"I didn't want to, it was Sandra," began Stephanie nervously. "She said-she said her mother was so strict and old-fashioned and she’d-she’d treated her father awful bad, she didn’t want to, you know, stay with her any more and-" She stopped and looked uneasily at Mrs. Moseley, her parents, and stuck there. Mrs. Peacock cast a somewhat unloving look at Mrs. Moseley, and Wanda intervened smoothly.
It might be better, she suggested, if they just left Stephanie to her and Sergeant Palliser; it was likely to be a long business taking a statement, and she’d be right with Stephanie all the time, they might be asking her to look at some photographs. Peacock said that was a good idea, they’d heard enough of it that he didn’t want to hear it all again, and he wasn’t going to face that drive again until tomorrow. Mrs. Moseley said faintly she’d just like to go back to the motel and lie down. Peacock exchanged a look with Palliser and urged his wife, protesting, to the door. "I guess we can leave it to you. We’re at the Holiday Inn off the Hollywood freeway."
"What would we do without you, lady?" said Palliser to Wanda, and meant it.
"All part of the job… Now, Stephanie, you can say whatever you want to us, you know, we won’t mind," she said comfortably. "We want to know anything you can tell us that might help to find out what happened to Sandra."
"You’re a policewoman, aren’t you? I guess that must be kind of an interesting job. Well, I know that. It’s all just so awful-Sandra dead and all-but I want to tell how it was, only Mama and Daddy carried on so, and I didn’t like to say in front of Sandra’s mother--"
"That’s all right now, you just tell it the way it happened."
"She said awful things about her mother," said Sandra miserably, "but maybe they were so, I don’t know. She said we could go to L.A., Hollywood, and get jobs, school was stupid and all the teachers squares and silly. She wanted to be a model, she said maybe we could get jobs like that right away, or there are schools where you can learn. I-well, I didn’t want to, I like school all right, but Sandra-she could always make me go along, sort of. She’d done it other times too. And her mother works, since the divorce, and my mother had a club meeting-last Saturday, I mean, so that’s when we did it. I packed a lot of clothes and things in Mama’s biggest suitcase, and Sandra had an overnight bag and a plane case, and we just took the bus out the state highway. It was crowded and nobody paid any notice, and at the end of the line we-uh-got out and, you know, started to hitch." She took a breath. "I was scared right from the first, that’s a thing you’re never supposed to do, get in strange cars, but Sandra wasn’t afraid of anything ever. She had fifteen dollars she’d saved from her allowance and I had nearly eight."
Palliser and Wanda refrained from looking at each other. Glasser wandered in and pulled up a chair behind Palliser silently. She hardly noticed him; she was talking to Wanda.
"Well, this man gave us a ride all the way to L.A. He was a salesman of some kind, he was nice and friendly, he joked with Sandra-she told him we were both eighteen and I guess he believed that. She said we were going to see some relatives of hers here and just to let us out at Hollywood Boulevard, that was the only name here we knew, and he did. He said, Hollywood and what, and we didn’t know what to say." Palliser put out one cigarette, lit p another, and thought, People. "But it was all so queer, sort of," said Stephanie, still sounding surprised. "Not what l we thought it’d be-not what we thought Hollywood’d be like! Just a great big city, and Woolworth’s and Penney’s and drugstores just like home, only some funnier-looking people-I mean, it wasn’t glamorous or anything at all! And we had some sandwiches at a place, but it was Sunday and no place was open, I mean we looked in the yellow pages for those model agencies like Sandra said, but they wouldn’t be open till Monday and I said where were we going to sleep. And then Sandra got talking to this man-"
"Sunday," said Wanda. "The man who drove you here, that was over Saturday night? Do you know his name?"
"He said to call him Jim, that’s all. Yes, ma’am, we drove all night, he bought us two sandwiches at a place on the way. And this other man Sandra got talking to, it was at this place on Hollywood Boulevard we went in to eat. I mean, I didn’t like it, but a person doesn’t know what to do," said Stephanie, blinking back sudden tears.
"My mother doesn’t think black people are very nice at all and Daddy always says nonsense, you judge people as individuals, and at school they seem to think they’re better than us because of slavery and all that and how do you know, anyway- But I didn’t like him! He got talking to Sandra and she told him about going to be a model and get jobs here and he said maybe he could help. He said did we have any place to stay and Sandra said not yet, and so he said we could stay at his place, his wife’d be glad to have us-I didn’t want to go, even when he said that, but Sandra said not to be silly. And he had a car, he took us to this house."
