Streets of Death

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 pals who’d pulled the job with him. They stashed him in jail; the warrant would be through presently, and they’d ask him about his pals tomorrow.

Hackett called Mr. Wensink and told him most of the liquor had been recovered, but it would be impounded as evidence; he’d get it back eventually.

"Maybe not me," said Wensink. "I think I got a buyer for this place, and I’m getting out. I’m getting too old to worry about heisters all the time I’m open for business. I’m going to retire and move to the country somewhere."

Higgins went home, and after kissing Mary and going in to see Margaret Emily peacefully asleep in her crib, went back to the garage to call Steve Dwyer in to dinner. "He’s been out in that darkroom ever since he got home from school, and I know he’s got homework," said Mary.

"I don’t know why in hell," Higgins said to Steve, "you’re set on being a cop. Most boring job there is a lot of the time."

"Not on the lab end," said Steve. "Gee, isn’t the place peaceful without Laura at the piano all the time!" Laura had permission to stay overnight with a girl friend. But dinner wasn’t exactly restful, the Scottie Brucie bouncing under their feet, and Steve anxious to get back to his photographic experiments.

"Just until nine o’clock," said Mary firmly. "I’ll call you."

"Oh, Mother! It’s Friday night!"

"Well, nine-thirty."

"He may invent a new camera or something and make us millionaires," said Higgins. "I don’t know why I didn’t go in for the lab end. No brains, I guess. Sometimes I think it rubs off on us, the stupid people we have to deal with."

"Now, George," said Mary.

Mendoza went home, still thinking about that snake, and Mrs. MacTaggart greeted him at the door with relief.

"If you’d take them off my hands while I get at the dinner, then-Alison’s better, she’s had a good long nap, but I want to get that souffle in."

"Daddy, come on-" Johnny pulling his arm urgently-"I want to show you what we learned in school today-"

"Listen to me first, Daddy, I can say a new poem-" Terry clinging to the other arm. The twins had been in nursery school for three months and on the whole the effect was good; they were speaking English-most of the time, at least. Mendoza kept them occupied in the living room until Alison came in, looking more like her usual self, when they erupted at her.

" Mamacita, you listen to my new poem-" "It’s a silly poem, Mama, I can do the Pledge of ’Legiance real good now-"

"The darlings," said Alison fondly when Mairi had taken them off to their baths. "Yes, I’m better-knock wood. And I’ve got something to show you, Luis. House plans. Well, you can’t deny it, this will be too small when the baby comes. And we ought to have more yard. Later on we might want a pool-"

"?Despacia!" said Mendoza. "I can see you’re feeling better, plotting to spend more money."

There was fish for dinner, and the cats sat on their feet under the table reminding them that cats liked fish too. Cedric, who didn’t, went away in disgust and brought in a dead bird from the backyard.

On Saturday morning Mendoza had just come in and said good morning to Sergeant Farrell, who sat in for Lake on days off, when an agitated voice said, "Oh, Sergeant Hackett!" Mendoza turned to see Hackett behind him. "I had to come, I got to make you listen-I tell you, they’re gonna kill that lady! Honest to God they are! They were talkin’ about it again, I heard ’em!"

Hackett looked down at Mr. Yeager and wondered if the man was slightly nuts. Hearing voices. "Now, look, Mr. Yeager-"

"No, you gotta listen to me, you gotta do something! They’re goin' to murder her!" Yeager yanked at his sleeve in excitement. "I heard ’em say so!"

"Where were you this time?" asked Hackett. "Fixing the faucet in the kitchen? I’m sorry, Mr. Yeager, but I just can’t believe-"

"You gotta listen to me!" Yeager looked ready to cry. "I tell you, I heard ’em say so!"

"How?"

Yeager took a step back. "Well, I did. I did so. I-the door was open, and him and his girl friend-"

Hackett had met his share of the nuts, and Yeager was not unlike some he’d met, the ones with fixed ideas, mild delusions. He wasn’t wasting time on figuring out this one, and caught Farrell’s eye. He said gently, "Now look, Mr. Yeager, I looked at this and there’s nothing to it. Suppose you go on home and stop worrying about it." He brushed past as Farrell took Yeager’s arm and started ushering him out. Grace and Conway had just come in.

"What’s that about?" asked Mendoza.

