Walsh for going over his head. I'll square him when the time comes, if it's necessary. Meanwhile, could one of you do me a little favor? You're on night tour, I see-Walsh is on days right now. Could one of you get a copy from him of his record book of last Friday night, and bring it to me tomorrow morning? I'll meet you somewhere near the station, or anywhere convenient.'
Farber was silent; Gonzales said, 'Sure, I'll do that, Lieutenant. If you think there's anything to be looked into. Frank talked to us about it, but it sounds-'
'Crazy, I know. I'm not saying yes or no yet. Just looking. Where and what time?'
'Corner of Avalon and Cole, say about ten-thirty?'
'O.K. Thanks very much. I'll see you then, Gonzales.' As the two men walked back to the squad car, Farber was seen to raise his shoulders in an expressive shrug. Mendoza murmured, 'Overconscientious
… I wonder,' and switched on the ignition. Then he said, 'Better places, yes, but just to be going on with, as long as we're here-' and postponed reaching for the hand brake a minute to kiss her.
At ten forty-five the next morning he sat in his car at one end of that cruise Walsh and Bartlett had been riding on Friday night, and read over the terse history of what jobs they had done between four-thirty and nine. It hadn't been a very exciting tour up to then. On Friday night, he remembered, it had been raining: gray and threatening all day, and the rain starting about three, not a real California storm until later, but one of those dispirited steady thin drizzles. Californians were like cats about rain, and that would have been enough to keep a lot of people home that night.
In the four and a half hours Walsh and Bartlett were on duty, up to the murder of Bartlett, they had responded to four radio calls and handed out seven tickets. At four-fifty they had been sent to an accident on Vineyard; evidently it had been quite a mess, with three cars called in and an ambulance, one D.O.A. and two injured, and they hadn't got away from there until five thirty-five. At six-three they'd been sent to another accident, a minor one, and spent a few minutes getting traffic unsnarled there. At six-forty they'd rescued a drunk who'd strayed onto the freeway, and taken him into the station for transferral to the tank downtown overnight. At seven thirty-five they'd been sent to an apartment on 267th Street, a drunk-and-disorderly. Apparently the drunks hadn't been very disorderly, for they were back on their route again by eight o'clock. At eight-twenty they'd stopped at a coffee shop on Vineyard, and were on their way again at eight thirty-five.
The tickets had all been for speeding, except two for illegal left turns. Mendoza started out to follow their route. He went to the scene of the first accident, and parked, and looked at it. It said nothing to him at all, of course: just a fairly busy intersection, with nothing to show that four nights ago it had been a shambles of death and destruction. He went on to the place of the second accident, and that said even less, eloquently. Again, of course… What the hell did he think he was doing? Waiting for his muse, Alison said. Waiting for that cold sure tingle between the shoulder blades that told him the man across the table was bluffing hard, or really did hold a full house. Or for that similar, vaguer sensation that for want of a better word was called a hunch.
Nothing said anything to him. An hour later he had got as far as the place where they'd subdued the D.- and-D., and had reached the conclusion that he was wasting time. It wasn't an apartment building, this, but a one-story court built in U-shape around a big black-topped parking area. There were four semidetached apartments on each side, in two buildings, and across the end a fifth building also with two apartments; at the street side of the first two buildings were double carports, and a single one at each end of the fifth. All the buildings were painted bright pink, with white door-frames and imitation shutters; they looked curiously naked standing there in the open, not a tree anywhere around, or any grass: only the blacktop and in the middle of it a large wooden tub in which was planted some anonymous shrub, which obviously wasn't doing very well-thin and anemic-looking. Six television aerials stretched importunate arms heavenward; presumably the other tenants possessed newer sets of the portable type.
In his exasperation with himself, Mendoza thought he'd never seen a more depressing place to live. Even a slum tenement gave out a warmer sense of life than this sterile, cheap modernity.
There was no parking lane along here, and he turned up onto the blacktop to make a U-turn, start back downtown, and quit wasting time. As he swung around by the twin front doors of the building across the end of the court, the left one opened and a woman bounced out in front of the car; so he had to stop.
