Carnival of Death (8 page)

Laredo made a gesture of despair. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Do you think it was engineered by former members of the invasion brigade?”

“I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”

Daly lit Paquita’s cigarette. “Let’s start with the dead guard, Mickey. As I understand it, you had trouble with Kelly before.”

“That’s right.”

“What sort of trouble?”

Paquita put her crossed hands on her shoulders and embraced herself, then turned her face quickly to avoid an imaginary kiss.

“Kelly tried to kiss you?”

The girl bobbed her head, then after pointing to her husband, she drew back one dainty fist as if about to punch an imaginary molester.

DuBoise was enchanted. “And Mickey punched him?”

The girl shook her head and DuBoise tried again.

“Mickey threatened to punch him.”

Paquita nodded.

Daly thought a moment. “Okay. You had trouble with the dead guard but it hadn’t come to a showdown. All there was to it was words.”

“That’s all,” Laredo said. He continued to be bitter. “But if they give me a lie detector test and ask me if I hated the guy, I’m sunk. I hated him so much I got my revolver from the catchall box and was ready to shoot him if he bothered Paquita again.”

“But you didn’t feed him chloral hydrate?”

“No.”

“Then how did he get it?”

“I haven’t any idea.” Laredo added, “But, being the kind of a man he was, there must have been a lot of people who would have liked to see him dead.”

“But Paquita did give him a cup of lemonade?”

“That was part of my contract with the shopping center. For X number of dollars, I agreed to furnish X number of gallons of free lemonade. All anyone had to do was ask for it.”

Daly looked back at the girl. “Did you put anything in his drink, Paquita?”

She shook her head, then drew an imaginary paper cup of lemonade from an imaginary container and drank it.

“You drank out of the same container?”

“In front of me,” Laredo answered for her. “When I saw Kelly go down, I walked over to the stand and asked her the same thing and Paquita was as puzzled as I was.”

Daly changed the subject. “Why didn’t you tell me what happened to your parents when you were on my show Friday night, Mickey?”

The younger man shrugged. “Probably because I still go to pieces when I think of it.” He added quickly, “But I’m not bitter or foolish enough to hold up an armored truck to get money for the cause.”

DuBoise suggested, “Realizing how much can be at stake for you and Mrs. Laredo, and that the District Attorney’s office intends to charge you with murder in the first degree, suppose you tell us exactly what happened from the time you arrived at the shopping plaza up to and including the arrival of the armored truck.”

Laredo sat on the edge of the table in the room. “There isn’t much to tell, Mr. DuBoise. Paquita and I got to the plaza a few minutes after eight o’clock. While she made up the juice I put on some coveralls and fixed one of the pipes on the carousel organ. That took me about an hour. Then I started for the Ferris wheel to see if I could do anything about a set of faulty main bearings and I met Jocko who told me he had worked most of the night replacing them with bearings he’d gotten from a junked wheel. That made me feel good. I felt fine. You know, like I might make it after all. Then I worked on the throttle of the locomotive of the miniature train.”

“What was the matter with the throttle?”

“A worn bushing made it stick.”

“Do you usually run the train yourself?”

“No. Usually I clown around to drum up trade. I pay a punk named Tommy Banks to run the train. But when he hadn’t shown up by twenty minutes of ten, I decided he’d quit. So I walked over to the men’s room in the service station and put on my makeup and clown costume, intending to run the train myself and save the twenty bucks I would have had to pay Banks.”

“Do you wear a distinctive clown costume?” Daly asked. “I mean, did it originate with you?”

“No,” Laredo said, “I use a more or less classical Pierrot. The only variations are that I paint on a sad mouth and put a few tears on my cheeks.”

“Go on. What happened after you changed into costume?”

“I started back toward the rides with the usual tail of kids following me. Then I hear a car horn beep behind me and when I turned to shoo the kids out of the way, I turned too quickly and fell. And it wasn’t a car that had beeped. It was the armored truck and Kelly was laughing at me.”

“It was Kelly who’d beeped the horn?”

“So Quinlan, the driver, said.”

“And then?”

“Kelly told him to drive on and made some crack about now that the one-legged clown was out of his way he wanted to cop another feel from the pretty dumb little Spanish broad and get a couple of glasses of lemonade before he made his deliveries.”

