Case Pending - Dell Shannon (17 page)

"You haven’t heard anything from him since, no
inquiries from other lodges of your union?"

"No, not since last August when he stopped
showing up."

"Well, thanks." The man was still shaking
his head sadly when Morgan came out to his car.

It it hadn’t been for this other thing, he’d have
been interested in the Lindstroms more than he was. Funny setup:
something behind it, but hard to figure what. Had the hell of a time
getting a definite answer out of the woman about where they’d been
living when the husband walked out. Sometimes they let out something
to one of the neighbors, a local bartender: it was a place to start.
Then, when he did, she gave what turned out to be a false address. He
hadn’t tackled her about that yet; it wasn’t the first time such
a thing had happened, and there were other ways to check. He’d
found Lindstrom, got this last address for him, through his
affiliation with the Carpenters’ Union.

The thing was, concentrate on Lindstrom today, keep
the nose to the grindstone. Forget about tonight, what was going to
happen tonight. It would all work out line, just as the inside,
secret Morgan had planned it. There was only one thing both Morgans
were really worried about, and that was, whether and when, about
telling Sue. Not, of course, before; she mustn’t guess, or she’d
be too nervous with the police. Not easy to put over the story on
her, Sue knew him too well, but he thought he’d got away with
it—that he was still stalling Smith, trying to bring him to
compromise. It was going to be very tricky, too, afterward, when he
had given the police one story and had to meet Sue before them. There
was also the woman and the boy, but you had to take a chance
somewhere. It was very likely that the woman (if indeed she was still
living with Smith at all, and knew about this) would be too afraid of
getting in trouble herself to speak up. And Sue was very far from
being a fool; Sue he could count on.

It would go all right, always provided that the man
was there. Otherwise it could be awkward, but Morgan figured that as
Smith was renting a three-room flat instead of just a room, the
chances were that his wife, or some woman, was with him, and he’d
be home sometime around the dinner hour. So that was the first way it
might go: the upright citizen Morgan, visiting one of his cases on
his lawful occasions—if it was after hours, well, it was a case
he’d got interested in, there was no law against zeal at one’s
job. The Lindstroms’ flat was on the second floor; Smith’s was on
the third, so the mail slots told him. Those landings would be damn
dark at night, not lighted anyway. Wait for him to come down on his
way to collect—the ransom, only word—wait on the i second-floor
landing. And get up close, to be sure—but no talk. The first story,
then: this man put the gun on me at the top of the stairs, before I
got to the Lindstroms’ door—I never saw him before, no, sir—he
was after my wallet, when he reached for it I tackled him, tried to
get the gun—we struggled, and it went off—

Remember (and not much time to see to it, after the
shot) to get his prints on the gun. They were so very damned careful
and clever these days, about details.

And if he missed Smith there, it would have to be in
the street. If he was at that corner: or, if again he redirected
Morgan to a bar, stall him off in there, and follow. A chance again,
that the bartender would be honest, would remember them together: but
in most of these places down here, hole-in-the-wall joints, the
chance probably on Morgan’s side. The second story: I was on my way
back to my car, when this man tried to hold me up—

They would never trace the gun, never prove it didn’t
belong to Smith. Nobody could. Morgan had taken it off a dead German
in 1944, the sort of ghoulish souvenir young soldiers brought home,
and he’d nearly forgotten he had it; he had, being a careful man,
taken the remaining three cartridges out of the clip, but they’d
been put with the Luger in the old cash box his father had kept for
odds and ends, locked away in a trunk in the basement. Morgan had
gone down there at three this morning, when he was sure Sue was
asleep, and got the gun and the cartridges. It was an unaccustomed
weight in his breast pocket right now.

He ought to be somewhere
around where this street came in; he began to watch the signs. The
third was Tappan. He turned into it and began to look for street
numbers.

* * *

At that precise moment, Mendoza was having an odd and
irritating experience. He was discovering the first thing remotely
resembling a link between these two cases (if you discounted that
gouged-out eye) and it offered him no help whatsoever. If it wasn’t
merely his vivid and erratic imagination.

