Exploit of Death

ONE

The Mendozas were on the way home. They had had an enjoyable, if tiring, five weeks' vacation, touring England and Scotland after a week in London. They had visited Bateman's, Rudyard Kipling's old home, and seen Pook's Hill. They had dutifully visited all the tourist attractions and they had called on Mairi MacTaggart's cousin Jennie in Inverness. They were both tired and it would be good to be home. Louis had needed a vacation, reflected Alison sleepily. But half the fun of going away somewhere was coming home. It seemed years since they had been home-since they had seen the twins, Johnny and Terry, and tomorrow was the twins' sixth birthday-and the baby Luisa would be a year old in a few weeks-and the cats and Cedric, the Old English sheepdog, and of course Mairi, the surrogate grandmother, and the Kearneys, and even the Five Graces, the sheep Ken Kearney had recommended for eating down the underbrush. It would be nice to get home to the big Spanish hacienda in the hills above Burbank, La Casa de la Gente Feliz, the house of happy people.

They had flown from New York this morning and had a two-hour wait at O'Hare Airport in Chicago for a flight to Los Angeles; when the flight was announced, there was quite a crowd of passengers flocking down the tunnel to board. The Mendozas were in the middle of the little crowd as the stewardess ushered them down the aisle of the big jet. The seats were in tiers of three across each side of the aisle, and there was a girl sitting in the window seat of the three the stewardess indicated.

Alison sat down in the middle seat next to her and Mendoza took the seat next to the aisle. The girl gave them a shy, tentative smile. She was a very pretty girl in the mid-twenties with a neat cap of smooth, dark hair, a pert triangular kitten face with a tip-tilted nose, and a wide, friendly mouth. Alison had noticed her before on the flight from New York, sitting several rows ahead of them. She was unobtrusively dressed in a smart navy-blue suit and a white tailored blouse. When the jet began to roar and presently trundle down the runway and lifted off, the girl gave a little exclamation and said apologetically, "It is the first time I have flown, I am nervous," and laughed. "But it is exciting to see America for the first time."

"Oh, of course, it must be," said Alison politely.

"You see, my mother was American, but never have I been out of France."

"Oh," said Alison. She was feeling. very sleepy and suppressed a yawn. "You are going to see relatives then, Miss-'?"

"Martin," said the girl. "I am Juliette Martin." She gave it the French pronunciation. She spoke nearly unaccented English. "My grandfather, yes." She hesitated, considered Alison's friendly, encouraging expression and went on, "It is a funny little story perhaps. You see, my mother was studying to be a teacher of languages and she came to France with a scholarship for postgraduate work, and met my papa. And her father was quite furious that she wished to marry a foreigner, a Frenchman, and said he would have nothing more to do with her. My mother wrote to him when I was born, five years later, but never heard from him. But when my parents were both killed in the auto accident, that is six months ago, I thought he should know if he is still alive, and so I wrote, and he wrote back. We have corresponded, and he is most anxious to meet me. He is very remorseful now about how he treated my mother." She smiled at Alison. "I think he is very old and lonely and sentimental as old people become. I am sorry for him."

"Of course," said Alison conventionally, suppressing another yawn. Mendoza had leaned back and shut his eyes.

"That's very interesting. Are you going to stay long?"

"Not long. I have three weeks' holiday due to me because last spring I could not get away when we were busy in the office? She smiled slightly. "M. Trennard is not so easy an employer as his uncle, but he had to admit that I was owed a holiday."

"I hope you'll enjoy it," said Alison sleepily.

"Oh, yes. At first Paul did not want me to go. That is my fiance, we are to be married in January. But he came to understand there is the family feeling. Grandfather is the only family I have, except for my two uncles. But you are having a holiday, also?" That was polite, conventional.

"No," said Alison through a large yawn. "We're on the way home," and how sweet it was to be going home. The vacation had been her idea, but she felt now that she didn't want to leave home again for a long, long time. She felt her eyelids drooping, but the girl had been friendly, perhaps was feeling lonely this far from home. Alison swallowed another yawn. "Do you live in Paris?" she asked at random. But the drowsiness was increasing. She thought the girl mentioned a rue de something and then her eyes closed and her red head fell back on the seat.

