Streets of Death - Dell Shannon (20 page)

"And what have you got?" he asked Duke,
sitting down at his desk and reaching for the flame-thrower. "The
first report on these Freemans." Duke spread out glossy 8 by
10’s. "The autopsies’ll give you more, but provisionally we
think they were attacked by at least two men. They don’t seem to
have made much effort to defend . themselves, as if they’d been
taken by surprise, both struck down at once maybe. I don’t think
they had a chance.

There was the usual mess, and not much there to
get--it was raining, and there were some muddy footprints on the hall
carpet, but not distinct enough to make anything of." The
photographs were just as usual too, not very pretty. "But you
called our attention to the phone book, and we took a little trouble
there--lifted a very nice set of 1atents."

Duke sounded smug. "All four lingers, for a
wonder. They’ve just gone down to R. and I., if we’ve got him on
file we’ll know who one of them is anyway."

"
Bueno
,"
said Mendoza. "You’ll let us know. Where is everybody, Art?"

"Out. John and Rich got some kind of lead on
Ames, and nobody’d done much on that addict who turned up dead,
Peralta. Nick had an inquest to cover."

"The Olson girl. That was
muy
extraño
," said Mendoza, and Sergeant
Lake buzzed and said the D.A.’s office wanted him. It was one of
the juniors, and he wanted to talk about Joey. They didn’t feel it
was a case to prosecute formally, and to save time and money a
reduced charge would probably be brought. The D.A. would be
interested in Robbery-Homicide’s opinion about that; it would
really be easier all round if they simply put him away as
incorrigible, in which case--

"In which case," said Mendoza sharply,
"he’ll be automatically released when he turns into a legal
adult, with no charge on his record. I wouldn’t go along with that
at all. He’s exhibited a good deal of violence, and very likely the
minute he’s turned loose he’d continue to do so."

Well, the D.A.’s office felt it wasn’t worthwhile
to do anything else. They had quite a case-load here, as Mendoza
knew.

"
¡Qué demonios!
"
said Mendoza to Hackett. "What do you bet that kid will be out
and roaming around with a knife again before he turns eighteen? The
trouble we go to, and then the damned lawyers--I swear I’m going to
get out of this rat race! And somebody’s got to get those
statements on Buford, Art."

"I’m going, I’m
going," said Hackett hastily. As he went out, Mendoza had opened
the top drawer and brought out the deck of cards.

* * *

"Tom Sawyer," said Fred Mallow blankly.
"Outside of the book, I never heard of one." He looked at
Palliser and Conway. "But I said I didn’t know everybody in
that night."

"
Well, we can try to narrow it down some,"
said Conway. "You knew most of the people by sight if not name,
no? O.K., between us Sergeant Palliser and I have seen all the rest
of them, except this bird who gave us the phony name and address. So
let’s start from scratch--"

Mallow yawned again, looking puzzled. "I don’t
see--oh, I get you. Maybe we could at that. You figure it was this
guy, whoever he is, stabbed Ames? I still don’t see how anybody
did." They had waked him up again, but he was ready to be
cooperative.

"A1l right, the ones you know by name and looks
first." Palliser handed him the list. Mallow checked it off
obediently: four people, three men and the girl, Edna Willis. "You
didn’t know the man with her, but we do, A having talked to
him--Michael Jarvis. Who was there you knew by sight and not name?"

"Jesus, I’d have to think back--lessee,
there’s a guy about forty, sandy hair, thin, comes in two-three
times a week, wears sports clothes usually. Usually in about nine."

Palliser looked at Conway, who said promptly, "That’d
be Adrian Forbes. He lives at the hotel around the corner."

"And there was a guy in work clothes, young,
long hair dirty blond, about six feet. He’s been in before, not
regular but I recognized him."

"Ralph Ensler," said Palliser. "He
drives a Times delivery route. I talked to him."