"I’m real glad I clean forgot to th’ow that
ol’ thing out," said Mrs. Breen, soft and southern, "if
it’s any help to you findin’ that bad man, suh. Ev’body knew
Carol thought the world an’ all of her, nice a gal as ever was.
Terrible thing, jus’ terrible."

Mendoza went on looking at the thing, fascinated. It
was a good sharp commercial cut, three by five inches or so, one of a
dozen in this dog-eared brochure, three years old, from a local toy
factory. Mrs. Breen, maddeningly slow, determinedly helpful, had
insisted on hunting it up for him, and as he hadn’t yet penetrated
her constant trickle of inconsequential talk to ask any questions,
he’d been forced to let her find it first.

"You can see ’twas a real extra-special doll.
Tell the truth, I was two minds about puttin’ it in stock, not many
folks’d spend that much money."

Was it imagination? That this thing had looked—a
little—like Elena Ramirez? After all, he told himself, the
conventional doll would. The gold curls, the eyelashes, the neatly
rouged cheeks, the rosebud pout, the magenta fingernails. The
irrational thought occurred to him that even the costume was exactly
the kind of thing Elena would have admired.

He said to himself, I’m seeing ghosts—or catching
at straws. What the hell, if the thing did look like her, or the
other way around? Dolls. The whole thing was a mare’s nest.
Overnight he had begun to suspect uneasily that he was wrong, dead
wrong about this thing; he hadn’t taken a good long look at all the
dissimilarities—he’d wanted to think this was the Brooks killer
again, without any real solid evidence for it. Wasting time. Look at
the rest of the facts!

Brooks: the handbag not touched. Ramirez: bag found
several blocks away. True, apparently nothing taken, for Teresa said
she wouldn’t have been carrying more than a little silver, to the
rink where she’d leave her bag and coat on a chair at the side.

Brooks: colored, not pretty, not noticeable. Ramirez:
very much the opposite.

Brooks: attacked on a fairly well-frequented street,
in a fairly good neighborhood—just luck that there hadn’t been a
number of people within earshot. Ramirez: attacked in that lot away
from houses and in a street and neighborhood where a scream wouldn’t
necessarily bring help.

The chances were, just on the facts, that there were
two different killers: say irrational ones, all right, because there
didn’t seem to be any good logical reason for anyone in either of
the private lives wanting those girls dead. But two: and the first
could be in Timbuctoo by now. He was annoyed at himself. He said,
"May I have this? Thank you."

Let Hackett laugh at him for an imaginative fool!
"Now, about this woman, the one who came in and wanted to buy
the doll—"

"Shorely, Lieutenant, I had a good rummage firs’
thing this mornin’ when Mis’ Demarest call me ’bout it, and I
found that bitty piece o’ paper with the name and address—"
 

NINE

Because afterward, thought Morgan (both Morgans),
there would be a time when Sue would look at him, that steady look of
hers, and want the truth. And he had better know what he was going to
say. He wondered if he could tell her half the truth convincingly (my
God, no, I never meant—but when he got mad and pulled a gun, I—and
afterward, I knew I couldn’t tell the police the whole story, you
know—) and go on forever after keeping the rest a secret. He’d
never been very good at keeping secrets from Sue. But a big thing
like this—and there was also the consideration, wouldn’t it be
kinder, fairer, not to put this on her conscience as it would be on
his? Let her go on thinking it was—accident. Because he guessed it
would be on his conscience to some extent. You couldn’t be brought
up and live half your life by certain basic ethics and forget about
them overnight.

All the while he was thinking round and about that,
at the back of his mind, he was talking to this woman, this Mrs.
Cotter, quite normally—must have been, or she’d have been eying
him oddly by this time. He saw that he had also been taking notes in
his casebook of a  few things she’d told him, and his writing
looked quite normal too. As usual now, he was having some trouble
getting away: people liked to talk about these things. You had to be
polite and sometimes they remembered something useful. He managed it
at last, backing down the steps while he thanked her for the third
time.

