'Thanks very much indeed,' said Mendoza. The big man waved away gratitude.
Carrying his treasure under one arm, Mendoza wandered down the lobby toward the alcove where he'd left Alison. Alison was enjoying the vacation anyway, he thought gloomily. And probably, just as she said, it was only egotism.
Alison was chatting with Mrs. Garven; inevitably, they were showing each other snapshots. Of Mrs. Garven's two rather plain daughters back in Montreal, and-of course-of the twins. When the Kitcheners abandoned them in favor of a round of night clubs, Mrs. Garven had attached herself. Garven was a prosperous businessman, with an ulcer to prove it, and all he talked about was common stock, its vagaries and inner economics, which Mendoza knew as much about as he knew or cared about the migration of lemming.
It was a fine hotel, and the weather was nice, and the service excellent, if they did keep pressing exotic rum drinks on you. But he still felt self-conscious without a tie, and he still felt uneasy about being so far from home. Suppose something big had come up. Or Art should have come down with Asian flu or something. Quizas, and so what? Other good experienced men in the office.
He sat down opposite Alison and Edith Garven and lit a cigarette. 'Just eleven months,” Alison was saying rather wistfully. 'But Teresa's walking already and Johnny probably is by now too. It does seem ages we've been away, but we have such a wonderful nurse-'
Mendoza opened the well-handled Chronicle and started to hunt through it for any news from L.A. The alleged feud was largely a joke, but for all that the San Francisco papers were a little chary of printing news about Los Angeles, and prone to treat it sarcastically where possible. The headlines were about forthcoming elections, a senatorial speech, an argument in the House. A socialite wedding. A dog show. He turned pages hopefully.
'… must go up and dress, Ted and I are going to that amusing calypso place tonight. Have you been there yet?'
'Yes, last night. Well, I didn't exactly-”
'Of course the songs do tend to be rather… But I feel one should be broad-minded, my dear, especially in a foreign country. I-'
'?Ca! ' said Mendoza softly. The bottom corner of this page had been torn, but he saw the dateline, Los Angeles, and carefully held the torn pieces together to read the brief story tucked away on the third page. Los Angeles, July I4.-A fourth victim of the latest mass killer roaming the City of Angels was found today, a teen-age boy. The Slasher, as he is locally known, has murdered and mutilated two men, a woman, and the boy within a period of less than two weeks. His first victim was left in a hotel room almost certainly rented by the murderer, but police as yet have apparently no clue to his identity.
'?Por Dios! ' said Mendoza to himself distractedly. 'My God-that body in the hotel-I knew there was something about it…' He could vividly imagine all the desperate hunting, the try-anything routine, on a thing like that. And no details at all, of course, damn it-not from 'Frisco. He got up and paced down the lobby, muttering to himself. The Slasher, My God. My God, four people-a mass killer, one of those berserk killers. He wished to God there'd been just a few details. Damn. He thought, I could call Art, long distance. And what good would that do, to know the details?
'?Que ocurre, querido? ' Alison put her arm through his. 'I do wish you'd cheer up and enjoy yourself more. You look-'
He told her, thrust the folded paper at her. 'I know what sort of job one like that is, damn it. I should never I have let you drag me this far from home. God knows what a mess that is, and don't I know it, the press needling us for not dropping on him inside twenty-four hours-probably damn all in the way of evidence-'
'Now look,' said Alison reasonably, 'there's Art, and John Palliser, and a lot of other perfectly capable men still there to cope with it, Luis. It's hardly as if you were-were shirking your duty or something like that. And it's silly to worry about it when there's nothing you can do. Look, it's nearly six o'clock. Let's go up and get dressed, and we said we'd try that Spanish place the taxi driver recommended.?Como no? Come on, be sensible and forget it.'
'Oh hell,' said Mendoza miserably. He trailed upstairs after her, to the luxurious big room that he disliked further because it had twin beds, and shaved and got into the uncomfortable evening clothes she'd insisted on; but he didn't forget the Slasher. He could just imagine what the boys were going through. And a few other cases on hand too, probably.
