FIVE
Galeano and Grace went along to see what it was. The address was one of the new high-rise buildings out on Wilshire; Galeano could never get used to calling them condominiums when they were just glorified apartments. There was a black and white at the curb; Mendoza slid the Ferrari into a red zone and they got out.
'Where’s Goldberg?' he asked the uniformed man by the squad car.
'Fourth floor, this side, sir. And thanks for the excuse to get out of there. I’m waiting for the men from the zoo, tell him I’ll send ’em right up.'
'The zoo?' said Grace. But Mendoza was already at the door.
The elevator took its time, eventually decanted them on the fourth floor. Down a plushly carpeted hall they spotted another navy uniform and made for it. 'Homicide,' said Mendoza. 'This is it?'
'Oh, brother, you said it,' said the Traffic man. 'I’d rather have a riot to handle any day, at least with people you sometimes know where you are. Lieutenant Goldberg said you’re to go straight in.' He opened the door behind him gingerly, a crack, peered in, and opened it wider for them. It was class, all right: rich deep carpeting, hotel-size furniture, damask draperies, in a big rectangular living room with a wall of window offering a view of the city. Lying face down under the window was a dead man, blood around him on the chaste carpeting. He was a chesty middle- aged man in a natty gray suit. Lieutenant Saul Goldberg, thin and dark and looking less morose than usual, was standing at one end of the long velvet upholstered sofa, and at the other end stood Captain Patrick Callaghan also of Narcotics, incredibly bigger than Hackett and redder-haired than Alison. He looked rather pale, and his eyes were glued to the closed door opposite.
'Well, hello, Luis,' said Goldberg. There was another man sitting on the couch, a rather fat middle-aged man in very expensive-looking sports clothes, an exquisite shade of fawn. He had jumped nervously when the door opened. There was a large, long wooden packing crate in the middle of the room with a lot of straw in it.
'Don’t let it out!' said the man on the couch.
'We won’t let it out,' said Goldberg.
'What in hell goes on here'?' asked Mendoza.
'This is Mr. Enoch Hoyt. A longtime narco dealer, just a couple of years ago graduated to the big time of smuggling. That,' said Goldberg, nodding at the dead man, 'was his partner, Mr. Delmar Underwood.'
'I didn’t mean to shoot him,' said Hoyt aggrievedly. 'I told you it was an accident. Anybody might have- Are you sure that door’s shut, for God’s sake?'
'So what happened?' asked Mendoza.
Goldberg blew his nose deliberately. 'We got a hot tip that there was a big shipment of stuff coming in from Central America-coke mostly, some H. We’d known all about Mr. Hoyt and Mr. Underwood for some time, we were just waiting to get the goods on them. The ingenuity that goes into the criminal trades-like with the conmen, if they used that much genius in legitimate channels they’d all be millionaires-'
'This pair don’t seem to have done too badly,' said Mendoza, looking around.
'We got on to San Diego, but those boys were just too late to catch it at the border, they’d already signed for it and got through Customs. Mr. Hoyt had some pretty forged papers identifying him as an assistant curator at the Los Angeles Zoo.'
'I can hear the damn thing in there, Saul,' said Callaghan. He hadn’t taken his eyes from the door. 'I don’t suppose you keep up with the latest dodges for smuggling in the dream powder, Luis. This is one of the newest. You see, snakes don’t eat very often. The big ones. So you stuff your shipment of coke or H or whatever in a big plastic bag, and you get the snake to swallow it with the rest of its once-a-month dinner, and then you shut it up in a crate and address it to the Chief Herpetologist, L. A. Zoo, and when it gets to Customs at the Mexican border somebody like Mr. Hoyt--'
'I will be damned,' said Mendoza.
'What kind of snake?' asked Galeano nervously. 'Well, I only got a very brief look at it,' said Goldberg, 'before I slammed the door, but the manifest says it’s a boa constrictor.'
'I said it was just plain nuts!' said Hoyt plaintively. 'I didn’t want nothing to do with it-I know it’s the latest gimmick, going smooth as damn-it here and New York and Miami, and our latest consignment got picked off by the Mexico City cops, damn it, and Del said to try it, we had a contact in Guadalajara-but I never liked the idea from the start-'
'Supposedly,' said Callaghan, his eyes on the door, 'the snake is dormant, and when they’ve got it through Customs they just knock it on the head, slit it open and recover the-'
'Dormant!' said Hoyt wildly. 'Say, listen, that’s what Del said, he knew some guys been doing it for months, no trouble at all, but-Dormant? When he pried up the nails on that damn box, that Goddamned snake came out like a bolt of lightning, about fifty feet of it, and my God, I never meant to shoot Del, but I’d got my gun out just in case and the damned thing was all over the floor, I just-'
Something heavy landed against the closed door with a thud, and Callaghan flinched.
'It was at this interesting juncture,' said Goldberg, 'that Pat and I arrived, armed with a search warrant-we hoped they hadn’t had time to get rid of the shipment to their dealers-and I’d just knocked on the door when the gun went off, so we came charging in.'
'Ugh!' said Callaghan.
'To find Mr. Hoyt screaming and waving a gun around, and the, er, party of the first part disappearing into the bedroom. So I shut the door. I’m not a great pet lover myself. You can take Hoyt away and book him anytime. We’re waiting for some men from the zoo to corral the boa. We’ll ask if there’s any way to make it disgorge the goods without killing it-it’d be a shame, poor thing, after it’s performed such a good deed in getting Delmar put away.'
'Yes, please, I’d like to get booked in right away,' said Hoyt, getting up anxiously.
'The damn thing’s working on the door,' said Callaghan. 'Where the hell are those herpetologists?'
Mendoza was laughing. 'The things we run into-we’ll take him off your hands, boys. Send me chapter and verse for the report. And do have fun with the snake charmers.'
'Ugh!' said Callaghan. 'I don’t think I’m a coward, but I don’t like snakes. I just don’t like ’em.'
Galeano was just as relieved to be out of that place, headed for the Alameda jail with Hoyt in a squad car. He didn’t like snakes either. No way.
Sometimes, said Hackett to Higgins, this damn job was so monotonous and so easy that you might as well be on an assembly line screwing in bolt forty-six. The automatic routine turned up the answer like a coin bringing you the candy bar out of the machine. And it made you feel tired, dealing with the stupid, stupid punks.
This particular punk, who was old enough to know better, had left a nice set of prints on that cash register last night, and the lab boys had had no trouble at all in locating them in LAPD records and marking him as Roy Titus, who had a long record of such stupidities behind him. He was forty-five now and had a record going back to age twelve, mostly armed robbery, B. and E., a couple of muggings and two burglaries. He’d served some time, not as much as he should have; and at the moment he was still on parole, which meant that his current address was on file.
It wasn’t even very far away from headquarters, on Budlong Avenue. Hackett and Higgins drove up there, in Higgins’ car instead of the scarlet Barracuda in case they found him. It was an old apartment building, and before they parked they spotted Titus talking to a man in the driveway, so they went up to him and started to inform him of his rights. The other man looked surprised and asked what was going on.
'Who are you, anyway? What right you got to butt in on a private deal? You want a piece of the action, you wait your turn!'
'What deal?' asked Hackett.
'Oh, hell,' said Titus. 'How’d you know I pulled anything?'
He had the haul from the liquor store neatly stacked in his garage; the other fellow lived down the block and on being offered a case of good whiskey at a quarter the retail price, wasn’t about to ask questions. He was annoyed to miss out on the deal.
At this end of a day, Hackett and Higgins were not disposed to waste time questioning Titus about the two