His car was around the corner, the only parking space
there’d been half an hour ago; now, of course, there were two or
three empty spaces almost in front of the building. As he came by, a
long low black car was sliding quiet and neat into the curb there.
The car registered dimly with him, because you didn’t see many like
it, but he was past when the driver got out. It was the car, a vague
memory of it, pulled Morgan’s head round six steps farther on. The
driver was standing at the curb lighting a cigarette, in profile to
him.

Morgan stopped. Absurdly, his mouth went dry and his
heart missed a few beats, hurried to catch up. You damn fool, he said
to himself. They’re not mind readers, for God’s sake! But, he
thought confusedly, but— An omen? Today of all days, just run into
one—like this. Casual.

That was a man from Homicide, a headquarters man from
Kenneth Gunn’s old department. Lieutenant Luis Mendoza of Homicide.
Morgan had met him, twice-three times—at the Gunns’, and again
when their jobs had coincided, that Hurst business, when one of the
deserted wives had shot herself and two kids.

Luis Mendoza. Besides the childish panic, resentment
he had felt before rose hot in Morgan’s throat: unreasonable
resentment at the blind fate which handed one man rewards he hadn’t
earned, didn’t particularly deserve—and also more personal
resentment for the man.

Mendoza, with all that money, and not a soul in the
world but himself to spend it on: no responsibilities, no
obligations! Gunn had talked about Mendoza: ordinary backstreet
family, probably not much different from some of these in
neighborhoods like this—nothing of what you’d call background . .
. . and the wily grandfather, and all the money. What the hell right
had he to pretend such to-the-manner-born—if indefinable—insolence?
Just the money; all that money. Do anything, have anything he damned
pleased, or almost. And by all accounts, didn’t he! Clothes—and
it wasn’t that Morgan wanted to look like a damned fop, the way
Mendoza did, but once in a while it would be nice to get a new suit
more than once in five years, and not off the rack at a cheap store
when there was a sale on. That silver-gray herringbone Mendoza was
wearing hadn’t cost a dime less than two hundred dollars. An
apartment somewhere, not in one of the new smart buildings out west
where you paid three hundred a month for the street name and three
closet-sized rooms, but the real thing—a big quiet place, spacious,
and all for himself, everything just so, custom furniture probably,
air-conditioning in summer, maid service, the works. It was the kind
of ostentation that was like an iceberg, most of it invisible: that
was Mendoza, everything about him. Nothing remotely flashy, all
underplayed, the ultraconservative clothes, that damned custom-built
car you had to look at twice to know it for what it was, even the
manner, the man himself—that precise hairline mustache, the way he
lit a cigarette, the—

A womanizer, too: he would be. And easy to think they
were only after the money: not, for some reason, altogether true. God
knew what women found so fascinating in such men. But he remembered
Gunn saying that, a little rueful as became a solid family man, a
little indulgent because he liked Mendoza, a little envious the way
any man would be—Poker and women, after hours, that’s Luis, his
two hobbies you might say, and I understand he’s damn good at both
.... A lot of women would be fools for such a man, not that he was so
handsome, but he—knew the script, like an actor playing a polished
scene. And all for casual amusement, all for Mendoza, and when he was
bored, the equally polished exit, and forget it.

Gunn had said other things about Mendoza. That he was
a brilliant man—that he never let go once he had his teeth into
something. All that, while the lighter-flame touched the cigarette,
and was flicked out, the lighter thrust back into the pocket. Mendoza
raised his head, took the cigarette out of his mouth, and saw Morgan
there looking at him. And so Morgan had to smile, say his name, the
conventional things you did say, meeting an acquaintance.

"How’s Gunn these days? He’s missed
downtown, you know—a good man. I understand that’s quite an
organization he’s set up."

Morgan agreed; he said you ran into some interesting
cases sometimes, he had one now, but one thing for sure, you
certainly had a chance to see how the other half lived—but that’d
be an old story to Mendoza.