An unspecified time later she was jerked awake when the stewardess came round taking orders for a meal. When the trays were served, Miss Martin said, "You are tired. I should apologize for bothering you."

"Oh, not at all," said Alison. "It's just, I'll be so glad to get home." She had never been so tired in all her life. Perhaps the girl was tired too. After that she slept a little and they exchanged only a little desultory conversation in the last half hour before the plane landed at International Airport in Los Angeles. The last Alison saw of her, she gave Alison a shy, fleeting smile as she stood back for the Mendozas to precede her up the aisle.

And it was blessedly good to be home again, even in the midst of the twins' clamor, to find everything just as usual. The house was running like clockwork under Mairi's capable management. There was a boisterous birthday party for the twins. Everyone had to hear all about the vacation. And after Alison had slept the clock around, she felt a good deal better.

"And you don't have to go into the office right away," she said to Mendoza.

"Change of pace," he said. He'd been fidgeting around the living room most of the evening, unable to settle with a book. "It's time I got back to work, mi vida." He hadn't been away from the thankless job so long in twenty-six years. These days, the thankless job at the Robbery-Homicide office at L.A.P.D. Headquarters.

He had talked to Hackett on the phone briefly on Sunday night, the day after they got home. To the inquiry as to what was new on hand, Hackett had said merely, "Just the usual. You can look over the reports when you come in. Nothing very abstruse, Luis."

There wasn't, as a rule, anything very complicated or mysterious in the reports. Just more evidence of human nature. But when Mendoza showed up at the office on Monday morning, dapper as usual in silver-gray Dacron, only Hackett was in. Robbery-Homicide was a little busier than usual. At the beginning of September the worst of the summer heat was on them and the crime rate up in consequence. There had been, Hackett told him, a new bank heist on Friday, and these days the FBI left the bank jobs strictly to the locals. Landers, Galeano, and Grace were out talking again to the various witnesses but probably would turn up damn all. It had been a slick pro job. Two men on it, and nothing so far useful in the way of descriptions. They had the usual run of heists to do the legwork on. Higgins and Wanda Larsen were out on those. It was, of course, Palliser's day off. The perennial heisters were anonymous, coming and going. Only occasionally did they drop on one with sufficient evidence to pin down a court case.

"Of course," said Hackett, "we've got this and that on this Baby Face. I've got the latest witness coming in for a session with the Identikit for whatever it might be worth."

He leaned back and the desk chair creaked under his wide bulk. "He's hit three times since you've been away. Two twenty-four-hour convenience stores and a liquor store. Everybody says he's big, blond, very polite, and sort of apologetic. Says please and thank you. No sort of description of the gun, what size or type, just a gun. He sounds like an amateur."

"No leads from Records," concluded Mendoza.

"Not a smell. Couple of descriptions could match but they both belong to tough pros. He's first time out," said Hackett with conviction. "Just luck if we ever drop on him. There's the usual run of corpses, O.D.'s and winos. No mysteries. You can look over the reports. And I'll bet you're glad to be back in this hellish climate again after the British Isles."

Mendoza lit a cigarette with a snap of his lighter and said, "No hot weather, and the people are fine, Art. But I was inviting high blood pressure driving on the wrong side of the road. So I'd better look over the reports."

They were shorthanded. Henry Glasser was off on vacation, wouldn't be back for another week. Hackett's witness arrived to be taken down to S.I.D. for the session with the Identikit. Hackett hadn't come back yet when Sergeant Lake buzzed Mendoza and reported a new body. This time of year was always a busy one for Robbery-Homicide. Nobody else being in, Mendoza went out on it. It was, to a veteran officer of Robbery-Homicide and a cynical cop, an uninteresting body. The body of a kid about sixteen sprawled alongside a bench at a bus stop on Alvarado.

