Exploit of Death - Dell Shannon (7 page)

"Time differences," said Mendoza tersely.
"Europe's eight hours ahead of us."

"But it's nothing you didn't know already,"
said Higgins.

Then a uniformed man came in with a manila envelope.

The lab report on the apartment. Mendoza scanned it
hastily and said, "Hell,
nada
absolutamente
—or nothing useful."

The only latent prints the lab had picked up in the
apartment were the girl's. There had been a clear print of her right
thumb on the top of the handle of the refrigerator—just where it
might be expected—and others on the kitchen counter, a table in the
living room. Nothing else but smudges anywhere, except for one clear
print of her right forefinger on the plastic, medicine bottle. There
hadn't been enough residue of anything in that for analysis. And that
was all the lab had to tell them. Mendoza passed the report over.

"And I'm wondering now—how did she get there?"
he said dreamily. "Already drugged, already unconscious—"

He stabbed out his cigarette and immediately lit
another, his gaze abstracted on the view over the Hollywood Hills in
the distance through the big window behind his desk. "Going to
visit her grandfather! No possible way to find out the name this side
of France—anywhere in greater Los Angeles—and where the hell was
she between Saturday and Tuesday? We haven't got an estimated time of
death yet but it looked as if it could've been Tuesday night. No
address book there. Well, they'd have got rid of anything
informative, of course."

"The Daggetts?"

"I don't know," said Mendoza in a
dissatisfied voice. He had asked Records about the Daggetts and Helen
Garvey. They looked simply like ordinary little people—unimportant.
"They know something but it might not be much. But Grandfather
comes into it somewhere, George."

"And how the hell do you make that out?"

"Grandfather would've been expecting her. Knew
she was coming. Was he going to meet her at the airport? We didn't
see anything of her after we got off the plane. Grandfather is
probably an elderly man—maybe he doesn't drive. Was she expecting
to be met?—And—Hell and damnation!" He sat up with a jerk.

"I just saw that too—not operating on all
cylinders," said Higgins. "Better ask the cab companies if
she picked up a cab at the airport."

Mendoza already had the phone off the hook. "And
damn it—no way to be sure but show the photos to any cabby who had
a fare there. A little legwork. But George, the reason I say
Grandfather's in it somehow—he'd be expecting her. If she was
intercepted somehow, by whoever, for whatever reason only God
knows—and didn't show up, Grandfather would be concerned. The
natural thing to do would be to check with the airline, and he'd find
out she landed here. If he isn't in on the caper—whatever the hell
it is—why hasn't he reported her missing?"

Higgins passed one hand over his prognathous jaw.

"Maybe he has."

Mendoza shut his eyes. "
Muy
bien
. Not operating on all cylinders you can
say. Grandfather may not be a villain. He could live anywhere from
Malibu to Monrovia, Tujunga to Lakewood—and he may have reported
her to one of a hundred police forces. Thank you, George."

"Well, it was just a thought."

"So we get on the phone and start asking. The
logical force would be Inglewood where the airport is. But what in
God's name it's all about—
Por Dios
,
I swear that was a cold-blooded killing, and it was planned out right
here, whatever the hell was behind it—and there have got to be some
leads if we dig deep enough." He picked up the phone again.
"Jimmy, I want to talk to some cab companies."

Higgins yawned. "There must be people who knew
where she was heading. She'd have had friends—there's the
boyfriend."

"Don't suggest that I
cable to the Sûreté
again," said Mendoza
bitterly.

* * *

HACKETT AND LANDERS were trailing Albert Gerber in
ninety-eight-degree heat. Gerber wasn't at the Houston Street
address, which was an old four-story apartment building, and the only
tenant at home didn't know him, but the manager lived on the premises
and said helpfully that he knew Gerber had a pal who worked at the
Shell Station up on the corner of Soto. He didn't think Gerber had a
job since awhile back but he was up to date on the rent all right.
They had queried the DMV about a car and knew Gerber was driving a
ten-year-old Chevy, plate number so-and-so.

