Streets of Death - Dell Shannon (17 page)

"But he’s always been such a quiet boy--never
got into any mischief! What--what’s going to happen to him?"

That was a question. It would be up to the D.A.’s
office; Mendoza and Loomis could make recommendations, which wouldn’t
necessarily be followed. There’d be the inevitable psychiatric
examination, for what it was worth: not much, in Mendoza’s opinion.

"But there’s got to be a kink somewhere,"
said Loomis. "My God, I’ve seen all kinds of the j.d.’s,
Mendoza, but this one--you’d think he was talking about snitching a
candy bar! Good record in school"--they knew about that
then--"and then out of the blue, all this coming out, there’s
got to be some screw loose there. God knows I don’t think any more
of the head doctors than you do, but--"

Mendoza picked up his cigarette lighter and regarded
it absently. By that time, Loomis had seen it in operation several
times, but he still eyed it in a fascinated way as it belched Hame.
"Reminds me of the story," said Mendoza, "about the
social worker doing a research paper on causes of prostitution. When
you get past all the broken homes and alcoholism and addiction and
weak character, you find some of them just like the life. Somehow I
don’t think a session with the head doctors will cure Joey of what
ails him."

It was past the end of shift when Grace took Joey
over to Juvenile Hall and Wanda took Mrs. Perkins back home. And
Grace, partly because he was a gentle man and partly because he felt
out of his depth with Joey, tried to talk sweet reason to him. "You
know you’ll have to stay here, and come up in front of a judge,
because of all the wrong things you did, Joey. Don’t you--"

"Will they ever let me out again?"

"Oh, I expect so, sometime. Don’t you feel
sorry for doing all these things? Sorry you hurt those ladies?"

Joey turned a thoughtful calm gaze on him. "No,
I don’t guess I do. I guess as soon as they let me out I’d go do
things like that again."

"Why, Joey?"

"Well, I guess I don’t know."

Grace turned him over to
the Juvenile Hall staff and started home, feeling baffled.

* * *

When Piggott and Shogart came on--it was Schenke’s
night off--they heard something about that from the desk. It was one
for the books all right, but in this place, this time, ones like that
seemed to come up every week.

Shogart switched on his desk radio to the Traffic
calls, put his feet up and shut his eyes. Piggott, reminding himself
of several fundamentalist Christian texts on forbearance and
tolerance, tried to shut his ears, and opened a new book on the
tropical fish. But neither of them had much time to relax on the job;
their first call came in twenty minutes later. It was a genuine
hit-run, with several witnesses to say so, of course no make on the
car, but a dead man and a report to write.

Piggott had just finished writing it when they had
another call, a body somewhere on Maryland Street. It was an old
house cut up into four apartments, and waiting reluctantly with the
Traffic men was one of the upper-floor tenants, Mr. Walter Pepple.
"Of all the damned nuisances," he said disgustedly, "this
is the damnedest! Now I suppose I got to waste time going in court to
tell about it. Just because I happened to be next door. I was tired,
I had to do an extra shift last night, I was all in, and these damned
people across the hall were like a bunch of hyenas, yelling and
laughing--I stood it as long as I could and then I got up and put on
a robe to go complain, see, and just about then I hear somebody go
tearing down the hall, sure I mean running, and when I go out the
door’s open and here’s this guy bleeding all over the floor-"

He had been indeed, stabbed repeatedly; there was a
knife left beside him. Pepple didn’t know who he was, said he
thought he’d just moved in. There wasn’t a landlord on the
premises. They found a wallet in a jacket in the closet; if it was
his, his name was Rodrigo Peralta. Let the S.I.D. men look for
anything else, said Shogart. There were needle-marks all over
Peralta’s arms; at first glance, and probably at second, it was
just another argument between addict and seller, or addict and
addict.

They got back to the office at ten-forty, and Shogart
had just turned the radio on again when they had a call from the main
desk. "Say, I just picked up something a little strange,"
said Patrolman Bill Moss. "We had a call to a public phone down
on Washington, and this guy insisted we bring him here to see a Mr.
Galeano. He won’t take no, and he’s an old guy in quite a state,
he won’t talk to us, just asks for Galeano, so we thought--"

"Well, and what’s all that about? You’d
better bring him up," said Piggott, rather intrigued. "Who
is he?"