The patrolman was waiting for him. There were a few curious bystanders hanging around. "A woman came up to catch a bus and noticed him," said the patrolman. "He could've been here for hours, everybody thinking he was passed out. Probably an overdose."

"Probably," agreed Mendoza, after a look. The kid was just an anonymous teenager. Long, greasy hair, jeans, dirty shirt; but there was ID on him, a detention slip from Manual Arts High School signed by one P. Siglione. The name on it was Anthony Delucca. After the morgue wagon came and went, Mendoza drove up to the high school and asked questions.

Siglione was an English teacher, fat and midd1e-aged and disgusted. "That one," he said. "What the hell are we supposed to do with these kids, I ask you? Stoned on drugs and/or the liquor half the time, passing out in class. I don't know if it's the right answer, but most of us just ignore them. Most of the parents don't care or can't do anything about it. Sure, Delucca's in one of my classes. He turned up drunk as a skunk yesterday. I gave him a detention and sent him to principal's office. I doubt if he went."

Mendoza asked the principal's office for an address and got one down on Seventeenth Street. There he broke the news to an indifferent neighbor, on one side of a dilapidated duplex, who said, "Mis' Delucca, she's at work. I don't know where. There's nobody home till about six." Little job for the night watch, reflected Mendoza, breaking the news. He took himself out to lunch at Federico's and ran into Galeano and Landers. They had to hear all about the vacation, and told him this and that about the bank job. Not that there was much to tell. There weren't any leads on it at all.

Mendoza asked, "And how are the expectant ladies?"

The joke around the office these days was that there was something catching going around. Phil Landers was expecting a baby in December, Galeano's new bride, Marta, in March. The Pallisers' second was due in February, as well as the Piggotts' first.

Landers said lugubriously, "She would rope me into that house in Azusa, for God's sake. It needs everything done to it, what else, when we got it for seventy thousand, and I just hope to God she'll use some sense and not start on the painting herself. Women."

When they got back to the office Higgins was there typing a report, and broke off to greet Mendoza and hear all about the vacation. "It's good to have you back, Luis. We could use a few hunches on some things that have gone down lately."

"I don't produce them to order, George."

"And sometimes we don't need the hunches," said Hackett behind him. "I just shoved that hooker into Pending. We'll never get anywhere on that."

"I said so the minute I looked at the damn thing," said Higgins.

"What hooker?" asked Mendoza.

"The reports are somewhere on your desk. No big deal," said Hackett. "Smal1-time hooker in business for herself, Mabel Carter. Typical two-room apartment on Portland Street. Girlfriend walked in and found her dead. Stabbed and cut up, it was a mess, but no weapon left. Well, for God's sake, it could've been any john off the street. The hookers lay themselves open to it and she was on the way down. A lush. She'd pick up any prospect who'd buy a bottle and pay her the ten bucks. The lab didn't come up with anything. All the girlfriend could say, she hadn't had any trouble with anybody she knew of."

"So she picked up the wrong john," agreed Mendoza uninterestedly. But as he wandered back to his office, started to look over the recent reports, he felt vaguely that it was good to be back, to the shop talk. To all the many men he'd worked with so long, knew so well, to the never-ending monotonous crude jobs showing up to be worked. It might be a thankless and sordid job, but it was the job he knew. It was his job.

He left a note for the night watch about Delucca. That was probably an O.D. of one of the street drugs or a combination. On second thought, he sent a note up to Narco, to Goldberg's office, about it. Not that there was anything unusual about the O.D. The various drugs floating around, so easily obtainable, saw to that, and the damn fool kids getting hooked by the pushers. There wasn't much Narco could do about it any more than Robbery-Homicide.

He was still a little tired from the strenuous vacation, from the jet lag. He found himself yawning over the reports and left the office early. By all experience, he knew that the next couple of months would see a buildup in the cases on hand. The worst of the summer heat always brought the rise in violence.

The Night Watch came on, and Rich Conway scanned Mendoza's note and uttered a rude word. "More dirty work," he said. "I hate breaking news to the citizens." But it was automatic complaint. Conway, that man for the girls, was resigned to a tour on night watch now. He was dating a nurse who was on night duty at Cedars-Sinai. Piggot was looking morose.

