Felony File (14 page)

"
If she wasn't here Friday night— These other
people you mentioned. She was friendly with them? Who are they?"

"
Oh, yes. They've all been coming for years.
Mrs. Stromberg the longest—we had her mother, Mrs. Wallace, here
for two years before she died—she was a nice old lady. Miss
Retzinge's mother has been here nearly five years, she's quite
helpless with arthritis but her mind's still sharp—and Miss
Retzinger's got interested in some of the other patients. The
Reverend Whitlow and his Good Samaritans—" she uttered a short
laugh—"well, the man means well, and it doesn't seem to make
much difference to the old dears who's listening or being
sympathetic, so long as it's somebody. He has his own church, some
nondenominational one, the Holy Shepherd it's called, and some of the
church people call themselves the Good Samaritans, visiting the sick,
you know."

"
Did Mrs. Stromberg seem just as usual on
Thursday night?"

"
Certainly did to me, but then she wouldn't know
she was going to be murdered, would she? There wasn't anything on TV
the old dears would enjoy, but Miss Retzinger had brought some
cookies and candy—diets be damned," said Miss Dowling, "it's
about the only pleasure they have left—and Mrs. Stromberg got a
game of rummy going, and they had quite a merry little party in the
lounge, up to about nine o'clock. We do close down early—they
usually left about nine."

"
Well." Mendoza stood up. "Where could
we reach Miss Retzinger?"

"
At the branch
library on Santa Monica—she's the I children's librarian there. I
wish you luck on finding out who killed Mrs. Stromberg—a real sweet
little woman she was. I can't get over that, I can't indeed—but
then none of us can know what end we'll come to."

* * *

"
There isn't anything else I can tell you,"
said Melinda Corey.

"
Maybe there is." Galeano had asked the
L.A.C.C. registrar what classroom she'd be in, and waited to catch
her at the lunch break. It was too cold to sit on one of the benches
outside, so they were in an empty classroom. The straight wooden
chair with the tray arm on it was too small, and Galeano was
uncomfortable.

"
I don't know what." She was staying on at
the house, she had said this morning, and her mother had taken Lily,
but she'd have to let the house go; the payments were too high.

"
Did your sister recently, or ever, have an
argument with somebody—trouble over anything? Come on, everybody
does sometimes. Little things." What was in his mind was that
other funny case last August, where a very small thing had triggered
off big trouble. But in any case, as Mendoza said, what constituted a
motive depended on who had it; and with this thing looking as nutty
as it did, it was very possible that a real nut with an irrational
motive had done it.

"
Nothing that would make anybody—"

"
You don't know. Tell me about anything."

"
Well, it's silly, but she did have an argument
with the salesclerk at the Children's World shop uptown. That was
last week. Leta was furious. She'd got some hair ribbons for Lily,
and gave the girl a ten, and the girl gave her change for a five and
wouldn't believe her about the ten. Leta called the manager and all
the good that did her was, they told her when the register was
cleared, if there was an extra five they'd call her. Well, naturally
the clerk wasn't going to admit a mistake. She probably sneaked the
five out of the register later. But Leta couldn't afford to lose five
dollars. Everything so high, even if she was making a good salary—
And sometimes it was like pulling teeth to get the support payments
from Len. He was supposed to pay her a hundred a month, and lots of
times it'd be late."

"
Yes," said Galeano. "That's the only
recent thing you can think of? All right, something else. You told us
she wasn't interested in getting married again, but she was a
good-looking girl. Had anybody made a pass at her, annoyed her any
way like that?"

She shook her head. "When she first went to work
for Mr. Armstrong, she thought she might have some trouble with him
like that. He started acting kind of fatherly and silly, patting her
arm and calling her pet names—you know the way a man that age acts
when he wants to make a pass. It was a good job and Leta didn't want
to lose it. She just let him see, in a nice way but making it pretty
plain, that she didn't like it, wouldn't stand any nonsense, and he
quit it. She never had any more trouble from him."

