Felony File (4 page)

Five minutes after Mendoza came in, he hailed Conway,
Palliser and Grace into his office, looking pleased. Hackett had a
witness coming in, the second pharmacy clerk from Thursday night's
heist; he showed up about eight-thirty and told Hackett just what the
other one had. His name was Donald Hopper.

"
Could've knocked me down with a feather,"
he said. "A dame! With a real cannon, and who takes chances with
a female with a gun?" He gave a faithful description: maybe
about five-five, really stacked, shoulder-length blonde hair, a good
deal of make-up, "and real loud clothes, a print dress all sorts
of colors, and a bright-red coat. That's about it."

"
Just think this over," said Hackett.
"Could it have been a man dressed up?"

Hopper didn't have to think. He laughed. "No
way," he said instantly, "and Bob'd say the same. I was
near enough to tell—no way was that padding, see, and it was a
dame's voice, a dame's hands—you couldn't mistake it. That idea
don't go. It's damn funny all right, a female heister, but that's
what it was, Sergeant."

Hackett started to type up a statement for him to
sign. He wondered if the female heister was in anybody else's records
somewhere around.

Glasser waited until nine o'clock to call the jail.
He was assured that both subjects were in a condition to be
questioned. "Care to sit in on round two?" he asked Wanda.

"
At the jail, yes."

It had stopped raining about ten o'clock last night,
but was looking threatening again. Today, everybody had worn
raincoats.

At the jail Glasser talked to the booking sergeant
first. "Anything show in the medical examination? A doctor did
look at both of them?"

"They were both just drunk," said the
sergeant, bored. "Doctor saw them about five yesterday. They're
both yelling about getting busted for no reason. You can't hold them
beyond, lessee," he consulted the record, "three P.M.
Twenty-four hours."

"
I know, I know," said Glasser. As they
went down the antiseptic-smelling corridor he added absently to
Wanda, "They're both in records. First place to look. Rose has
one count of prostitution about eight years ago, probation, and
Fratelli did six months for a felony hit-run and involuntary
manslaughter, four years ago."

"
Which I suppose they'd tell us might happen to
anybody," said Wanda.

"Nobody likes a cynical woman," said
Glasser.

They saw Rose Engel first. The matron had commented
dryly, "She's as sober as she ever will be," and looking at
her in the bare little interrogation room, they could see that she
was far down the line, far gone: her hands shaking, her eyes dull.
Her pedigree said she was twenty-nine now; she looked forty. It was
doubtful that she'd ever been very intelligent, but the alcohol had
dimmed whatever sense she'd had.

"
You got no right to hold me," she told
them. "I didn't do anything."

"
We're not holding you," said Glasser. "You
can go any time when you've answered some questions. You do realize
your daughter Alice has been murdered?"

"Yeah. Poor 1i'l kid."

"
Where's your husband, Mrs. Engel?"

"
Joe, you mean? He walked out on me a long time
back—six, seven years. I dunno where he is, but he wouldn't hurt
Alice."

"What about the other children, are they his
too?"

They were younger than that.

She was hunched over the bare table, not looking at
them. She'd been bathed, and given a beige cotton uniform, but her
dark hair was still unkempt, the dark-red polish on her stubby nails
half worn off. "I dunno," she muttered. "I just
couldn't say who it was, on Dicky or Linda, I guess I was drunk.
Except the baby, it's Leon's."

"
All right, about Thursday night," said
Glasser. "You left the kids at what time, you remember?"

She shrugged. "I went to a party at Cora's. Cora
Miller, she lives over the next block, on Mozart. Leon said he was
tired, didn't want to go. I told him to get some hamburgers or
something for the kids. The kids were O.K."

"
What time was it?"

"
I dunno, maybe seven-thirty."

"When did you get home?"

"
Well, it sort of went on, the party. I stayed
over with Cora, I guess we went to bed about four o'clock. I come
home about noon, and that's when I found Alice. Like that. I couldn't
get no sense out of Leon, so I went back to Cora's and she said I
oughta call the fuzz, so I did."

"
There wasn't anybody else there with the kids
but Leon when you left?"

She shook her head. "They was O.K. Some real
fiend musta got in while Leon was asleep. I dunno nothin' about it,
you can't say I did."

"
Nobody's saying anything," said Glasser.
"You can leave any time."

Out in the corridor, Wanda said, "I hope you
called the Board of Health."

"I did. Rose may go home, but it won't be home
anymore. Depending on their red tape, it'll get declared unfit for
habitation today or tomorrow—I mean Monday. I wonder who owns the
place. They'll find out. And probably," said Glasser, "the
court will take the kids away from her—God knows they'd be better
off at Juvenile Hall or nearly any foster home—and she'll stop
getting the nice A.D.C money."

Leon Fratelli wasn't as far down the road as she was,
but on the way. He was at least cold sober now; he didn't like cops
much, and answered them sullenly.

"Listen," he said, "I'm sorry, what
happened to the kid, but I don't know nothin' about it. All I know, I
went out and got some hamburgers for the kids after Rose left, and
then I went out for a couple drinks and when I come home I went to
bed."

"
You usually sleep on the cot in the living
room?"

"
No. I been thinkin', and it musta been that
guy. Come home with me. I don't know who he is," said Fratelli.
"I got talkin' to him in that bar."

"
Which bar?"

"
Uh, Pete's place up on North Main. I was awful
tired, I'd hadda work two shifts, see, the night barkeep was off
sick. That's at the Eagle Grill on Fourth, where I work. I was tired.
I thought a couple drinks sort of relax me, is all. And I got talkin'
to this guy, I never seen him before, he said his name was Sam. Maybe
the barkeep or somebody there knows him."

"
How did he happen to come home with you?"
asked Glasser. "You have a car?"