"Did he tell you his name? What did he look like?"
"Sure. His name was Steve Smith. I didn’t see how he might help us get jobs, because, you know, he talked-oh, real ignorant and bad grammar. But after, Sandra said maybe he was a servant to somebody real high up in the movies or something like that. Anyway, he took us to this house, but his wife wasn’t there and he said she must’ve gone someplace."
"Did you notice the name of the street?" asked Palliser.
She shook her head. "It wasn’t a very good neighborhood, I guess-lots of narrow little streets and awful run-down old houses. There wasn’t much furniture there, just some chairs and a TV and a couple of beds. And he went and got some hamburgers and asked would we like a couple of joints, and Sandra said sure but I knew that was marijuana and I was scared to because of what the school nurse told us last semester, so I didn’t take any but Sandra- Oh, what he looked like. Well, he was kind of tall, as tall as you anyway," she said, looking at Palliser, "and not very black, just sort of medium, and he had a mustache and a funny little beard just at the end of his chin."
"What about the car?" asked Wanda.
"I don’t know the-the brand. It was an old car, a two-door. Blue, I guess. Anyway, Sandra got to talking real silly and I was scared then but I didn’t know what to do, I just went in the bedroom and shut the door. I guess I went to sleep. And all next day he was gone someplace and we mostly watched TV. There were Cokes and a lot of stuff to eat there, only by then I-just-wanted-to-go home!" said Stephanie. "And he came back that night and said he’d been talking to somebody he knew about jobs for us, and so Sandra said wait and see. But the next night when he came, he got to talking sort of, you know, dirty, and tried to fool around with Sandra and I got more scared and I ran out the back door without my suitcase or anything, and I just about died till it got light-only I didn’t know where I was or what to do-I had my wallet in my pocket, I still had about four dollars and some change, and pretty soon I found that big public library, I felt sort of safe there and it was warm, but it closed at six and I just sort of walked on and I wanted to go home just the worst way, and so when I found that big railroad station I knew what to do. There were public phones and I got the operator and said to reverse the charges, and called home, and Daddy swore at me the minute he heard my voice, I guess he’d been awful scared about me. But I bet he couldn’t have been as scared as I was."
And with reason, thought Palliser. Kids! If she was immature for her age-unlike the other one-still it was a funny age, a mixture of emotion and ignorance. She’d been lucky to be scared enough to run. "It was Tuesday night when you left Sandra there, wherever it was?" That fitted in; the state of the body yesterday morning, she had probably been killed Tuesday night.
"Yes, sir."
"Do you think you could recognize the house where he took you? Did you notice any street names when you ran away?"
She shook her head. "It was dark. Oh, I remember one, Flower Street, just before I came to the library."
Palliser rubbed his nose. That wasn’t much help; by what she said, she could have walked three dozen blocks before that. What was in his mind was that city dwellers tend to be curiously insular, stick to their own little corners: and when Steve Smith attempted to get rid of the body in that derelict building, a hundred to one he lived somewhere nearby, or had lived there. A house. Well, there were enough old streets with ramshackle old houses along them, both sides of San Pedro and other main drags down there.
"Do you think you could recognize him, Stephanie?" asked Wanda. "If you saw his photograph?"
Stephanie nodded doubtfully. "I think so. I tried to make Sandra come with me, I just knew something awful’d happen if we stayed there, but you never could get Sandra to do things. She got you to do things. Only-when Mama told me what happened to her-I mean, I knew Sandra all my life." But this time, in spite of everything, Stephanie was rather enjoying herself, all of them listening to every word and Wanda taking notes.
"Wel1, I’ll tell you," said Palliser, looking at his watch, "suppose Miss Larsen takes you to lunch, Stephanie, and then we’ll take a ride around and see if you recognize any buildings, and then you can look at some pictures."
She agreed almost enjoyably. When Wanda had led her out, Palliser looked at Glasser and said, "Terrifying, no? Kids."
"She was lucky," agreed Glasser sleepily. "Does Harry sound like the kind to have a whole house of his own? Even a ramshackle one?"
