over his eyes, and he thought he could pretend to have a cold, keep his handkerchief up.
There was a hamburger joint a block up where you could take it away with you, didn't have to eat there. He walked up to it fast. There were some other people there, eating or waiting for their hamburgers. He asked for two; when they were shoved across the counter at him he put down a silver dollar.
'Buck an' ten cents, mister.'
He found the extra dime. He walked back quickly, carrying the food. Down in his safe place he ate slowly, enjoying the greasy hot flavor of beef and onions and pickle… Now he was lying here hungry for something else. For the dark. For the dark to come down, so he would know it was time. The right time to go out and start his night's hunting.
He held a gun on his lap, and now and then he touched it almost lovingly. The knife was good, but the gun would be good too. Better, now. Better for him. I'm a people hunter, he thought, and laughed. Most important guy in the whole Goddamned town. In all the papers. Everybody talking about him. The Slasher. Be the hell of a lot more important before he was done…
Laughing at him. Not wanting to look at him. Stupid, they said. The girls, the pretty girls looking at him and- He was on his feet, pacing excitedly, cradling the gun. A pretty girl named Ellen, screaming when he tried to kiss her…
Suddenly he yelled in a high savage voice, ' What d'you think of me now, you bastards? All you Goddamned bastards-show you-show all of you- '
Nobody heard him at all, and after a while he stopped. Jesus God, wouldn't it ever get dark tonight?
Dwyer and Scarne came in while Palliser was still talking. Nothing had shown up, of course. Palliser had been a little excited to find a button missing from Cliff Elger's topcoat. 'But it was a bigger button, and a different color, and who'd be wearing a topcoat in July?' And as for asking whether anybody had given away any clothes for salvage lately, you couldn't expect anything on that. If X had belatedly realized he'd left that button behind, and couldn't replace it on the jacket or cardigan, and gave it away to be rid of it, he wouldn't say so. The canny way he'd got rid of the gun…
Mendoza agreed inattentively. He had a county guide open in front of him and was studying the big detailed map of the downtown area.
'I only dropped in to report no progress too,' said Dwyer. 'I'm on my way down to Santa Monica to have a look at the wardrobe of a fellow named Ross. Don't know how well he knew Nestor-he's just there in the address book. And you'll likely be getting a formal complaint from a Wall Street type by the name of Marlowe. He wasn't home when I got there-seems he has a butler who also acts as his valet, all veddy-veddy, but it was his day off; the maid was scared of me and my warrant, and let me in. The master arrived just as I was looking over his second- best evening jacket, and he didn't like me at all. He said so. Police, he said, and it was a dirty word coming from him, pawing over his clothes-very highhanded, and the idea of trying to connect him to a sordid crime- Quite a little pile there, I'd say.'
'Money and family,' said Mendoza, sounding faintly amused. 'But you're not going anywhere else. All that can be put off-our Slasher is the hell of a lot more important. That one we've got to get, and in a hurry.'
'You have any bright ideas how to do it, beyond what we're doing? Somebody'll recognize him and say so- he's got to eat, he'll be showing somewhere-”
'Eventually!' said Mendoza. 'It's not good enough. Yes, I've got a bright idea. Jimmy! Call down to Traffic and ask Fletcher to come up here. Now look.' He pointed at the map. 'He's stuck to the downtown area up to now, and never above Third. This is his part of town. Incidentally, remembering what we got from up north, the part of any town where that sort does land-the drifters, the almost bums. On and around Skid Row. All right. We had one quite promising lead, you remember, from that leg work on men with scarred faces. A man like that had rented a room over on Boardman, said his name was John Tenney. Had, we subsequently found, paid the landlady partly in silver dollars. Only he skipped before we laid hands on him. He could have skipped because he heard our man questioning the landlady-we don't know.'
'Are you heading any particular direction?” asked Dwyer.
' Paciencia. After that we got the attempt on the Rollen girl and the murder of this late unknown. Both along San Pedro, four blocks apart. I'll tell you where I'm heading. I think he's just smart enough to have realized that, with his description in circulation, he's got to have cover, some safe hole to lie up in. I think he's found one, and it'll be somewhere not too far from where he attacked those two. I can't offer a guess where it might be, an empty building-if there are any-or what. But he's got to be somewhere around there, and he won't be coming out of his hole until after dark. We're going to get a lot of men, the more the merrier, and conduct a building-to-building search in a twelve-block square between Main and San Pedro, between Temple and Third.'
'For God's sake!' said Scarne. 'Do you realize how much territory that covers?'
'Some of it,' said Mendoza, 'is taken up by the Civic Center. We're sitting on one perimeter of it right here. I know. A lot of residential streets, a lot of business-and part of Skid Row. Nevertheless, we're going to do that. We're going to pry into every nook and cranny-'
'Now?' said Dwyer.
'There's four and a half hours of daylight left. Set it up, get it started. After dark, they can search in pairs. And-' Mendoza stopped, and said, 'Yes. The dogs. I want the dogs. Damn it, where's Fletcher?'
The L.A.P.D. had been slow to start using dogs. Maybe some prejudice of the chief's; the chief liked dogs and maybe was reluctant to see them used that way. But with increasing evidence of their great usefulness, the force had finally acquired a few. Oflicially they were under the Traffic office; Mendoza wasn't quite sure how many there were yet, fully trained and ready for action. But on this kind of action, as on many others, a trained dog would be worth two men-seeing and hearing and smelling where a man wouldn't.
'My good Christ,' said Dwyer mildly. 'Look at it.' He flung the map down. 'Dozens of little side streets and courts-rooming houses, apartments-along the main drags, warehouses, all those joints on the Row with flop-houses and a few cat houses, probably, upstairs-my God, with a hundred men it'd take three days to be sure you'd covered-'
'So we take three days, or three weeks!' said Mendoza.
'Did you like the afternoon headlines, Bert? We're going to work this the only way we can. Damn.' He massaged his temples, elbows on the desk. 'I've fumbled around at this… I thought Art's business tied up to the Nestor thing, I've been concentrating on that-but-I don't know…'
'Who's called the hospital last?' asked Palliser.
'Jimmy. Just before I came in,' said Mendoza. 'They say he's getting a little restless, which they seem to think is a good sign. But of course-'
'Yeah,' said Dwyer. They all knew about that. A clean dying one thing: the permanent brain damage another. 'You don't think now it was tied up to either case?' He looked at Mendoza thoughtfully.
'?Que se yo? ” said Mendoza. 'I don't know. There's nothing really that says yes or no. I'll say this much, I doubt very much whether that is linked with our Slasher. In spite of his being the one who derailed the Daylight. It doesn't fit-it isn't the right shape. But it could have been the outside thing. And if it was'-he sat up straighter, automatically brushing ash off the desk, aligning the desk box and blotter-'if it was, by God, or if it wasn't, we'll get the X on that and get him but good. But-'
'Amen to that,' said Palliser.
'But in the meantime we've got the Slasher on our hands. I say, let's go all out to get that one, and then we'll have the slate clear-and the damn press off our necks-to hunt down the other one. Plural or singular? Hell, I don't know,' said Mendoza. 'I don't even know whether the motive on Nestor came out of his abortion trade or something else-his girl friends, his marriage.?Basra! Forget about that for a minute-' He looked up as the door opened.
'What's the urgent summons to my lowly office?' asked Fletcher of Traffic. He was a big, heavy, amiable man, about due for retirement.
'How soon can you get me about fifty men?' asked Mendoza. 'More if you can. And all the dogs available? For a house-to-house search of about one square mile of downtown?'239
Fletcher just looked at him. 'Are you serious? Right now? What the hell on? Not-'
