case pending
by
Del Shannon

There are certain earnest and intense would-be writers of fiction who
like to explain to captive audiences that All Is Inspiration'The
characters simply take over and write the story." Now, as any
professional writer knows, if we waited for Inspiration to prod us to
produce, nothing would ever get written; perhaps even more than any
other job, the writing of fiction requires a lot of hard slogging labor,
physical as well as mental.  But the odd thing is-again as any
professional writer will testify-that on occasion a character will "take
over"; the impersonal little black marks on the page, representing
letters which evoke sounds and words in our reading minds-a kind of
shorthand to convey the gamut of human experience and emotion-suddenly
resolve themselves into a three-dimensional person.

This is not Inspiration, if indeed there is such a thing.  I can only
call it interference, and a wildly unimaginable kind of interference it
is.  For it occurs not on the part of an inanimate object, but something
far more ephemeral-a ghost-nothing more than a conceived plan for a
character intended to appear and further the plot action, either
significantly at length or briefly in one scene.  I suppose the firmly
agnostic philosophers would nod intelligently and murmur something wise
about ddia vu, that curious condition in which (the philosophers have
decided) one area of the brain jumps a few beats ahead of the rest.

At any rate, you are writing staidly along, aware that this known and
planned character is about to enter the scene, when suddenly it becomes
apparent that it is somebody else, somebody new, a different

character entirely: and the whole scene shimmers, changes, and evolves
into something unplanned.

On occasion this can be gratifying, if the character concerned is of
brief importance to the plot.  The result is often a satisfying Ettle
vignette, a sharpened, rounded few lines of prose and dialogue conveying
a much more convincing sense of individual personality than your earlier
conscious intention.

But if the character is to be of major importance to the plot as a
whole, this kind of impertinence-this impossible action on the part of
what is nothing more than the insubstantial shadow of a ghostan be
extremely awkward indeed for the writer.

For there, quite suddenly, this character is.  There is nothing to be
done about it.  An individual, three-dimensional, full-blown personality
has appeared on the scene; it must be coped with somehow, whatever
devastation and change it must wreak on all your original plot ideas and
plans.

You may have intended the story to take off in a northeasterly
direction, but now that this character has appeared, a character of
entirely different stuff than you had planned, it is obvious that the
plot is headed southwesterly, and that is that: nothing to be done about
it.  Of course you are still responsible for the actual writing, for
refashioning scenes and people and emotions and actions consistent with
the new direction; but the center of things has shifted and it is a
different story than you had thought it was.

This is what happened to me early in the writing of Case Pending,' and
the sudden unexpected emergence of Lieutenant Luis Rodolfo Vicente
Mendoza onto the page had profound and far-reaching consequences.  I had
intended that book as a tour-de-force suspense novel, a one-time thing,
based on a slightly offbeat plot.  Instead, I found myself at the end of
it still insistently possessed of an egotistical, sharply defined,
inescapable Character, who was clamoring insistently to occupy another
book; and this shook me somewhat.  I was accustomed, in producing books,
to the careful and tedious research which had gone into my period
novels, and to building characters in deliberate and leisurely
development; Mendoza was something new in my experience.

However, there he was: he existed, and he refused to be ignored; he
insisted on appearing on more printed pages, and more .  .  .  The
immediate consequence of that was The Ace of Spades.  By the end of that
one I had discovered that it was a good deal more fun, and a good deal
easier, to write such books than long-winded tomes of historical novels;

and I had settled down with Mendoza in a kind of temporary truce.

With scarcely a pause I proceeded on to Extra Kill.  But it was with
Knave of Hearts that it dawned on me that I had, willy-nilly, entered
into an involuntary partnership, probably for life; I was stuck with
Mendoza and his emerging cohorts, and there was nothing in this world I
could do about it.

At this point my long ingrained habit of doing careful research to
produce authentic backgrounds came again to the fore; if I was fated to
produce novels about police officers, police cases, the police job, it
behooved me to find out all about the job, and the L.A.P.D.  and other
police forces.  I found this extremely interesting research: the
background of general knowledge that detectives must possess, the
content of police examinations, techniques of investigation and
interrogation, legal aspects of the job, the fascinating world of
forensic laboratory investigation in police work, and the vast but
tightly organized and superbly structured network of that top police
force in the world, the Los Angeles Police Department.

Perhaps my experience as a historical novelist, accustomed to the
meticulous research of details, made it second nature to me, in
constructing police-procedural novels, to create as authentic a
background as possible.  But that is simply necessary spadework.

Whatever kind of novel a writer is producing, the major yeasty
ingredient is always people,: people is what fiction is all about, and
perhaps no other professional job in the modern world brings its
practitioners more varied experience with all sorts of people than
police work.  In a sense it is not a well-rounded job: police officers
see very little of the good, the true, and the beautiful; they are in
too many cases dealing with the mud at the bottom of things, the sordid,
the stupid, the random violence.  But in another sense it is a job more
sharply defined than any other of this century; there are no fuzzy edges
around that job, no gray areas, no vaguenesses.  And I believe this is
the one basic reason why so many people enjoy reading about it-not only
the novels of police procedure, but the other novels so vaguely and
generally categorized as "mysteries." For this century seems to have
forgotten or abandoned the absolutes: the eternal simple standards
fencing apart right and wrong, good and evil.  And there is an
instinctive understanding, however deeply buried, in human people that
the fence exists.  The glib modern philosophers tell them convincingly
that it doesn't, but they know better by their deepest gut feelings; and
they turn with relief from the vague plottings of the fictioncers
endlessly mouthing the modern shibboleths of

amoral sociology, to a fictional world where there is solid ground
underfoot.  A world where right and wrong, good and evil, are starkly
defined: though it is so much oftener goodness and stupidity-a world
without fuzzy edges around the perimeter.  For like it or not, that is
the real world we all inhabit; and in a very special sense, the
detective novel is the morality play of the twentieth century.

Of course, if I had deliberately set out to create a series of detective
novels about a certain set of characters, I would have ended up with
something quite different than the people who occupy these books.

Mostly they all, like Topsy, just grew.  Mendoza arrived on the scene
entirely evolved, unchangeable, his own man: nothing of mine.  It is
entirely implausible, and in my saner moments I disapprove, that he
should be wealthy; but there it is, a fact of life.  There is nothing
more detestable than a man of such compulsive neatness and
persnicketiness; but there he is.  It is not so strange, perhaps, that
he should be a card shark; for some reason a good many of my
protagonists have been, although personally my feeling about card
playing parallels what Robert Benchley once wrote in reviewing a certain
play, that it's a good way of killing time for those who prefer it dead.

Most of Mendoza's cohorts are far more plausible types of police
officers; and of course over the years they have evolved, here and
there, into three-dimensional characters, so that the whole crew is now,
we might say, a cohesive cast frozen in time between books, taking up
renewed life with each new one.  The two senior sergeants Hackett and
Higgins, ingenuous-looking Landers, earnestly religious Piggott,
simple-minded Grace, the plodder Glasser, handsome Palliser, Schenke,
Conway, and Galeano, and all their concems and individualities gradually
grow and emerge in one book or another over the years.  And over the
years they have experienced some interesting occasions together, aside
from the monotonous run-of-themi cases turning up day by day in any
big-city police bureau: they have shared changes and troubles, laughs
and surprises-the grim chase of all the thieves and killers and lunatics
and fools which makes up the working day of the professional police
officer.  At the same time, they are only human, with human problems and
foibles even as the rest of us.

And over the years, that one-time lone wolf Mendoza has acquired a
surprisingly varied household retinue, quite aside from the cats:
starting with the twins and proceeding to an adopted grandmother, the
dog Cedric, a third offspring, and at last hearing (as of June 1979) a
small flock of sheep on a newly refurbished country estate.  I have the
distinct

premonition that those sheep are going to cause trouble; but that
Mendoza will find out later on .  .  .  all of which may stimulate
interest in new readers to catch up on the entire series.

But the four novels contained in this volume constitute the beginnings:
they mark the time when the cast was only tentatively being assembled,
shaking down together, a cast later to be widened and further developed.

As with the advent of Mendoza, much of it came as a little surprise to
me as events and people unfolded on the page; though what emerges as a
surprise to the writer is probably the result of a great deal of hard
labor in the unconscious mind (or is it?).

In spite of all the labor, I have enjoyed following Mendoza and his
retinue over the years, in finding out more about them all and passing
it on to interested readers.  I hope all Mendoza's old fans will welcome
this omnibus volume if for no other reason than nostalgia, and that new
readers may find their interest aroused to look for the later books and
find out What Happened Next.

case pending

When Gunn came down the hall to his office at half-past eight, he found
Curtis waiting.  Curtis was holding up the wall beside the door; he
opened his eyes at Gunn's step.  He looked tired and rather dirty.

"And a good, good morning to you too, chief," he said.  Gunn didn't like
to be called chief.

"What'd you draw?" Gunn unlocked the door.

"Just what we expected.  I won't come in-I'm going home to bed-I can
give it to you in ten words.  Williams showed up about eight, you'll get
that on Henry's report.  Went in, about twenty minutes later came out
with our Mafiams, and they went down to the Redbird bar on Third.

Ten-forty, shifted to the Palace.  Henry called me from there and I took
over at midnight.  They drifted home about half an hour later and
stayed.  His car's still outside."

"Well, now," said Gunn, pleased.  "Fancy that."

"And for your further information," said Curtis, "I damn near froze to
death sitting it out in my car.  Next time I'll take along another
blanket and a portable radio."

Gunn grinned benignly and told him to go home.  He went on through the
stenos' room to the center of three partitioned-off rooms at the rear,
hung up his hat and coat, and sat at the desk.  Henry's report was
neatly centered, waiting for him there; Henry never missed getting in a
written report immediately, however late his duty.  Williams in 7.57, it
announced laconically, and the rest of what Curtis had said.  Very nice,
thought Gunn.

So now they knew that Mr.  John Williams hadn't deserted his wife and
four children.  The county had been passing over sixty-three dollars and
fifty cents per month to Mrs.  John Williams for four months, on
her claim of desertion and failure to provide.  The kids had to be fed,
had to be sheltered and clothed-after a fashion-by somebody.  it
appeared that once again the county had been rooked.  Williams was a
skiffed carpenter, probably making good money on an out-of-town job.

Gunn made a notation on the report, Morgan to see, and sighed.

Naughty, naughty, Mr.  and Mrs.  Williams, collusion to defraud the
state-and maybe next time they'd think up something slicker.

He got out his file of current investigations, wrote a brief summary of
the conclusions in the Williams case, and set the file page aside for
refiling among cases completed.  He ificked over the rest.  He heard the
girl stenos begin to drift into the outer office.

Rossiter.  Brankin.  Peabody.  Prinn.  Fraty.  Kling.  A new one,
Lindstrom.  There were follow-up reports to be typed in on six or seven
of them; he took those out to the stenos.  "Morning, girls." Morgan and
Stack came in together.

"I want to see you about that Mrs.  Gold," said Stack.

"What about her?"

Stack followed him back into his office.  "I told you I finally caught
up to the guy-the Reno D.A."s office found him, he's working in some
joint there as a waiter.  I had it all set up to crack down on him, see.

Reno says he ought to be good for seventy-five a month, and I went round
to give the glad news to the missos.  And then the rabbi puts the kibosh
on it."

"What rabbi?"

"Mrs.  Gold's rabbi.  He was there.  He says please will we just drop
the whole thing and leave it to him-I guess he figures it'll be less of
a disgrace or something if he can handle it-"

"Oh," said Gunn.  "Well, he might have something there.  If he can get
it without any fuss, so much the better.  Man'd feel better about it if
he's persuaded instead of forced, the money'll come easier-less chance
we'd have more trouble.  It works out with ministers sometimes, but we
can't let 'em stall forever.  You tell him we'll give him a couple of
weeks to try it his way before we crack down." Gunn went out with Stack
and looked into the room next his own; Morgan was sitting there at one
of four desks, looking at some papers.  "Oh, Dick."

Morgan looked up.  "Yes, sir?" he responded dully.

"Little job.  Henry and Curtis have tied up the Williams case.  Another
collusion, way you figured.  Williams is weekending-they were at a bar
until midnight and it's a good chance you'll catch him still in bed with
her if you make it snappy.  Here's the report."

Morgan got up.  "All right.  Williams--yes."

Gunn looked at him more closely.  "You look a bit off-color."

"I'm all right," said Morgan.  He did not look it.  As he took his
topcoat from the peg behind the door, Gunn saw his hand shaking.  He was
the thin, sandy type that doesift change much between boyhood and old
age, doesn't look much different sick or well.  But there were lines
around his mouth now that Gunn hadn't seen before, and his eyes looked
tired, as if he hadn't slept.  He had a little trouble folding the paper
Gunn handed him, putting it away in his pocket.

"How's Sue?" asked Gunn casually.  "And Jan?"

"Fine," said Morgan, buttoning his coat carefully.  &&Just fine,
thanks."

"Must get together again soon, Christy was saying just last night she'd
like to kidnap that Janny of yours, kind of lonesome with our three
grown and off."

"Oh-yes, sure.  I guess so.  We'll do that, thanks."

Gunn stood in the door of his office, absently jingling the coins in his
pocket, and watched the other man out to the corridor.  What was wrong
with Morgan?  He felt some responsibility for Morgan, unreasonably, for
it had been his doing that Morgan got this job.  Dick Morgan was the son
of an old friend of Gunn's, and he'd known the boy most of his life.

Boy, well, Dick was thirty-eight, but it depended whero you sat: Kenneth
Gunn was sixty-two.  And good as held ever been too, once he'd got out
of the hospital after that business last year; but the doctors wouldn't
pass him for active duty again.  Nearly forty year:?

service, and then a home-made bullet out of a punk's zip-gun retired
him.  And Bill Andrews got the promotion to head of Homicide instead.

Way the cards fell, and Bill was a good man; but Gunn hadn't known what
to do with himself that six months.  He'd jumped at this minor post in
the D.A."s office; and he could say now, a year later, he'd given
Kelleher something to talk about at the next election, by God.

It was a new department, this little corps of investigators-the
husband-chasers, inevitably they were called; and if Gunn couldn't claim
their job was as important as the one he'd done for forty years in and
out of uniform, at least the Scot in him took pride in reckoning how
much they saved the taxpayers.  He's set up the organization himself,
and it served as a model for those some other counties were building,
here and in other states.  He and his crew had tracked down over two
thousand runaway husbands so far, to pry minimum child-support funds out
of them anyway.  Authorities in other states had cooperated,

of course, but it came out even: they'd picked up deserters for other
D.A."s offices from Maine to Oregon, too.  Gunn had the exact figure
whenever Kelleher wanted it; to date it was upward of half a million
dollars this office had saved the county in support of deserted wives
and children.  There'd been a time a man could walk out and it was
nobody's job to locate him, make him provide for a deserted family.

These days, no.  He couldn't go across the Arizona or Nevada line and
thumb his nose at the California taxpayers.

Gunn himself hadn't had any idea what a staggering sum casual desertions
cost the state, until he saw the figures last year.  And he could have
doubled the amount saved by now if he could have another dozen men,
another dozen office clerks.  This was the hell of a big town, and it
attracted the hell of a lot of indigents and transients, as well as the
usual shiftless ones any city had.

But he wasn't thinking about that as he looked after Dick Morgan.

He stood there passing a hand over his jaw in a habitual gesture, a big
hefty man with a round, amiable face and thinning hair, and for a minute
he worried about Morgan.  Dick had had some rough breaks: just out of
college when the war came along, and he was married and had a child by
the time it was over so he never did go back to finish his law course,
but like so many others went into a big-company job.  Then they lost the
child, one of those unnecessary accidents, a drunk in a car, turning
down their street just at random.  That had nearly finished Sue, because
she couldn't have another.  .  .  .  Sure, they put the drunk in jail
for manslaughter, but what good did that do a six-year-old girl, or Sue
and Dick?

Dick's father had been alive then and living with them, and Gunn used to
drop in there.  Hadn't done old Rob Morgan any good either, losing his
only grandchild like that.  After a while they'd put their names down
with a couple of adoption agencies, but those places were so damn
finicky; they'd waited almost five years before they got Janny -but
Janny was worth it.  And just about then had come one of those
squeeze-plays, a company merger, a few new hatchet men from the front
office, and Dick was out-at thirty-seven, with nowhere to go, a
mortgaged house, and less than a thousand in the bank.

Gunn wouldn't have blamed him for feeling bitter.  At the same time,
being Gunn, he wouldn't have had Dick Morgan on his staff-old Rob,
sympathy, or no-If he hadn't known Dick could handle the job the right
way.  It wasn't a job that paid anything like what Dick had been

earning before, but it was a job and Dick had seemed grateful and
certainly competent and reasonably contented with it.

To anyone who didn't know him, Dick's manner just now might suggest a
touch of indigestion, or a spat with his wife at breakfast, or an
unlucky bet on the ponies.  But Gunn knew Morgan for a man of abnormally
equable temper, and that little nervousness and bad color meant a lot
more than it would with another man.  Besides, Dick and Sue never had
spats; Sue wasn't that sort.  And Dick didn't betr drink, either.  Not
since eight years ago.

Gunn hoped the boy wasn't in for another piece of rough luck somehow.

Janny, maybe-some unless?  Some people walked all their lives with bad
luck at their shoulders.

No good worrying about it now.

His phone rang and he stepped back into his office to answer it.  The
voice at the other end was the heavy bass of Captain Bill Andrews.

"Say, Ken, among your little brood of wives you wouldift have one Sylvia
Dalton, would you?"

"Don't think so.  N y?" Gunn riffled through the current file before
him.

"Well, it was just a thought.  Maybe you noticed by the papers that New
York sort of misplaced Ray Dalton the other day.  He was up on a
three-to-five and got himself paroled, but he never did report in to his
officer.  New York thinks now-the usual information received-he lit out
west, specifically to these parts, and'll be obliged if we can return
the goods undamaged.  Thing is, the party that said he headed west also
said it was to see his wife.  I came up with the bright thought that
wives of crooks don't usually like to work very regular, and maybe this
one was accepting our hospitality."

"Not unless she's doing it under another name.  It's a thought, all
right."

"Yeah.  You might just check for initials.  I can give you a make on
her."

"I've got nothing else to do but your work," said Gunn.  "I don't know
every one of our customers personally, you know.  Sure somebody sees 'em
all, but I've got eleven men on duty.  Yes, sure, I'll check with them.

Send over the make.  Don't I remember Dalton?  It rings a bell' "It ought
to.  The Carney job, five-six years back.  Cameron and Healey were on
it-liquor store knocked over and two men shot, proprietor and a clerk.

We couldn't tie Dalton to it tight enough, but he

was in on it.  I guess at that we made him nervous enough to run back
east, and New York put the arm on him for another job."

"I remember," said Gunn.  He leaned back in his chair and regarded the
ceiling.  For a minute, with the familiar shoptalk, he almost had the
vision he was back at headquarters in a real job, not this makeweight
piddling business, and under KeUeher too .  .  .  but, damn, a job worth
doing.  "It's worth a try," he said.  Any kids?"

"One, a boy about twelve-thirteen."

"O.K.," said Gunn.  "I'll have a look, might come up with something."

Morgan drove slowly down Main Street, not cursing at the traffic; he
handled the car automatically, stopping for pedestrians, for red lights.

Mrs.  Williams lived on a run-down street among those that twisted and
came to dreary dead ends the other side of Main.  He would surprise Mr.
and Mrs.  Williams together and deliver a little lecture on the dangers
of conspiracy to defraud.  Maybe it wasn't so stupid of them to pull the
shabby little trick, the commonest one in the list, with scarcely any
attempt at secrecy; until the formation of this new department, God knew
how many people had got away with it for years.

The problem created, Morgan thought as he had before, went beyond the
Williamses or any individual-or the amount of public money.  In essence,
a social problem, and not a new one.  If it wasn't money from this
county office, it'd be money from another: people like the Williamses
didn't give a damn.  Williams, letting himself be branded a wife and
child-deserter, getting a job and a cheap room somewhere out of town,
sneaking back for week-ends with his family, all to cheat
sixty-three-fifty a month out of the county top of the three hundred or
more he could earn as a skilled workman.

At a bar last night with his wife until midnight.  Last thing they'd
worry about was leaving the kids alone: four kids, the oldest eleven. It
was a shabby, cheap neighborhood, almost a slum, though there were worse
streets.  People like the Williamses didn't care where or how they
lived: often they had more money than others who lived better, but their
money went on ephemeral thing n flashy cars and clothes and liquor.

Morgan was driving a six-year-old Ford.  He wouldn't be surprised to
find that Williams' car was a new model, and something more expensive.

But all that was on the surface of his mind; he couldn't, for once, be

less concerned.  Deeper inside a voice was screaming at him soundlessly,
What the hell are you going to do?  Ten thousand bucks. Ten thousand.  .
.  .  All right, so he knew what he ought to do: Richard Alden Morgan,
law-abiding citizen, who'd always accepted responsibilities and stood on
his own two feet, and where had it got him?  So it was just the breaks:
everybody had bad luck.  But, God damn it, so uch bad .  .  .  And a
damn funny thing to think maybe, but if he could blame himself (or
anybody), some concrete way, reason he'd just brought it on himself, he
wouldn't feel so bitter.  Nothing like that with Dick Morgan, he thought
in savage sarcasm: respectable, righteous Morgan who paid his bills and
lived within his income, Morgan the faithful, considerate husband and
father-how did the old song go, everything he should do and nothing that
he oughtn't-0-and got kicked in the teeth all the same.  You could say
"the breaks," but it damn well wasn't fair that Sue should be dragged
under with him-Sue hadn't done anything, neither of them had done
anything to deserve Janny hadn't done anything.  Except get born.

He coasted gently to the curb two doors from the apartment house where
the Williamses lived, and sat for a minute, getting out the watchers'
report, rereading it but not really taking it in.  Parked smack in front
of the apartment was a year-old Buick, a two-tone hardtop.

"that'd be Williams, sure; Henry had taken down the license.

All right, so he knew what he ought to do.  Go to the police, tell the
story.  Honest citizen.  Sure.  The police would take care of the man
with the pock-marked face and dirty nails and cold gray eyes and the
rasping voice that said Ten thousand bucks, see.  And would that be the
end of it?  Like hell it would.  The juvenile court would have something
to say then, miles of red tape to unwind, and in the end they'd lose
Janny anyway-he knew how those things went, how judges figured, how the
cumbersome, impersonal law read.  It was all the fault of the damned
pompous law to start with: the silly God-damned inhumanly logical rules
of the accredited agencies.

Suddenly his control broke one moment and he pounded his fist on the
steering wheel in blind, impotent fury.  Not fair, after everything else
-the panic in Sue's eyes, the panic he heard in his own voice telling
her-ten thousand-what the hell could he do?  The police.  The money.  No
choice for him even here, it had to be the police; he couldn't raise
money like that.

You had to be logical about it.  Juvenile hall, a state foster home, an

orphanage, s6fl better than anywhere with that pock-marked hood, the
kind of woman he'd Ten thousand.  The car wouldn't bring five hundred.

They still owed four thousand on the house, a second mortgage
wouldn't-Sue's engagement ring, the little odds and ends of jewelry they
had, maybe another five hundred if they were lucky.

He'd sat still to be kicked in the teeth for the last time.  If he could
get from under this by forgetting every righteous standard he had- But
it wasn't so easy, it never was.  So, go and rob a bank, hold up a
liquor store, sure, get the ten thousand.  It wouldn't cancel out: the
threat would be just as potent, and in a month, six months, a year,
there'd be another demand.

He straightened up after a while and took a couple of long breaths.  It
wasn't any good agonizing round and round in the same circle, they'd
gone over all this a hundred times last night.  He'd just have to play
it by ear.  Meanwhile he had a day's work to do-conscientious,
methodical Morgan, he thought tiredly.

He got out of the car, slipping the ignition key in his pocket.  See the
Williamses and try to put the fear of God into them.  The county
wouldn't prosecute this time, on a first offense involving a relatively
small amount: the courts were working overtime as it was.  Morgan looked
up Commerce Street to the corner of Humboldt, where something seemed to
be going on-he could see the tall end of a black-and white police car,
its roof light flashing, and the fat Italian grocer had come out of his
corner shop with a few early customers.  Whatever it was, a drunk or a
fight or an accident, it was round the corner on Humboldt.

He started up the worn steps of the apartment.  After he'd dealt with
the Williamses he might as well drop in on Mrs.  Kling, and that new one
was somewhere around here too, if he remembered the address-he got out
his case-notebook to look.  Yes, Mrs.  Marion Lindstron4 273 Graham
Court.

There were worse streets than Commerce, but it wasn't a neighborhood
where anyone would choose to live, except those who didn't think or care
much about their surroundings, or those who couldn't afford anything
better.  Ironically, only a few blocks away rose the clean modern forest
of civic buildings, shining with glass and newness and surrounded by
neat squares of asphalt-paved parking lots.  Like many cities, this one
sprouted its civic and business center in its oldest section, inevitably
bordered with slums.  It might look easy to change matters with the
power of condemnation, the expenditure of public money, but it wouldn't
work out that way if the city fathers tried it.  There'd grow up other
such streets elsewhere if not here; there were always the people who did
not care, the landlords who wouldn't spend on repairs.  Every city
always has its Commerce Streets.

Commerce started ten or twelve blocks up, at the big freight yards, and
dead-ended two blocks down from Humboldt.  It was a dreary length of
ancient macadam lined mostly with single houses-narrow, one-storey,
ramshackle clapboard houses as old as the century or older, and never
lovingly cared for: here and there was one with a fresh coat of paint,
or a greener strip of grass in front, or cleaner-looking curtains
showing, but most were a uniform dun color with old paint cracked, brown
devil grass high around the front steps.  About halfway down its length,
the street grew some bigger houses of two storeys, square frame houses
not much younger and no neater: most of those were rooming houses by the
signs over their porches.  Interspersed with these were a few dingy
apartment buildings, a gas station or two, neighborhood stores-a
delicatessen, a family grocery; and in windows along nearly every block
were little signs-sEwiNG DONE ClifAP, CANARIES FOR SALE, FIX-IT SHOP,
HAND-TMLORING.

Agnes Browne lived behind one of the signs, that said prhwy, SeamSTRESS,
in the ground-floor right window of the house at the corner of Commerce
and Wade, two blocks up from Humboldt.  She worked as a

waitress at a dime-store lunch counter; the sewing added to her wages
some, and anyway she liked to sew and figured she might as well get paid
for it.  She didn't care much for going out and around; it still made
her kind of nervous.  She couldn't help but be afraid people were
looking at her and thinking, Huh, kind of dark even for Spanish, wonder
if- When the landlady said Browne didn't sound very Spanish, Agnes had
told her it was her married name and she was a widow.  But she was kind
of sorry she'd ever started it now; it was like what the minister said
for sure, about the guilty fleeing where no man pursueth.  It hadn't
been the money, she could earn as much anyway, maybe even more, at a
dozen jobs colored girls got hired for; but there were other things
besides money.

Only she felt guilty at making friends under false pretenses, and as for
Joe, well, she just couldn't.  Joe was a nice boy, he had a good job at
a garage, he was ambitious; he'd asked her for a date half a dozen
times, but it wouldn't be right she should take up with him.  Not
without telling him.  A lot of girls would have, but Agnes didn't figure
it'd be fair.  All the same, she liked Joe and it was hard.

She was thinking about it this morning as she started for work; seemed
like she couldn't think of anything else these days.  She was a little
late, it was ten past eight already, and she hurried; she could walk to
work, it was only two blocks down to Main and four more to the store.

As usual she cut across the empty lot at the comei' of Humboldt.

There'd been a house on the lot once, but it had been so badly damaged
by fire a few years back that what was left of it was pulled down.

Now there was just the outline of the foundation left, all overgrown
with weed"evil grass and wild mustard.  Agnes had tripped over the
hidden ledge of the concrete foundation before, and skirted it
automatically now; but in the middle of the lot she tripped over
something else.

When she saw what it was she clapped a hand to her mouth and backed away
without picking up the purse she'd dropped.  Then she ran across to Mr.
Fratelli's store where there was a telephone.  Agnes knew her duty as a
citizen, but that didift say she liked the idea of getting mixed up in
such a thing.

Huddling her coat around her, listening to Mr.  Fratelli's excited
Italian incoherence, she wondered miserably if the cops would ask many
questions about herself.  Probably so, and go on asking, and find out
everything-maybe it served her right for being deceitful, the Bible said

that never did anybody no good in the long run, and wasn't it the truth.

.  .  .

"I figured you'd like to take a look before they move it," said Hackett
on the phone.  "The boys just got here.  If you want ru put a hold on
the stiff until you've seen it."

"Do that." Lieutenant Mendoza put down the phone and rose from his desk.

Hackett was the one man under him who fully respected his feeling in
such matters, though it was to be feared that Hackett put it down to
conscientiousness.  The truth was less flattering: Mendoza always found
it hard to delegate authority, never felt a job well done unless he saw
to it himself-which of course was simply egotism, he acknowledged it. He
could not do everything.  But Hackett, who knew him so well, had a
feeling for the nuances; if Hackett thought he should see this, he was
probably right.

When he parked behind the patrol car twenty minutes later and picked his
way across the weed-grown corner toward the little knot of men, one of
the patrol officers there remarked sotto voce, "That your Mex
lieutenant?  He don't like to get his nice new shoes all dusty, does
lie?"

Detective-Sergeant Arthur Hackett said, "That's enough about Mexes, boy.

For my money he's the best we got." He watched Mendoza stepping
delicately as a cat through the tall growth: a shin, dark man,
inevitably impeccable in silver gray, his topcoat just a shade darker
than his suit, his Hamburg the exact charcoal of the coat and with the
new narrow brim, tilted at the correct angle and no more.  Mendoza's tie
this morning was a subtle foulard harmony of charcoal and silver with
the discreetest of scarlet flecks, and the shoes he was carefully
guarding from scratches were probably the custom-made gray pigskin pair.

"My God, he looks like a gigolo," commented the patrolman, who was only
a month out of training and meeting plainclothes men for the first time
on the job.  "What brand of cologne does he use, I wonder.

Better get ready to hold him up when he takes a look at the corpse."

He hadn't enjoyed the corpse much himself.

"Don't strain yourself flexing those muscles," said Hackett dryly.

"Like Luis'd say himself, las aparienciay engafian-appearances are
deceiving."

Mendoza came up to them and nodded to the patrolmen at Hackett's mention
of their names.  At close quarters, the young recruit saw, you

could guess him at only an inch or so under your own five-eleven, not so
small as he looked; but he had the slender Latin bone structure,
minimizing his size.  Under the angled Hamburg, thin, straight features:
a long chin, a precise narrow black line of mustache above a delicately
cut mouth, a long nose, black opaque eyes, sharp-arched heavy brows.

A damn Mex gigolo, thought the recruit.

"I thought you'd like to see it," Hackett was saying.  "It's another
Carol Brooks."

Mendoza's long nose twitched once.  "That is one I'd like to have
inside.  You think it's the same?" His voice was unexpectedly deep and
soft, with only an occasional hint of accent to say he had not spoken
English from birth.

"Your guess, my guess, who knows until we get him?-and maybe not then."

Hackett shrugged.  "Take a look, Luis."

Mendoza walked on a dozen steps to where other men stood and squatted.

The ambulance had arrived; its attendants stood smoking and waiting,
watching the police surgeon, the men from headquarters with their tape
measures and cameras.  Mendoza came up behind the kneeling surgeon and
looked at the corpse; his expression stayed impassive, thoughtful, and
he did not trouble to remove his hat.

:'When would you say?" he asked the surgeon.