"Pay your money, take your choice. Could be his sister’s and the fami1y’s away visiting Aunt Mary. Could be his wife’s just left him. What I’m thinking about right now, he did take some steps to get rid of the body." Palliser picked up the phone and called S.I.D. "That D.O.A. yesterday-you pick up anything else at the scene?"
"Didn’t anybody call you? Well, we would have," said Horder. "It’s busy down here. You’l1 get a report. Yeah, no latents anywhere on the body-you thought it’d been dropped there-but out back of that building we picked up a new-looking suitcase with some female clothes in it about the right size for the corpse, and an overnight bag ditto. We’ve just been over those, and there were some pretty good prints on the suitcase."
"Send the bags up if you’re finished with them, will you? Thanks." Palliser relayed that to Glasser. "There you are. He dumped both her and the luggage there, maybe overlooking the plane case. The damn funny thing is, Henry, if he hadn’t tried to set fire to the corpse she might not have been found until the powers that be finally came to demolish that building, which could be years."
"Fate," said Glasser. "That’s so. Let’s go have some 1unch."
When Wanda brought Stephanie back she identified the suitcase immediately, and Sandra’s overnight bag. Palliser took her prints to compare to those S.I.D. had collected from the suitcase, and they wasted an hour or so cruising around in the Rambler in the vicinity of that building on San Pedro. Stephanie was vague; it had been dark when Steve brought them to the house and dark when she ran away: she didn’t recognize anything but the public library. So he brought her back, down to the Records office, and introduced her to Phil Landers.
"Mrs. Landers will give you some photographs to look at, Stephanie. If you recognize him, you tell her-or if you see any picture that might be him."
"Yes, sir, I’ll look good. You’re pretty sure it was him killed Sandra, aren’t you?"
"Pretty sure." He left her to it, under Phil’s eye.
"Why, yes, sir, I knew Dick Buford, very nice guy. Beg pardon? Oh, my name’s Cutler. I couldn’t believe it, I heard he got killed by a robber, right next door, and we never heard a thing!" Cutler was pleased at finding Landers and Grace on his doorstep, to talk about it. "Last person in the world you’d think-nice quiet fellow, him and his wife just devoted like they say till she passed on-" He rambled on, giving them nothing. He said he was a widower himself, that he’d been at the movies Tuesday night, when Buford had probably been killed.
At the house on the other side of Buford’s they met a Mrs. Skinner who told them they’d just moved in, and if they’d realized it was the kind of neighborhood where murders happened they’d never have rented the house. She and Mr. Skinner had been at her sister’s in Huntington Park on Tuesday night, got home late.
"All very helpful," said Grace, brushing his dapper mustache. "But the brother said he sometimes went up to a local bar for a few beers. Maybe he did that night."
"So what?" said Landers. "He was attacked at home."
"Well, we have to go through the motions."
Up on Virgil Street, in the two blocks each side, were three small bars. It wasn’t quite noon, and only one was open. They went in and asked the lone bartender if he knew Buford. It was a little place, licensed for beer and wine only. He didn’t react to the name or description. Pending the opening of the other two, they went to have some lunch, and Grace said over coffee, "A handful of nothing. It could’ve been any thug in L.A. picking a house at random to go after loot. The brother’s supposed to look and see if anything’s missing. Up in the air, like those damned funny rapes."
"I said we’d be in for another spate of the funny ones," agreed Landers. "And of course, if that kid is as young as those women say, he won’t be in Records, that is to have prints and a mug-shot. Unless one of them happens to spot him on the street, there’s no way to look. That is one for the books all right."
At one-thirty they went back to that block and tried Ben’s Bar and Grill on the corner of Virgil. It was just open, no customers in. A fat bald fellow with a white apron round his middle was polishing the bar; it was just a small place, but looked clean and comfortable, with tables covered in red-checked cloths. "Do for you, gents?" asked the bartender genially.
Landers flashed the badge. "Is a Mr. Buford one of your regular customers here? Dick Buford?" He added a description. "Maybe he didn’t come in often, just sometimes?"
The bartender’s geniality vanished. "Oh," he said in a subdued tone, "yeah, that’s so. Yeah, I knew that guy. I heard something happened to him-some guy down the street said he got killed. That’s a shame, seemed like a nice guy. No, I didn’t know him good, just a customer, not very often like you said.”
"Was he here on Tuesday night?" asked Grace in his soft voice.
