Exploit of Death - Dell Shannon (12 page)

"She wasn't attacked in the store," said
Higgins. "Not until they'd gone into the living room at the
back." He hunched his bulky shoulders.

"Well, the women friends. Nothing likely there."

"I suppose they had families and she'd know
them. But damn it!—that was a crude spur-of-the-minute attack—don't
see any rudimentary planning to it. She was an old lady, John. She'd
been familiar with that neighborhood for years—before the crime
rate started to climb. Maybe she wasn't just as cautious as the
family thinks. She might've opened the door for any reason. Wait and
see what the lab report has to say. There just could be some prints
on that hammer."

"Wait and see,"
agreed Palliser.

* * *

WHEN IT COULD BE EXPECTED that people would be up and
dressed on Sunday morning, Galeano drove up to Beachwood Drive and at
the little frame house found Cora Delaney at home. She looked at
stocky dark Galeano—according to regulations in a whole business
suit, white shirt and tie, when most men wore casual and sports
clothes, and at the badge in his hand—with surprise and curiosity.
She was somewhere around Rose Eberhart's age, short and plump and
defiantly blond. She let him into a neat livingroom with a collection
of old but good furniture, and Galeano told her about Rose Eberhart.
She broke down and cried for five minutes and then sat up and blew
her nose.

"We knew each other for forty-five years, since
we were in kindergarten together. She was only forty-nine. But how
could it have happened? You said it looked like she was attacked by
somebody. I don't understand—a burglar—"

It hadn't been a burglar. The apartment had been
intact, not ransacked, and there'd been thirty dollars in her wallet,
a modest amount of good jewelry undisturbed.

"That's what it looks like, Mrs. Delaney. When
did you see her last?"

"I talked to her on the phone Wednesday night.
She sounded just her usual self, but of course she wouldn't know she
was going to be attacked. She'd been feeling run-down lately, said
she was taking extra vitamins." She blew her nose again. "Oh,
and she was annoyed at some woman who'd been pestering her. Some
woman named Arvin."

"What about?" asked Galeano.

"Oh, she was claiming Rose owed her some money
and she didn't. It was some woman she used to work with. She hadn't
seen her in a long time and ran into her at the corner market. She
wasn't really worried about it, just annoyed. Have you talked to
Alice—her daughter? Does she know?"

He told her about that, gave her the name of the
funeral parlor. The body would probably be released tomorrow.

"Oh, I'd better call Alice, I'll be glad to make
the arrangements. This is all the poor girl needed, a sick baby and
her husband laid off. Yes, I've got her number, thanks." She
began to cry again. "We were going out to lunch together today.
It's her day off. I said I'd meet her at the Tick-Tock at
twelve-thirty. It just doesn't seem possible she's dead."

Galeano drove up to McClintock's Restaurant. It was
just open, no customers in yet. He ordered a cup of coffee from Marie
Boyce, who said blankly, "I don't think I ever heard the name.
Arvin? l can't recall anybody named that ever worked here. Since I've
been here anyway."

Whitney came over and sat on the opposite side of the
booth. "Arvin," he mused. "It seems to ring a faint
bell. I've heard the name somewhere." He accepted a cigarette
and brooded over it. "Somebody she used to work with. Well,
she'd been here ten years. About as long as I've managed the place. I
tell you, in that time there's been a little turnover in the staff.
Most of our girls are pretty steady, but now and then we get one who
isn't satisfactory and I let her go, or one doesn't stay for some
reason. It could've been one like that—here for just a short
while—sometime back. I just don't remember, Mr. Galeano."

Galeano went back to the office. Jason Grace had just
come in, having taken the morning off. He had just bought himself a
Polaroid camera, and he was passing around shots of the christening,
a broad smile on his face. Galeano grinned at him over the snapshots.
Grace's wife, Virginia, was a nice-looking woman, and the baby was a
cute one, round and brown with solemn eyes and a little fuzz of hair.
The little three-year-old girl was a honey, in a starched white dress
and a red hair ribbon. "Nice family, Jase." Galeano had
been a bachelor for a long time and he was looking forward to a
family of his own.

