Murder Most Strange (20 page)

Seton gave him a friendly smile. "Do you know,"
he said, "you really don't look old enough to be a detective,
Mr. Landers. Or maybe I'm just getting on myself. Well, that's why I
can't quite understand why he was found where he was. As far as I
know he intended to go out to dinner, go back to his hotel and spend
the evening going over his speech." They had found the
typescript of the speech in Upchurch's hotel room, yesterday. "And
you see, he wasn't at all familiar with Los Angeles, he didn't know
anyone here, and he asked me about restaurants. He liked French
cuisine, and I suggested the restaurant right here, L'Escoffier, and
La Bella Fontana at the Beverly Wilshire, Chez Claude, Frangois's or
Jimmy's in Beverly Hills. He said they all sounded fine, and did I
know a place called the Granada at the Century-Plaza, somebody had
recommended it to him, and I told him I'd never been there but it was
probably good, that was a good hotel. He was going back to clean up a
little, and then going to a restaurant, that's all I could tell you."

"That's the last you saw of him? Well, thanks
very much."

"You know something," said Landers as they
waited for the elevator, "we ought to have some of that campaign
literature, Art. There's a good picture of him splashed all over all
of it. If we're going to be asking about him at these restaurants,
it'd be useful."

"Occasionally you use your brains, Tom,"
said Hackett.

"Let's go and get some." They went back to
the Beverly Hills Hotel about ten blocks away, got the keys to
Upchurch's room from a subdued desk clerk and abstracted a handful of
the campaign brochures with Upchurch's virile, trustworthy, smiling
photograph prominently displayed. As they came out the front entrance
and turned toward the parking lot, Hackett said, "Wait a minute.
They've got valet parking here, haven't they? Separate parking
accommodation for guests' cars. I just wonder. If the attendant
happened to notice which way he turned out, or if he asked
directions, it might give us a clue where he did go."

They found the private hotel parking lot around at
one side, and the attendant lounging there in a canvas chair in the
shade of the building, reading a sports magazine. Hackett showed him
the badge and explained. "Say," he said interestedly, "I
heard something on the grapevine about some big shot we had staying
here dropping dead or something." He was a lank young man with a
very deep tan. "Tell me what car he was driving and I might
remember something? Hackett handed him one of the leaflets. "This
him? Oh-oh, sure. He had a renter. Gee, he's a good-looking guy,
isn't he? Yeah, I remember him some. He showed up about two-thirty on
Friday afternoon, and went in the hotel, and then about five-thirty
the desk called and he wanted the car brought around to the front
entrance. It was just before I was due to go off, I'm here until six
and then Chuck comes on."

"Fine," said Hackett. "Do you remember
about Saturday? Happen to notice which way he turned out of the lot
when he left, about five or five-thirty?"

The attendant shook his head. "Sorry, I'm not on
on Saturdays. I'm on Friday I remember. I brought the car up to the
front steps, and this guy was there with a cute little blond chick
maybe twenty, really stacked—they were laughing and talking, and he
gave me a buck and I walked back to the lot and that was it."

Hinted at, Hackett gave him a dollar. They started
back to the car. Landers said darkly, "The devoted family
man—hah. He gets here on Friday afternoon, doesn't know a soul in
L.A., and three hours later he's picked up a pretty dolly to play
with. For God's sake. And I wonder where?"

"By what the fellow said, the car wasn't out
until then, after he checked in. It could have been at the bar here,
I suppose. But that won't be open until two o'clock. I don't know
about these other restaurants, but we can go and ask."

“
Politicians!" said
Landers.

* * *

The wire photo came in about ten-thirty, and Higgins
took it to show the Ortiz girl and she identified it, so he took it
to Clyde Burroughs and he identified it. "Why didn't you show me
this one in the first place?" he asked indignantly.

