Mark of Murder - Dell Shannon (23 page)

"That's right" said Duke. "I just
thought I'd pass it on.”

"And isn't it interesting," said Mendoza.
"Thanks very much .... " He thought about that story he'd
built up, on Art. The louts jumping him. The outside thing? Or, if
you were bound to link it with another case, had he shown some
suspicion, and been followed outside?

The nice neat detective-story plot--Art stumbling
across the X in the Nestor case, or the Slasher--he had bought it,
but now he wasn't so sure.

Art attacked in the street. A blacktop street. Like
how many thousand streets in L. A. County?

What the hell?

And that was when the man from Ballistics came in. A
paunchy, elderly fellow named Hansen, who said, "I think we've
cleared one up for you, Lieutenant. That chiropractor that got
himself shot. We've got the gun."

"¡Parece mentira! Don't keep me in
suspense--where the hell did you--"

"Well, the Wilcox Street boys sent it down, and
I fired a few test slugs, and they looked sort of familiar--I did the
tests on that slug out of the chiropractor. It's a Harrington and
Richardson Sportsman 999--nice little gun. Nine-shot revolver,
retails for about fifty bucks." He laid it on Mendoza's desk.

"And where did the Hollywood boys get it?"

"Attempted break-in at a drugstore, Saturday
night," said Hansen. "Three juveniles. They got this off
one of them.”

"
¡Un millén demonios!
"
said Mendoza exasperatedly. "
¡Ya se ve!
So it was the outside thing on Nestor--just what it looked like. The
outside thing--too."
 

FIFTEEN

Mendoza called Wilcox Street and set up an immediate
date with Sergeant Nesbitt at the County Jail. Damn it, this turned
the whole case upside down. The facts that Nestor had been an
abortionist, had been cheating on his wife, didn't matter a damn; he
hadn't been murdered for a personal reason; it had been just what it
looked like, the break-in, the burglars finding him there, using the
gun in panicky impulse. So the Nestor thing hadn't anything to do
with the assauly on Art; he hadn't stumbled onto the personal killer
there because there wasn't one. And there wasn't any way he could
have stumbled onto these actual killers, either.

So, a hundred to one, the assault on Art had been the
outside thing too. Because, to hell with the train wreck, Mendoza
didn't see one like the Slasher setting up that faked
accident--elementarily faked as it had been. If Art had stumbled onto
the Slasher that night, the Slasher would probably have just yanked
out his homemade knife and . . .And, buying the detective-story plot,
they'd wasted three days on that. Where to look now? Nowhere. They
hadn't a clue as to where or when the first assault on Art had
happened.

He said to Sergeant Lake, "If I'm not back when
Mrs. Sheldon comes in, ask her to wait, will you?" He went
downstairs to the lot and headed the Ferrari for North Broadway.

Wait a minute. Were there any leads? Even small ones.
It could have been the way he'd outlined it to Palliser, a little
gang of juvenile louts drifting the streets, jumping Art on impulse.
In that case, a very small chance indeed that they could ever be
identified, charged. But--the
terminus a quo
.
He was all right when he left Mrs. Nestor's apartment on Kenmore.
He'd meant perhaps to see the Elgers, see the Corliss woman, see the
desk clerk, but they didn't know where he'd actually headed from Mrs.
Nestor's. But Mendoza thought that Margaret Corliss was leveling with
him now, and she'd denied again that Art had been to see her that
night. All right. Mendoza was thinking again about Cliff Elger. None
of these people had had anything to do with taking Nestor off, and it
looked pretty farfetched that any of the rest of them could have had
anything to do with the assault on Art; but Cliff Elger? That big
boy, bigger than Art, who had the hair-trigger temper? Could he have
got so mad at something Art said--about his wife, probably--that he
struck that first violent blow, and found himself stuck with a badly
injured cop? And with the reputation to preserve . . .Art attacked in
the street. His heels scraping a blacktop street as he fell--but he
hadn't fallen onto the blacktop, or there'd have been the same traces
of asphalt and so on in the wound.