“What did you do then?”

“I gave the kids some passes to get rid of them and I limped after the truck and got my gun from the catchall box.”

“What did you intend to do with it?”

“Kill Kelly if he bothered Paquita.”

“Did he?”

“No. He was just needling me. While I stood there, holding the gun like a fool, he stopped at the stand but all he did was ask for a cup of lemonade.”

Daly looked at Paquita. She nodded.

Laredo continued, “So I put the gun back in the box and started for the train and I heard a woman scream and when I looked back Kelly was clutching at the collar of his shirt and having trouble staying on his feet. And while I watched him he dropped to the pavement and Quinlan carried the money sacks back to the truck and got Mike Kelly and he hurried over to where his brother was and asked if there was a doctor in the crowd. And a man with a little hairline mustache said he was a doctor and went to work on Kelly.”

“Go on.”

“Then, like I said before, I walked over to the stand and asked Paquita if she had given him anything and she said she hadn’t. And about then I heard the train whistle and I looked over at the station and I almost blew my stack.”

“Why?”

“The train was in motion with a white-faced joie at the throttle, wearing a clown costume just like mine.” He went on to describe the other clown, the one who had thrown money around; the killing of Jocko; and the accidental shooting of the young mother.

Laredo paused briefly, continued. “Then Paquita came running over from the stand and picked up the baby and asked me how badly Jocko was hurt and I remember I told her I didn’t think he was going to make it. And he didn’t.”

Paquita pretended to beat on her husband’s head with an imaginary weapon.

“That’s right,” Laredo said. “Then Mike Kelly came running over and started beating on my head with his gun barrel and yelling something about Paquita having poisoned his brother and what did I do with the money.”

Daly asked, “And that’s all you and Paquita had to do with it?”

“That’s all.”

“You didn’t get any of the money?”

“No.”

“And you didn’t plot with anyone to rob the truck?”

“No.”

“Now tell us this. Was it the same clown who threw the money out of the truck who shot the old roustabout?”

Laredo thought for a moment. “I can’t be sure, but I think it was. Yes, I’d said it was the same one.”

“How many clowns were there, Mickey?”

“There,” Laredo said, “you have me. They let me read a newspaper down in the detention cell and according to the story I read there were six or more clowns. But I didn’t see any more than two at any time. That is, beside myself. The clown who threw the money out of the truck and the clown who started the train.”

Daly snuffed the cigarette he was smoking. “That doesn’t give us much to go on. The only thing we’re certain of so far is that three people are dead and you and Paquita are going to be charged with their murders. Think carefully, Mickey. Did either you or your wife notice anything about the two clowns you saw that might help us establish their identity?”

Laredo shook his head. “N-no. I can’t remember a thing. Wearing identical makeup and costumes, all joies look more or less alike.” He realized Paquita was trying to tell him something. “You saw something, sweetheart?” he asked her.

The girl pointed her finger at the wall and cocked her thumb, fired an imaginary pistol, reversed her position, staggered as if she’d been shot, then clapped one hand to her chest as she described a square in the air with the other.

“Thanks, honey,” Laredo smiled. He kissed his wife lightly, then turned back to Daly and DuBoise. “So much has happened, I forgot. There was one thing. Just before Jocko died and Mike Kelly started beating on me, I asked the old man if there was anything he could tell me that might help the police pick up the guy who’d shot him. And he said, ‘Yeah. Sure, boss. I thought he looked familiar. I make him now. It was the young clem.’”

“Who or what is a clem?” DuBoise asked.

“That one I know,” Daly said. “A clem is the term applied by circus and carnival people to a farmer or a towner. Or as Paquita described it — a square. But that in itself doesn’t tell us anything. Have you any idea whom the old man could have been referring to, Mickey?”

“Only one person. The punk who didn’t show up. The one who was supposed to have run the train.”

“And you say his name is Banks, Tommy Banks.”

“That’s the name he gave me for my records.”

“Have you his address?”

“Yes. He lives on Franklin Avenue, in North Hollywood.”

“Describe him.”

“Eighteen or nineteen. About my size. Light complexioned. Blond hair and wears it long. Thinks he’s hell with the high school girls and judging from the shadows under his eyes, he doesn’t do too badly.”