"That’s it," said Mallow, looking at the
list. "These others, I don’t know the names. Toombs, this
Sawyer--Pace and Woods. But, say, where’s--"

"Forget about everybody else but Sawyer. The
others are O.K., we’ve talked to them. Now, the big question is,
what does Sawyer look like? This is a secondhand description, Mr.
Mallow, and you may not place it even if you’d seen him before."
Considering all they knew now about Don Ames’ reputation, it seemed
hardly conceivable that anyone had had a grudge on him, deliberately
sought him out; but you never knew. "You remember it was our
night watch came out on it. We’ve talked with the two officers and
tried to get anything they remembered about the witnesses." It
had been a roundabout way to do it: the witnesses had been just
strange faces to Piggott and Shogart, but on the other hand they were
trained to notice faces. And it could be that this shy witness had
defeated his own purpose with the false name, because it had caught
Piggott’s attention as he took it down, and remembered more about
the man.

"Well, shoot," said Mallow obligingly.
"I’ll see what he sounds like."

"The best we can get, he was on the young side,
between twenty and thirty, medium height, stocky, with light hair
going thin, and glasses," said Palliser. "He might have
been wearing a tan jumpsuit."

Mallow stared. "Why, that’s Georgie," he
said. "I just now noticed on this list, Georgie’s name isn’t
here and he was there that night. I saw him talking to the officers
when they were taking names. You don’t mean it was Georgie who-"

"We don’t know. Maybe he was just shy of
giving police his name for some reason," said Conway, his gray
eyes hooded. "Georgie who?"

"George Little, he works at the Shell station
kitty-corner from the restaurant. But Georgie wouldn’t do a thing
like that! I don’t know him except as a customer, but he seems a
very decent guy." Mallow was troubled. "I can’t make out
why he should give a wrong name."

"Well, we’ll hope to find out. Thanks very
much, Mr. Mallow."

They weren’t feeling certain that this was going to
provide an answer. People did foolish, impulsive things for all kinds
of reasons and no reason: it was just a lead that had to be followed
up. As they left the apartment building where Mallow lived, Palliser
buttoned his coat and said, "I don’t know when we’ve had so
much rain in January.”

"Probably mean an extra-hot summer," said
Conway. They were using his Buick. They made the eight blocks to the
little chain restaurant quickly, in the middle of the day, and Conway
slid into the left-turn lane, crossed and pulled into the Shell
station.

A young kid came up, long hair falling over his eyes,
and said indolently, "Yuh?"

"Is George Little here?"

"That’s him over there." The kid jerked
his head at a broad back bent over the raised hood of a car away from
the pumps.

"O.K." Conway pulled to the side of the
apron and they both got out. "Mr. Little?"

The man straightened and turned. "That’s me,"
he said; and then he saw the badge in Palliser’s hand and stood
very still. "Cops."

"That’s right. Is there somewhere where we can
talk to you? The station--"

"Sure," said Little dully. He was
mechanically wiping his hands on a rag, over and over. "Sure."
He tossed the rag away and turned to the little glass--fronted
station; they followed him in. "I bet I know how you found me,"
he said. "It was a damn fool thing to do, give you guys a wrong
name. Fred Mallow knew I was there." And of course one small
annoying thing about it was that they needn’t have gone the long
way round; if they’d shown the list to Mallow he’d have told them
right away who wasn’t on it and should have been.

"That’s right. Why did you do it?" asked
Palliser. Little sat down on the edge of the desk. "Because I
was scared," he said in a low voice. "I didn’t believe
it, when Mallow went over and said he was dead. I just didn’t
believe it. But then when the squad car came--and they said we all
had to stay for the detectives--I was scared. I just wanted to get
away." He raised his eyes briefly.

"Why?” asked Conway.

