The Ace of Spades - Dell Shannon (3 page)

"Somebody's pocket-piece," he suggested. "A
man's, probably, because owing to the curious fact that tailors still
put side pockets in our trousers at an acute angle, things do tend to
fall out when we're sitting down. Of course, it might also have got
pulled out of a woman's purse when she reached in for a handkerchief
or something. Are you sure the thing wasn't in the car when it was
stolen?"

"No, of course not. Which is exactly what that
sergeant said. It occurred to me that it might be some sort of clue
to whoever'd taken the car, and I thought I ought to tell them about
it, you know— so I called, and got hold of the man who brought it
back. A very nice obliging young man named Rhodes. And he asked, was
I sure one of my own friends hadn't lost it in the car beforehand—
which I'm not. Anyway, he said, it probably wouldn't be much of a
clue, and I might as well keep it or throw it away. I do want to ask
around, see if someone who's ridden with me might have lost it. I
suppose it might have been someone's lucky talisman, something like
that— but you'd think whoever'd lost it would have said something,
in that case— asked me if I'd found it— if it was someone I
know."

"
De veras
,"
agreed Mendoza absently, still looking at it. "It feels old,
somehow. I wonder if it's valuable at all. Curious. You might take it
to an expert and ask."

"Well, surely nobody'd have lost anything worth
much and not tried to follow it up, everywhere they might have—
though if it was whoever took the car— Oh, well, I'll keep it
awhile and ask everyone, just in case." She dropped it back in
the drawer.

Presently Mendoza put on
his tie and jacket and went home, and as he cut up fresh liver for
the dignified Abyssinian feline who lived with him, the sleek brown
green-eyed Bast, and let her out and let her in, and undressed and
had a bath and went to bed— and eventually to sleep, after Bast had
walked her seven mystic times around a circle and chosen exactly the
proper place to curl up beside him— he did not ruminate at all on
Alison's little find, but on his own puzzling small dolphin.

* * *

The autopsy report was waiting for him on his desk
next morning, and he read it with interest. The deceased, said Dr.
Bainbridge, had died of a massive injection of heroin. Probably not
long prior to death he had received a blow on the head, a blow severe
enough to have rendered him unconscious— a blow to the parietal
area on the left side. He had been dead between five and seven days—
impossible to pin it down further; say between last Monday and last
Wednesday. He had been six feet one inch tall, around a hundred and
seventy pounds, and between twenty-six and thirty years of age. He
had a medium-fair complexion, black hair, and brown eyes; not much
dental work, an excellent set of teeth— no scars or birthmarks—
blood type O. His fingerprints were being checked in their own
records and in Washington, to try to identify him.

But all that was the least interesting of what
Bainbridge had to say. "The body," so the report went on,
"bore at least two dozen puncture marks in the areas which a
drug addict most commonly uses for injections— both arms and
thighs. However, when I came to examine these areas in detail, it was
evident that none of these had in fact penetrated an artery, or much
below the first layers of the epidermis."

"Well, well," said Mendoza. He called
Hackett in and got Dr. Bainbridge on the inside phone. "This
corpse. The one with the puncture marks. What did you think about
that?"

"Did you haul me away from work just to ask
that? I should've thought even a lieutenant of detectives could
reason from here to there. The obvious deduction is that he was not
an addict. Maybe somebody wanted to make it look as if he was, or
maybe it was him, I wouldn't know—people do damned funny things.
Maybe he committed suicide and those marks are relics of where he
kept trying to get up his nerve. You get that kind of thing, of
course."

"Yes, but heroin's not a very usual method. And
why and where would he get hold of any if he wasn't an addict? And
why and where did he get that knock on the head?"

"That's your business," said Bainbridge.