Bob Schenke said amiably, "I'll toss you for the job."

Conway produced a quarter and flipped it. "Tails," said Schenke. That was the way it landed, and Conway handed over Mendoza's note.

"So I suppose I'd better get it over," said Schenke, and collected his hat and went out.

Piggott said, "These interest rates." As a practicing fundamentalist Christian, Piggott was not a swearing man, but his pauses could be eloquent. "We should've started buying a house when we got married, but you always figure there's time. Now, an apartment's no place to bring up a family, but who can afford the payments, even on a little place? We've been looking, but it's just impossible."

Conway, the carefree bachelor, wasn't much interested, but offered token sympathy. They didn't have any calls until Schenke came back an hour later.

He said cheerfully, "She cried all over me. Fat Italian woman with seven other kids, and the husband's a drunk. Had to tell me seven times how hard she tried to get the kid to stop using this awful dope. But kids don't listen to sense. If us lazy cops would just stop these terrible people selling the stuff, the kids would be all right."

"Oh, tell us," said Conway. Sure enough, ten thousand street dealers out there, anonymous.

"The devil," said Piggott, " getting around and about."

At ten-forty they had a call to a new heist, and Schenke and Conway went out on it. It was a twenty-four-hour convenience market on Beverly Boulevard, and the manager had been there alone. His name was Bagby. He was a small man about forty, and he was still flustered.

"I don't like to ask the women clerks to take the night shift," he said, " just on account of this kind of thing. The terrible crime rate. But it's the first time we've ever been held up. I was just so surprised because he looked like a-like an average young fellow. Not anybody you'd suspect-well, I don't know exactly how much was in the register, but it must've been around a hundred bucks-"

"Could you describe the man, Mr. Bagby?" asked Conway.

"Well, yes, just an average-looking young fella, maybe about twenty-five. He was big, around six feet, and he had blond hair-he was wearing ordinary sports clothes, slacks and a short-sleeved shirt, and he was clean-shaved. In fact he looked pretty clean and neat altogether. Not the kind of lout you'd expect- Well, I don't know anything about guns-it was just a black sort of gun, not very big."

Schenke and Conway looked at each other resignedly.

"Baby Face again. Did he touch anything in here, did you notice?'

Bagby shook his head. "I don't think so. He waited till another customer left and we were alone, and then he just came over to the counter and said, this is a stickup, give me all the money-and I saw the gun, so I did, and then he went out. No, I didn't follow him or look- I don't know if he got into a car."

The citizens. Well, faced with a gun in unknown hands, anybody would play safe. Schenke started to tell him they'd like a formal statement, if he'd come to headquarters sometime tomorrow. There'd be another report on Baby Face, and the way it looked, no more leads than the other reports had turned up.

They didn't have another call the rest of the shift. The beginning of the week was sometimes slow.

On Tuesday morning when Palliser came in, he wasted a little time hearing all about the vacation. "But it's good to have you back. With Henry off, we've been busy. And we'll be busier, with the worst of the summer still to come." He rubbed his handsome straight nose ruefully.

Hackett and Higgins had drifted into Mendoza's office after him. Hackett had the night report and said, "Baby Face again. And no leads. Well, how often do we pick up a heister? Go through the motions." He laid the report on Mendoza's desk.

It was Jason Grace's day off, and there was enough work on hand to keep the rest of them busy. They were still taking statements from the witnesses to the bank robbery, and two of the tellers were coming in again to look at more mug shots down in Records. The rest of them went out, and Hackett sat down in the chair beside the desk and lit a cigarette. "Have you had a chance to go through last week's reports?"

"Desultorily," said Mendoza. "‘Any one in particular?"

