Hackett watched Mendoza out, and massaged his jaw, grinning a little to himself, humorlessly. Mendoza was as touchy as the devil about emotions, and nobody in the office made any cracks about his going back to church after many years as the professed agnostic; for some reason the pretty boys had got under Mendoza’s skin anyway, but now that they’d jumped a priest he was really annoyed. It would be nice to get hold of some tangible lead to those boys, but Hackett didn’t really hope for one.
He put the report on Mendoza’s desk and went out to look at Jimmy’s nut-case. As he came into the anteroom he ran into Lieutenant Carey, who had a manila envelope in one hand and was looking harassed.
'If you’ve got anything for us, go away. We’ve got enough to do already.'
'I can’t help it,' said Carey. 'It’s a hundred percent sure this guy is dead. It’s a homicide if not Murder One, so it’s your business. I’ve got all these statements-'
'Tell it to Galeano or Landers,' said Hackett resignedly.
'This is Sergeant Hackett, Mr. Yeager,' Lake was saying. 'You just tell your story to him.'
'Yeah, yeah, I got to tell somebody, you got to do something about it, I been up half the night worrying and I said to myself, I got to tell the cops, we got to do something, see, and so I came-'
'Just come in here and sit down, Mr. Yeager,' said Hackett soothingly. Yeager might be a nut at that. He was a scrawny middle-aged man in a shabby brown suit; he had a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down as he talked, and bulging pale-blue eyes, and a high reedy voice. Hackett settled him in the chair beside his desk and prepared to listen. There were other things he could be doing. That Beaver woman who’d been assaulted and raped ought to be able to answer questions sometime today; there was that inquest-a straightforward suicide; there’d been other things on the night-watch report, by the length of it, and without much doubt something new would show up today. But cops got paid by taxpayers, and had to listen to them when they came in. 'What’s it all about, Mr. Yeager?' he asked.
'Well, it’s about a murder,' said Yeager nervously. 'I didn’t hardly know what to do, but my God, I got to do something-I been worried to death-I didn’t hardly believe it but I- Listen, I don’t like the guy, he’s given me a hard time, and his ma too, always complainin’ about the furnace makin’ noise and the faucets drip and like that, but my God, I never thought he’d do a thing like that! A murder!'
'Now slow down and let’s have it from the beginning,' said Hackett patiently. 'What murder?'
'His own ma, for God’s sake! They live together, see, and I’m the manager of the apartment. This lady, Mis’ Lampert, she’s a widow, no other kids, and he’s a young guy but he don’t work, she does. At a dress shop someplace. And he’s got a girl friend comes to see him afternoons, and I heard ’em talk about killing the old lady to get her money.' Yeager paused, breathing hard.
'Heard them? How? Where were they?'
'Uh-in the apartment,' said Yeager uneasily. 'Uh-the door was kind of open and I was fixing the window in the ha1l.'
Hackett sat back and his chair creaked. 'Well, now, people do some funny things, Mr. Yeager, but it’s a little hard to believe this pair would go discussing a murder with the door open and other people around. Are you sure you didn’t just misunderstand something they said?'
'No, I didn’t! They was talking about killing her!' said Yeager excitedly. 'Listen, you got to do something about it-'
Hackett sighed. Across the room he saw Carey gesticulating at Galeano and Conway, and Palliser was still on the phone. Landers was on the way out, and Jason Grace typing a report. 'Now, Mr. Yeager-'
Mendoza bent over the hospital bed. 'He’s only been conscious the once,' said the nurse. 'It’s a bad concussion, they’d have operated already except for his heart. When we got in touch with his own doctor-'
'Can you hear me, Father? Can you try to tell us who did this?' Three mornings ago, Mendoza had listened to the old priest say Mass at the little church in the old Plaza: a very traditional Mass, nothing new and progressive about Father Joseph Patrick O’Brien. He was probably in his eighties: a stocky, round little man with a broad snub- nosed Irish face, scanty hair and eyebrows. He lay on his back, his breathing slow and irregular, and Mendoza straightened up.