He told Grace what meager
information he had turned up and Grace said, "It doesn't sound
like much, Nick, but we don't know one hell of a lot about this
anyway."

* * *

MENOZA WASN'T supposed to come in on Sunday, but he
usually did for a while, to keep track of what was going on. He
drifted in about two o'clock and Lake said that Sergeant Donovan from
Chicago had been asking for him. "So get him on the phone."
Mendoza swept off the Homburg and went into his office.

"We've got damn all for you," said Donovan.
"There are about a thousand and one Hoffmans in the greater
Chicago area, but none of them seems to be missing a Ruth."

"I didn't expect so," said Mendoza. "That
must've been a hell of a job. Thanks very much, Donovan."

"At least we could check by phone, didn't have
to do the legwork in this damn heat. But thank God, it's beginning to
cool off now, getting into fall."

"I wish I could say the same." He was just
off the phone when an autopsy report came in from the coroner's
office on Anthony Delucca. He had to think before he remembered—the
teenager on the bus-stop bench. It had been an overdose of Quaaludes.
He filed it and forgot it.

The office was humming along quietly, Higgins typing
a report, Palliser on the phone, nobody else in. Hackett and Landers
had gone over to the jail to talk to Gerber. Mendoza swiveled his
desk chair around to the window and sat smoking, staring at the view
over the Hollywood Hills, and tried to think if there was anything
else to do on Juliette Martin. There wasn't. Wait for the French
police. Hell, he thought. There must be a catch to that somewhere. X
would know about that possibility, too. Wait and maybe never hear
anything from France on Juliette. Why not? He didn't have any ideas
about it at all.

Lake brought him a cable. It was from the Sûreté
and said simply, PRINTS UNKNOWN OUR RECORDS. Mendoza snarled at it.

Of course, strictly speaking, it wasn't the Sûreté's
fault. Passports didn't carry a typed address, only one filled in by
the holder. But the French passport bureau might, for God's sake,
have noted down something about the girl. What the proof of
citizenship had been, something.

And he reflected moodily, they'd have to bury the
poor girl eventually. They couldn't leave her down in the cold tray
at the morgue indefinitely.

Hackett looked in the door and said, "Gerber
gave us a statement. He admitted he was on the heist with Bauman, but
it was Bauman had the gun and fired it."

"
Naturalmente
."

"So it's up to the D.A.'s office what to call
it. Want to bet it'll start murder two and get reduced? Tom's doing
the final report on it. Anything new gone down?"

"I don't know.
Everybody seems to be out somewhere on something." Sunday was
just another day to the men at Robbery-Homicide.

* * *

HACKETT WENT DOWN the hall for a cup of coffee, but
he hadn't taken more than three sips before Lake buzzed him.

"Attempted heist, it's a liquor store on
Wilshire and the squad's got him."

"No rest for the wicked," said Hackett,
annoyed. He abandoned the coffee and went back downstairs to the
parking lot. The liquor store was a little way out on Wilshire.

The heister had picked a wrong target on this one.
The store owner was a hefty ex-Marine by the name of Nolan who worked
out at a gym regularly, and the gun hadn't scared him worth a damn.
He said to Hackett disgustedly, "For Christ's sake, the damn
punk didn't even have his finger in the trigger guard! Does he think
I'm a goddamn idiot? I just took one swing at him and put him out
cold, and called for cops, and I bet some goddamn fool judge sends
him up for sixty days, poor guy not responsible because his mama
spanked him too much."

The heister was sitting on the floor propped against
the counter. The patrolman had put the cuffs on him, and he was
feeling his bruised jaw with both cuffed hands. He raised his head to
look at Hackett, and Hackett said pleasedly, "Well, I will be
damned if it isn't Baby Face."

The various descriptions had been faithful. The man
looked about twenty-five and he was fairly tall and husky F but he
had a round, boyish face, a shock of white-blond hair. He was very
neatly dressed in brown slacks and a clean white sports shirt. He
looked as if he was ready to cry.

