The Knave of Hearts (12 page)

They had just so many men to work the routine; in
this ten days they had accomplished a quiet miracle in checking all
the places they had, all the people. But that was the kind of thing
that didn’t show—the press boys couldn’t make a good story out
of patient clerks poring over file cards, tired street men plodding
from house to house in the pitiless October heat, asking the same
questions .... The radical papers jabbed fretfully at the police,
accusing, challenging, deploring. The others ran cautious editorials
pointing out the excuses for delay, the difficulties of the hunt. The
public wrote letters to the editors agreeing or carping: people who
disapproved of the press printing anything about such sordid affairs
("simply encouraging our youth to dwell on filth"); people
who had theories; people who advocated a vigilante committee to aid
the police. ("
¡No faltaba más que
eso
—that’s all we need!" said
Mendoza.)

The Chief was wisely avoiding all but noncommittal
comment. He knew Mendoza, but no officer was much different there:
the hourly demands for progress reports, the exhortations, merely
irritating. And now, this one.

"Discard and draw," said Mendoza, edging
the Facel-Vega out into highway traffic. "Another one—just
maybe in the series—another chance of more evidence, another trail
to follow. But also the chance of another dead end. You’re looking
thoughtful—has inspiration visited you?"

"
Favour que me hace
,
you flatter me," said Hackett. "I was just thinkin’,
Luis," and he sighed. "I can remember eating breakfast
because it was eggs a new kind of exotic way—with cream and green
pepper and melted cheese and little bits of ham mixed in—"

"Scrambled eggs Creole.”

"I guess. But I didn’t have time for lunch.
And what we hear about this joint of Tony’s, I don’t suppose we
can expect much of a meal."

"You think too much about your stomach,"
said Mendoza. "And if you’re not careful, that girl will have
you grossly overweight. I swear you’ve gained five pounds just in
the month or so she’s been feeding you. You’ll get high blood
pressure and have a heart attack and have to retire at forty if it
doesn’t kill you—"

"But it’s such a
nice way to die," said Hackett wistfully.

* * *

Mendoza didn’t think much of Julie Anderson. The
fellows in the detective novels, everything was so nice and neat for
them: the interest in clues was their obscurity. In real life, the
first problem usually was to decide whether it was a clue at all and,
next, if it belonged to this particular problem. What had happened to
Julie Anderson had happened to a lot of women in the last
twenty-seven months, and their boy hadn’t accounted for them all,
that they knew. Among the small list of things his known crimes had
in common was the fact that the women had all come from a very
different background than Julie Anderson’s.

But it had to be looked into, of course.

The proprietor of Tony’s just laughed when they
asked him about her. If he tried to keep track of all the chippies he
had in and out of here, he wouldn’t have time to run his business.
Sure, he remembered Julie—and was interested to hear about the
murder, that was something, and probably (he added thoughtfully to
himself) would bring in some trade .... Yes, he remembered her going
off, it had been a damn nuisance, but these girls, no responsibility,
she wasn’t the first or the last had just walked out without
warning. And what the hell were they getting at, asking if he knew
anything about her private life?—he was a respectable married man.
So what if she hadn’t had a very clean reputation?—he had some
like that working for him sometimes, and sometimes the other kind, he
didn’t ask for a letter from their ministers before he hired them,
and it wasn’t any of his business what they did in their off time.
And about the girl friend he didn’t remember anything if he’d
ever known anything.

The Missing Persons files told them her name, Madge
Parrott; she’d made a statement at the time, as had various other
people including Tony. Nothing had indicated that Julie hadn’t just
drifted oif voluntarily. Madge had admitted that Julie had recently
got acquainted with a free spender, some kind of oil worker on
vacation, who’d taken her around. Men like that were more or less
transient workers—he’d moved on, too, and they couldn’t locate
him; it looked probable that Julie had gone with him. Neither of the
girls apparently was a very orderly housekeeper, and Madge was forced
to say that she couldn’t be a hundred percent sure Julie hadn’t
taken a few things, but if so she hadn’t taken much, and not her
only suitcase. But oil workers made money, and maybe she expected him
to get her everything new and better.