The bartender passed a fat hand across his mouth and said unwillingly, "I guess maybe he was. I guess it was Tuesday. He never stayed long-two, three beers, and he’d go out."
"Did he get talking to anybody else here that night'?"
"I don’t remember. We were kind of busy, I didn’t take any notice. He never stayed long, like I said, in and out. I don’t remember what time it was."
"Remember any other regular customers here at the same time?" asked Landers.
"No. I couldn’t tell you a thing. I’m not even sure now it was Tuesday," said the bartender. A couple of men came in and he turned his back on police.
"Well, do tell," said Grace outside. "That’s a little funny, Tom. What’s he feeling nervous about?"
"Just doesn’t want to be mixed in-you know the citizens, Jase. This is a waste of time. The only way we’ll find out what happened to Buford is if the lab picked up some good evidence at the scene."
Higgins had had some paperwork to clean up on a suicide from last week, and was the only one in when a call came from Traffic about a new body. It was a rooming house over on Beaudry, and the landlady had walked in to confiscate anything there until the rent was paid up, and found the tenant dead in bed. Higgins went to look at it.
Anywhere there was always the narco bit, the addicts and the pushers; these days something new had been added. Time was the heaviest traffic in the hard stuff was in heroin; a while back the H had started to be old hat, and the thing now was cocaine. It was just as lethal but it took a little longer to kill its victims. But the younger generation had added a refinement, and increasingly now they were picking up the kids half high on dope of one sort or another and half high on gin or vodka.
Higgins couldn’t say exactly what might have taken off the fellow in the little bare rented room; the autopsy would tell them. But he didn’t look over twenty-five, and there were needle-marks on both arms, not a dime in the place, a few old clothes, an empty vodka bottle beside the bed. No I.D. in the clothes, but the corpse was wearing a tattoo on one upper arm that said Jacob Altmeyer in a wreath of flowers. Higgins called up the morgue wagon and went back to Parker Center, down to Records.
"And how’s Tom treating you these days?" he asked a cute flaxen-haired Phil Landers as she came up. Phil smiled at him.
"So-so. I think his Italian blood’s showing, he’s getting stingy with a buck."
"God knows aren’t we all these days."
"I understand," said Phil gravely, "that the baby’s walking at last."
Higgins grinned unwillingly; he’d taken some kidding about that. Well, since he’d belatedly acquired a family, his lovely Mary and Bert Dwyer’s kids Steve and Laura, and then their own Margaret Emily, he found he worried about them. And he’d never known any babies before, but by what everybody said they ought to start walking at about a year, and she hadn’t, and he had worried. She’d been a year old in September. Mary said don’t be silly, George, she’s a big baby, she’ll walk in her own good time. But he’d fussed about it, in case anything was wrong. And then suddenly, a couple of weeks ago, she’d got up and started walking just fine, and he’d been damned relieved. Probably bored everybody in the office about it.
"That’s so," he said. "She’s just fine. Have we got a Jacob Altmeyer on file anywhere?"
Phil said she’d look, and while she was gone Higgins thought about what Luis had said about the pretty boys.
When that had begun to show a pattern, not just the one-time thing, they had asked the computer about known threesomes at muggings, but that had come to nothing. Anyway, nothing said these three had been together very long. And even if Luis was right, and they didn’t belong to this beat, there was no way to go looking for them. Phil came back with a small package on Altmeyer. He had a rap-sheet of B. and E., possession, assault. Just another dopie, whatever he was on, supporting a habit which had finally removed him from his misery. There was an address for his mother in Glendale. Higgins went back to the office and got her on the phone to break the news. After two days of threat, it had finally begun to rain again.
"Well, I don’t know what to say," said the manager of the Globe Grill. "I suppose-my office isn’t very big-you could use the dining room, we don’t open that until four." He was a rather handsome sharp-faced man with friendly eyes and a quiet voice; his name was Rappaport, He eyed Mendoza, Conway and Galeano worriedly. "Police coming-you’re a new bunch-but Marta’s a good girl, and of course I’ve heard something about it. The damnedest thing-I don’t understand it. We’ve got to cooperate with you, and I don’t like to ask you, don’t keep her-but it’s working hours and we get kept busy here. If you want to go in the dining room, I’ll get her."
