Felony File (22 page)

"
Yes, he has—had—a clerk, Susan Adams. She's
been off sick with the flu all week. When I talked to him Thursday he
was kicking about it, he was run off his feet there all alone. It's a
damn good thing," said Newton suddenly, "she didn't walk in
to open up this morning—Sylvia'd never have thought to call her. I
don't know her address, but it ought to be somewhere in the files—I
can look it up for you."

"
If you'd do that, please." Mendoza stood
up. "It's about the end of our day, Mr. Newton, if you'll excuse
us. We'll hope to come up with something on it."

"
Oh, sure, sure. God, I hope you do—I hope you
get him." He was apologetic again. "I know I'm just wasting
your time. Where do I go to get my prints taken? Anything I can do to
help—"

Hackett told him how to
get down to S.I.D., and after he'd gone phoned down to tell them he
was on the way. Farrell had already left. Mendoza picked up his hat
and they went out together.

* * *

For once Mendoza got in early on Sunday. There had
been two more heists overnight, one at a bar, one of a couple getting
off a bus late on Olympic Boulevard. Everybody was out on the
legwork, hunting for the heisters and the rapists from records.

The phone company had come up with the trace on that
phone number. It was registered to Ronald Truepenny at an address on
Ardmore in Hollywood. "¿Y qué es esto?" said Mendoza to
himself. Five minutes after he'd come in he went out again, and drove
up to Hollywood in the very slight rain.

It was a garden apartment built around a pool. He
walked around the rectangle of front doors facing on the pool;
halfway around he found TRUEPENNY in a name slot, and shoved the
bell. He shoved it four times before a bleary-eyed young man with an
unshaven face, clutching a bathrobe around him, opened the door. He
looked at the badge in astonishment and said, yawning, that he'd
never heard of Marion Stromberg. "Crack of dawn, cops coming,"
he said. "Sherry, you know a Marion Stromberg?"

A pretty red-haired woman in a fleece robe came to
join him. "I knew a Mary Stromberg in school. For heaven's
sakes, a cop? You?"

"
Your phone number was among her effects."

"
Oh. Well, we only moved in here last month.
Took over the phone. Couldn't tell you who was here before. Your girl
could have known 'em, I suppose."

The cardigan where he had found the memo slip was a
summer-weight one. She might not have worn it since last June.
Mendoza apologized and looked to see if there was a manageress on the
premises.

There was. She listened to his questions and said
briefly, "The Beckwiths. They left because they were getting a
divorce, and she's well rid of him. Last six months he was out of a
job, and her supporting them sewing—she did a lot of expert
alteration work for The Broadway and private clients."

¿Qué mono?
said Mendoza
to himself. Another little ride on the merry-go-round. The phone
number of the obliging seamstress, probably lengthening a hem,
altering a new summer dress for Marion.

Her car still hadn't been located. He went back to
the office and, as he came in, suddenly wondered if the lab had got
anything from her clothes. There hadn't been any report. He called
S.I.D. and got Marx. "Well, there wasn't anything to report,"
he said. "Nothing on the clothes but what you'd expect, flecks
of her face powder, couple of her own hairs. And by the way, those
prints from the Jackman house aren't in our records, we passed them
on to the Feds." That, of course, was the little catch about
fingerprints: if they weren't in anybody's records they were no use
at all. "Just a minute, Duke's got something for you."

Mendoza started to say he thought Duke was on night
shift, but the phone hummed at him. Then Duke came on and said
happily, "Oh, we've got something pretty for you, Lieutenant.
Did you know there's a whole new process for lifting prints from a
dead body? It's not quite foolproof yet—Scarne and I've been
practicing every chance we get for a couple of months, and it's
damned interesting. It's a matter of the pores contracting at death,
and you've got to use special equipment—these Kromekote cards—"

"Yes? So what have you got?"

"
Some lovely clear prints off that rape victim
on Friday night. One from her upper left arm, three from her left
thigh. I've been doing some overtime, processing all we got. The rest
of 'em aren't clear enough to make much of, but these are beautiful."

"
Congratulations. If they show up in records—"

"
I'm just going down to look." Duke sounded
pleased with himself.