Hackett sighed. "These muggings. There's not a damn thing we can do about it, nowhere to go, but it looks like an organized effort to me. The first one was just after you left. So far there have been five. All of them in interesting places-the parking lots by the Ahmanson Theatre, that complex of shops around the Music Center, around those high-class restaurants in Little Tokyo. About the only places in downtown L.A. where you might reasonably expect to run into the well-heeled victims. And they've taken a little haul, all right. The jewelry, the cash."

"They," said Mendoza.

"Well, yes," said Hackett. "Only one of the victims was alone, an elderly widower. He's still in the hospital. The rest were couples having a night on the town. They all say it was three, four, five young louts. Moved in fast and didn't care how much damage they did. I know, Luis, but it smells to me like gang action. Fairly smart gang action. Picking those spots. It's funny when you come to think, these-um-fashionable places being right downtown in what used to be the real slums."

"Mmh," said Mendoza. He'd grown up in those slums before the fashionable places got built, or got to be fashionable.

"I talked to Slade over in Juvenile about it. He says there are four or five gangs who could be responsible, but no way to pin it down. Whichever, they know a fence. None of the jewelry showed up."

"And gangs down here," said Mendoza sardonically, "would know every fence operating."

"Well, it's just a thought," said Hackett. He sighed again and stood up. "And I would have a bet with you that it's a waste of time. That Bagby, Baby Face's latest victim, offered to come in and look at mug shots. Somehow I don't think Baby Face is anywhere in Records."

"You never know," said Mendoza. " Buena suerte." The phone buzzed at him as Hackett went out and he picked it up.

"Mendoza."

"I got your love note about your latest overdose," said Captain Goldberg. "What the hell do you suppose we can do about it? You haven't even had an autopsy report yet."

"I just thought you'd like the information for your statistics, Saul. No, I don't know what kind of an O.D. it was yet. But we all know the probabilities."

Goldberg sneezed and said, "Damn allergies. For a bet the Quaaludes-and/or liquor or PCP. Anybody can buy the stuff on any street corner, and when the kids are such goddamn fools to get hooked-well, let me see the autopsy report when you get it, just to pass the time. How was the vacation abroad?"

Mendoza told him and finished going over the reports he hadn't caught up on. He was just going down the hall to the coffee machine when Sergeant Lake on the switchboard beckoned to him urgently.

Mendoza halted. "What's gone down now?"

Lake proffered him the phone. He was smiling broadly.

"It's Jase, Lieutenant, they've got one."

"?No me diga! " Mendoza took the phone. "Congratulations, Jase."

Grace was in the middle of a sentence. "-and I've got to admit to you, we could've got one a year ago if we hadn't been particular. Us black folk get priority now, you know, and then too there are always plenty of black babies, but Virginia wasn't about to take just any baby and neither was I. Jimmy, you there?"

"It's me," said Mendoza.

"Oh, Lieutenant. That's good, you can tell everybody. We just got the confirmation an hour ago. Only heard about the possibility last night. We haven't even seen him yet, but he sounds just what we want. No, it wasn't the adoption agency, it was Virginia's doctor. He knows the family, very respectable family, good people, but the daughter got in trouble. He's only three days old, but the doctor's going to arrange everything-well, we don't know when we can see him, but we've already decided on Adam John and Virginia's crazy to go out shopping for baby clothes-"

Mendoza was laughing. "Good news, Jase, congratulations, just what you wanted." The Graces already had one adopted baby, little Celia Ann, and had been hunting another for a couple of years.

"You pass the word on, Lieutenant-tell you more tomorrow."

Mendoza grinned at Lake. "A1l of these pregnancies must've rubbed off on Jase."

Lake grinned back. "Just what he wanted. It's grand; I suppose he'll be raving about this one and taking all the pictures to show, the way he did with the first one. Well, kids, they can be a lot of trouble, but a lot of fun too."

Mendoza looked into the big communal detective office. Galeano and Landers were in and he passed on the news. They were pleased for Grace; he had felt a little resentful of all those pregnancies.