So now they knew that their hair-trigger heister was
Leroy Rogers, but they had no idea what car he was driving, where he
was living or where he might hit next. Higgins came back to the
office. Mendoza was closeted with a couple of feds, Grace was talking
about babies with Wanda, showing her the latest I pictures of plump
brown Celia Anne. There were other heisters to look for and Glasser
was probably out on that.

"Oh, the autopsy report on Barker came in,"
said Grace. "There's not much in it."

There wasn't, except that it sounded like the same
knife. "That," said Higgins abstractedly, "is a very
queer thing."

He thought about Rogers. That heist job in
Atlanta—when had it been?—he'd taken some notes, talking on the
phone; he looked them up and checked. The date had been March 4, and
Atlanta had picked up the pal on the eleventh and he had fingered
Rogers, but Atlanta couldn't find him. He could have landed here
anytime between then and his first job here, and he wouldn't have had
much money; they hadn't made a big haul on the Atlanta job. He
wouldn't have bought a car. He could have stolen one in another
state, but there was no way to find out about that. Or he could have
stolen one here. He passed on all that to Grace. "It just occurs
to me," he said thoughtfully, massaging his craggy jaw, "just
to be on the safe side, because he seems to be very handy with that
Colt, it might be a good idea to brief all the Traffic men to use
extreme caution in approaching any car in this area. Or any
out-of-state cars."

“
I think," said Grace, "that is a dandy
idea—just to be on the safe side."

Higgins started downstairs
to see the watch commander in Traffic. At least all the Traffic
shifts would be briefed, beginning with the swing at four o'clock.

* * *

Mendoza had been pessimistic about the proposed trap
for the brotherhood. "Damn it, the rest of them would know he's
dead, nobody's going to show up at that place again."

"We don't know," said Grady patiently.
"It's very possible they don't know, that is, aside from the one
who killed him. I'll say this, Mendoza. These people—one of the
ways they get their kicks is the secrecy of the whole thing. Like the
little boys' secret clubs, you know? They're unimportant people, as I
said, having to pretend to be important, and the idea that they're
part of a secret group of superior beings provides a big thrill. They
tend to stay away from each other except for the secret meetings—and
your man's murder wasn't spread all over the papers, if it was
mentioned at all."

"True."

"Now we don't know when they met, or how often.
But Carroll here has been doing some research on what we know about
this outfit, and most of the local groups seem to meet about every
couple of weeks, on week nights. That might not apply to this one—who
knows?—but we can give it a try."

So they were sitting here, on three of Mr.
Parmenter's folding chairs, in the back room of Mr. Parmenter's
pharmacy, at eight o'clock on Monday night, Mendoza and the two feds.

They had put on all the lights in front and left the
door unlocked. Mendoza, feeling rather sleepy, had just worked it out
that Parmenter had probably left the lights on until everybody had
gathered and then turned them off for the secret meeting, which was
the only reason that Rauschman had been able to notice them, when
Carroll beside him tensed and put a hand on his arm. Somebody was
walking in the front door. They waited, and whoever it was came down
the store and around the corner toward the back room. "Gregory?"
said a fretful voice.

"Come right in," said Grady cordially. He
had his gun in one hand and his badge in the other. It was a little
rabbit-faced man who stared at them and suddenly looked ready to
faint. "Do sit down," said Grady; they had set out a few
chairs just in case. The little man seemed transfixed, and sat down
meekly under the gun. Somebody else came in, and this one turned out
to be a tall weedy kid about nineteen; he tried to put up a
half-hearted fight, and Grady shoved him into a chair roughly. The
third one was an elderly man with a limp, and then they waited for
five minutes with nobody saying anything, until the door opened again
out there, and by the footsteps two men came in.

Without warning the rabbity man made a dive for
Grady's gun arm and shouted an inarticulate warning. Not expecting
it, Grady stumbled against the chair. The footsteps out there began
to run, and the two feds ran too, and Mendoza pulled out his own gun
to hold the ones they had.