Mendoza swiveled around
and stared at the gray sky out the window. It suddenly further
occurred to him that he'd never looked up that parson, Whitlow, and
his Good Samaritans. But, as per Miss Retzinger, he didn't suppose
Marion Stromberg had spent any time that Thursday night chatting with
a well—meaning minister. That was one thing they had all told him,
all the people who had known her; she wasn't at all interested in
religion; if she wasn't an atheist she was at least an agnostic. And
if there was one thing he felt certain of, it was that Marion
Stromberg hadn't lingered in the foyer of the Brown Derby to make a
phone call to the Reverend Whitlow.

* * *

Linda Carr was still unconscious. Palliser and
Landers, having spent the morning looking for rapists out of records,
got to the Denny's on La Brea just after the two o'clock shift came
on, to talk to the girls she had worked with.

The three girls who had just come in, Joan Tenney,
Sandra Moore, and Ruth Hobbs, were excited and upset over what had
happened to Linda. They were nice, ordinary girls, and they told
Palliser and Landers this and that. The former boy friend wouldn't
have done any thing like that, they said. His name was Marvin King,
he worked for a Ford agency up the block, and there hadn't been
anything serious between them.

"
But we've been thinking about something else,"
said Ruth, her eyes big and serious and admiring on Palliser, who was
a good-looking man. "There are always guys coming in, try to
make up to you—mostly it doesn't mean much, they're just kidding.
Once in awhile you get one gives you a hard time, but Mr. Sorenson
won't put up with anything real annoying. It's not as if we got the
drunks coming in, not having a liquor license. But there was a fellow
really got across Linda—she could put a guy down without any
trouble usually, you know, just pass it off, but that one really
bugged her. I'd have been a little scared of him myself."

"
Who was he?"

"
Who knows?" said Joan. "We've been
talking about it. He used to come in around one or one-thirty, three
or four times a week. He's a great big guy, with dark hair and funny
eyes—kind of intense—looking. He acted like he really went for
Linda, kept asking her for a date. He gave her a hard time, and she
finally said if he bothered her again she'd get Mr. Sorenson to kick
him out. Only he hadn't done anything really, you know, and you can't
just throw customers out—I suppose Mr. Sorenson'd just have talked
to him."

"
He just came in off the street as a customer?"
asked Palliser.

Sandra said, "I'm pretty sure I saw him once in
one of those big Arrowhead trucks. A lot of places around here buy
the Arrowhead water. One of their delivery trucks—it was parked
down the street and I saw him get into it."

They didn't know anything more, and of course there
was no reason to follow that up. But it was interesting. They went
back to the office to collect another handful of names from records,
and came in just in time to take a call from Sergeant Bill Costello.

"Well, you told us," he said bitterly.
"We've been round and round on it, Palliser. Even went through
all Robinsons' employment records, turned the security guards inside
out, and it's all a great big blank. In and out they went, just like
at Bullock's, and how they got the inside dope doesn't matter—there
are just no loose ends to take hold of. And incidentally, harking
back to your ghost, nobody with the M.W. initials, up to six months
ago anyway."

"
We run up against
these things," said Palliser. "File it and forget it.
Nothing else to do."

* * *

"
Well, it was an idea," said Galeano
philosophically.

"In theory, quite a good idea," said Grace.
Galeano was driving; Grace sat back and lighted a cigarette, and his
lean regular-featured chocolate-brown face wore slight amusement.
"When you come down to it, Nick, most people are ordinary,
reasonably honest and sane people—maybe because we see so many of
the other kind, we expect to find them where they aren't." '

Galeano just hunched his shoulders.

They had found the Armstrong house empty and were
debating whether to wait or come back, when the woman drove up in a
Chevy sedan and went into the house. They waited three minutes and
rang the bell, introduced themselves, and she asked them in.

"
What can I do for the police?" she asked,
smiling.

"
Sit down, won't you?" She was a big woman
with a warm smile.

"
It's about Leta Reynolds," said Grace in
his soft voice.

The smile vanished. "Oh, dear, that's a dreadful
thing. Such a nice girl, Herbert said, and a good retoucher too. A
pretty girl too, I'd seen her several times at the store. But I
couldn't tell you anything about what happened." She was puzzled
at their coming; she looked  from Grace to Galeano. "Did
you want to see Herbert?"