"
Yeah, yeah, I got a kind of beat-up old Ford.
Well, that was sort of it. I guess I had a couple too many drinks,
and—uh—once I got busted for drunk driving and I was nervous
about it and—uh—he said he'd drive me home. He seemed like an
all-right guy."

"
How was he going to get back?"

"
It was only up North Main. About six blocks.
Listen, I don't know nothin' about all this, and you can't hold me. I
sort of passed out and I never saw or heard nothin'."

Glasser sighed. "You remember what Sam looks
like?"

"Sort of. Yeah. He was kind of tall, maybe six
feet, and thin. About twenty-five. He had black hair, sort of long."
Fratelli shrugged. "Listen, you can't hold me—"

Glasser said, "You can leave any time." And
halfway down the corridor he stopped and said, "Damnation. The
Board of Health—"

"
I was going to say something," said Wanda,
"but you're the detective."

"
Yes. They'll get evicted, and how are we to
know where the hell they've gone? But there's the A.D.C. money."

"
What about it?"

"
She won't be getting
it anymore. I think she'll stick to Fratelli as long as he's got a
job, and we know where he works."

* * *

Mendoza had surveyed his three detectives pleasedly,
lounging back in his desk chair.

"
Sometimes the routine pays off. We haven't any
record of the M.O. on the Bullock's job, but I wondered if somebody
else had—I sent a query on to NCIC's computers last night. We have
here the result." He tapped the yellow page on his desk blotter.
"Two carbon copies. Last March in Philadelphia, last April in
Pittsburgh."

"
You don't say," said Grace interestedly.

"
They decided to spend the winter someplace
warmer, maybe," said Conway. "That's the hell of a long way
off."

"
And if they took anything like the Bullock's
haul seven months ago, how come they needed more loot?" asked
Palliser. He added, "Don't bother to tell me, I know. The pros
can get rid of it faster than a dozen extravagant females. Gambling,
women, dope, booze, name it."

"
Nobody was ever dropped on for either job,"
said Mendoza, brushing his moustache thoughtfully, "which of
course is why the record was still in the NCIC computer. But all the
details don't always get sent to NCIC. It might be useful to hear
what Philly and Pittsburgh can tell us." He picked up the phone.
"Rory, get me through to Philadelphia P.D. headquarters? The
call went through in five minutes; he was handed around a little, but
finally got a Captain Royce of Robbery detail, who said he'd handled
that one. "
Bueno
,"
said Mendoza, and shoved the amplifier button. Royce had a heavy bass
voice which boomed startingly loud in the room; it was a very clear
connection. "We've just had the same exact job pulled here. By
what we got from NCIC. Did you ever get any leads on them at all?"

"What?" said Royce. "Is that so? It
was the hell of a slick job—did you say Mendoza? They had the
store's routine down pat, how the day's take gets handled—they knew
just where to go and what time. They had to have some inside
knowledge, but there wasn't a smell of a lead. All the security
guards had records like new-fallen snow, and they'd all been at
Gimbels for years. Nothing pointed to any of the regular personnel.
None of our street informants knew a thing, and that was straight.
For what it's worth, Mendoza, that said to me that maybe none of the
gang is known—er—generally, on the street, if you follow me. It
was a high-class job."

"
Yes. So was ours. You never got a glimmer of an
idea?"

"The hell I didn't," said Royce. "But
it was just nothing, legally, and after all the city doesn't pay me
to chase ghosts. We're always busy, and after a while it got stashed
away in the unsolved file and I had to forget it."

"
Yes, I'm a big-city cop too. What was the
idea?"

"
Well, after we'd looked everywhere else
possible," said Royce, "we took a look at all the
employees' records, and maybe I was just woolgathering but I wondered
about this one woman. Employed as a salesclerk in the cosmetics
department. One Marcia Wilmot. She only worked there for three
months, and their personnel usually stay a lot longer than that. She
quit her job two weeks before the job was pulled. Well, what could it
say? I asked around, and there was nothing to say it wasn't all
perfectly kosher. She told the other clerks that her mother had had a
heart attack, she was going home to take care of her, even though she
hated to give up a good job."

"
Home being?"

"
New York," said Royce.

"
Vaya historia
,"
said Mendoza.

"
If that means what I think it does, the same to
you in spades," said Royce. "It could have been absolutely
straight. On the other hand, Wilmot was said to be a divorcée and
nobody knew her maiden name. So try to look for her living with her
mother in the Big Apple? And there really wasn't any reason to—it
was just a handful of nothing. But I had a very strong hunch that she
was tied in somehow."

"
How well I know the feeling," said
Mendoza. "That's all very interesting, gracias. Did you get a
description, by the way?"

"
Sure, for what it's worth. About thirty-five,
medium height and weight, dark hair, brown eyes. Good-looking. She's
not on record anywhere, at least under that name."
 
"And I hate to think how many brunettes answer
to that. And she needn't have stayed brunette. But thanks so much."

He got less from Pittsburgh, where he talked with
Lieutenant Wells. The job pulled at the Joseph Horne store had been
another carbon copy, and Pittsburgh had gone through all the motions
and come up blank. Yes, of course they had looked at the security
guards, also at employees' records; but no employee had quit
recently, they were all accounted for and not throwing money around.

"
However," said Mendoza, putting the phone
down, "it may offer us a small pointer, boys."

"
You want us to wade through all Bullock's
employment records?" asked Conway. "My God, it'd be a
month's job."

"
I have," said Mendoza, grinning at him
rather wolfishly, "great faith in hunches, Rich. Even somebody
else's."

"
Shortcuts," said Grace meditatively. "The
initials. Mary Webb or Margaret Willard or something. But she didn't
show on the Pittsburgh job."

"
Not out in the open."

"
And we haven't checked back on all the guards
yet," said Palliser.