Exploit of Death - Dell Shannon (2 page)

"So she picked up the wrong john," agreed
Mendoza uninterestedly. But as he wandered back to his office,
started to look over the recent reports, he felt vaguely that it was
good to be back, to the shop talk. To all the many men he'd worked
with so long, knew so well, to the never-ending monotonous crude jobs
showing up to be worked. It might be a thankless and sordid job, but
it was the job he knew. It was his job.

He left a note for the night watch about Delucca.
That was probably an O.D. of one of the street drugs or a
combination. On second thought, he sent a note up to Narco, to
Goldberg's office, about it. Not that there was anything unusual
about the O.D. The various drugs floating around, so easily
obtainable, saw to that, and the damn fool kids getting hooked by the
pushers. There wasn't much Narco could do about it any more than
Robbery-Homicide.

He was still a little
tired from the strenuous vacation, from the jet lag. He found himself
yawning over the reports and left the office early. By all
experience, he knew that the next couple of months would see a
buildup in the cases on hand. The worst of the summer heat always
brought the rise in violence.

* * *

THE NIGHT WATCH came on, and Rich Conway scanned
Mendoza's note and uttered a rude word. "More dirty work,"
he said. "I hate breaking news to the citizens." But it was
automatic complaint. Conway, that man for the girls, was resigned to
a tour on night watch now. He was dating a nurse who was on night
duty at Cedars-Sinai. Piggot was looking morose.

Bob Schenke said amiably, "I'll toss you for the
job."

Conway produced a quarter and flipped it. "Tails,"
said Schenke. That was the way it landed, and Conway handed over
Mendoza's note.

"So I suppose I'd better get it over," said
Schenke, and collected his hat and went out.

Piggott said, "These interest rates." As a
practicing fundamentalist Christian, Piggott was not a swearing man,
but his pauses could be eloquent. "We should've started buying a
house when we got married, but you always figure there's time. Now,
an apartment's no place to bring up a family, but who can afford the
payments, even on a little place? We've been looking, but it's just
impossible."

Conway, the carefree bachelor, wasn't much
interested, but offered token sympathy. They didn't have any calls
until Schenke came back an hour later.

He said cheerfully, "She cried all over me. Fat
Italian woman with seven other kids, and the husband's a drunk. Had
to tell me seven times how hard she tried to get the kid to stop
using this awful dope. But kids don't listen to sense. If us lazy
cops would just stop these terrible people selling the stuff, the
kids would be all right."

"Oh, tell us," said Conway. Sure enough,
ten thousand street dealers out there, anonymous.

"The devil," said Piggott, " getting
around and about."

At ten-forty they had a call to a new heist, and
Schenke and Conway went out on it. It was a twenty-four-hour
convenience market on Beverly Boulevard, and the manager had been
there alone. His name was Bagby. He was a small man about forty, and
he was still flustered.

"I don't like to ask the women clerks to take
the night shift," he said, " just on account of this kind
of thing. The terrible crime rate. But it's the first time we've ever
been held up. I was just so surprised because he looked like a—like
an average young fellow. Not anybody you'd suspect—well, I don't
know exactly how much was in the register, but it must've been around
a hundred bucks—"

"Could you describe the man, Mr. Bagby?"
asked Conway.

"Well, yes, just an average-looking young fella,
maybe about twenty-five. He was big, around six feet, and he had
blond hair—he was wearing ordinary sports clothes, slacks and a
short-sleeved shirt, and he was clean-shaved. In fact he looked
pretty clean and neat altogether. Not the kind of lout you'd expect—
Well, I don't know anything about guns—it was just a black sort of
gun, not very big."

Schenke and Conway looked at each other resignedly.

"Baby Face again. Did he touch anything in here,
did you notice?'

Bagby shook his head. "I don't think so. He
waited till another customer left and we were alone, and then he just
came over to the counter and said, this is a stickup, give me all the
money—and I saw the gun, so I did, and then he went  out. No,
I didn't follow him or look— I don't know if he got into a car."