They tried the Shell Station. An indolent-looking
fellow with a big paunch, shirt opened to his belt, looked at them
lackadaisically over a canned Coke and said, "Oh, him. Yeah, he
hangs around here some—working on his car. He's a a friend of
Mike's—Mike Sullivan, he spells me part-time and nights, he's
supposed to show up at four if you want to talk to him."

"Do you know where he lives?" asked
Landers.

The man said reluctantly, "Oh, hell, I got it
wrote down somewhere." He moved slowly into the grubby little
office, rummaged and found an address scrawled in a ragged ledger. It
was Cornwell Street, only a couple of blocks away, a shabby old
duplex. The girl who answered the door had a luscious model's figure,
clearly visible in a pair of shorts and a halter, and she didn't know
where Mike was but she knew where Gerber might be. He'd been dating
Marlene Foster pretty heavy lately, she said, she and Marlene had
been to school together, and Marlene had just got laid off her job so
she might be out somewhere with Al. That address was Pennsylvania
Avenue. The air-conditioning in the Monte Carlo barely had time to
get going when they found the place, a single frame house with
peeling paint. A shapeless woman in a wrinkled tent dress opened the
door.

"Oh," she said to the question. "No,
Al's not here. Him and Marlene went to the movies. Mostly for the
air-conditioning. They went to the first show when it opened at one
o'clock."

"Do you know which one?" asked Landers.

"Sure, the Bijou over on Whittier. Unless they
changed their minds. You're cops, aren't you?" She looked
doubtfully at Landers. "Even if you don't look old enough to
be."

Landers with his perennially boyish face would be
hearing that one until he was a grandfather.

It was a little past three-thirty then and the first
show was probably about over. They looked up the address at the
nearest public phone and got to the theater fifteen minutes later.
There was a public parking lot half a block away. They looked and
spotted Gerber's old Chevy, so they waited.

There wasn't any shade and the sun beat fiercely on
the sticky blacktop. They waited another fifteen minutes and a couple
walked up to the car laughing and talking.

"Albert Gerber?" asked Hackett.

"Yeah, that's me." He recognized them for
what they were instantly and said, "What the hell you want
anyways?" He was tall and dark with a heavy tan and bulging
muscles. The girl was small and blond. She looked scared.

"You," said Landers and brought out the
badge. They had already applied for the warrant.

Gerber came out with a string of obscenities and the
girl began to cry. "You promised you wouldn't get into any more
trouble," she wailed.

"I haven't done a thing, the dirty fuzz just
pick on anybody got a little pedigree—"

"Well, Joe Bauman says you were with him on that
heist the other day, and it's a charge of murder two this time,
Gerber. That pharmacist is dead."

Gerber said this and that about Bauman. "I don't
know what the hell you're talking about."

"Come on," said Landers. "We're taking
you in."

Gerber fished out his car keys and gave them to the
girl. He said, "You get hold of Mike and tell him I'll need some
bail money. The goddanm fuzz."

They ferried him down to the jail and booked him in.
Hackett said, "We can talk to him some more later on, Tom—after
they've got the air-conditioning fixed."

The air-conditioning was
still off at the jail and it felt hotter than it had outside, stuffy
and stagnant.

* * *

MENDOZA LEFT EARLY and got home by six o'clock. It
was a little cooler up in the hills above Burbank, but the sun was
still fairly high and unrelentingly bright. Beyond the tall iron
gates which opened politely as he shoved the gadget on the dashboard,
the green pasture on either side of the drive looked pleasantly
pastoral. The Five Graces, the woolly white sheep to keep down the
weeds, were peacefully huddled in a little cluster grazing
industriously. Ken Kearney had the sprinklers going on the pasture.
The Kearneys would be relaxing over dinner in their apartment
attached to the stables for the ponies, Star and Diamond.