"At least," said Landers, "they already have a house. When I think of the payments on that old shack-·"

Hackett and Higgins were apparently still down in Records with the witnesses. They hadn't shown up when the rest of them went out to lunch, leaving Wanda Larsen taking a belated statement from one of the witnesses to the bank robbery, and they had just landed back at the office at one-forty-five when a new heist went down, with a first report of a D.O.A. victim.

Mendoza went out on that with Galeano. It was a big chain pharmacy and on Olympic, and the D.O.A. was the head pharmacist, Dave Bryan. Everybody else around was in a state of shock. There were two other pharmacists, five women clerks, and seven or eight customers. Most of the heisters were shy birds, wary of operating in front of a crowd, but like everyone else they came all sorts. The two patrolmen had done their best to preserve the scene, but there had been some milling around. It probably wouldn't make any difference here.

"But it was so fast-" The older of the two pharmacists kept repeating that in a dazed voice. "So fast-in and out, and they both had guns-I don't know which of them killed Mr. Bryan-one of them asked for all the uppers and downers, and the other opened the register. I don't think anybody but us saw what was going on until they fired at Mr. Bryan-"

"And it was just a mistake," said the other one fiercely. "A damn stupid mistake! He didn't pay any attention because he didn't hear the bastards. He was getting deafer all the time and the hearing aid didn't help him much. He just turned away, he thought I was waiting on them, and I guess they thought he was going to call the cops and they-" The man lying face down at one end of the counter looked to be in his late seventies, with a scanty tonsure of gray hair and a spare figure in the white smock. He had been shot once in the head and there was no exit wound.

"There was just one shot?" They seemed to think so. Stocky, dark Galeano stood looking at the corpse thoughtfully. "No powder burns," he pointed out. "The shot was fired from at least three feet off and got him square in the back of the head-either it was a fluke or the shooter's a pretty good marksman. Fairly small caliber, too. It looks like a very slick pro job."

Mendoza agreed, and talking to all of these people, getting all of the formal statements, was going to take up quite a lot of time. Go through the motions, he thought, with a vengeance-and likely come up with nothing useful. On the other hand, if this had been pulled by a pair of experienced pros, it was possible that one or both of them were in Records, and some of the witnesses might pick a picture. Even the experienced pros were quite often stupid, and it was also possible, given the stupidity of this caper-walking into a store full of people to pull a heist in the middle of the day-that they had both been high on something.

They started to ask for names, get the people sorted out. One of the patrolmen had called the lab; Scarne and Horder came out in a mobile truck and took some photographs, dusted the counter and cash register for any latent prints. Presently the morgue wagon came for the body. The other pharmacists said that Bryan had been a widower but had a married daughter in Pasadena. So they'd have to break more bad news.

ALTOGETHER, THERE WERE fifteen people to question, get the formal statements from, and it was going to go on a good part of tomorrow. Wednesday was Hackett's day off. By the end of shift on Tuesday afternoon, Mendoza and Galeano had taken four statements and set up appointments for the other witnesses to come in tomorrow.

On Wednesday morning Mendoza had just finished getting a statement from one of the clerks and had seen her out when Lake buzzed him from the switchboard. "You've got a new corpse," he said tersely. "Fourth Street."

"Oh, hell," said Mendoza. That was another thing about this job. It was like women's work, always more of it coming along. He looked into the big office. Grace, Galeano, Palliser, and Landers were all talking to witnesses, and Higgins had taken a couple more down to Records to look at pictures. Somebody had to tidy up the corpses as they came. He collected his gray Homburg and got the address from Lake.

It was a little way out on Fourth, in a very shabby block of old buildings. Most of the others along here were empty and boarded up and very probably the whole block was ready to be torn down to make way for the new high rises. The address he wanted was a desiccated-looking old six-story apartment house. The squad was parked in a red zone in front. In the little lobby, Patrolman Hunter and three other people were waiting. Hunter stepped forward. "I kept him from going back into the room, sir. Not that I suppose it's important. Looks like a straight suicide." He added in a louder voice. "This is Lieutenant Mendoza. Mr. and Mrs. Daggett, they're the managers here, Mrs. Garvey," Daggett was a thin, medium-tall man in the fifties, with a lantern jaw and a prominent Adam's apple. He looked anxious and shaken. His wife was plump and maternal-looking, right now a little pale. The other woman was tall and thin with too much makeup and a lot of cheap costume jewelry Daggett burst into speech rapidly.