"Well, you examined the body pretty thoroughly—
"

"I did. I'll tell you this, Luis. In the
ordinary way, an autopsy wouldn't have uncovered that about those
puncture marks. No reason to— er— go into such detail. But I
happened to notice that not one seemed to have left any cyanosis—
he was very well preserved, of course the clothes had helped, and he
was on his back, so all the natural death-cyanosis had settled there—
and you'd ordinarily expect to find local cyanosis, black-and-blue
spots to you, around the most recent of the punctures. And a few
others which had faded some, being older. You know, what always shows
up on any user. A real mainliner, he's giving himself a jolt two or
three times a day, and pretty damn clumsily too— even if he uses a
hypo instead of the teaspoon method, he leaves bruise marks. Well, I
noticed that, and I investigated, and I think all those marks were
made about the same time, and after he was dead, or just before."

"Now isn't that interesting!" said Mendoza.
"I presume the body's still in the morgue— "

"Did you think I'd take it out to Forest Lawn
and bury it myself?"

"What I meant was," said Mendoza patiently,
"you're done with it, you're not doing any further research?
It's on file, ready to be looked at by anybody who might know it?"

"Complete with replaced organs and roughly sewn
together, yes. Don't tell me you want a complete analysis of
everything."

"But I do, I do, amigo. Please. If possible,
what he had for his last meal, any chronic diseases, any foreign
bodies or inflammations, any suspicious differences from other
bodies, etcetera. Look at everything."

Bainbridge uttered a howl of protest. "But, my
God, there's no reason! We know he died of heroin, and after all this
time there won't be much else— "

"You go and look. What kind of injection was it,
by the way? Could it have been a normal dose?"

"You know as well as I do how that varies— it
could have been. A pretty big one to be called that, but the kind of
jolt a lot of users take."

"Mmh. Well, you go and look." Mendoza put
down the phone and grinned at Hackett. "I knew that dolphin had
something to say to us, Art. This corpse is a bit more mysterious
than you thought."

"So it seems," said Hackett, still reading
the autopsy report. "I'll be damned. But it can still be an
ordinary business, Luis. His first shot maybe, and he overdoes it or
has an idiosyncrasy for it— like they say."

Hackett found the role of the big dumb cop useful,
and sometimes forgot to lay it aside in private; as he also looked
the part, it came as a little surprise to most people that he was, in
fact, a university graduate.

"And he was nervous about the shot and made a
lot of tries at it." V

"Could be," conceded Mendoza. "Could
still be .... Cigarettes but no matches. Handkerchief but no
billfold— where most of us carry some identification."

"You've done time down on Skid Row like most of
us— you know how they live, hand to mouth. I've picked 'em up,
dead, drunk, and sober, without so much as a handkerchief on 'em."

"Sure," said Mendoza, "and once in a
while with a few hundred-dollar bills in a back pocket." He
picked up the inside phone again and called the crime lab, and got
Dr. Erwin himself. "Over at the morgue is a body, and I presume
they still have its clothes. The body of a handsome young man who
died of a shot of heroin. I'd like the clothes gone over thoroughly,
if you'll be so good." He added the last as a sop to Dr. Erwin's
reputation; you didn't give arbitrary orders to a criminological
scientist who had several times been consulted by Scotland Yard's
C.I.D.

“
What for?"

"Anything. If I knew specifically I'd have told
you."

"Really, Luis," said Dr. Erwin, annoyed,
"must you be so difficult? We do like to have some idea, you
know."

"Me, I'm not a chemist," said Mendoza. "I
read in the papers that criminological scientists make miracles these
days— peer at the microscope and tell the cop on the case just who
and what to look for. Science, it's wonderful,
¿no
es verdad?
You just take a general look and
see what turns up."

"Really," said Erwin. "Oh, well, we'll
do our best."

"I wonder— " Hackett was beginning, when
Sergeant Lake looked in the door and said Lieutenant Carey would like
to see whoever had that Carson Street homicide. Carey of Missing
Persons.

"Ah," said Mendoza happily, "the next
installment of this thrilling mystery, maybe. Bring him in, Jimmy."
 

