Mark of Murder - Dell Shannon (17 page)

"About silver dollars," said Higgins.
"You've been spending a few lately. Don't often see silver
dollars any more."

Rosie didn't say anything. She looked at him, setting
her glass down, and small fright was in her eyes.

"Where'd you get them?" asked Higgins
casually.

"H-how d'you know I had any silver dollars?"
Suddenly she read them; Rosie would have had this and that to do with
cops in the course of her misspent life; and she gasped and shoved
violently against Higgins. "You're fuzz--you leave me be, I
haven't done nothing--let me go!" She made no impression
whatever on Higgins' solid bulk; but her voice rose, and the
bartender came over in a hurry.

"
I said no disturbance in here, bloodhounds!
Listen--"

"We don't want you, Rosie," said Higgins.
"Quiet down, you stupid little-- We just want you to answer some
questions, damn it. We've got nothing on you, see? Take it
easy--here, drink your drink."

She shrank into the corner of the booth. "I
haven't done nothing,” she said sullenly.

"You've spent a few silver dollars, Rosie,"
said Mendoza. "That's all we want to know about. Where'd you get
them?"

"
Why's it matter to you, anyways?" She
reached for her glass.

"It matters. Where?"

"From a friend o' mine," she said.

They could translate that. A customer. "What's
his name, where'd you meet him?" asked Mendoza.

"I don't have to--it's no damn business of
yours--"

"We'll go on sitting here," said Mendoza,
"until you tell us, Rosie." Sharp savage irritation rose in
him: obstructed every small step of the way! And Art-- Don't think
about Art. "All we want to know is what he looks like."

"None o' your business. I didn't mean nobody
gave 'em to me, I--l got this friend o' mine to change 'em for bills,
see--" She was still busy defending herself on the obvious vice
count.

"I don't care how you came by them," said
Mendoza.

"Who did you get them from? Do you know his
name?"

"What the hell are you insin-sinuating about
me?" she flared up. "I know lotsa people, no reason I
shouldn't--I'm a model, see, I got a good job all lined up, you guys
can't--”

"Sure, honey," said Higgins, "we can
see you're a real high-class girl. We just want to know which friend
gave you the silver dollars." He sounded patient.

Mendoza wasn't. He leaned across the stained, scarred
old table. "Listen to me, you stupid female! I don't give a
single damn who you go to bed with, how often or for what price.
There's the hell of a good chance that the man you got those silver
dollars from is this killer, the Slasher. You can tell us what he
looks like, and that's all I want from you, if you can get that much
through your--"

It didn't penetrate at once, and then when it did she
half screamed, "The-- Oh, my Christ! No--I never saw him, I
don't know who- Let me outta here for God's sake! Jesus, you don't--"

"I told you what I mean," said Mendoza
coldly. "We think that man's the Slasher. Now will you tell me
all about him or shall we take a little ride to headquarters?"

She made one sudden, convulsive effort to squeeze
past Higgins again; she looked almost witless with fright. Then she
said faintly, "O.K., O.K., you take me in and I tell you. Please
take me in, mister--on account of if he knew I told----"

"Whichever way you want," said Mendoza. He
dropped a couple of bills on the table and slid out of the booth.
Higgins took her by the arm and followed.

They went single file down the narrow aisle to the
door, the woman between and Higgins' hand on her arm. They came out
to clean fresh night air, and Mendoza said, "Where's your car?"

"
Up the block to your right-- God damn!"
said Higgins. Rosie was out of his grip like an eel, leaving a torn
edge of her tawdry dress behind; she fled up the block wildly, dodged
around the corner there, and was gone. They ran after her, swearing,
and turned into the darker side street. They heard the clatter of her
high heels, sharp on the sidewalk ahead, and then lost them.