"Ah, you know why." He was silent, and they
gave him time; he made several false starts at it, ran oily fingers
over his thinning hair, and finally said, "The whole thing don’t
make any sense at all. I don’t know why it happened. Yes, I do, but
it was--it wasn’t--I don’t know. See, there’s this girl. She
goes out with me sometimes. I--that night, I wanted to call her, but
not from the station, I--the boss--he don’t mean anything but he
likes to kid people. I went over to the restaurant on my break."
He was talking expressionlessly, head down, as if under a compulsion
to explain just how senseless it had been. "There’s a public
phone just outside the rest rooms, down that little hall the other
side from the counter. I’d just got up to it when I found out I
didn’t have any change, and this guy came up just then, this
Ames--I didn’t know his name, I’d seen him there before. And I
asked him for change for a dollar, and he gave it to me and went into
the rest room. So I called Dorothy--I still had the rest of the
change in my hand--only she wasn’t home, her sister said she was
out with somebody. And I was, I guess, so mad and kind of upset about
it, I just stood there, and then I looked at the change in my hand
and it was only eighty cents, he’d short--changed me a dime. And
then he came out and I told him so, and he said he hadn’t, and I
was still mad, I put the change in my pocket and there was my
knife----" He brought it out slowly and showed it, an only
slightly oversized pocketknife with a white handle. "It’s a
gadget," he said, and pressed a catch on the top to fold and
unfold the blades, one long and one short, very thin and pointed. "I
did it before I knew I would, just like a little kid--I--I--just
wanted to hurt somebody," he said. "And I never thought I’d
really hurt him--I called him a name and he looked kind of surprised
and then just went by me, and after a minute I came out and sat at
the counter and had some coffee. And then--over in that booth-- And
Mallow said he was dead! I swear to God, I thought he’d had a heart
attack, it couldn’t’ve been what I-- And then that one big
plainclothes cop said he’d been stabbed. I couldn’t believe it."
He raised his head. "You’ll arrest me now, I guess."

"That’s right, Mr. Little. We’ll want to get
all this down in a formal statement."

"Me, killing
somebody. I still can’t believe it," said Little. "All
right, I know you got to. I better call the boss
to
come in. That snotnosed kid can’t fill a tank without falling over
his own feet."

* * *

What with one thing and another, not much had been
done about Rodrigo Peralta, the addict found knifed on Monday night.
Landers had started out to do some legwork on it, had talked to
Walter Pepple and failed to find the other two tenants at home. They
had turned up a record for Peralta, a petty pedigree of narco
possession and B. and E., and that had given them the address of a
relative, an uncle, Rubio Gonsalves. Glasser hadn’t found him
yesterday, so now Landers tried the address again, down on Santa
Barbara, and found him home. He was sitting in his single room, clad
in underwear and slacks, reading a Spanish-language newspaper. He
listened to Landers impassively and said, "The boy is dead? Let
God judge him. He was nothing to me any more."

"You don’t know who any of his friends were?"

"
No sé
.
Nor I did not care. He had chosen his own road." He shrugged
massively and picked up his paper again.

It didn’t seem to be the best moment to tell him
that the coroner’s office would come down on him to pay for the
funeral. Landers went downstairs again, into the dirty, dingy city
street where refuse blew down the sidewalks and collected in the
gutter, to where he’d left the Corvair down the block. It had begun
to rain again, rather hard. He got into the car, and the engine was
dead, wouldn’t even try to turn over. Landers said a few things,
got out and looked under the hood, decided it was hopeless to do
anything in the rain. He found a public phone, called the auto club
and huddled in the overhang of a building for thirty minutes until
the tow truck came.

The driver had a look at the Corvair’s innards,
slammed the hood and said, "She’ll have to go in, mister.
She’s about had it. Good little car, but a car’s only good for so
many miles, you know. You need practically everything new. Oh, sure,
a garage can fix her up, but it’ll only be a question of time
before she goes out again."

Landers said a few more things. "Well, tow it in
to the agency," he said. "I’ll talk to them about it."

He called a cab and got
back to the office in the middle of the afternoon.

* * *

Hackett had just got back to the office at five
o’clock, after getting the formal statement from Nygard and
starting the machinery on the warrant. It was pouring rain outside,
and he was wet. He found Landers blowing off steam about his car to
Glasser, who said they’d all been telling him to trade that thing
in for a year.