"That wasn't very sportsmanlike," he said
to the rabbit. "I thought you people went in for all the high
principles."

"One can't fight evil with fair tactics,"
said the rabbit smartly. "How did you know where to come? And
where is Gregory?" As a matter of fact he was still at the
morgue, because no one quite knew what to do with him; there wasn't a
soul to arrange a funeral.

Grady and Carroll came back emptyhanded and Grady
said shortly, "So this is the bag. Those two looked just a
little more important from the back view, one of them a big fellow,
but they had a start and they made it around the corner to a car, I
heard it start up. What a haul."

"Listen," said the kid unhappily, "it's
only my second time here, I don't know much about—"

The other two looked at him disapprovingly. "Oh,
come on, let's see what we've got," said Carroll tiredly.

They didn't have much. The kid was Jim Ferguson, a
student at LACC. He said old Parmenter had given him some stuff to
read, it had been kind of interesting, he'd been to one meeting but
he hadn't joined yet, and he didn't know there was anything illegal
about it.

The elderly man was Richard Cooke, a retired janitor
for the Board of Education. At intervals he kept invoking the Fifth
Amendment, and aside from that he wouldn't say anything except to ask
what they'd done with Parmenter. The rabbit was Edmund Bond, a
salesclerk at a men's shop in Hollywood, and he was relatively
voluble. He refused to give them any information about the other
local members, but he told them he'd be proud to become a martyr for
the cause.

"Are you," asked Mendoza, "the leader
or chairman or whatever you call it?"

Unguardedly Bond said, "Oh, no, that—"
and shut his mouth.

"That was one of those who got away. I didn't
think you looked like leadership material," said Mendoza
distastefully. They left them sitting there and went into the front
part of the store to discuss it.

The feds had been all over this store and the house
without finding anything in the nature of a membership list. Mendoza
agreed that very probably Parmenter had supplied the meeting place,
but wasn't the local group leader; that one would keep what records
were kept, and that one was probably one of the two who had got away.

"Damn it," said Grady, "we can't hold
them on anything. As I told you, this bunch doesn't build bombs.
Yet."

"You were really obliging me," said
Mendoza, "looking for a murderer. Gracias. We don't know how
many others were just arriving, and got away too."

"But those two back there, the regular members,
don't seem to know that Parmenter's dead. If it was one of this bunch
who killed him—"

"For a personal and private reason," said
Mendoza. "He wouldn't be boasting about it to any of the rest of
them, and also, of course, he'd innocently turn up here tonight, to
show the rest he didn't know and be all mystified when the place was
locked up. And equally, when he spotted the lights on, he'd have
stayed away. Altogether an abortive evening."

"No, we haven't helped you much," said
Grady. "And we'll let those poor idiots go. You can't change
them, that's for sure."

"And I really can't feel," said Mendoza,
picking up his hat, "that Mr. Parmenter is any great loss."

At least the electric eye
had been installed in the gate today, and tomorrow he'd be driving a
loaner while the gadget got installed in the Ferrari.

* * *

"And just look at this damned night report!"
said Hackett on Tuesday morning. He waved it at Mendoza. "Four
new heists, and the boys didn't have time to go out asking questions
on Upchurch. Damn it, those hotels have got little bars and
restaurants all over, we haven't begun to cover them all yet. I
suppose we'll have to do the overtime on it, most of them aren't open
till afternoon."

"Yes, business picking up," said Mendoza.
It was Grace's day off supposedly, but he had come in, being sent an
SOS from the desk. They were missing Nick Galeano. Everybody else was
there too, taking quick notes on the night reports, outlining the
day's work ahead.

"Morning, Luis." Dr. Bainbridge came
waddling in, stouter than ever, with the inevitable black cigar, and
took the chair beside Hackett's desk, where Mendoza had perched one
hip.

"I knew you'd be anxious to have the details on
this one, I did the autopsy myself last night. Press is giving it a
play, aren't they?"