At the top of the hill, where the big old Spanish
ranch house sprawled behind its concrete block wall, Mendoza slid the
Ferrari into the garage beside Alison's Facel-Vega and Mairi's old
Chevy and went in the back way. In the rear patio, Cedric, the Old
English sheepdog, greeted him amiably. His long pink tongue was out;
in this weather his heavy coat must be a burden. He followed Mendoza
in through the service porch.

Mairi MacTaggart was at the stove, Alison busy making
a salad. She glanced up. "You're early,
mi
vida
. The rat race just as usual?"

He bent to kiss her. "
Estoy
rendido
— I'm exhausted, for no good
reason."

"Is there anything new on the Martin girl?"

"
Nada
—and
maybe nothing ever will show," he said moodily.

"Now that," said Mairi, shaking her silver
curls at him, "is a verra strange business indeed. I wonder what
happened to that poor thing? Now, you go and sit down with the man,
achara
, I'll finish
that."

"I need a drink," said Mendoza.

El Señor, the half-Siamese, could hear that
particular cupboard opened the length of the house away, and came
floating up to the counter top demanding his share in a raucous
voice. Mendoza poured him half an ounce of rye in a saucer.
"Shortening your life,"' he said.

"I'll have a glass of sherry,
cariña
."

In the living room the twins scrambled up from
coloring books to greet him. Baby Luisa was staggering around with a
stuffed dog in her arms. The other three cats, Bast, Nefertiti, and
Sheba, were dozing in a tangle on the couch. Cedric sprawled at
Alison's feet and Mendoza gratefully sank into his big armchair and
sipped rye. It cost a fortune to run the air-conditioning in the big
house, but it was worth it.

"Have you heard from the French police?"
asked Alison.

"That's a dirty word," said Mendoza.

"I wish to goodness I could remember anything
else she said. I've got the definite feeling there was something
more, but it just won't come."

"And it could turn
out to be a dead end." Mendoza sipped rye and tried to turn his
mind off. No use worrying at the thing; it was futile. He sighed and
leaned back. Someday maybe he would retire and be rid of the
thankless job.·

* * *

LANDER'S SPORTABOUT wasn't air-conditioned and he was
perspiring and exhausted when he got home to the Hollywood apartment.
The apartment, thank God, was air-conditioned, and Phil—whose
parents had christened her Phillipa Rosemary before she decided to be
a police-woman—looked cool and comfortable. She had got home just,
ahead of him, but she had spent the day in air-conditioning down in
the R. and I. office. She was bulging a good deal in the midsection
these days; the baby was due at the end of December, and at the end
of this month she'd be taking maternity leave and then she could stay
home until the end of March. And by that time, he reflected without
much enthusiasm, they'd be moved into that claptrap house in
Azusa—Azusa, my God, forty miles farther to drive—and her car was
eight years old and sooner or later she'd have to have another one,
and he wasn't due for a raise until next year—and there'd be the
house payments—and a baby-sitter.

"You look as if you had quite a day," said
Phil in a concerned voice.

"Well, you look fine," said Landers. He
kissed her, his cute little blond Phil with the freckles on her nose.
"The rat race. I need a drink before dinner."

"It's just cold cuts and potato salad and odds
and ends, unless you'd like a hamburger."

"That's fine. I'll
fix us some drinks and we can take our time."

* * *

THE BRAWL in the Temple Street bar had been time
consuming and took a little sorting out. There was only the one
patrolman there and he said apologetically that a couple of witnesses
had been long gone before he could get their names. There had been
quite a little crowd in the place and most of them excited, but he'd
done his best. Both Palliser and Grace had served apprenticeships
riding squads and knew how awkward that kind of situation could be.
"But. I've got the one who did the knifing. His name's Tony
Aguilar." He had the man in cuffs, sitting at one of the
battered wooden tables. "I got here just about as it happened.
The owner had called in—"