The patrolman handed the gun to Hackett. It was an
old .32 Colt automatic and it wasn't loaded.

"All right, let's have your name," said
Hackett.

The heister said in a thin voice, "Ricky Davies.
I'm sorry. He didn't need to hit me that hard, I wouldn't have done
anything to him. The gun's not loaded. I don't even know how to load
a gun."

Nolan said, "Oh, for Christ's sake."

Hackett reached down and helped Davies onto his feet.

"Come on, I think we want a little talk with you
." The uniformed man went out to go back on tour and Nolan said
to nobody in particular, "These goddamn punks."

At least the air-conditioning was back on at the
jail. While Davies was getting booked in, Hackett called the office
and told Lake to start the machinery on the warrant. Davies had I.D.
on him, a driver's license, a couple of credit cards and
nineteen-sixty-four in cash. He sat hunched in the cramped little
interrogation room, and asked in a subdued voice, "Can I call my
wife? She's going to be upset as hell about this and I don't know how
to tell her. She thinks I'm out with a buddy of mine. She's going to
be mad as hell at me and I don't blame her."

Hackett offered him a cigarette and he said he didn't
smoke. "You can call your wife whenever you like, and a lawyer.
How did you get into this?" Davies was hardly the seasoned
criminal by his looks and manner.

Davies said miserably, "It was on account of all
the bills. I never did anything wrong before in my life—never
wanted to. But it's just, everything costs so much. I've got a good
job— I work at Desmond's men's store up on Western—and I thought
Stella and I could get by O.K. on what we both make, we just got
married six months ago—but we had to get an apartment, I'd been
living at home with Mom and she'd been with her folks too, and the
rent's three-fifty—you can't find anything much cheaper and it's
not a high-class place at that, and Stella's used to nice things— I
wanted her to have nice things—and we had to get furniture and a
lot of things. She works too, she's a cocktail waitress at the Tail
o' Cock, but even between us there's the payments on her car, and my
car, and the rent, and all the groceries, I never realized how much
groceries cost. And then she said she'd all ways wanted a diamond
watch and I got her one for her birthday—and you got to dress
pretty sharp in my job and I even when I get a discount it adds up."
He took a breath.

"And Stella likes nice clothes—all pretty
girls do. And the Visa account got up to the limit, a thousand bucks,
and I missed one payment on the car, and then Stella got the flu and
was off work a week, and she'd used up her vacation and sick leave
when we went on the honeymoon. We went up to Tahoe and that was part
of the Visa account. And I got so I just didn't know which way to
turn," said Davies helplessly. "And Stella wanted to get me
a nice birthday present, it's this gold ring with my initials, she
put it on our account at Bullocks', it was ninety-four bucks—and I
was feeling kind of desperate, if you get me. I got that gun at a
pawn shop for thirty dollars. I don't know anything about guns, I
never had any bullets for it—and people just handed over the money.
I thought if I came right downtown here there wouldn't be the chance
of anybody recognizing me from up in Hollywood. I felt pretty bad
about it, it was all wrong, but I got the Visa account nearly cleared
up. Stella never looks at the statement— I knew she wouldn't
notice." He looked at Hackett, his face haggard. "She's
going to be mad as hell at me, get into all this."

"Have you ever been in any trouble before?"

He shook his blond head. "I never even had a
parking ticket."

Hackett stood up. "We1l, you can get bail and
your wife can get you a lawyer." It was funny in a way, and he
felt sorry for this stupid kid. It would probably end up as a reduced
charge. Call it a year in and probation. "You'd better call your
wife and break the news."

"Thanks," said Davies meaninglessly.
Hackett turned him over to the jailer and started back to the office
to write the final report on this.
* * *

MENDOZA HAD GONE home and nobody else was left in the
office at five-fifty, except Higgins and Palliser. They were on their
way out past the switchboard when Lake beckoned, put down the
earphone and said, "Something funny, boys. It's the California
Community Hospital and they say they've got a murder. The desk
downstairs relayed the call. It's a Dr. Rasmussen. Says one of the
patients has been murdered."