The Knave of Hearts (13 page)

Tired . . . But he’d worked such hours before,
cases as tough as this one, and never felt this deadly mental
exhaustion—perilously near to losing interest in the whole damn
thing, let somebody else worry about it . . .

He put his elbows on the desk, rested his head in his
hands a minute. He had a little reputation at headquarters, Luis
Mendoza, as one of the stars. Not because Luis Mendoza was any
brainier than the next man—egotist though he might be, he knew
that—but because he had come equipped with that tidy mind. Maybe
from some crafty old Castilian military expert four hundred years
back, or maybe from one of those Aztec engineers who’d so precisely
designed those sacrihcial pyramids the archaeologists kept Ending. He
liked things orderly, squared off. Give him something all in a
tangle, he had to keep working at it until it was all straightened
out. You might say it was just single-minded stubbornness, and it was
helped along a little by that sensitivity for people giving him the
nuances.

And usually he hit every new problem thrown his way
hard and fast, feeling enthusiastic, feeling just naturally capable
of solving it—because he was Mendoza, this bright fellow with a
deserved reputation. He hadn’t hit this one like that, even the
first day. He hadn’t felt all that usual enthusiasm for proving
himself all over again. He’d fumbled at it a bit, too, worrying
about decisions, unsure right away where to look, how to tackle it.
And right now he wasn’t that headquarters star at all: he was a
tired, irritated, even uncertain man—remembering again, vague and
irrelevant, that he’d turned forty-years old last February.

And remembering (in the sympathetic silence there,
Hackett letting him take a moment to himself) that aberration of last
night . . . A little sluggishly his mind rose to tell him in defense,
Not used yet to the old lady’s being gone, missing that sense of
family.
Eso era todo
,
that was all, that was all.

Sergeant Lake came in and laid a slip on the desk
before him. "Tele-type, Lieutenant."

Mendoza raised his head
slowly. "All right, thanks, Jimmy."

* * *

He had come in late and gone through all the usual
motions: made a little fuss over the cats, cut up fresh liver for
them, undressed, and had a bath. He sat up in the big bed smoking,
for a while, and they came up around him, his only family now, his
dear creatures so graceful and amusing to watch. The two small ones
washing, settling down for the night, and the miniature lion El Senor
trying to catch the smoke wisps in his big blond paws. And quite
suddenly the grave silence of the big, solid-built apartment late at
night had struck him to the heart with loneliness—Mendoza, always
as self-sufficient as one of his cats! He was a man content in the
life he had: so it was a strange and even frightening thought,
sliding into his mind unbidden: what did he have? He had upwards of
six million dollars, and three cats to welcome him home.

But, a momentary mood: to the outside world Mendoza
looked pretty much the same all the time, equable of temperament-but
inside, he was up or down from mood to mood between two seconds. The
way he was made: keep up the mask, the camouflage.

So he got up, and went and poured himself a drink. He
brought it back to the bedroom with him, and as he sat down on the
bed he knew what he wanted more than the rye. He wanted most
violently to be with Alison. There was oddly, no desire in him to
make love to her, he was too tired: only to be with her, for the
desultory talk they’d so often shared, or no talk at all, just the
sense of her presence in the room. Alison of the quick unsentimental
mind, the humor that matched his own, the personality tuned to the
same wave length.

And he looked at himself in the mirror and told
himself he was the kind of fool he’d never thought to be. The trap,
the trap—however pretty it was hidden. This sentimental Anglo-Saxon
notion, true love everlasting. A fable for the children. It was the
tangible plane only that mattered: in al wider sense, hadn’t he
found it out long ago?—all the other pretty fables too, the ones
the priests told.

And he laughed, and told
himself wryly he was an egotist: he wanted somebody to talk to,
somebody sympathetic. Come down to it, it was probably one reason
Luis Mendoza liked women, who by all convention learned to be such
sympathetic listeners to men. And he drank the rye and put out the
light, and after a long while he slept ....

