Mark of Murder - Dell Shannon (6 page)

He laughed and leaned into the light from the blaring
TV above the bar, and she gave a little gasp and drew back: "You
seen me before?"

"No--maybe not." She'd have stepped back
farther, but he put his arm around her and closed his hand cruelly
round the thin sagging breast. "I buy you all the drinks you
want," he said savagely, "an' pay you besides. Is it a
deal?"

"Sure--it's a deal," she said dully. "Can
I have a drink now, honey?"

"
Sure thing," he said. He hated her,
hugging the hate to himself. The way she'd gasped and looked away.
Everybody in the world, except him. His hand went secret and sure to
the knife.

There was always the blood
....

* * *

Mendoza's turn at the newspaper and magazine counter
finally arrived and the fatherly attendant turned his British beam in
his direction. "Do for you, sir?"

"I see you stock some American papers--I don't
suppose you've got a Los Angeles paper? A
Times
?"

The beam faltered. "Well, now, I'm afraid not,
sir. I don't recall that I've ever been asked--"

"Well, could you get me one, please?"

"l really couldn't say, sir. I can try. Beg
pardon, what was the name again?"

"
The Los Angeles Times
,"
said Mendoza hopefully. He looked around the vaulted immense lobby of
the luxury hotel, the new sports jacket feeling uneasy on his
shoulders, and felt homesick. Nearly two weeks out of touch now, and
they were staying here another week before flying home.

"Beg pardon, would you mind--that's L-O-? . . .
Yes, sir. Er--would that be California, I presume?"

"
It's quite a well-known town," said
Mendoza irritably.

"Yes, sir. I'll see what I can do, sir. ‘Kyou,
sir." The beam turned elsewhere.

Mendoza turned away and a diffident voice said,
"Another Californian? I just flew in myself--if this is any use
to you, you're welcome." A big hearty-looking man in city
clothes, smiling, holding out a folded newspaper. "Kind of
foolish to extend the feud this far from home." The paper was a
San Francisco Chronicle
,
with yesterday's date on it.

"Thanks very much indeed," said Mendoza.
The big man waved away gratitude.

Carrying his treasure under one arm, Mendoza wandered
down the lobby toward the alcove where he'd left Alison. Alison was
enjoying the vacation anyway, he thought gloomily. And probably, just
as she said, it was only egotism.

Alison was chatting with Mrs. Garven; inevitably,
they were showing each other snapshots. Of Mrs. Garven's two rather
plain daughters back in Montreal, and--of course--of the twins. When
the Kitcheners abandoned them in favor of a round of night clubs,
Mrs. Garven had attached herself. Garven was a prosperous
businessman, with an ulcer to prove it, and all he talked about was
common stock, its vagaries and inner economics, which Mendoza knew as
much about as he knew or cared about the migration of lemming.

It was a fine hotel, and the weather was nice, and
the service excellent, if they did keep pressing exotic rum drinks on
you. But he still felt self-conscious without a tie, and he still
felt uneasy about being so far from home. Suppose something big had
come up. Or Art should have come down with Asian flu or something.
Quizas
, and so what?
Other good experienced men in the office.

He sat down opposite Alison and Edith Garven and lit
a cigarette. "Just eleven months,” Alison was saying rather
wistfully. "But Teresa's walking already and Johnny probably is
by now too. It does seem ages we've been away, but we have such a
wonderful nurse--"

Mendoza opened the well-handled
Chronicle
and started to hunt through it for any news from L.A. The alleged
feud was largely a joke, but for all that the San Francisco papers
were a little chary of printing news about Los Angeles, and prone to
treat it sarcastically where possible. The headlines were about
forthcoming elections, a senatorial speech, an argument in the House.
A socialite wedding. A dog show. He turned pages hopefully.

". . . must go up and dress, Ted and I are going
to that amusing calypso place tonight. Have you been there yet?"