THREE

Carey was a big stocky man with a pugnacious jaw.
He'd been a lieutenant only a few months; neither Hackett nor Mendoza
knew him well. He came in on the sergeant's heels and nodded at them.
"I had a memo from Sergeant Hackett— about this latest
unidentified corpse you've got. It might be somebody we're looking
for."

"Sit down and let's hear the details. Have you
looked at the corpse yet?"

"Just got back from the morgue. I didn't have a
photo, but I think it's him all right. Stevan Domokous, working as a
clerk. Greek, but had his first papers."

"My God," said Hackett, "I must have
caught it from you, Luis— hunches— that's close enough to
Bulgaria, isn't it? Was he a millionaire's son, Carey?"

"I don't know," said Carey, looking a
little surprised. "But he's been missing about the right time,
and the description matches. Fellow came in to report it last
Wednesday— head of a local import and export firm, an Andreas
Skyros— I'd lay a bet on that one being a millionaire, all right.
Dressed to the nines, diamond ring, gold tooth, custom-made suit, the
works. He's a citizen, but came from the old country— you can cut
his accent with a knife."

"I take it this Domokous hadn't any family here,
if it was this fellow came in. Friend, or is he a relative?"

"Employer. Domokous was working for him. Skyros
said he felt kind of responsible, the guy was lonely, didn't speak
English so well yet, you know. Which was how come, when Domokous
didn't show up for work last Tuesday, he went round to see him, see
if he was sick— or maybe sent one of the other fellows, I don't
know. Domokous had a cheap room in a hotel on Second Street, we went
over it. Not much there, a few odds and ends of clothes— no cash—
album of family pictures from the old country— stuff like that. He
paid by the week and it was almost up, they wanted the room— they'd
seen him last on Monday— so seeing there wasn't much and it looked
as if he hadn't taken off voluntari1y— I mean, Skyros said probably
he wouldn't have had much else but what was there— we impounded it,
cleared out the room. Skyros says, and of course he's got something,
that a stranger here, he's apt to get in trouble easy— wander into
the wrong part of town, run into a mugger, something like that— "

"Which happens to a lot of people who've lived
here all their lives," said Hackett ruefully.

"And Skyros said too that he maybe felt a little
worried sooner than he would have about anyone else because the guy
wasn't the kind to take up with any cheap skirt all of a sudden, or
go off on a bender. Anyway, when Domokous didn't show up on
Wednesday, he comes m."

"So we'd better have
Mr. Skyros take a look at the corpse," said Mendoza. "But
even if it is Domokous— very nice to know, but it doesn't explain
much besides. Where do we find Skyros?"

* * *

"Oh, this is very sad," said Mr. Andreas
Skyros. He sat down on the bench along the corridor and brought out a
handkerchief to polish his bald head and his glasses. "I don't
pretend, gentlemen, I had any great— you know?— emotion about the
young man, this way, that way— " he shrugged massively. "He
was such a one to feel sorry for, you know what I mean? But a very
good, honest, hard-working young man."

As Carey had said, Mr. Skyros had a thick accent, but
he also had a good command of English; for the rest, he was large,
round, genial, and obviously prosperous. "Tell me, how does he
die?"

"He had an overdose of heroin!," said
Mendoza. He stood in front of Skyros, hands in pockets, watching him.

"Oh, God help us, so? I was sorry he has no
family here, but perhaps it is better, none to know this sad thing.
You know? I— Gentlemen, perhaps we go somewhere else to talk? I
don't like dead people all around."

"Certainly," said Mendoza cheerfully, "we
can go back to my office, if you like."

"I would be so pleased to buy you gentlemen a
drink," said Skyros wistfully.

"Now, now, you mustn't corrupt our morals, Mr.
Skyros! Not at all necessary."

"Oh, my, no, you mustn't think such a thing,"
protested Skyros. In Mendoza's office he polished his pink skull
again. "But such weather, a foretaste of hell, isn't it? I go
out in it as little as possible— my office nice and
air-conditioned, like this." He glanced around approvingly. "I
didn't know they're so kind to you policemen now. Since the new
building is up, isn't it, I suppose?"