"I'm a fool," said Mendoza to himself
suddenly, braking for a light. It was, when you thought about it,
obvious. Whoever had struck that blow. Art standing at the curb or in
the street--he could see it--car keys in his hand, ready to walk
round the car to the driver's door. Either he'd been already facing
someone, talking, or someone had spoken to him and he'd turned. And
the blow struck--the violent blow--and he had fallen backward, feet
sliding out from under him, and gone down hard on the broad, flat
expanse of the car trunk. There wouldn't have been traces on the car,
after the accident; he'd been wearing a hat.

That said a little more, but it wasn't any lead to
who. Cliff Elger, roaring mad at something Art had said, following
him down to the street, getting madder when he couldn't rouse Art's
temper in return . . . Maybe. Normandie was a blacktop street.

So was the street Madge Corliss' apartment was on. So
were a lot of streets--including Third and the side streets around
there. Wait a minute again. If that little build-up about how it
happened was so, didn't it say probably that the car had been parked
along the curb, not diagonally? And that wasn't much help either,
because on most streets in L.A. and Hollywood the street parking
wasn't diagonal. You got that in a lot of towns around--Glendale,
Pasadena, Beverly Hills--but not much here.

"Hell," said Mendoza, and parked, pocketed
the keys, and walked up to the jail.

Sergeant Nesbitt was waiting for him at the top of
the steps. "Lieutenant Mendoza? Nesbitt." He was a square,
solid man about forty, with a square stolid face. "I understand
you're going to claim my young punks on a murder rap. Well, glad to
oblige. They're all under eighteen, though, you won't be getting the
gas chamber for them."

"What's the story?" They went inside.

"Well, we've been having quite a little wave of
break-ins up in my stamping ground. Drugstores, independent markets,
dress shops, and so on. The cheaper stores. where the buildings are
old and the locks not so good, you know. It's been mostly petty
stuff, we figured it was juveniles--not much cash, and stuff they
wouldn't get much for-- I think myself some of it was stolen to give
away to their girl friends, make them look big. You know. Cigarettes,
liquor, clothes from the dress shops, and so on. Well, Saturday night
a squad car touring out on Fountain spotted what looked like a
flashlight in the rear of this drugstore on a corner, took a closer
look, found the back door forced, and picked these three up in the
stock room. They had an old Model A Ford sitting by the back door,
half full of stuff they'd already piled in it." Nesbitt rummaged
and produced his notebook. "One Michael Wills, Joe Lopez, George
Kellerman. They're all from down around your part of town, and
they've all been in a little trouble before. Wills was picked up and
warned once for carrying a switchblade, and the other two have one
count each of Grand Theft Auto--little joy riding, you know.
Probation. Wills and Kellerman are seventeen, Lopez sixteen."

"Well, they've got into big trouble this time,”
said Mendoza. "Who had the .22?"

"Wills. I'd say he's the ringleader."

"O.K., let's go in and look at them."

Nesbitt told the desk man whom they wanted to see; in
a few minutes they were let into one of the interrogation rooms, and
the boys were brought in by a uniformed jailer.

Mendoza looked at them coldly, resignedly. They were
about what he'd expected to see, from the black leather jackets and
wide belts and dirty jeans to the expressions on their faces. And
there was a lot of talk about it, from a lot of different people, and
a lot of different solutions offered to cure the problem. It was a
problem all right. They said, clean up the slums. A fine idea, but it
wasn't going to cure the problem, because quite a lot of very
respectable citizens--Luis Rodolfo Vicente Mendoza among others--had
grown up in the slums. They said lack of discipline, which was a
little more realistic, but it was theoretically a free country and
you couldn't tell people how to bring up their kids. They said
prejudice, they said inadequate public schools. What nobody among all
the do-gooders would ever admit was that some people just came
equipped that way, and that more people were just naturally the kind
who'd play along with any strong character to be one of a gang; and
you weren't going to change character overnight.

