Streets of Death - Dell Shannon (24 page)

"
¡Ca!
"
said Mendoza to himself. "
A su tiempo
maduran las uvas.
" He got up and fished
in his pocket for change for the coffee machine, and Sergeant Lake
came in and shut the door behind him.

"We’ve got ca1lers," he said. He was
looking grim and rather pleased; he had one hand behind him.

"Anybody interesting?"

"Oh, I think so," said Lake. "I think
you’ll like her. A very respectable widow by the name of Mrs.
Consuelo Gomez. She’s got a mustache, seven sons, and a tender
conscience."

"Meaning what, Jimmy?" Mendoza sat down
again. Sergeant Lake brought his hand from behind his back with
something in it. He laid it on top of the cards on Mendoza’s desk.
Mendoza stared at it.

It was a large silver crucifix on a long silver
chain. The center of the cross was studded with an opaque pale-green
veined stone. It was, in fact, the crucifix which had been torn from
Father Patrick Joseph O’Brien when the pretty boys attacked him.

Mendoza raised his eyes from it, and they had gone
very cold. "Suppose you show the lady in."

"
Oh, she’s got one of them with her,"
said Lake. "Her youngest, Guido." He went out, and a minute
later they came in. Mrs. Gomez was mountainous, in ancient and decent
black silk, black hair piled in a knob on her head. But his eyes
passed over her to the big boy behind her. Boy--he might be twenty,
he was big but gangling: unused to his size as yet, awkward. Almost
handsome, a poor attempt at a mustache, long waving black hair. And
the very natty loud sports jacket, striped blue and green, a dark
shirt, a wide tie.

She sat in the chair beside the desk and flooded
Mendoza with emotion, religious and otherwise. "He is my
youngest, my baby, I worry over him, I know he goes with these
foolish young ones, and he does not come to church any more--I try to
talk to him, I say--"

"Oh, for God’s sake knock it off, Mama! You
just wasting their time with your crazy ideas--" He gave Mendoza
a calculatedly apologetic smile. "Listen, she’s old country,
know what I mean, you don’t want to pay no notice, I didn’t want
to come here waste your--"

"You be still or I smack you again seven times!
Oh, no, you don’t want to come here, to police, and I am stupid and
old, but I am yet your mother! I have to drag him here, he feels my
hand hard--and maybe he should feel it more often since he thinks he
is all grown to a man! Away from his so--clever modern friends, he
comes with me, I see to that!" She was breathing asthmatically,
and her little black eyes were bright. Queerly, for she didn’t look
anything like Teresa Sanchez y Mendoza, he was reminded of his grand
mother.

"That," she said, and pointed to the
crucifix on the desk, "that is why! That, I find in his drawer!
It will be--"

"For God’s sake," he said, "for
God’s sake. I told you I found it. On the street."

"That, I know. It is the crucifix the priest at
the church always was wearing. Father O’Brien. And he has been
murdered, the other Father has told us, by these terrible wicked
ones. I have seven sons," she cried emotionally, and all her
chins wobbled magnificently, "and I thank the good God the six
of them are decent Christian men, it is for my sins I have this
wicked one--I tremble to think what he has done, if indeed it can be
he has attacked a priest, but I know my duty to God and the law--I
bring him to you!"

"For Christ’s sake!" said the boy. "Of
all the crap! I told you I found the damn thing, I thought it might
be worth a couple bucks at a hock shop. That’s all I know about
it."

"Where’d you End it?" asked Mendoza.

"It was over on Fourth somewheres, just lying in
the street."

"When?" asked Mendoza.

"Oh, Jesus’ sake, couple o’ days ago."
He met Mendoza’s cold eyes and suddenly backed away. "You
aren’t gonna believe the stupid old lady, I had anything to do--I
found it!"

"I have known he is running with wicked ones,
late at night, never would he tell me where he is, and sometimes
drinking too much wine--I have implored him, take the good little job
his uncle offers, earn the money--I do not know where he has money,
his clothes--"

"Knock it off!" he said furiously. "For
God’s sake, all that crap about God and the law-- That guy outside,
he said Mendoza--I suppose you go for all that too, hah? I got shut
of that a good long while back! Anything to all that, the hellfire,
nobody in the world get out of it--I told you it was all in your
silly Goddamn mind, you takin’ a hand to me like I was still a
kid--"

"I know my duty to God!"
 