"
Go call up a car," panted Mendoza. "God
damn the little--"

She was gone. He stood there waiting for the car, to
start the futile block-by-block hunt. She'd be diving into whatever
cheap rented room she called home, bundling her few possessions
together to run on--maybe out of L.A.--thinking of her own skin,
Rosie. The Rosies did that. And, being Rosie, she'd know how to go to
ground, anonymous, in some other Skid Row.

Damn her, damn her. She might have given them a very
damn definite description--if that was the Slasher--and he knew
they'd never pick her up.

But he set up the routine
hunt. You had to try.

* * *

That night he didn't sleep much. He lay and stared
into the darkness and, senselessly, his mind went back over every
detail of every case he and Art had worked together. A lot of cases.
You got to know a man pretty well in that length of time.

No way to be certain . . . permanent brain damage . .
.

He was still lying there at five-thirty when light
out-lined the window, and El Señor got up, yawned and stretched,
trampled over Bast and went to sit on the window seat and make
chattering noises at the early sparrows in the tree outside. Bast
sent a disgusted glare after him, wrapped her tail round her nose,
and went to sleep again. Alison was heavily asleep still, lying
motionless. He got up, shaved, and dressed. Went out to the living
room. Hospitals were always awake. At six-fifteen he called. No
change. They had said it could be days. And no way to be certain ....

When he heard faint sounds from the kitchen he
wandered out there, and the brisk little Scotswoman smiled at him.
"Coffee in five minutes. And it's a senseless sort of thing to
be saying to you, but it's never any bit of good worrying over a
thing that's out of your hands entirely."

"I know, Máiri,', he said. "I know that."

"It's a great pity you've no religion to depend
on. I don't know," said Mrs. MacTaggart, "but what I
haven't stayed in this heathen household with the hope of
reconverting you, my gallant man. And I'm making a novena for the
sergeant, so you'll have to find your own breakfast if you want any
.... I've taken the wee boy into his mother, and our two are fast
asleep still and likely'll stay so until I'm home."

"Yes," said
Mendoza .... He drank the coffee too hot. He watched her hurry off to
the garage for Alison's car. Damned ridiculous, he thought.
Superstitious . . .On her knees at the nearest one, the Church of Our
Lady of Good Counsel, obeying the ancient meaningless ritual. What
happened or didn't happen, to Art or Luis Mendoza or anybody else, it
was just according to how the hands got dealt round.

* * *

They hadn't picked up Rosie.

The reproduced signature had made the front page of
the Times, blown up twice life size. It was certainly an odd
signature, almost totally illegible. Fred, Frank, something like
that, and whether the second name started with a T or an L was hard
to say, or what the rest of it might be. Anyway, there it was. See if
anybody recognized it. It'd be in the afternoon and evening papers
too.

Routine was chuming out background information, the
kind of thing you collected automatically; none of it was at all
suggestive.

William Marlowe was fifty-nine, and a Harvard
graduate. He'd inherited an estimated ten or twelve million from his
father; there'd been money in the family for some time. Oil money and
other interests. They came originally from Connecticut, where the
family had been since preRevolutionary days. He was married--his wife
was a D.A.R. member--and had one son and two daughters. Andrea
Nestor's father had been a self-made man. Self-made by gambling on
the stock market. He'd died broke six and a half years ago. She had
attended local private schools. No close friends had shown up; the
neighbors hadn't known much about the Nestors. She seemed to be a
neutral sort of woman--nothing to get hold of, good or bad.

Frank Nestor had come here from New Jersey about ten
years back. No background showed at all before that; he never
mentioned any relations, wrote no letters back
home.

The only interesting thing turned up overnight was
Larry Webster. Corliss had met him at a bar and grill on Grand Avenue
for dinner, and they'd gone back to her apartment. The tail had got
his name and address from the registration in his car, and called in.

Webster had a record. Mendoza rather liked the
record. Lawrence Richard Webster, forty-four, Caucasian, six feet
one, one ninety-five, complexion medium, eyes blue, no distinguishing
marks. He'd served six months for aggravated assault in 1947, been
picked up three times on a D.-and-D., and done a one-to-three for
burglary.

