the jail-the air-conditioning's broken down and it's like a damned oven. My God. But Bauman had been thinking things over and decided to tell us who his pal was-one Albert Gerber.'
'And Gerber was the one who fired the gun and killed the pharmacist,' said Hackett.
'Naturally.' Landers picked up his phone, told Sergeant Lake to get him R. and I., and asked if they had a package on Gerber. 'Bauman gives us an address-Houston Street in Boyle Heights. We'd better go and see if Gerber's home.'
'After lunch,' said Hackett.
Five minutes later R. and I. called back to say that Gerber had a package with them of two counts of armed robbery.
It was a quarter past twelve. Palliser finished the report and they all started out for lunch. But as they passed the switchboard, a uniformed man came in and handed Lake a manila envelope.
'Cable from Paris. You've been asking about it.'
Mendoza seized it eagerly and slit it open with his thumbnail. Twenty seconds later he said exasperatedly,
'?Diez millones de demonios! ' He thrust the cable at Hackett. That prestigious police force, the Surete Nationale, had nothing to say. PRINTS WILL CHECK. INSUFFICIENT DATA YOUR REQUEST INFO MARTIN NO AVAILABLE INFO UNLESS SUPPLY FURTHER DETAILS.
'?Condenacion! ' said Mendoza. 'If we had any further details, don't they suppose we'd have said so?'
'I said you'd never get anything more on it. It's all up in the air,' said Higgins. 'You don't know anything about the girl-what to ask for-or where. Where she was bound for here. Anything-it's a dead end. If there's anything to it all.' And Mendoza gave him a bitter look.
'In other words, I'm just woolgathering.'
'Don't rile the man, George,' said Hackett. 'Maybe the lab report will have something useful.'
THE LAB REPORT wasn't in when everybody came back from lunch. Hackett and Landers took off to look for Albert Gerber, and ten minutes later a new call went down to a bar on Temple. Palliser and Grace went out on that. Five minutes after that information started to come in all at once. American Airlines called Mendoza from New York to confirm as requested that a Juliette Martin had been booked on that flight from New York to Los Angeles with a stop-over at Chicago and a change of planes, last Saturday. Air France called from its New York office to confirm that Juliette Martin had been on its flight from Paris to New York-leaving Orly Airport at eight P.M. a week ago today. 'Something to tell the Surete anyway,' grunted Mendoza. Then the Customs office in New York called to confirm that French citizen Juliette Martin had passed through Kennedy Airport with a French passport at approximately five P.M. a week ago today. They gave him the passport number.
'Something concrete,' said Mendoza pleasedly.
'For what it's worth,' said Higgins.
'You're just a little ray of sunshine, aren't you?'
'And that's impossible. If she left Paris at eight that evening she couldn't get here at-'
'Time differences,' said Mendoza tersely. 'Europe's eight hours ahead of us.'
'But it's nothing you didn't know already,' said Higgins.
Then a uniformed man came in with a manila envelope.
The lab report on the apartment. Mendoza scanned it hastily and said, 'Hell, nada absolutamente -or nothing useful.'
The only latent prints the lab had picked up in the apartment were the girl's. There had been a clear print of her right thumb on the top of the handle of the refrigerator-just where it might be expected-and others on the kitchen counter, a table in the living room. Nothing else but smudges anywhere, except for one clear print of her right forefinger on the plastic, medicine bottle. There hadn't been enough residue of anything in that for analysis. And that was all the lab had to tell them. Mendoza passed the report over.
'And I'm wondering now-how did she get there?' he said dreamily. 'Already drugged, already unconscious-'
He stabbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another, his gaze abstracted on the view over the Hollywood Hills in the distance through the big window behind his desk. 'Going to visit her grandfather! No possible way to find out the name this side of France-anywhere in greater Los Angeles-and where the hell was she between Saturday and Tuesday? We haven't got an estimated time of death yet but it looked as if it could've been Tuesday night. No address book there. Well, they'd have got rid of anything informative, of course.'
'The Daggetts?'
'I don't know,' said Mendoza in a dissatisfied voice. He had asked Records about the Daggetts and Helen Garvey. They looked simply like ordinary little people-unimportant. 'They know something but it might not be much. But Grandfather comes into it somewhere, George.'
'And how the hell do you make that out?'
'Grandfather would've been expecting her. Knew she was coming. Was he going to meet her at the airport? We didn't see anything of her after we got off the plane. Grandfather is probably an elderly man-maybe he doesn't drive. Was she expecting to be met?-And-Hell and damnation!' He sat up with a jerk.
'I just saw that too-not operating on all cylinders,' said Higgins. 'Better ask the cab companies if she picked up a cab at the airport.'
Mendoza already had the phone off the hook. 'And damn it-no way to be sure but show the photos to any cabby who had a fare there. A little legwork. But George, the reason I say Grandfather's in it somehow-he'd be expecting her. If she was intercepted somehow, by whoever, for whatever reason only God knows-and didn't show up, Grandfather would be concerned. The natural thing to do would be to check with the airline, and he'd find out she landed here. If he isn't in on the caper-whatever the hell it is-why hasn't he reported her missing?'
Higgins passed one hand over his prognathous jaw.
'Maybe he has.'
Mendoza shut his eyes. ' Muy bien. Not operating on all cylinders you can say. Grandfather may not be a villain. He could live anywhere from Malibu to Monrovia, Tujunga to Lakewood-and he may have reported her to one of a hundred police forces. Thank you, George.'
'Well, it was just a thought.'
'So we get on the phone and start asking. The logical force would be Inglewood where the airport is. But what in God's name it's all about- Por Dios, I swear that was a cold-blooded killing, and it was planned out right here, whatever the hell was behind it-and there have got to be some leads if we dig deep enough.' He picked up the phone again. 'Jimmy, I want to talk to some cab companies.'
Higgins yawned. 'There must be people who knew where she was heading. She'd have had friends-there's the boyfriend.'
'Don't suggest that I cable to the Surete again,' said Mendoza bitterly.
HACKETT AND LANDERS were trailing Albert Gerber in ninety-eight-degree heat. Gerber wasn't at the Houston Street address, which was an old four-story apartment building, and the only tenant at home didn't know him, but the manager lived on the premises and said helpfully that he knew Gerber had a pal who worked at the Shell Station up on the corner of Soto. He didn't think Gerber had a job since awhile back but he was up to date on the rent all right. They had queried the DMV about a car and knew Gerber was driving a ten-year-old Chevy, plate number so-and-so.
They tried the Shell Station. An indolent-looking fellow with a big paunch, shirt opened to his belt, looked at them lackadaisically over a canned Coke and said, 'Oh, him. Yeah, he hangs around here some-working on his car. He's a a friend of Mike's-Mike Sullivan, he spells me part-time and nights, he's supposed to show up at four if you want to talk to him.'
'Do you know where he lives?' asked Landers.
The man said reluctantly, 'Oh, hell, I got it wrote down somewhere.' He moved slowly into the grubby little