"
Oh, really," said Galeano. He remembered
Armstrong, seen briefly, as a dignified light-skinned Negro about
fifty, austerely dressed and looking like a solid citizen. But if he
was given to making passes at girls half his age—

She hadn't anything more for him. And of course,
though they'd been living together, they wouldn't have told each
other about every single incident happening in the course of every
day.
 
He sat in the car thinking
about Leta Reynolds, and he didn't see how the five dollars could
really tie in. Not unless the salesclerk was nutty as a fruitcake,
and if she was she wouldn't be holding down a job, would she? Well,
go and look at her. But first, he got out of the car, walked half a
block to a public phone, and looked at the book.

Herbert Armstrong was listed at an address in Leimert
Park as well as at the photographic studio. He drove over there and
pulled up in front of the house. This was one of the solidly black
areas that was also affluent; a lot of professional people lived
here, as they did in View Park, the next area over. Jason Grace and
his wife had a nice house in View Park. There were elegant big houses
in both locations, some quite expensive places. The house where
Armstrong lived was a two-story colonial with a brick chimney, an
expanse of lawn in front.

Galeano got out of the car and went up to the front
porch, pressed the bell. He thought, this is damned silly. Suppose
they had a maid, or one of the kids answered the door—if they had
kids—but if they had, they'd likely be grown and away. But they
might have a relative living with them— Damn it, he thought, I
don't even know that he's married. He pressed the bell again.

Unhurriedly the door opened. He said, "Mrs.
Sidney?"

"Why, no, nobody of that name lives here."

"
Oh, excuse me, it's the address I had."

"
No, I'm sorry. I'm Mrs. Armstrong, just my
husband and myself live here."

Galeano muttered an excuse and hastened back to the
car. As he drove off he was thinking. Mrs. Herbert Armstrong was a
tall, heavy-bosomed female who matched Melinda's description at least
cursorily. And if Herbert was given to dalliance with young women,
she was probably aware of it. And she might on some occasion have
seen Leta Relynolds at the studio without Leta seeing her—or
possibly Leta just didn't remember her. And if she had evidence that
Herbert was playing around again, she might have jumped to the
conclusion that his playmate was Leta.

It was possible. Anyway, he wanted Melinda to take a
look at Mrs. Armstrong.

She'd be home about four. Take her over there, get
her to ring the bell, pretend to be selling something. He headed back
for the station automatically, parked in the lot, and on the front
steps met Glasser coming out.

"
Well, good, you can come be a witness,"
said Glasser.

"
If you're not nervous of meeting Leon again."
Galeano felt his eye absently; it had certainly developed into a
colorful sight, and he'd been conscious of a slight ache in it all
day.

"
What for?"

"
The lab just called. The doctor sent over some
of Leon's pubic hairs this morning, and it's just a matter of looking
through a microscope. Somebody finally got around to it, and it's a
match for the hairs from Alice Engel's body. Nice evidence, but it's
always nicer if we can spell it out for a judge."

"
That thing."

"
Come on, I'm escaping from Wanda. I have an
old-fashioned prejudice against talking about sex in front of an
unmarried girl." Galeano grinned at him; Wanda was probably a
little—just a 1ittle—tougher than Glasser thought. There was a
little whisper on the grapevine about those two; he wondered how
Glasser really felt. They took the Gremlin up to the jail, and
presently Fratelli was brought to them in an interrogation room. He
looked neat and clean enough in the tan uniform, but he hadn't been
allowed to shave and a heavy beard stained his jaw. He looked at them
with a scowl and Glasser told him to sit down.

"
You might as well tell us about it, Leon. How
you killed Alice. We know it was you."

"
I never done a thing like that. I told you how
it was, it was that dude brought me home. He seemed like an all-right
guy, but it must've been him did that. He said his name was Sam."

"
No, Leon, there isn't any Sam," said
Glasser. "It was you."