'The doctors don’t think there’s a good chance,' said the nurse in a troubled tone. She was slim and black and rather pretty. 'It’s just terrible what goes on, a priest, and such an old man-just terrible.'
Unexpectedly the man in the bed opened his eyes and stared up at them, moving his head slightly. A frown of pain creased his forehead and the nurse moved instinctively to quiet him.
'Can you hear me, Father? Can you tell me anything about who attacked you?'
The faded blue eyes fixed on Mendoza’s face. 'I-know you,' the old priest whispered faintly. 'Of course. I was-just about-get in the car. Who-who? Young-thugs. Three, I think-the one blond-and a loud plaid jacket-'
Mendoza sighed. 'All right, that’s enough for now, Father.'
One veined hand crept up to his chest, and the priest went on, 'My crucifix. All they got-no money-it was dark-but there were three of them. Tore my crucifix off-' His eyes shut again and he relaxed limply.
'Poor old man,' said the nurse.
That was about all they’d get, thought Mendoza, but so far as it went it showed the pattern. Only what had O’Brien been doing down there at that time of night? Not that it mattered. There was a little pattern to this. The other seven all lived in the general area; most of them had been on their way home, at reasonably early hours- seven, eight, the latest attack had been at nine-thirty. By the little they got from the victims, it looked like the random thing-the pretty boys were jumping any senior citizen they came across when the urge hit them: the old, lame, frail senior citizens who wouldn’t fight back.
The rest of them had been in that area unavoidably, as residents; how had the priest happened to be there? Mendoza was aware that the priests who served the little church, nearly the oldest building in the city, no longer had quarters there. In any case, somebody ought to be told about O’Brien.
He drove down to the old Plaza, found the church open, and went in. The little place was dim as a cavern, only the flickering light at the altar moving, and the statues along the walls seemed to loom taller than usual. A man was speaking somewhere; following the voice, Mendoza came to a tiny robing room past the confessional box, and unexpectedly into a very small square room furnished as an office, with desk and swivel chair. A tall thin young man in clerical dress was talking on the phone, looked at Mendoza in surprise, and at the offered badge with consternation.
'I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.' Mendoza had seen him once or twice, the assistant priest here.
'About Father O’Brien-we knew something had happened, I was just calling the police again. When he didn’t come home last night-' He listened to what Mendoza had to tell him, obviously distressed, and said, 'I must go to him. If he’s as bad as you say-' But he answered questions as they went up to the church door. He and O’Brien both had living quarters in the residence attached to the much larger Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Hollywood. O’Brien sometimes stayed on down here, in his little office, to write letters, as apparently he had last night. He would have been driving one of the cars belonging to the church, a ten-year-old Pontiac. The car, in fact, was here-'I looked for it right away, we were afraid he’d had another heart attack when we realized he hadn’t come home, and I came down at once-it’s right where he always parked, behind the church.'
'Yes, he said he was on his way to it,' said Mendoza. No keys on him; the S. l. D. boys could have a look, but it was a long chance anything useful would show up. 'Evidently he hadn’t any money on him; the only thing they got was his crucifix.'
The priest stopped and stared at him, one hand on the church door. 'His crucifix-but that might give you some kind of clue, Lieutenant-that is, if it turned up in a pawnshop or somewhere. It’s a very valuable antique- sterling silver set with a piece of Connemara marble. It was a gift from his old parish priest when he entered the seminary, and I believe it’s several hundred years old. Any of us could identify it at once, if it should turn up anywhere.'
Mendoza thanked him and watched him hurry up the street to a newish Ford. Let the S.I.D. boys come and go over the Pontiac for possible physical evidence, in case O’Brien had been jumped in or near it: a very small chance there’d be anything. Put out a description of the crucifix to the pawnshops, just in case.
He got into the big black Ferrari and lit a cigarette, thrusting the key into the ignition; his eyes were cold.