So,
de veras
,
it was a democratic country and theoretically its agencies didn’t
favor one class over another, but things didn’t always work out
that way in practice. Here there hadn’t been an anxious family of
respectable citizens to demand more extensive police action: the girl
was a loner, not important to anybody, and the police thought they’d
figured out pretty accurately what had happened, and why go on
wasting time making sure, for a girl like Julie? So there it had been
left, understandably from the professional view—not so easy to
forgive for the ordinary civilian who saw things in black and white.

Especially, thought Mendoza bitterly, when a paper
like the Telegraph finished doing a job on it, blowing it up.

Madge Parrott had drifted on, no one seemed to know
or care where, about a year ago. It was on the cards that publicity,
a radio appeal, wouldn’t turn her up: she might not care for the
idea of being mixed up with cops again, whether or not she had a
concrete reason for staying clear. She might be in New York, she
might have forgotten all about Julie Anderson. But they’d try to
find her.

Dr. Bainbridge, mildly surprised at the body’s
state of preservation, said he thought she’d been raped. He
couldn’t as an honest man swear to it on the witness stand, after
all this time, but he rather thought so, from a couple of secondary
indications. At any rate, she had probably died of head blows,
possibly of choking; the throat was lacerated, and the skull cracked
in two vulnerable spots.

The story broke in the papers before the final
results of the autopsy were in, but those boys didn’t need definite
facts. She’d been youngish, she’d been choked and beaten, and
buried: that was enough to connect her with Mary Ellen, and by
inference with the others. A couple of papers reported the find in
fairly noncommittal language, but the Telegraph blew it up under a
byline every man on the force was coming to hate, Brad Fitzpatrick.

The chances were Fitzpatrick hadn’t ever possessed
much love for authority, but a couple of other circumstances entered
in. His paper had a policy of taking the most bombastic stand on any
newsworthy subject, which the editors fondly claimed as crusading.
More important, all this had come along at the psychological moment
for Fitzpatrick, who had a personal grudge against the police
uniform. He’d been picked up four times for speeding and twice for
drunken driving; when Traffic picked him up the third time on that,
two months ago, the judge threw the book at him and revoked his
license. Consequently Fitzpatrick (who like everybody in that
category had been unjustly treated—according to them) took great
pleasure in needling the force on this business; and though he
wielded a very blunt pen, he knew to a hairline where to stop short
of personal libel.

He had some very nasty things to say about Anderson
....
 

NINE

Along with seven or eight other press boys,
Fitzpatrick was waiting on the steps to catch Mendoza that next
Saturday when he came back after lunch. "You got anything new
for us, Sherlock, like maybe you just found out she bleached her
hair?" Fitzpatrick was a big fellow in the forties, running to
paunch, and a sloppy dresser; he grinned insolently at Mendoza over
the shoulders of scholarly-looking Edmunds of the Herald, little
Rodriguez of the Daily News, Wolfe of the Citizen.

"Nothing to make a story of, boys. You know
routine doesn’t get us there overnight."

"Anything welcome, Lieutenant," said
Edmunds mildly. "Any little scrap of stuff—"

"Sorry, nothing you haven’t got. You know
about the radio appeal for the Parrott girl." Mendoza edged
past; the group re-formed and barred his way again.

"My God, two and a half years they take to find
out there’s a mass killer—now they’ve got nothing to say about
how they’re hunting him! You have any idea how to detect anything,
Sherlock—or d’you just sit around up there playin’ Deuces Wild
with your sergeants?"

Mendoza gave Fitzpatrick a tight, polite smile. "Once
in a while we get a little exercise cruising around handing out
tickets to honest upright citizens."

