' Oye, oiga, frene!-Que se yo? ' Mendoza sat up abruptly. 'Wait a minute now, you were driving? Bartlett got in beside you, you said-you being behind the wheel.'
'Why, yes, sir,' said Walsh. 'We generally change round like that, you know, if there're two of you on patrol, one drives the first half of the tour, the other the second half. That night, we changed after the coffee break, and Joe took the wheel.'
Mendoza looked at him, but he didn't see Frank Walsh's square, honest, amiable face at all. He saw that ugly courtyard, on that dark rainy night-and a murderer opening a door (all right, no evidence, nada absolutamente, to back that up, but it made a picture, it filled in an empty space)-and being confronted with that black-and-white squad car, unexpected and so close; and in that moment, one great flash of lightning lighting the whole scene-pinpointing it in time and space. What picture in a murderer's mind of that one moment? A uniformed cop at the wheel of that car, looking up alertly-apparently toward the open apartment door. And Mrs. Bragg's porch light shining full on the front of the squad car and its L.A. police number.
That was all. That was enough. Mendoza's patrol days being far behind, that one little fact hadn't occurred to him, that a pair of cops in a squad car changed around at the wheel. The ordinary civilian wouldn't think of it.
So, there was the answer: and say it wasn't backed up by any kind of evidence the D.A. would look at- Mendoza knew surely it must be the right answer. All somebody had known, had been afraid of, was the driver of the squad car number such-and·such. It didn't matter then-the idea was that Twelvetrees should vanish, that he'd never be found in his makeshift grave down that kitchen trap-it didn't matter if the driver saw and remembered a face. Not if things went the way somebody planned. But just in case Twelvetrees was found, in case questions were asked, and the driver of that car was able to identify a face-Panic? Impulse? And a very damned lucky shot- or a very damned skillful one… into the wrong man.
And, after all, Frank Walsh hadn't seen whoever stood in that open door.
EIGHT
'Every other country in the world,' said Alison, clutching Mendoza's arm, 'puts decent lights in night clubs and bars. People go to such places to read newspapers and hold philosophical discussions over their drinks. Or at least so I'm given to understand. Why are Americans condemned to these caves of darkness, like moles?'
'It's the Puritan background,' said Mendoza, stumbling over a pair of outstretched legs and apologizing. 'We still suffer from the influence of all those high-minded, earnest people who had the idea that anything a little bit enjoyable, from a glass of wine to a hand of cards-anything that makes life a bit more amusing-is necessarily sinful. It's a holdover-ah, haven,' as the waiter's dim figure stopped and hovered in the gloom ahead, indicating a table or booth, impossible to tell which. On cautious investigation it proved to be a booth, and he slid into it beside the vague slender figure that was Alison-at least, it smelled of the spiced-carnation and faintly aphrodisiac scent that said Alison. '-A holdover from the days when those righteous old colonists felt seven kinds of devil if they let the cider get hard, you know… Straight rye,' he added to the waiter, 'and I think a glass of sherry for the lady.'
'Yes. It's a great pity, all I can say,' said Alison. 'I expect you're right, and how silly.'
'On the contrary,' said Mendoza, 'very good business. You make people feel there's something a little devilish about a thing, they'll fall over themselves to buy it. Human nature. Prohibition created more drinkers than we'd ever had before. Same principle as banning a novel-everybody reads it to find out why.'
'It's still silly. I can't find my cigarettes, have you got one?'
'Only,' said Mendoza, groping in his pocket, offering her the pack and lighting one for her, 'because you and I were born at par. I got this from Sergeant Farquhar-it's a Scottish proverb, haven't you heard it, and you half Scots? ‘Some people are born two drinks under. They need the drinks to get up to normal?'
'Certainly I've heard it, and my father used to say that redheads-oh, well, never mind, it wasn't very genteel now I come to think.'
'If it was about redheads,' said Mendoza as the waiter brought their drinks, 'I might guess what it was.'
