Streets of Death

SIX

"Mrs. Fleming’s not home," said Galeano.

The boy turned. "Oh. Maybe she just went to church. You-you don’t want to buy the car, do you? Because she gave me first option on it. That’s what I came to tell her, I got the money to pay for it now."

"That’s good," said Galeano. "I know she wants to sell it."

"It’s a real good deal," said the kid. "A sixty-three Dodge, only sixty thousand on it, for four-fifty. The tires are good too, and it handles O.K.-I’ve drove it some already. If we can sort of clinch the deal right away, I'd like to."

Galeano said it sounded fine. "Anyway," said the kid, "even if we can’t, I want to borrow it again this afternoon to take Mom to Aunt Madge’s. Mrs. Fleming let me borrow it before, take her to the doctor’s. You a friend of hers? She’s a nice lady, isn’t she?"

"Oh, yes," said Galeano.

"You suppose she’ll be home pretty soon?"

"I don’t know."

"Well-uh-my name’s Newton. Jim Newton."

"Galeano." They shook hands solemnly.

"There she is," said Jim a moment later as the front door shut below. "I bet she was just out to church." And remembering Mrs. Del Sardo’s revelation, Galeano heard the light footsteps running up the stairs with a leaden heart. She stopped short on the landing, startled to see them.

She wore the hooded coat again, and her tawny hair was spangled with a few drops of rain; just since he’d been here, it must have started again. She had a little purse in one hand, a bunch of keys in the other.

"Hello, Mrs. Fleming. I come by to tell you I can get the car. I already saved up two hundred and my dad says he’ll go the rest if I take Mom places in it and pay the gas. Could I maybe take it now? I got the money, if you’ll take Dad’s check. Oh, Mr. Galeano wants to see you too, but I guess I got here first."

"I have no doubt," said Marta. She came between them and unlocked the door. "It is all right that you buy the car, Jimmy, but now I do not know about the-the legalities, it is registered to my husband."

"If you’ve got the pink slip," said Galeano, "you can just hand it over, and Jim can re-register it to himself."

"I see. You would know," she said. They had both followed her into the neat little living room.

"You haven’t been driving it much, have you, Mrs. F1eming?"

"I have not been driving it at all," she said.

"Oh, I know you had it out a couple of weeks ago, because I came to ask to borrow it and it wasn’t here. I just wondered."

Marta turned to stare at him. "I have not driven the car since we moved here. That can’t be, Jimmy."

"No, it was gone-honest. It was two weeks ago Friday, I wanted it to take Mom to the doctor’s. Gee, Mrs. Fleming, you seen it since, haven’t you? I mean, nobody’s stole it?" He was suddenly anxious.

"Just a minute," said Galeano. "I’d like to hear more about this, Jim. Two weeks ago Friday? You came to borrow the car, and it wasn’t in the garage? How’d you know?"

"Well, gee-" He looked from her to Galeano uneasily. "Because I looked. Acourse I knew you’d be at work, Mrs. Fleming, but Mr. Fleming had keys to it. It was raining so hard, Mom said to see could I borrow it because the buses are so bad, so I-but there wasn’t any answer to the bell so I thought maybe Mr. Fleming had to go to the doctor or something and you’d took him, so I looked in the garage and the Dodge wasn’t there."

Marta was standing very still in the middle of the room. "I do not know anything about this," she said. "It must be a mistake."

"What time was this?" asked Galeano. "You know, Jim?"

"Sure. It was about one o’clock, Mom’s appointment was for two-thirty, and I took off from school because of helping her on and off the bus with the cast still on her ankle, see. Say, listen, Mrs. Fleming, you sure it hasn’t been stolen, if you didn’t know-"

"Let’s all go down and look at it," said Galeano.

"This is all very silly," said Marta.

"Come on," said Galeano. They all went downstairs together and down the driveway. It was drizzling very slightly. "You’ve driven the Dodge, have you, Jim? Trying it out? I suppose, you interested in buying it, you noticed the mileage."

"Sure," said Jim. "The last time I brought it back, it was sixty thousand and forty-one miles. Sure I’m sure of that. I got a good head for figures."

"I wouldn’t be surprised," said Galeano. "The key to the garage, Mrs. Fleming?" Silently she singled it out on her ring of keys and gave it to him. He unlocked the padlock and swung open one leaf of the old-fashioned double doors. The old Dodge sat inside. "Let’s see what the mileage is." He opened the driver’s door.