'Was it about the apartment? You're lucky to catch me, I was just goin' to market. You're welcome to see over it, won't take a minute to it get the key-' She might have been sixty; she was an inch or so short of live feet and very nearly as wide, but every bit of her looked as firm and brisk and bouncy as a brand-new rubber ball. She had pug-dog features under a good deal of wild gray hair, and her cotton housedress was a blinding Prussian blue with a pink-and-white print superimposed.
'Not about the apartment, no,' said Mendoza. Oh, well, as long as he was here… He got out of the car and introduced himself. 'You, or someone here, put in a call to the police last Friday night complaining about a drunk-'
'Mrs. Bragg, that's me, how-do. Mex, hey? Well, I don't mind that, you're mostly awful polite folk, I will say, nor I don't mind the police part either-matter of fact it might be sort of handy sometimes, with them Johnstones. Now there, if I haven't got the key, musta picked up the wrong bunch-it's this apartment right here, what'd-you- say-the-name-is, and a bargain if I do say so-'
'I'm not interested in the apartment? But he had to follow her to the door to say it, and she prodded him inside before he got it across.
'This call you put in-it was you?-'
'And what about it?' said Mrs. Bragg. 'Got a right to call the police, I hope, I pay taxes, and not the first time either since them Johnstones've been in Number Three. I don't mind folk taking a drink now and then, and it's none of my business are they really married or not, which I don't think they are, but when it comes to getting roaring drunk three nights a week average, and taking 'em both as it does, him trying to beat her up and her yelling blue murder, well, l've got my other tenants to think of, I hope you can understand that-'
'Yes, of course, why don't you get rid of them?'
'0h, well, she's a nice woman when she isn't drunk, quite the lady, and the rent on the dot first of every month. Funny thing is, it never lasts long, you see-half an hour and they quiet down. Beats me what fun they get out of it, but there it is, it takes all sorts. Thing is, it went on a bit longer Friday night, and I thought it might kind of bring them to their senses if I called the police, which it did as it has before-they quieted down soon as they come and the older one, he gave 'em a good talking-to, and never a peep out of them afterwards? She eyed him speculatively. 'Might be real handy, have one of you here all the time.
You're sure you don't want to move? It's a real nice apartment-now you're here you might's well see over it, just on the chance. Three and a half rooms, all utilities, and furnished real nice if I do say so-just take a look around-and only ninety a month. The gentleman I've just lost out of it, he was a real gentleman, if he did have a funny name-Twelvetrees it was, Mr. Brooke Twelvetrees, kind of elegant-sounding at that when you say it, isn't it?-and he took real good care of everything, I was sorry to see him go. You can see he left everything in apple-pie order, to tell the truth I haven't got round to cleaning it up myself since, except for emptying the wastebasket and so on. Which, however, would be done before you moved in, even to windows washed. Handy to everything, market two blocks away, and thirty minutes to downtown. Now you can see-'
Submerged in the flood, Mendoza was swept ruthlessly across the tiny living room (pink Bowers in the rug, Prussian blue mohair davenport, blond step-table beside a maroon-upholstered chair) into an even tinier bedroom, in which there was just room for a double bed of blond finished pine, a bureau enameled cream, and a straight chair. The bed bore a pink chenille spread with fringe, and there was a small bedside table with a lamp about nine inches high which wore a madly ruffled shade very much askew. The rug here had maroon flowers.
Mrs. Bragg pounded the bed vigorously. 'Good mattress, good as new, you can see. Oh, I tell you, I was sorry to see Mr. Twelvetrees go-a real gentleman he was, and finicky as a lady, you can see by the way he left everything so neat. Here's the bathroom, shower and tub if they are all together so to speak, and real tile, not that plastic stuff.' It was mauve, and the shower curtain was embellished with improbably blue fish.
'I'm really not interested-'
'Plenty of closet space, even for a man like Mr. Twelvetrees and he had as many clothes as a woman, you shoulda seen-a real snappy dresser he was. And the kitchen, if I do say, is all nice and modern as anybody'd