He stayed on at the chruch to discuss something with
the Reverend Farley."

"
We were wondering," said Grace
disarmingly, "if you minded your husband working with such a
pretty young woman, Mrs. Armstrong."

"
If I—" She stared at him. It dawned on
her slowly what was in their minds and, at first, indignation
hardened her expression and then she began to laugh. "You don't
mean you're thinking that I—"

"
When Mrs. Reynolds was first working for your
husband," said Galeano, "she thought she might have a
little trouble with him, she'd said. Being a little too friendly."

"
Now that is too much!" she said. "You
two listen to me and use some sense. Naturally Herbert appreciates a
pretty girl as much as any man. But he's a good Christian. For the
Lord's sake, we've got four grown children and Herbert's a deacon in
our church! just when was this girl killed?—last Monday
morning—well, I was out shopping with my daughter Maureen from
about ten till three in the afternoon, and if you think I've ever
touched a gun in my life—"

Now Galeano said, "We missed lunch, Jase."

"
So we did. Let's
stop somewhere?

* * *

 
Hackett and Higgins were in one
interrogation room talking to a possible rapist, and Grace and
Galeano in another talking to a possible heister, at three o'clock.
It was still sprinkling. Mendoza was smoking and shuffling the cards,
and Lake had just come in to say, "It slipped my mind—Jackman
called to say his sister had a slight heart attack, she's in the
hospital."

"
Damn," said Mendoza. He wanted to talk to
the woman.

"
Oh, she's going to be all right in a day or
two."

"
I got to talk to somebody here!" said a
loud desperate voice. "Isn't nobody here? The sergeant
downstairs said Robbery—Homicide—"

Lake and Mendoza went out together. Standing beside
the switchboard was a tall youngish Negro. Normally he'd have been
rather handsome; he had sharp Semitic features, he was medium black,
he had broad shoulders; but he looked to be in a state of shock.
"It's about a murder!" he said. "I got to tell you!"

"
Calm down," said Mendoza. "Come in
here." He got him to sit down in Hackett's desk chair. "Now
what's it all about? I'm Lieutenant Mendoza. And you?"

"
L-L—L- She shot Leta!" he said. "Oh,
my God, and I didn't believe it! But I had to come—I had to come
and tell you—" He gave a great sigh suddenly, and sagged in
the chair limply. "I suppose I should've got ten traffic
tickets—gettin' down here. I left Ventura—I don't know what time.
I had to come and tell you."

Mendoza snapped to attention. He said, "Jimmy,
fetch us some coffee, will you? And rout out everybody. I have a
little idea we're about to hear an interesting story."

The coffee seemed to revive Len Reynolds somewhat. He
calmed down a little, but he was still excited and upset. He looked
at them, grouped around Hackett's desk there, and it was easy to see
why the pretty and personable Leta had fallen for him; he was
good-looking and his brown eyes were gentle and honest. "Oh, my
Lord," he said. He finished the coffee and asked if he could
have another cup; Galeano went down the hall to the coffee machine.

"
Take your time," said Mendoza, offering
him a cigarette.

Reynolds took a long deep breath, held it and let it
out. "Thanks," he said to Galeano, and sipped coffee, took
a drag on the cigarette. "I've got to—tell you how it was. I
don't know if you know I've been up in Ventura. I went to night
school after Leta and m—I broke up, she always said I ought to, and
I got my diploma, and I passed the post office test. I got a good job
up there as a carrier. And I've got an apartment. I've been there a
couple of years. Well, about four-five months ago this girl moved
into the apartment next to me. Betty Simms her name is. We'd said
hello and nice day and like that, but she's no looker and it never
crossed my mind to ask her for a date, look twice at her. You got to
believe that! I never did. I think she's got a job waiting on table
somewhere. But she's an awful pushy girl and she's been trying to
make up to me every which way, all the while she's been there. God
knows I never did n—anything to make her think— I've been real
rude to her a lot of times lately, I didn't like doing that because I
don't like to be mean, but—" he drank more coffee- "she's
been a real pest. Bringing me cakes and asking me to her place for
dinner— I was going to move just to get away from her, only thing
to do. My God—but I didn't think she was a real nut. Only she's got
to be—she's got to be."