Streets of Death - Dell Shannon (11 page)

"Don’t tell me Marta’s corrupted our cops,
Mr. Ga1eano," she said sweetly.

Marion Prescott said, "Yes, your Jack did rather
fall for her, didn’t he, dear? Until you hauled him back into
line."

Galeano escaped.

* * *

He’d have to put that in a report, and what it
sounded like--Conway and Mendoza would pounce on that Jack Frost,
God, what a name, for the boyfriend. There was nothing in it,
couldn’t be anything in it: lots of men would be attracted to
Marta. And Carey had talked to the Cadbys, said they hadn’t had any
contact recently. Which was exactly what they would say if there was
any reason not to admit it.

Yielding to impulse, Galeano stopped at the Globe
Grill for an early lunch. The place was crowded and another girl
waited on him, but he could see Marta across the coffee shop, neat in
her uniform. Yes, a lot of men--more money, a better life. He didn’t
know what place she came from. There were still a lot of places in
Europe, off the beaten track, where people still thought all
Americans were millionaires. She got disappointed there. So there she
was, with a husband less well educated, likely not much in common
(after the baby died), and then a permanent invalid.

She happened to turn and catch his eye on her just
then, and a slight flush showed on her cheekbones, her wide mouth
tightened.

Cops keeping an eye on her, thought Galeano.
Suspecting her.

But he retained a wide streak of peasant common
sense, and as he picked up his bill, it suddenly said to him, What
did she gain by it? Which was a question. Read it the obvious way,
that the hypothetical boyfriend was to get rid of Edwin--fake a
suicide, the easiest thing. Galeano couldn’t imagine any
circumstances in which that would have gone so wrong as to
necessitate taking the body away. But even if it somehow had, and
there was no blood, nothing suspicious in the apartment, . they’d
have got together to make up a tale. Ed was in the hospital for more
tests; he was sick in bed and couldn’t be seen. There was just no
reason at all for her to tell the LAPD that very funny story--unless
it was true. Damn it, thought Galeano, that is an honest girl.

When he got back to the office, ready to argue the
case with Mendoza, he found Hackett and Higgins just sitting, Hackett
reading a report just typed, and Grace on the phone. Higgins told him
about the new one. They were hoping the lab could give them a lead.
It had already given them a lead on one of the heists last night, at
the liquor store: the boys had picked up a dandy set of latents from
the cash register, being run through to see if they were in Records.
If not LAPD’s, maybe somebody’s: NCIC or the FBI would tell them.

Grace put the phone down and said, "That’s
funny."

"What?" asked Higgins.

"That bartender," said Grace. "Who was
nervous. When Tom and I asked him about Buford coming in that night.
A funny little thing, and funny little things make me nervous. I just
thought I’d find out about him. And--·"

"Goddamn!" said Higgins suddenly. "Talking
about funny little things just reminded me. Matt had an anonymous
call--somebody said that Robert Chard thing was a deliberate kill.
Probably means damn all."

"Anyway," said Grace, brushing his mustache
back and forth, "that bartender--his name’s Reinke, Charles
Reinke--owns that place, holds the liquor license, which in this
state says he’s very clean and respectable. Which is also funny."

"The boss here?" asked Galeano.

"I don’t know where he is," said Hackett.

Mendoza came in briskly, announced that it was still
raining, and went into his office. Galeano followed him and without
preamble gave him the gist of what he’d turned up. "If it
means anything," he added. "Which I’m not convinced it
does. For one thing, I just don’t see what it gained her to tell
that tale. If there’d been collusion to kill him and something went
wrong, why in hell hide the body? And even so, why should she--"

"
De acuerdo
,"
said Mendoza. "I got there too, Nick. But I can imagine
circumstances where--mmh--she couldn’t very well have done anything
else. Jack Frost.
¡Porvida!
But we’d better talk to him. Just in case." He opened the top
drawer of the desk and brought out the inevitable pack of cards,
stacked it neatly on the blotter, got out a cigarette and operated
the flame-thrower. "That’s a very curious thing. Homesick, she
said."

"Oh, Luis," said Higgins, poking his head
in, "I forgot to tell you about this anonymous call on that
Chard.

