Case Pending - Dell Shannon (23 page)

It'd been bad enough feeling guilty all the while,
worrying, but when it came to getting your friends in trouble—
Agnes dried her eyes and blew her nose and thought forlornly, Well,
that's that. And serve her right too. Tomorrow morning, go to them
and tell the truth-shame the devil, like her grandma used to say-and
have it done with, that was all. Whatever they'd do to her for it.
And afterward Joe and Rita and the others that'd been nice, that
she'd like having for friends, they wouldn't want any more to do with
her when they knew, but you couldn't expect different, she'd just
have to take her medicine was all.

Better go to the store first, tell Mr. Snyder she was
quitting, she'd have to anyway—and it'd mean finding another room
too, because Mrs. Anderson wouldn't—

And it was silly, go on crying like this, when it was
all her own fault. . . . .
 

TWELVE

The rookie who'd been riding the squad car that
answered the call to Elena Ramirez' body was on night shift this
week, and came into the precinct station on Main to check out at five
past eight that morning, with his partner. They found the desk
sergeant and a couple of the day men who'd just reported in guffawing
over something on the sergeants desk.

"We got a present from an anonymous admirer,
boys—ain't she purty? I guess somebody figures we're not getting
enough feminine companionship."

The rookie went up to look, and it was a doll—an
old, dilapidated, half-broken-apart doll lying there. A big one,
good three feet long.

"Where the hell did that come from?" asked
his partner.

"Vic found it propped up against the door when
he came on just now."

"Like somebody'd sat it up there on purpose,"
said Vic. "The damnedest thing. Kids, I guess."

"Aughh," said the desk sergeant, "what
some o' these punks think is smart! Here, Vic, stick it out back in
the trash, will you?

"Just a minute, Sergeant," said the rookie.
He had a funny feeling, looking at the thing; it was crazy, but—
"Hey, Pete," he said to his partner, "does it kind of
remind you of something? Look at the way it's got that one eye—I
mean—it's the damnedest thing, but that dead girl over on Commerce,
Saturday—you know. I mean—"

They all looked at it again and Pete said what about
it, and the rookie said weakly, well, he'd just wondered if there
could be any connection. "I mean, it's crazy, but maybe the boys
downtown'd be interested—"

"In this?" said the sergeant. "Now
that'd be something. I can just see myself calling headquarters,
ask if anybody down there wants to play dolls."

"No, but—" The longer he looked at it,
the funnier the feeling got. They had a little more backchat, the
rest of them kidding him because that had been his first corpse and
he hadn't acted as hard-boiled as maybe he should have; and the
sergeant finally said, if he wanted to play detective so bad he could
do it with his own dime and be sure and tell whoever he talked to it
was strictly his own idea, none of the precinct's
responsibility. They didn't think he'd have the nerve to do
anything like that, but by then he was feeling stubborn about it, and
he said all right, by God, he'd do just that, and got Vic to change a
quarter for him and called downtown.

He got hold of Hackett after a little argument with
Sergeant Lake, and in the middle of talking with him Hackett broke
off to relay the news to Mendoza who'd just come in. The rookie
hung on, listening to the lieutenant's exclamation in the background,
and then jumped as Mendoza's voice came crackling over the wire:
"Tell your sergeant I'm coming right around—leave it as it is,
and stay there yourself—"

"Yes, sir!" said the rookie, but the wire
was already dead. Ten minutes later Mendoza walked in and took a look
at the doll before he remembered to throw a good-morning at the
sergeant.

"
¡Vaya una donación!
"
he murmured very softly to himself, and his very mustache seemed to
quiver with excitement. "Now what does this mean? But by God,
whatever it means, it's the one—no odds offered!" He swung on
the sergeant. "Let's hear all about it!"

There wasn't much to hear, when they got down to
definite details. It had been sitting up against the left side of the
double doors, in a position where it wouldn't either interfere with
that door's opening or necessarily be noticed, in the dark; this was
an old precinct station, and the doors were set at the back of a
recessed open lobby at the top of the front steps, which was
temporarily unlighted due to defective wiring.