"Yes, last night. Well, I didn't exactly--”

"Of course the songs do tend to be rather . . .
But I feel one should be broad-minded, my dear, especially in a
foreign country. I--"

"
¡Ca!
"
said Mendoza softly. The bottom corner of this page had been torn,
but he saw the dateline, Los Angeles, and carefully held the torn
pieces together to read the brief story tucked away on the third
page.

Los Angeles,July I4.--A fourth victim of the
latest mass killer roaming the City of Angels was found today, a
teen-age boy. The Slasher, as he is locally known, has murdered and
mutilated two men, a woman, and the boy within a period of less than
two weeks. His first victim was left in a hotel room almost certainly
rented by the murderer, but police as yet have apparently no clue to
his identity.

"
¡Por Dios!
"
said Mendoza to himself distractedly. "My God--that body in the
hotel--I knew there was something about it . . ." He could
vividly imagine all the desperate hunting, the try-anything routine,
on a thing like that. And no details at all, of course, damn it--not
from 'Frisco. He got up and paced down the lobby, muttering to
himself. The Slasher, My God. My God, four people--a mass killer, one
of those berserk killers. He wished to God there'd been just a few
details. Damn. He thought, I could call Art, long distance. And what
good would that do, to know the details?

"
¿Qué ocurre, querido?
"
Alison put her arm through his. "I do wish you'd cheer up and
enjoy yourself more. You look--"

He told her, thrust the folded paper at her. "I
know what sort of job one like that is, damn it. I should never I
have let you drag me this far from home. God knows what a mess that
is, and don't I know it, the press needling us for not dropping on
him inside twenty-four hours--probably damn all in the way of
evidence--"

"
Now look," said Alison reasonably,
"there's Art, and John Palliser, and a lot of other perfectly
capable men still there to cope with it, Luis. It's hardly as if you
were--were shirking your duty or something like that. And it's silly
to worry about it when there's nothing you can do. Look, it's nearly
six o'clock. Let's go up and get dressed, and we said we'd try that
Spanish place the taxi driver recommended.
¿Cómo
no?
Come on, be sensible and forget it."

"Oh hell," said Mendoza miserably. He
trailed upstairs after her, to the luxurious big room that he
disliked further because it had twin beds, and shaved and got into
the uncomfortable evening clothes she'd insisted on; but he didn't
forget the Slasher. He could just imagine what the boys were going
through. And a few other cases on hand too, probably.

He hadn't any business to be here. He ought to be
home, joining the hunt.

He could call Art. He
could--"
¡Mil rayos!
"
he said to the very bad rye that the Spanish place had produced with
prodding. He'd had a feeling all along . . . There was a boy with a
guitar who sang, but Mendoza hardly heard him. He was back home, with
a harassed Hackett and all the rest of them, visualizing the routine
they'd be setting up, the tiresome questioning, the eager follow-up
of any small lead. On one like that. The Slasher. Hell. Thirty-five
hundred miles . . .

* * *

"Well, you understand, I don't want to get
anybody in trouble," said Mr. James Clay. "You couldn't
help liking Frank, he was that sort of guy, but that doesn't say I
exactly approved of all he did. Not that I'm a prude, but--"
 

Mr. Clay was being fairly helpful in building
back-grounds, and Hackett drew him out hopefully. Frank Nestor had
once worked as a salesclerk in Clay's sporting-goods shop on
Hollywood Boulevard, and they had, Clay said, kept up. Clay only a
few years older than Nestor, a friendly, pug-faced little man.

"He was doing real well the last few years,
since he got to be a chiropractor. But from what he said here and
there, I don't figure he was being just so ethical at it, if that's
the word .... Oh well, he said once you'd be surprised how you could
rook the old folks, selling 'em regular courses of special vitamins
and so on, at ten and twenty bucks the bottle. Like that."

That figured right in with what Hackett was beginning
to build on Nestor.