The citizens. Well, faced with a gun in unknown
hands, anybody would play safe. Schenke started to tell him they'd
like a formal statement, if he'd come to headquarters sometime
tomorrow. There'd be another report on Baby Face, and the way it
looked, no more leads than the other reports had turned up.

They didn't have another
call the rest of the shift. The beginning of the week was sometimes
slow.

* * *

ON TUESDAY Morning when Palliser came in, he wasted a
little time hearing all about the vacation. "But it's good to
have you back. With Henry off, we've been busy. And we'll be busier,
with the worst of the summer still to come." He rubbed his
handsome straight nose ruefully.

Hackett and Higgins had drifted into Mendoza's office
after him. Hackett had the night report and said, "Baby Face
again. And no leads. Well, how often do we pick up a heister? Go
through the motions." He laid the report on Mendoza's desk.

It was Jason Grace's day off, and there was enough
work on hand to keep the rest of them busy. They were still taking
statements from the witnesses to the bank robbery, and two of the
tellers were coming in again to look at more mug shots down in
Records. The rest of them went out, and Hackett sat down in the chair
beside the desk and lit a cigarette. "Have you had a chance to
go through last week's reports?"

"Desultorily," said Mendoza. "‘Any
one in particular?"

Hackett sighed. "These muggings. There's not a
damn thing we can do about it, nowhere to go, but it looks like an
organized effort to me. The first one was just after you left. So far
there have been five. All of them in interesting places—the parking
lots by the Ahmanson Theatre, that complex of shops around the Music
Center, around those high-class restaurants in Little Tokyo. About
the only places in downtown L.A. where you might reasonably expect to
run into the well-heeled victims. And they've taken a little haul,
all right. The jewelry, the cash."

"They," said Mendoza.

"Well, yes," said Hackett. "Only one
of the victims was alone, an elderly widower. He's still in the
hospital. The rest were couples having a night on the town. They all
say it was three, four, five young louts. Moved in fast and didn't
care how much damage they did. I know, Luis, but it smells to me like
gang action. Fairly smart gang action. Picking those spots. It's
funny when you come to think, these—um—fashionable places being
right downtown in what used to be the real slums."

"Mmh," said Mendoza. He'd grown up in those
slums before the fashionable places got built, or got to be
fashionable.

"I talked to Slade over in Juvenile about it. He
says there are four or five gangs who could be responsible, but no
way to pin it down. Whichever, they know a fence. None of the jewelry
showed up."

"And gangs down here," said Mendoza
sardonically, "would know every fence operating."

"Well, it's just a thought," said Hackett.
He sighed again and stood up. "And I would have a bet with you
that it's a waste of time. That Bagby, Baby Face's latest victim,
offered to come in and look at mug shots. Somehow I don't think Baby
Face is anywhere in Records."

"You never know," said Mendoza. "
Buena
suerte
." The phone buzzed at him as
Hackett went out and he picked it up.

"Mendoza."

"I got your love note about your latest
overdose," said Captain Goldberg. "What the hell do you
suppose we can do about it? You haven't even had an autopsy report
yet."

"I just thought you'd like the information for
your statistics, Saul. No, I don't know what kind of an O.D. it was
yet. But we all know the probabilities."

Goldberg sneezed and said, "Damn allergies. For
a bet the Quaaludes—and/or liquor or PCP. Anybody can buy the stuff
on any street corner, and when the kids are such goddamn fools to get
hooked—well, let me see the autopsy report when you get it, just to
pass the time. How was the vacation abroad?"

Mendoza told him and finished going over the reports
he hadn't caught up on. He was just going down the hall to the coffee
machine when Sergeant Lake on the switchboard beckoned to him
urgently.

Mendoza halted. "What's gone down now?"

Lake proffered him the phone. He was smiling broadly.

"It's Jase, Lieutenant, they've got one."

"
¡No me diga!
"
Mendoza took the phone. "Congratulations, Jase."