Very nice, thought Mendoza. Just the boy friend for
Corliss. And she said he'd been at her apartment on Friday night ....
He thought he'd like to have a little talk with Larry Webster. He put
out a call on him.

He phoned down to Vice. Lieutenant Andrews had been
out on a stake-out last night and wasn't expected in until about
eleven. "O.K., tell him I want to see him--I'll be there."

That damned--that Goddamned stupid lush Rosie.

Who could have given them a description.

A description . . . You
just had to try everywhere. Mendoza stood up abruptly. Palliser was a
good man, but . . . He said to Lake, "If they pick up Webster,
hold him for me. I probably won't be long."

* * *

"I know it was almost dark," he said to
Miguel Garcia. It was nine-thirty. Miguel was attending summer
school; he'd talked to the public-school principal, who had called
Miguel out of class for him. They sat here in an empty classroom,
Mendoza uncomfortably perched on the edge of a too small desk, and
Miguel looked at him with round solemn eyes. "Maybe it's easier
for you to tell it better in the Spanish, Miguel? I--”

"It doesn't matter, sir." They were
speaking English. "My dad says we got to know English real good,
to get on, see. So we do good at school and all. Well, I mean. Get a
good kind of job, see. My dad works for the city, for the parks
department, keeping it all nice and the grass watered, see."

"WelI, I suppose you could say I work for the
city too," said Mendoza.

Miguel gave him an uncertain grin. "Yes, sir.
You carry a gun?"

"Well, no," said Mendoza. "I'm afraid
not. Now look, Miguel. You saw this man--the one who probably killed
Roberto. He's killed other people too, and we'd like to catch him."

"I sure hope you do, sir. That was just an awful
thing, Roberto. My dad said I should help the cops--oh, gee, excuse
me, he said you shouldn't say cops, you don't like it--the policemen
all I can, and I told that other one--"

"Well, we're cops, like it or not," said
Mendoza, smiling.

"
I told him all I knew, sir. All I remembered."

"
Try again, Miguel. Think back, hard. He said
something to you, and for some reason you felt seared of him, and
walked on past--"

"Yes, sir. I don't know why I got scared. He
just stood so kind of still--and then stepped out and said something
like, ‘Hey, kids.' Like that. I--"

"You told the other officer he was thin and had
on clothes that looked too big for him, and had a red face."

"Yes, sir."

"How did you see that, Miguel? It was nearly
dark, and the man had a hat on. You said there wasn't a street-light
near. And what exactly did you mean, his face was red? Like a drunk?"
Miguel, living down here, would know about that: the broken red veins
of a lush.

"No, it was--gee," said the boy, "I
don't know how to say about it, sir. It wasn't very light, almost
dark, sure, but there was some light, from the drugstore on the
corner--and he-- Well, I guess it was that sort of scared me. It was
silly. I could see--it was red all over his face, and--sort of
puckered, like. Like Pokey."

"Pokey?" said Mendoza softly.

"Yes, sir. My dad says you shouldn't make like
you don't like looking at him, it isn't polite," said Miguel.
"It's not his fault he got burned so awful bad like that, one
time, on his face. He looks real awful, sir, one side of his face all
drawed up like, and all red. But this was even worse, see, it was all
over the middle of his face, and I guess it was that sort of scared
me, it was silly."

"Who's Pokey?"

"Oh, he sells papers at Figueroa and Third, sir.
I guess my dad's right, but--well, anyway, this guy was worse, see. I
told the other policeman. Red all over his face, and--”

"Thanks very much, Miguel," said Mendoza
fervently.
 

TWELVE

"A real break," he said. "Something
more than definite--it might lead us to him in the next twelve hours.
Evidently a bad scarring, from an old burn-red scar-tissue and the
skin puckered, you know what I mean. God, if we'd had this before--"