"Well, there," said Jim Newton, "you can see it’s been out since. Sixty thousand and seventy-two miles and four tenths."

"What about it, Mrs. Fleming? Suppose you give Jim the keys, so he can drive his mother-he can come back and make the deal with you later. That O.K., Jim?"

"Sure, sir." Jim’s eyes were puzzled on them. Marta gave him the keys. "I hope Mr. F1eming’s O.K., Mrs. Fleming."

"That’s fine," said Galeano meaninglessly, took her arm and walked her back up the drive. "I’ve just heard from Mrs. Del Sardo that you came home about two-thirty that Friday, Mrs. Fleming. Not five o’clock as you said. And went out again right away. Why didn’t you tell us about that?"

"No," she said. They stopped just inside the front door, in the square little lobby. "No, that is not so. I have told you all the truth."

"And now this comes to light about the car. Kids like Newton know their cars pretty well, and he’s sure of what he says. The car was out that Friday, and driven thirty-odd miles. Where, Mrs. F1eming'?"

"No. I do not know. It is impossible."

"Do you have a driver’s license?"

"Yes, but I have not driven it since we came here. Only to run the engine because of the battery, a few moments."

"Who had keys to it? How many sets?"

She was shaking her head slowly, blindly, back and forth. "No. Edwin had keys, I have keys. Edwin’s keys are still here, in the apartment. This is all nonsense, it cannot be."

"I don’t think so, Mrs. Fleming. Where were you that afternoon?"

"Ach, Gott!" she exclaimed suddenly, violently, and put her hands to her head. "But it is all too much-too much!" She turned and plunged up the stairs, and before he could move to follow her he heard the door bang shut up there. Galeano stood looking after her, his heart strangely heavy, and all he could think was, they were right. The damned cynics. They had been right about her all along.

He drifted unhappily into Mendoza’s office to tell him about that, and found Hackett there, one hip on a corner of Mendoza’s desk. They both listened to what he had to say, and Hackett commented interestedly, "The same thought, about his faking the paralysis, crossed my mind, but of course there’s nothing in it, they hadn’t anything to gain and more than one doctor said it was genuine. But this bit about the car, what in hell does it mean? That just makes it funnier, Luis. So she could have driven him somewhere-where and why?"

" No lo niego," said Mendoza. "Funny is the word. But she didn’t drive him anywhere, if the Dodge was out of the garage at one o’clock. She didn’t get off work until two."

"That’d skipped my mind," said Galeano. "But she could have given the keys to somebody."

"Or he could," said Mendoza thoughtfully. "It’s a tangle-I don’t see through it at all. And talk about things being up in the air-" He had been turning a cigarette round in his fingers and now reached for his new cigarette lighter and pressed the trigger, bent to the flame.

"This Faber thing," said Hackett. "I’ve been telling him, sometimes S.I.D. hands us the answer right off, but this time all they’ve done is make more work for us. My God, you should see the list of names we got from Pendleton! Hundreds-and that’s only military personnel, there’d be no way to check on all the civilians wandering around, wives and so on. George is feeling pessimistic. He said ten to one that cigarette pack was already there when X came in, but I don’t think so. I talked to Weinstein again and he said she was a persnickety old lady, never would have let a thing like that lie around her clean floor. And there was something in what Scarne said-the autopsy will say definitely but they thought she’d been killed just before she was found, and that early in the morning he could have been staying or living right around there. What we’re doing now is checking with Pendleton for original home addresses. It’s the hell of a bore, but if we do find some airman who hailed from two blocks west of Faber’s Market and was on leave to see his sick mother-"

" De veras. The routine paying off again." Galeano had wandered out, and Mendoza added ruminatively, "Human nature is a queer thing, Art."

"A profound remark."

" Vaya el diablo. That Marta Fleming’s a nice-looking girl, nothing spectacular, but to see Nick fall for her-I’ll be damned if I can even guess what might have happened there, but if she was mixed up in some piece of collusion to get rid of her husband, I’d be sorry to see Nick knocked out over it. Last man in the world, you’d think."

"I seem to remember you once said that to me," said Hackett dryly, and Mendoza laughed.

"Hard to guess what people see in each other, fortunately for the continued existence of the human race."