"Nothing," said Hackett. "Makes you wonder about Freud. He said he didn’t like these people, and I suppose a confirmed Freudian would say he just wants to get them in trouble. These Lamperts. I went and looked around a little, but there’s nothing to it. Well, one like that Roy Titus might go discussing a projected murder with the door open, but this Lampert doesn’t seem to be working regular but seems to be on perfectly good terms with his mother- looks like a weak sister to me. I just can’t see-I hope Yeager isn’t going to be a nuisance."

Mendoza went on into his office. Hackett collected Higgins when he came in and they went up to the jail to follow up on Titus. Palliser roped Conway in with Landers to get back at the legwork on Sandra. Galeano, Grace and Glasser were still there when Scarne came in with some S.I.D. reports, and the autopsies came up from Bainbridge’s office at the same time.

"So let’s see what we’ve got, boys," said Mendoza. He glanced over the autopsies first. "There you are, the girl was raped and strangled. Short and sweet. Not, obviously, where she was found." He handed the report to Palliser, who’d just been leaving when Scarne came in. "What did the lab get on her clothes and so on??Condenacion! Those prints on the suitcase belong to Stephanie Peacock. Very helpful. And that is that. Nada absolutamente… Buford. Well, that gives us a little, not much. He died of a skull fracture. The lab found blood and hair on the leg of a chair in the house, hair his, blood his type. Inference, there was a scuffle with somebody and he was knocked down and cracked his skull."

"The door wasn’t forced," said Grace. "He must have let the somebody in."

"So it was somebody he knew."

"Somebody he’d just had a run-in with at that bar, and the bartender knew it, but why the hell shouldn’t he tell us? Unless-" Grace paused, looking thoughtful. "Well, I’d like to know more about him, that’s all."

"Not even any surprises about the time of death. Both Tuesday night. Sandra between seven and ten, Buford between ten and midnight." Mendoza slapped the reports down. "Are you sure enough about that Rank to ask for a search warrant on the house, John?"

"No," said Palliser. "It’s fifty-fifty. He could be X, but we’d never pin it down. If that plane case was there, it isn’t now. But I get the impression-just the impression-that his mother’s an honest woman, and she says he doesn’t have a key to the house. It’s a double deadbolt. We can’t really rely on Stephanie’s identification, anyway. I think we do it from scratch, look at men with the right records and weed ’em out by the general description. The right one might fall apart."

Mendoza shrugged. "There’s not much routine to do on Buford, when the lab didn’t turn anything else. And nothing says it had anything to do with that bar, Jase."

"No," admitted Grace. "But I’d like to talk to some of the people there that night, hang around and meet some of the regulars there. Only of course the owner knows me as a cop. It’s a pity Tom was with me-he could wander in all innocent, nobody ever takes him for a cop."

"Well-?vamos! " said Mendoza. "I’ve got a little idea myself. Oh, that Chard-the anonymous call. I don’t suppose there’s anything in it, but somebody might ask his wife if he’d had any trouble with anyone lately. He was no loss, however he got taken off."

He sat there for a minute when the men had gone, his mind wandering over Fleming, over the rapes, over the pretty boys. Fleming-there wasn’t anything routine could do there. Carey had done it. There’d been a search for a block around, not that there’d be many places in that bare city block where a man could be hidden away, and Fleming couldn’t have crawled much farther. Where the hell was the man'?

The rapes. Very queer. It would do no harm to ask if somebody at Juvenile had any ideas.

The pretty boys- He roused himself, told Farrell to get him the Mission Church, and found the younger priest there. There would be a requiem Mass for Father O’Brien on Monday morning at ten o’clock.

He got up and said to Farrell, "I’ll be over in Juvenile if anybody wants me."

Roy Titus, aggrieved and surprised at having been dropped on so quick, parted with the names of his two pals without much persuasion-Floyd Sporler and Bob Bovers. They were both in Records and Sporler was also still on parole, which made the whole caper all the more stupid. Hackett and Higgins tried Sporler's address first, and found both of them there, trying to get Titus on the phone. They were just as surprised as he’d been, and asked how the cops had found out it was them.

"You ever read detective stories, George?" asked Hackett as they came out of the jail.

"Seldom."

"Fairy tales," said Hackett. "The cunning intellectual criminals. I’ve never run across one yet."

They stopped for lunch at Federico’s and went back to the office. Wanda Larsen was on her way out. She eyed Hackett’s notebook and said firmly she was busy, it was her week to qualify at the range. "I’m supposed to be a police officer, not just your secretary, boys."