Rappaport, and this whole place, was a little surprise. Galeano had taken it for granted, from Carey’s report, that the blonde worked in a greasy spoon somewhere for peanuts. The Globe Grill, while down this side of Wilshire and not in the gourmet class of the better-known places out on La Cienega, was a quietly good restaurant. It was divided into a coffee shop on one side and a large dining room on the other, it was shining bright with cleanliness and polished chrome and sleek modern lighting, and was larger and busier than they had expected.
"Very nice," said Mendoza as they went past a red velvet curtain into a large dining hall with crystal chandeliers, red vinyl upholstery, a vaguely Mediterranean decor. The tables were octagonal, with low heavy chairs; he pulled out a chair, sat down and lit a cigarette.
"Maybe a little classier than we thought," agreed Conway. Galeano sat down too, and accepted a light from Conway.
The curtains parted. "Again, you want to ask questions? Oh, you are different police."
Carey’s blonde was blonde only in the sense that she wasn’t dark. Her thick hair was tawny russet to dark gold, obviously as nature made it, and she wasn’t conventionally pretty; she had high wide cheekbones, a face slanted to a slender chin, a wide mouth, uptilted brows and grave dark eyes. She was only about five-three, and had a neatly rounded figure in her yellow and white uniform. She came farther into the room and all the men stood up formally.
"Mrs. Fleming? Lieutenant Mendoza-Detective Conway, Detective Galeano. Sit down, won’t you?" Mendoza offered her a cigarette.
"Thank you, I do not smoke. You want to ask all the questions again?"
"Well, you see, Lieutenant Carey has passed the case on to my department." Mendoza was watching her. "Robbery-Homicide."
Her eyes didn’t change expression; she looked down at her folded hands and said, "You think Edwin is dead. So do I." She had the faintest of accents; her speech betrayed her more by its formal grammar. "I thought that from the first."
"We’ve heard all the-mmh-circumstances from Carey," said Mendoza, emitting a long stream of smoke, "and you must admit it all looks very odd, doesn’t it?"
"It is a mystery, yes," she said. "I have thought and thought, and I cannot decide what has happened." She was watching them too, looking from one to the other. "I am sure he has killed himself, but I do not understand how."
"Mmh, yes, it seems rather an impossibility." Mendoza’s tone was only faintly sardonic. "When he was confined to a wheelchair, he couldn’t even get downstairs by himself. And couldn’t, of course, drive-though you have a car."
"We were going to sell it. A young man down the street wishes to buy it. It is too expensive to operate an auto now. No, he could not have driven."
"You told Carey your husband had threatened suicide?"
She said carefully, "He has been very-very despondent about life, since the baby died." Her mouth twisted a little. "He was fond of little Katzchen. Before, he had been-a little optimistic, that perhaps in time the doctors could make him walk again. But lately, it was as if-he said, there was nothing, no reason to go on living, he was only a worry and a burden to me, and it was not right."
"And how did you feel about it? The same way?" asked Mendoza.
She looked surprised. "I? It was-a thing life had brought to us. How should I feel? I was sorry."
"Mmh, yes," said Mendoza. "You work long hours here? Walk to work and home again?"
"Yes. I am here mornings and evenings, six days a week." She looked at him impassively and then said, not raising her voice, "You do not believe me either. That other policeman, that Carey, he asked questions over and over again, who are our friends, do I have a special friend, perhaps a special man friend, what did I do that day, where did I go, were there any telephone calls-and the other girls here, Betty and Angela who work with me, he asked them questions about me. It is almost a little funny." But she was looking angry. "Do you all think I have murdered my husband? That is very funny indeed, how could I do that? Even if I were so wicked?"
"Did you?" asked Mendoza.
"Please do not be so foolish. I beg your pardon," she said tiredly. "I know the police always have to deal with criminals, wicked people, and perhaps you come to suspect everyone is so. You have to find out, ask questions, to know. But all I can do is tell you the truth. I do not know what has happened to Edwin."
Mendoza had stubbed out his cigarette, now lit another. "You came home that day, nearly two weeks ago-two weeks ago tomorrow-at about five o’clock? You got oif here at two, and went shopping, you said. It was raining very heavily that day."
Her eyes fell before his. "Yes," she said. "Yes. I am-you forget-European, I am used to the rain."
For no reason Galeano’s heart missed a beat. There was a curious purity of outline to her wide forehead, and that mass of tawny hair-she looked like a Saxon madonna. But this story-this impossible tale-and there, just one second, she had flinched over something.
