was in deep shadow and he’d made no noise. He stood there until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, to avoid colliding with anything, and moved on slowly. He knew now that it was possible to come in here without being noticed, but could anyone count on it five times out of five?
There would be times Ehrlich was wider awake, for one thing.
He sat down in a chair midway from the railing, twenty feet from the attendant. In five minutes neither the man nor any of the skaters took the slightest notice of him. He got up, drifted back to the wall, and began a tour of the borders.
When he got round to the opposite side of the floor, he made an interesting discovery. In the corner there a small square closet was partitioned off, with a door fitted to it. He tried the door and it gave to his hand with a little squeak. He risked a brief beam from his pencil-flash: rude shelving, cleaning materials, an ancient can of floor wax, mops and pails. Hackett was quite right; nobody had disturbed the dust in here for a long time. He shut the door gently and went on down the rear width of the building.
The jukebox was never silent long; it seemed to have a repertoire only of waltzes, and now for the third time was rendering, in all senses of the word, 'Let Me Call You Sweetheart.'
He came to the far corner and with mild gratification found another closet and another door. 'At a guess, the fuse boxes,' he murmured, and eased the door open. A quick look with the flash interested him so much that he stepped inside, pulled the door shut after him, and swept the flash around for a good look.
Fuse boxes, yes: also, of course, the meter: and a narrow outside door. For the meter reader, obviously: very convenient. He tried it and found himself looking out to a narrow unpaved alley between this building and the warehouse next to it.
And does it mean anything at all? he wondered to himself. He retreated, and now he did not care if he was seen or not; he kept the flash on, the beam pointed downward… How very right Hackett had been: this place had not been so much as swept for years. But full of eddying drafts as it was, you couldn’t expect footprints to stay in the dust, however thick. He worked back and forth between the rail and the wall, dodging the chairs. He had no idea at all what he was looking for, and also was aware that anything he might find would either be completely irrelevant or impossible to prove relevant to the case.
Now, of course, he had been noticed; he heard the attendant’s chair scrape back, and a few of the skaters had drifted over to the rail this side, curious. He didn’t look up from the little spotlight of the flash: he followed it absorbedly back and forth.
'Hey, what the hell you up to, anyway?' The attendant came heavy-footed, shoving chairs out of his path. 'Who-'
'Stop where you are, for God’s sake!' exclaimed Mendoza suddenly. 'I’m police-you’ll have my credentials in a minute, but don’t come any closer.'
'Police-oh, well-'
And Mendoza said aloud to himself, 'So here it is. But I don’t believe it, it’s impossible.' And to that he added a rueful, 'And what in the name of all the devils in hell does it mean?'
In the steady beam of the flash, it lay there mute and perhaps meaningless: a scrap of a thing, three inches long, a quarter-inch wide: a little strip of dainty pink lace, so fine that it might once have been the trimming on the lingerie of a very special doll.
Ehrlich went on saying doggedly, 'My place didn’t have nothing to do with it.' That door, well, sure, the inside one oughta be kept locked, it usually was-but neither he nor the attendants would swear to having checked it for months, all three maintaining it was the other fellow’s responsibility. Mendoza found them tiresome. Hackett and Dwyer, summoned by phone, if they didn’t altogether agree with Ehrlich were less than enthusiastic over Mendoza’s find; Hackett said frankly it didn’t mean a damned thing. He listened to the story of Carol Brooks’ doll and said it still didn’t mean a damned thing.
'I don’t want to disillusion you, but I’ve heard rumors that real live dolls sometimes wear underwear with pink lace on-and just like you say, it is nice and dark along here. Not havin’ such a pure mind as you, I can think of a couple of dandy reasons-'
'And such elegant amenities for it!' said Mendoza sarcastically. 'A wooden bench a foot wide, or a pair of folding chairs! I may be overfastidious, but I ask you!'
'There’s a classic tag line you oughta remember: It’s wonderful anywhere.'
'So maybe it doesn’t mean anything. Nevertheless, we’ll hang onto it, and I want a sketch of this place, showing that door and the exact spot this was found.'
'O.K., will do.' There was always a lot of labor expended on such jobs, in a thing like this, that turned out to have been unnecessary; but it couldn’t be helped. And in case something turned out to be relevant, they had to keep the D.A.’s office in mind, document the evidence.
'And what happened to you‘?' added Mendoza, turning on Dwyer, who was sporting a patch bandage taped across one eye.
Dwyer said aggrievedly he ought to’ve run the guy in for obstructing an officer. All he’d been doing was try to find out more about that Browne girl who’d found the body-as per orders. First he’d got the rough side of her landlady’s tongue-the girl wasn’t home-for asking a few ordinary little questions, like did the girl ever bring men home, or get behind in the rent, and so on-you’d have thought she was the girl’s ma, the way she jumped on him-if the police didn’t have anything better to do than come round insulting decent women-! She’s still yakking at him about that when this guy shows up, who turns out to be some friend of the girl’s, and before Dwyer can show his badge, the guy damns him up and down for a snooper and hauls off and-'Me, Lieutenant! It was a fluke punch, he caught me off balance-'
'That’s your story,' said Hackett.
'I swear to-Me, walking into one off a guy I could give four inches and thirty pounds-and his name turns out to be Joe Carpaccio at that!'
'So now you’ve provided the comic relief, what did you get?'
'Not a damn thing but the shiner. Except she’s only lived there three months or so. But how could she be anything to do with it, Lieutenant?'
'I don’t think she is, but no harm getting her last address.'
'Well, that was why-'
'Let me give him all the news,' said Hackett. 'You take the car and go on back, send Clawson over to do a sketch. And then go home and nurse that eye, you’ve had enough excitement for one day.' Dwyer said gratefully he’d do that, he had the hell of a headache and he must be getting old, let anything like that happen. Hackett said, 'Let’s sit down. I’ve got a couple of little things for you. First, Browne. I was bright enough to ask for her last address when we took her formal statement-let her think it was a regulation of some kind-thought it might be useful. And you might say it was. She gave one, but it turned out to be nonexistent. Which is why I sent Bert to sniff around some more.'
'That’s a queer one,' said Mendoza. 'You think it’s anything for us?'
Hackett considered. 'It doesn’t smell that way to me, no. She struck me as an honest girl, and sensible too, which means it’s not likely she’s mixed into anything illegal. But they say everybody’s got something to hide. We might trace her back, sure, but I think all we’d find would be the kind of thing innocent people get all hot and bothered about hiding-an illegitimate baby or a relative in the nut house, or maybe she’s run away from an alcoholic husband. I think it’d be a waste of time myself, but you’re the boss.'
'It might be just as well to find out,' said Mendoza slowly. 'In a thing like this, any loose end sticking out of the tangle, take hold and pull-maybe it isn’t connected to the main knot, or maybe it is-you can’t know until you follow it in.'
'O.K., I got more for you.' The brief flare of the match as he lit a new cigarette brought some looks his way again. The kids on the floor were more interested in them than skating, now-gathering in little groups, slow-moving, to whisper excitedly about it; some of them would have known Elena.
Mendoza stared out at them absently, listening to Hackett. It was now just about thirty-three hours since the body had been found; a lot of routine spadework had kept a lot of men busy in that time. A dozen formal statements had been taken, from the Ramirez family, from three or four of the kids present here on Friday night,