"Oh-morning.  Didn't hear you-you always move like a cat.  It's a messy
one, Luis, see for yourself.  Between ten and midnight, give or take a
little." The surgeon hoisted himself up, a stoutening, bald, middle-aged
man, and brushed earth from his trouser legs.  "I'll tell you what she
actually died of when I've had a better look-strangulation or blows-my
guess'd be the head blows.  There was a sizable rock-"

"Yes," said Mendoza.  He had already seen the rock, jagged, triangular.

"She was cutting across from Commerce, so she knew these streets." A
faint track made by foot traffic, just out from the corner of the house
foundation, and the woman lay across the track.

"Daresay," grunted the surgeon.  Hackett strolled up and the patrolmen
followed, the recruit concealing reluctance.  "No identification yet but
you probably will have if she's local.  Either she wasn't carrying a
purse or he took it away with him."

"Never get prints off that rock," added Hackett to that.  "You see what
I mean, Luis.  First off, it looks like any mugging, for what she had in
her bag.  I don't say it isn't.  You take some of these punks, they get
excited-Doc'll remember the ten-dollar word for it." Hackett, who looked
rather like a professional wrestler, adopted the protective coloration
of acting like one on occasion; possibly, thought Mendoza amusedly, in
automatic deference to popular expectation.  In fact he was -unlike
Mendoza-a university graduate: Berkeley '50.  It was a theory that
Mendoza did not subscribe to: he had never found it helpful-or
congenial-to pretend to less intelligence than he had.  "They're after
the cash, but they get a kick out of the mugging too.  Horseplay."

"Yes, I know," said Mendoza.  "This doesn't look like horseplay."

"She wasn't raped," offered the surgeon.

"I can see that for myself.  She's on her way home, at that time of
night-maybe from late work, from a friend's house.  There's a full moon,
and she knows these streets-she doesn't think twice at cutting across
here.  But something is waiting." He sank to his heels over the body,
careful to pull up his trouser knees first, and regarded it in silence
for a long minute.

Before it had been a body it had been a young and pretty woman: in fact,
a very young one, under make-up lavishly applied.  The too-white powder,
the heavily mascaraed lashes, the smeared dark-red lipstick, was a mask
turned to the pitiless gray sky of this chill March day.  The
unfashionable shoulder-length hair, where it wasn't stiffened with
clotted blood, was bleached white-gold, but along the temples and at the
parting showed dark.  "Coat pockets?" he murmured.

"Handkerchief and a wool scarf," said Hackett.

"To put over her hair in case it rained," nodded Mendoza.  "Then she had
a handbag too."

"So I figured.  Dwyer and Higgins are looking around the neighborhood."

A bag-snatcher, whether or not he was also a murderer, seldom kept the
bag long; it would be tossed away on the ran.

Her clothes were tasteless, flamboyant-tight Kelly-green sweater with a
round white angora collar, black fame skirt full-cut and too short,
sheer stockings, black patent-leather pumps with four-inch heels, over
all a long black coat with dyed rabbit round the collar and hem.

Mendoza felt the coat absently, expecting the harshness of shoddy
material: cheap, ill-cut stuff.

Two very different corpses, he reflected, this tawdry pseudo blonde and
Carol Brooks.  Carol Brooks, six months ago, had been an eminently
respectable and earnest young woman, not very good looking, and she had
died in the soiled blue uniform-dress she wore for work.  Otherwise, no,
the corpses weren't so different.

"Yes," he murmured, and stood up.  "He didn't intend murder, to start
with-I doift think.  He hadn't any weapon but his hands.  And he

didn't reach out to find one, blind, like that, and pick up the rock-it
wasn't used that way, Art.  He had her down, she was fighting him,
trying to scream-he was strangling her, finding it not quick enough-and
he slams her down on the ground, hard, just by chance on the rock.  I
can see it going like that.  Unpremediated violence, but once it
unleashes itself'-he looked down at the body again-"insane violence."

"Here comes Bert," said Hackett, "with the handbag.  Not that it'll
maybe take us very far."

"That's a loaded question for the so-called expert," said the surgeon,
looking interested over the flame of his lighter, "but I'll say this, at
least -he must have gone berserk for some reason.  Nobody can say sane
or insane just on that evidence-unnecessary violence.  That sort of
thing is apt to be vicious personal hatred, or a couple of other
quirks."

"You're so right," said Mendoza.  "You'll make a report all emhellished
with the technical terms, but to go on with for the moment?"

"Her neck's broken.  Excessive laceration of the throat.  Half a dozen
head wounds, all but one on the back of the skull-the one that killed
her, I dank, is this here, on the temple.  Maybe she turned her head in
struggling and- The left shoulder is dislocated.  She was struck
repeatedly in the face with a fist.  You can see the cyanosed areas,
there.  Her right arm is broken just below the elbow.  The whole torso
has been damaged, kicked or maybe jumped on.  Fractured ribs, I think,
and internal injuries.  It's on the cards some of that was done after
death, but I don't know that it'll be provable-probably a very short
time after, of course.  There's some damage to the left eye, as if a
finger or thumb had been'

"Yes.  It was Dr.  Bainbridge who made the autopsy on Brooks," said
Mendoza.  "You wouldn't remember.  That is the one thing of positive
resemblance.  Otherwise?!-he flicked away the burnt match and drew deep
on his cigarette, shrugging-"any mugger after a woman's bag, who used a
little too much violence."

"So?" said the surgeon.  "Ever catch that one?" Mendoza shook his head.

"Well, here we are," announced Hackett, who had gone to meet Dwyer.  "In
plain sight in the gutter a couple of blocks away." It was the bag one
would have predicted she would carry: a big square patentleather affair
with a coquettish white bow cluttering the snap-fastener.

"Ya lo creo, as we might put it, huh?"

Mendoza lifted his upper lip at it.  "Before you get promotion and

cease to be my junior in rank, Arturo, you will have perfected your vile
accent.  It may take years."

Very delicately Hackett delved with two fingers into the bag's interior
and came up with a woman's wallet, bright pink plastic, ornamented all
around the border with imitation pearls.  Mendoza regarded it with
satisfied horror: the very object this girl would have admired.  "Lot of
other stuff here-doesn't look as if he took a damn thing.  Funny he put
the wallet back after grabbing the cash, if- He might've figured the
wallet aloned be spotted quicker and picked up, but then again muggers
don't think so far ahead usually, and this one, I doift see him in a
state to think at all, after that.  lf'

",iBasta!  One thing at a time."

"Her name was Elena Ramirez.  No drivers' license.  Dime-store snapshot
of herself and, I presume, current boy friend.  Social Security card.

Membership card in some club.  I.D.  card-address and phone-little
change in the coin purse-that figures, of course, he'd take the bills-"

Dwyer said, "Prints are going to love you for putting your fat paws all
over that celophane."

"All right," Mendoza cut off Hackett's retort abruptly.  "Give me that
address, Art.  I'll see the woman who found her and then the family-if
there is one.  Dwyer, you and Higgins can begin knocking on doorsdid
anyone hear a disturbance, screams perhaps?  When we know more of the
background, maybe I'll have other jobs for you.  They can take her away
now."

Hackett drifted over to Fratelli's grocery behind Mendoza.  In two
hours, tomorrow, Hackett would be the man nominally in charge of working
this case; a lieutenant of detectives could not devote all his time to a
relatively minor case like this.  The fact annoyed Mendoza, partly
because he had an orderly mind, liked to take one thing at a time,
thoroughly.  Even more did it irritate him now because it was
intuitively clear to him that this girl and Carol Brooks had met death
at the same hands, and he wanted very much to get that one inside,
caught in a satisfactory net of evidence and booked and committed for
trial.

If one murder was more or less important than another, neither of these
was important: the kind of casual homicide that happens every week in
any big city.  This girl did not look as if she would be much missed, as
if she had been a human being with much to offer the world, but one
never knew.  Carol Brooks, now, that had perhaps been a loss -yes.  He
remembered again the warm gold of the recorded voice a

trifle rough as yet, a trifle uncertain, but the essential quality
there.

However, his cold regret at missing her murderer had nothing of
sentiment in it.  The reason was the reason, in a wider sense, why Luis
Mendoza was a lieutenant of detectives, and-most of the time-regarded
fondly by his superiors.

There are people who enjoy solving puzzles: he was not one of them.

But-probably, he told himself, because he was a great egotist, and his
vanity was outraged to be confronted with something he did not know nce
a puzzle was presented to him he could not rest until he had ferreted
out the last teasing secret.  It was not often that he was faced with a
complex mystery; the world would grow a great deal older before police
detectives in everyday routine met with such bizarre and glamorous
situations as those in fiction.  Por desgracia, indeed: unfortunate: for
complex problems inevitably had fewer possible solutions.

This thing now, this was the sort of puzzle (a much more difficult sort)
that Mendoza, and all police detectives, met again and again: the
shapeless crime that might have been done by anyone in the citymostly
impersonal crime, this sort, with destiny alone choosing the victim. The
shopkeeper killed in the course of a robbery, the woman dead at the end
of attack for robbery or rape, the casual mugging in an alley -nothing
there of orderliness, the conveniently ififfited list of suspects, the
tricky alibis, the complicated personal relationships to unravel:
criminal and victim might never have met before.  Or perhaps it might be
an intimate business, a personal matter, and only all anged to look
otherwise-and if it were, so much the easier to find the truth, for one
had then only a few places to look.

But so often it was the casual, shapeless thing.  And there are always,
in any efficient city police force, the policemen like Luis Mendoza,
single-mindedly, even passion lately concerned to bring some order and
reason, some ultimate shape, to the chaos.  Not necessarily from any
social conscientiousness-Mendoza cared little for humanity en masse, and
was a complete cynic regarding the individual.  Nor from any abstract
love of truth or, certainly, of justice-for all too often the criminals
he took for the law evaded punishment, this way or that way; and Mendoza
sometimes swore and sometimes shrugged, but he did not lose any sleep
over that.  Being a realist, he said, Lo que no se puede remedier, se
hade aguantar-what can't be cured must be endured.

Nor from ambition, to gain in rank and wages through zeal-Mendoza
desired no authority over men, as he resented authority over himself,
and his salary would not begin to maintain his wardrobe, or a few other

personal interests.  Nor even solely from earnest attention to doing
one's job well.

The only reason for such men, the end goal, is the contemplation of the
solved puzzle: the beautiful completeness of the last answer found.

It is so with all these men, whatever kind of men they may be otherwise.

Having the orderly mind, they must know where every last oddshaped small
piece belongs in the puzzle, no matter if the picture comes out
landscape or portrait or still life, so to speak.

Mendoza, in fact, forced to file away an unanswered question-as he had
six months ago in the Brooks case-felt very much the way an overnice
housewife would feel, forced to leave dinner dishes in the sink
overnight.  It worried him; it irritated him; and in every free moment
his mind slid back to the thing left undone.

He said now absently to Hackett, "Eso se sobreentiende, it's not so good
that he's been loose for six monthsne like that." With only a few people
he didn't watch his tongue, or even let it drift into the Spanish
deliberately; and that (as Hackett was fully aware) was a mark of
affection and trust.

"Oh, I don't know, Luis.  One dame every six months, pretty damn
moderate, come to think." Hackett glanced at him sideways.  "So you
think it's the same joker too."

"That eye.  It's a little psychological point, mayb' Mendoza tossed away
his cigarette and paused with his hand on the shopdoor.

"Or am I being too subtle?  In a fight with another man, anything goes
-one of you may have an eye gouged out.  But to do that to a woman, and
a woman you have already made helpless- Well, what do we call insane?

You and I have seen it, there are men just turns sadistic, and they're
not legally insane.  But I don't think this is one of those, Art.  I
didn't think so with Carol Brooks.  Because of that eye business.  And
Bainbridge says to me, de paso, just what Dr.  Victor says now-probably
much of the damage is made after death.  Only just after, but- Due para
mi, it's a wild one, never mind the doubletalk of the psychiatrists.

A real, hundred-percent, guaranteed genuine wild one-mucho loco."

"Hell, I said the same thing.  And you know what that means, chico -work
or brains don't count in catching him.  He's got no sane reason for
picking this girl or that.  It'll be luck, that's all, if we do.  My
God, he might not know himself what he's done, and a hundred to one the
only way we'll ever put a name to him is if he happens to have a brain
storm in front of witnesses next time.  Probably he's living quiet as
you please, an ordinary guy nobody'd look at twice, maybe going to work

every day, comin' home prompt at six to kiss his wife and look at the
sports page before dinner-goes to church every Sunday-never done a thing
anybody'd think queer.  It'll just be the way the cards fall, if and
when and how soon we get him."

"It isn't always," said Mendoza, "the hand dealt to you, so much as the
way you play it."

"You should know.  How much do you average a year in poker winnings,
anyway?"

"Sometimes enough to buy my shirts."

"That ain't hay for you, at what, twelve bucks a throw.  .  .  .  You
know something else?  When we do catch up with him, he's going to be
some guy who's got the reputation of being the kindest, mildest,
sweetest-tempered hombre God ever put on earth.  Everybody who knows
him'll say, Oh, John couldn't be the one, he'd never do such a thing,
officer!  Want to bet?"

Mendoza laughed, abrupt and mirthless.  "Don't I know it!  I only hope
he doesn't have another brain storm before we catch up to him.

No one's ever accused me of being a sentimental man, ino, por Dioslbut I
don't care for his notions of how to treat women." He swept the Hamburg
off, passed a hand over the thick, Indian-straight black hair that grew
to a widow's peak, and opened the door.

The girl who had found the body was nervous, too nervous.  Not a nice
experience, but it had been over an hour ago, and if she had nothing to
do with it, why was she trembling and stammering and eying the policemen
as if she expected the third de,,,ree?  Mendoza was mildly curious.

She was a rather pretty girl, about twenty-seven, neat rounded figure,
modest and dowdy in a clean cotton housedress.  Fine olive-tan
complexion, big brown eyes, minimum of make-up: a respectable girl.

"Her name was Elena Ramirez.  I realize you wouldn't be likely to

recognize anyone you knew under the circumStances-sO, did you

know Nss Ramirez?"

"Oh, no, sir, I never heard of her." She twisted her hands together and
her eyes shifted away.  "I'll be awful late for work, sir, I doift know
nothing'

Mendoza let her go.  "Sergeant Hackett will drive you to your job and
explain why you're late"; and to Hackett, "Conversation-find out what
you can about her, and then see what you can pick up where she lives.  I
don't think she's got anything to do with it, but one never knows.  I'll
see the family.  That takes us to an early lunch, maybeFederico's at
twelve-thirty, O.K.?-we'll compare notes."

"Est ,bien," said Hackett, and joined Agnes Browne outside.  The Italian
grocer, hovering to get Mendoza's attention, asked excitedly if he had
said Ramirez-the family Ramirez over on Liggitt Street, would that be?

Sacred name of God, what a terrible thing-ah, yes, he knew them, only to
nod to, the signor comprehended-sometimes the wife came in to buy, not
often-God pity them, to lose a daughter so-no, no, the girl he did not
know at all-she was assaulted, assassinated by some madman, then?

"So I think," said Mendoza.  The men from headquarters had dispersed;
the ambulance was gone, the patrol car was gone.  Across the street he
saw Dwyer leave the first house next to the corner lot and head for the
neighboring one.  Mendoza crossed to his car and stopped to light a
cigarette; he looked at the car thoughtfully, getting out his keys.  He
believed in buying the very best piece of merchandise obtainable of what
one set out to buy, giving it loving care and using it until it fell to
pieces.  A thing like a car, that by this scheme was with you for years,
you got acclimated to one another, it had personal individuality for
you, it was more than a mere machine of transportation.  The austerely
elegant black Ferrari club-saloon was only thirteen years old, just into
middle age for a Feffari, and it would be mad, extravagant, to give it
up: he had no intention of doing so: but there was no denying that with
the increase of traffic and parking problems, its size was a
disadvantage, not to say a nuisance.  The trouble was, if he did buy a
new car, it would be one with less than twelve cylinders-unless he
should buy one of the new, smaller Ferraris, which was piling madness on
madness.

He muttered, "Es dificil," got in and started the engine.  ("Now look,
Mr.  Mendoza," the mechanic had said patiently, "the number o' cylinders
isn't anythin' to do with how good the car is!  If you knew anythin'

about engines ataff-I I know it sounds to you like you're gettilf more
for your money-facta the matter is, about all it means is it costs more
to inn, see?  Sure, this is the hell of a great car, but you'd be just
as well off, get just as much power and speed, with say something like
that Mercedes six-I mean if you got to have a foreigner-1/2r one of them
slick hardtop Jagu1)

Liggitt Street, a block the other side of Main and one down, was a bare
cut above Commerce.  Not so many signs in windows, and the houses, most
as old and poor, better cared for.  The Ramirez house was one of the
two-storey ones; as he came up the walk, he saw that the curtains at the
narrow front windows were clean and starched, a few flowers planted
against the low porch.

He did not mind breaking bad news to strangers, and often it was Of help
to notice reactions: little things might tell if this was as impersonal
fate as it looked, or had reasons closer to home.  But he fully expected
that a good deal of time would be wasted, from his point of view, while
they assimilated the news, before he could decently ask questions.

He was not wrong there.  The family consisted of Papa, Mama, assorted
children between three and sixteen, an older daughter perhaps
twenty-one, and a stocky middle-aged man who bore enough resemblance to
Papa that his designation as Tio Tombs was superfluous.

Mendoza waited through Mama's hysterics, the dispatching of a message to
the parish priest, the settling of Mama on the sofa with a blanket,
cologne-soaked handkerchief, glass of wine, and her rem ' * g brood
nested about her comfortingly.  He found a cracked pink saucer in
obvious use as an ash tray and smoked placidly in the midst of the
uproar, eyes and ears busy.

Not native Mexican-Americans, these, not a couple of generations across
the border.  The kids, they had the marks of smart American kids, and
their English was unhesitating, sparked with slang; but Mama, fat and
decent in ankle4ength black cotton, and Papa, collarless neck scrawny
above an old flannel bathrobe, were Old Country.  It was no different,
Mexican, German, Lithuanian, whatever-always there was bound to be a
little friction, the kids naturally talking on freer modern ways, the
old ones disapproving, worried, and arguments about it.  So?

The man called Tio Tomfis sat in a straight chair behind the sofa and
said nothing, smoking tiny black Mexican cigarillos.

"You know I must ask you questions," said Mendoza at last, putting a
hand on Manuel Ranrez' arm.  "I'm sorry to intrude on your grief, but to
help us in hunting whoever has killed your daughter'

"Si, yes, it is understood,,, whispered Ramirez.  "I- I tell YOU
whatever you want to know.  Maria Santisima, my brain is not working for
this terrible thing, but-excuse, mister, I don't speak so good in
English'

"Then we speak Spanish."

"Ah, you have the tongue, that's good.  I thank you-pardon, mister, the
name I did not'

"Lieutenant Mendoza."

"Mendoza." He gave it the hard Mexican pronunciation that was ultimately
Aztec, instead of the more elegant Spanish sibilance.  "You are -an
agent of police?"

"I am.  I'll ask you first'

"The gentleman's good to wait and be polite." It was the oldest girl,
coming up quietly, looking at him with open curiosity; she was pale, but
had not been weeping.  She was not as pretty as her sister had been, but
not bad-looking, in a buxom way.  "Of course we know you got to ask
questions, but look, Papa, no sense disturbing Mama with it-I guess you
and me can tell him whatever he wants.  Let's go in the kitchen, if
that's all right, mister?"

"It is Lieutenant, Teresa," said Ranrez distractedly; he let her urge
him through a shabby dining room.  Mendoza strolled after: she threw him
a glance over her shoulder of mixed interest, anxiety, and a kind of
mechanical female brandishment.  The kitchen was big, cold, reasonably
clean.  "Please to sit down, sir-if you would accept my hospitality, a
glass of wine-it's only cheap stuff' Ranrez was trying to pull himself
together; the conventional courtesy was automatic.

"No, no, thanks.  Tell me first, I believe your daughter lived here with
you?-then you must have been worried that she didn't come home last
night?  Do you know where she was?"

The girl answered from where she had perched uneasily on the kitchen
table.  "Sure, we were worried.  But she might've gone to stay overnight
with a girl friend, or-well, you know how it is, we sort of talked back
"n' forth and kept waiting for her maybe to cam one of the neighbors
with a message-Mrs.  Gomez next door lets u,

"Where had she gone and when did she leave?"

"She was-she was just out on a date.  I don't know where they were
going.  Ricky, he was here for Elena about seven, I guess, and they went
right after." In answer to the query only begun, she added hurriedly,
"Ricky Wade, he's a boy Elena's-Elena had been going with a lot.  A nice
boy he is, you needn't go thinking anything about him, see.  I don't

know where they were going, but they did go to the Palace A* a lotthat
roller-skating place, you know.  Silly, I say, but Elena's-Elena was
just a kid, she liked it."

"She would have had nineteen years only the next month," murmured
Ramirez.  "It was wrong, Teresa, I said so!  We should have gone to the
police at once, at once!  Elena was a good girl in her heart, she was
properly brought up, never would she have done such a thing-all the talk
around and around, I should have let you and Mama talk and gone to the
police myself-"

"What would she not have done, Mss Ramirez?" asked Mendoza.

&& Oh, well, I spose we got to say or you'll think it's funny we didn't
seem more worried." Her mouth tightened.  "We were going to do something
about it this morning, don't know what, but- We were awful worried, you
can see that, way Papa and I both stayed home from work-it wasn't as if
Elena ever did nothing like that before, stay away all night and not
call or nothing.  But-well, we got to thinking maybe her and Ricky'd
eloped-you know, over to Las Vegas or somewhere, to get married in a
hurry'

"It is not true!" exclaimed Ranrez excitedly, jumping up.  The bathrobe
fell open to reveal his spendly legs and unexpectedly gay pink cotton
underpants.  "It is a wicked lie, that Elena is got in trouble with this
fellow and has to run away and marry quickl She is a respectable girl,
never would she-oh, she does this and that Mama and I don't like, sure,
but she's young, it's different times and ways now, I know that-she's
impatient, she wants the moon like all youngsters, but never would sh'

"I never said she did, I never!  But after they made up and he came
back, she sure meant to keep him, she was set on marrying him some day,
you know good as I do.  All I said was, if be all of a sudden wanted to
elope, she wouldn't take the risk of losing him, she'd say yes quick!"

"Did you disapprove of this Mr.  Wade, then?" asked Mendoza of Ramirez
casually.

"Disapprov' He moved his thin shoulders wearily.  "He is not of the
faith.  I don't know, if Elena wanted so bad, I- You don't have nothing
to say about it any more, anyway, fathers.  The kids, they go their own
way.  She wouldn't have been happy in such a marriage, that I thought.

But it wasn't really serious, they were just youngste'

"Elena was serious, all right!" said Teresa.  She turned to Mendoza.

"Look, you might's well know how it was, an' weasel round like I

&,pose you got to, to be sure Ricky didn't have nothing to do withwith
killing her.  That's silly, he wouldn't.  Elena met him in school three
years back, see-that's Sloan Heights High, where I went too.  Only I had
the sense to finish, and she didn't-wanted a job so's she could buy a
lot of splashy clothes 'n' all-soon as she turned sixteen, she got a
work permit an' a job uptown in a Hartners' store, putting stuff on the
models in the windows, unpacking in the stock room, like that'

Ramirez moved restlessly.  "All this foolishness," he muttered, "keeping
girls in school so long-history and algebra, it don't teach them any
better to keep house and bring up the kids.  And Elena always give Mama
her five dollars a week, regular, like she should."

"I'm not saying nothing against her, Papa, only she should've finished
like I did, learned typing and all, so's to get a better job.  Sure she
gave Mama money, and bought things for the kids too, she wasn!t stingy.

All l'

",mr.  Wade," murmured Mendoza.

"That's what I'm getting to.  She saw I was right in the end, see?

Because the Wades, they reckon they're a lot too good for the likes of
us, they didn't like Ricky taking up with Elena.  Mr.  Wade, he works
for the city, they own their house and all that-you know.  Elena, she
liked Ricky a lot, sure, he's a nice boy like I said, but at the same
time she saw it'd be kind of a step up the ladder for her, marry into a
family like that.  She didn't want to stay on Liggitt Street all her
life, well, who does?  But the time she had a little fight with Ricky,
In' don't go thinking it was anything serious, just a little spat like,
she started thinking how silly it'd be to really lose him-I know all
this because she talked it over with me, see, nights-we got the same
room.  I mean, she thought, he's used to different sorts of ways and she
got worried she wouldn't know how to act right about things like that if
they got married."

"It was foolishness," said Ramirez.  "That school place for teaching the
fascination.  But it's Elena's money, if she wanted-i'

"Fascination?" Momentarily the subtle color of near-synonyms in the
Spanish misled Mendoza.

"No, it wasift," said Teresa.  "It's-it was worth the money, Papa, and
that Miss Weir's real nice, you know I seen her once, when I met Elena
uptown to shop.  It's a charm school"-turning back to Mendoza 'you know,
they teach you what's right to wear and so on.  Me, I say it was O.K.

for Elena to try to improve herself, sure.  Even if she had to quit her
job like she did, it's a six-week course an, every day-she

could get another easy enough after.  What was silly about it, those
Wades aren't all so much that she had to feel nervous about theml Mother
of God, you'd think they were millionaires with a butler maybe like in
the movies, way she talked.  He's just a bookkeeper in some office,
but-you know -they're the kind put their noses in the air at us, dirty
low-class Mexes, they say to each other, an' Catholic which they don't
like so much either.  Me, I don't let people like that bother me, not
one little bit.  Maybe we do rent a house instead of owning one, an'
maybe our street isn't so high-class, an' we don't have no car or
telephone or electric washing machine-maybe Papa does just drive a
delivery truck-what's that got to do with anything?  We're respectable
folks, Papa's worked for Mr.  Reyes all the time since he come over, and
that's nearly twenty years, and we don't owe nobody no money like I'll
bet the Wades do.  I got a good job typing for El Gente Mdjico, 'n' I've
saved nearly three hundred dollars toward furniture an' so on for when
Carlos and me get married this summer-which I'll bet is more than Mrs.
Wade can say she did!" Teresa gestured contemptuously.

"People like them, let them talk!  But it bothered Elena, see."

"You have much common sense," said Mendoza with a smile.  "I think
Carlos is lucky.  So nothing was said last night about where your sister
and Mr.  Wade were going?" She shook her head.  "But you would certainly
have expected that he'd see her home?"

"Oh, sure.  I can't figure out how she come to be alone-she mustve been,
for whoever-did it-to sneak up on her.  You said-the corner at Commerce
an' Humboldt?  She must've been on her way home then, and from that
Palace rink too, coming that way."

"We'll find out.  Mr.  Ramirez, you'll have to identify the body
formally, and there'll be an inquest, of course.  I'll send someone to
take you down to the morgue."

"Identify-that mean you're not sure it is Elena?" asked the girl
sharply.

"No, that we know.  It's only a formality of the law."

"Yes, I understand," said Ramirez.  "You're kind, we thank you."

Mendoza took the girl's arm and led her out to the dining room.  She
looked up at him alertly, half-suspicious.  "Well, what now?"

"No need to upset your father more," he said easily.  "Will you give me
the address of this school your sister attended, please-how long had she
been going there?"

,,A-about three weeks it was, yes, just three because today's Saturday
an' she began two weeks ago last Monday.  I don't know that it was doing
her much good at that, she couldn't seem-"

"Miss Ramirez, you're a smart girl.  You can look at things straight,
and I don't think you'D He to me just to defend your sister's memory.

Tell me, do you think she'd have let a stranger pick her up, as they
say?"

Teresa put a hand to her cheek.  "That's a hard one to answer, mister.

Right off I'd say no, an' not to, like you said, make out Elena was
better than she was.  When I said we're respectable folks, that wasn't
no lie either-us girls've been raised proper, know what's right 'n'
wrong, even if maybe we don't know everything like about which forks an'
spoons.  No, sir, Elena wouldn't ever have gone with a strange fellow,
way you mean, somebody whistled at her on the street or offered her a
ride.  But it might be she would think it was O.K.  if it was somebody
she'd seen around, if you know what I mean, and he acted all right.

This rink place, f'r instance, she went there a lot, belonged to some
crazy club they got for regular customers, and if some fellow there got
talking to her and maybe offered her a ride home, if she was alone, or
said he'd walk with her, she rrght've thought it was O.K., if he seemed
polite and all.  She-she couldn't size people up very good.  I know -I
told her time an' again-she made herself look cheap, bleaching her hair
and all that make-up, but she wasn't like that really.  She was her face
twisted suddenly'she was just a kid.  Rollerskating .  .  .

"I see, thank you.  Someone will come for your father-you'll see he's
ready?  I'll cease to intrude for the moment then, but as this and that
comes up, one of us will be back to ask more questions."

"I s'pose you got to."

"Were you very fond of your sister, Miss Ramirez?" he asked, soft and
offhand.

She was silent, and then looked up to meet his eyes.  "She was my
sister.  That don't say I couldn't see her faults-nobody's all good or
bad.  It don't seem fair-she should die like that before she was even
nineteen, hadn't had nothing much.  But it's a thing that happens,
people dying, age don't seem to have an awful lot to do with it
sometimes.

Little babies, like a couple of Mama's.  You got to figure God must know
what He's doing.  And think about them that's still alive."

There was in her round brown eyes all the sad, inborn, fatalistic wisdom
of the primitive tribe living close with the basic realities of life and
death.

At the door, Mendoza met the priest just arriving: round-faced, rich
voiced, middle-aged Irishman, the self-introduction as Father Monaghan
unnecessary to guess his ancestry.  "You are-?  Oh, yes-but what an
incredible, tragic thing, I can hardly believe- Before I go in, then,
Lieutenant, perhaps you would tell me in more detail' And when he had
heard, steady blue eyes fixed on Mendoza, he said quietly, "God grant
you find this poor wicked man soon.  If there is any way I can be of
help- I know this district well, and most of those living here, you
know' :,Yes, thank you, we'll keep it in mind."

"You said, Lieutenant-Mendoza?  At least it must be some comfort to them
that one of their own people should be investigating, one of their own
faith who-"

"Not for some while of that or any, Father."

"Ah," said the priest, "but not forever, my son, will you say that to
God.  One day you will return the full circle."

Mendoza smiled, stood back to let him pass, and went out to the porch.

Adjusting his hat, he said to himself, "imuy improbable, venga lo que
venga-nada de eso!"

The man called Tio Tomis was leaning on the porch railing.  He showed
yellow snags of teeth in a brief grin.  "Nothing doing-that's what I say
to them kind too.  All they're after is money.  For a cop maybe you got
a little brains." The grin did not change his wary cold eyes.  His skin
was bad, showing relics of the smallpox.

"You will be a brother to Manuel Ramirez, I think."

"Sure, that's right, but I don't live here, I'm just visiting.  Too bad
about Elena, she was a nice kid."

Mendoza looked him over thoughtfully.  "I'll hear your permanent
address."

"I live in Calexico, I got a business there, I didn't have nothing to do
with-"

"Indeed?" said Mendoza; small satisfaction warmed him for something,
however irrelevant and minor, to take hold of.  The most respectable
families had black sheep, and this was one of them, that he could see
with half an eye.  "You're a Mexican national, not a citizen?  I'll see
your entry permit." The man brought it out promptly; it was in order.

"Exporter.  What do you export?"

"I got a silversmithy," said Ramirez.  "Nothing big, you know, just a
man and four girls-jewelry.  You know how the tourists go for native
stuff, and here too.  I make a better profit on it up here even with the
duty, you can mark it up higher.  I'm just up on a little business
trip."