'I wouldn't put it past you. Well, in polite language it was to the effect that they're born two drinks over. And he was, certainly. Did I ever tell you about the time he challenged the governor of Coahuila to a duel? It was over a dam up in the Sierra Mojadas-the governor kept saying if Providence had intended people to have the water, the dam would have been created in the first six days, you know, but as it was the whole thing was immoral and contrary to God's wishes-I've never seen Dad madder-but in the end the governor backed down and they never did get to the duel. I think myself somebody told the governor the pedazo rojo norteamericano was a crack shot.'
'These effeminate Latins, all cowards,' said Mendoza. “ Salud y pesetas! ' He tasted the rye. 'You and I are the unconventional ones, we don't need this to enjoy life… And another thing about these places,' he added over a roll of snare drums, 'if they can persuade you to drink enough they can save a lot of money on what they call entertainment-anything goes if you're sufficiently high.'
A blue spotlight circled a painfully thin girl in silver lame, on the little low platform at one end of the room, above what was revealed as a five- or six-piece band. On the edges of the light, white blurs of faces, tables crowded close. A tenor sax spoke mournfully, and the girl clasped her hands at her breast and began to moo nasally about missing her naughty baby.
'Oh dear,' said Alison. The spotlight, moving with the singer, dimly showed them the Voodoo Club: fake handdrums and shrunken heads for wall-decor, zebra-patterned plastic on chairs and banquettes, and the waiters all Negroes in loincloths. There was also a postage-stamp dance floor.
'Yes,' said Mendoza. 'Hardly combining business with pleasure. We'll get to the business as soon as the waiter shows up again.' Which he did as the girl stopped mooing and the spotlight blinked out. The band went into a soft blues and a few couples groped their way onto the dance floor.
'Re-peat, suh?'
'No, thanks. Tell me,'-Mendoza flicked his lighter over the blown-up print of Twelvetrees-'have you ever seen this man in here?' The waiter bent closer and looked at the print. In the little circle of unsteady light, he was very black, very Negroid; out of the dark his hand came up to finger his jaw, a long, slender hand with oddly intellectual-looking narrow fingers. 'Well, I jus' couldn't say offhand, suh. An' we ain' supposed to gossip about customahs, y' know.'
'Just take another look, and be sure.'
'Don' know nuthin' 'bout him, suh. Anythin' else I can do for you, suh?'
Mendoza shook his head. 'So, we'll have to get at it official,' he said when the man had gone, leaving the check behind as a gentle hint. 'See the manager. I don't suppose there's anything in it, or not much, but you never know-he must have had acquaintances in other circles than the Temple. By the little we've got on him so far, I think he looked on that just the way the Kingmans do, as a soft racket, and he'd hardly find the sect members to his social taste. Except for Mona Ferne-and that was for other reasons. I could wish his landlady had been the prying, suspicious kind who took more notice of his callers. Oh, well. Are you finished with that? Let's go.'
They groped their way out to the better-lighted foyer, and Mendoza reclaimed his hat and Alison's coat from the check girl, paid the cashier. As he held out the coat for her, the slab door in the opposite wall opened and there emerged a slender little man who looked exactly like a film gang-boss, from his navy shirt and white tie to his fancy gray punched-pigskin shoes. He had black hair slicked back into a drake's tail, cold black eyes, and a cigarette dangling out of one corner of his mouth. Behind him was a big black Negro wrapped in a white terry robe like a boxer between rounds.
'This them?' snapped the gang-boss.
'Yes, sir,' said the Negro.
'O.K.,' said the gang-boss, walking up to Mendoza, 'what you asking questions for, buddy? Who are you? Got any identification on you? What's this all about?'
'I told you, Luis,' said Alison, sliding behind him. 'Every time I go out with you in new stockings-why you drag me to these dens of iniquity-'
'Hey,' said the gang-boss angrily, 'what you talking about, lady, den of iniquity? We don't pay a grand a