"To hell with your stupid God! And these
Goddamn cops, stupid damn pigs--" His eye fell on the gadget on
Mendoza’s desk, the life-sized pearl-handled revolver, and he
laughed a little wildly. "Great big men, long as you got the
guns around! You believe her, take me in and beat me up so I say
anything--"

"Suppose we all calm down," said Mendoza.
"Did you mention finding this to anyone, Mr. Gomez?"

"Goddamn all of you!" he said. And suddenly
he made a grab for the gadget, snatched it up and turned it on his
mother. "You Goddamned fool!" And he pressed the trigger.

Mendoza was on his feet. The barrel belched forth the
torch-like flame, and Guido Gomez dropped the thing and began to
scream hoarsely. "Fires of hell--fires of hell--
fuegos
del infierno
--I didn’t mean to kill the
priest, I didn’t know he was a priest, I didn’t mean--"
 

TEN

IT Took a while to calm him down. Sergeant Farrell
shooed Wanda in three minutes later, when she and Landers came back,
and she got Mrs. Gomez out and down to First Aid; Hackett came in and
cowed Guido considerably by mere looks. Within ten minutes he was
talking, sullen, reluctant, resentful, but talking.

They spelled it out for him that they knew there were
three of them, and he came out with two names, Jay Folger, Bruce
Hardwick. "We met up the semester I went to L.A.C.C. Goddamn it,
you got me you’re sure as hell goin’ to get them--they been
pullin’ break-ins up in Hollywood for the bread, I wasn’t in on
that, I swear." He gave them addresses: Emmett Terrace, Alta
Loma Drive, "Jay, he drove me home one night, we saw that crazy
old lady Miller lives at the end o’ the block on her way home, he
says have some fun with the old scarecrow, and we-- No, we never got
any loot off them, it was just for kicks. God-damned old creeps,
think they know it all, tell everybody else how to live-- But that
night--that night--I never knew it was a priest, till I saw his
clothes."

Mendoza held up the crucifix. "How about this?"

Guido shivered and looked away. "I grabbed
it--and then I was afraid, after, to hock it or anything. I shoulda
put it in the trash, got rid of it, but I--and the Goddamned old
woman--"

Mendoza sighed deeply and dropped it on his desk.

"Take him away, Art," he said. "I do
get so tired of the punks, the brainless louts."

Palliser was back then, and they all went up to
Hollywood after Jay Folger and Bruce Hardwick. They didn’t find
either one. At the address on Emmett, a flustered middle-aged woman
told them, "I don’t know when either of them’ll be home, Jay
or his father--l’m just the house-keeper--Mr. Folger travels a lot
for his company, and Jay, goodness knows where he is, he’s got his
own car."

At the Alta Loma address, Mrs. Hardwick stared at the
badge in Mendoza’s hand and said, "Police? What--what do you
want with Bruce?" She was a fake redhead with a foolish face, a
slack mouth, and she bleated like a sheep at them. "Bruce
wouldn’t do anything wrong, I see he has plenty of money of his
own, he wouldn’t--"

"God give me patience," said Mendoza.

Both of them were supposed to be attending L.A.C.C.,
but when the school was contacted the registrar said they’d both
dropped out last semester. Eventually they would show up at their
respective homes; the Robbery-Homicide men went up to the Wilcox
Street precinct house and talked to Sergeant Barth, who said he’d
have a squad car check at intervals, bring them in if they showed.

At least they knew who the pretty boys were; sooner
or later they’d be in custody.

Mendoza went home to tell
Alison what a successful gadget her Christmas present had proven to
be.

* * *

With Guido coming apart, they’d have picked up
Folger and Hardwick sometime; as it turned out, they were
forestalled. Folger and Hardwick were out for some more lighthearted
fun in the slums that night, and at nine-fifteen, having left
Folger’s sporty Jaguar parked on a side street, they had the
misfortune to jump on Miss Maureen O’Connor. Miss O’Connor was
tired, on her way home from work at a cafeteria uptown, and she was
rather short-tempered by nature anyway.