One of the annoyances to police work was that something new was always coming along to interrupt other routine. With the continued hunt for Sandra’s killer reduced to the dogged routine, Palliser was now handed this new one by the night watch, Don Ames. It looked from the report as if there’d be a good many people to see, so he roped Conway in on it too.

"I think," he said as Conway digested Piggott’s report, "I’d like to see what a doctor had to say about this first. On the face of it, it’s another impossibility-by this, he was sitting alone in a booth, nobody near him."

"Let’s," agreed Conway. "Though I remember a case, when I was still riding a squad car-"

They found Dr. Bainbridge in his office, conscientious or with nowhere else to go on a rainy Sunday. He said he hadn’t seen the body, snorted interestedly over the report, and said, "Humph. I can tell you better after I’ve had him open, but let’s take a look anyway." He led the way down to the cold room and located the right tray; in a morgue the size of L.A.’s bodies tended to pile up. The corpse looked oddly young and defenseless, naked there; and Bainbridge poked at the minute brown line on his left breast, scarcely an inch long.

"There you are," he said. "I can guess what I’ll find inside. It was a very thin blade, he probably didn’t bleed at all immediately. The witnesses said he’d been sitting p alone there about five minutes before he suddenly fell down dead? Typical. He could have been stabbed fifteen, twenty minutes before and not realized it himself."

"I saw a case something like it once," said Conway, nodding.

"It’s possible he never felt the knife, didn’t know he’d been stabbed. Depending how it happened, he’d have felt a blow on the chest, thought nothing of it."

"That might put it before he got into the restaurant," said Palliser.

"I don’t say it was that long, I don’t know," said Bainbridge. "I just said it could be."

"Well, thanks anyway." And that was at ten o’clock; Palliser had already been to Ames’ address in Hollywood, where he’d lived with his parents, and been through that harrowing scene.

They started out at Dick’s Tow Service where he’d worked, and found out from the owner that-as usual, he said-a couple of employees hadn’t shown up for the night shift, and he’d been there alone with Ames since five o’clock. They hadn’t had a call in an hour before Don went off on his break, and nothing unusual had happened; they’d just been sitting there talking. He couldn’t make out what had happened to Don-"I thought a lot of him, hard worker, nice fellow, and he didn’t go around picking lights, even getting into arguments. I just can’t make it out."

He was a straightforward type, so that seemed to put it right back to the restaurant again, and they looked up Fred Mallow, who was annoyed at being waked up, and heard a firsthand account. "He came in, gave his order and went into the rest room? How long was he there?" asked Palliser.

"Oh, three, five, six minutes-I wasn’t watching the clock. Not long. And like I said, he came out and sat down in the booth perfectly O.K., and then five minutes later--"

"All right. Was anybody else in the men’s room at the same time?"

"My God, I don’t know. I was counting the receipts, I’d just taken over from Powell. I suppose there could’ve been, but I couldn’t say."

"Well, suppose you take a look at this list and tell us which are employees there and if you know any of the witnesses."

By this time fully awake, Mallow accepted a cigarette and looked at the list of names and addresses. "Sanchez and De Carlos are the busboys. The cook’s Bob Smith. Lessee, well, a lot of our regulars I just know by their faces, but I know some of these names. Javorsky, he has the tape and record shop up the block, usually stops in after he closes up. Kravits, he’s from the twenty-four-hour pharmacy up the other way, a pharmacist I think. I think I heard this name Cobbler too, if I place him he works somewhere around, comes in pretty regular. This Edna girl, I didn’t know her name was Willis, she’s from that pharmacy too, been in with other girls, I heard them call her Edna. But she was with a guy last night, I don’t know his name, must be one of these others. I’m not saying I don’t know these guys, I just don’t recognize the names. Michael Jarvis, Joseph Toombs, Tom Sawyer-say, that’s kind of familiar at that, wasn’t it a movie'?"

"Also a book." But they were both common names, thought Palliser. It seemed easier to start out knowing something about the witnesses; and it was going to be a tedious job to get all their stories and fit them together. And if none of them had seen or heard anything significant, where to go on it then? Obviously, none of them-if they were all honest witnesses-had seen anything they thought was important, or they’d have come out with it last night.

"I know we’ve got to do the routine," said Conway, "but it looks like a waste of time to me. Are we operating on the premise that he got the knife between Dick’s and the restaurant booth? On the street or in the rest room?"

"It looks as if that’s the only possibility."