"I’ve got no idea," said Moss. "I
thought it might be something to do with a case, when he knows
Galeano. We’ll be up." Five minutes later he came in,
escorting a little potbellied old man limping and panting.

"Detective Galeano’s gone home," said
Piggott. "Mr. --er? What is it you want to see him about?"

"Dixon. You just tell him, Mr. Dixon. Seeing
it’s his fault I damn near got murdered too," said the old man
testily, "least he can do is listen to me. I’m staying right
here till he shows up, if it’s tomorrow morning." He lowered
himself into Hackett’s desk chair painfully and panted. Piggott
looked up Galeano’s number and dialed it. "I don’t know what
it’s all about, but he seems to think you will."

"Dixon?" said Galeano. "Well, I’m
damned if I do know, Matt, but I’ll come in and find out. I hadn’t
gone to bed anyway, I’m off tomorrow."

When he walked in half an hour later, Dixon had
dropped off to sleep and was snoring slightly, head back. He woke up
with a start at Galeano’s voice, sat up and grimaced, a hand to his
back.

"What’s this all about, Mr. Dixon?"

"I had me quite a night, all on accounta you,
young feller. Havin’ to get out in this damp weather, my arthritis
is killing me. Ow. I tried to give you fellows a little hint about
Bob, quiet like, and you have to come out flat-footed and say so! Oh,
you didn’t say it was me on account you didn’t know, but them two
bitches can add two and two. They knew. How they’d’ve covered up
about me gettin’ killed I don't know, because I don't go out and
get drunk and pick fights like Bob did, but they was gonna get
me--they said so--do me just like they did Bob, beat the poor guy to
death they did, I saw it--whangin’ away with a couple o’ chairs,
and that Elmer just a-laughin’ all the while they was at it. And
they’d’ve got me too, only for once I was too quick for ’em."
He chuckled. "You wouldn’t have a cup of coffee around here,
would you? I’m still cold as bedamned, that night air."

Piggott went down the hall to the coffee machine.

"
You mean Mrs. Chard and--" Galeano, even
as steeped in sin as any cop of experience, was momentarily startled.

"Who else? Them two bitches," said Dixon.
"I’m a patient man, Galeano, but enough’s enough. I wasn’t
no pal of Bob’s, but they didn’t need to go kill the poor
bastard. Just because Cissy found he was runnin’ with another
woman, for which I can’t blame him--and he had a little life
insurance too. They beat him to death, the two of ’em, right there
in the kitchen, and Elmer got the wheelbarrow from out back and they
carted him off somewheres, figure leave him on the street and you’d
think he got killed by a car."

"Well, I’ll be Goddamned," said Galeano
blankly.

"And then, damn it, you had to go and tell ’em
there’d been some tip on it, and acourse they guessed it was me!
They’d ’a’ got me too, but I was too smart for ’em. Locked
m’self in the bedroom, and I heard Cissy tell her ma I’d have to
come out sooner or later, they’d grab me then--but I got out the
window and climbed a fence to the next yard, how I done it I dunno
with the way my back’s been, but I did, and called up a squad car.
And you better believe, Galeano, I don’t stir outta the police
station till them two bitches and that Elmer, they’re all locked up
good and tight!"

"For God’s sake! " said Galeano. He
looked at Piggott and Shogart.

"The statement’s enough to go on."
Shogart was grinning wryly. "This is his wife and daughter?
Well, we’d better go get ’em, and make it all kosher with the
warrants tomorrow, get the statement down. My God, what does go on."

They all went out to the Constance Street house, but
ended up calling a wagon. The Dixons and Cecelia Chard were all on
the way to being drunk, and the two women went berserk. Before it was
all over Galeano and Shogart were well marked up by fingernails,
Galeano’s shirt was torn and one sleeve out of his jacket, and
Piggott had the beginning of a nice black eye from Elmer.