* * *

The teletype was from a place called Murrietta. Madge
Parrott had come into the police station there in response to the
radio appeal. She was employed in a local restaurant; and Murrietta
wanted to know whether they should take a statement and if so what
about, or if L.A. would underwrite the cost of importing her.

"Hell!" said Mendoza. "I want to talk
to her myself, I can’t tell anybody else what questions to ask—"

"Tell them to send her up, no expense spared."

"No. No. Ten to one she’s got nothing to give
us at all, but if she has, I won’t have the press at her—just in
case it’s something that shouldn’t come out. Bring her up, we’d
have to let them interview her. And if Anderson turns out to be
irrelevant to this case, I’ll be damned if I give the press any
more reason to blow it up. They’d make headlines—New Witness
Discovered. Let’s keep it all nice and quiet until we know. Where
the hell is Murrietta, somewhere south of Elsinore, isn’t it?—give
me a map .... Yes, there you are, call it ninety miles or a hundred.
Pues bien, iré
—I’ll
go down myself, probably overnight. O.K.? What time is it?—twenty
of two. I’d better get going then, you can carry on here, I’ll be
back tomorrow morning."

"I don’t envy you the drive in this weather."

"Might as well be doing something as nothing."

“
Nothing," said Hackett. "Are you
kidding?"

Mendoza laughed and went out. All the reporters had
gone, downstairs, except Fitzpatrick, who’d buttonholed Edmunds and
was laying down the law about something to him, gesturing
emphatically. Both of them stopped talking and got on Mendoza’s
heels like a pair of well-trained hounds; they’d thought he was
placed for the afternoon. "Something new come up, Lieutenant?"

"Where’re you off to, Sherlock?"

"It’s too hot to work, boys," said
Mendoza, "I’m taking the afternoon off to visit a blonde."

"And I could believe that damn easy!"
Fitzpatrick shot at him as he went past. Mendoza took the Facel-Vega
out onto Main openly; he couldn’t very well do anything else. He
grinned to himself, thinking of Fitzpatrick, licenseless, fuming at
the driver they allotted him. No sign of them, though they’d be
coming, but an old sedan with a "Press" sign and Edmunds at
the wheel right behind him when he caught the signal at First. He’d
have to go a little off his direction to lose them; he didn’t mind.
He was ordinarily a scrupulously cautious driver, but what was the
use of running something like a Facel-Vega if you didn’t let it out
occasionally? He drove sedately up to the Hollywood freeway and took
off like a scalded cat in the fast lane; this time of day it wasn’t
crowded, and within five miles he’d lost the press.

They wouldn’t figure he was going home at this
hour; he turned off at at Hyperion and went on up northeast, no
further attempt at concealment. Home, he folded pajamas, put them
with his razor into a briefcase, called on the one of his four
helpfully cat-venerating neighbors at home, Mrs. Bryson, and asked
her to see that his darlings were let in and out and fed for the next
eighteen hours. Thoughtfully he put away the cuff-link case in a
drawer (El Senor had yet to master drawers), set out fresh meals for
them, and left.

It was just before seven when he got to Murrietta. He
could have made it earlier; once he was out of the metropolitan
traffic, somewhere the other side of Whittier, he made good time
southeast. But from the look of Murrietta on the map, he wouldn’t
find much effete accommodation there, and he stopped at Corona for an
early dinner.

At the police station in Murrietta, which was about
what he’d expected from the map, he announced himself to a big
indolent-looking sheriff with remarkably shrewd eyes, who surveyed
his tailoring, his moustache, his I. D. card, and the Facel-Vega
parked outside the little building and obviously didn’t think much
of any of them. "You must be real anxious to talk to Madge,
Lieutenant, run down on purpose like this. Don’t strike me as very
likely she’d know much about a nut like the one you’re after, but
that’s your business."

"Well, you never know," said Mendoza
amiably. A young fellow even bigger than the sheriff came in, was
introduced as a deputy, and adopted a similar expression of politely
veiled scorn for this city fop who called himself a police officer.
"Where’ll I find her?"

