That bus will be here any minute and these two heathens not washed-there’s coffee on the stove-'
'I’ll get breakfast out, Mairi.' He dodged Cedric slurping from his bowl on the back porch. He backed out the Ferrari, but didn’t head downtown. It was nine-fifty when he walked into the office of Captain Noble of Harbor division and asked, 'What about it?'
Noble was a hardbitten middle-aged man, big and stolid. 'Well, I’ve got him here for you,' he said. 'When you called last night I checked with the Shore Patrol and found he was aboard all right. We picked him up this morning, about an hour ago, after a little argument with the chief petty officer. What do you want him for, Mendoza?'
'I don’t know that I want him for anything,' said Mendoza. 'It’s just a little hunch. And when I checked with the Navy and found the ship was still in port, I thought I’d better talk to him while I could.'
Noble shrugged. 'He’s in an interrogation room down the hall. Ready to chew nails and talking about his rights as a citizen.'
'Lead me to him.'
When he went into the little room and shut the door behind him, Ted Nygard swung around belligerently. 'Who the hell are you and what the hell’s this all about?' He was about twenty, a good-looking youngster with crew-cut blond hair and a pink and white complexion, trim in his blue uniform. 'What is all this, anyway? Police-'
'Lieutenant Mendoza, Robbery-Homicide. Sit down, Mr. Nygard. I’ve just got a few questions for you.' Mendoza laid down his hat, got out a cigarette and contemplated him consideringly. 'You were on leave about a week, ten days ago. You went to stay with your uncle-or great-uncle-Mr. McAllister, up in L.A.'
Nygard flushed, to betray his youth. 'My mother asked me to go see them,' he muttered. 'I was only there a couple of days. Why?'
'You got into a hot poker game while you were there, at a little neighborhood bar.'
'You’re Goddamned right I did!' said Nygard.
'Bunch of silly old bastards like Uncle Sam, I thought, and it turned out, I guess I was the sap-they cleaned me out! Not Uncle, he dropped some too, but this one guy was stacking the deck, I could swear. He walked away with a wad, mostly mine.' He looked at Mendoza more warily.
'But so what, what’s your business with me? Did you say-'
'The poker session, Mr. Nygard. Was this fellow’s name Buford? And you thought he was ringing in a cold deck? Naturally you were annoyed.' Mendoza was filling in gaps, and it was easy to do. 'You went home with your uncle that Tuesday night, and he was tired and went right to bed-but you were still missing your money. You went out again and found Buford’s place-mmh, yes, I could guess. You knew his name, and that he lived in the neighborhood-he’d be in the book. Yes, it’s one thing to lose money legitimately, but when you thought he was a sharp-'
'Hell!' said Nygard, flushing deeply. 'Did he lay some kind of charge? I wouldn’t think he had the nerve! All I wanted was my money back. Yeah, I found the place, the door was open and I went in and he was sound asleep in front of the TV. If you know so damned much-'
'But he woke up when you started to search him for the money,' said Mendoza, 'and you had a little scuffle.'
'Well, damn it, I didn’t want to hurt him,' said Nygard, 'he was a lot older than me, but I wasn’t going to let him get away with that loot, and I told him so. Did he lay a charge on me? Damn it-'
'No,' said Mendoza, 'but I’m afraid we’re going to. He’s dead, Mr. Nygard. We won’t be calling it Murder One, but he got knocked down and cracked his skull and died of it.'
Nygard lost all his pink freshness; he stared at Mendoza in dismay, incredulity. 'Oh, no,' he said, 'I just gave him a little push-I didn’t even hit him-I thought he’d knocked himself out and I just-oh, my God! I never meant a thing like that-my God!'
Mendoza got back to the office just after lunch, and met Duke coming in. Hackett was alone in the sergeants’ office, laboring over a report. Mendoza told him about Nygard: Harbor division would send him up to be booked Q in, and there’d be the statements to get, the warrant to be applied for. It was Higgins’ day off, and everybody else was out on something.
'And what have you got?' he asked Duke, sitting down at his desk and reaching for the flame-thrower. 'The first report on these Freemans.' Duke spread out glossy 8 by 10’s. 'The autopsies’ll give you more, but provisionally we think they were attacked by at least two men. They don’t seem to have made much effort to defend. themselves, as if they’d been taken by surprise, both struck down at once maybe. I don’t think they had a chance.
There was the usual mess, and not much there to get-it was raining, and there were some muddy footprints on the hall carpet, but not distinct enough to make anything of.' The photographs were just as usual too, not very pretty. 'But you called our attention to the phone book, and we took a little trouble there-lifted a very nice set of 1atents.'
Duke sounded smug. 'All four lingers, for a wonder. They’ve just gone down to R. and I., if we’ve got him on file we’ll know who one of them is anyway.'
' Bueno,' said Mendoza. 'You’ll let us know. Where is everybody, Art?'
'Out. John and Rich got some kind of lead on Ames, and nobody’d done much on that addict who turned up dead, Peralta. Nick had an inquest to cover.'
'The Olson girl. That was muy extrano,' said Mendoza, and Sergeant Lake buzzed and said the D.A.’s office wanted him. It was one of the juniors, and he wanted to talk about Joey. They didn’t feel it was a case to prosecute formally, and to save time and money a reduced charge would probably be brought. The D.A. would be interested in Robbery-Homicide’s opinion about that; it would really be easier all round if they simply put him away as incorrigible, in which case- 'In which case,' said Mendoza sharply, 'he’ll be automatically released when he turns into a legal adult, with no charge on his record. I wouldn’t go along with that at all. He’s exhibited a good deal of violence, and very likely the minute he’s turned loose he’d continue to do so.'
Well, the D.A.’s office felt it wasn’t worthwhile to do anything else. They had quite a case-load here, as Mendoza knew.
'?Que demonios! ' said Mendoza to Hackett. 'What do you bet that kid will be out and roaming around with a knife again before he turns eighteen? The trouble we go to, and then the damned lawyers-I swear I’m going to get out of this rat race! And somebody’s got to get those statements on Buford, Art.'
'I’m going, I’m going,' said Hackett hastily. As he went out, Mendoza had opened the top drawer and brought out the deck of cards.
'Tom Sawyer,' said Fred Mallow blankly. 'Outside of the book, I never heard of one.' He looked at Palliser and Conway. 'But I said I didn’t know everybody in that night.'
'Well, we can try to narrow it down some,' said Conway. 'You knew most of the people by sight if not name, no? O.K., between us Sergeant Palliser and I have seen all the rest of them, except this bird who gave us the phony name and address. So let’s start from scratch-'
Mallow yawned again, looking puzzled. 'I don’t see-oh, I get you. Maybe we could at that. You figure it was this guy, whoever he is, stabbed Ames? I still don’t see how anybody did.' They had waked him up again, but he was ready to be cooperative.
'A1l right, the ones you know by name and looks first.' Palliser handed him the list. Mallow checked it off obediently: four people, three men and the girl, Edna Willis. 'You didn’t know the man with her, but we do, A having talked to him-Michael Jarvis. Who was there you knew by sight and not name?'
'Jesus, I’d have to think back-lessee, there’s a guy about forty, sandy hair, thin, comes in two-three times a week, wears sports clothes usually. Usually in about nine.'
Palliser looked at Conway, who said promptly, 'That’d be Adrian Forbes. He lives at the hotel around the corner.'