And S.I.D. just called, they made those prints off
that heist last night, he was in our records, Roy Titus. Art and I
are just going out to have a look for him. They picked up some
latents from that new job, the old lady, but they aren’t processed
yet."

"
Bueno
."
Mendoza took the deck in his long, strong hands and began to shuffle
it. "Good hunting." He squared the deck and cut it
precisely to show the ace of diamonds.

"Oh, yes, I’ve seen you do that before,"
said Higgins, and went out. Mendoza shuffled, squared the deck and
cut it to the ace of spades; shuffled and cut the ace of hearts.

"Plotting," he said absently to Galeano,
"can be complicated. Most of what we see isn’t plotted.
Anything but."

"I see what you mean," said Galeano.
Mendoza cut the deck, contemplated the ace of clubs, and the phone
buzzed. He picked it up.

Loud enough for Galeano to hear, it sneezed at him.
"Hello, Luis."

"God bless you, Saul. What do you want?"

"We’ve got a very pretty little homicide for
you," said Lieutenant Goldberg of Narcotics, and blew his nose.

"You want to come look at it? Damn these
allergies. Pat and I are both here, it’s a very classy apartment on
Wilshire. Do come and see, Luis, we’ve got something interesting to
show you."

"¡Condenación!" said Mendoza resignedly.
"What’s the address?"
 

FIVE

GALEAN0 AND GRACE went along to see what it was. The
address was one of the new high-rise buildings out on Wilshire;
Galeano could never get used to calling them condominiums when they
were just glorified apartments. There was a black and white at the
curb; Mendoza slid the Ferrari into a red zone and they got out.

"Where’s Goldberg?" he asked the
uniformed man by the squad car.

"Fourth floor, this side, sir. And thanks for
the excuse to get out of there. I’m waiting for the men from the
zoo, tell him I’ll send ’em right up."

"The zoo?" said Grace. But Mendoza was
already at the door.

The elevator took its time, eventually decanted them
on the fourth floor. Down a plushly carpeted hall they spotted
another navy uniform and made for it. "Homicide," said
Mendoza. "This is it?"

"Oh, brother, you said it," said the
Traffic man. "I’d rather have a riot to handle any day, at
least with people you sometimes know where you are. Lieutenant
Goldberg said you’re to go straight in." He opened the door
behind him gingerly, a crack, peered in, and opened it wider for
them. It was class, all right: rich deep carpeting, hotel-size
furniture, damask draperies, in a big rectangular living room with a
wall of window offering a view of the city. Lying face down under the
window was a dead man, blood around him on the chaste carpeting. He
was a chesty middle-aged man in a natty gray suit. Lieutenant Saul
Goldberg, thin and dark and looking less morose than usual, was
standing at one end of the long velvet upholstered sofa, and at the
other end stood Captain Patrick Callaghan also of Narcotics,
incredibly bigger than Hackett and redder-haired than Alison. He
looked rather pale, and his eyes were glued to the closed door
opposite.

"Well, hello, Luis," said Goldberg. There
was another man sitting on the couch, a rather fat middle-aged man in
very expensive-looking sports clothes, an exquisite shade of fawn. He
had jumped nervously when the door opened. There was a large, long
wooden packing crate in the middle of the room with a lot of straw in
it.

"Don’t let it out!" said the man on the
couch.

"We won’t let it out," said Goldberg.

"What in hell goes on here'?" asked
Mendoza.

"This is Mr. Enoch Hoyt. A longtime narco
dealer, just a couple of years ago graduated to the big time of
smuggling. That," said Goldberg, nodding at the dead man, "was
his partner, Mr. Delmar Underwood."

"I didn’t mean to shoot him," said Hoyt
aggrievedly. "I told you it was an accident. Anybody might
have-- Are you sure that door’s shut, for God’s sake?"

"So what happened?" asked Mendoza.

Goldberg blew his nose deliberately. "We got a
hot tip that there was a big shipment of stuff coming in from 
Central America--coke mostly, some H. We’d known all about Mr. Hoyt
and Mr. Underwood for some time, we were just waiting to get the
goods on them. The ingenuity that goes into the criminal trades--like
with the conmen, if they used that much genius in legitimate channels
they’d all be millionaires--"

"This pair don’t seem to have done too badly,"
said Mendoza, looking around.