"With success?" asked Mendoza genially.

"Oh-sure, sure.  Got to get back, though, the business don't ran
itself." His eyes shifted.  "Say, I won't have to stay, just account
this thing about Elena?  I didn't have nothing to do with- I mean, it
was some crazy fellow killed her, wasn't it-"

"It would be as well if you stay for the inquest," said Mendoza, gave
him a last smiling inspection and went unhurriedly down the walk to his
car; he felt the man's eyes on him.  He drove back to Commerce and
caught Higgins and Dwyer comparing notes before leaving for
headquarters.  No one in the block had heard anything unusual last
night.

He had not expected much from that.  He sent Dwyer with the headquarters
car over to Liggitt Street, to keep an eye on Tomfis Ranrez.

"Maybe a waste of time.  Maybe something for us, but not connected with
the murder.  He's been in trouble, I think he's been inside, anyway he
doesn't like cops-not too close.  Exporter, his papers say.  He might be
just that, indeed."

Dwyer said, "Marijuana-or the big H.  Sure, he might.  And how about
this, Lieutenant-the girl finds it out and either says she'll turn him
in or wants a cut, so he-"

Whatever he is or isn't, he's small time.  I don't think so, but of
course it's a possibility we'll have to check.  Stay on him, I'll send a
man to relieve you." He took I-Eggins back to headquarters to pick up
another car and ferry the father down to the morgue.

Himself, instead of returning to his office where he should be attending
to other matters, he set off to see the Wades.  There should be just
time before lunch.  It was a very routine errand, something for Hackett
or even one of Hackett's underlings, and not until he was halfway there
did Mendoza realize clearly why he felt it important to see to it
himself, why he had gone to the Ramirez house.  The sooner all this
personal matter was cleared out of the way, proved to be extraneous, the
better.

And he must satisfy himself doubly that it was irrelevant, because it
was always dangerous to proceed on a preconceived idea.  He had been
seized by the conviction, looking at the body, that this girl had been
killed by the killer of Carol Brooks-but it was little more than a
hunch, an irrationality backed by very slender evidence.

Carol Brooks, three miles away over in East L.A.-maybe a bigger loss
than this girl had been.  A young, earnest, ambitious girl, who had
earned her living as a hotel chambermaid and spent her money not on
clothes but voice lessons-with an expensive trainer of high repute, too,
who thought a good deal of her, was giving her a cut price.  He had

said she needed constant encouragement, because she didift believe a
black girl could get very far, unless she was reamy the very best, and
she'd never be that good.  Maybe she would have been; no one would ever
know, now.

Nothing very much to support his conviction, on the surface evidence.

And he must guard against holding it blind, if other evidence pointed
another way.  As it would-as it did.  Nobody lived long without giving
at least a few people reasons for dislike, sometimes reasons for murder.

They might turn up several here.  And that was the easy way to look for
a murderer, among only a few, the immediate surroundings and routines of
the girl who'd been killed.

If he was right, they'd need to spread a wider net.  For someone quite
outside, someone without logical motive.  Someone, somewhere among the
five million people in this teeming metropolitan place sprawling in all
directions-someone who was dangerous a hundred times over because the
danger from him was secret, unsuspected.

This time Mendoza would like to get that one.  Because he had missed him
six months ago, another girl was in a cold-storage tray at the city
morgue now.

FOLTR

They met for a not-too4eisured lunch at Federico's, out on North
Broadway.  Hackett left him to mull over what meager information they
had; his own next stop was obviously the skating rink.  The waiter
whisked away the relics of the meal, apologetically; they never hurried
you at Federico's, you could sit as long as you pleased.  "More coffee,
sir?,$

"Please." Mendoza brooded over his refilled cup; he should go back to
his office and occupy himself at being a lieutenant; there were other
cases on hand than this.

The girl who had found the body, nothing there immediately: nothing
known against her, but little emerged of her background either.  It was
a very long chance that she had anything to do with it, but of

course she had to be investigated.  As did every aspect of the Ramirez
girl's life.  And after that, where to look?

He drank black coffee and dwelt for a moment on Mrs.  Elvira Wade.

In her appalftgly cluttered, tasteless, middle-class-and-proud-o&it
living room: a God-fearing upright citizen, Mrs.  Wade, who had spread a
little too much in the waist and hips, not at all in the mind.

"Of course we didn't like it, to say the least-a Mexican girl-and such a
girl, all that cheap4looking bleached hair and perfectly dreadful
clothes, but of course they're always so fond of garish colors, you
know.  And then of course there was the religious question.  Really,
boys have no sense, but it's beyond me how a son of mine could be so
taken in, after all you'd think he'd have some finer instincts, the way
I've tried to bring him up.  Not that I'm not sorry for the poor thing,
the girl I mean, and one shouldn't speak Ul of the dead.  I try to take
a Christian view I'm sure and after all people can't help being born
what they are, but when it comes to accepting them into one's family'

It was something, however, to have embarrassed such a woman even
momentedly: her belated furtive glance at his card, her ugly pink flush,
almost ludicrous.  "And of course," she had added hurriedly, "there's
all the difference in the world between people like that and the real
high-class old Spanish families, everyone knows that, I understand the
peasant class is actually mostly Indian and the real Spaniards wouldn't
have anything to do with them.  But I'm sure you can see how we, my
husband and I, felt'

Mendoza sighed into the dregs of his coffee.  It did not, apparently,
cross Mrs.  Wade's mind that she had perhaps, in a sense, contributed to
the girl's death.  The boy had been strictly forbidden to see Elena
again ("really such strong measures were necessary, though he is
nineteen and ordinarily I don't believe in iron discipline"), and when
it was discovered, through a garrulous acquaintance of Ricky's, that he
had not borrowed the family car to go to the movies last night but to
take Elena to that awful skating plac'Well, I said to Mr.  Wade, when it
comes to lying to his own parents, something drastic must be donel You
can see how she corrupted him, he'd never done such a thing before-I
said to Mr.  Wade, you'll go right down there and, So Mr.  Wade (could
one conjecture, breathing fire, or were the men married to such women
capable of it?-at least he seemed to have acted effectively) had, by
bus, sought out the Palace rink, publicly reprimanded the erring Ricky,
and fetched him ignominiously away.  After this soul-scaring experience,
nineteen-year-old Ricky had probably been in no state to consider how
Elena would get home, and if it had occurred to the Wades, presumably
they had thought a girl like that would be used to going about alone at
night.

As, Mendoza conceded, she had been: she had probably got home alone
before.  He pushed his coffee cup round in a little circle, aimlessly;
and of course the girl would also have been angry, humulated-quite
possibly she might have let a stranger pick her up, a thing she wouldift
ordinarily do.  Someone at the rink?

He wondered what Hackett would find out there.  He paid the bill,
redeemed the Feffari from the lot attendant, and instead of turning back
downtown for headquarters, negotiated his way through the bottleneck
round the Union Station and turned up Sunset Boulevard.  It had begun to
rain steadily, after long threat.

The address Teresa had given him was close into town, along the less
glamorous stretches of that street.  It proved to be the upper half of a
small office building, not new.  A narrow door and a steep stair brought
him to a landing and a sign: THE SUNSET SCHOOL OF CHARM.  A mousy girl
with a Rat figure and harlequin glasses was scrabbling among papers at
the receptionist's desk.

"Miss Weir?"

"Oh, dear me, no." She moved the glasses up to focus on him better.

"No classes on Saturday, sir, and we don't enroll gentlemen anyway."

"Which is not what I am here for," said Mendoza, annoyed at the
implication.  "I want to see A&ss Weir on private business."

"Not here on Saturdays.  .  .  .  Of course I have her home address, but
I don't know -oh, well, I suppose it's all right."

New directions took him, tediously, several miles into Hollywood, to a
street of solidly middle-aged apartment buildings, a little shabby,
thirty years away from being fashionable addresses, but neatly kept up.

The row of locked mailboxes in the foyer of the Blanchard Arms informed
him that Miss Alison Weir lived on the fourth floor.  A hand-lettered
placard further informed him that the elevator was out of order.

Mendoza said mildly, "Damn," toiled up three ifights of dark,
dustycarpeted stairs, pressed the bell of 406 and, regaining his breath,
hoped his quarry was in.

When the door opened to him, he was gratified for more reasons than one.

Miss Alison Weir was worth the drive through traffic, worth a wasted
afternoon.  A middling tall young woman, with an admirably rounded yet
slender figure, less conventionally pretty than charmingly
provocative-rather square chin, a nose too small, a mouth too large,

alert gray-green-hazel eyes under feathery brows, a magnificent
mattwhite complexion, and crisply cut and curled hair somewhere between
copper and auburn, which was moreover nature's own choice for her.

Her tailored dress was exactly the color of her hair, there were
discreet gleams of topaz costume jewelry, her lipstick and nail polish
were of the same burnt-orange shade.  Twenty-nine, thirty, he said to
himself: recovered, thank God, from the arch uncertainty of girlhood,
and miraculously not bent on maintaining it: one might even suspect that
great rarity in a woman, a sense of humor.

"Yes?" And her voice matched the rest of her, a warm contralto.

As he produced his credentials, explained, he swore mentally at the
destiny which involved the woman in a case.  It was not a good idea to
mix personal matters with the job, and he was scrupulous about it.

Until this woman was proved definitely to be clear of any connection
with the case-he would be extremely surprised if she had, but it had to
be checked, of course-strictly business, Luis, he said to himself
regretfully.

"Good lord!" she exclaimed.  "Well, come in, Lieutenant-you're lucky to
catch me, I've just got in myself."

"Then you're excellent advertisement for your business.  Any woman who
can come in out of a rainstorm looking so charming' It was the usual
apartment of this vintage, but the personal touches were firmly
individual: a good many books in cheap low cases against the wall, a row
of framed pen sketches above them, a coffee table with Chinese teak
underpinning topped with a large Benares brass tray, in serene
indifference to incongruity with the rest of the furniture, and an
enormous aerial photograph of a suspension bridge over the simulated
hearth.  He sat down facing that, at her gesture, on the sofa, and
disposed his hat and coat beside him.

"I shouldn't give myself away," she smiled, "but I came in looking like
a drowned rat, I'm afraid.  I'd be in a hot bath now if Marge hadn't
called to warn me that a mysterious sinister-looking stranger' "That
one's not such a good advertisement," he grinned.

"But I can't keep books.  what's all this about the Ramirez girl?

Cigarettes in that box, by the way-and don't you usually hunt in
couples?"

"I've got no business hunting at all," said Mendoza, lighting her
cigarette, then his.  "I ought to be in my office doing this and that
about a dozen other cases.  As it is, I'm tying up loose ends'?-he
gestured"you might say, on the perimeter of this business.  I don't
think it was a

personal business, you see-I think it was more or less chance that the
Ramirez girl was the one killed-but we have to be sure.  I don't know
what I expect from you, but you've been seeing the girl five days a week
for the last couple of weeks, and anything she said to you-any little
problem she mentioned, maybe-?"

"I see." AJison studied her cigarette.  "You're always reading about
these things in the papers-never think of its happening to anyone you
know.  The poor kid .  .  .  I don't know that I can ten you anything."

"I'm hoping you can't," he said frankly.  "We've already run across a
couple of things in her personal life that might-just might-have led to
murder.  They have to be looked into.  If you tell me something else,
that's got to be investigated too.  And I don't believe anything
personal is behind it, I don't want to waste time on that."

"I see," she said again.  "One of these psychos, blowing off steam every
so often, on anyone convenient at the moment."

"They exist.  Something like that, anyway.  And I don't think this is
his first, either.  I'd like to find him before he, shall we say, has
the impulse again."

"Amen to that," she said seriously.  "But how on earth do you even start
to look for a man like that?  It might be anybody."

"I could give you a superior smile and say, We have our methods."

He shrugged.  "There are places to start looking.  The records of any
recently discharged mental patients-our own records of similar assault
ex offenders who might have graduated to something more serious.  We
went through all that on the first case."

"And didn't come up with anything?  So then what do you do?"

"Then," said Mendoza rather savagely, "you file all the records neatly
away marked Case Pending, and you wait for it to happen again.

Of course ideas occur to you about other places to look-but to put them
into effect, I'd need about three times the number of men I've got." He
sighed and put out his cigarette.  "Of course, if one like that kills a
dozen people a week, and obligingly leaves evidence to show it's all his
own unaided work, the upper echelons get excited-and I get the men.  But
nobody, not even a lunatic killer, reaches the top of his career all at
oncthere's a build-up."

"Everyone has to start small?" She smiled briefly.  "I see what you
mean.  Well, I don't think I can add anything to what you've probably

got from her family and so on, but fire away-what do you want to IMOW?ly

"Tid you have much to do with the girl personally?  You teach classes,
or whatever they're called, yourself?"

"Oh, lord, yes, I'm all there is.  It may sound like a racket,
Lieutenant, and maybe it is in some cases, but I think I offer them
something, you know." She leaned to the table to put out her cigarette;
her smile was wryly humorous.  "The ones like this girl-and some others
who might surprise you.  Natural good taste and so on isn't standard
equipment with the so-called upper classes.  I've known girls from the
same sort of background as Elena Ramirez who knew how to dress and had
better instincts, as we say, than girls from wealthy homes.  Mostly I
get girls who are serious about improving themselves, but what they want
to know, all I try to get over to them, is pretty simple.  The very
basic things about clothes and make-up and manners.  You wouldn't
believe what some of them look like when they com'

"But I would," said Mendoza sadly.  "I've seen them in the street, for
my sins.  Generally in those things mistakenly called toreador pants."

She threw back her head and laughed, and he admired the clean white line
of her throat.  "Oh, my lord, I knowl"

"I have no moral objection whatever, you understand-in fact it's enough
to turn a man celibate for life-it's the aesthetic view I object to."

"And how right you are, with most of them.  Well, as you might say
yourself, ZA qud viene eso?  What'

"You speak Spanish, Miss Weir?"

"93y accident.  I was born in Durango-my father was a structural
engineer and worked in Mexico a good deal.  That't-she nodded at the big
photograph'is his last piece of work.  Funny sort of d6cor for a living
room, I suppose I'm sentimental about it-he was very proud of it." She
lit another cigarette.  "In a sort of roundabout way, that's how I got
into this business.  You see, I'm a painter-or shall we say I hope I
am-and that doesift bring in much of a living unless you're really
good-or at least known.  Dad didn't leave me much, and I have to earn a
living some way.  What with moving around the way we did for his work, I
got a rather sketchy education, and then like a fool I quit high school
to get married-which turned out a mistake in more ways than one-and,
well, I thought I'd try this, and it's worked out surprisingly well.

Leaves me a fair amount of time for my own work, and at the same time I
really enjoy it, you know.  Not to bore you' "But how could you indeed?"

"And this isift getting to what you want to know, anyway.  It's a

fairly small group, I never take more than twenty-five in a class and
it's usually around twenty girls.  I try to keep it on a more or less
personal basis, you see.  The course is six weeks, five days a week, but
some of that time is spent on group reading and some on-private
counseling, to give it a fancy name.  Generally, I'll see each girl
privately, oh, say a total of two hours or so a week.  So you see, while
I knew the girl, you can't say I knew her intimately."

"But you're no fool at sizing up people," he said placidly, leaning
back, arms folded behind his head.  "And the girl poured out her
problems into your sympathetic ear?"

"That she did.  You probably know about that-the superior boy friend and
his family's objections.  She was rather a pathetic little thing,
really-awfully earnest, but-" She paused for a word.

The first one comes to your mind about her," he prompted softly.

:,'Stupid," said Alison unhesitatingly.  "She was stupid.  She had no
imagination, subtleties of any sort just didn't penetrate-you know the
type.  Oddly enough, her older sister is quite intelligent-I met them in
town one day-"

"Yes, that girl has brains."

"Elena was honest, and-though she didn't look ituite a respectable girl,
in the old-fashioned sense.  Immature for her age.  But stupid."

"Immature and honest," he murmured.  A little something there.  The man
Tomds, if there was anything in that, this girl would probably have been
too stupid to discover it.  If anyone in that household had seen
something suspicious about the visiting uncle, it would not have been
Elena, but the sharp-eyed Teresa.  "That's no surprise," he said, half
to himself.  "Even dead, she was-unsubtle.  I haven't met the boy
yetjudging by Mrs.  Wade, I'd say that his persistence was less
attraction to Elena than rebellion against his mother."

"Like that?" She looked amused, and then sobered.  "But that's another
thing that happens, Lieutenant-the old, old story.  I've never laid eyes
on him either, don't know what kind of a boy he is, but-"

"Oh, yes, that's the first thing one thinks of here-If it was a private
killing, so to speak.  If she was pregnant, if she could make trouble
for him, if he lost his head- It's happened.  It'R happen again.  We'll
find out if it happened here."

"And how easy," she said, "to talk about it like arossword puzzle.

After all, she's dead.  Nineteen .  .  .  She had a private session with
me yesterday.  She said she'd decided to stop bleaching her hair-"
Alison

stopped abruptly and looked up at him.  "I have thought of something,
but it doesn't sound like much' "I'll tell you whether it does when rye
heard it, hms Weir-or is it Mrs.?"

"I got my own name back after the divorce," she said absently.  "It was
only a year.  And aren't you the autocratic male.  Well, for what it's
worth, Elena asked me yesterday what to do about 'a guy annoys
you!-that's how she put it-she said he 'sort of' followed her and stared
at her."

"iNo me diga!" He sat up.  "Don't tell me! That might be it, you know.

Tell me every last little word she said about itl"

"But there wasn't anything, really!  I'm afraid I didn't take it as very
important.  You mean it might have been-?"

"It might have been.  There aren't any rules for lunatics-or parttime
lunatics-but even lunatics don't often kill utter strangers without some
reason.  Nor what you or I'd call a logical reason, but a reason.

I'm not even at the point of guessing about that here, but it's probable
that at least he'd seen the girl before-consequently she may have
noticed him.  Let's have it-all of it!"

Alison looked stricken.  "You'll want to murder me, Lieutenant-I didn't
give her a chance to say much about it.  In fact, I used it as an excuse
to give her a neat little lecture on Making Oneself Conspicuous.

She said-let me think!-'Miss Weir, what should you do about a guy annoys
you?" and I asked, Annoys you how?  That was when she said he 'sort of
followed' her and stared at her.  And as I say, I seized the opportunity
to point out that sometimes a girl seems to invite such attentions by
making herself look cheap-and so on and so on' Her voice died; she shut
her eyes and pressed both hands to her cheeks, trying to remember.

"There wasn't anything else-she said she understood about that, and that
was when she told me she'd decided to stop bleachingwe talked about
different things, you know, one thing leading to another'

"That you needn't tell met Women, they never keep to the subject!"

"But there was something else, I know it.  Ye' She straightened.

"Just as she got up to leave, she said, 'But it's not exactly like that,
Miss Weir, like he was trying pick me up or nothing like that.  It's
just -funny.  Awful funny." And I said something like, Well, just be
sure you're not encouraging him, and that was that-she left, her
consultation time was up."

"God favor me with patiencel" said Mendoza violently.  "And they

say women are curious and fond of gossipl IWs girl tells you some
strange man is annoying her, and you talk about hair dye and never ask
one question?  She says there's something 'funny' about him, and you'
"How should I know it was anything important?  If I'd-no, but %ten,
Lieutenant-she didn't say it as if she thought it was important,
anything to be worried aboutl You see?  If there'd really been anything
very queer about him, to frighten her' Her voice dropped.

"Yes, you've remembered that she was a stupid girl," he said
sardonically.  "And how did she mean that 'funny'?"

"Extrafio, like that-she said, 'It's just funny' or 'He's just funny,'
and then she said it in Spanish, as if the English word didn't quite
express what she meant.  Es un muchacho extrailo."

"I wt be damned," said Mendoza.  "Something at last, maybe.  'A queer
boy."' He looked at her in cold exasperation.  "And you didn't ask so
much as where and when she saw him, what he looked like?"

"There's a saying about hindsight," retorted Alison, but meekly.

"Would you have?"

"No, but then I'm not a woman.  My God, I'd have thought you'd be a
little curiousl Well, it can't be helped." He got up.  "I'll ask you to
make a formal statement about this, if you will."

"Yes, of course." She went to the door with him.  'Where do I go and
when?"

"Tomorrow will do." Abruptly in better humor again, he smiled down at
her.  "I'll take you down to headquarters myself, not to expose any of
my sergeants to temptation.  I make it a rule not to mix business with
pleasure, but if you turn out to be irrelevant to business, iln be
back-con su permiso."

"Termission be damned, you meanl I do like your nerve," said AEson
pleasantly, leaning on the open door.  "When you're quite satisfied that
I didn't murder the girl-maybe because she was so stupid -or egg your
lunatic onto her, you'll condescend to find me good enough to be seen
with.  Un hombre muY arbitrario, in factl And doesn't it occur to you
that I might have a possessive six-foot admirer hanging about to raise
objections?"

"What, to compete with me?  I don't let those worry me any day."

"As if I needed telling.  What time tomorrow?"

"In a hurry to be rid of me?  One o'clock?"

"But naturally," she said, widening her eyes at him.  "I'm panting for
you to get to work and absolve me of guilt, what else, with such a
reward offered?  One o'clock-I'll be ready." The small amusement faded

from her eyes then and she added, "I hope I have helped.  Good luck with
it."

"That I've had my share of for today.  Unfil then." Scarcely a wasted
afternoon, no-however you looked at it.  He reflected pleasurably and
with anticipation on Alison Weir-a sophisticated, shrewd, sensible woman
(deliver him from romanticizing and possessive young girls!) and a very
lovely one-until he slid behind the wheel and started the engine.  He
then removed his mind from her &"y and thought about what she had told
hial

Hackett was waiting for him in his office; Hackett had been bugy, and
there was quite a list of miscellaneous bits and pieces to think about.

Of greatest importance was the Ricky Wade business.  That had to be
looked into: it was so obvious.  Hackett agreed with that: he would call
there this evening, to catch both the boy and the father at home: a
phone call assured that they would be, Mrs.  Wade sounding surprised and
uneasy (but what have we to do with this sordid matter, her tone
implied).

The proprietor of the rink had been out, but some useful information had
been obtained from his two employees, and Hackett was to see him at
four.  Two of Hackett's men were now out chasing down the patrons
definitely stated to have been in the place last night.  That was a
place to be very thorough, the rink and everybody connected with it, for
the girl had almost certainly been on her way home from there.

When Hackett left, Mendoza shoved aside everything to do with this case,
conscientiously went over all the other pending matters under his
authority.  The still-unidentified corpse found in the frieght yards;
Sergeant Clock hadn't come up with anything new.  The liquor-store
holdup, a clerk shot; Sergeant Brice was on a faint track there, from
the usual anonymous Information Received.  The woman who'd shot her
husband before witnesses: nothing to investigate but much tiresome
routine, collecting statements for the District Attorney's office, in
that sort of thing.  Sergeant Galeano thought he had it about tied up
now.  A new memo from the captain's office, more routine: particulars of
a man New York wanted for parole violation, one Ray Dalton, five-ten,
oneeighty, age 42, Caucasian Mendoza swore to himself and reached for
Hackett's notes again.

The two men at the rink, Hayes and Murphy, described themselves as
attendants.  They kept the place cleaned up (Hackett's comment: "This is
news to anyone who's seen it"), one of them was on the floor

at all times during open hours, to hand out skates and generally keep an
eye on the patrons, and on occasion they spelled Ehrlich, the
ownerproprietor, at the ticket desk.  Not often, because Ehrlich didn't
trust nobody much but himself with money.  Ehrlich's wasn't getting
rich, but business was so-so: most nights and Saturday afternoons they
had maybe thirty, forty people in.  AH kids, sure: teenagers; some of
those were crazy about it, maybe the ones had been too poor ever to have
skates.  They were good enough kids, not punks: the kind of kids carried
switcliknives, roamed round in gangs, all that, got in trouble with the
cops-to them kind roller skating was for the birds.  Sure, the kids got
noisy and rambunctious sometimes like kids do, but there wasn't never
anything real bad, knives pulled or an honest-to-God fight.

No, neither of them ever remembered an adult coming irmot to skate.

There'd been a kind of fad for it once, like that miniature golf and
ping-pong, that was when Ehrlich had opened this place, but nowadays
anybody grown-up, they'd feel like a danm fool roller skating.  Well,
the chairs round the sides were for people to sit and watch, sure, but
this wasn't like an Ice Palace where there was a show to see, for God's
sake -just a bunch of kids skating-nobody came just for that, the chairs
were mostly used by the kids themselves, resting and talking.

As for the club thing, it wasn't really a club but a kind of
seasonticket deal, see.  You got a cut rate if you joined as a "regular
patron": there weren't no meetings or nothing, all a card meant was
they'd paid three or six months in advance.  All the kids with cards
didn't necessarily know each other: sometimes yes, sometimes no.  A card
was an automatic pass good for three nights a week up to the date on it.

What with kids sixteen and seventeen getting maybe forty a week at some
job, a lot of them had more money than was good for them, to throw away.

Both men knew the Ramirez girl and confirmed that she had been in last
night.  What with the row, they could hardly miss her.  Ehrlich had been
damned mad about it too, the guy saying the rink was a low dive and all:
Ehrlich was death on liquor in the place.  This fellow barged right in,
about twenty minutes to ten it was, and pulled the kid off the floorne
that was with this girl.  Gave him hell, way the kids both looked: but
not shouting, private-like at the side of the rink, see, where it was
kind of dark, account the overhead lights were just in the middle, to
light the skating floor.  The fellow took the boy out finally, maybe
five minutes later-practically dragged him, hardly give him time to take
his skates off and turn them in.  Yes, off the premises-Ehrlich probably
saw them go out to the street or wherever, he was arguing at

the guy and followed them.  The girl was mad too, naturally.  And she
didift stay long after; a couple other kids come up and talked to her,
but she probably didn't feel much like staying to skate alone, thought
it made her look silly, have her boy friend dragged away from her like
that.  She took off her skates when the other kids left her, and turned
them in to Hayes who was on duty then, and left the floor.  Murphy, who
was having a cigarette in the little foyer, had noticed her come out;
she'd gone into the rest room-those were opposite sides of the foyer,
with the ticket desk in the center.  Ehrlich was sitting there again by
then, he would have seen her too.  She was in the rest room maybe five
minutes, and come out, and left.  That was maybe ten or five after.

It sure was awful, what had happened to her-to think of a guy who'd do
that walking around loose.  No, neither of them could say offhand if
anybody left right after her-the kids came and went all the time, there
was a Coke machine in the foyer.  And what the hell were the cops
getting at with that?-somebody from here the one killed her?

If Ehrlich heard that he'd hit the ceiling-besides, they were all kids
in here last night, like every night, and no kid had done that.

Dwyer had called in at one-thirty to report that Tomfis Ramirez had left
Liggitt Street and was sitting alone in a bar-and that it might be a
good idea if the relief man sent to join Dwyer understood Spanish.

Sergeant Lake's prim script appended Sent Smith, so that had been taken
care of.

Mendoza got up restlessly and stood at the window, not really focusing
on the panoramic view of the city spread out before him.  He wished the
Ramirez house had a phone; there was, he had thought, no such great
urgency about the matter that it could not wait a couple of hours -he
would stop on his way home, or Hackett could see them tomorrow.  Now
suddenly he felt that it was urgent.

It was four o'clock.  He told himself he was a single-minded fool, and
on his way out told Sergeant Lake he'd be back in half an hour.  He
drove the few blocks to Liggitt Street, and as he pulled up at the curb
before the house Teresa Ramirez came out.  Scarf over her hair for the
rain, shabby brown coat, folded string shopping bagn her way to market,
probably for tonight's dinner.  ("You got to think about them that's
still alive.") He lowered the window and beckoned her.

She ducked in beside him for shelter from the rain, held the door shut
but not latched.  "You found out anything yet?"

"A little.  Something else I want to ask you about."

"Well, O.K., only I got the shopping to do-but it don't matter, I guess,
if it'll help you catch this fellow."

"I'll drive you wherever you're going.  Did your sister'

"That's real nice of you, but I don't want to put you out.  But maybe
you get gas allowance on the job?-excuse me, I don't mean to sound nosy,
but I guess you don't get paid much, driving such an old car, and I
wouldn't want you should go out of your way for m'

"No trouble at all," said Mendoza without a smile.  "TeR me-and take
your time to think about it-did your sister say anything to you recently
about being annoyed by a man who followed her and stared at her?"

They did, sometimes," she said, nodding.  "I told her it was account of
her looking so-you know -and that Miss Weir at that school said so too.

But-you mean special, just lately?  I can't remember she mentioned
anything like that.  .  .  .  Wait a minute though, she did!  Only it
wasn't a man like that, like you mean, somebody whistling at her or
making smart cracks.  Way she said it, it was more as if there was
something sort of funny about it.  She didn't say much-just about some
guy who stared at her, got on her nerves, you know.  She said she was
going try find out who he was, and get him to stop."

Mendoza almost dropped his cigarette, suppressing an exclamation.

"She said that?  It sounds as if he were someone local then, someone who
lives or works around here?"

"don't know anything about that, I don't think she mentioned any
particular place she'd seen him-except-she did say, and I guess that
must've been what she meant, she thought she knew somebody who knew this
guy.  A kid over on Commerce Street, she said.  .  .  .  No, I don't
know if this kid lived on Commerce or she'd maybe just seen him there,
see.  She just said, next time she saw him she was going to ask him who
this other guy was, and tell him tell the guy stop bothering her."

"She had seen this boy with him?"

"Maybe.  I don't know.  She must've, or how would she know the boy )mew
him?  AH Elena said she knew about him, was his name's Danny.  .  .  . I
didn't pay much notice to it, she didn't sound like it was anything
important, just-like it made her kind of mad because it was so siny."

Do we start moving at last?  Mendoza asked himself.  A Ettle something,
a nuance, no more-maybe nothing at all-but a starting place.

He was pleased.  He asked her where she wanted to go.

"Main an, First, its nice of you....  You mean you think this guy might
be the one?  But it wasn't anything at all, or I'd sure have remembered
and told you before!  She didn't sound like she was scared of him or
anything.  You might ask that Miss Weir about it, though, if you think
it's real important, because Elena did say she was going to ten her all
about it-maybe she told her more than she did me."

FIVE

Martin Lindstrom put on the blue corduroy jacket that was getting too
small for him, and buttoned it up slowly.  He didn't feel very good.

"Where you going?" she asked sharply.

"Just out awhile." He still had fifteen cents left but that wasn't
enough to get into a movie, except the one over on Main that had Mexican
pictures, and those were never any good even if you could talk Mexican,
nothing interesting in them.

"You be back for supper, mind!  I don't want you gallivanting all over
the streets aria time like these kids their mothers don't care what
they're up to.  Why you got to go out, Marty?  It's raining something
fierce, you better stay home."

"H-got to see a guy's all," he said.  "One o' the guys at school, Ma, I
said I'd help him with his homework, see."

"Oh." Her tight mouth relaxed a little; she was proud of his good marks
at school.

It was a lie; and he didn't want to go out in the rain, but he didn't
want to stay here either; he felt bad, but he wasn't sure about what
exactly, just everything.  He'd been feeling that way a long while, all
wrong but not knowing how or where, seemed like.  Of course he knew when
everything had sort of started to get on top of him like this, it was
after Dad went.  He wondered where Dad was now.  The funny thing was,
and it was part of the bad feeling now, he ought to be feeling better
about everything because of what that guy this morning said about
finding Dad.

"Ma," he said.  "Ma, you think that guy will-you know -find him,

and' He looked back at her from the door; right then, he dimly knew
himself, he was begging her for the reassurance, Things will get like
they used to be.