Wills was tall and thin, with an angular pale face,
sullen pale eyes, and lank dark hair; he looked older than seventeen.
Kellerman was a fat lump, big and awkward and blond. Lopez was a
little runt of a kid, skinny and dark, with terrified eyes. They just
stood and looked back at him.

"Well, let's get the show on the road,"
said Mendoza sharply. "Which of you shot Nestor last Tuesday
night?"

They looked surprised; and then Lopez looked almost
idiotic with panic. "We n-never shot nobody, mister.
¡Se
lo digo, no! Honestamente
, we never--we never
do a thing like that--"

"
You got rocks in your head?" said Wills
coldly. "What makes you think we shot a guy?"

"I don't think, I know," said Mendoza.
"There's no point going the long way round here. You've been
pulling a series of break-ins. Probably in other places than
Hollywood. Last Tuesday night you broke into the office of Dr. Frank
Nestor, on Wilshire Boulevard. Only you found the office wasn't
empty--Dr. Nestor was there." Why had he been there, by the way?
Not very important? "Wills, you had the .22. When Dr. Nestor
showed up, did you panic and shoot on impulse, or did you kill him
deliberately? You did have the .22--It's your gun?"

"For Christ's sake!" said Wills
incredulously. "That's crazy, man! We was never near no doctor's
office, Tuesday night or any other! We never heard o' that doctor.
Why the hell'd we want to break in a doctor's?"

"I can think of reasons," said Mendoza.

"
Oh--dope. We don't go for that crap," said
Kellerman. "Not me, boy! I seen what it done to my brother.
You're nuts--we'd never do a real bad thing like that. Gee, what was
a couple cartons cigarettes and--"

"I said, let's not go the long way round,"
said Mendoza.

"I've got other things to worry about than you
three louts." He took a step toward them and Lopez cringed back.
"Now listen--"

"You c'n beat me all you want!" cried Lopez
in a high frightened voice. "Just go on 'n' try--you never make
me--
¡Santa Maria y Josejo
--
I never--"

"Oh, for God's sake, Joe," said Wills
contemptuously, "they don't dare lay a hand on us!" He gave
Mendoza an insolent leer. "They got to stay little gents--ain't
that so, bloodhound?"

Mendoza pasted a careful, bland smile on his mouth.
Never let them see they were getting to you. It was sometimes
difficult. Sure--that juvenile thing last year. All the careful rules
and regulations to protect the citizenry--and the L.A.P.D. with a lot
of private rules on that too, especially about the minors, and what
it came to was that the punks could call you every name in the book,
tell the most obvious lies, accuse you of anything from wife beating
to sodomy, and you had to take it without even a word or two in
reply. Sometimes a man lost his temper a little and roughed up one of
them--which was the only way to reach a lot of them--and then you got
the press screaming about police brutality and the tenderhearted
public excitedly demanding investigation. Mendoza smiled at these
three young punks, pityingly. The only other way to reach them was to
talk to them like the immature children they were. "Look, Mikey
boy," he said very gently, "I've got no time to waste
playing games with little boys. I'll give you just five minutes to
tell me a straight story, but whether you do or not, I'm getting
warrants on all of you for murder. As of now. That .22 is the gun
that killed Frank Nestor, that we know, and it was in your possession
on Saturday night. Which of you had it on Tuesday night?"

Evidently he reached them with that. Lopez started to
say a fervent Hail Mary, with his eyes shut; Kellerman just looked
worried. Wills suddenly dropped his sneer and said, "Listen, is
that on the level? Somebody got killed with that gun? Jesus--"

"I told you there was somethin' a little funny
about it, Mike," said Kellerman.

"That's level," said Mendoza. "What
fancy story are you going to tell me now?"

"Jesus," said Wills. "I'm not taking
no murder rap! I never had that gun until Thursday night, bloodhound,
and that's level in spades. I never laid eyes on it till Thursday."

"
¡No me tome el pelo!
Don't kid me," said Mendoza skeptically. "So where'd you
get it?"

Wills licked his lips. "We found it," he
said.

"Oh, for God's sake," said Mendoza, "can't
you think up a better one than that?"