Grace was in the middle of a sentence. "—and
I've got to admit to you, we could've got one a year ago if we hadn't
been particular. Us black folk get priority now, you know, and then
too there are always plenty of black babies, but Virginia wasn't
about to take just any baby and neither was I. Jimmy, you there?"

"It's me," said Mendoza.

"Oh, Lieutenant. That's good, you can tell
everybody. We just got the confirmation an hour ago. Only heard about
the possibility last night. We haven't even seen him yet, but he
sounds just what we want. No, it wasn't the adoption agency, it was
Virginia's doctor. He knows the family, very respectable family, good
people, but the daughter got in trouble. He's only three days old,
but the doctor's going to arrange everything—well, we don't know
when we can see him, but we've already decided on Adam John and
Virginia's crazy to go out shopping for baby clothes—"

Mendoza was laughing. "Good news, Jase,
congratulations, just what you wanted." The Graces already had
one adopted baby, little Celia Ann, and had been hunting another for
a couple of years.

"You pass the word on, Lieutenant—tell you
more tomorrow."

Mendoza grinned at Lake. "A1l of these
pregnancies must've rubbed off on Jase."

Lake grinned back. "Just what he wanted. It's
grand; I suppose he'll be raving about this one and taking all the
pictures to show, the way he did with the first one. Well, kids, they
can be a lot of trouble, but a lot of fun too."

Mendoza looked into the big communal detective
office. Galeano and Landers were in and he passed on the news. They
were pleased for Grace; he had felt a little resentful of all those
pregnancies.

"At least," said Landers, "they
already have a house. When I think of the payments on that old
shack—·"

Hackett and Higgins were apparently still down in
Records with the witnesses. They hadn't shown up when the rest of
them went out to lunch, leaving Wanda Larsen taking a belated
statement from one of the witnesses to the bank robbery, and they had
just landed back at the office at one-forty-five when a new heist
went down, with a first report of a D.O.A. victim.

Mendoza went out on that with Galeano. It was a big
chain pharmacy and on Olympic, and the D.O.A. was the head
pharmacist, Dave Bryan. Everybody else around was in a state of
shock. There were two other pharmacists, five women clerks, and seven
or eight customers. Most of the heisters were shy birds, wary of
operating in front of a crowd, but like everyone else they came all
sorts. The two patrolmen had done their best to preserve the scene,
but there had been some milling around. It probably wouldn't make any
difference here.

"But it was so fast—" The older of the
two pharmacists kept repeating that in a dazed voice. "So
fast—in and out, and they both had guns—I don't know which of
them killed Mr. Bryan—one of them asked for all the uppers and
downers, and the other opened the register. I don't think anybody but
us saw what was going on until they fired at Mr. Bryan—"

"And it was just a mistake," said the other
one fiercely. "A damn stupid mistake! He didn't pay any
attention because he didn't hear the bastards. He was getting deafer
all the time and the hearing aid didn't help him much. He just turned
away, he thought I was waiting on them, and I guess they thought he
was going to call the cops and they—" The man lying face down
at one end of the counter looked to be in his late seventies, with a
scanty tonsure of gray hair and a spare figure in the white smock. He
had been shot once in the head and there was no exit wound.

"There was just one shot?" They seemed to
think so. Stocky, dark Galeano stood looking at the corpse
thoughtfully. "No powder burns," he pointed out. "The
shot was fired from at least three feet off and got him square in the
back of the head—either it was a fluke or the shooter's a pretty
good marksman. Fairly small caliber, too. It looks like a very slick
pro job."

Mendoza agreed, and talking to all of these people,
getting all of the formal statements, was going to take up quite a
lot of time. Go through the motions, he thought, with a vengeance—and
likely come up with nothing useful. On the other hand, if this had
been pulled by a pair of experienced pros, it was possible that one
or both of them were in Records, and some of the witnesses might pick
a picture. Even the experienced pros were quite often stupid, and it
was also possible, given the stupidity of this caper—walking into a
store full of people to pull a heist in the middle of the day—that
they had both been high on something.