"I don't care if they do or not," she said, and besides the crossness in
her voice there was the quivering fear he sensed from her almost all the
time now.  "It's not right," she whispered to herself, "asking a person
all them questions.  Just because you get where you got to ask relief,
they think they can go nosing into ever'thing.  Not as if I like to take
charity -fidn't ask till I had to.  Nobody in our family ever been on
charity before-comes hard to a respectable woman allus held her head up
an' took nothing from nobody.  Way they act, you'd think I was doing
something wrong, ask for enough keep a roof over our heads 'n' food in
our mouths.  Forty dollars a monthl" She sat hunched in the rocker, thin
arms hugging her flat body.  "County's got millions.  Come poking around
with their questions before they let me have forty dollarsl"

"He only ast four-five things, Ma-"

"He ast four-five things too muchl What business is it of theirs?  No,
acourse, they won't find your dad, they'll never find him." She said
that with fear, with hope, with insistence.  "If your dad was minded go
off like that, he'd be real careful make it so's nobody'd ever find him,
aifan' it's seven-eight months back he went, too."

The boy was silent.  He knew all sorts of things in the dumb, vague way
thirteen does know -hardly aware that he knew.  She made out she didn't
mind Dad going off, except for the money, but she did.  She was afraid
and making out she wasn't.  He knew there were things in her mind that
for years she'd shut away somewhere, and now they'd got out, they were
shapeless unseen monsters, crowding in on her and him both.

"Don't you stay out later than six," she said.  "Six is supper like
"OUS.

Then, all of a sudden, he knew why he felt bad-why he'd been feeling
like this all the time since.  In awful clarity it came to him that
things never stayed the same, or even got back to what they'd been
before.  However bad things were, you were safe, knowing what a day
would be like, tomorrow and next week; but it would change so you didn't
ever know, and you couldn't stop it any way.  She wanted to, and she
thought she had, and now she'd found nobody ever could.  One of the
invisible monsters right here with them now was the threat and promise
of change to come.

It was knowledge too big for thhteen, and he turned blindly and ran out,
and down the dark rickety stair into the rain.

The rain was cold coming down but like mostly in California when it
rained it wasn't really cold, not cold like back in Minnesota with the
snow and all.  The snow was kind of nice, though-Dad said-Dad didn't
like California much-maybe he'd gone back east, and He stopped,
breathless, and leaned on the window of the drugstore on the corner
there, as if he was looking at the picture of the pretty girl saying
Instant Protection, but he didn't see anything in the window.  Oh, Dad!

he cried in silent agony.

He'd lost Dad too, just then, and forever.  It wouldn't matter if Dad
came back, things would never be like they were, ever again.

"]FE, kid," said Danny behind him.

Marty turned, eager for companionship, for anybody to talk to.  "I- E,
Danny, wh-what's new?" It came out kind of squeaky-sounding, like a real
little kid, and embarrassed him all the more because of Danny
being-well, Danny.

"Nothin'much.  Say, Marty'

Mr.  Cummings had already turned on the lights in the drugstore, the
rain made it so dark-it was getting dark anyway, fast-and Marty could
see their blurred reflections in the glass of the window.  They looked
funny together, him and Danny Smith, but maybe only to anyu body knew
them.  Because he was so big beside Danny, he'd grown so fast just this
last year-Dad said their family always did start to grow awful
young-last month when all the kids got measured for gym in school, he'd
been sixty-eight inches and some over, and that was only four inches
shorter than Dad.  In the glass there, sideways, he saw himseer looking
man-size, looming alongside of Danny-but it was the other way round
inside them.  Danny was like a grown-up somehow, things he knew and said
and did, not having to be in any special time, and always having money,
and sometimes he smoked cigarettes.  It wasn't just Marty, he guessed
most of the guys around here felt the same about Danny, and Danny sort
of bossed them around, and they let him.

The figures in the window gjass weren't sharp, just shapes like, but
just the way the smaller one moved you'd know it was Danny, didn't have
to really see his sharp straight nose and the way his forehead went up
flat, not bulgy, into black hair that was wavy like a girl's with a
permanent, or his eyes that moved a lot and were bluer than most blue
eyes.

"Say, Marty, why'd you run off las' night?" Danny was asking.  "At the
show, alla sudden-we hadden seen it right through yet either.  You
scareda your ole lady, hafta get home when she says?"

"I didn't so sudden," he said quickly.  Danny and a lot of the guys
oxound here, they thought that was funny-both kinds of funny; they sort
of needled you if your mother said a certain time and you did what she
said.  "I just decided to," he said.  "It wasn't a very good pitcher
anyway."

"You kiddin'?  It was'

"I seen it before," said Marty, desperately.

Danny just looked at him.  Then he said, "You been down t' see where the
murder was?"

Something moved a little, dark and uneasy, at the very bottom of Marty's
mind.  "What murder?"

"Jeez, don't you know anything happens?  Right down at Commerce m
Humboldt, you know where that house burn down across from the wop store.

It was some girl, an' boy, was she a mess, blood all over an' one of her
eyes punched right out-whoever did it sure musta been mad at her-I dint
get there till after they took her away, but you could still see some o'
the blood, oney the rain'

Marty's stomach gave a little jump.  He put his right hand over that
place on the left sleeve of the blue corduroy coat, where the mark was.

It wasn't a very big spot, but it showed dark against the light blue and
it was stiff.  It hadn't been there this time last night when he put the
jacket on; he'd noticed it this morning.

I got it in the theayter last night, he told himself.  Of course it
wasn't blood.  Something on the seat in there, it was.

Empty lot where a house had burned down.  All of a sudden he remembered
how it had been, in the dark last night: something tripping him, hard
squarish cement something when he felt of it, like what was left when a
house was burned.  A lot of grass around it.

No, it wasn't, he said in his mind frantically, it wasn't like that, I
must remember wrong.  His mind said back at him, Like you remembered
wrong before?

Danny was going on talking but he couldn't listen.  Please, oh, please,
it can't have happened again.  It never did happen, nothing happened
before, you just remembered wrong is all.  You can't ever be sure in the
dark, and it was night then too, of course it had to be, it was always
night when -When things happened.  A light green shirt that time because
it was

hot, it was summer, and the mark didn't come out when she washed it, you
could still see where it'd been.  That wasn't blood either, acourse it
wasn't, how could it be?

He said louder than he meant to, "I-l got to go home, I better not be
late for supper," and walked away fast as he could.  He didn't want to
hear any more about it, or he might remember too much.  There wasn't
anything to remember, he was just making up stories in his head to try
and scare her, because he There were long times when he never thought
about it, but when he did, it was all right there sharp and clear, more
like it pounced at him instead of him remembering.  That other night.

The first time.  Wet red mark on the green shirt and her
scolding-because it was late.  The big doll with the pink dress and
goldy hair.  And next day people talking about-what had happened-to that
colored girl.

He was almost running now, trying to run away from the voice in his
mind, and he blundered into a man walking the other way.  The man said
something and put out a hand to steady him on his feet, but Marty pulled
away and dodged round the corner into Graham Court.  He leaned on the
broken-down picket fence of the corner house and he hit it with his
fist, the breath sobbing in his throat, tears squeezing out from
tight-shut eyes.

"I tole her," he said low in his throat.  "I tried tell herl" It was all
he could do, wasn't it?  What else could thirteen years old do?

But there wasn?t much to tell, that time or this time-he really
remembered, knew his own sell.  She said so.  He didn't know, he must've
remembered wrong, or he was a wicked boy just trying to scare her.

Making up stories that couldn't be so.

And she washed the green shirt but the mark still showed after.

After a while Marty straightened and went on, slowly, down the little
cul-de-sac.  He didn't want to go home; just two things pulled him that
way, drearily, as they had before.  Habit, and Dad's voice that time a
while back, slow and easy like always, Dad saying, "You want to be nice
t' your ma, Marty, an' help her all you can, an' doift do nothing to
worry her.  I know it ain't easy, times, but things ain't easy for her
neitheir.  You got to remember she come of folks had a lot more than the
Lindstroms, back home-her pa Ole Larsen was a rich man, eleven hundert
acres he had all good land too, an' his girls never wanted for nothing.

Maybe them Larsens did give theirselves airs, but maybe they had reason
too, an' anyways your ma never had cause to makeshift an' scrims on
nothing, till she married me-an' it ain't exactly been a easy

row to hoe for her, not noways.  I know she gets cross-tongued once in a
while, but you got to remember things is hard for her too."

That had been before-anything happened.  If it had.

Marty went up the stairs of the apartment building slow, hanging onto
the shaky railing.  He felt another thing he'd got to feeling allmost
all the time lately, and that was as if there were two of him: one was a
little kid whose ma was right whatever she said or did, just naturally
because she was Ma-and the other was, well, nearest he could come was
Marty-separate-from-Ma, who knew Ma might be wrong about some things. He
tried to push that Marty away, because he didn't want to really know
that, but seemed like that Marty was getting stronger and stronger in
him.  At the same time there were two other Martys, the one that was
just a wicked little boy making up stories-and the one that knew
different.

That one was scared, deep and cold inside.  Because it was all his
fault, must be, even if he'd never meant, never known, if he'd just sort
of forgot for a while And the bad feeling had begun maybe when Dad went
away, but what had made it so bad ever since was-that first time, back
there on Tappan Street on a breathless night in late September.

He'd had to tell her.  Things happened that were too big for you,
frightening and confusing, that you couldn't do anything about yourself
-you told your ma or dad, and they knew what to do.  Only Dad hadn't
been there.

And there was a third place the real bad feeling started, after she
wouldn't believe, wouldn't listen-when she did something she'd never
done before, ever: when she went out and bought a newspaper, and read
about-It.  And said like to herself in a funny kind of whisper, "Only
some nigger girl, anyways.  Prob'ly trash-just trash."

And the next day she'd gone and found this place for them to move,
account it was cheaper, she said.

He got to the dark top of the stairs, and he thought frantically, I got
to tell her.  I got to try.  Becau-se He was sick and shaking with fear,
with guilt, with the weight of a thing thirteen couldn't bear alone. The
door was locked like always and he knocked and she said sharp, "Who is
it?"

"It's me, Ma, let me in." And there wasn't any other way to say it than
he did, then: "Ma, it's happened againl Ma-please listen-I didn't mean
to-I never meant nothing to happen-but it must've, becaus'

She just stood and stared at him.

"!-Because it was blood on my coat's morning." He gulped and went on
through the lump in his throat, "And-and the place they found-it-it was
right where l'

The fear pulled her face all tight and cross4looking for a minute, but
then it changed to being mad at him, and she said quick, "I don't listen
to a boy tells lies!"

He looked at her durably.  He knew what else she'd say, like she had
before; but this time he knew something else-that what she said wasift
just at him, it was at that place she had way inside her where she knew
it was so-it was to shut the door to that place and forget it was there
at all.  And now she was asking him to help her, seemed like, not mad
any more but asking.

"You get washed an' eat your supper while it's hot, an' then you set
right down to that schoolwork you shoulda done last night-I'm allus
tellin' you, don't want to end up like your dad, not enough schoolin'
for a decent job-you're a real smart boy, Marty, you take after my
folks, an' last thing I do I see you get educated good, maybe even
college.  But you got to remember you don't know ever'thing yet, see,
an'-an' kids get mixed up in their minds, like, that's all-"

He whispered, "I'm not awful hungry, Ma."

And all the while the secret was there in the room with them, neither of
them daring to look at it open: that she wouldn't see for what it really
was, that he was getting more and more afraid of-that they had to live
with somehow.

Danny stood there by the dragstore awhile after Marty left.  On top of
his mind he thought, That big lummox of a Lindstrom kid, sure a dumb
one.  But most of him was occupied with the job he was on, and he felt
kind of tensed-up because it was the first time his dad had taken much
notice of him, acted like he was a person with any sense, and he wanted
to do this right.

It had been a big surprise to him to feel the way he did.  Asked him
last week, he'd have said it wasn't nothing to him, whatever his dad did
or said-been three and a half years since he'd laid eyes on him,
anyways-and that went other way round too, they'd always just sort of
stayed out of each other's way.  Same as with his mother, but she was
just a nothing, like a handful of water, and there was at least
something to his dad.  And he'd felt a new, funny feeling when his dad
said that: Kind of a sharp kid, you can maybe be some use to me.

Besides, this was different from hooking little stuff off store counters
or stripping cars at night.  This was a big job.

When the man came, he spotted him right off from what his dad had said
he looked like; but he waited awhile, just went on looking in the
drugstore window.  The guy stopped and stood there too, waiting, under
the store canopy.  Nobody came past after him, and when Danny walked
down the block there weren't any cops watching from alleys, nobody at
all.  It was all going just like his dad had planned, but of course you
had to play it smart.  Danny walked back to the drugstore; he didn't
stop by the guy waiting there, just slowed down, and he said, "He's
changed his mind, mister, he says meet him at the Paradise Bar on
Second, right now."

The man said, "What?" sort of dumb and surprised, and then he made as if
to grab for him, but Danny slid away in the dark, into the alley round
the corner, and waited.  After a minute the man started to walk up
toward Second Street, not very fast; he looked back a couple of times,
but once away from the corner lights it was dark and Danny stayed close
up against the buildings.

On Second Street there were more lights, but people on the sidewalk,
too, to hide him; he stayed farther behind, but he could still see the
guy when he turned in under the pink neon sign that said PA=ISE.  SO
that was O.K.  And no cops.

Danny turned and sauntered back to the corner; another man stood there,
looking in the window of the liquor store.  "O.K.," said Danny.

"He's in, and no cops."

"You sure?"

"You think I can't smell a cop?"

The man relaxed a little, grinned.  "Maybe you ain't so smart as you
think, but I guess you're not so dumb neither.  Chip off the ole block
like they say, huh?  O.K., you go along.  Now I just let the guy stew
awhile an' get real worried." He went back to looking in the window.

Inside the bar a jukebox was pounding, and the blood-hammer in Morgan's
head began to keep time with it.  He went all the way in to the last of
the little booths opposite the bar, and sat down; the waiter who came up
gave him a sour look for taking a booth instead of going to the bar, but
he didn't say anything and he'd come over promptly because Morgan was a
lot better dressed than the usual customer in here and might be drinking
something besides beer or wine.

Morgan asked for whiskey, but when it came he just left it there on

the table; he'd never been much of a drinker and not at all the last
eight years, since- Which was a useless gesture, maybe: morbid.

He sat there and waited.  The place wasn't crowded on a rainy night,
only ten or a dozen men at the bar.  It was stuffy, too hot after the
street, and he realized he still had his coat on, slid out of the booth
to take it off, fold it beside him.  The clock on one side of the bar
said half-past six, but Morgan knew he'd better keep his eye off the
clockthe man wanted him to sweat, and might not show up for hours.  In
his mind he knew that, while all the rest of him was tense and agonizing
to get to it, have it done, the ultimate doom arranged.

He lit a cigarette and set himself to wait, and wait, and wait some
more; and his intellect told him further (methodical, plodding Morgan)
that if he let himself go over and over this thing emotionally, he'd be
in just the softened-up state the bastard wanted, at the end.  So he
made himself think about anything, everything else than Sue and Janny.

The first thing he seized on to think about was that boy.  Using a
youngster, for this.  That was a conventional thought out of the small
neat circle of life he'd always lived in up to now: correction, up to
being on the job he held now, for that (even before his own private
nightmare) should certainly have taught him about lives lived elsewhere
and otherwise, where children weren't automatically screened from the
uglier realities because they were children.

It didn't occur to him that the boy was just relaying a message, didn't
know what he was mixed into: he'd seen his expression.  And there were
two things about that, that turned this into something like a real
nightmare where ordinary sights and sounds made no sense or a new
monstrous kind of sense.  That boy hadn't realized, maybe, that there on
the rain-swept empty corner, as he swaggered past Morgan, the lights
from the store fell unshadowed on him.  Oh, yes, the boy had known just
what he was doing.

Morgan looked down at his hands on the wet, scarred table, and as he
looked they began to shake violently, so he put them in his lap.

Quite a handsome boy.  Even in that deceiving light, he had seen the
regular features, fair skin with the black hair and blue eyes all the
more emphasized for it, the thick brows going up in little wings at the
end.

He knew that curve by heart, the very angle, Janny's brows winging up at
the corners of Janny's blue eyes Not to think about Janny, or Sue.

Janny, just about now, being tucked into bed with that ridiculous
stuffed tiger Mrs.  Gunn had got

her, that she was so crazy about.  Warm and powdery from her bath,
buttoned into the woolly blue pajamas.

That boy had just had on jeans and a leather jacket.  That boy who was,
who must beFor God's sake!  said his mind to him savagely.

He glanced sideways at the clock.  It was twenty-five minutes to seven.

He remembered a while ago, couldn't remember where, reading an article
on juvenile delinquents that had interested him.  It was funny, there
was a clear picture in his mind of himself saying to Sue, "The man's got
something there, you know," but he couldn't recall now who the author
was, some official or a senator or whatever.  Anyway.  Often the most
intelligent children, it said, those with imagination and ability, the
nonconforming minds any society needs-but for this and that reason
turned in the wrong direction.

All right, yes; up to a point; some of them, the leaders.  Most, well
Hell, maybe the man was right.

The boy-led to Janny and he mustn't think about Janny.  Quick, something
else.

Another boy.  Barging into him in the street there, dodging past.

Didn't know it was a boy-big as a man, as tall as Morgan himselfuntil he
heard the sobbing light breath, had a glimpse of him close in the
reflected street light.  That was the Lindstrom boy, that one; they Eved
around here, of course.  Clumsy big ox of a kid, one of those got all
his growth at once, early, and wouldn't quite learn how to handle his
size for a while; and still so baby-faced, any roundish, smooth,
frecklenosed thirteen-year-old face, that you expected to see half a
foot below where this one was.  Lindstrom was what, Danish, they grew
big men mostly.

Generalizing again, he thought; you couldn't, of course.  The archetype
Scandinavian wasn't a wife-deserter, but this one was.  That report
wasn't made up yet either, and he had to have it ready Monday morning
for Gunn.  .  .  .  Something queer there about the Lindstroms,
something that smelled wrong, hard to say what.  It could be another
case of collusion to get money out of the county, but Morgan didn't
think so; he didn't think that, whatever was behind the indefinable
tension he'd sensed in that place, it came from dishonesty.  Anything
so-uncomplicated-as dishonesty.  The woman was a type he knew:
transplanted countrywoman, sometimes ignorant, frequently stubborn at
clinging to obsolete ways and beliefs, always with a curious rigid

pride.  'That type might be dishonest about anything else, but not about

money.

Invariably the first thing that kind said to him was, "I've never asked
nor took charity before." Marion Lindstrom had said that.  She hadn't
told him much else.

But the report had to be made out, and the hunt started for Eric John
Lindstrom.

It was a quarter to seven.  Morgan kept himself from watching the door;
his mind scrabbled about desperately for something else irrelevant to
occupy it.  He heard the door open, couldn't stop himself looking up to
see: outside he was still uncomfortably warm, but there was an ice-cold
weight in his stomach, and it moved a little when he saw the man who'd
come in-a stranger, not the one.

And right there something odd happened to him.  Suddenly he knew what
was behind the queerness he'd sensed in that Lindstrom woman, this
morning.  The few minutes he'd been there, talked to the woman and the
boy.  It was fear: secret fear.  He knew it now because it was his own
feeling: the sure recognition was emotional.

He thought without much interest, I wonder what they're afraid of.

At seven o'clock, because of the looks he was getting from the barman,
he drank the whiskey and ordered another.  It was cheap bar whiskey,
raw.  At a quarter past seven he ordered a third; he decided the whiskey
was just what he'd needed, because his mind had started to work again to
some purpose, and suddenly too he was no longer afraid.

That was a hell of a note, come to think, getting in a cold sweat the
way he had without ever even codsidering whether there were ways and
means to deal with this, come out safe.  What had got into him, anyway?

There must be a way, and what he'd told himself this morning still went:
to hell with any moral standards.  If When at half-past seven someone
slid into the booth opposite him, he'd almost finished a fourth whiskey.

He looked up almost casually to meet the eyes of the man across the
table, and he wondered with selfcontempt that didn't show on his face
why he'd ever been afraid of this man.

"You been doin' some thinkin', Morgan?" The man grinned at him
insolently.  "Ready to talk business?"

"Yes," said Morgan, cold and even.  "I've been doing some thinking, but
not about the money.  I told you before, I haven't got that kind of
money."

The man who called himself Smith laughed, as the bdrman came up, and he
said, "You'll buy me a drink anyways.  Whiskey."

The barman looked at Morgan, who shook his head; he'd had just the right
amount now to balance him where he was.  "Don't give me that," said
Smith when the man was gone.  "You're doin' all right.  You got money to
throw away once, you got it to throw away twice."

Money to throw away ...  But that was perfectly logical reasoning,
thought Morgan, if you happened to look at things that way.  He looked
at Smith there, a couple of feet across the table, and he thought that
in any dimension that mattered they were so far away from each other
that communication was impossible.  He found, surprisingly, that he was
inteRectuaRy interested in Smith, in what made him tick.  He wondered
what Smith's real name was: he did not think the name the woman had used
two years ago, Robertson, was the real name any more than Smith. Smith's
eyes were gray: though his skin was scoffed with the marks of old acne
and darkened from lack of soap and water, it was more fair than dark.

And his eyebrows curved up in little wings toward the temples.  Morgan
stared at them, fascinated: Smith had worn a hat puffed low when he'd
seen him before, and the eyebrows had been hidden.  The eyebrows were,
of course, more confirmation of Smith's identity.  With detached
interest Morgan thought, lifight be Idsh, that coloring.

"You know," he said, "you might not be in such a strong position as you
think.  Your story wouldn't sound so good to a judge-not along Vdth me."

"Then what're you doin' here?" asked Smith softly.

And that of course was the point.  Because it was a no man's land in
law, this particular thing.  Anyone might look at Smith, Esten to what
that upright citizen Richard Morgan had to say, and find it incredible
that any intelligent human agency could hesitate at making a choice
between.  But it wasn't a matter of men-it was the way the law read. And
in curious juxtaposition to the impersonal letter of the law, there was
also the imbecilic sentimentality, the mindless lip service to
convention -the convention that there was in the physical facts of
parturition some magic to supersede individual human qualities.  He
could not take the chance, gamble Janny's whole future, Sue's sanity
maybe, on the hope that some unknown judge might possess a little common
sense.  Because there was also the fact that, as the law took a dim view
of buying and selling human beings, it didn't confine the guilt to just
one end of the transaction.

Smith knew that, without understanding it or needing to understand it;
but the one really vital fact Smith knew was that there had never been a
legal adoption.  They had hesitated, procrastinated, fearing the
inevitable questions .  .  .

"!-A business proposition, that's aB," Smith was saying.  "Strickly
legal." His tone developed a little resentment, he was saying he had a
legitimate grievance.  "You made a Goddamn sharp deal with my wife, a
hundred lousy bucks, an' you got away with it, she didn't have no
choice, on account she was up against it with me away like I was, flat
on my back in the hospital I was, an' the bills runnin' up alla timeyou
took advantage of her not knowin' much about business, all rightl I
figure it same way like a bank would, Morgan-innerest, they call it,
see?"

There was an appalling mixture of naive satisfaction and greed in his
eyes; Morgan looked away.  (Interest, just how did you figure that kind
of interest?  Twenty-six months of a squirming warm armful that weighed
fourteen pounds, eighteen, twenty-two, and a triumphant
twenty-nine-and-a-half?-he forgot what the latest figure was, only
remembered Sue's warm chuckle, reporting it.  Twenty-six months of
sticky curious baby-fat fingers poking into yours, into the paper you
were trying to read, into what was almost a dimple at the corner of
Sue's mouth: of the funny solemn look in the blue eyes: of ten pink toes
splashing in a sudsy tub.  That would be quite a thing to figure in
percentages.)

"You can raise the dough if you got to," said Smith.

"Not ten thousand," said Morgan flatly.  "I might manage five." And that
was a deliberate lie; he couldn't raise five hundred.

"I don't go for no time-payments, Morgan." The gray eyes were bleak.

"You heard me the first time.  I give you a couple days think about it,
but don't give me no more stall now.  Put up or shut up."

Poker, thought Morgan.  Bluff?-that he'd bring it open, go to law?

You couldn't take the chance; and in this last five minutes it had come
to him that he didn't have to.  There was only one way to deal with
Smith, and Morgan knew how it could be done, now: he saw the way.

He could take care of Smith once for all time, and then they would be
safe: if necessary later, he could handle the woman easier, he
remembered her as an indecisive nonentity.  There was, when you came to
think of it, something to be said for being an upright citizen with a
clean record.  And it would not trouble his conscience at all.  In the
days

he'd worn Uncle's uniform, he had probably killed better men, and for
less reason.

There was hard suspicion now in the gray eyes; Morgan looked away, down
to his empty glass, quickly.  He'd been acting too calm, too controlled;
he must make Smith believe in his capitulation.  He made his tone angry
and afraid when he said, low, "All right, all right-I heard you the
first time!  H guess if I cash in those bonds-I mightbut I'll get
something for my moneyl You'll sip a legal agreement before you touch-"

"O.K., I don't mind that."

"You've got to give me time, I can't raise it over Sunday'

"Monday night."

"No, that's not long enough'

"Monday," said Smith.  "That's the time you got-use it.  Make it that
same corner, seven o'clock, with the cash-an' I don't take nothing
bigger than fives, see?" He slid out of the booth, stood up.

"Yes, damn you," said Morgan wearily.  Without another word Smith turned
and walked toward the door.

Morgan took out his wallet below the level of the table, got out the one
five in it, held it ready.  When Smith looked back, going out, Morgan
was still sitting there motionless; but the second Smith turned out of
sight to the left, Morgan was up, quick and quiet.  He laid the five on
the table and got into his coat between there and the door; outside, he
turned sharp left and hugged the building, spotting the back he wanted
ham a block ahead.

Because Kenneth Gunn, who had been a police officer for forty years and
sure to God ought to know, had once said to him, "They're a stupid
bunch.  Once in a long while you get a really smart one, but they're few
and far between.  The majority are just plain stupid-they can't or won't
think far enough ahead."

Maybe this was Smith's fixst venture into crookedness, but it should
qualify him for inclusion in that; Morgan hoped so.  There was a chance
that the boy was posted to watch, of course; but he had to risk that.

The precautions about the meeting place, beforehand, were to assure
Smith that Morgan came alone: and satisfied of that, Smith's mind might
have gone no further.

Smith had made another mistake too, one frequently made by men like him.

They always underestimated the honest men.

It had stopped raining and turned very cold.  This was the slack hour
when not many people were out, and it was easy to keep Smith spotted,

from pool to pool of reflected neon lights on the sidewalk.  If he had
looked back, he'd have found it as easy to spot Morgan; but he didn't
look back.  He walked fast, shoulders hunched against the cold, round
the next corner to a dark side street.

When the trail ended twenty minutes later Morgan told himself, almost
incredulously, that his luck had turned; he was due for a few breaks.  .

.  .  He'd had a job to keep Smith in sight and still stay far enough
back, down these dark streets, and he'd lost all sense of direction
after they got off Second.  But at that last corner, stopping in shadow,
watching Smith cross the narrow street ahead, Morgan realized suddenly
where they were.  He was at the junction of Humboldt and Foster, a block
down from Commerce; it looked as if Humboldt ended here, where Foster
ran straight across it like the top bar on a T, but it only took a jog,
started again half a block to the left.  what made the jog necessary was
Graham Court, a dreary little cul-de-sac whose mouth gaped narrowly at
him directly opposite.  He'd been here before, just this morning.  And
Smith was going into Graham Court.

Morgan jaywalked across Foster Street and under the lamppost whose bulb
had been smashed by kids, and into Graham Court.  It was only wide
enough for foot traffic: there were three dark, dank, big frame houses
on each side, cheap rooming places, and right across the end of the
court, a four-story apartment building of dirty yellow stucco.

A dim light from one of the ground-floor windows there showed Smith as
he climbed the steps and went in.

"I will be damned," said Morgan half-aloud.  Luck turning his way?

-with a vengeance!  The building where the Lindstrom woman lived: where
on his legitimate comings and goings Richard Morgan, that upright and
law-abiding citizen, had every reason to be, a real solid beautiful
excuse, good as gold.

And that was just fine, better than he could have hoped for: he saw
clear and confident how it would go, now.

six

Mendoza realized they'd have to let the Danny go: it might not be
impossible to find the Danny Elena Ramirez had known, if it would be
difficult; but more to the point, there was no way of identifying the
right Danny.  What was interesting about this matter was that by
implication it narrowed the locale.

He had formed some very nebulous ideas-mere ghosts of
hypotheses-overnight, out of the evidence a second murder inevitably
added to the evidence from a first one; and he thought that a restricted
locale was natural, if you looked at it a certain way.  At least, it was
a fifty-fifty chance, depending on just what kind of lunatic they were
hunting.  If he was the kind (disregarding the psychiatrists'
hairsplitting solemn terms) whose impulse to kill was triggered suddenly
and at random, the odds were that his victim would be someone in the
area where he lived or worked: and considering the hour, probably the
former.  If he was the kind capable of planning ahead, then the place of
the crime meant nothing, or very little, for he might have cunning
enough to choose a place unconnected with him.  But to balance that
there was the fact that madmen capable of sustained cunnidg generally
chose victims by some private logic: they were the ones appointed by God
to rid the world of prostitutes, or Russian spies, or masquerading
Martians.  Like that.  And to do so, they had to be aware of the victims
as individuals.

So there was a chance that this one, whatever kind he was, lived
somewhere fairly near the place he bad killed.  And that might be of
enormous help, for it suggested that he had lived (or worked) somewhere
near the place Carol Brooks had been killed last September.  If he was
the man who had killed her, and Mendoza thought he was.

Sunday was only another day to Mendoza; he lay in bed awhile thinking
about all this, and also about Alison Weir, until the sleek brown
Abyssinian personage who condescended to share the apartment with him,
the green-eyed Bast, leapt onto his stomach and began to knead the
blanket, fixing him with an accusing stare.  He apologized to

Lindstroms.  If you'd asked her, she'd have said-in fact, she was saying
it now to Mendoza-that most any other tenants she'd ever had while she
was manageress here, and that'd been eleven years, were more likely to
bring detectives around.  That blonde hussy in 307, for instance, or Mr.
Jessup who was, not to beat round the bush, just a nasty old man-and
there'd been that couple in 419 that got drunk most nights and threw
things.

She told him about them all, at some length and, when she remembered,
taking pains with her grammar, because this one was a lot more
interesting-looking, and seemed more interested in her, than the first
one.  She always thought there was something about a man with mustache.

This one looked a little bit like that fellow in the movies, the one
that was usually the villain but personally she thought about a lot of
the movies she'd seen with him in that the girl was an awful fool to
prefer some sheep-eyed collar-ad instead, but there was no accounting
for tastes.  And a real gentleman too, beautiful manners; of course that
was one thing about these Mexes, people said things about them, but of
course there was classes of them just like anywhere, only when they were
highclass like this one, you said Spanish.

"-And I tell you, when he up and left, and everybody knew it, nobody
couldn't hardly believe it!  You'd never have thought they was that kind
at all, fly-by-nights I mean that don't go on steady, you know what I
mean, all their lives.  But I tell you, lieutenant, I like to sort of
study people, and G- goodness knows I get the chance in my job, and I
said to myself at the time, There's something behind it."

"There usually is.  The man left in August, you said, early."

"I couldn't swear to the date, but it was after the rent was due-and
paid.  They was never a day late.  Good tenants.  Maybe the first week."

And how long did the woman and boy stay on?"