"So I’ll toss you for who types the report," said Higgins to Hackett, and won the throw. But as Hackett stripped off his jacket and sat down, Duke came in with a fat manila envelope.

"Oh, good, I caught you. Understand you were out on this. We’re still looking at some of the stuff there, blood types and so on, but I thought you’d like to see this." He opened the manila envelope and spread out a sheaf of glossy black and white 8 by 10’s.

Hackett and Higgins looked at them without comment, the mercilessly clear pictures of the carnage worked on the old lady, her place in life. The twisted frail old body was frozen by the camera, its grotesquely smashed-in face, the blood, the bruises, the torn clothes. The little grocery store had been ransacked, cans and packages thrown down from shelves, the cash register opened, but the havoc there was nothing compared to that in the apartment upstairs. They’d seen all this yesterday, after the lab men had been through it; they looked at it again, in the photographs which were somehow worse to look at-a curious effect of timeless photography. The tiny living room with its ancient flowered rug, fat old furniture: the smaller bedroom with its sagging double bed, skimpy carpet, high chest of drawers and chair in golden oak-it had all been ruthlessly torn apart, drawers flung out, upholstered furniture slashed to ribbons, rugs pulled up, the mattress crisscrossed with knife-cuts and off the bed.

"Hunting for the loot, we said at the time," said Higgins. "And it’s a toss-up whether it was somebody who knew her reputation-if that was generally known-for keeping cash around, or just somebody picking her at random. And no way to guess what he got or didn’t."

"No," said Duke, "but there are points. For one thing, you didn’t see the body near to-being good little boys, keeping clear not to spoil evidence for us eagle-eyed scientific types. It was pretty clear she hadn’t been dead long when Weinstein found her. The blood was hardly dry. I think she’d just come down to open the store-he said she was usually open by seven-thirty-she was dressed, you notice. And a customer walked in early. Sorry, we didn’t pick up any useful latents-the ones on the register too smudged to be any good. But that says to me, when it happened at that time, the odds are it was somebody who’d been living or staying right around that neighborhood, recently. And in the midst of all that mess, there was this."

His blunt forefinger came down on one photograph, of the front part of the store. Just beside the front door, a small crumpled object lay on the floor. He removed that photograph and substituted a close-up. The object now showed as a crumpled empty package that had once held cigarettes-Camels.

"Big deal," said Hackett.

"Oh, but you haven’t seen this," said Duke. He pulled out another close-up. This one looked as if it had been made under a microscope: the finest details of the little package showed up clear and clean. They could see where it had been torn open from one end across the top, and the blue seal or part of it left, and another seal superimposed.

"By God!" said Higgins. "By God-eagle-eyed, you’re damn right."

The little seal, torn across, still showed part of a stamp with black letters. PDL TN px.

"That’s beautiful, Duke," said Hackett. "Pendleton Air Force Base PX. It can’t be anything else."

"Narrows it down to whatever personnel has access to the post exchange and wasn’t there yesterday morning," said Higgins. "Or come to think, was this thing here when he walked in? What says he dropped it?"

"Don’t nitpick, George," said Hackett. "I like it. It’s a damned good lead if you ask me. And it makes a picture- him tearing the place to pieces hunting for the loot, after he’d killed her, and then-whatever he got or didn’t get-just as he walked out, lighting the last cigarette in the package. That’s nice work, Duke."

"I thought you’d like it," said Duke complacently.

"It just occurred to me," said Mendoza to Captain Loomis of Juvenile Division, "on these rape cases we’ve got-the description the women gave us, just a kid. About fifteen. He won’t be in any records complete with mug-shot at that age, but if he’s out on this caper that young, it could be he’d given the warning rattle some way before and got into your records."

"That’s the hell of a thing," said Loomis. "Rape, at that age? Well, it does happen. We get ’em in here at four and five, budding pros at burglary and you name it-but we can’t take pictures either, Mendoza. These days, we’re just a sociological counseling service. Let’s hear that description again. Well, it doesn’t ring a bell with me, but let’s ask Melinda and Betty." He opened the office door and beckoned. "Both damn good officers, and they’ve been here six-seven years, they might have some idea."

Melinda and Betty, both trim in uniform, were respectively black and white, and efficient. They listened to the description, consulted with each other, and Melinda asked, "If he has been in trouble before, Lieutenant, would you have any idea what kind?"

"Not a clue. I only thought he might have been in little trouble before he graduated to big."