Consequently there was no
terminus
a quo
; the thing might have been there since
midnight and gone unnoticed by the various patrolmen going in and out
during the night; or it might have been put there ten minutes before
Vic found it, though it was likelier to have been before daylight.

And of course every man there had handled the thing,
but it was no good swearing about that now. Mendoza demanded a sheet
of wrapping paper and swathed the doll in it carefully; Prints would
have to isolate any strangers from the precinct men, that was all.

So I've got you to thank for this," and he
turned to the rookie, who was nearly as surprised as the
sergeant. "What's your name?" The rookie told
him. "I'll remember that, you showed intelligence. What
struck you about it?"

"Well, I—it's crazy, Lieutenant, but the way
it looked lying there, it reminded me of that dead girl—the eye and
all—it was just a sort of feeling—"

"Yes. You're a good man. Any time you want
to get out of uniform, when you're qualified, I'll be glad to put in
a word for you."

The rookie, who had heard a little more about Mendoza
by this time, stammered incredulous gratitude; the sergeant was
struck dumb; and Mendoza walked out with the doll cradled tenderly in
his arms. He could not resist showing it to Hackett before he
delivered it to Prints; they looked at it lying there on his desk,
mute, ugly, and enigmatic, and Hackett said, "I laid myself
open—say it—I told you so."

"I'm magnanimous this morning. But that's the
only thing I could say about it, boy—I'm just one big question mark
about it otherwise. What the hell has it got to do with this?"

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Ya
veremos
—I hope."

"Waiting for time to tell is just what we can't
do, danm it. Take it down, will you?" While Hackett was gone he
called Gunn's office.

"Morgan? He just got in—"

"
Bueno
,"
said Mendoza happuy. "I want him. Now. Immediately.
Sooner. Apologies to take him away from his job, but I need
him."

Gunn said resignedly all good citizens had a duty to
aid the police when requested and he'd shoot him right over. 
Mendoza looked up another number and called it. "Mrs.
Demarest? Lieutenant Mendoza.  I want to see you some time
today. I think we've got the doll, and I want your
identification—if it is. Also Mrs. - Breen's. . . .I don't
know one thing about it except that I've got it—it just came out of
the blue. Look, I won't ask you to come all the way down here,
suppose you see if you can get hold of Mrs. Breen for some time
this afternoon, and I'll bring it to your house. I probably
won't get it back from Prints until noon anyway. . .Right, then,
you'll call me back."

Waiting for Morgan, he called Callaghan in idle
curiosity about Ramirez. They had found an ounce and a half of uncut
heroin in a plastic bag taped to the underside of the bureau in his
room at the Ramirez house, he had been taken into custody, and yes,
Callaghan agreed that the rest of the family looked innocent enough
but of course a check had to be made. And was what he heard in
the background evidence of how they usually examined witnesses in
Homicide because if so it ought to be reported to the Chief.

"I'm just about to find out," said Mendoza,
and hung up. Somebody out in the anteroom was shouting angrily; he
could hear Hackett saying, "Now take it easy," and a woman
saying something else. He opened the door in time to see a little
dark fellow take a swing at Hackett which almost connected. Hackett,
looking as surprised as a Great Dane attacked by a belligerent Peke,
held the fellow off with a hand on the chest and went on saying,
"Take it easy now—"

The woman was Agnes Browne, and she was saying,
"Joel— Oh, you mustn't—please, Jo—"

"What's all this about?" Mendoza plucked
Joe off Hackett and swung him around. "Now calm down, all of
you, come into my office and let's hear about it—Miss Browne, or
it's Mrs. Browne, isn't it'

"No, it's n-not!" said Agnes desperately.
"That's just what I came to tell you, sir—only I went to tell
Mr. Snyder I was quitting first, and Rita
would
go and call Joe, and he has to come after and start all this
ruction—he doesn't mean any harm, sir, please—"

