The Knave of Hearts (4 page)

"I see you’re going to make a fine wife for a
cop. No complaints about irregular hours, bein’ neglected for some
nasty corpse-"

"A casserole," said Angel. "Very
French and exotic. I did think maybe strawberry mousse afterward, but
when you called— So I made a trifle instead. A very good one, first
time I’d tried the recipe. I never i came across oregano in a sweet
sauce before, but there’s something about it—odd but rather
nice—"

"I might’ve known," said Hackett. "You
never missed me at all, with a new recipe to try."

"I did too." She raised her mountain-pool
eyes to his. "Art."

"Mmh?"

"Did you see much of your boss today? . . . I
just wondered. Alison’s had a fight with him, I think. We were
going downtown together this afternoon, I went to pick her up, and
she begged off. She I looked—oh, I don’t know, all washed out,
way down .... No, she wouldn’t exactly say, but you know, she
didn’t need to—I—"

"You don’t tell me," said Hackett slowly.
A little something different about Mendoza, he’d thought: Mendoza a
bit more nervous, irritable, than usual. So maybe this was it. He
kissed the top of Angel’s brown head absently; he said, "Damn
Luis. You think they’ve split up? No, she wouldn’t go looking for
a shoulder to cry on—not that kind—but she’d take it hard ....
Sooner or later he always walks out, sure."

"Just like that, goodbye and good luck! Doesn’t
he have any feelings at all?" she asked bitterly. "As if
she was a— Oh, I was so damned sorry for her, darling! Of course
she didn’t need to tell me, I know her well enough to—"

"You weren’t by any chance, my Angel, thinkin’
of getting me to play go-between, maybe try to persuade him back to
her? Because I’m not exactly a coward, but I got better sense than
to fool around with high explosive, and when it comes to interfering
with Luis’ private life—"

"Heaven help us, you big lummox," said
Angel crossly, "that’s the last thing I’d wish her! The
sooner she gets over that man the better—I can’t imagine what
women see in him—or you either, for that matter! Oh, he may be a
wonderful detective and so on, but—" She pounded a chair
cushion into shape as angrily as if it had been Mendoza himself.

"Oh, well," said Hackett, "‘passing
the love of women'—" Which was all too true: even his Angel
took funny ideas sometimes, or didn’t quite understand. You had to
expect it. And he guessed a lot of women would feel that way about a
man like Mendoza. The one that always got away: the one you couldn’t
trust (the way it looked to them)—whether or not they felt the
charm. A lot of guff talked about equality and friendship between the
sexes: people weren’t made that way; men still knew men better, and
women women—for any real emotional understanding.

Mendoza—the only way you stayed a close friend to
Luis was not trying to go too deep with him, intrude on privacies.
And of course, men weren’t given to that in friendship anyway,
which was maybe the reason they could always stay better friends
longer than women: they left each others’ emotions alone. It wasn’t
any of Art Hackett’s business, and it didn’t make any difference
to the friendship, what Mendoza did or didn’t do in his private
life.

At the same time, in this instance there was Alison
Weir, whom he liked, and owed something, and felt sorry for ....
She’d been a good friend to Angel. Maybe if it hadn’t been for
Alison his Angel wouldn’t be the sane and pretty girl she was, nor
his either.

"It’s senseless." she said. "Tearing
herself to pieces over a man like that—"

But Luis, and it was a damn funny way to put it (even
in thought)— it wasn’t really selfishness or irresponsibility in
him, that he was like that. It was more something like shyness. As if
he was ashamed to show any real emotion, to show himself
uncamouflaged to anybody—so he was afraid to get in too deep.

Well . . . people. "Darling love, there’s
nothing anybody can do about it. People—just made the way they’re
made." He was suddenly, immensely sorry for both of them—for
anybody who didn’t have what he and his Angel had.

"I know .... I wish she’d meet someone really
nice, and—and solid, and good for her—"

"A real satisfactory husband just like me,"
he said, trying for a smile.