"Oh, I can tell you that to the day.  It was the twenty-second of
September they left, she told me in the morning, late, round noon maybe,
and they went that night.  I remember because she was paid to the end of
the month, but they went before, and I did think that was funny, because
it must've meant she'd paid extra wherever they were moving, you know,
to move in before the first.  And already bein' paid up to the first
here, you'd think- Of course, all I know, she didn't say, they might've
been going back east or somewheres.  I did ask, account of mail, not
that they ever had much of that, mostly ads-but she never said, just
looked at me as if I was being nosy.  And I'll tell you something else,
Lieutenant, you can believe it or not, but that was just exactly the
fourth time I'd spoke to Ms' Lindstrom, all two years they'd been here.

That was the kind they was-her, anyways.  Why, they'd moved in a week or
more before I ever laid eyes on her-it was him rented the place, and
paid, and like people mostly do they moved in at night, after work, you
know -not that they had much to bring, a few sticks o' furniture.  But I
was telling you about when he went.  It was Mis' Spinner in 319 told me,
right next to them, they had 320, you can see that I wouldn't notice
right off, especially with them, sometimes I'd see him going off in the
morning or coming home, but not every day.

And Mis' Spinner thought I ought to know he'd left, at least hadn't been
there she didn't think four-five days, time she told me.  Well, they was
paid up to the end of August, I didn't go asking questions till then,
none o' my business, but when September first come round, it was her
come down to pay the rent and then I did figure, better know where we
stood, if you see what I mean.  Without wanting to be nosy," added Mrs.
Cotter virtuously.  "She wouldn't adn-tit he'd gone and left her, froze
right up and said I needn't worry about the rent, and some rigmarole
about he was called back east sudden.  But alla same, it wasn't a week
before she had to get herself a job, so I knew all right.  And if you
ask me-"

"Where did she work, do you know?"

"Sure, it was a night job cleaning offices downtown-the Curtis Building.

And that's what I was going' to say, Lieutenant-that kind of job, it
shows you what she was like, and you ask me, it all ties in, it was
prob'ly all her fault, whole thing.  She was one of them old maids
married like they say, for sure.  Went around with a sour look alla
time, never a smile or a friendly word in passing-and as for looks!

Well, I don't s'pose she was more than forty, and I tell you, she looked
like her own gran'mother!  Hair screwed up in a little bun behind, and
skin like a piece o' sandpaper, you could tell she never took any care
of herself, prob'ly used laundry soap and that's that-never a scrap of
make-up, and cheap old cotton house dresses was all I ever seen her in.

You know's well as me there's no call for a woman to let herself go like
that, these days!  And if she acted to him the way she did to everybody
else, even the youngster, well, between you 'n' me 'n' the gatepost, I
don't blame him for walkin' out.  A man can take just so much.  She'd've
been the kind wouldn't let him sleep with her either, a regular
prunes-an'prison old maid like they say, if you know what I mean.  Why,
if she'd taken a little trouble, fix herself up and act nice, she coulda
got a better job, waiting in a store or something, you know, daytimes.

There's just no call for a woman to look like that, if she's got any
self-respectl But

she wasn't one you could talk to friendly, you know, give any adVice,
like-she was downright rude to everybody tried to make friends, so after
a while nobody tried no more, just left them be.  And I do think he'd
have been different.  Times he came by to pay the rent, or if you met
him going' out or like that, he always acted friendly and polite.  I
figure he just got good and fed up with the whole way she was-it musta
been like livin' with a set bear trap."

The detective grinned at that and she permitted herself a ladylike
titter, smoothing her defiantly brown pompadour.  "I gather you didift
exchange much casual talk with the woman at any time."

"Nobody did, she wouldn't let 'em.  .  .  .  Ever hear her mention
going!

to buy a doll?  That I did not.  It wasn't a girl she had, it was a boy,
I thought I said.  Marty, his name was.  He favored his dad, I must say
he was a nice-raised boy.  Always took off his cap to you, and he was
real quiet-for a boy, you know.  He'd be about eleven or a bit past when
they come, and that last year they was here, he all of a sudden'd
started to shoot up, early like some do-going to be as big as his dad,
you could see.  A real nice boy, he was, not like his Ma at all.  .  . .

Well, I'm sure I don't know why she'd be buying a doll, unless it was
for some of their farably back east, might be she had a niece or
something.

But for goodness' sake, Lieutenant, won't you tell me what this is all
about-what's she done?-or is it him?  I mean'

"I don't know that either of them's done anything.  It's a matter of
getting evidence, that's all, not very important." He was standing up.

"Oh.  I must say, I can't help being curious-two of you coming, same
day, ask about theml You can't blame me for that, couldn't you just'

"So Mr.  Morgan was asking about the Lindstroms too?" He looked
thoughtful, and then smiled and began to thank her.  She saw she
wouldn't get any more out of him, but that didn't stop her from
speculating.  The Lindstroms, of all peoplel

Mrs.  Cotter watched him down the walk to his car, heaved an excited
sigh after him, and hurried upstairs to tell Mrs.  Spinner all about iL

The clock over the row of phone booths, in the first drugstore he came
to, said ten past twelve.  Mendoza spent an annoying five minutes
looking up the number in a tattered book, finally got the office, and
just caught Gunn on his way out to lunch.

"Oh, Luis-how's the boy?-,good to hear from you.  Say, I'm afraid
Andrews' idea didn't pay off, you know, about that hood New York wants
for jumping parole.  It was a long chance, find him through the

wife, and of course it may be she's collecting from some other county
agency.  if he wants- What's that?  Sure thing, anything I can tell you
.  .  .  Morgan, well, he's probably having lunch somewhere right now."

"It's one of his cases, that's all.  And all I want from you is the
present address.  The name is Mrs.  Marion Lindstrom.  Apparently she's
only recently applied for relief."

"If we're working on it, that's so, within a few months anyway-it'll be
right here in the current file, hang on and I'll look."

Mendoza opened the door for air while he waited.  He was rapidly
developing a guilty conscience: wasting time over this meaningless
thing.  He didn't get paidr shouldn't-for listening to inconsequential
gossip.  A dozen things he should have been doing this morning
besides"-Graham Court," said Gunn's voice in his ear.

"Oh?  Any idea approximately where that is?"

"Somewhere down the wrong side of Main, that area-below First or Second.

We've got'

"iNo puede ser!" said Mendoza very softly to himself.  "It can't be, not
so easy, I don't believe it.  .  .  .  When Morgan comes in, tell him to
wait, I want to see him.  Call me at my office immediatamente-mr even
quickerl I want everything you've got on these people.  Let me have that
address again."

It was Gunn, of course, and not Hackett, who said all the things Hackett
might say later; before outsiders, like this, Hackett paid lip service
to rank.  Gunn had once been Mendoza's superior; he spoke up.

By the same token, of course, Mendoza wouldn't have talked so freely if
Gunn hadn't been a retired Homicide man.

"You've got your wires crossed, Luis.  What you've got here is just
damn-all, it doesn't mean a thing.  First off, how many people d'you
suppose moved out of that section of town last September?  There's no
narrowing it down to a couple of blocks, you have to take in at least a
square mile-call it even half a mile-at a guess, seven-eight thousand
families, because you're taking in apartments, not just single houses.

In that kind of neighborhood people aren't settled, they move around
more.  And'

"I know, I know," said Mendoza.  "And that's the least of all the
arguments against this meaning anything at all.  But say it-it's not
even very significant that the move should be from the
twenty-four-hundred block on Tappan to within two blocks of Commerce and
Humboldt,

because those are the same sort of neighborhoods, same rent levels, same
class and color of people.  All right.  Evidencl" He hunched his
shoulders angrily, turning from staring at the view out Gunn's office
window.  "Say it.  Even if it is the same killer, no guarantee he lived
anywhere near either of the girls.  So all this is cuentos de hadas,
just fairy tales."

Hackett made a small doleful sound at his cigarette.  "I guess you?re
saying it for yourself, Lieutenant."

"You've got no evidence," Gunn said flatly.  "You'd just like to think
so, which isn't like you, Luis.  What the hell have you got?  I'

"I've got two dead girls," said Mendoza, abrupt and harsh.  "And they
don't matter one damn, you know.  The kind of murders that happen in any
big town, this week, next week, next year.  No glamour, no excitement,
no big names.  Nothing to go in the books, the clever whimsy on Classic
Cases or the clever fiction, ten wisecracks guaranteed to the page, a
surprise ending to every chapter, where fifteen people had fifteen
motives for the murder and fifteen faked alibis for the crucial minute,
conveniently fixed by a prearranged long-distance phone call.  They
weren't very important or interesting females, these two, and anybody at
all might have killed them.  You know," he swung on Gunn, "this kind of
thing, it doesn't go like the books, the clues laid out neat like a
paper trail in a gamel You start where you can and you take a look
everywhere, at everything-jqud mis?  (I then you start all over again."

T know," said Ghnn heavily.  'T,;hat I'm saying is, you've got nothing
at all to link these two cases.  The doll, that's really out of bounds,
boy, that one I don't figure any way.  The odds are that somebody found
the girl, didn't report it, but picked up the package-"

"You're so right," said Mendoza.  "It was dark, and her handbag was half
under her, almost hidden."

"Well, there you are.  They were killed the same general way, but it's
not a very unusual method-brute violence."

"That eye," said Hackett to his cigarette.

Gunn looked at him, back to Mendoza.  "If it's a real hunch, Luis, all
rye got to say is, keep throwing cold water at it-If it just naturally
drowns, let it go."

"What else am I doing?" For they both knew that it wasn't ever all pure
cold logic, all on the facts: nothing that had to do with people ever
could be wholly like that.  You bad a feeling, you had a hunch, and you
couldn't drop every other line to follow it up, but a real fourteen
karat hunch turned out to be worth somethingometimes.  Say it was
subconscious reasoning, out of experience and knowledge; it wasn't,
always.  Just a feeling.

"All right," said Hackett amiably, "cold water.  I don't like the doll
much myself.  I said I'd buy all that about the guy at the skating rink,
but there's nothing there to show it's the same one.  In fact, the
little we have got on that one, it suggests he admired the girl, wanted
to pick her up-like that, whether for murder or sex."

"So it does," said Mendoza.  "And no hint of anything like that for
Carol Brooks."

Gunn opened his mouth, shut it, looked at Hackett's bland expression,
and said, "You saw both bodies, of course-you're a better judge of what
the similarity there is worth."

"Oh, let's be psychological," said Mendoza.  "Not even that.  Art says
to me before I looked at Ran2irez, 'It's another Brooks'-maybe he put it
in my mind."

"Sure, lay it on me."

There was a short silence, and then Mendoza said as if continuing
argument, "Nobody's interested in this kind of killing, no, except those
of us whore paid to be interested.  But it's the kind everybody ought to
take passionate interest in-the most dangerous kind there is-just
because it's without motive.  Or having the motive only of sudden,
impulsive violence.  The lunatic kill.  So it might happen to anybody.

Claro que si, let one like that kill a dozen, twenty, leave his mark to
show it's the same killer, then he's one for the books-the Classic Case.

And don't tell me I've got no evidence these were lunatic kills.  It's
negative evidence, I grant you, but there it is-we looked, you know.

Nobody above ground had any reason to murder the Brooks girl, and she
wasn't killed for what cash she had on her.  The couple of little things
we've got on Ranrez, nothing to lead to murder-and she wasn't robbed
either.  Not to that murder.  I don't have to tell you that brute
violence of that sort, it's either very personal hate or lunacy."

Morgan cleared his throat; he'd been waiting in silence, a little apart,
his case book out ready, if and when they remembered him.  "I don't want
to butt in, you know more about all this, but I can't help feeling
you're on the wrong track here, just for that reason.  These peoplewell,
after all-I don't suppose you're thinking the woman did it, and a
thirteen-year-old kid-"

Again a short silence.  Hackett leaned back in his chair and said
conversationally, "I picked up a thirteen-year-old kid a couple of
months

ago who'd shot his mother in the back while she was watdxlng T.V.

She'd told him he couldn't go to the movies that night.  You remember
that Breckfield business last year?-three kids, the oldest one thirteen,
tied up two little girls and set fire to them.  One died, the other's
still in the hospital.  I could take you places in this town where a lot
of thirteen-year-old kids carry switch-knives and pug off organized gang
raids on each other-and the neighborhood stores.  And some of 'em aren't
little innocents, any other way, either.  Juvenile had a couple in last
week-and not the first-with secondary stage V.D., and both on

heroin."

Morgan said helplessly, "But-this kid-he Is not like thatl He's just a
kid, like any kid that age.  You can tell, you know."

"Something was said," cut in Mendoza, "about his size, that he'd started
to get his growth early.  How big is he?-how strong?"

"Almost as tall as I am-five-eight-and-a-half, around there.

Stillchildish-looking, in the face.  But he's going to be a big man,
he's built that way-big bone structure."

"Weight?"

"Hell, I can't guess about all this," said Morgan angrily.  "As far as I
can see you've got no reason at all to suspect the Lindstroms of
anything.  I don't know what's in your mind about this boy-you talk
about lunatics and juvenile hoods, so O.K., which is he?  You can't have
it both ways.  The whole thing's crazy."

Mendoza came a few steps toward him, stood there hands in pockets
looking down at him, a little cold, a little annoyed.  "I've got nothing
in my mind about him right now.  I don't know.  This is the hell of a
low card, but I've got the hell of a bad hand and it's the best play
I've got at the moment.  Carol Brooks was killed on September
twenty-first, and these people left that neighborhood-unexpectedly, and
in a hurrywithin twenty-four hours.  The woman was working at night, so
the boy was free to come and go as he pleased.  Shortly before Brooks
was killed, the woman showed interest in an article Brooks was buying on
time, and it now appears that the girl had this with her before she was
kUled and it subsequently disappeared.  I'm no psychiatrist and I don't
know how much what any psychiatrist'd say might be worth, here-the boy
just into adolescence, probably suffering some shock when his father
abandoned them.  Let that go.  But he's big enough and strong enough to
have done-the damage that was done.  If.  And I may take a jaundiced
view of the psychological doubletalk, the fact remains that sex can play
some funny tricks with young adolescents sometimes.  All

right.  These people are now living in the neighborhood where Elena
Ranrez was killed.  I don't say they had anything to do with either
death, or even the theft.  I'd just like to know a little more about
them."

Morgan shrugged and flipped open his notebook.  "You're welcome to what
I've got.  Mrs.  Lindstrom applied for county relief six weeks ago, and
was interviewed by a case worker from that agency.  She says her husband
deserted her and the boy last August, she has no idea where he is now,
hasn't heard from him since.  She took a job between then and a week or
so before she applied, says she can't go on working on account of her
health.  She was referred to a clinic, and there's a medical report
here-various troubles adding up to slight malnutrition and a general
run-down condition.  Approved for county relief, and the case shoved on
to us to see if we can find Lindstrom, make him contribute support. He's
a carpenter, good record, age forty-four, description-and so on and so
on-they both came from a place called Fayetteville in Minnesota, so she
said," and he glanced at Gunn.

"Yes," said Gunn thoughtfully, "and what does that mean, either?

Sometimes these husbands head for home and mother, we usually query the
home town first-and I have here a reply from the vital records office in
Fayetteville saying that no such family has ever resided there."

"You don't ten me," said Mendoza.

"This I'll tell you," said Morgan, "because we run into it a lot.  Some
of these women are ashamed to have the folks at home know about it, and
they don't rearize we're going to check on it-the same with former
addresses here, and she gave me a false one on that too, sure.  It
doesn?t necessarily mean'

"No.  But it's another little something.  What have you got on the boy?"

"Nothing, why should I have?  He exists, that's all we have to know.

He's normal, thirteen years old, name Martin Eric Lindstrom, attends
seventh grade at John C.  Calhoun Junior High." Morgan shut the book.

"That's all?  I'd like to know more about the boy.  We'll have a look
round.  No trace of the father yet?"

"It's early, we've only been on this a few days.  Routine enquiries out
to every place in the area hiring carpenters-to vital records and so on
in other counties-and so on."

"Yes.  Witt you let me have a copy of all that you've got, please-to my
office.  We'll keep an eye on them, see what shows up, if anything.

Thanks very much."

When the two men from Homicide had gone, Gunn said, "Get one of the
girls to type up that report, send it over by hand."

"O.K.," said Morgan.  "I suppos' He was half-turned to the door, not
looking at Gunn.  "I suppose that means he'll have men watching that
apartment."

"It's one of the basic moves.  Nwat's the matter, Dick?"

"Nothing," said Morgan violently.  "Nothing at all.  Oh, hell, it's just
that- I guess Mendoza always rubs me the wrong way, that's all.  Always
so damned sure of himself-and I ifift he's way off the beam here."

"It doesn't look like much of anything," agreed Gunn.  "But on the other
hand, well, you never can be sure until you check."

TEN

"I have the feeling," said Mendozascreetly in Spanish, for the waiter
who had seated them was still within earshot'that I'd better apologize
for the meal we're about to have."

"But why?  Everything looks horribly impressive.  Including the prices.

In fact, after that automatic glance at the right-hand column," said
Alison, putting down the immense menu card, "I have the feeting I've
been in the wrong business all my life."

"I never can remember quite how it goes, about fooling some of the
people, etcetera." Mendoza glanced thoughtfully around the main dining
room of the Maison du Chat, which was mostly magenta, underlighted, and
decorated with would-be funny murals of lascivious felines.  "It's
curious how many people are ready to believe that the highest prices
guarantee the best value." The waiter came back and insinuated under
their noses liquor lists only slightly smaller than the menus.  "What
would you like to drink?"

"Sherry," said Alison faintly, her eyes wandering down the right column.

"And straight rye," he said to the waiter, who looked shaken and took
back the cards with a disappointed murmur.

"Not in character.  I'd expected to find you something of a gourmet."

"My God, I thought I'd made a better impression.  The less one thinks
about one's stomach, the less trouble it's apt to cause.  And I know
just enough about wine to call your attention to those anonymous
offerings you just looked at-port, muscatel, tokay, and so on.  At three
dollars the half-bottle, and they'll be the domestic product available
at the nearest supermarket for what?-about one-eighty-nine the gallon."

"They're not losing money on the imported ones either."

,:About a one hundred percent markup." He looked around again casually,
focused on something past her shoulder, and began to smile slowly to
himself.  "Now isn't that interesting .  .  ."

"I couldn't agree more-I said I've always found the subject fascinating.

You're pleased about something, and it can't be the prices."

"I just noticed an old friend.  And what's more, he noticed me.  He
isn't nearly so pleased about it." The waiter, doing his best with
pseudo-Gallic murmurs and deft gestures with paper mats to invest these
plebeian potions with glamour, served them.  Mendoza picked up his rye
and sniffed it cautiously.  "isalud y pesetas!  And if this costs them
more than a dollar a fifth wholesale, they're being cheated, which I
doubt."

:'Why did we come here?  I gather it's new to you too."

"We came because I'm interested in this place, not as a
restaurantprofessionally.  Of course I also wanted to impress you."

"You have."

"And I'm gratified to find you see through these spurious trappings of
the mere,3), expensive.  Next time I'll take you to a hamburger stand."

"You will not.  I like an excuse to get really dressed up occasionally."

she had, after all, compromised with his dictation: pearls, and a very
modest dicolletd, but for the rest an oyster-silk sheath.

"I complimented you once, don't fish for more so early," said Mendoza
placidly.  "And what I expected to get by coming-besides rooked out of a
little money-I don't know.  Mr.  Torres-Domingo is an unexpected bonus.

You see, the uncle of your late pupil went out of his way to visit this
place last night, which seemed a little odd."

:,Oh!  I should think so.  Who is the other gentleman you mentioned?"

"I wouldn't say gentleman.  He just barely avoided an indictment for
homicide about eighteen months ago-he was then the proprietor of a bar
on Third Avenue.  Another gentleman who later turned out to have been a
small-time wholesaler of heroin got himself shot full of holes by a
third gentleman who subsequently said that Mr.-the first gentleman

-had offered him a substantial sum of money to do the job.  We didn't
doubt his word-after what showed ubut unfortunately there just wasn't
enough evidence.  The first gentleman retired modestly across the
Mexican border, though he is an American citizen, and it's interesting
to know he's back home.  I don't want him for anything myself, but
Lieutenant Patrick Callaghan will be very interested to hear that he's
now the headwaiter at a fashionable restaurant."

"I deduce that the lieutenant is on the narcotics team, or whatever you
call it."

"And as you and I are not the only people in the world who speak
Spanish, we will now cease to talk shop.  .  .  .  What are we offered?

All the standard Parisian concoctions.  Women living alone subsist
mostly on casseroles anyway, no treat to you-I suggest the one
concession to Americanism, a steak."

"Medium well," she agreed meekly.  And when the waiter had gone, "May I
ask just one question?  People make a lot of money in that-er -business
you mentioned.  Wholesaling you-know -what.  Why should they go to all
the trouble of holding down regular jobs too?  I always thought of them
as-as coming out at night, slinking furtively down alleys, you know
-like that-not punching time clocks."

"Oh, God!" he said.  "Now you've taken my appetite away.  Well, there's
a den of crafty bloodsucking robbers in Washington-you'll have heard of
them-"

"Which ones?"

"It says Bureau of Internal Revenue on the door.  Now, the L.A.P.D.

couldn't get one useful piece of evidence against the gentleman I
menhoned-as we can't always against a lot of others in a lot of
businesses, and I do mean big businesses, on the wrong side of the law.

But we can't poke our noses into some things those fellows can.  A
hundredthousand-dollar apartment house-a new Cadillac-a mink coat for
the girl friend-you are doing well, Mr.  Smith, how come you never told
your uncle about it?  And if Mr.  Smith can't explain just where it all
came from, he's got a lot more grief than a mere city cop could ever
hand him."

"Oh, I see.  I do indeed.  Cover."

"And then," added Mendoza, not altogether humorously, "when uncle has
stowed Mr.  Smith away in jail for tax evasion, the indignant public
points an accusing finger at us and says, Corrupt cops!-they must have
known about him!  Stupid cops!-if they didn't find out!  Why wasn't he
arrested for his real crimes?  You try to tell them, just try, that

it's because we have to operate within laws about evidence designed to
protect the public.  .  .  .  I wonder whether I ought to call in and
tell Pafs office about this." Mr.  Tomes-Domingo, who had made a
precipitate exit on first catching sight of him, reappeared round the
screen at the service doors, polishing his bald head with a
handkerchief.  He shot one furtive glance in Mendoza's direction, pasted
on a professional happy smile, and began to circulate among the tables,
pausing for a bow, a word here and there with a favored patron.  "Oh,
well, there's no hurry-he won't run away, and for all I know he's
reformed and hasn't any reason to anyway."

The steaks could have been less tough; the service might with advantage
have been less ostentatious.  Mendoza asked her presently whether she'd
got anything useful from any of the girls.

"I wondered when you'd ask.  Nothing at all, I'm sorry to say-she hadn't
said anything to any of them about that.  But she didn?t know any of
them well, after all."

"No.  I didn't expect much of that.  I've got a queer sort ofan I cam it
a lead?-from another angle, but I don't know that that means much
either.  .  .  .  What do you think of the murals?  I've never asked you
what kind of thing you paint."

Alison said the murals constituted a libel on the feline race and that
she was herself unfashionably pre-Impressionistic.  "This and that-I'm
not wedded to any one particular type of subject.  Now and then I
actually sell something." They talked about painting; they talked about
cats.

"But when you're away all day, you can't keep pets, it's not fair."

"Nobody keeps a cat.  They condescend to live with you is all.  And as
for the rest of it, I moved.  It's miles farther for me to drive, and
the rent's higher, but it's on the ground floor and they let me put in
one of those little swinging doors in the back door, out to the yard.

You've seen the ads-let your pet come and go freely.  Yes, a fine idea,
but she won't use it-she knows how it works, but she doesn't like the
way it slaps her behind, and she got her tail pinched once.  Fortunately
aB the other seven apartments are inhabited by cat people.  Four of them
have keys to mine and run in and out all day waiting on her, which of
course is what she schemes for.  I believe Mrs.  Carter and Mrs.
Bryson," he added, looking around for the waiter, "alternate their
shopping tours and visits to the beauty salonoffee, pleas' "And pairhaps
some of our special brandy, sair?"

"That I need," said Alison, "after listening to this barefaced
confession.  Battening on the charity of your neighbors like that-"

"One of the reasons I picked the apartment.  The Elgins keep her
supplied with catnip mice, they buy them in wholesale lots, having three
Siamese of their own.  Of course there is a man two doors down who has a
spaniel, but one must expect some undesirables in these unrestricted
neighborhoods." The waiter came back with the coffee, the brandy, and
the bill on a salver, contriving to slide that in front of Mendoza by a
kind of legerdemain suggesting that it appeared out of thin air, not
through any offices of this obsequious and excellent servant.  Mendoza
looked at it, laid two tens on the salver and said now he needed the
brandy too.

"I have no sympathy for you," said Alison.

When they came out into the foyer, Mendoza hesitated, glancing at the
discreet row of phone booths in an alcove.  "I wonder if I had' There
had appeared no bowing, smiling headwaiter as they left the dining room,
to make the last honors to new patrons, urge a return.  "Oh, well," and
he put a hand automatically to his pocket for more largesse as one of
the several liveried lackeys approached with Alison's coat.

"So 'appy to 'ave 'ad you wiz us, sair and madame-I 'ope you enjoyed
your disenair?  You mus' come back soon-Holy Mother o' God, what the
hell was that?" Between them they dropped the coat; the lackey took one
look over Alison's shoulder, said, "Jesus, let me out of here!" and
dived blindly for the door, staggering Mendoza aside.  The second volley
of shots was a medley of several calibers, including what sounded like a
couple of regulation's.  From the dark end of the corridor off the foyer
plunged a large, shapeless man waving a revolver, and close after him
the tuxedo-clad rotundity of Mr.  Tomes-Domingo, similarly equipped.

The checkroom attendant prudently dropped flat behind his counter as the
large man paused to fire twice more behind him and charged into the
foyer.

"Wait for me, Neddyl" Mr.  Tomes-Domingo sent one wild shot behind him
and another inadvertently into the nearest phone booth as he continued
flight.

The first man swept the gun in an are round the foyer.  "Don't nobody
move-I'm comin' through'

Mendoza recovered his balance, shoved Alison hard to sprawl hid& length
on the floor, and in one leap covered the ten feet to the gun as it
swung back in his direction.  He got a good left-handed grip on the
gunhand as they collided, his momentum lending force to the considerable
impact, and as they went down landed one right that connected
satisfactorily.

Neddy went over back-ward and Mendoza went with him; the

gun emptied itself into the ceiling as they hit the floor with Mendoza's
knee in the paunch under him; Neddy uttered a stradgled whoof and lost
an interest in the proceedings.

Mr.  Tomes-Domingo yelped, fired once more and hit the plate-glass door,
turned and ran into the embrace of an enormous red-haired man in the
vanguard of the pursuit, which had just erupted down the corridor.  The
red-haired man adjusted him to a convenient position and hit him once in
the jaw, and he flew backward six feet and collapsed on top of Mendoza,
who was just sitting up.  One of the three men behind the red-haired man
dropped his gun and sank onto the divan beside the checkroom, clutching
his shoulder.

There was a very short silence before several women in the crowd
collecting at the dining-room door went off like air-raid sirens.

Mendoza heaved off Mr.  Tomes-Domingo, sat up and began to swear in
Spanish.  The red-haired man bellowed the crowd to quiet, and turned to
the man nearest him: "Find a phone and call the wagon and an
ambulance-and"-flinging round to the man on the divan-"just what in the
name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did you think you were doing, you
almighty bastard?  You-"

";Hijo de perra!-take your hands off that man, you son of a Dublin
whorel" Mendoza shoved him away and bent over Higgins, who was fumbling
a handkerchief under his coat.  "Easy, boy' "It's not bad, Lieutenant-I
just-"

"Before God!-Luis Mendoza!-does this belong to you?  Just what the holy
hell are you doing in this?-you tellin' me you put this blundering
bastard out back there-to bitch up two months' work and the first chance
I've had to lay hands on-I ought to bust you right in the -I ought to-"

Mendoza twitched the handkerchief from the red-haired man's breast
pocket, wadded it up with his own, shoved Higgins flat on the divan and
pulled aside the coat to slap on the temporary bandage.  "Temper,
Patrick, temperl We're in public-you'll be giving people the idea
there's no loyalty, no unity in the police force.  And listen, you red
bastard, next time you have to knock a man out to arrest him, for the
love of God don't aim him at me-you've damn near fractured my spinel
There's the squad car.  For God's sake, let's clear this crowd backwho's
this?"

The little round man who had popped out like a cork from the dining-room
crowd was sounding off in falsetto.  "I am the manager-I am the
owner-what do you do here in my place, shooting and yelftg?  I

call the police!-what is all this about?-shootings-gangsters-I will not
have gangsters in my nice quiet plac'

"Then you shouldn't hire one as a headwaiter," said Mendoza.  "And you
should also change your butcher, your steaks are tough." He pushed past
him and went over to Alison, who was just somewhat shakily regaining her
feet.  "I don't usually knock them down the first date, mi
vida-apologies!  Are you all right?  Here, sit down."

"I'm all right," said Alison, "but you owe me a pair of stockings."

Morgan had read somewhere that marijuana did this to you, played tricks
with time, so first it seemed to slow down, almost grind to a full stop,
and then sent everything past you at the speed of light.  His watch told
him he'd been standing here on this corner just an hour and twelve
minutes, no more and no less; for a while it had felt like half
eternity, and then, a while after that, time began to go too fast. Where
he'd been tense with impatience, wound up tight for actionod, God, make
him come-suddenly, now, he could have prayed for time to stop.  Not now,
he said to Smith frantically in his mind, you can't come now, until I've
thought about this, figured it out, got hold of another plan.

Oh, Christ daffm Luis Mendoza and his little slum-street mugging!what
the hell did that matter, some damn-fool chippy knocked off, probably
she'd asked for it, and that crazy idea about those Lindstroms who
couldn't by any fantastic stretch of the imagination have had anything
to do .  .  .  Because, yes, this upright citizen Morgan had a good
innocent reason to visit that apartment house, he wouldn't care if the
whole L.A.  police force stood by in squads to watch him go in-but after
he was clocked in by men watching, he couldn't lie in wait maybe an
hour, and do what he'd come to do, and then say Just as I got to the top
of the stairs- Nor could he call at the Lindstroms' first, thinking to
say, Just as I was leaving- That woman might not be very smart but she
could tell time, and suppose he'd left her half an hour before, as might
well happen?  Also, of course, there was no telling about the cops:
where and how and how many.  It might be a desultory thing, one man
outside up to midnight, something like that; it might be a couple of men
round the clock; it could be a couple of men inside somewhere.

So he hadn't dared go near Graham Court at all.  It had had to be the
street corner; and on his way here, and up to a while ago, he'd been
telling himself that after all the street was safer.  Once you were off
Main, off Second, along here, the streets were underhghted and there
weren't many people; in all this while he'd stood and strolled up and

down outside the corner drugstore here, only four people had come by, at
long intervals.  Safer, and also more plausible that Smith would try a
holdup on a darkish side street, instead of in the very building where
he lived.

Morgan had been feeling pretty good then: ready for it, coldly wound up
(the way it had been before action, when you knew action was coming)
but-in control.  He'd known just how it would go, Smith coming along
(he'd been wary before, sent the boy to check that Morgan had come
alone, but this time he wouldn't bother, he thought he had Morgan
and-the ransom-tied up); and Morgan pretending nervousness, saying he
had the money locked in the glove compartment, his car was just round
the corner.  Round the corner, an even narrower, darker street.  Sure to
God Smith would walk a dozen steps with him .  .  .