"And found your husband gone? Missing from his wheelchair. Did you look for a suicide note?"
"Yes, yes, yes. I would have thought he would leave such a note, if he meant to kill himself. There was nothing. I looked all about the apartment building, I thought if he had jumped out a window-"
"But he couldn’t have jumped," said Conway.
"No, no, a figure of speech. I have said all this before, it must be in reports. There was no one else in the house except the old man, Offerdahl. He was drunk, he could not say anything. I said, since we are living there, just a few times when I came home Edwin had been drinking, and it is this Offerdahl who has done it, brought him drink. I did not--"
"Did it make him less despondent'?" asked Conway deadpan.
"No, it did not! It was very bad for him. All this, it is all I can tell you. When I had looked, I called the police and told them. Then this Carey came, and his men, and asked questions and looked at the apartment, and they did not believe me. Do you want to look at my apartment also?"
"Why, I think we would," said Mendoza cheerfully.
"Thanks so much, Mrs. Fleming."
She stood up abruptly. "I will get you the key."
They watched her stalk past the curtain. "Now that is some blonde," said Conway. "Different type than I expected. And a very, very nice act. She’s smart not to try to ham it up with my God what’s happened to poor darling Edwin, I don’t think she’s that good an actress."
"You could be right," said Mendoza meditatively, and Galeano exploded at them.
"My good God in heaven, a child in arms could see that girl’s as innocent and honest as-as a nun!" he said furiously. "Of course she’s not acting, she wouldn’t know how-I know what the story sounds like, but I’ll be Goddamned if I don’t believe it, that girl is as transparently honest as-as-"
"?Que hombre! " said Mendoza, staring at him. "Don’t tell me our confirmed bachelor has fallen for a suspect."
"You go to hell, of course I haven’t fallen for her, if you want to be vulgar," said Galeano. "But I’d think anybody could see-" He stopped as the curtains came apart and she marched up to Mendoza, stiffly erect.
"Here is the key. You will know the address. I ask only that you return it before I must go home, I have no other. There are no secrets there, you may look as you please."
"Thanks so much," said Mendoza. She marched out again, her shoulders squared. "Saint Nicholas to the defense of accused womanhood! We don’t need Carey to point out obvious facts. Who had a motive to be rid of him?"
"You’re only inferring that, as the cheap Goddamned cynics you both are," said Galeano hotly. "For all we know, she was still mad in love with him-"
"Ha-ha," said Conway. "And you’ve been on the force how long?"
"Peace, ninos," said Mendoza. "Since the lady handed over the key so obligingly, I’ll believe her that far, there aren’t any secrets there. But I’d like to see the wheelchair, and the general terrain. Come on."
He and Conway went on discussing it on the way over there in the Ferrari, while Galeano sat in silence in the little jump seat behind. For the first time he realized that this job held a built-in hazard, just as she’d said: too many cops, from too much experience, automatically expected the lies, the hypocrisy, the guilt. Conway was a cynic from the word go, but Galeano would have expected more insight from the boss. That girl was so shiningly honest-and when you thought what she’d been through- And then to have all the cops come poking around suspecting her, Dio, it was a wonder she’d been as polite as she had.
But just what, inquired the remnant of his common sense, had happened to Edwin Fleming? It was raining again. (Just why had she minded that question about her shopping trip?) The narrow old streets down from Wilshire were dispirited and drably gray in the drizzle. The six-family apartment, when they went into it, was silent as the grave. Everybody here out at work, except the bibulous Mr. Offerdahl. There was a tiny square lobby with a single row of locked mailboxes. They climbed uncarpeted stairs, steep and slanted old stairs-no, a man in a wheelchair couldn’t have come down here, and if he had somehow crawled down, where had he gone from there?-to the second of three floors. There were two doors opposite each other in a short hall. Galeano remembered Mrs. Del Sardo across the hall, who had seen Fleming that morning as Marta said good-bye to him.
Mendoza fitted the key in the lock and opened the door.
It was a small, old, inconvenient apartment: what she could afford. But it was all as shiningly clean as the restaurant where she worked, furniture polished, stove and kitchen counter-top immaculate; that was a German girl for you, thought Galeano. There was the wheelchair, pushed to one side of the little living room, a steel and gray-green canvas affair. A few pieces of solid dark furniture, probably chosen with care at secondhand stores, possibly several pieces bought before his accident, when he was still earning and they were planning a home of their own. Just the one bedroom, sparsely furnished: a small square bathroom, a minimum of cosmetics in the medicine cabinet. She had wonderful skin, milk-white, evidently didn’t use much on it.