"Oh, you—I’ll make up my mind if you’re
satisfactory or not in about thirty years. Nobody can be sure in
less. But really, I do wish she’d find someone right for her. If—"

"You can’t pick for somebody else. Best
bargain in the world come along and want her, she’d probably have
no use for him." He didn’t add, while Luis was still above
ground: he didn’t have to.

"No," she agreed morosely.

"You say something about keeping something hot?"

Angel’s eyes took on the absent dreaminess which
meant she was thinking about recipes. "Mmh. Something new and
nice. I’ll get it ....And the triffle. I thought maybe I’d do the
strawberry mousse tomorrow—"

"Is that one of those things won’t keep?
Better not count on it. We're going to be havin’ some heavy
homework, so to speak."

"Oh. A new case?"

"Yes and no," said Hackett. "A nasty
one—I’ve got a feeling, a bad one."

"I thought the great Mendoza was the one who had
hunches," said Angel, making a face.
 

THREE

Mendoza sat opposite Sally Haines in her
slightly-too-neat living room and looked at her, and at her brother
Jim Fairless. He hadn’t troubled to do much listening to her yet:
no use until she’d got it all said, just what she thought about the
blundering cops.

She had a reason to say it, and a right. It would be
no use either to argue with her, to point out that policemen and the
law in general had to go on factual evidence, that it was only about
once in a thousand cases that factual evidence pointed the wrong way
or, conversely, that careful police investigation didn’t turn up
all the factual evidence there was. No use to point out the fact
that—you might say, looking for first causes—if her husband
hadn’t had some reason to be cheating on her, to be with Rose
Foster that day, he’d probably have been easily cleared by a
straightforward alibi.

There were excuses for the law’s mistake; that
didn’t make it any easier to acknowledge—either for Mendoza or
Sally Haines. He sighed and got out a new cigarette.

"—won’t admit it even now!" she was
saying fiercely. "Now that this woman—but you’ll have to, in
the end! You—"

Yes: there’d be some nasty publicity, the governor
would issue a posthumous pardon, everybody would make excuses and
apologies, passing the buck, a lot of the ordinary public would lose
faith in their police force, and none of it would be any use to Allan
Haines. Whose life had been a stiff price to pay for one illicit roll
in the hay: and probably (considering Rose Foster) not a very good
one at that.

"Mrs. Haines," he said at last, his eyes on
his cigarette, "we all appreciate how you feel about this. You
may not believe me, but we’re not exactly feeling indifferent about
it either. But I haven’t come here to listen to recriminations for
what’s past help now. I’d like to ask you a question. Those
letters you wrote to us—"

"Don’t tell me someone read them!" She
laughed sharply. He had seen Thompson’s private notes, and he
thought Thompson had sized her up pretty well. Quite a pretty woman,
blonde, slender, tall; probably an excellent wife and mother: but
Thompson’s scribbled terse notes summed her up—bossy, in a nice
way—likes family under her thumb. He had added, Reason? H. fed
up—but not enough guts break real clear? Maybe, thought Mendoza; it
didn’t matter much now. Yes, she’d be smooth about it, but she’d
been the man in that family. Haines hadn’t been his pigeon and he’d
never met him, but it wasn’t hard to figure him, the easy-going
salesman type, agreeable, friendly—the type who often went for a
woman he could lean on a little. (And at the same time often picked
one, for the extracurricular exercise, who’d lean on him, flatter
him.) All of which was quite irrelevant now.

"You made some accusations, Mrs. Haines,
concerning three other homicides. I’d like to know just what led
you to link them up."

"Better late than never!" exclaimed
Fairless with a sarcastic smile.

He shared this apartment with his sister; and that
was another item on the account. Someone had to help support a widow
with three kids, and he’d come in for part of that responsibility,
Mendoza deduced. "Red-letter day, Sally—the cops are asking
for help from somebody with at least an average I.Q.! My God, having
to ask that, an obvious thing like that! But I suppose when they make
ranking cops of your kind—"

Mendoza returned the smile. "It’s quite as
obvious to the police as it is to you, Mr. Fairless, that there are
certain points in common among these cases. But they’re only three
out of a dozen very similar cases, you know. Why did you single them
out, Mrs. Haines?"