“How long has he worked for you, Mickey?”

“Not long. If he’d shown up yesterday morning, it would have been the fourth stand he’d played.”

T
HE ADDRESS
wasn’t difficult to find. The landlady was cooperative but not helpful. Yes, she had a lodger named Tommy Banks. No, he wasn’t home. Yes, she’d known for the last few weeks that he had been working for a small carnival, or group of rides, that played shopping center parking lots.

No, she didn’t know when he would be home. She hadn’t seen him since late Friday afternoon. No, he hadn’t told her where he was going but, judging from the way he was dressed and the fact that he’d strapped his skis on the roof of his Volkswagen sedan, she imagined he’d gone to one of the mountain resorts, possibly Big Bear or Mammoth Mountain.

No, there hadn’t been anyone with him, male or female. She didn’t allow her lodgers to entertain girls in their rooms. No, she didn’t know the license number of his car. No, she didn’t know the name of any of his friends. She had, however, heard him boast that he had a lady friend who had a cabin near Big Bear City. Yes, it was possible he’d gone there.

Daly asked the woman for permission to use her phone and called Charlie Schaeffer and asked him to have one of his men check with the Bureau of License and get the license number of a 1960 or 1961 Volkswagen registered to Tommy or Thomas Banks.

“Whatever you say, Tom,” Lieutenant Schaeffer said. “But you and Gene are wasting your time. We just ran a quick polygraph on Laredo and while our expert says it is inconclusive, we feel it’s at least indicative that he’s in this thing up to his neck. Every time the dead guard’s name was mentioned, the writing arms almost jumped off the graph.”

“That was to be expected,” Daly said. “Mickey explained that to us. He hated Kelly for making a pass at his wife. Hated him enough to kill him. But that doesn’t prove he did, nor does it prove that he either planned the caper or in any way participated in the looting of the truck.”

“No,” the homicide man admitted, “it doesn’t. But you and Gene do me a favor, will you, Tom?”

“If we can.”

“When you find some other way that Tim Kelly could have gotten that lethal dose of chloral hydrate except in the cup of pink lemonade that Mrs. Laredo served him, call back and let me know.”

“I’ll do that,” Daly promised. “But right now Gene and I are going out to the shopping center and see if we can pick up anything there.”

There was little about the new East Valley Shopping Plaza to distinguish it from any of the dozens of other shopping centers in the Greater Los Angeles area. Nor had the incident of the day before done anything to impede the swarms of Sunday bargain hunters.

As Daly parked his car DuBoise asked, “Just what are we looking for?”

Daly admitted, “I haven’t any idea. But, if possible, I want to talk to the public relations man who took that picture. I also want to ask around the neighborhood and try to find out if anyone knows anything about the mysterious Dr. Alveredo.”

“You think he could have been in on this?”

Daly shrugged. “It could be. Kelly died seconds before, or after, he gave him an injection. And you heard Schaeffer on the phone. If we hope to pry the Laredos out of this, we have to find some other way that Kelly could have been given that chloral hydrate.”

“But can it be injected intravenously?”

“I don’t know. Right now the only thing I’m certain of is that Kelly didn’t commit suicide.”

They crossed the parking lot to the open square of stores. The branch bank was closed but all of the stores were open and crowded with shoppers. The only signs of the tragedy of the previous day were Mickey Laredo’s three canvas covered rides and the gaily painted but untenanted pink lemonade stand.

By inquiring of one of the counter girls at the open counter of the pizza palace, Daly learned that the public relations office for the center was in the back of a greeting card and job printing plant on the far side of the square. There was no one in the front of the store but he and DuBoise could hear a man whistling and the busy thump of a small printing press in the rear of the building. Daly parted the matchstick curtain separating the two areas and the thin-faced man running the press shut it off and introduced himself.

“Well, what do you know?” he smiled, pleased. “I must live right. If it isn’t Tom Daly in person. You don’t know me, Mr. Daly, but I watch your show every night, five nights a week. I wouldn’t miss it.” He offered his hand to Daly, then to DuBoise. “The name is Carver, Jim Carver. What can I do for you gentlemen?”