"Iike I was telling the officer here, I just found her. Never thought the poor girl would do such a thing. Take poison or whatever it was. She seemed like a nice girl. Her name's Ruth Hoffman, she rented the apartment last month, said she was from Chicago. See, I explained to her-it says apartment hotel in front but the last ten years we just had permanent tenants-I explained to her I couldn't rent except on a weekly basis, the building's going to be torn down and we might get notice any day, but she said that was O.K. She seemed like a nice quiet girl. l don't think she had a job-she didn't go out regular-"

"Fred," said his wife, "don't get all upset now. It's nothing to do with us. I'm sorry for the poor girl, but it was her own doing."

"For love," said Mrs. Garvey unexpectedly in a dramatic tone. "All for love and the world well lost! I'm one of the few remaining tenants here, Lieutenant, and her apartment was just across from mine. I had met her when she asked to borrow some coffee once and the poor darling had confided in me." She sniffed into a handkerchief smelling violently of lavender. "How she had followed her true love here and he had spurned her. My heart went out to her, tru1y."

"Anyways," said Daggett rather desperately, "her rent was up yesterday and she hadn't come to pay me and I went up about maybe half an hour ago, forty minutes, to see if she was in, and the door was unlocked and, well, there she was, dead. Killed herself, with poison or something. And so I called the cops."

"All right," said Mendoza. "Which apartment?"

"It's number twelve-the right front. I don't have to go up again, do I?"

"Don't upset yourself," said his wife soothingly.

Hunter followed Mendoza up the uncarpeted stairs.

"Dilapidated old place," he said. "Just what I could see, it looks like a straight suicide." The apartment door was open. Beyond it there was the expectable cramped living room, the tired old furniture, couch and one upholstered chair, a couple of small end tables. Visible through a doorway was a tiny narrow kitchen with just space for a minute table and two chairs. An old-fashioned wall bed which would fold up into the wall overnight was pulled down. The body lay on that, the face turned to the wall. On the bedside table was a half-full glass of water and a small plastic prescription bottle. Mendoza bent to scrutinize that without touching it.

Whatever label it had borne had been torn off. It was empty. On the cheap painted bureau were a worn billfold and two sheets of paper. Mendoza flicked through the billfold. Two hundred and twelve dollars in cash, a Social Security card with the name Ruth Hoffman. He took up the first sheet of paper. They were both letters. The first one was a half sheet of cheap stationery, evidently torn from a tablet. It was written in an overlarge, careless script, the writing of someone who did not often use a pen. Dear Ruthie, I told you before you better just forget this guy. He is no good for you. You think he's serious, but believe me it isn't so what you tell me he said. You know the boss was kind of put out when you quit so sudden and he would take you back like a shot so you better come back home and forget this guy. You know we've been friends a long time and I'm just thinking of what's best for you. Love, Jean.

The other letter was typewritten by somebody who wasn't a proficient typist, on a sheet of ordinary typing paper. It began abruptly without salutation. Look Ruthie, I'm sorry if I hurt you. But I never was serious like you. I'm not ready to get married and settle down, and anyway, not with you. I'm sorry but you better stop pestering me about it. I like you all right, but nothing serious. You better go back to Chi where you got friends. Jim.

" Asi, " said Mendoza to himself. The straightforward suicide. The silly girl in love. The lover spurning her, and a deliberate overdose. Where had she got it? And kaput. Just more paperwork.

For the first time he looked at the old-fashioned pulled-down bed where the body lay. He went over to look at the body, and it was the body of the girl who had traveled with them on the flight from Chicago. Juliette Martin. She was unmistakable. The neat cap of dark hair, the tip-tilted nose, the wide mobile mouth. It was Juliette Martin, the girl from France.

And the identification said, Ruth Hoffman.

Why?