"I should have thought that would be obvious
too," she said in a hard tone. "I knew it would happen
again—that kind of man—watched the papers, I followed everything
printed about any murder
like that, that was
how—Do you really need an outsider to point out such a simple
fact?"

Mendoza’s smile tightened a little. Generally he
had himself well in control, and he had come here expecting nothing
else than this; he had intended merely to verify his deductions, say
as little as possible. But he disliked this bad business almost as
emotionally as these people did, and the tone of Fairless’ voice,
making your kind a thin euphemism for a dirty stupid Mex, raised
unaccustomed anger in him, suddenly.

He said softly, "To save time—and perhaps our
tempers—was all you had to go on the fact that these three were
women of similarly respectable backgrounds?"

She did not condescend to show him disappointment. to
miss the satisfaction of stating the obvious. "All? I should
think it was enough! That kind of thing doesn’t often happen to
such women—the opportunity—men like that—"

Mendoza stood up. "It happens. You picked them
for that reason—I thought so. I’ve only one other question, Mrs.
Haines—one you were asked before, but you may have thought of an
answer by now. In those letters and others, you put forward the
theory—I might deduce, suggested by wide reading of detective
novels—" and he let his smile turn sardonic, "that Mary
Ellen Wood’s body was buried on your property in a deliberate
attempt to make your husband the scapegoat. Have you
any—mmh—candidate to name who might have had reason for that?
Anyone with a grievance? Who might also have been the kind of man to
commit that murder?"

"No, of course I—but it could have been! Oh, I
don’t know, about that! But the other—it’s so obvious!" He
had put her a little on the defensive now. "Girls, women like
that—not the kind to let themselves be picked up by any
stranger—just as Mary Ellen wasn’t. Not as if they’d been alone
down on Skid Row at midnight, anywhere like— It can’t have been
just the usual thing with them, the way it usually happens, just as
it wasn’t with Mary Ellen—whoever—"

"I assure you, the implications are plain—even
to a policeman," said Mendoza. These people had suffered a
wrong, but there was no law that said he had to like them for it. As
he walked down from the door to the street and the long elegance of
the Facel-Vega there, he was aware of their hot eyes on his back.
Aware that Fairless was wondering how a cop could afford to run a car
like that—and making the obvious deduction.

He wanted to tum and go back, say to Fairless, Oddly
enough, friend, it’s honest money: if maybe the old miser rang in a
cold deck now and then to win his capital, by the time it came to me
it was on the level and it’s stayed that way.

He was surprised at himself for the sudden temper,
over such a small thing. This damned business . . . And he wasn’t
so juvenile as to harbor any honor-of-the-regiment chauvinism for the
Los Angeles Police Department as sacrosanct; but for some nineteen
years a large part of his life had been bound up with it. It wasn’t
very often that the L.A.P.D.—or any other efficient police
force—got itself into a position like this, and it wasn’t a happy
position for any representative. The hell of it was, he was beginning
to think it might be a bigger, cruder blunder than anybody had
suspected . . . not just on the Wood case. And that he didn’t like:
very much he didn’t like that.

It was a quarter to one of this hot, still September
Sunday. Mrs. Haines’ apartment was in Bellflower; he drove up to
Hollywood, to where the Woods still lived. The house was a sprawling
frame bungalow, neatly maintained, on a quiet street. The girl who
answered the door was relief and promise after Fairless and Mrs.
Haines: about nineteen, luscious young rounded figure innocently
displayed in shorts and halter top, and a boyishly friendly grin.
Edith Wood, the sister.

"Oh," she said to his explanations. "Well,
I’m the only one home, but I guess you can come in, Lieutenant. Off
the record, I’m always getting warned about strange men, but after
all if you’re not safe with a policeman, when are you? The rest of
the family’s gone to the beach, but I had an essay to do for
English Lit .... About Mary Ellen?"