"I thought they were riffraff," said
Galeano ruefully, "but I never got beyond that. My good God."
They had to wake Dixon up again to tell him they were all in jail,
and they would see he was driven home if that was where he wanted to
go.

"Sure," he said,
sitting up and yawning. "It’ll be damn good to have some peace
and quiet in that house. I only hope some damn fool judge don’t let
’em out in a hurry. They’d sure as hell get me good, then."

* * *

Mendoza, who had a perverted sense of humor about
these things, was still laughing over Dixon that next morning when
Conway started out with Wanda to question the Dixons and Mrs. Chard,
get statements and warrants.

"
Mas vale que digan, Aqui
corrié, y no, Aqui murió
," he gasped
to Hackett, shoving over Galeano’s note. "How right Nick is,
if you don’t get rich at this job you get a look at human nature.
Dios mio,
the people
we meet. And how are you and George doing on your private hunt?"

"We’re not. Nothing suggestive’s turned up
at all. I’m beginning to think George is right, that cigarette pack
could have been there for weeks, maybe she just didn’t notice it.
We’ll go on to the bitter end, but I think it’s a waste of time."

"Which I understand," said Palliser,
passing Hackett in the doorway, "Tom’s been saying about my
brainwave on Sandra. What do you think?"

"You talked to the girl," said Mendoza
consideringly. "From what I know of the case, Rank could be a
hot suspect. Why don’t you think so?"

"For one thing, he was at work out in Van Nuys
at that car-wash place up to three o’clock that Sunday. I don’t
think he’d have had time to get to Hollywood and pick up those
girls by five o’clock. He’s not the only man in Records with the
right pedigree and possible access to a house near San Pedro.”

"And we aren’t even sure of that, are we? But
the girl picked him, John."

"Along with a couple of others. Damn," said
Palliser suddenly, "we never did locate that Steve Smith. Who
she also picked. But she wasn’t at all certain, you know, and I
think myself the fact that these mug-shots showed men wearing goatees
had something to do with her picking ’em. At least I understand
we’ve got those rapes cleaned up--Jase called to tell me about it
last night. My God, what a thing."

Sergeant Lake buzzed Mendoza. "You’ve got a
new one. Twenty-fourth Place, double homicide."

"
¡Diez millónes de
demonios!
"' said Mendoza. "All
right, I’m on it, Jimmy."

They went to look, and they looked sadly: just more
of the mindless brutality stalking the streets of any big city. The
daughter had come home from a night at a girl friend’s and found
them: Mr. and Mrs. Paul Freeman, both in their fifties, beaten and
dead on their livingroom floor and the house ransacked. A modest
house, but between sobs Janice Freeman told them this and that. "Of
c-course we were always careful about locking doors and all--there’s
the chain on the front, you can see. Not that Daddy ever had much
money himself, but there’s the church money--he keeps the books for
our church, the Methodist chapel it is, and he always had the
collection to take to the bank-- Oh, if I’d only been here, if I’d
just been here--"

If she’d been there she’d probably have ended up
dead too. There were a few suggestive things to notice. Mendoza
nodded at the phone book, lying open on a table against the wall,
oddly undisturbed. "The door wasn’t forced, chain off. That
could be why, John."

"Oh, yes," said Palliser, going closer to
look at it. The book was open to the yellow pages, to the listing for
service stations. "He rang the bell--or they did--said he was
stalled and could he please use the phone. And the helpful Christian
let him in."

"
Tal vez
.
You’d better call up S.I.D." Looking at the corpses, Mendoza
thought about statistics. They did enter the picture. Thoughtless
people would quote the fact that the incidence of black crime was
astronomically higher than white; what they forgot was that there was
an astronomically higher number of black victims too.

"Oh, if I’d just
been here. I can’t help feeling it wouldn’t have happened if I’d
just been here--"

* * *

Galeano got up late, his day off, dropped his jacket
at a tailor’s for repair, and drove down to the Globe Grill for
breakfast. This time he sat where Marta had to wait on him. Her lips
tightened when she saw him, but she came up correctly to take his
order.