Safe and easy.  Sure.  Before a while ago, when the scraggly bald old
fellow had peered out the drugstore door at him.

Morgan knew this window by heart now.  Everything in it a little dusty,
a little second-hand-looking: out-of-date ad placards, the platinm
blonde with a toothy smile, INSTANT PROTECTION, the giant tube of
shaving cream, the giant bottle of antiseptic, the cigarette ad, GET
SATiSFACTION, the face-cream ad, YOU CAN LOOK YOUNGER.  In a vague way
he'd known the drugstore was open, but the door was shut on this coofish
evening, he hadn't glanced inside.  When people came by, he'd strolled
away the opposite direction: nobody had seemed to take much notice of
him-why should they?  And then that old fellow came to the door, peered
out: Morgan met his glance through the dirty glass panel, by chance, and
that was when time began to race.

God, don't let Smith come now, not until I've had time to think.

The druggist, alone there, pottering around his store in the hopeful
expectation of a few customers before nine o'clock, or maybe just
because he hadn't anything to go home to.  Time on his hands.  Looking
out the window, the door, every so often, for customers at first-and
then to see, only out of idle curiosity, if that fellow was still there
on the corner, waiting.  .  .  .  AH that clutter in the window, Morgan
hadn't noticed him; not much light, no, but enough-and without thought,
when he was standing still he'd hugged the building for shelter from the
chill wind.  Most of the time he'd have been in the perimeter of light
from the window, from the door.  God alone knew how often the old man
had looked out, spotted him.

The expression in the rheumy eyes meeting his briefly through the

dirty pane-focused, curious, a little defensive-told Morgan the man had
marked him individually.

And hell, hell, it didn't matter whether the druggist thought he'd been
stood up by a date, or was planning to hold up the drugstore, or was
just lonely or worried or crazy, hanging around this corner an hour and
twelve minutes.  The druggist would remember him.  .  .  .  That was a
basic principle, and only common sense, in planning anything underhand
and secret-from robbing Junior's piggy bank to murder: Keep it simple.

Don't have too many lies to remember, don't dream up the complicated
routine, the fancy alibi.  The way he'd designed it was like that-short,
straight, and sweet.  Now, if he went on with it that way, there'd be
the plausible lie to figure out and remember and stick to: just why the
hell had Morgan been hanging around here, obviously a man waiting for
someone?

Half-formed ideas, wild, ridiculous, skittered along the top of his
mind.  You know how it is, officer, I met this blonde, didn't mean any
harm but a fellow likes a night out once in a while; sure I felt guilty,
sure I love my wife, but, well, the blonde said she'd meet me- I tell
you how it was, I'd lent this guy a five-spot, felt sorry for him you
know, guess I was a sucker, anyway he said he'd meet me and payWell, I
met this fellow who said he'd give me an inside tip on a horse, only he
wouldn't know for sure until tonight, if I'd meet him AH right, he
thought furiously, all right; of all the damn-fool ideas .  .  .  So,
produce the blonde, the debtor, the tipsterl It couldn't be done that
way.

He stood now right at the building corner, close, out of the druggist's
view.  Think: if, when Smith comes, what are you going to do now?

What ean you do?

The little panic passed and he saw the only possible answer: it wasn't a
very good one, it put more complication into this than was really safe,
but that couldn't be helped.  Obviously, get Smith away from this place.

The farther away the better.  In the car.  Stall him and get him into
the car, and Christ, the possibilities, the dangers that opened uouldn't
drive far, maybe not at all, without getting him suspicious.  Sure,
knock him out with a wrench or something as soon as they got in, fine,
and have it show up at the autopsy later on.  Great, shoot him in the
car under cover of the revving motor, and get blood all over the seat
covers.  All right: think.

Yes.  It could be managed, it had to be: the only way.  In the car,
then, right away, and in the body, so the clothes would get the blood.

Have to take a chance.  Then quick around to Humboldt or Foster, only a
few blocks, both dark streets too, thank God; park the car, get him out
to the sidewalk, get his prints on the gun, make a little disturbance,
fire another shot, and yell for the cops.  I was on my way to visit this
case I'm on, when- And the druggist no danger then, no reason to connect
a holdup there with his corner.

Not as safe, but it could work: maybe, with luck, it would work fine.

Now let Smith come.  Morgan was ready for him, as ready as he'd ever be.

He looked at his watch.  It was seventeen minutes past eight.

And suddenly be began to get in a sweat about something else.  Smith had
made him wait on Saturday night, deliberately, to soften him up: but why
the hell should Smith delay coming to collect the ransom he thought was
waiting?

Cops, thought Morgan-cold, resentful, sullen, helpless-copsl Maybe so
obvious there outside, inside, that Smith spotted them-and thought, of
course, Morgan had roped them in?  God, the whole thing blown open

ELEVEN

Cops, Marty thought.  Cops, he'd said.  Funny, the words meant the same,
but seemed like people who didn't like them, maybe were afraid of them,
said "cops," and other people said "policemen."

He sat up in bed in the dark; it was the bad time again, the time alone
with the secret.  And a lot of what made it bad was, usually, not having
outside things to keep him from thinking about it, remembering; but
right now he had, and that somehow made it worse.

He sat up straight against the headboard; he tried to sit still as
still, but couldn't help shivering even in Ms flannel pajamas, with the
top of him outside the blanket.  If he laid right down like usual he was
afraid he'd go to sleep after a while, even the long while it'd got to
taking him lately; and he mustn't, if he was going to do what he planned
safe.  He had to stay awake until everybody else was asleep, maybe two,
three

o'clock in the morning, and then be awful quiet and careful.  .  .  .

Like a lesson he was memorizing, he said it all over again to himself in
his mind, all he'd got to remember about: don't make any noise, get up
when it's time and put on his pants and jacket over his pajamas and
get-it-and remember about the key to the door, take it with him so's he
could get back in.  He knew where the place was, where he was going; it
was only three blocks over there, on Main Street.  Wouldn't take long,
if nobody saw-mr if This was the only way to do it if he was g,,)ing to,
and the worst of that was it didn't seem like such a good idea now, a
kind of silly idea really but he couldn't think of anything else at all,
without breaking the promise, doing the one unforgivable thing.  He'd
tried this morning, he'd waited until she was busy in the kitchen,
thought he could pick-it -up and call out good-by and go off quick,
before But it'd gone wrong, he wasn't quick enough; and she'd come in,
looked awful queer at him-funny, a bit frightened-and said sharp, "What
you up to, still fooling round here?-you'll be late for school, you go
"long now," and he'd had to go, with her watching.  So now he was
waiting until there'd be nobody awake to see.

And maybe it was silly, it wouldn't make anything happen.  Cops, he
thought confusedly: but he did remember Dad saying, all new scientific
things and like that, they were a lot smarter and some real higheducated
now, from college.  It might Cops.  He didn't like loud voices and
people getting so mad they hit each other.  It made him feel hollow and
bad inside-in the movies you knew it was just put on, and when you were
interested in the story you didn't mind so much, but even there
sometimes it made you feel kind of upset.  That was the first time,
tonight, he'd seen Danny's dad-since he'd come with them.  Danny didn't
seem to be ashamed at all, tell his dad had been in jail back east, said
it like it was something to brag about, but that was how Danny was.

Marty sure didn't think he could be much of a dad to brag on, jail or no
jail.

He shut his eyes and just like a movie saw it over again-himself going
up the stairs to Danny's apartment, as if he wanted go to the movies
with him, Ma'd given him thirty cents, said he could go-and the loud
voice swearing inside, "Cops!  You think I can't smell a cop?yeah, yeah,
you say that to me before, so you walk right past a couple the bastards
outside an' never see 'em more'n if they was-listen, what the hell you
been up to, bringin' cops down on the place-"

And Danny, shrill, "I never done nothing, I-"

"Don't talk back f me, you little bastard-I ain't fool enough to think,
him-I got him too damn scaredl If I hadn't spotted them damned-might've
walked right into- What the hell else could they be after, watching the
house?  Couldn't've traced me here-you been up to some o' your piddling
kid stuff, heisting hubcaps or somethin', an' they' "I never- Listen, l'

And the noise of fists hitting, Danny yelling, and something falling
hard against the door-Danny, he guessed, because then it opened and
Danny sort of fell out and banged it after him and kicked it.  It was
dark in the hall, Marty had backed off a ways, and Danny didn't see him.

Danny leaned on the wall a minute there, one hand up to the side of his
face, maybe where his dad had hit him-it looked like his nose was
bleeding too-and Marty thought he was crying, only Danny never did, he
wasn't that kind.  And then the door opened again and Mr.  Smith came
out.

A tough-looking man he was like crooks in the movies, and there in the
room behind that was just like the living room in the place Marty lived
a floor down, was Danny's ma, he'd seen her before, of course, a little
soft-looking lady with a lot of black hair, and she looked scared and
kept saying, "Oh, please, Ray, it's not his fault, please don't, Ray."

"Oh, for God's sake, I ain't going' do nothing!  So all right, kid,
maybe I got my wircs crossed an' it's somethin' else-hope to God it
is-but listen, come here, you gotta go and do that phone call for me,
see, I can't'

Danny yelled at him, "Be damned if I will, bastard yourself!" and kicked
at his shins and bolted for the stairs as the man snarled at him.

Marty had crept back even farther toward the dark end of the hall; Mr.
Smith didn't see him either.  He made as if to go after Danny, stopped,
said, "Oh, hell!" and went back into the apartment.

And Marty slid past the shut door and downstairs, but he didn't see
Danny anywhere on the block.  He wondered if Danny was hurt bad, his dad
looked pretty strong.  And if he'd ever hit Danny like that
beforeprobably so, if he got mad that way a lot.  For a minute, thinking
about it, Marty felt some better himself, because maybe his own dad had
gone away and left them, but he'd sure never, ever, hit him or said bad
things to him-or anybody.  Marty's dad, he always said it beat all how
some fellows were all the time getting mad, you always sure as fate did
something dumb or wrong when you was mad because you couldn't think
straight.  There was only a couple of times Marty could remember his

whole life when Dad had got real mad, and then he didn't swear or yell,
why, he'd never heard Dad say a damn, he was right strict about
swearing.  He didn't talk an awful lot any time, but when he was mad he
didn't say anything at all.

He'd been awful mad, that last timo-that night before he went away. Just
didn't come home.

And on that thought, everything it made him remember, Marty stopped
feeling better, and stopped wondering why Mr.  Smith was so mad at
Danny, what he'd been talking about.

He hadn't gone to the movies after all.  It was a kind of crook picture
and he didn't much want to see it really, though if he'd been with some
other fellows he'Xve had to pretend he did because it was the kind of
thing everybody was supposed to like.

And now he was sitting here in the dark, alone with the secret, waiting
for it to be time.  And remembering, now, what Mr.  Smith had said about
cops.  Cops outside, watching the house.  Something funny happened
inside Marty's stomach, like he'd gone hollow, and his heart gave an
extra thud.  Were they?-was it, was it because You had to do what was
right, no matter what.  Even if it meant you'd die, like in the gas
thing they had in California.  He knew, and he didn't see how his Ma
could ifift a differer, way, it wasn't right people should get
killed-like that-even if he hadn't ever meant, ever known even- Somebody
ought to know, and stop it happening again.  That was why he was sitting
here cold and scared, waiting.  Somebody.  He hadn't exactly thought,
the cops-but of course that was what he'd meant.  And all of a sudden
now, thinking about them maybe outside, cops meant something different,
terrible, to be more scared of than anything-anything he knew more
about.  .  .  .

Sometimes in the movies yelling at guys and hitting them and a thing
called the third degree-the gas chamber in California-but once Dad had
said, about one of those movies Marty'd told about, that was bad to
show, it was wrong because policemen weren't like that at all any more,
that was other times.  A bright light they had shining right in your
eyes and they- But Dad said Marty shut his eyes tight and tried to get
back to that place, couldn't remember how long ago or if it was Tappan
Street or Macy Avenue, where there'd been Dad just like always, sitting
at the kitchen table, digging out his pipe with his knife and looking
over the top of his glasses and saying-and saying-something about
policemen being your friends, to help you.

He couldn't get there, to Dad that time.  Where he got to instead was
that night before Dad-flidn't come home.  He was right there again, he
saw Dad plain, awful mad he'd been for sure, his face an stiff and white
and a look in his eyes said how hard he was holding himself in.  Dad
saying slow and terrible quiet, "I can't stand no more, Marion-I just
can't stand no more."

And Marty knew right this minute just

how Dad had felt when he said that.  Because he felt the same way, not
all of a sudden but like as if he'd only this minute come to know how he
fel% plain.

I just can't stand no more.

He relaxed, limp, against the headboard, and a queer vague peace filled
him.  Like coming to the end of a long, long walk, like getting
there-some place-at last, and he could stop trying any more.

It didn't matter what place, or what happened there.  It was ififted.  I
just can't stand no more.

The gas, and the cops whatever kind and whatever they did or didn't do,
and even-more immediate and terrible-his Ma, and what would happen
afterward, when she found out.  Anything, everything, nothing, it wasn't
anyways important any more.

Something had to happen, and what did it matter what or how?

Maybe there were those cops doivn there, even two or three o'clock in
the morning, and they'd see him, when he came out with-it-and take him
to the police station.  Maybe not; some other way, the way he'd thought
or-maybe they already knew, he couldn't see how but they might.  And in
the end maybe they'd make him break the promise.  It didn't matter how
it came: he knew it would come, and it was time, he didn't care.

Time for the secret to be shown open, the terrible secret.

When Morgan finally moved, he was stiff with cold and the sense of
failure, a resignation too apathetic now to rouse anger in him.  He bad
known hall an hour ago that Smith wasn't coming.  Why he'd gone on
standing here he didn't know.

He turned and went into the drugstore; hot stuffiness struck him in the
face after the cold outside.  The druggist was rearranging bottles on a
sheer along the wall; he turned quickly, to watch Morgan-didn't come up
to ask what he wanted.  Maybe he thought he was going to get held up.

Morgan scraped up all the change in his pocket, picked out a quarter,
went up to the man.

"May I have change for the phone, please?"

"Oh, sure thing." The cash register gave brisk tongue; a kind of
apologetic relief was in the druggists eyes as he handed over two dimes
and a nickel.

As soon as he was inside the phone booth, Morgan began to sweat, in his
heavy coat in that airless, fetid box.  He sat on the inadequate little
stool and dialed carefully.  After two rings the receiver was lifted at
the other end.

G'Su,

"Dick!'L-their voices cutting in on each other, hers on a little gasp.

"I thought you'd call-been waiting-"

"Has he called?" asked Morgan tautly.  "He didn't show, he won't now,
and I'm afraid-darling, I'm afraid he's spotted those damn cops and
thinks'

"I don't think so." Her voice steadied.  "She called, Dick.  About ten
minutes to eight.  She said to tell you he'd got 'hung up' and couldn't
make it, it'd have to be tomorrow night-and you'd get a phone call some
time tomorrow, to tell you where and when."

Morgan leaned his forehead on the phone box for a second; a wave of
tingling heat passed over him and be felt weak.  "He got-delayed?

He didn't-that's damn funny, I don't- Sue, you sure it was the woman,
the same-?"

"I'm sure, darling.  You remember what a soft, ladylike little voice she
had, and she spoke quite well too, not glaringly bad grammarshe's had
some education-but awfully timid and meek, as if she was cowed.  I
recognized it right away-and she sounded like a chdd reciting a lesson,
as if she was reading the message off'

"The woman," he said, "the woman.  So she's still with him.  Yes, we
didn't think she was lying then, about being married.  Yes, a cut above
him all right, probably one of those natural doormats-husband's just
being the superior male when he knocks her around.  He-God, I was
afraid-so it's just another breathing space, until tomorrow night.  I
wonder why."

"I don't like itan't stall with him forever, Dick-and in the end we
can't pay, he'll- What can you say to him any more, to make im,

"Listen," said Morgan, trying to sound authoritative, confident (don't
let her suspect how you're planning to deal with it, convince her),
"it's the money he wants, he's not in any rush to get this thing open in
court, that's the last thing he wants.  It's his only hold on us, he's
not so anxious to let go of it."

"I ppose not.  But-Dick, I-rye got to where I just want it over and
decided, whichever way.  This hanging on'

"I know, darling, I know.  Maybe tomorrow.  I'll be right homb-half an
hour."

Lieutenant Callaghan was a good deal less than mollified to be presented
with such small fry as Tomis Ramirez; he had been lying hopefully in
ambush for a certain big-time eastern wholesaler, and had -as he
informed Mendoza bitterly-had a leash on Mr.  ToffesDomingo and assorted
friends for some time.  What the hell good did it do to pick up a minnow
like this Ramirez, who just ferried the stuff across the border in small
lots?  If Mendoza was interested, they had known about the Maison du
Chat for quite a while, and a usually reliable source of information had
led them to expect the wholesaler on the premises tonight, to set up a
deal with Neddy, Mr.  Tomes-Domingo being the middleman.  At nine
o'clock they'd expected him, and so it was very probable that he'd been,
maybe, a hundred feet away from the kitchen door when Mendoza's bright
boy had got a little too close to the game and flushed it early.  And so
their chances of getting him now, or even another line on him, were just
about nil.

And if Mendoza could remember back seventeen years to when, God help us
and if this good-looking redhead here would believe it, he and Mendoza
had been in the rookie school together, Mendoza just might recall that
one of the first things they'd been told was that there were different
divisions within any big-city police force.  And that one division was
sort of expected to play ball with the others, seeing that they weren't
exactly in competition with each other.

"Well," said Mendoza mildly to that, "I suppose I could have checked
with you first, certainly if anything definite had showed upbut Ramirez
was only one of those vague hunches, you know."

"Sure, sure, we all know Mendoza's hunches!  Second sight he's got,
maybe a crystal ball, I wouldn't know, our little genius Luis Rodoffo
Vicente Mendoza!  One look, and he says, that naughty fellow's got a
stack of H.  in his back pocket, and won't my good old friend Pat jump
for joy to have a little of his work all done for him!  Oh, he's a star,
our Luis!  Hey presto, and I've ended up with a couple of hired-salesmen
punks I could've taken two months ago, instead of the real big boyand
our Luis thinks he does me a favor to give me this Ramirezl"

"Now when did I say so?  It's the way the cards fail," said Mendoza

philosophically.  "these things happen.  My crystal ball doesn!t always
show me the right pictur'

"That you can say twice," said Callaghan.  "Got you in trouble before
-got you a bullet in the leg in that Brawley business, and right now, by
God, I'm sorry it wasn't in the headl And I'll never know how you
hypnotize these respectable, high-class, good-looking women to go round
with you." He looked at Alison there in the drafty corridor outside his
office at headquarters.  "You look like a decent God-fearing Irish
girl."

"Only on my mother's side-she was a McCann," said Alison solemnly.  "And
I think it's sheer surprise, Lieutenant-for any man these days who
thinks he can still order us around, the dominant male, you know.  By
the time we've recovered enough to begin to talk back' "It's too late, I
know." Callaghan shook his head at her.  "You watch yourself.  I've got
another piece of advice for you, lady-whatever else you do with him's
your own business, but don't ever get into a hand of poker with him. And
seeing you've done about all the damage you can do tonight, Luis-on
headquarters business, that is-I guess you can get out of my sight and
take her home."

Mendoza rubbed his nose and said he wouldn't presume to teach Lieutenant
Callaghan his job, but he did think that Ramirez "Oh, get out, scatl"
said Callaghan.  "He's on his way here now, I sent two men after him
while you were phoning your bright little boy's wife.  I can't hold him
on anything, unless one of these two involve him or we find the stuff in
his possession-both of which are likely to happen.  Not that I give a
damn about him, but thank you so much for pointing him out, and now good
night to you."

Mendoza germed at him, said, "iuno no puede complacer a todo el
mundo-one can't please everybody!  Be good, Pat-hasta mds ver," and took
Alison's arm down the hall to the elevator.  "And now," he added, "la
familia Ramirez is due for another shock."

"Yes, poor people.  I must see them, to return half the tuition she'd
paid, you know.  I didn't like to blunder in the very day after, but I
thought at the inquest I might have a chance t'

"You haven't been subpoenaed, you notice.  A very routine affair.

Maybe twenty minutes-adjourned awaiting further evidence-that's how
it'll go.  Come if you like, but it'll be very dull, I won't be there."

"I'd like to think that was a non sequitur," said Alison, "but I'm draid
you didn't mean it that way.  I suppose that ex-football-star sergeant
will represent you.  I think I will go.  I've never been to an inquest

and it's an excuse to take the morning off.  Besides, I do want to see
the family, only decent."

Mendoza looked at her and shook his head, getting out his car keys.

"Occasionally I agree with Pat-astonishing how I seem to acquire these
high-principled women."

"That," said Alison sedately, "is a very premature verb." And twenty
minutes later, at her apartment door: "Don't forget those stockings.

s, "Nine and a half, thirty-three inches, I'd guess it."

"Mmh, yes," said Alison, "and entirely too good a guess it is."

,:Women, we never satisfy them-they don't like us too callow and they
don't like us too experienced!" He laid a caressing hand round her
throat.  "I'd said to myself, very gentlemanly this time, maybe next
time I'll kiss her good night, but I told you I'm always breaking
resolutions .  .  .  and sometimes even twice-or three times-if it seems
like a good idea."

"Once was quite enough," said Alison rather breathlessly, pushing him
away, "for three days' acquaintance!"

"So we figure it like compound interest, chica-I'll add up how much it
comes to per week."

"Good night, mi villano optimists," said Alison firmly.

He smiled at the closing door; he never liked them too easy.

At about the same time that Alison Weir was struggling with the zipper
of the oyster-silk sheath and reflecting that Lieutenant Callaghan's
advice about watching herself was an excellent idea, Agnes Browne was
standing in the cold dim rooming-house hall, shivering in just her slip
and the cotton robe she'd tied round her when Mrs.  Anderson called her
to the phone.

"You shouldn't've," she kept saying, almost crying.  "Hitting a
policeman like that, Joe, it's terrible, they right've arrested you-you
shouldn't go losing your temper like that."

"Well, they got a nerve, snooping around you just on account you found a
body!  What the hell they after, anyway?  You didn't have anything to
do- Listen, Agnes, I don't get it, Rita says there was a guy came up to
her after work, another cop, asking about you-I guess she told you-I
just got in, had to work late, and when she-"

"Oh, dear," whispered Agnes to herself.  "I-I know, she called me .  .

." Rita was Joe's sister who worked the same counter as Agnes, it seemed
funny to think if she'd got that job at Kress's instead she'd

never've met Rita or Joe, and it'd been just chance really-and she
couldn't wish she hadn't, but-"Oh, dear." Asking questions about how
long had she known Agnes, Rita said, and like that.  They must suspect.

"I-I don't know what they're after, Joe, but no call for you to get in
trouble account of me, it's my own-"

"You got nobody to talk up for you, I guess your friends got a right

t,

"You mustn't," said Agnes in agony.  "It's awful good of you, Joe, but
you don't know -you-you better just not b-bother about me any more,
because-" But she couldn't come out with it like that, over the phone,
hear what he'd say, know what he'd think-she just hung up quick and went
back to her room, shut herself in.

It'd been bad enough feeling guilty all the while, worrying, but when it
came to getting your friends in trouble- Agnes dried her eyes and blew
her nose and thought forlornly, Well, that's that.  And serve her right
too.  Tomorrow morning, go to them and tell the truth-shame the devil,
like her grandma used to say-and have it done with, that was all.

Whatever they'd do to her for it.  And afterward Joe and Rita and the
others that'd been nice, that she'd like having for friends, they
wouldn't want any more to do with her when they knew, but you couldn't
expect different, she'd just have to take her medicine was all.

Better go to the store first, tell Mr.  Snyder she was quitting, she'd
have to anyway-and it'd mean finding another room too, because Mrs.
Anderson wouldn't And it was silly, go on crying like this, when it w-.s
all her own fault.  .  .  .

TYv'ELVE

The rookie who'd been riding the squad car that answered the call to
Elena Ramirez' body was on night shift this week, and came into the
precinct station on Main to check out at five past eight that morning,
with his partner.  They found the desk sergeant and a couple of the day

men who'd just reported in guffawing over something on the sergeants
desk.

"We got a present from an anonymous admirer, boys-ain't she purty?  I
guess somebody figures we're not getting enough feminine companionship."

The rookie went up to look, and it was a doll-an old, dilapidated,
half-broken-apart doll lying there.  A big one, good three feet long.

"Where the hell did that come from?" asked his partner.

"Vic found it propped up against the door when he came on just now."

"Like somebody'd sat it up there on purpose," said Vic.  "The damnedest
thing.  Kids, I guess."

"Aughh," said the desk sergeant, "what some o' these punks think is
smart!  Here, Vic, stick it out back in the trash, will you?  I'

"Just a minute, Sergeant," said the rookie.  He had a funny feeling,
looking at the thing; it was crazy, but- "Hey, Pete," he said to his
partner, "does it kind of remind you of something?  Look at the way it's
got that one eye-I mean-it's the damnedest thing, but that dead girl
over on Commerce, Saturday-you know.  I mean-"

They all looked at it again and Pete said what about it, and the rookie
said weakly, well, he'd just wondered if there could be any connection.

"I mean, it's crazy, but maybe the boys downtown'd be interested'

"In this?" said the sergeant.  "Now that'd be something.  I can just see
myself calling headquarters, ask if anybody down there wants to play
dolls."

"No, but-" The longer he looked at it, the funnier the feeling got.

They had a little more backchat, the rest of them kidding him because
that had been his first corpse and he hadn't acted as hard-boiled as
maybe he should have; and the sergeant finally said, if he wanted to
play detective so bad he could do it with his own dime and be sure and
tell whoever he talked to it was strictly his own idea, none of the
precinct's responsibility.  They didn't think he'd have the nerve to do
anything like that, but by then he was feeling stubborn about it, and he
said all right, by God, he'd do just that, and got Vic to change a
quarter for him and called downtown.

He got hold of Hackett after a little argument with Sergeant Lake, and
in the middle of talking with him Hackett broke off to relay the news to
Mendoza who'd just come in.  The rookie hung on, listening to the
lieutenant's exclamation in the background, and then jumped as

Mendoza's voice came crackling over the wire: "Tell your sergeant I'm
coming right around-leave it as it is, and stay there yourself I"

"Yes, sirl" said the rookie, but the wire was already dead.  Ten minutes
later Mendoza walked in and took a look at the doll before he remembered
to throw a good-morning at the sergeant.

"IVaya una donac16n!" he murmured very softly to himself, and his very
mustache seemed to quiver with excitement.  "Now what does this mean?

But by God, whatever it means, it's the one-no odds offeredl" He swung
on the sergeant.  "Let's hear all about itl"

There wasn't much to hear, when they got down to definite details.  It
had been sitting up against the left side of the double doors, in a
position where it wouldn't either interfere with that door's opening or
necessarily be noticed, in the dark; this was an old precinct station,
and the doors were set at the back of a recessed open lobby at the top
of the front steps, which was temporarily unlighted due to defective
wiring.

Consequently there was no terminus a quo; the thing might have been
there since midnight and gone unnoticed by the various patrolmen going
in and out during the night; or it might have been put there ten minutes
before Vic found it, though it was likelier to have been before
daylight.

And of course every man there bad bandied the thing, but it was no good
swearing about that now.  Mendoza demanded a sheet of wrapping paper and
swathed the doll in it carefully; Prints would have to isolate any
strangers from the precinct men, that was all.

So I've got you to thank for this," and he turned to the rookie, who was
nearly as surprised as the sergeant.  "What's your name?" The rookie
told him.  "I'll remember that, you showed intelligence.  What struck
you about it?"

"well, I-it's crazy, Lieutenant, but the way it looked lying there, it
reminded me of that dead girl-the eye and all-it was just a sort of
feeling'

"Yes.  You're a good man.  Any time you want to get out of uniform, when
you're qualified, I'll be glad to put in a word for you."

The rookie, who had heard a little more about Mendoza by this time,
stammered incredulous gratitude; the sergeant was struck dumb; and
Mendoza walked out with the doll cradled tenderly in his arms.

He could not resist showing it to Hackett before he delivered it to
Prints; they looked at it lying there on his desk, mute, ugly, and
enigmatic, and Hackett said, "I laid myself open-say it-I told you so."

"I'm magnanimous this morning.  But that's the only thing I could say

about it, boy-I'm just one big question mark about it otherwise.  What
the hell has it got to do with this?"

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.  Ya veremos-I hope."

"Waiting for time to tell is just what we can't do, danm it.  Take it
down, will you?" While Hackett was gone he called Guanos office.

"Morgan?  He just got in-"

"Bueno," said Mendoza happuy.  "I want him.  Now.  Immediately.

Sooner.  Apologies to take him away from his job, but I need him."

Gunn said resignedly all good citizens had a duty to aid the police when
requested and he'd shoot him right over.  Mendoza looked up another
number and called it.  "Mrs.  Demarest?  Lieutenant Mendoza.  I want to
see you some time today.  I think we've got the doff, and I want your
identification-if it is.  Also Mrs.  Breen's.  .  .  .  I don't know one
thing about it except that I've got it-it just came out of the blue.

Look, I won't ask you to come all the way down here, suppose you see if
you can get hold of Mrs.  Breen for some time this afternoon, and I'll
bring it to your house.  I probably won't get it back from Prints until
noon anyway.  .  .  .  Right, then, you'll call me back."

Waiting for Morgan, he called Callaghan in idle curiosity about Ramirez.

They had found an ounce and a half of uncut heroin in a plastic bag
taped to the underside of the bureau in his room at the Ramirez house,
he had been taken into custody, and yes, Callaghan agreed that the rest
of the family looked innocent enough but of course a check had to be
made.  And was what he heard in the background evidence of how they
usually examined witnesses in Homicide because if so it ought to be
reported to the Chief.

Ceilm just about to find out," said Mendoza, and hung up.  Somebody out
in the anteroom was shouting angrily; he could hear Hackett saying, "Now
take it easy," and a woman saying something else.  He opened the door in
time to see a little dark fellow take a swing at Hackett which almost
connected.  Hackett, looking as surprised as a Great Dane attacked by a
belligerent Peke, held the fellow off with a hand on the chest and went
on saying, "Take it easy now'

The woman was Agnes Browne, and she was saying, "Joel Oh, you
mustn't-please, Jo'

"What's all this about?" Mendoza plucked Joe off Hackett and swung him
around.  "Now calm down, all of you, come into my office and let's hear
about it-Miss Browne, or it's Mrs.  Browne, isn't it'

"No, it's rmot!" said Agnes desperately.  "That's just what I came to
tell you, sir-senly I went to tell Mr.  Snyder I was quitting first, and

Rita would go and call Joe, and he has to come after and start aB this
ruction-he doesn't mean any harm, sir, pleas'

"The hell I don'tl I'd like to know what the hell you guys are up to,
persecuting an innocent citizen what it amounts to and by God I'll see
it carried to the Supreme Court if-you got no reason-just because she
happened'

"Oh, Joel They have.  I-I couldn't tell you, but now I got to-I came to
confess and have it all done with, I know I've done awful wrong, sir,
but please, Joe didn't know'

Hackett said to nobody in particular, "I better apologize to Dwyer, I
see how he came to walk into it." Joe stared at Agnes in astonishment
and subsided, and Mendoza told them all to sit down.

"You want to confess what?" he asked Agnes.

She collapsed into a chair and began to cry.  "I'm blackl" They all
looked at her.  Hackett said, "Well, I'll be damned.  You see, Luis, I
told you-it was that sort of thing, nothing at all.  Now we know .  .

.You don't look very black to me, NEss Browne."