"Peter Ricksey?" said Betty to Melinda. "He’d be about fifteen, and he’s baby-faced. The last time we had him in was eighteen months ago, for beating up the other kids for their lunch money. He’d fit the description."

"He doesn’t sound like the nice polite youngster our victims say he is," Mendoza said with a grin. "Could he act it?"

Betty laughed. "I wouldn’t think so. He’s completely illiterate, and not very polite by nature. I just can’t think of any boy to fit that description, Lieutenant."

"It was just an idea. For all we know, he’s never so much as stolen a nickel from Mama’s purse," said Mendoza. "But you can see, there’s no way to look for him, damn it. Well, thanks anyway."

Palliser, Conway and Landers came up with nine men out of Records to hunt for, by a process of weeding out the ones with suggestive records who lived or had lived on the Central beat and looked something like the Harry Stephanie had described. They went out looking for them, without any conspicuous success.

Hackett got on the phone to Pendleton Air Force Base, and a cooperative sergeant began feeding him long lists of base personnel, military, who had been on leave or otherwise off base yesterday. It was a frighteningly long list. And of course the nonmilitary personnel resident there or having business there could patronize the PX too. Hackett I began to feel less enthusiastic about that little clue.

Altogether, Saturday was an unproductive day.

Saturday night was always busy for Traffic, sometimes for the night watch at Robbery-Homicide; it varied. Tonight they didn’t get a call for some time, and Shogart amused himself by listening to the Traffic calls-drunk drivers, drunks on the street, speeders, accidents, one high-speed pursuit.

"Makes you feel kind of safe here, out of all that mayhem," said Schenke, and the desk buzzed them. There was a body reported by Traffic.

Piggott went out on it with Shogart. It was an all-night restaurant on Alvarado, a chain place with a good reputation. The black and white was at the curb, and inside they found Patrolman Bill Moss and some excited, bewildered people. It was just nine-thirty, the place wasn’t crowded, but the short-order cook and two busboys had come out to add to the crowd.

"But, my God, he’s just a young guy! It could’ve been a heart attack, anybody can have one, but my God-"

"The night manager, Fred Mallow," said Moss. "He can identify him."

"Identify him!" Mallow was tall and thin, flapping his arms all around. "His name’s Donald Ames, he’s only twenty-three, twenty-four, he works at the tow service down the street, always comes in here middle of the evening for a sandwich. A nice young guy, quiet, I just can’t get over this! I can’t believe it! Sitting there in a booth, like always, waiting for Beatrice to bring his sandwich, and all of a sudden he falls on the floor, and I rush over, and he’s dead! Dead! I can’t believe it-"

Shogart was squatting over the body, which lay stretched out awkwardly between the rows of booths. Ames was a good-looking young man, dark hair cut short; he had on a white jumpsuit with red stitching over the breast pocket: Dick’s Tow Service. Shogart stood up and sniffed, getting out his handkerchief; a minute red stain came off his fingers. "He was stabbed,’° he said. "Thin blade, right in the heart I’d say. Hardly any blood."

Moss looked surprised; Mallow was incredulous. "Stabbed?" he said. "Why, that’s impossible! That’s just ridiculous! Nobody came near him! It’s early, we’re not crowded-you can see, only one couple in a booth, six-seven people at the counter-and he walked in here perfectly O.K., looked just the same as usual, he says to Beatrice, fix me the usual-which is a Reuben sandwich with coleslaw on the side-and he goes into the rest room and comes out again and sits in the booth and lights a cigarette. There wasn’t anybody in ten feet of him! Nobody could have stabbed him!"

"I can’t help that," said Shogart. "He was knifed." He looked around at the little crowd. "Were you all here when he came in? Then we’d better take all your names and addresses, please."

It took a while; there were ten men and four women, including the restaurant staff. Five people definitely confirmed that not a soul had approached Ames as he sat in the booth, so there wasn’t much point in calling out S.I.D. to process the place. It was just another offbeat thing.

Piggott searched the body and came up with I.D.-an address in Hollywood. Let the day watch break the news and try to figure out what had happened to him.

They got back to the office at eleven-thirty, and Schenke told them what they’d missed. Roger Perryman, seventy-nine, on the way from the movies to his rented room on Elden Place-his weekly night out. Jumped and beaten up by the thugs. They’d got a dollar and eighty-four cents, left out of his Social Security. Mr. Perryman had been lucky; they hadn’t roughed him up much when a squad car came round the corner and they ran off. There were three of them, he said, one with long blond hair and real sporty clothes, he remembered a plaid jacket.