"We got on to San Diego, but those boys were
just too late to catch it at the border, they’d already signed for
it and got through Customs. Mr. Hoyt had some pretty forged papers
identifying him as an assistant curator at the Los Angeles Zoo."

"I can hear the damn thing in there, Saul,"
said Callaghan. He hadn’t taken his eyes from the door.  "I
don’t suppose you keep up with the latest dodges for smuggling in
the dream powder, Luis. This is one of the newest. You see, snakes
don’t eat very often. The big ones. So you stuff your shipment of
coke or H or whatever in a big plastic bag, and you get the snake to
swallow it with the rest of its once-a-month dinner, and then you
shut it up in a crate and address it to the Chief Herpetologist, L.
A. Zoo, and when it gets to Customs at the Mexican border somebody
like Mr. Hoyt----"

"I will be damned," said Mendoza.

"What kind of snake?" asked Galeano
nervously. "Well, I only got a very brief look at it," said
Goldberg, "before I slammed the door, but the manifest says it’s
a boa constrictor."

"I said it was just plain nuts!" said Hoyt
plaintively. "I didn’t want nothing to do with it--I know it’s
the latest gimmick, going smooth as damn--it here and New York and
Miami, and our latest consignment got picked off by the Mexico City
cops, damn it, and Del said to try it, we had a contact in
Guadalajara--but I never liked the idea from the start--"

"Supposedly," said Callaghan, his eyes on
the door, "the snake is dormant, and when they’ve got it
through Customs they just knock it on the head, slit it open and
recover the--"

"Dormant!" said Hoyt wildly. "Say,
listen, that’s what Del said, he knew some guys been doing it for
months, no trouble at all, but-- Dormant? When he pried up the nails
on that damn box, that Goddamned snake came out like a bolt of
lightning, about fifty feet of it, and my God, I never meant to shoot
Del, but I’d got my gun out just in case and the damned thing was
all over the floor, I just--"

Something heavy landed against the closed door with a
thud, and Callaghan flinched.

"It was at this interesting juncture," said
Goldberg, "that Pat and I arrived, armed with a search
warrant--we hoped they hadn’t had time to get rid of the shipment
to their dealers--and I’d just knocked on the door when the gun
went off, so we came charging in."

"Ugh!" said Callaghan.

"To find Mr. Hoyt screaming and waving a gun
around, and the, er, party of the first part disappearing into the
bedroom. So I shut the door. I’m not a great pet lover myself. You
can take Hoyt away and book him anytime. We’re waiting for some men
from the zoo to corral the boa. We’ll ask if there’s any way to
make it disgorge the goods without killing it--it’d be a shame,
poor thing, after it’s performed such a good deed in getting Delmar
put away."

"Yes, please, I’d like to get booked in right
away," said Hoyt, getting up anxiously.

"The damn thing’s working on the door,"
said Callaghan. "Where the hell are those herpetologists?"

Mendoza was laughing. "The things we run
into--we’ll take him off your hands, boys. Send me chapter and
verse for the report. And do have fun with the snake charmers."

"Ugh!" said Callaghan. "I don’t
think I’m a coward, but I don’t like snakes. I just don’t like
’em."

Galeano was just as
relieved to be out of that place, headed for the Alameda jail with
Hoyt in a squad car. He didn’t like snakes either. No way.

* * *

Sometimes, said Hackett to Higgins, this damn job was
so monotonous and so easy that you might as well be on an assembly
line screwing in bolt forty-six. The automatic routine turned up the
answer like a coin bringing you the candy bar out of the machine. And
it made you feel tired, dealing with the stupid, stupid punks.

This particular punk, who was old enough to know
better, had left a nice set of prints on that cash register last
night, and the lab boys had had no trouble at all in locating them in
LAPD records and marking him as Roy Titus, who had a long record of
such stupidities behind him. He was forty-five now and had a record
going back  to age twelve, mostly armed robbery, B. and E., a
couple of muggings and two burglaries. He’d served some time, not
as much as he should have; and at the moment he was still on parole,
which meant that his current address was on file.