"I am-it's the law-l-I know I don't look so-my mother was half white,
sir, and my dad more'n half, they didn't either, I'm about an eighth I
guess or something like that, and everybody always said I could pass,
and I thought I'd-but I've felt just awful about it, I've never done
anything against the law before, sir, I swear I haven'tl H don't know if
that counts, makes any difference to how long I'd maybe have to go to
jail'

"Nobody's going' to put you in jaill" said Joe.

"It's the lawl" sobbed Agnes.  "They know it's the lawl And I gave a
wrong address and all, I s'pose they found out and then of course they'd
suspect someffng funny'

"Well, now, I grant you we got some damn funny laws on the books," said
Hackett, "but that's a new one to me, Mss Browne."

"It is the law, most states and I guess here too.  I know it was wrong,
sir." She emerged from her handkerchief to blow her nose.  "It says
anybody with any black at all who pretend'

"Oh, that one," said Hackett.  "I forget now, does it say it's a
misdemeaner or a felony?" He looked at Mendoza.

"I seem to remember it says misdemeanor," said Mendoza, "but offhand I
wouldn't know whether the mandatory sentence is thirty or sixty days.  A
judg'

"Now listen," said Joe.

"A judge might have a little trouble finding the latest precedent,
somewhere around 1900 I should think."

"They leave all that stuff in to make life hard for law students," said
Hackett.  "There're some a lot funnier than that."

"Don't ridicule the law," said Mendoza severely.  "If you ask me some of
those ought to be looked up and enforced.  There's another one that says
it's a misdemeanor for a female to wear male clothing in public, and if
you've ever walked down Broadway and seen all the fat women in pants-i'

Agnes stared at them a little wildly and asked weren't they going to
arrest her?  "Agnes honey," said Joe, as if the sense of it had just
penetrated, "you mean that's why you'd never go out with me, always
acted so- Well, I'll be damned!" He leaned on Mendoza's desk and
laughed.

"You want to know something, H been in kind of a sweat about it because
I figured it was on account I'm Catholic and you wouldn't have nothing
to d'

Why, Joe!  However could you think such a thing of me, I'd neverwhy,
that's unamerican, go judging people by what church'

"Yes, I think there's a law about that too," agreed Hackett
thoughtfully.

"Honey, one-eighth isn't so awful black, you know.  Matter o' fact,
you're a lot Ughter-complected than me, and far as I know I got nothing
but Italian both sides back to Adam.  Though I guess at that a lot of
us'd get some surprises if we knew everything was in our family trees
like they say.  You stop crying now, Agnes, it's all right, you see it's
all right' "But-you mean you don't care-and they aren't going to arrest'

"Well, I tell you, Miss Browne," said Mendoza, "the court calendars are
pretty full, and we don't want to overburden the judges.  I think we'll
just forget it, but maybe Mr.  Carpaccio hero-it is Mr.  Carpacdo?

-would care to take the-er-probationary responsibility for your future
good conduct, in which cas'

"That's a dgmn good idea," said Joe.  "Come on now, Agnes, stop crying
and come with me, you see they're not going to do noffng to you, it's
nobody's business but yours.  .  .  .  Don't I care?  Listen, honey,
you're the nicest girl I ever knew and the prettiest one too, and I
couldn't care less if you're all colors of the rainbow.  And no, Rita
won't care either, I'd like to see her try- Besides, I read some place
about a thing called Mendelian law, it sa' "Take her away and explain
that one thoroughly," advised Mendoza,

shooing them out to the anteroom.  "Yes, yes, Afiss Browne, you?re very
welcome, thank you for coming in.  .  .  .  Morgan, good morning, what
kept you?  Come in here, I've got a job for you."

Morgan wasn't enthusiastic about the job, took it on somewhat
grudgingly, while taking Mendoza's point of view.  "I've got no real
reason to ask questions about this boy, and the school people would
undoubtedly raise an uproar, want to know all about i% if a Homicide man
walked in wanting to know all about one of their seventh-graders.

There may be noffng in it anyway, and in any case not much to find out
at the school, but it's obviously the first place to go for information
about him.  They may be a little surprised at your office wanting to
know, but they won't be alarmed about it, and everybody's so used these
days to being asked irrelevant questions by busybody goverranent
agencies, ten to one they won't think twice about it.  Try to see his
teacher-%r all his teachers, if there are more than one-and his school
records.  I've jotted down some questions you might ask."

All right." Morgan took the memo ungraciously.  "I'll get what I can for
you, but I do have a job of my own, you know (I Wwgs rye got to do
today."

"I realize that." Mendoza also realized that some of the reluctance was
due to the fact that Morgan didn't like him much personally; that was
just one of those things.  Morgan being a reasonably intelligent man,
Mendoza didn't put it down to any irrational prejudice, though he wasn't
much concerned with the reason if there was one.  Probably not, just a
matter of personal chemistries; and he never wasted time liftg to
ingratiate himself with people who felt that way.  He'd had the same
reasonless reaction himself often enough to know that it was a waste of
time.  He merely thanked Morgan politely, saw him out, and deciding he
could not decently call down to Prints, to see if they'd found anything
interesting, before eleven, sat down to look over the latest reports on
his other current cases.

Before he had read the first three lines of what Sergeant Brice had to
tell him, another disturbance commenced outside his door.  He said
resignedly to himself, "IMe doy por vencidop' and went to investigate.

As he might have expected, it was a delegation representing the family
Ramirez, consisting of Papa, Teresa, and Father Monaghan.  Ramirez was
being impassioned in Spanish, and Hackett was patting his shoulder and
repeating, "No se soloque listed, wnigo-m O.K., comprende?"

"Ueutenant' Teresa clutched at his arm.  "Please, you got to believe
none of us knew what my uncle was up t'

"Never, never, never!" Ramirez whirled to state his case to bioher
authority.  "This villain, this bandit, to bring such disgrace on the
family - I swear before God to you, never would I have him in my house
if I knew what he is guilty of!  And now you're thinking bad things for
all of us, that we're all criminals-I swear to you-"

"Calm yourself, my son, I've told you the police will judge fairly, you
must not worry.  Lieutenant, I do hope there'll be no misunderstanding,
I'm quite certain these people had nothing to do-"

"Yes, yes, yes," said Mendoza.  "Ramirez-quiet!  You've been in this
country long enough to know that we're not ogres!  Listen now.  Your
brother has broken the law and he will go to prison, but his crime isn't
in my jurisdiction, understand?  He was arrested by my friend Lieutenant
Callaghan, and I have spoken with the lieutenant, who agrees with me
that you people very likely knew nothing of the crime, although
naturally he must investigate that.  You understand that there must be
investigation when a crime is committed.  But if you've done nothing
wrong, you have nothing to fear from the police."

"You see, Papa, I kept telling you it was all right, they'll find out we
didn't have nothing to do with it, and Uncle will say too, he's not that
bad, try to pull us into it!  Thanks, Lieutenant, that was real nice of
you, say that to this other cop-now don't take on so, Papa-"

They got Ramirez calmed down a little.  Mendoza, suddenly struck with a
not very hopeful idea, but you never knew and no harm to try, took
Teresa down to Prints to look at the doll.

"No, I never seen nothing like that before.  .  .  .  Why?  Is it
something to do with-?  But how could it be?"

"Now there you've asked me something," he sighed.  "Yes, it is something
to do with it-that I can tell you now, at least I'm ninety-eight percent
sure.  But what, that's another question."

"It's- I don't like it," said Teresa, shuddering.  "All pulled apart
like that."

"Yes .  .  .  I suppose you haven't got anything for me yet," he said to
Carter.

"We've got a lot of dandy prints, Lieutenant-whether they'll tell us
anything-" and Carter shrugged.  "Let's see, you gave us the names of
five of our own men handled it, well, I've got a couple of the boys
checking records now, to eliminate those.  At a guess, we've got two or
three different people besides-I think.  Tell you more when I know

which to e%Sate.  We'll see if the strangers match anything in the other
records, and have a look at the psychos on Me first, way you suggested.

You can have her back any time, by the way-we've finished with her."

"Thanks very much." Mendoza folded the paper round the don and carried
it back upstairs with him.  He spent another five minutes on additional
reassurances to Ramirez and the priest, got rid of them, unwrapped the
doll on his desk, and said, "Now we'll just see if we can match up that
little clue you were so superior about."

"What?  Oh, that," as Mendoza tenderly slid the dainty strip of pink
lace from its envelope.  "Today's great thought, I'd forgotten-my God,"
said Hackett suddenly, "look at the time, I'll be late for that damned
inquest, and it's old Curly too, he'll give me hell-have fun, wnigo,"
and he snatched up his hat and ran.

The two women looked at it in silence for a minute and came out with
twin reactions.

"Well!" said Mrs.  Demarest.  "What kind of a mother would go and let a
child treat an expensive doll that way!  Breaking things up just out of
mischief, it's a thing I always saw my children got a good spanking
for-just leads to trouble later on."

"A sinful waste-wicked," agreed Mrs.  Breen, looking horrified.  "A
downright destructive youngster, must be, whoever's had it.  I never saw
anythin' like'

"I've begun to think that might be an understatement-about who's had
it," said Mendoza.  "But is it the doll Carol bought?"

"Yes, suh, it is," said Mrs.  Breen promptly, "or one just like it,
because if I got to swear, well, of course I couldn't do no such thing.

I just had the one in stock, not figurin' I could sell more'n that, you
know, an' I couldn't guess how many of 'em the factory might of made,
an' they'd be all just alike, except some was dressed in blue and some
in pink like this here.  But it's just exactly like the one Carol
bought-or 'twas when it was new."

"Would there be some kind of a serial number on it, I wonder?"

suggested Mrs.  Demarest.  "The factory maybe could tell what store
they'd sold it to.  Little cheap things, there wouldn't be, but a thing
that was going to sell for twenty dolla'

"Yes, it's possible.  I haven't looked, the thing's in such a state I
don't want to handle it more than necessary, and if there is a number
the factory'll know where to look for it.  That we'll find out.  Now
look at this."

He brought out the three-inch strip of lace.  "I'll swear to you this
came off some part of the clothes, but it's not possible to fit it on
anywhere."

They bent over it, over the doll, looking.  "It's justnlike the lace on
the underwear," agreed Mrs.  Breen.  "Same exact color.  I reckon the
factory could tell you for sure, 'bout that-but there's not an awful lot
o' the lace left on, an' if it gottorn off different times, well, there
wouldn't be no fitting this piece where it was."

" I can't get over the way it's been' Mrs.  Demarest raised troubled
eyes to him.  "Can you tell us about it, Lieutenant, how you came to
find it?"

Mendoza leaned back and lit a cigarette.  "I'll tell you what I know you
tell me what it means!  Carol bought this thing the night she was
kitted.  That morning, a Mrs.  Marion Lindstrom tried to persuade you,"
stabbing the cigarette at Mrs.  Breen, "to sell it to her, and, when you
re, fused, was insistent that you find out whether you could get her one
like it, and left her name and addres'

"Real uppity she was," nodded NUs.  Breen, "as if I could, if I wanted."

"So.  Carol was killed and the doll stolen.  No evidence either way, as
to whether the killer or someone else took it.  Now, Mrs.  Lindstrom
Eved just two blocks up from here, across Hunter Avenu (I the next day,
though it lacked a week to the end of the month and her rent was paid to
then, she moved-unexpectedly and hurriedly.  We can conjecture it was
pure chance she ended up where she did, in a place called Graham Court,
down the wrong side of Main.  She'd have to take what was available
right that day, if she was anxious to move at onceand what was
available, of course, within the Hmits of what she could pay.  AH right.

Time goes on, and last Friday night another girl is lulled, within two
blocks of this Graham Court.  Killed the same way, and as was the case
with Carol, there is absolutely nothing in her private life which gave
anyone reason to kill her.  She wasn't as bright a girl as Carol, she
had very bad taste and not too much education, but she was an honest
girl and well enough liked-and I don't suppose she wanted to die, you
know."

"Ah, poor thing," said Mrs.  Demarest.

"She was on her way home from a roller-skating rink, alone because her
boy friend's father, who disapproved of her, had come and hauled the boy
home with him.  Fortunately they're Out of it on evidence.  This time
the handbag was taken, found a couple of blocks away, but as far as we
can tell nothing was stolen.  Now, take a look at me,,, said Men doza,
sitting up.  "I'm visited by a hunch-it's the same kner-and I've got no
evidence whatever, that means anything, to back me up- Not until you
told me about this doll.  Then I've got Mrs.  Lindstrom's name, and then
I find out she's living in the same neighborhood this time too, and
where that does get me?  If I checked back on all the people living
around there, I might find half a dozen others who'd moved there from
this general neighborhood in the last six months.  One of those things.

.  .  .  But, where d'you think I found this little piece of lace?  On
the floor of that skating rink.  There's some vague evidence about a boy
or a young man who's been in the habit of sneaking into the rink by an
unused door, and who-so the dead girl complained to several people
-1/2tared at her in a 'funny way." I think he's the one, but that's
mostly another hunch and I know nothing else about him, I've got no line
on him at all.  Except that maybe he dropped this little strip there one
time -and that doesn't say it came from the don.  I say to myself, I'm
woolgathering, all this doesn't mean one damned thing.  And then this
morning somebody leaves that doll carefully propped against the door of
the precinct station down there-three blocks away from Graham Court."

"Well, that is queer," said Mrs.  Demarest interestedly.  "But this Mrs.
Lindstrom, she wouldn't be the on'

"There's not much to go on there either-yet.  Her husband deserted her
about a month before Carol was killed.  There's a thirteen-year-old boy.

All I know about him right now is that he's a big, strong boyshot up
early-big as a man, and probably strong enough to have done -what was
done.  I don't know if he did, or why he might have.  I'm getting what I
can about him, but'!-he shrugged-"you can see I've got no real evidence
to warrant a full-scale investigation."

"I don't know 'bout your rules for that kind o' thing," said Mrs. Breen,
"but it shorely is queer, all that.  Don't seem hardly possible, though,
that a boy thirteen-and why'd she want a dog so bad, her with only a
boy?"

Mendoza sighed and stood up.  "I haven't even got an excuse to go and
ask her that-and she'd only tell me it was for her favorite niece back
east, anyway.  I'm hoping the factory can identify this definitely, and
in that case I'll want you both to make formal statements about it.  . .

.  Thanks very much, I'll let you know as soon as I can."

TMRTEEN

The phone call had come through, Sue said when she eventually got Morgan
at the office after lunch, about eleven o'clock.  It was the woman
again, again sounding as if she were reading the message, refusing to
answer questions, say anything else.

"I tried to- I thought if I could appeal to her, remind her of what she
said before, what we-but she just gave a little gasp and said, 'Oh, I
couldn't, Mis' Morgan,' and hung up.  Dick-i'

"Yes," he said, making meaningless scribbles on the note pad in front of
him.  Henry was there at his desk across the room, Stack right alongside
under the other window; Morgan couldn't say much directly.

"Go on."

And what it came to was-right back to Graham Court.  Seven o'clock,
Smith's message said, at Graham Court, the address and apartment number
carefully read out.  Morgan might as well come to him, ran the message
(insolently phrased, sounding the opposite in the woman's soft voice),
and he needn't think account of things going havwire last night he'd
stopped meaning anything he'd said.  He'd be waiting alone for Morgan at
seven, and this had better be the pay-off, or else.

"All right," said Morgan steadily, "I've got that.  Seven, that's early.

I'd better not try to make it home first.  Mean?-just more bluster, is
all -don't worry, hon.  You'd better expect me when you see me, O.K.?"

He put down the phone and went back to his open case book there on the
desk, pretending to check notes, add a word here and there, but not
really seeing anything on the page.

Two things said themselves over in his mind.  The apartment.  And,
Alone.  (Smith, of course, unknowing that he bad any prior knowledge of
the apartment, any other reason to be there.)  It added up-for Morgan,
and also to a couple of things that were no concern of Morgan's but
interesting: that alone suggested that Smith had seen to it that
neitheir the woman nor the boy had any idea how much money he was
expacting, and that and the revealing of his home ad&ess suggested that
very likely he was planning to decamp with the money, maybe at once.

What it added up to for Morgan the murderer was safety-maybe.

Depending on where Mendoza's men were.  He thought he might get some
information on that point when he saw Mendoza an hour from now, with
this stuff from the school.

From the time on Saturday night when the cold fact had penetrated his
mind that the only real lasting safety was Smith dead, circumstances had
been forcing on Morgan certain changes of his original plan he didn't
much like.  He looked at this one from all the angles; it was better
than the street holdup in a way, and it would, of course, have to do.

You were always seeing something like that in the paper.  A man shot
himself, hanged himself, slashed his wrists in the bathtub: no known
reason, no prior threat.

The tricky factor was the timing.  If Mendoza's men were inside, it
couldn't be done at all: they'd be too close, and not unlikely in a
position to know at which floor Morgan stopped.  But if they were
outside, then-which way, before or after the Lindstroms?  Before, he
thought.

Quick and quiet up to the third floor, and no backchat with Snth: as
soon as the door was shut behind him in Smith's place, and Smith away
from it.  Amd no fooling around with any attempt to muffle the shot, a
suicide wouldn't bother and there wouldn't be time.  Gun in his hand:
prints.  Thirty seconds?  There had to be a good chance he'd have time
to be outside the door again, at least, before anyone else got there.

There was a narrower chance that he could get halfway down the stairs
before that.  People exclaimed, talked a little, wondered, before they
went to see.  The ideal thing would be Morgan standing in the
secondfloor ham, just ready to knock on the Lindstroms' door, when doors
opened and people came out saying, "Was that a shot?"

But Morgan halfway down (which was also halfway up) would do.

I'd just got to the Lindstroms' door when- I knew it was a shot up here,
I started up to see That was all he needed to say; none of his business,
nothing to link him to an unexplained suicide.

Sue, of course no question here of passing it off as accident.  It
couldn't be helped.  He'd got past worrying about the side effects; he
was feeling now the way she'd said, Let's for God's sake get it done and
over, any way at all.

Because, if he'd be honest with himself, he wasn't sure he could do it
-that all this would come to any action in the end.

He had to do it, the only possible solution.  He'd seen that clear on
Saturday night.

Which of course was the point.  If you got yourself wound up to a place
where you were ready to do murder, you ought to do it right then while,
so to speak, the spring was tight.  He hadn't; he'd had three nights and
nearly three days to think about it, and now he didn't know if, when the
chips were down, he could really bring himself He touched the gun under
his coat; he'd been carrying it because he was afraid Sue would find it
if he left it around the house.  He thought angrily, uneasily, Ethics be
damned: what loss is that hood?  He'd decided this, he was just being a
damned coward, to think You got a little cowardly when you were
thirty-eight, with a wife and child and a mortgage on the house and
debts and a job that paid just forty-two hundred a year.

And once he'd thought, if he could feel he was to blame for getting into
this mess- But of course he was, they both were, they'd known at the
time it was a silly and dangerous thing to do.

Vftch brought him back to the woman, because he supposed-if you looked
at it from all sides-and remarkable as it might seem, she wouldn't want
to lose her husband, whatever kind he was.

People, thought Morgan tiredly: people.

The agencies' bright brisk assurances: we like to find just the right
child for the individual parents: patiencel The endless forms.  The
investigators: questions, questions.  Time going by, and both of them
afraid, never, and Sue And then, that woman.  Just by chance sitting
next to Sue in the lounge of a department-store rest room.  "Such a
lovely baby, Dick, I couldn't help saying-only a month old, and darling,
she hasn't even named her, wasn't that interested-sh' Later they both
thought, less lack of interest in the baby than preoccupation with the
husband.  Oh, obviously that curious mixture of obsession (that couldn't
really be called love), dependence, and fear .  .  .

He was awful mad when he heard about the baby, he didn't want another
kid, they take a lot of time and all, you know.  And I can't go out to
work now, with it to look out for.  He's-my husband, he's back east,
he's-well, he's sick, see, awful sick, in the hospital, and can't work.

I'd just as soon-anyways, I guess it'd be better o,# with folks like
you.  .  .  .

Yes, silly: dangerous.  All that you forgot, confronted with the warm
round armful that would be Janet Ann Morgan.  A little sense you tried

to use, you got the woman to sign a statement saying she was
relinquishing the child voluntarily, and you told Dr.  Fordyce that Sue
was nervous, didn't trust the agency's medical tests, wanted his report
too.

And Dr.  Fordyce, very probably, could make a pretty shrewd guess at the
truth, but he was an old friend and he figured, maybe, that it wasn't up
to him to be an officious busybody.  And all the tests saying just what
Janny had been telling everybody since-such a lovely baby.

And now, Smith.  Robertson, the woman said: Smith, Brown, Green, what
the hell if it was O'Kelly or Bemstein or Gonzales.  .  .  .  There he
was, and he was the danger: it would all come to nothing if he were out
of it, the woman was a nonentity with no force in her.  So that left it
right up to Morgan, and this was the only way he could see open to him.

When he came round to that point again, he got up and shut the case
book.  On his way over to Police Headquarters, he told himself that from
another angle, it was safer really-if you came to murder-to do it cold,
thinking.  If you had to, if you could, if you could face the issue and
take the only decision .  .  .

The waiter at Federico's saw Mendoza come in, and when he presented the
menu also brought the two fingers of rye that was usually Mendoza's one
drink of the day, and, five minutes later, the black coffee.  They never
hurried you at Federico's, and they knew their regular patrons.

Mendoza brooded over the coffee; he had something else to think about
now, which was probably quite irrelevant, and that was Morgan.

Morgan, so much friendlier than he had been this morning, expanding on
what information he'd got at the school, and then asking questions.  Had
Mendoza got anywhere on the Lindstroms, anything suggestive from the men
watching the apartment, and just how did they go about that anyway, he'd
think it was an awkward job, that they'd be spotted .  .  .  oh, from a
car, and tailing the woman when she-and only up to midnight, that was
interesting.  .  .  .

Morgan, being affable in order to ask questions?  And just why?

Morgarmow Mendoza looked at him with more attention-strung-up, a little
tense, putting on an act of being just as usual.  So all right, he was
worried about something, he'd had a fight with his wife, he was coming
down with a cold or-quite likely-he'd felt a trifle ashamed of his
barely courteous manner this morning and was trying to make up for it.

There were more interesting things to think about than Morgan.  Over his
dinner Mendoza thought about them.

The school, somewhat bewildered at being asked but polite to an
accredited civic agency, said in effect that young Martin Lindstrom was
one of its more satisfactory pupils.  A good student, not brilliant but
intelligent, cooperative, well-mannered and reliable.  He had a good
record of attendance and punctuality.  He was somewhat immature for his
age, not physically or academically but socially: not a particularly
good mixer with other children, shy, a little withdrawn but not to any
abnormal degree.  Mrs.  Lindstrom had never attended any P.-T.A.

meetings, none of the teachers had ever met her, but that was not too
unusual.

The tailers.  Mendoza had debated about taking them off: a waste of
time?  Not likely to come up with anything, and there was no real reason
to single these people out.  .  .  .  In twenty-four hours she had left
the place odly once, between seven and eight last evening, the boy then
being home; she had walked three blocks to a grocery store on Main and
home again with a modest bag of supplies.

On Thursday she had an appointment at the county clinic.  He toyed with
the idea of putting a policewoman in there, to inveigle her into casual
conversation, but what could he hope to get, after all?  No lead, no
line .  .  .  He'd like to talk with her himself, judge for himself what
kind of woman- See the boy, get some idea- Remembering Mrs.  Cotter's
graphic description, he reflected that Mrs.  Lindstrom wouldn't be an
easy woman to talk with, sound out.

The doll, his only excuse for approach, and not a very good one.  He
knew now definitely that it was the same doll: the factory had
identified it by a serial number as the one sold to Mrs.  Breen, and
that was something: it might be a lot.  Definite facts he liked: this
was one of the few he had to contemplate in this business.  But-as he'd
said to Mrs.  Breen and Mrs.  Demarest-make it an excuse to see the
Lindstrom woman: forget Elena Ramirez and go back to Brooks, say, you
were inordinately interested in this piece of merchandise-and all the
rest of it.

She would only tell him some plausible tale of a niece or godchild, and
that was that-no further excuse to pry at her.

He got out the little strip of lace and booded over that a while.  He
muttered to it, "Eso no vale un comino-not worth a hang!" Both ends of
this thing had come to a dead stop: blind alleys.  There was nowhere new
to go, on either Brooks or Ramirez.  And yet at the same time he felt
even more certain now that the cases were essentially the

same case, that the Lindstroms were the link (or one of them), and that
just a couple of steps beyond this dead end lay somethingsomeone-.-some
one more definite fact-that would lead him to the ultimate truth, and to
a murderer.

He had also, for no reason, a feeling of urgency-a feeling that time was
running out.

When he left Federico's he went back to his office.  And that was for no
reason either.  He stood there, hat and coat still on, looking down at
that doll on his desk.

He thought, It might mean this and it might mean that, but the one thing
it meant, sure as death, was that somebody was trying to tell him
something with it.  And what he would like to think somebody was telling
him was that the Lindstroms were definitely involved.

Suddenly he swore aloud, folded the wrapping paper round the thing and
thrust it under his arm.  There were times you had to sit down and
think, and other times you had to act, even if you weren't sure what
action to take-there was a chance you'd pick up a new lead somehow,
somewhere, if you went out and about just at random.

Take the excuse: go and see the woman, talk with her-about anything;
something might show up, he might get the smell of a new line.

It was just before seven when he nosed the Ferrari into the curb outside
Graham Court.  Already dark, but the city truck had been around,
finally, to replace the bulb in the street lamp a little way down from
the entrance to the cul-de-sac, and he recognized the man just turning
in there, walking fast.

Morgan.  Small and rather dubious satisfaction slid through Mendoza's
mind for a possible answer to this one little irrelevant puzzle: Morgan,
perhaps, infected with boyish detective fever, using his own excuse to
get at the Lindstroms?

If so, and if they were involved in this thing, the blundering amateur
effort might warn them-or it could be useful, frightening them into some
revealing action.

Mendoza got out of the car and stood there a minute at the curb with the
doll under his arm, debating his own next move now-whether to join
Morgan or wait until he came out.

Marty hadn't gone home after school, and he wasn't lying to himself
about why: he couldn't.  He was just plain scared, more than he'd ever
been before his whole life.  It had been bad enough this morning, he'd

got out just as quick as he could, long before usual, and of course she
couldn't come after to drag him back, make him answer questions.  This
morning had been pretty bad.

He'd had some idea what was going to happen right off, but he just
hadn't cared-then.  The thing was, maybe like a silly little kid
believing in fairies and like that, when he thought about the afterward
part (vague and eager) he'd thought, if it was going to tell Them
anything at all, it'd be right away, and maybe even by this morning-some
time today-*verything would Not like that.  Maybe not even some time
today.

Maybe never.  And what might happen now, when he went home, he just
couldn't imagine how bad it'd be, or even what it might be.  She knew he
had something to do with its being gone, with the door always locked
inside and all.

And besides Ma, what she'd do and say and ask This had been about the
longest and awfullest day of his whole life.

He'd got up early, before it was light even: he hadn't really got to
sleep after he was back in fromoing that-just laid there miserable and
scared and wondering what would happen now.  And then getting out soon
as ever he could, after it started to happen.  He hadn't really had
breakfast, she'd been too upset and he thought some scared too, to fix
much, and he hadn't wanted that; and she hadn't faed his lunch to carry
either, so he didn't have any.

Times today he'd felt sort of empty, but not like being hungry.  An
awful day, other ways: all the ways it could be.  He'd been dumb in
history class and Mr.  Protheroe had scolded him, and then in English
class he'd felt so sleepy, couldn't lift his head up hardly, take in
what Miss Skinner was saying, and she'd been mad.  He was glad, sort of,
when it was three thirty and school was out, but another way he wasn't,
because it was at least somewhere to be.

He didn't go home.  He had the thirty cents Ma'd given him, hadn't
bought anything in the school cafeteria at lunchtime, because he wasn't
hungry then, but now he was and he bought a ten-cent chocolate bar and
ate it while he just walked along going nowhere.  Staying away from
home.

He walked for a while, just anywhere, and sat on the curb sometimes to
rest; he started to feel like he couldn't breathe, from being so scared
and not knowing what to do.

Because he had to go home some time.  There wasn't anything else to do,
anywhere else to go.  It'd get dark, and he couldn't go on waling,
sitting on curbs, all night.

Somewhere along one street, down near Main, he met Danny's ma.  It was
just starting to get dark then.  She saw him, and she made him stop, and
said, "Oh, you're the boy lives downstairs, aren't you?  You know

Danny, Danny S-Smith, don't you?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Marty, and he took off his cap like Ma and Dad both
always said you ought to talking to a lady or when you came inside, to
be polite.

"Oh, have you seen him anywheres?  Was he to school today?"

"No, ma'am, I guess he wasn't, I haven't seen-:'

"Oh, dear," she said in her funny soft little voice.  "I guess he's for
sure run off.  I don't know what I better do about it.  You see, his dad
was kind of nice to him awhile, just lately, an' then he got mad at him,
and I guess it sort of turned Danny-d'you suppose?  Boys, they're funny
anyways-never know what they're up to." It was like she was talking to
herself.  "I better ask Ray what to do.  Only he said not to come home
till eight anyways.  Oh, well' and she smiled sort of absent-minded at
Marty and went past and he saw her stop and look at the ads outside the
movie house there and go in.

He couldn't be bothered, think much about her or Danny.

It got darker, and then it was really dark and getting cold too, and his
head began to feel funny, light, and he wasn't sure he could keep on
walking, like, even if he sat down somewhere he might fall over.

There wasn't anything left to do but go home.  And it'd be worse now,
after a whole day.  .  .  .  And worse too with Ma, because he'd stayed
away so long.

It took a long time to get there, and he thought for a while he'd never
get to the top of the stairs.  And now he wasn't feeling so awful scared
any longer-like he'd got past that-part of him was just feeling sick and
so tired and wanting to get home because that was the place to go when
you felt that way, and another part just wanted to have it all over
with, whatever was going to happen.

He leaned on the door when he knocked and waited for her to come, and so
when the door opened he almost fell down, and she grabbed at him.  She
hadn't called out sharp, way she always did, who was there,

first before unlocking-but he hardly noticed.

"Martyl" she said, and there wasn't so much crossness in her voice as
he'd expected, she sounded-almost like the way he'd been feelingplain
scared.  "Marty, where you been?-l been nearly crazy all dayyou got to
say what you did, where you-go aif get it backi Marty'

And that was the first time he ever remembered she didn't right away
lock the door-but he didn't notice that much either, right then.

Gunn was starting a cold, and left the office early.  As usual, he
denied the vague stuffy sensation in the head, the little soreness in
the throat, the general feeling of lassitude; he said he wouldn't dare
have a cold after the way she'd been stuffing him with Vitamin C all
winter.

Christy, having been married to him for thirty-nine years next June,
ignored that, stood over him to see he finished the glass of hot
lemonade and honey, and said he'd better have something light for dinner
instead of the hamburger, and why didn't he get into his robe and
slippers and be comfortable, so far as she knew nobody was coming in.

Gunn said defiantly he felt perfectly all right, never better.  "Of
course," said Christy briskly, "but no law against making yourself
comfortable."

"I suppose you'll give me no peace until I do," said Gunn, relieved at
being argued into it.  And then the phone rang, and she said vexedly,
There, if that was the MacDonalds wanting to play bridge tonight they
could go on wanting-not, of course, because Gunn wasn't feeling well but
because she didn't feel like it herself.

He had his tie off, in the bedroom, Estening to her murmuring protests
at the phone, when she came to the door and said crossly it was somebody
who insisted on speaking with him, wouldn't take no for an answer.  So
he went out and picked up the phone.