"What the hell!" said Fitzpatrick,
scowling. "Don’t you try to hide out any more facts on us,
amigo
, to cover up
your bungling! I got a hunch that’s just what you—"

"
¡Hombrate!
”
said little Rodriguez softly.

Mendoza’s grin tightened; Fitzpatrick was indeed a
clumsy fellow, but it didn’t make him less annoying. "Out of
the way, boys, you bother me, I’ve got work to do." They let
him by reluctantly; and his expression was still grim when he came
into his office. Sergeant Lake eyed him and said he supposed he’d
had to run the gauntlet again.

"You are," said Mendoza, "too young
and innocent to hear my unexpurgated opinion of Mr. Bradley
Fitzpatrick."

"Oh, I don’t know, might broaden my experience
like they say," said Lake. "Art’s got a little something
for you."

Mendoza went on into the inner office and demanded
Hackett’s news.

"I don’t know that it means much," said
Hackett, gloomily. "We’ve turned up a couple more of our
suspects-in-embryo, that’s all. Just creating more work—now we’ll
have to look at them hard instead of for them." He flipped over
a little stack of file cards on the desk.

"John Tewke, sex record, indecent exposure—two
years back. He’d moved, and we’ve spotted him working at a gas
station in Sunland. George Canfield, nothing to say he’s anything
but an honest citizen, he’s one of those worked in Haines’ office
at the time—you remember he was fired, so he never asked for a
reference and we didn’t know where he’d gone. Now we do, he’s
working for some outfit in Compton as a clerk. And here’s that one
the sheriff’s boy was mentioning the other day, Brooke Edwards. I
didn’t remember it myself, but it seems there was quite a little
publicity on that case—he got off, the girl’s word wasn’t good
enough—and he changed his name all legal by deed poll afterward, so
people wouldn’t connect him. He’s now Richard Brooke, working as
a bond salesman for a respectable brokerage down on Spring. And Adam
Pfeiffer, who lived two blocks down from the Haineses house then and
moved about a month later—nothing on him except that he fits the
description and we couldn’t find him. Now we have. He got married,
which is why he moved, and he’s living in Glendale and driving a
milk route. He doesn’t sound very dangerous."

"I am forced to agree," said Mendoza. He
sat down at his desk and flicked the cards away contemptuously. "I
am the biggest damned fool walking the face of the earth, Art. Will
you explain to me why, why in the name of heaven I went on driving
eight-hour tours in that squad car?"

"What? When?"

"Sixteen years and four months ago," said
Mendoza bitterly. "Out of a precinct house in east Hollywood.
When the old man finally died and we found all those bankbooks and
the safe-deposit boxes stuffed with land deeds and gilt-edged stock.
Will you tell me? The hell of an inheritance tax they slapped on it,
but there was still quite a lot left. In the neighborhood of three
million apiece for the old one and me. I could have bought a yacht. I
could have gone round the world. I could have opened an exclusive
night club. I could have retired to study Yoga or sleight of hand—"

Hackett grinned. "Coals to Newcastle, that last
idea—just judging from the couple of times I’ve sat in a card
game with you."

"But no, me, I’m a nice idealistic earnest
young fellow, I’d got interested in being a cop and a cop I stayed.
Everybody ought to have some regular occupation in life, I said. And
so what do I end up with? Mr. Bradley Fitzpatrick and our elusive
Romeo. And I have the premonition I’ll have them for the next ten
years, if I last that long."

"
¡Animo!
"
said Hackett with forced cheerfulness. "You never know when
something’s going to break."

"If you’re going to play Pollyanna, you can go
and do so somewhere else." Mendoza passed a hand over his face
tiredly. He made jokes about it, but he wasn’t feeling humorous in
this situation. Like all the men working the case, he was tired; he’d
been putting in sixteen hours a day since it broke—more than any of
them, because he was the man in charge and he couldn’t give himself
time off. He was the one who had to keep all the threads separated,
untangle the knots, and decide which ends to follow into the skein.