He hadn't any business to be here. He ought to be home, joining the hunt.
He could call Art. He could-'?Mil rayos! ' he said to the very bad rye that the Spanish place had produced with prodding. He'd had a feeling all along… There was a boy with a guitar who sang, but Mendoza hardly heard him. He was back home, with a harassed Hackett and all the rest of them, visualizing the routine they'd be setting up, the tiresome questioning, the eager follow-up of any small lead. On one like that. The Slasher. Hell. Thirty-five hundred miles…
'Well, you understand, I don't want to get anybody in trouble,' said Mr. James Clay. 'You couldn't help liking Frank, he was that sort of guy, but that doesn't say I exactly approved of all he did. Not that I'm a prude, but-'
Mr. Clay was being fairly helpful in building back-grounds, and Hackett drew him out hopefully. Frank Nestor had once worked as a salesclerk in Clay's sporting-goods shop on Hollywood Boulevard, and they had, Clay said, kept up. Clay only a few years older than Nestor, a friendly, pug-faced little man.
'He was doing real well the last few years, since he got to be a chiropractor. But from what he said here and there, I don't figure he was being just so ethical at it, if that's the word… Oh well, he said once you'd be surprised how you could rook the old folks, selling 'em regular courses of special vitamins and so on, at ten and twenty bucks the bottle. Like that.'
That figured right in with what Hackett was beginning to build on Nestor.
'Mind you, I guess most chiropractors are honest, like most M.D. s. I go to one regularly,' said Clay, 'chiropractor, I mean, for my sacroiliac, and he's good, too. I asked him about it once, after I'd heard Frank say that, and he said it's so, there are a few of 'em just in it for the money-well, like some M.D. s, I suppose-and they rake it in by overcharging for vitamin pills, supposed to be something new and different. I could figure Frank doing that, and just thinking it was smart. And yet you couldn't help liking the guy. He had what they call charm-you know?'
'That kind isn't usually shy with the opposite sex,' suggested Hackett.
'Sure as hell he wasn't,' agreed Clay. 'That I can tell you. I started out feeling sorry for that wife of his, but in spite of everything I couldn't keep it up. And my wife said the same. So, anybody knew them knew he'd married her for the money-her old man was a millionaire, everybody thought then. Turned out he'd lost most of it before he died. Frank was working for me when he married her, you know-six, seven years back. She should've known what kind Frank was, when she'd been married a month. He was making a good salary here, but he always had expensive tastes-and he was always ready for a little session of poker. He didn't go out of his way to be mean to her, just the opposite-he wanted everybody to like him so bad he was nice to everybody, her included. But she just asked for it. Acting like a doormat, you know. Never complaining when he lost the grocery money at cards, or like that. Never standing up for herself, or trying to fix herself up a little. I never could take to the woman somehow… '
It seemed that Nestor, Clay, and several others used to get together for poker a couple of times a month, and Nestor had talked, casually, about his girl friends, about his lucrative practice. 'I don't mean he'd come right out with names and details-Frank wouldn't do that. On the women, I mean. But he'd say things like, he had a date with a hot number tomorrow night, or something like that. So I knew he was stepping out on his wife a lot.'
'Did he ever mention a name to you at all?'
That was where Clay said again he wouldn't want to get anybody in trouble. 'He did, once. About two weeks ago, last time I saw him, matter of fact. He had the tail end of a nice shiner-about three days old, you know-and I asked him about it. He laughed and said, oh, Ruthie's husband had caught up to him.'
'Ruthie.' There was a Ruth Elger, and an address, in Nestor's address book. 'I see.'
'I guess at that,” said Clay, 'even if he wasn't just so level, at that job, he'd have been good at it. He'd always wanted to be a surgeon, he used to say, and he was good with his hands, any hand work. I understand now it's not like it used to be, this chiropractic thing, a six-week course anybody could take-it's like a regular college course, and they have to take all the pre-med classes. He may have turned quite a few unethical bucks, but he was
