about fifty Quaaludes in it. 'My God,' said Conway, 'if the dope hadn't got him, he might've got taken off for this. Let's have that light closer.' The patrolman shifted the flashlight. 'I thought so. More of the fake stuff. It's coming in by the ton, by what Narco says. Mostly from South America.'
'It isn't the real stuff?' The patrolman was interested.
'Oh, it's the real stuff. It'll kill you as quick as the bona fide American-made, but look at the little stamp mark.'
The pills were slightly smaller than a dime and in the beam of the flashlight they could make out the tiny legend stamped on each. LEMMON 74. 'The real pharmaceutical company doesn't use that mark, but it looks like a guarantee that these are American-made. Real Quaaludes.'
'I'll be damned,' said the patrolman. 'I suppose we want the morgue wagon?'
'What else?' said Conway. 'I'll see these get handed over to Narco, as if they needed any more.'
AT ELEVEN-THIRTY, one of the sergeants sitting on the central switchboard at Hollywood Division got a call from a frightened citizen. At first she was rather incoherent, but he calmed her down and got her talking straight. 'Now, have I got your name right, Frances Holzer? Yes, Mrs. Holzer. Start out again, it's about your mother?'
'Miss,' she said. 'Miss Holzer. Yes, I'm just worried to death because she should've been home hours ago, she's a good driver, but an accident-but she's carrying identification, I would've heard about it, somebody would've called. And she was only going to stay a little while, Mrs. Lincoln's been pretty sick and visitors aren't supposed to stay long-'
'Just let me have your address, Miss. 0. K, Del Mar Avenue. What's your mother's name?'
'Mrs. Edna Holzer. She was going to the French Hospital to see Mrs. Lincoln. She left about seven and she should've been home by at least eight-thirty, I've been worried to death. She was coming straight home, she said so, and-'
The sergeant thought rapidly. That was a pretty classy address, up above Los Feliz, and the girl sounded straight.
'What's she driving?'
'A Chrysler Newport-two years old-navy-blue.' She was more businesslike now, reassured by the solid masculine voice. 'Wait a minute, I've got the license number. It's one-E-D-seven-four hundred.'
It passed fleetingly across the sergeant's mind that these seven-digit plate numbers, issued since the state ran out of different six-digit ones, made life a little complicated. He wrote it down. 'I'd like a description of her, please.'
'Of M-mother?- She's f-forty nine, five six, a hundred and t-t-twenty,' and the girl burst out crying.
'Now, Miss Holzer, try to get hold of yourself. Miss Holzer?'
She hiccupped and sobbed once more and said, 'I'm sorry. I don't want to sound stupid, but it's just, she was so p-p-proud of herself, she'd been on a diet and lost twenty pounds-she's got brown hair and blue eyes and she's wearing a sleeveless blue nylon dress and bone sandals.'
'All right, Miss Holzer. That's fine. We'll have a look around. Check the hospitals, and so on. I'll get back to you.'.
He did the obvious things on it. Called the emergency rooms, the Highway Patrol. If the woman had been heading for Hollywood from downtown she'd likely have been on the freeway and the Highway Patrol handled freeway accidents. He drew a blank. So then he called Central Traffic, explained and asked them to look around that area for the car. The woman could have had a heart attack, a lot of things could have happened.
At twelve-fifty, Central Traffic called back. A squad had checked the parking lot at the French Hospital. The Chrysler wasn't there. The squad had looked all around side streets there and it wasn't anywhere. Funny, thought the sergeant. What could have happened to the woman? Of course, without knowing anything but what the girl said she could have stopped for a drink, she could have gone to see a friend and lost track of time, she could have-
He called the girl back. 'No, she hasn't come home. What have you found out?'
'I'm sorry, I haven't a thing to tell you. But we'll keep looking. Miss Holzer, have you checked with any of her friends? She could have stopped in to see someone. She could have-'
'At nearly one A.M.?' she said. 'She told Mr. Shepherd she'd be in the office at nine, she's his secretary. Mr. Lynn Shepherd, he's the head of the firm-Shepherd, Lynch, and Morse. Mother's been his secretary for twenty years, and there was this important tax case, there has to be a deposition and the witness could only come in on Sunday. She said she'd be home by eight-thirty.'
They both sounded like responsible citizens, but of course even that kind came all sorts. The sergeant said, passing the buck, 'Well, we've done all we can do, Miss Holzer. I tell you, if your mother hasn't come home by morning, you can file a missing report with Central Headquarters.'
'And what would they do?' she asked wildly.
The sergeant wasn't too sure. He said stolidly, 'Well, that's what you'd better do. All I can tell you, your mother hasn't been involved in an accident in the last six hours.'
'That's all you know?'
'I'm sorry, Miss Holzer. That's all.'
'Well, thank you,' she said.
THE MISSING REPORT on Edna Holzer got filed at nine A.M. on Sunday morning, but that was not a busy office, Missing Persons. Their business was quiet and slow, and Lieutenant Carey was off on Sunday. The sergeant in that office filed the report without thinking much about it. Carey didn't see it until Monday morning.
On Sunday morning there was another cable from the Surete. They had turned up Juliette Martin's passport number. She had applied for it on the first of August. It had been issued on the nineteenth. No information was required for a passport except evidence of citizenship. There was no address available. No further information.
'?Diez milliones de demonios desde infierno! ' said Mendoza.
FIVE
ON SUNDAY Wanda Larsen was off. Higgins and Palliser might have taken her along to help break the news to Verna Coffey's daughter; a woman officer was helpful at that sort of thing. The address corresponding to the Pasadena listing was one side of a duplex, on a quiet middle-class street, but nobody had been home. Now this morning they tried there again and found the family just starting off for church, Robert and Julia Elmore and an eighteen-year-old daughter, Lila. There was the usual reaction to news of violent death. Palliser and Higgins gave them time. These were more honest solid citizens, as Verna Coffey had been. The husband worked at a Sears store here, the girl was a senior in high school. But Julia Elmore was a sensible woman and when her first grief subsided, she answered questions readily.
'I couldn't say exactly how much money might've been there. Mother only went to the bank once a week, on Wednesdays.' She was a thin sharp-faced woman, not very 'black. 'She didn't drive and her arthritis bothered her. She had to take the bus, she used to close the store for a couple of hours-same as when she went up to the market once a week.'
'I don't suppose,' said Elmore, 'she made an awful lot out of the store, but more than you might think. It was a steady trade.' He was a heavy-shouldered man, medium black. 'I suppose she might've had a hundred bucks or so, in cash, maybe more.'
'Where did she keep the money, do you know?' asked Palliser.
'She kept it all in an old handbag in the closet,' said Julia Elmore. 'But she was careful about keeping the doors locked, Sergeant, living alone like she did-and that's an old building and it was lonely at night there-you know, she was the only one lived there, all the rest of those stores were closed and empty at night. She was crying a little again. 'Oh, we worried about it-'