"
I never did no such thing."

"
Listen, do you understand anything about
science? Scientific evidence? The lab boys can take a hair from your
head and compare it to another and prove it's the same, from the same
place. You get me? just the way they can match shoes to footprints."

"
Yeah?"

"
That's right. And you may remember that the
doctor detached some hairs from you last night, not from your head."

"He hadn't no right—crazy thing to do—I
thought first off he was a nut—"

"
And now the lab boys have compared them with
hair found on Alice's body, and what do you know, Leon, they're all
yours. There wasn't any Sam. You did that. We can prove it in court.
Suppose you tell us how it happened."

He sat there thinking. He looked at his hands spread
out on his knees, and he said, "That's for real?"

"
For real, Leon. You ever do anything like that
before?"

"
No! No, I never," said Fratelli violently.
"That's true on the cross. I never. I dunno why it happened—I
don't. I—I—I'd been mad at Rosie—I tell you how it was—"
He took a long breath and held it.

"
Yes? Go on, tell it."

"
Rosie—she's no good anymore, see. Getting to
be more of a lush every day, she's drunk alla time. No good to me.
What kind of john's gonna look at one like that? And she ain't
int'rested in turning tricks no more. I'd been mad at her—and then
she goes off 'n' the kids are hollerin' for somethin' to eat—damn
it, they ain't my kids—"

"
She says one of them is," said Glasser.

"
Well, I guess. I got fed up."

"
But were the kids?" asked Galeano gently.

"
What? Oh, sure, sure, I got 'em some
hamburgers. I went out for some drinks, there wasn't nothin' in the
place. I went to that bar, an' after I had a few drinks I felt
better, see, I felt O.K. I wasn't so mad at Rosie, except like I say
she's no good at it no more an' I hadn't had none in a while. I got
back home O.K., an' the kids had shut up and gone to sleep. Alice was
asleep there, I saw her when I went to the john. I—well, I tell
you, I just dunno what put it in my head. Musta been crazy just
awhile. I just got to thinkin', how maybe it'd feel—to do it to a
kid—like that. I never thought about nothin' like that before. But
I kept thinkin' about it, and after a while I-I-I went in there. I
never meant to hurt her—honest, I never."

"
Just what did you think it would do to a
nine-year-old?" asked Glasser coldly.

"
I—never thought. An' I started—doin' it—and
she commenced to holler and scream and that made me mad, I'd just
started—and I grabbed her just a second to make her keep quiet—I
never meant to hurt her," said Fratelli hopelessly.

"
That's enough," said Glasser. He opened
the door.

"
You can have him back." As they walked
down the hall he said to Galeano, "Such a dirty job, Nick,
dealing with such dirty people."

"
But there are always more of the do-right
people around, Henry. We just don't see as many of them as other
people do," said Galeano seriously.

Mendoza and Higgins came into the office at
four-thirty. Lake looked up from his paperback as they came past the
switchboard and said, "Two things, Lieutenant. You're supposed
to call the coroner's office. And a funny thing happened about an
hour ago—" he picked up a small brown paper bag and handed it
over. "This pawnbroker came in with that. Either he's the most
honest man in the world or he's covering up something else. He said
when he took a look at the latest hot list he thought he recognized
this stuff. He took it in last Saturday for five bucks. He's got a
shop over on Second."

"
Cal1 for Diogenes." Mendoza was amused;
pawnbrokers weren't usually so obliging. He upended the bag, and
there was the little loot from the Whalen house: the old Waltham
railroad watch, the Masonic ring, the cameo pin. He turned it over in
his palm with one finger. Five bucks. Seventeen bucks they'd got
altogether. And a man's life.

"
Hell," he said, "pure formality, but
we'll have to get Dan Whalen to identify it."

Higgins had passed on into the office, and now came
back. "I called the coroner's office. The inquest is set for
Friday." Yes, officialdom would want to get that one over, let
everybody forget it.