The sheriff said kindly, "You go down this road
’bout a mile and a half and take the west cutoff toward Fallbrook,
and half a mile or so on you’ll come to the Apache Inn. That’s
where she works, see. Randolph Newbolt runs the place, you just ask
somebody for Mr. Newbolt and he’ll likely let her take time off to
talk to you."

"Thanks very much."

"You can’t miss it, I guess." The deputy
added his bit to this fraternization with the foreigner. "Big
brick place—there’s a sign. Randolph gets quite a play—fanciest
place we’ve ever had around here, liquor license and all. People
come in from Temecula and even Elsinore."

"Well, well, how gratifying," said Mendoza.
“I’ll find it, thanks."

Their combined, benevolently amused gaze followed him
back to the car.

He found it. And why, he wondered, the Apache Inn: a
somewhat sketchy memory of native history failed to place any Apaches
within five hundred miles. Also, why Murrietta? Perhaps there was
something as peculiar about Americans as the rest of the world seemed
to think, when they deliberately commemorated the names of their
public enemies. (Mendoza regarded the famous Robin Hood of El Dorado
from the policeman’s viewpoint, not the romanticist’s: merely
another outlaw.) Then, as he got out of the car, he looked
thoughtfully at the Apache Inn from another angle, and reflected that
maybe the nation was safe as long as Americans went on admiring the
outlaws, who in one essential aspect at least were the
nonconformists.

It was new, only slightly garish, and well filled
this weekend evening with local ranchers and their families, a few
tourists and city vacationers from the Elsinore resort. He found
Newbolt, who was annoyed.

"You would turn up on a Saturday night, to take
one of the girls out of service! Oh, well, can’t be helped, we got
to cooperate with the law, I guess. I’ll get her for you."
 

TEN

"Brother," said Madge Parrott, "don’t
go thinking I’m trying to corrupt the cops, but you’re a sight
for sore eyes! Somebody from town, that knows the score. Gee, that’s
a real nice suit you got on, nice goods. It’s been so long since I
seen anybody in coat and pants that match—well, around here you
might as well put on a full-dress suit, know what I mean. Brother!"
She heaved a sigh at him across the marred narrow table of the little
booth, in this nondescript restaurant-bar several cuts below the
Apache Inn, where they’d settled at her suggestion.

Mendoza grinned at her. He’d placed Madge at one
look: essentially a nice honest girl, just a little too democratic.
He was reminded of the sheriff’s sergeant at Julie’s grave the
other day—what the hell?—that was Madge. She was in the late
twenties, round-faced, brown-haired, not bad-looking. The waiter came
up and leaned on the table. "Got a night off or did Randolph
fire you, Madge?"

"Night off, Jimmy—real important business,
this is a big cop from L.A.—you know that thing I was telling you
about."

"Yeah?" Mendoza received a curious stare.

"I want a Daiquiri if the city’s going to pay
for it, Lieutenant, it’s kind of expensive—"

"The city can stand it. You can bring me rye,
straight. Now, Miss Parrott, first of all I want to ask you—"

"Oh, gee, don’t call me Miss Parrott, I won’t
know who you mean! Honest, this one-horse burg! I sure hope I’ll
have to come up, testify at the trial or something—you know. Get
out of here a while, anyhow." She leaned an elbow on the table,
heaved another sigh. "I’d never’ve come back—I was born
here, you know, worse luck—if it hadn’t been for Ma getting sick.
But there you are, it wasn’t fair to expect Betty to take her,
she’s got a husband and kids to look after and I don’t. The
doctor says maybe only a year or so," and her face saddened
momentarily. "That won’t kill me, and it’s a kind of a duty.
But you know how it is—country gives me the jim-jams .... But you
didn’t come down to listen to all this. I read in the papers about
Julie," and now her expression hardened. "I was—tell the
truth, I’d been already doing some thinking, one reason and
another—come to that in a minute—and even before I heard you
wanted to see me, I was goin’ to call you, because I don’t know
but I guess maybe you ought to hear what I got to say."

"I’d rather expected you might feel the way
Mrs. Haines does. Stupid cops."

She glanced up, quick and surprisingly shrewd. "You
think it’s—the same one did that? The papers I saw said maybe."