"The hell I don't! I'd like to know what the
hell you guys are up to, persecuting an innocent citizen what it
amounts to and by God I'll see it carried to the Supreme Court if—you
got no reason—just because she happened—"

"Oh, Joel They have. I-I couldn't tell you, but
now I got to—I came to confess and have it all done with, I know
I've done awful wrong, sir, but please, Joe didn't know—"

Hackett said to nobody in particular, "I better
apologize to Dwyer, I see how he came to walk into it." Joe
stared at Agnes in astonishment and subsided, and Mendoza told them
all to sit down.

"You want to confess what?" he asked Agnes.

She collapsed into a chair and began to cry. "I'm
black!" They all looked at her. Hackett said, "Well,
I'll be damned. You see, Luis, I told you—it was that sort of
thing, nothing at all. Now we know. . . .You don't look very
black to me, Miss Browne."

"I am—it's the law—I-I know I don't look
so—my mother was half white, sir, and my dad more'n half, they
didn't either, I'm about an eighth I guess or something like that,
and everybody always said I could pass, and I thought I'd—but I've
felt just awful about it, I've never done anything against the law
before, sir, I swear I haven't! I-I don't know if that counts, makes
any difference to how long I'd maybe have to go to jail—"

"Nobody's going' to put you in jail!" said
Joe.

"It's the law!" sobbed Agnes. "They
know it's the law! And I gave a wrong address and all, I s'pose they
found out and then of course they'd suspect something funny—"

"Well, now, I grant you we got some damn funny
laws on the books," said Hackett, "but that's a new one to
me, Miss Browne."

"It is the law, most states and I guess here
too. I know it was wrong, sir." She emerged from her
handkerchief to blow her nose. "It says anybody with any
black at all who pretend—"

"Oh, that one," said Hackett. "I
forget now, does it say it's a misdemeanor or a felony?" He
looked at Mendoza.

"I seem to remember it says misdemeanor,"
said Mendoza, "but offhand I wouldn't know whether the mandatory
sentence is thirty or sixty days. A judge—"

"Now listen," said Joe.

"A judge might have a little trouble finding the
latest precedent, somewhere around 1900 I should think."

"They leave all that stuff in to make life hard
for law students," said Hackett. "There're some a lot
funnier than that."

"Don't ridicule the law," said Mendoza
severely. "If you ask me some of those ought to be looked
up and enforced. There's another one that says it's a misdemeanor for
a female to wear male clothing in public, and if you've ever walked
down Broadway and seen all the fat women in pants—"

Agnes stared at them a little wildly and asked
weren't they going to arrest her?

"Agnes honey," said Joe, as if the sense of
it had just penetrated, "you mean that's why you'd never go out
with me, always acted so— Well, I'll be damned!" He leaned on
Mendoza's desk and laughed. "You want to know something, I-I
been in kind of a sweat about it because I figured it was on account
I'm Catholic and you wouldn't have nothing to do—"'

"Why, Joe! However could you think such a thing
of me, I'd never—why, that's unamerican, go judging people by what
church—"

"Yes, I think there's a law about that too,"
agreed Hackett thoughtfully.

"Honey, one-eighth isn't so awful black, you
know. Matter o' fact, you're a lot lighter-complected than me, and
far as I know I got nothing but Italian both sides back to Adam.
Though I guess at that a lot of us'd get some surprises if we knew
everything was in our family trees like they say. You stop
crying now, Agnes, it's all right, you see it's all right—"

"But—you mean you don't care—and they aren't
going to arrest—"

"Well, I tell you, Miss Browne," said
Mendoza, "the court calendars are pretty full, and we don't want
to overburden the judges. I think we'll just forget it, but
maybe Mr. Carpaccio here—it is Mr.  Carpacdo? —would care to
take the-er-probationary responsibility for your future good conduct,
in which case—"