"Mind you, I guess most chiropractors are
honest, like most M.D.s. I go to one regularly," said Clay,
"chiropractor, I mean, for my sacroiliac, and he's good, too. I
asked him about it once, after I'd heard Frank say that, and he said
it's so, there are a few of 'em just in it for the money--well, like
some M.D.s, I suppose--and they rake it in by overcharging for
vitamin pills, supposed to be something new and different. I could
figure Frank doing that, and just thinking it was smart. And yet you
couldn't help liking the guy. He had what they call charm--you know?"

"That kind isn't usually shy with the opposite
sex," suggested Hackett.

"Sure as hell he wasn't," agreed Clay.
"That I can tell you. I started out feeling sorry for that wife
of his, but in spite of everything I couldn't keep it up. And my wife
said the same. So, anybody knew them knew he'd married her for the
money--her old man was a millionaire, everybody  thought then.
Turned out he'd lost most of it before he died. Frank was working for
me when he married her, you  know--six, seven years back. She
should've known what kind Frank was, when she'd been married a month.
He was making a good salary here, but he always had expensive
tastes--and he was always ready for a little session of poker. He
didn't go out of his way to be mean to her, just the opposite--he
wanted everybody to like him so bad he was nice to everybody, her
included. But she just asked for it. Acting like a doormat, you know.
Never complaining when he lost the grocery money at cards, or like
that. Never standing up for herself, or trying to fix herself up a
little. I never could take to the woman somehow .... "

It seemed that Nestor, Clay, and several others used
to get together for poker a couple of times a month, and Nestor had
talked, casually, about his girl friends, about his lucrative
practice. "I don't mean he'd come right out with names and
details--Frank wouldn't do that. On the women, I mean. But he'd say
things like, he had a date with a hot number tomorrow night, or
something like that. So I knew he was stepping out on his wife a
lot."

"Did he ever mention a name to you at all?"

That was where Clay said again he wouldn't want to
get anybody in trouble. "He did, once. About two weeks ago, last
time I saw him, matter of fact. He had the tail end of a nice
shiner--about three days old, you know--and I asked him about it. He
laughed and said, oh, Ruthie's husband had caught up to him."

"Ruthie." There was a Ruth Elger, and an
address, in Nestor's address book. "I see."

"I guess at that,” said Clay, "even if he
wasn't just so level, at that job, he'd have been good at it. He'd
always wanted to be a surgeon, he used to say, and he was good with
his hands, any hand work. I understand now it's not like it used to
be, this chiropractic thing, a six-week course anybody could
take--it's like a regular college course, and they have to take all
the pre-med classes. He may have turned quite a few unethical bucks,
but he was really interested in it and no fool, you know. I don't
know how much it's worth to you, Sergeant, because I couldn't say
whether it was so, but he told me once his family had had a lot of
money, he'd always had everything, and been going to go to medical
school and so on, but after his father died his mother got hooked by
some con man and lost it all. He said he'd made up his mind to get
his however he could--he was kind of bitter about it."

"And that might figure too," said Hackett.
"Could be. Now, you knew him pretty well, Mr. Clay. This could
be what it looks like, the break-in after drugs or cash, and the
impulsive assault. But not so many burglars carry guns. It could also
be a private kill. And generally speaking, in a case of murder, the
deceased has done something--or been something--to trigger it off.
Could you make any guesses as to who might have wanted Nestor dead?
Off the record--just between us."

"Hell," said Clay, "that's a thing to
ask me, Sergeant? He looked down at his scarred old desk there in the
back room of his store, the untidy pile of invoices, business
letters. "I don't know about any--you know--specific person. Far
as I know, everybody liked Frank just line. But I'll say this much.
If it was like that, the private reason like you say, I'd make a
guess that it was most likely over some woman. Some girl's husband or
boy friend. He liked the girls--and they liked him."

"Yes. What about his wife? Do you think
she--felt anything about him any more? Enough to--"