The two began arguing about where they’d been last Tuesday. They’d been living at an old hotel over in Glendale, but they didn’t know the terrain out here and got confused about directions and distances. They agreed they’d spent last Tuesday night in a bar someplace, but couldn’t say where.
'What the hell does it matter?' said Higgins to Hackett. 'We’ve got them for the Freemans anyway. These days, a heavier charge means nothing.'
That Saturday night was a busy one for the night watch, three heists and a market clerk shot dead in one of them. There were three witnesses to that, and Piggott, Schenke and Shogart were busy until the end of shift. The witnesses came in on Sunday morning to look at mug-shots, and annoyed Galeano and Phil Landers. As witnesses sometimes were, they were confused by the very number of photographs to look at.
'I just couldn’t say,' said Akiko Tomito. 'It all happened so fast-that looks like him, but so does this one, some-no, I guess this one here’s more like, only his face was fatter-'
'Oh, dear me, I wouldn’t like to say definitely,' said Mrs. Marilyn Vail brightly. 'If he’d had dark hair instead of light, he’d look a lot like this man-but then he didn’t, so I guess it wasn’t. On the other hand-'
'Nobody could say, just look at a picture,' said Gus Severson with a growl. 'Some pictures look like the people and some don’t. I told you what he looked like. Couldn’t say just from a picture.'
Galeano suppressed any retort and thanked them for trying. 'Description!' he said to Phil when they’d trooped out. 'What the hell did they give the night watch? Six feet, five-ten, five-nine, medium, light, sandy, brown, sort of thin, kind of stocky, blue pants, black slacks, tan coat, white coat. I ask you.'
Phil laughed. 'The civilians aren’t trained to notice things.'
They’d be reduced to doing that the hard way, looking for men with the right pedigrees who lit the general description. And before they got down to it, they had a new homicide-a middle-aged man, Harry Schultz, a bookkeeper at a brokerage, stabbed to death as he walked up the drive to his own back door from the garage, just after dark. It was cold and misty, threatening to rain again, and nobody had been looking out windows or had doors open; even though it was a crowded neighborhood, houses on forty-foot lots, there were no witnesses and no leads. His wife said he might have had fifteen or twenty dollars on him.
'Round and round the mulberry bush,' said Piggott, typing the initial report. 'Just like ancient Rome, E. M. The weakened moral fiber, relaxation of standards, all the easy welfare, bread and circuses-and the pornography and you get all the senseless violence, the killings done for peanuts, the killers given a slap on the wrist and let go to do it again. Makes you wonder where it’ll all end, doesn’t it?' He got no reply and looked up from the typewriter. Shogart had his feet propped up in Landers’ desk chair and his head had fallen forward at an angle. He emitted a small snore. Shogart, up for retirement next year, had ceased a long time ago to get involved with the crime he was paid to look at.
Piggott sighed and went back to the report. 'Sodom and Gomorrah,' he muttered to himself. Talk about making bricks without straw-***
On Monday morning, in a threatening gray mist, Palliser tried all the book’s suggestions on Trina again, without much noticeable success. When it started to rain he came in, and Trina shook her wet self all over Roberta’s clean kitchen floor. 'You know, John,' said Roberta, 'I’ve had a look at that book too, and it says a few minutes every day, morning and afternoon. You can’t expect to try once a week and get anywhere.'
'Damn it, I’m busy all day and tired when I get home,' said Palliser. 'Even if I could get her to one of these c1asses-'
'Well, you’re not accomplishing anything this way. I wonder how much it might cost to have a professional trainer do it?'
'Too much, if I know anything about prices these days. Yes, she’s a very nice dog,' said Palliser, sitting down and looking at the scratches on his shoes where Trina had been pretending to be a teething puppy again, 'but why in hell did it have to be me who went out on that freeway accident? Just because I rescued Madge Borman’s champion hound, so she has to give us one of his pups in a burst of gratitude-'
'Who I’m very glad to have around, she’s a good watchdog. I’m home most of the day, you let me have a try at it.'
'All I can do is wish you luck, Robin.'
Hackett, Galeano and Higgins had gone out on the anonymous Schultz thing. Glasser and Conway were looking for possibles on the heist jobs, and Wanda was typing a report across the hall, when Jason Grace wandered into Mendoza’s office on Monday just as Sergeant Lake put through a call.
'What’s on your mind, Jase? Just a minute. Robbery-Homicide, Lieutenant Mendoza.'
'Sergeant Richards up here in Santa Barbara,' said a heavy male voice. 'You’ve got an A.P.B. out on a Mr. and Mrs. King, sixty-three Ford sedan, plate AGN-740. We just picked them up.'
'Thank you so much,' said Mendoza. 'We think they may be connected to a homicide here.'
'Well, you’ll have ’em on possession anyway,' said Richards. 'There was about a pound of marijuana in the car. Which is wrecked, by the way, they tried to run when the squad spotted them and King had a little load on and piled it up in a ditch. Do you want somebody to ferry ’em down there'?'
'Well, we are a little busy,' said Mendoza. 'It’d be a nice gesture, thanks.'
'Glad to oblige. I don’t mind a little drive down the coast. Be with you sometime this afternoon,' said Richards, and hung up.
Mendoza passed that on to Grace. He’d been sitting here practicing stacking the deck, and looked, as Grace told him, like an old-style riverboat cardsharp, hair over one eye where he’d run fingers through it, cigarette in mouth corner. 'I’ve been brooding over Fleming, Jase. What have you got?'
'Just a little idea.' Grace sat down and lit a cigarette. 'This Mrs. Hopper. As George said, really not much M.O. about it, and Benoy and Allesandro denied it. The daughter told us her credit cards were gone, so I got on to the companies. Daughter also told me'-he grinned at Mendoza-'and don’t say there’s nothing to this race business, she’d never have come out with it to Art or you or George-that she’s got a sister. Very unsatisfactory sister-they’re all ashamed of her-lived around with this man and that, couple of illegitimate kids, on the welfare. Carla said Isabel had stolen things from Mother before, and it could be she’d helped herself to the cards, it mightn’t have been the murderer.'
' Interesante.'
'I thought so. When I talked to the BankAmericard people-I didn’t get any satisfaction on Saturday, of course-I just now heard that Mrs. Hopper had reported it herself, last Tuesday, and put a stop on any charges. Which looked possibly suggestive. I talked to Carla again and she told me her mother had put up with a lot from Isabel. Every time, Isabel all remorseful, never do it again, but she always did. And Mother wasn’t playing any more.'
'Are you heading where I think you are?'
'That’s just where. Just for fun I looked in Records, and there’s Isabel Hopper big as life. Soliciting, prostitution, possession, petty theft, and she’s been tied up with a couple of mean characters. Maybe she still is, or could find one when she needed one.'
'Probably,' said Mendoza, his eyes on the cards. 'And if Mother phoned her and said she knew who’d snitched her credit cards and this time she was going to prosecute- Dios, Jase, I have had it too, with these brainless brutes who hit first and think later! But that hangs together. Have you located her yet?'
'She’s not where she was the last time she was picked up, but the welfare board will know where she is. I’m just waiting for somebody to come in to go with me, in case she’s got one of the mean characters sharing quarters with her. I don’t want to end up as a statistic in our files.”
Mendoza laughed. 'I won’t volunteer. It’s started to rain again. She’s all yours, Jase.'
Hackett had come in by the time Richards got there with the Kings. He shook hands around, said, 'Glad to