"There is," said Mendoza, "only one little thing in my mind, boys." He looked out the rear window in the bedroom. "Yes, even as Carey said-who was to see anything there was to see?" This was a square building on a short lot. There was a single driveway to a row of six connected single garages across the back; and on the lot behind a building had recently been torn down. The old house across from the driveway was vacant, with a FOR RENT sign in front of it. "Just one thing," said Mendoza. "When did she have time?"
"Time for what?" said Conway. "She took care to have an alibi. We said-"
"Time to acquire the boyfriend. She’s working eight hours a day, and Edwin must have taken up some more. On the other hand, there is Rappaport. Quite a handsome fellow. Right at the restaurant."
"Oh, for God’s sake," said Galeano.
"And then again, a restaurant. Sometimes these things don’t take all that long. Quite probably there are regular customers. And she could be out shopping on Sunday, on her afternoon break, without the neighbors noticing-there is that. But how in hell to locate him, if it isn’t Rappaport-there won’t be any letters-"
"Woolgathering!" said Galeano. "And you’re supposed to be such a hot detective! If you can’t see that that girl is honest as day-"
Mendoza shook his head at him. "You do surprise me, Nick. Let’s see if Mr. Offerdahl is home." Carey had said he was down the hall; actually Offerdahl lived on the next floor. They climbed more steep stairs, knocked. There were fumbling sounds beyond the door; presently it opened and Offerdahl gazed blearily out at them.
He was the wreck of a once big man: still tall and broad-shouldered, but cadaverously thin, a few wisps of white hair on a round skull, his skin gray and flabby. He was not quite falling-down drunk, and a rich aroma of Scotch enfolded him.
"About Mr. Fleming," said Mendoza conversationally.
Offerdahl blinked. "You used to go see Mr. Fleming? The fellow in the wheelchair? Take him a little drink now and then to cheer him up?"
"Tha’s right," said Offerdahl after a dragging moment. "Poor fella. Poor fella. Jus’ young fella. Para-paraparalyzed."
"Did you see him a week ago last Friday?"
"Oh, don’t be silly," muttered Galeano. "He doesn’t know March from December."
"Haven’t you found the poor fella yet?" asked Offerdahl. "Strange. ’S very strange. Poor, poor fella." He leaned on the door jamb looking thoughtful, and suddenly added, "Good-bye," and shut the door.
"And what you think that was worth," said Galeano sourly, "I don’t damn well know."
"Neither do I," said Mendoza. "Here-you take the key back to her, amigo. And for God’s sake preserve your common sense."
Cunningly, Galeano waited until just before two o’c1ock to take the key back, and offered to drive Mrs. Fleming home through the rain. She thanked him formally, and emerged in a practical hooded gray coat over a subdued navy dress.
"I am sorry if I have offended your chief," she said in the car. "But it is so silly to ask the questions over and over."
Her profile was enchanting, with its little tilted nose and the wisp of tawny hair under the hood. Galeano nearly ran a light. "Wel1, we have certain routines to go through," he said. "Look, nobody suspects you, Mrs. Fleming. I mean, we can see you’ve had a bad time. What with everything."
She was silent. When he stopped in front of the apartment, went round and opened the door, she said, "Thank you-you are kind. I am sorry, your name-"
"Galeano. Nick Galeano."
"Mr. Galeano. Thank you." She ran into the apartment quickly and he stared after her, for a moment forgetting to put on his hat.
By five o’clock Stephanie had pored over a lot of mug-shots, and pointed out three though her responses were laced with doubt. "I mean, all of these look something like him. Not just exactly, but they could be."
Wanda shepherded her back to the Peacocks at the Holiday Inn. If this came to court, she’d be asked to identify X positively; as it was, Palliser and Glasser looked at the possibles she’d picked out with mixed feelings as well. Steven Edward Smith: pedigree of B. and E. Richard Lamont: indecent exposure, assault with intent. Earl Rank: rape, B. and E.
"Two possibles, by their records," said Glasser. But the addresses were nowhere near downtown L.A., and they were fairly recent addresses; Lamont was just out of jail. "People move around," said Palliser. "We can have a look at them, Henry."