"My God, those punks," said Shogart.

On Sunday morning, Galeano went to early Mass for the first time in years. He hardly knew why he did; he’d got out of the habit, since moving out here away from the family. He went to the nearest church downtown, the old Mission Church, and was surprised and oddly embarrassed to spot Mendoza there, in one of the back pews. He slipped hurriedly out afterward.

And, mulling over Carey’s report in his mind, he hadn’t got any further about Fleming at all. The other tenants in that building-could there be anything there? Carey had seen them all, and to anyone who knew city people, the results were understandable. That, said Carey, was a place to sleep. There was only one couple, the Del Sardos, people in their fifties, both working. Offerdahl. An old maid in one ground-floor unit, out all day at a job. Two men, Lathrop and Harrigan, both bachelors, also out at jobs. And the Flemings. And the Flemings had only been there a couple of months-the others didn’t know much about them, or care. It wasn’t the kind of place, they weren’t the kind of people, for fraternizing.

Like Mendoza, Galeano told himself that Carey had looked: there had been a thorough physical search for the man all up and down that block. Carey the cynic, looking for the boyfriend, had looked at the single men Lathrop and Harrigan. Lathrop, he said, was a fag: hung out at a known fag joint uptown. Harrigan had a steady girl friend he was practically living with.

They said she was homesick. No close friends. She wrote her family all the time. Galeano wondered-he had sisters, but he didn’t know about females-if she’d have written home about a boyfriend; he rather thought not, but you never knew. But there’d be no way to get at those letters.

Whatever else you could say about Carey, he was a competent man at his job. So far as the physical evidence went.

Galeano parked in front of the apartment and looked at the terrain. The empty house: Carey’s men had searched the yard, all the yards down the block. The newer apartment on the other side was a bare box of a place. The half block behind, just cleared for a new building, was nothing but raw earth.

But it wasn’t just a physical problem.

He got out of the car, climbed the stairs and rang Marta’s bell. It buzzed emptily at him. She wasn’t home.

After a moment he turned and pushed the bell across the hall.

The door was opened by a little perky-looking gray-haired woman. He had read all the statements, and somehow he had pictured Mrs. Del Sardo as buxom and dark. He showed her the badge.

"Oh," she said, "cops again. That really is a funny thing, isn’t it? I’ve got a theory about it." He saw that her slate-colored eyes were shallow and foolish. "I think he was a fake, not a cripple at all. They were going to sue somebody, he was just pretending to be paralyzed."

Galeano stared at her. "I’m afraid that wasn’t-"

"You can’t trust doctors, they’ll say anything," she told him. "And if you ask me Mrs. Fleming is a real sly one. Look at the way she made sure I saw them together that morning, her saying good-bye and him in the chair there-"

"You usually leave the same time?" asked Galeano. "It wasn’t the first morning you’d seen her leave when you came out too?"

"Well, no, but now I think about it- And then all the fuss and excitement that afternoon- And it wasn’t till later I found out from one of the cops, she said she came home at five that day, and it was earlier, and the more I think about it I think there was some kind of plan that maybe went wrong, to cheat an insurance company or something. I thought-"

Galeano fastened on the one thing she’d said. "What do you mean, it wasn’t five when she came home?"

"Well, it wasn’t. I came home early that day, I know the day because of all the fuss and the cops. I was coming down with a cold, I felt terrible, and the boss said take the afternoon off. So I did, and this place isn’t exactly the Rock of Gibraltar"-she laughed-"you can hear neighbors. That Offerdahl! He was never so bad as this before. Anyway, she-Mrs. Fleming-she came home just after I did. I heard her running up the stairs like she always does. Call it two-thirty. And a minute after, down she goes again. So I guess he was all right then, or she was pretending he was. If you ask me he always was all right, prob’ly he’s just lying low somewheres. Like I say-"

And what the hell was this? Galeano’s mind felt numb. And she added suddenly, "Oh, you got to excuse me, I want to make the eleven o’clock Mass-" She rushed around in her living room (scarcely as neat and clean as Marta’s counterpart across the hall) gathering up purse, coat, prayer book; she rushed out past him.

He stood there thinking about what she’d said. Marta had come home at two-thirty that day. The rest of it was silly, but- He turned to go down the stairs and faced a nice-looking fresh-faced high-school-aged kid just coming up. The kid passed him and rang the bell of Marta’s apartment.