"mr.  Gunn?" said a male voice, confident, courteous, used to doing
business over the phone.  "I've got a little deal for you, sorry to
disturb you at home, but I'm glad I've finally got hold of you-your
office let me have your number.  You don't know me, I'm Earl King, King
Contracting out on Western-but your office sent a memo to me, and I
guess a lot of other places, about a fellow named Lindstrom, wanting to
know if he'd applied for work or been hired, under that name or any
other'

"Yes?" Gunn sat down beside the telephone table.

"Well, I've got him for you.  It was quite a little surprise to me, I
ten you, because of the kind of thing it is-Weserting his family-if
you'd asked me, I'd have said he was the last man.  He's been working
for me nearly six months, one of my steadiest men, and under his own
name too.  When-"

"Well, that's fine," said Gunn.  "We're glad to know where he is, and in
the morning-"

"Wait a minute, this is just the start.  When I got your form letter
asking about him, well, there wasn't any doubt it was him, name and
description and all.  But I tell you, it staggered me.  I couldn't help
feeling there must be something on his side, you know, because of the
kind of guy he is.  And I didn't want to go and haul him off the job in
front of the other men, make a big thing of it.  What I did, I met him
at the job half an hour ago when he'd be through for the day, and
tackled him about it.  No trouble at all, he broke right down, said he
was glad it'd come out and he'd thought it would before this, and anyway
he'd been feeling so bad about it he couldn't have gone on much longer'
"That's fine," said Gunn, yawning.  "Glad to hear it.  He's decided to
go back to his family?  So that's that." Surreptitiously he swallowed,
testing that soreness at the back of his throat.

"Well, not quite," said King.  "Now the dam's broken, he's been telling
me a lot of things, but more to the point he insists on seeing youyou're
the one's after him, so to speak, and he's in such a state-well, he's
one of those terribly honest fellows, you know, can't sleep if they
forget to pay for a cup of coffee at a drugstore counter-you know what I
mean.  He's got to get it all off his chest right away, to you."

"In the morning," said Gunn, remembering that Mendoza would also be
interested and want to see Lindstrom, "if he'll com'

"I can't talk him into that, Mr.  Gunn.  He's in such a state-not wild,
you know, don't mean that, but- Look, I can't help feeling so damned
sorry for the guy, he's sort of desperate-keeps saying he can't rest
till he explains how he came to-you see how it is.  Look, if you'll
agree to see him tonight, I've said I'll drive him over there.  I know
it's an imposition, but-there's one thing about it, too, I don't know
but what it'd be just as well for- Well, I think you'll be interested,
and if' "Oh, hell," said Gunn.  But this was, in a way, a funny sort of
job, and you ran into these things sometimes.  Strictly speaking it was
Morgan's case and he ought to be the one to handle this, but let it go.

At least it didn't mean going out again, and an hour should take care of
it.

"All right, bring him here if it's like that.  Have you got the
address?"

"Just a minute, I'll take it down.  .  .  .  That's quite a little
drive, don't expect us much before seven, O.K.?  Thanks very much, Mr.
Gunn, I hope this isn't interfering with any plans-I appreciate it. He's
really a nice fellow, I can't help feeling he- Well, we'll see you about
seven then, thanks again."

Gunn hung up and said "Helll" again.  Christy wasn't very pleased
either, said she thought he'd given up being on twenty-four-hour call

when he retired.  But she got dinner a Ettle early, and they'd eaten and
Gunn was sitting in the front room in his robe and slippers when the
doorbell sounded, while she cleaned up in the kitchen.  He'd left the
porch light on; he went and let them in, brought them into the living
room.

King, fortyish, nice4looking, responsible-looking fellow.  And
Lindstrom, a big man, tag and also broad, still in his work clothes, and
yes, the very look of him making you think, The last man.  A steady
type, you'd say-mild blue eyes behind steel-framed glasses, square
honestlooking face, big blunt workman's hands twisting his white work
cap.

"Come in, sit down, won't you?"

Lindstrom burst out, nervous apologetic, "It's awful good of you, see me
this way, and Mr.  King too, drive all this far over-I got to thank
you-I just got to tell, explain to you, sir, H don't mind whatever you
got to do to me for it, it was a terrible wrong thing, I knew that all
the while, I felt so bad after-but I-"

"No one's going to do anything to you, Mr.  Lindstrom.  It's just that
when a family is deserted, you understand, the county has to support
them, and we try to find the husband to save ourselves a little money."

Gunn smiled, to put the man more at ease.  "It costs the county quite a
bit, you know.  Even in a case like your wife's, where there's only one
child'

Lindstrom looked down at his cap; for a minute it seemed as if his big
bands would tear it apart, straining and twisting.  "That's what I-you
don't understand-l-" He raised desperate, suddenly teartaled eyes to
Gunn.  "I-we-got two boys," he said.  "Two.  The-the other one, Eddy,
our oldest one, he's-not right.  Not noways.  She wouldn't ever hear
to--even when that doctor said- But she allus kep' him hid away from
ever'body too, account of being-ahemed.  Secret, like."

FOURTEEN

Morgan stepped inside the dark, smelly front hallway of the apartment
building and shut the door after him.  This was it, here and now.  And
it was the damnedest thing, he'd expected it to feel like going into
action, but instead-a little ludicrously-he felt exactly the way he had
when he'd been in that senior play in high school.  Walking out on the
stage, all the lights, painfully conscious of every breath he drew,
every slightest gesture, and yet somehow divorced from himself so that
he moved with a stranger's body, spoke with a stranger's voice.

This was it, this was it.  Start now.  Remember-and as he went up the
first half-dozen steps, sudden sharp panic stabbing at the back of his
mind (the way it had been that time on the high-school auditorium stage,
oh, God, suppose I forget-) that he'd forget just the one detail of his
plan that would bring the whole thing down like a house of cards on top
of him.

Think about what you're doing.  You'll be all right, you're getting
keyed up to it now, you know what you've got to do, you've decided, and
now time's run out, you're on-move!

Quick, because you've been watched in, every second counts now, the
timing is the important factor here.  You'll be all righ4 you can do it.

He went fast up the stairs.  There were sixteen steps, and a tiny square
landing, uncarpeted, and then you turned up six more steps to the left,
to the second-floor hall.  The door to the Lindstroms' apartment was
just across there, and the next flight right around from the top of
those stairs, left again.  He got to the landing, and his breath was
coming too short- God, he'd never do it, out of condition, another
flight and he wouldn't have strength to aim the damn gun- But he had to
hurry, he had to A woman screamed ten feet away in the dark hall.  And
screamed.

And the third scream shut off sharp and final, cut off as with a knife.

After that it was mostly reflex action for Morgan.  The only conscious

complete thought he remembered having was, Not destiny I should kill
Smith: every time something happens to stop it.  That in his mind while
the screaming sounded, and then he was across the landing and plunging
up the six additional steps, and in the hallway-behind that door there,
no noise now, no screams, and then other sounds, and a boy's frantic
voice, "No, don't, Eddy, don't, please-"

He expected the door to be locked, he pounded on it to let them know
someone was here, coming.  Afterward he remembered it wasn't until then
he realized it was the Lindstroms' door-and now, no voices inside but a
queer grunting, thrashing-around noise that raised the hair on his neck,
and he put his shoulder to the door, shouting warning.

It was not locked, it swung in under him, almost threw him head
foremost.  Feet on the stairs below: a voice calling something.

He didn't see the woman, not then.  Only one lamp on in the dingy room,
a body on the floor, a big dark figu!:e crouched over it, with hands
reaching "What's going on here, what-" He was halfway across the room;
he stopped, seeing the woman then, twisted limp figure sprawled across
the threshold of the bedroom; he looked away from her, dry-throated, saw
the big figure had straightened to come at him, lumbering.  In the full
light then, coming with guttural mouthings, and Morgan saw what it was,
saw Blind, instinctive, he clawed for the gun in his pocket.  The butt
caught in the pocket lining; hands took hold of him and slammed him back
against the wall and he thought all the breath was knocked out of him,
he couldn't- Animal gruntings, a fetid breath hot on his face.  He
tugged desperately at the gun and it came free, the pocket tearing
loose, as he went down full length on his back, and hands lifting,
holding, smashed his head down against a chair leg.

Dark exploded inside his head, he was blind, he was done, but the gun in
his hand, and he jammed it into what was on top of him, just at random,
and pulled the trigger.

Johnny Branahan had been riding patrol cars for nearly twenty years; he
was growing a spare tire around his diaphragm and he wasn't quite as
quick on his feet as he'd been when he was a rookie.  He wasn't a
particularly ambitious man, or the brainiest man in uniform, but he was
a good cop, within certain limits: he did the job he was supposed to do
the way it was supposed to be done, and he wasn't one of those did just

CAS]3 PENDING

as little as he could get away with, either.  He was conscientious about
studying the lists of hot cars and wanted men.

The call came over at six minutes past seven, and they were quite a way
off, so even with the siren going they were the fourth car to get there.

An assault, it was, by the code number, and must be a three-star
business, some sort, with four cars called in.  The ambulance was
already there, and quite a crowd-honest to God, you'd think they grew up
out of the ground, let anything happen Wilkinson and Petty, Slaney and
Gomez, handling the crowd: he spotted them as he braked the car, and
Gomez caught his eye and called to him as he and his partner got out.

"Upstairs, Johnny-second floor, the lieutenant's up there." n

"Right," said Branahan.  He was puffing a Ettle when he got to the top
of the stairs; it was the apartment right there, door open, and he could
see the white-coated interns inside, just lifting a stretcher.

"This one's a D.O.A.  too," said one of them.  "We'll come back for
those- O.K., boy, let's get the show on the road." Goldstein and
Costello were handling the smaller crowd up here, tenants, trying to get
in to see the blood, see the corpses, honest to God you wondered what
got into people "All right, folks, let the doctors through, now'

As the interns came out with the first stretcher, the crowd parting
reluctantly, he caught a glimpse of another man in there, one of the
downtown men, Lieutenant Mendoza from Homicide.  Quick work, he thought,
and moved back himself to give room to the interns at the top of the
stairs.

That put him at the foot of the stairs to the next floor, and out of the
corner of his eye he saw a man crouched halfway down those stairs, and
got a flicker of movement as the man retreated a little way, farther
into the dark up there.

It wasn't brains made Branahan go up after him, any conscious process of
reasoning.  It was just that as an experienced cop he knew there must be
something funny about anybody who didn't come rushing up to join the
crowd when anything like this was going on.

He started up the stairs, and above him heard sudden movement, and then
the fellow began to run-light and fast-up toward the next floor; so then
of course Branahun ran too, and caught up with him at a door t lif,- man
was fumblidg at, and swung him around.  It was damn dark up there, and
he had his flash out ready; he shot it in the man's face and said, "Hold
it, brother, let's see what you look like."

The man swore and swang on him, so Branahan belted him one on the side
of the head with the flash, and the man staggered back against the wall.

Branahan took a second look and was pleased; he'd had reason to remember
this name and face on the wanted lists again, because he'd picked this
hood up once before, five-six years back.

"Well, if it isn't Ray Dalton," he said.  "Up on your feet, boy.  Hey,
Andy, up here!  I got a deal for us!  It's just a damn shame, Ray, you
so homesick for California you couldn't wait to head west-but New York's
kind of mad at you on account you spurned their hospitahty.

You oughta learn better manners, Ray- No, you don't, me bucko, just hold
it now," and the bracelets clicked home as Andy came pounding up the
stairs.

By nine o'clock the excitement was about all over; they were tying up
loose ends there at the General Hospital.  If you could say anything
like this really ended, or ended satisfactorily, maybe this had.  The
woman was dead, and the murderer was dead; the boy wasn't badly hurt;
Morgan had a slight concussion and could go home tomorrow, they said.

The reporters had come and gone, after the usual backchat with the
nurses about flash-shots and noise.  This would make the front page
tomorrow morning, just once, and not as a lead story; people would talk
of it a little and then soon forget it.

"Also," said Mendoza to Hackett, lighting a fresh cigarette, "we can't
claim to have done much about winding this up, can we?  Just the way the
deal ran-1/2ometimes you get a hand you can't do a damn thing with."

"That's the way it goes sometimes.  But I don't know, Lyou'd linked this
up, in the process of tim'

"I think so, yes.  It only needed somebody with official excuse to get
into that apartment for any length of time, you know -sooner or later
such an outsider would have heard or seen something to rouse suspicion,
and then the lid would have blown-with what we had already."

"One hell of a thing, who'd have- And danm lucky in a way it ended like
this, nothing worse.  I've got no sympathy for that woman, that I'll
say-she got what she asked for.  But when you think what it must have
been like for that kid, for the husband, all these year' Seven years,
the husband said, since they'd come west away from home where everybody
knew.

"Mother love," said Mendoza, and laughed.  They had quite a lot from the
husband about that, by now: incoherent, poured out in spo FIRST FOUR BY
S ON

complete thought he remembered having was, Not destiny I should kill
Smith: every time something happens to stop it.  That in his mind while
the screaming sounded, and then he was across the landing and plunging
up the six additional steps, and in the hallway-behind that door there,
no noise now, no screams, and then other sounds, and a boy's frantic
voice, "No, don't, Eddy, don't, please-"

He expected the door to be locked, he pounded on it to let them know
someone was here, coming.  Afterward he remembered it wasn't until then
he realized it was the Lindstroms' door-and now, no voices inside but a
queer grunting, thrashing-around noise that raised the hair on his neck,
and he put his shoulder to the door, shouting warning.

It was not locked, it swung in under him, almost threw him head
foremost.  Feet on the stairs below: a voice calling something.

He didn't see the woman, not then.  Only one lamp on in the dingy room,
a body on the floor, a big dark figu!:e crouched over it, with hands
reaching "What's going on here, what-" He was halfway across the room;
he stopped, seeing the woman then, twisted limp figure sprawled across
the threshold of the bedroom; he looked away from her, dry-throated, saw
the big figure had straightened to come at him, lumbering.  In the full
light then, coming with guttural mouthings, and Morgan saw what it was,
saw Blind, instinctive, he clawed for the gun in his pocket.  The butt
caught in the pocket lining; hands took hold of him and slammed him back
against the wall and he thought all the breath was knocked out of him,
he couldn't- Animal gruntings, a fetid breath hot on his face.  He
tugged desperately at the gun and it came free, the pocket tearing
loose, as he went down full length on his back, and hands lifting,
holding, smashed his head down against a chair leg.

Dark exploded inside his head, he was blind, he was done, but the gun in
his hand, and he jammed it into what was on top of him, just at random,
and pulled the trigger.

Johnny Branahan had been riding patrol cars for nearly twenty years; he
was growing a spare tire around his diaphragm and he wasn't quite as
quick on his feet as he'd been when he was a rookie.  He wasn't a
particularly ambitious man, or the brainiest man in uniform, but he was
a good cop, within certain limits: he did the job he was supposed to do
the way it was supposed to be done, and he wasn't one of those did just

radic bursts jumbled together with seer-apology.  I knew it was awful
wrong of me, but I got to a place where I just couldn't stand no more.

An' I thought, it I warn't there, ied be bound to come out-they'd make
her put him away somewheres-account it was getting where she couldn't
handle him herself, all I could do to manage him, times, he was so big,
you know.  They were silent awhile, thinking about it.

Mother love, maybe: also pride, shame, ignorant conviction of guilt.

An obsession: if he was to be put away, questions, forms, people
knowing; and also habit, also familiarity, saying the doctor back home
was wrong, no danger, poor Eddy just like a little kid, he'd never- A
little kid twenty years old, six-feet-four and stronger than most men.

Ashamed of him, but refusing to send him away.  And quite possibly
aggravating the whole mental state by the unnatural secret life she
forced on him in consequence-on all of them.  Moving in or out of places
by night, watching, waiting, so that none would see.  Keeping him in by
day, close-watched: if she had to go out, the husband home from work,
the boy home from school, to keep watch.  Taking him out like a dog for
exercise after dark, keeping to unlighted side streets.  Training him
like a dog, no noise inside the apartment.  Building three lives around
the one unproductive life, everything else subordinate to looking after
Eddy and keeping Eddy a secret from everyone else.

I figured she'd have to give it up, if I wasn't there.  He got into,
well, like rages they was, times-any little thing'd set him off, wanted
to smash things, you know, an' she couldn't handleame time, he knew lots
o' things you wouldn't expect, an' it was like that doctor said, when he
got to be fourteen, fifteen, you know, getting to be a man, like, he-It
got harder, he kept wanting get out, away, by himself, an' then when
you'd bring him back, say no, he got just terrible mad, couldn't see why
Of course Lindstrom had argued with her.  Not the kind of man to be very
articulate.  Not the kind of woman to listen, reason, understand clearly
what she was doing and why.

And I never did think he'd ever turn on any of usn his own Mal Didn't
seem possible, if I'd thought that I'd never in this world gone off like
I did.  I knew it was awful bad for Marty, sleeping same room and all,
"twasn't fair-but she wouldn't never listen.  I just got to a place
where Mendoza dug his cigarette into the tub of sand in the corridor
there and repeated, "Mother love."

"Teople," contributed Hackett rather savagely.  The pretty blonde

nurse came out and said they could see the boy for just ten minutes, if
they wouldn't let him get too excited, held been in shock after all and
needed rest and quiet.

The boy had tight hold on his father's hand, sitting up in bed looking
at them a little uncertain, a little scared still.  "We don't bite,"
said Mendoza, smiling down at him.  "There's just a few little questions
we want to ask and then we'll let you go to sleep."

"Yes, sir.  H want to tell you-how it was, it was my fault, I know
that-let him get away, when I knew how he was, he'd maybe get in
trouble.  But I-but I- That first time, it was all account of that doll,
it was awfully silly but he wanted it so bad, he saw it in the store
window, there was a fight left on even when it was shut, you know, and
times I took him out, nights, we went past a couple times and I couldn't
hardly get him away from it, hid'

"He took funny notions like that," said Lindstrom.  "Don't you get
excited, Marty, I'm right here to watch out for you now, and all they
want to know, I guess, is about-about today." He looked still a little
dazed and shaken, but his voice was reassuringly stolid.

"But I want to tell-about everything, have it over .  .  .  Ma, she'll
be awful mad-I made things happen like they did." He hadn't been told
about his mother yet; there was time.  "I- I was scared to tell her,
first, that tim ver on Tappan-wd then I had to, account of knowing what
he'd done.  Ma saidhe told him slid'd buy it for him, se&the doll. She'd
saved up the money'

"Waste, waste," muttered Lindstrom.  "Foolish, but she'd do such,
whatever hid'

"And then I guess she couldn't, somebody else- And that night, I was out
with him, he ran off and I couldn't catch up-I looked everywhere, I went
to that store but they'd taken the doff out of the window a while
before, he wasn't- And when If-found him, he had it, a great big box and
inside- I thought he'd stole it, I shouldn't've let him get away like
that'

"You take it easy now," said Hackett, soothing; he glanced at Mendoza.

They could both reconstruct that one, Brooks, now.  Eddy peering in the
shop window, seeing Carol come out with the doll.  His doll, that he'd
been promised, that she had no right to.  Following, working up to anger
at her thievery.

"- when I heard-about that girl, and I remembered there was a little
spot on his shirt, like blood-I had to tell Ma, but she wouldn't

listen, she wouldn't believe he'd- She said I'd just forgot, she had so
bought the dolt and I was making up bad stories-"

Mendoza sighed to himself; he had heard that animal mothers too always
gave more attention to the runt of a litter, the sickly one .  .  .

"I'd like to hear something about the skating rink, Marty.  This girl,
this time.,)

"Yes, sir.  That was even more my fault, 'cause I knew how bad he could
do, then.  I shouldn't've-but Ma'd got kind of sick, she was doctoring
at the clinic and couldn't go out with him any more nights, I had to
every night.  And sometimes it was kind of hard, things I wanted to do
with other fellows, like movies sometimes-you know -l-he got away a
couple times more, and once when I found him he was at that place, he'd
found a sort of little back door that was open and he was getting in,
and I had to go after, I had an awful time getting him to come away-he
liked the music, and he liked to watch them going round and round.
AndDad, you know how when he liked anything he'd be good and quiet, just
sit there still as could be, hours sometimes - I thought it was all
right!  H went with him a couple of times, and he never moved, just sat
there watching and listening, see.  So I thought, he'd do like that long
as that place was open at night, never bother nobody, nobody knew we was
there at all.  And, Dad, it wasn't like cheating to sneak in without
paying like that, because we wasn't using it, I mean didn't go to skate.

I thought I could just, sort of, leave him there and it'd be all right,
he'd just sit and never do nothing.  And I did, a lot of times, I went
off and to a movie or somewheres, not to see it all through but mostly,
you know -and came back to get him, and he was fine, right where I'd
left him."

"And at the rink," said Mendoza softly, "he saw a girl, a pretty girl
who looked like his beautiful doll.  .  .  .  How'd I know that?  Why,
I'm a detective, Marty."

"He was-funny-about the doll," said the boy with a little gasp.  "I
mean, I guess he sort of-loved it-but same time, he did things to itbad
things.  Yes, sir, it was like that-at that place, he saw this girl, he
got terrible excited about it, kept talking about her- I mean, whatwhat
he meant for talk, he couldn't ever talk real plain, you know.  It was
really that, sort of, that'd tell you what he was like, because just to
look at him, he-"

Yes; not until you looked twice, saw the eyes, the lumbering walk, or
heard the guttural attempts at speech, would you know.  Otherwise, to
the casual look, just a big young man, maybe a little stupid.

"Once down on Commerce, when I was with him, I saw her too-he -tried to
go up and talk to her, I got him away then.  And I guess she was a
little scared, remembered me anyways, I mean what I looked like, even if
it was dark-because a couple days after, in the daytime, I saw her in
the street again, and she made like to say something to me, but she
never-Danny was with me, hid'

"You're doing fine, but don't try to teer everything, just take it
easy."

"He wanted-to skate with her, round and round, to the music," said the
boy faintly.  "I shouldn't never have left him there that night.  I got
sort of scared about it in the movies, I thought I'd better (I he was
gonel I looked everywheres, but it was so dark and I didn't dare call at
him very loud, people- And when I did find him, it was right there, that
lot where- I didn't know then, I didn't, I never saw herl He had a
lady's handbag, I didn't see that until we was down the street a ways,
and I thought he'd stole it.  I just dropped it, like, didn't know what
else -he didn't mind when I took it, hid'

So that built up Ramirez for them.  He saw the boy she was with taken
out, and the girl left alone.  So now was his chance to go skating round
and round with his pretty doll who'd come alive for him-and that was
all, probably, he'd followed her for: to tell her that, ask her.

And the girl, confronted there in the dark, alone, in the empty lot,
with the animal mouthings, the eager pawings, losing her head,
struggling to get away- And that was all it had needed.

Mendoza said, "All right, Marty, that's all for right now.  You just try
to stop thinking about it.  Go to sleep and don't worry any more."

"He was just wild, find the doll was gone's morning." The boy lay back
tiredly on the pillows, his eyes closing.  "I think even Ma was real
scared then-so was I-and tonight, well, she'd been telling him all the
while I'd-get it back for him-and when I said I couldn't, hid'

"Yes, we understand all that.  Don't worry about it nowverything's
over."

As they turned to the door Lindstrom said rather desperately, "Thease,
sir, I got to ask you-wul they-will they do anything to-to my boy or me
for being to blame about this?  I mean, I want to do what's right, I
ain't trying to get out of anything, but'

Mendoza turned back to him.  "There's no legal responsibility involved
here really, now the boy's dead, Mr.  Lindstrom.  I couldn't say, it's
an academic question, under other circumstances very likely the D.A. and
the grand jury might have decided to call it criminal negligence. As it
is, I scarcely drink so.  Certainly not the boy, a minor

couldn't be assumed responsible.  .  .  .  I might add, however, that at
any time these seven years you could have taken action, if and when it
seemed-indicated.  A word to any of a number of agencies-police, county
health, doctor, hospital-"

"She made us premisel" burst out the boy.  "She made us promise on the
Biblel"

Mendoza looked at them a minute more, smiled, said good night, and
followed Hackett out to the corridor.  "Any comment?" he asked, very
soft and amused.

"Nada," said Hackett heavily.  "Just-people.  Leave it there.  Are we
wound up here?"

"I want to see Morgan."

FIFTEEN

"The gun," said Mendoza.

"Damn lucky-I had it on me," repeated Morgan.  He was all there,
himself, sitting up smoking a borrowed cigarette, not much of a bandage
to frighten his wife when she came; but he'd had just enough sedation to
slow his mind somewhat, at the same time loosen his tongue.

"I don't deny it.  You've saved everybody quite a bit of
troubleincluding the expense of a trial.  It's only a small point, Mr.
Morgan, and maybe you'll think I'm being unnecessarily careful.  But as
of the moment, California law says you don't need a license for firearms
unless you're carrying them on the person or- I needn't quote the whole
thing, that's the relevant part.  License, Mr.  Morgan?-and not that
it's any of my business, but how did you come to be carrying a loaded
gun on a visit to one of your cases?"

"It's all shot to hell now," muttered Morgan, "all for nothing-and you
know, I don't think-I don't think I could've done it anyway." He looked
at Gunn, at the other side of the bed-Gunn, who'd had to get dressed and
come out after all.  "I'll tell you," he said, "I'll tell youdidn't go
there to see Mrs.  Lindstrom, Mendoza.  I went to kill a man.

A man named Smith."

They heard about Smith in disjointed phrases.  Gunn's round, amiable
face got longer and more worried by the second.  "Oh, you damn fool,
Dickan't have been thinking straight-should've come to me, gone to the
police, he couldn't-"

"Oh, couldn't he!  Can't he!  I remember enough law- Extortion?

The law doesn't take your unsupported word, does it?"-turning on
Mendoza, who shook his head.  "What could I do, what else could I-?

Well, there it is-wasn't intended, I guess-and now we're right back
where we were.  God, I don't know'

"Smith," said Mendoza.  "Description?" And when he'd pried that out of
Morgan, "Yes, well, he won't be troubling you for a while.  His real
name's Dalton, he's a small-time hood on the run from parole in New
York, and we picked him up tonight in the middle of the other
excitement.  He's got two years coming back east."

"Oh, God, you don't mean it-he's-all this for'

"Take it easy, Dick," said Gunn, sitting down, looking almost sick with
relief.  "That doesn't mean you're out of the woods, but it makes it the
hell of a lot easier.  If the woman's so-tractable, the way you say,
there shouldn't be any trouble.  Put it through nice and quiet, get her
to see a lawyer with you, there shouldn't be any contest, just a routine
thing.  Dalton wasn't after Janny, only the money, he wouldn't-"

"You think-no hitch, do it like that?  If we-wh, God, I hope so, we've
both been about crazy-" Morgan sat up and clutched Gunn's arm.  "You
said Sue's coming?-want to tell her-tell her it's all right, or almost'

"Sue's coming, you lie down.  r called Christy, she's gone over to stay
with Janny, and Sue'.U be taking a cab down, on her way right now,
probably."

Mendoza stood up.  "There'll be an inquest, of course, but purely
formal.  You needn't worry about it.  Self-defense, justifiable
homicide.

Which is a very damned lucky outcome for you, Morgan.  You don't know
how lucky.  If you want the Luger back, you'll have to apply for a
license."

"Oh, well, keep it, I don't want it.  H feel fine," said Morgan, and
laughed.  "Wish Sued get here.  You can have the damn gun.  Glad now
-didn't use its the way I planned, anyway-"

"Just as well." Mendoza looked down at him, smiling very faintly.

"I'd advise you, Morgan, not to get in a situation again where you start
thinking about murder.  in the first place, it never solves any
problems, you knownly creates more.  And in the second place, from what
you

told me of your plans for this one, it wouldn't take a full-fledged
lieutenant of detectives to spot you for X about half an hour after the
corpse began to cool.  However, as it is we're all very happy you
happened to be in the right place at the right time-and congratulations
on the rest of this working out for you." He nodded to Gunn, still
looking amused, and went out.

After a minute Morgan said, "Damn him-that's-when I thought I was being
so clever, too .  .  .  but I suppose he's right, at that. Justsomething
about him-puts my back up, is all."

Gunn sneezed, said, "Oh, hell it is a cold," and took out another
cigarette.  "Well, you know -Luis," he added soberly, "maybe he's just
what they call overcompensating, for a time he was only another dirty
Ettle Mex kid in a slum street.  You know?  Tell you one thing, Dick,
he's a damned good cop-if a little erratic now and then," and he
grinned.  He found a packet of matches, looked at it without lighting
the cigarette.  "He's also a very lonely man.  WWeh maybe he'll find out
some day."

Morgan moved restlessly.  "Give me another one of those, will you?  I
wish Sued come .  .  ."

"Philosophizing?" Mendoza came up behind Hackett in the lobby.

"Yeah, I guess you could say I was," said Hackett, who'd been standing
stock-still, staring vacantly at the wall.  "I guess so.  You know, this
whole thing-it just struck me-what for?  What's it mean?"

Mendoza laughed and shrugged.  "&Quidn sabe?-isabe Dios!  Nice to think
it means anything."

"No, but it makes you wonder.  You look at it and you can work up a fine
righteous wrath against that damn fool woman, against the ignorance and
false pride and plain damned muddle-headedness that's killed three
people-four, if you count him-and all unnecessarily.  But was it?  The
way things dovetail, sometimes-Morgan just happening to be there, and
with a gun on him-because if he hadn't had, you know, I don't think he
could have handled that one alone, I don't think any two men- Without
the gun, maybe Morgan dead too.  And maybe it was all for something,
Luis-that we don't know about, never will.  To save the boy-maybe he's
got something to do here, part of some plan.

You know?  Maybe," and Hackett laughed, "so Annes Browne could get all
straightened out with her Joe.  Maybe so the Wades can keep their nice
high-class superior-white-Protestant bloodline pure."

"Comforting to think," repeated Mendoza cynically.  "That's why I'm

a lieutenant and you're a sergeant, Arturo-every time I formulate a
theory, I want evidence to say it's so, or I don't keep the theory.

iComprende?  On that, there's no evidence.  If you want to theorize,
chico, maybe it all happened so I could meet this pretty redheadl
Change, please, if you've got it-IDate prisa, por favor!"

Hackett took the quarter and gave him three nickels and a dime.

"You watch yourself with that one, boy-I got a hunch you don't get
something for nothing there."

"All these years and you don't know me yet.  Wait and see.  Hasta
luego-eight o'clock sharp, we've a lot of routine to clear up." Mendoza
went over to the row of public phone booths.

When Alison answered the second ring he said, "Luis.  Would you like to
hear a story of human foibles and follies?  .  .  .  Yes, we've got him,
it's all over.  But for the routine.  I'll be with you in twenty
minutes, you'll be interested to hear all about it."

"Well, yes, but it is rather late-"

"Night's still young, chica.  Twenty minutes," he repeated firmly, and
hung up on her reluctant laugh.

Hackett was gone.  Mendoza stood on the steps, lighting a cigarette, and
the dead man in the freight yards wandered through his mind.  The next
thing, now.  Tomorrow.  A couple of rather suggestive little things,
there: might yield the ghost of a line to look into.  .  .  .  When he
came out to the street, somebody in a brash new Buick had sewed him up
tight in the parking space; it would take some maneuvering to get the
Ferrari out.  He swore, getting out his keys; no denying at all that a
smaller car- He might just look into it, no harm in looking.  Maybe that
Mercedes .  .  .

He slid under the wheel and started the engine.  Meanwhile, Alison.

He smiled to himself; he expected to enjoy Alison.  .  .  .