"Come out at me like a pair of wild men,"
she told the uniformed men indignantly. "See me limping when I
got off the bus, I s’pose, I twisted my ankle in the kitchen, and
think they’d snatch my purse and I wouldn’t do nothing--Hah! Fat
chance I’d let ’em try! I just let ’em have it, and I bet they
think twice, tackle a poor defenseless old woman again!"

"Defenseless?" said the Traffic man to his
partner.

"Well, it’s not a very apt word for it. And
listen, doesn’t this look like the pair we had the word on at
briefing? We better take ’em in to First Aid to start with."
Miss O’Connor had felled Folger with one lusty blow of her heavy
handbag, I knocking him clean out on the sidewalk, and tripped
Hardwick up and sat on him, yelling mightily for cops all the while.
A nearby householder had obliged her by calling it in.

So there they were neatly in jail on Saturday
morning, and Mendoza and Hackett talked to them, not very long. They
were saying various things about Miss O’Connor.

"We had the word out on you already,"
Mendoza told them. "Your pal Guido told us where to find you."

"
That Goddamn--I might’ve known, weak-bellied
little spick!" Folger would have been the leader of the three, a
dominating crude force like an aura about him. "Ever since we
got that damn priest he’s been ready to have kittens--"
Hardwick just glowered.

"You do realize it’ll be a charge of Murder
One," said Mendoza. "It was just blind luck you only killed
one of them. It really doesn’t matter whether you’re inclined to
make statements or not." Folger growled and told them where they
could go for statements. "So there’s no point in wasting any
more time on you two louts." Mendoza looked them up and down
contemptuously. "Come on, Art." In the corridor they met
Barth, who wanted to talk to the two louts about a few unsolved
burglaries. "I wish you joy of them," said Mendoza. "I’m
getting old, Barth. These punks without brains or bowels make me sick
and tired."

Barth laughed and said, "You haven’t changed
in years, Luis. And I hear your wife’s expecting again."

"More than that,"
said Mendoza. "Talking about moving to a ranch, I gather. And
God knows, there are times I feel like buying a thousand acres in the
middle of wilderness somewhere and building a fence around it and
staying inside. What the hell are we doing at this thankless job?"

* * *

When he and Hackett got back to the office Landers
was slouched at his desk rereading a report, and followed them into
Mendoza’s office. "This Peralta," he said. "No
damned loss, but we have to do the routine. I’ve now got statements
from three other people besides Ford Robinson that these Kings--Nita
and Gerald--were at that disco on Monday night and said they were
going to see Peralta. By inference, to see if he had any dream
powder. I haven’t turned up anything else. Walter Pepple, across
the hall from Peralta, says it might have been two people running
away. And the Kings have taken off from their apartment. He had a
part--time job at a service station, and the owner says he hasn’t
been in all week."

"So maybe we’d better put out an A.P.B.,"
said Hackett. "They sound likely for the job, Tom. At least we
want to talk to them."

"I think so. I just put a query to D.M.V. about
the car."

Hackett went out, heading for the sergeants’
office, and met a diffident-looking couple in the hall. "Oh--Mr.
and Mrs. Joiner."

"You asked us to come in, sir. Detective Grace
said--"

"That’s right," said Hackett. "Come
in here." Carla Joiner was Myrtle Hopper’s daughter. Hackett
settled them down in front of his desk, and Grace and Higgins came
over. The Joiners looked with faint awe at Higgins, that craggy man
with COP all but emblazoned all over him, and were dumb before
Hackett. Carla was small and pretty, her young husband round-faced
and earnest.

"Just as we told you, Mrs. Joiner," said
Grace easily, "all we want from you is some idea of what’s
missing from your mother’s house."

"Well, there wasn’t much there to steal,"
said Carla frankly. "Mother wasn’t one for much jewelry or
fancy things. But one thing we’d better tell you, her credit cards
are gone. You people said we could go through the house yesterday,
after you got finished looking around, and as soon as I looked I saw
they were gone, she always kept them right in her wallet, and there
was still a little change in it but the cards were gone."