"And just as Bainbridge said, never realized he’d been stabbed, or he’d have raised a fuss, hung on to the guy.

He could have run into a drunk in the street, or- But why? There was hardly time for him to’ve had a fight with anybody, even an argument. Dick said he left about nine-twenty, and Mallow said he was sitting in the booth by about nine thirty-five."

"Well, let’s see if we can come up with some answers," said Palliser. They went out separately to find people and ask the questions, and it was a small bonus that it was a rainy Sunday when most people would be home.

Grace had asked Galeano to drop in at that bar and grill sometime, have a look around, get talking to the owner if he was there. He had a bee in his bonnet about that Reinke. Galeano didn’t see what good that was going to do, but he wasn’t feeling much like going out on a piece of tedious routine, and after a lunch he didn’t especially want, he drove up Virgil to Ben’s Bar and Grill, parked and went in.

It looked like a quiet family place, the cheerful red-checked tablecloths, and the fat bartender who was probably Reinke was friendly. It wasn’t once a year Galeano drank anything but an occasional glass of wine, and of course you weren’t supposed to drink on duty, but defying the regulations he ordered a Scotch on the rocks, feeling he needed it.

There was a friendly game of gin going at a rear table, a little money changing hands, but quiet and orderly. He couldn’t see there was anything to notice about the place. What they’d heard about Buford, if he’d been in here that night he wouldn’t have stayed long: had a couple of beers and left.

Galeano went back to the office and finding Grace there, told him that. "Card game, huh?" said Grace. "Well, I don’t get too excited about the state regulations either, Nick. This thing is going to wind up in Pending. We now know from Buford’s bank that he hadn’t drawn out any cash in a couple of weeks, and then only fifty bucks. I just had the brother in-he’s been through the house and says there isn’t anything missing, even his new shotgun there. Which is also funny. Because if somebody intended to rob him, you’d have thought they’d have made a job of it. In for a penny, in for a pound as they say. And then again, the brother said Dick was usually home, and he hadn’t been able to reach him for a couple of days. Where was he instead?"

Galeano wasn’t much interested in Buford or how he’d come to be taken off. He said, "I suppose I’d better go see that Mrs. Chard again." Not that that was very important either.

He had to look for the address on Constance Street, and by the time he found it, it was raining in buckets. He turned up his collar and dashed for the cover of the deep porch; it was an old California bungalow. Waiting for an answer to his ring, he wondered if Marta had sold the Dodge to Jim Newton; and remembered suddenly of course, Carey a very thorough man-that there’d been an examination of the car too, and nothing had shown up that was at all suggestive. So what if she had driven the car somewhere that day?

He rang the bell again and thought rather miserably, that part of it could be true. The boyfriend. Edwin Fleming was no good to her as a husband. Say she had a boyfriend, that didn’t mean they had to have plotted a murder. There wasn’t one scrap of evidence that the man was dead. It was hard to see how he could be alive, but queerer things had happened. And, he thought suddenly, hadn’t somebody called Marta straitlaced? If she was just covering up some affair- The door opened and a waft of noise came out at him. "Thought I heard the doorbell," said the man just inside. "What you want?"

Galeano brought out the badge. The man was little, old, bent over as if he had arthritis or a crooked spine. He said, "Oh. You want Cecelia-it’s about Bob?"

"Now what the hell have you got the door open for, you silly old bastard?" Mrs. Wilma Dixon came up behind him, glass in one hand, noticed Galeano, gaped for a moment, readjusted her expression to a winning smile and said, "Oh, it’s that police officer who was so nice and understanding about poor Bob. Cissy! You know the funeral’s tomorrow, it’ll be a great relief to have it over. This is my husband, Mr. Dixon."

"How do," said Dixon, and hobbled away, a hand to his hip.

"Won’t you come in?" Galeano went in to a TV turned up too loud in a nearby room, an aroma of port and Scotch. Cecelia Chard appeared in the doorway opposite, gestured at someone behind her, and the TV volume lessened abruptly.

Galeano asked his questions uninterestedly, and Cecelia and her mother looked at each other. "Bob having trouble with anybody? Oh, I don’t think so, any more than usual," said Cecelia. "When he was drinking- Why?"

"There’s been some suggestion he was deliberately killed," said Galeano absently. "He didn’t owe anybody money, or-"

"Oh, I don’t think it would be anything like that, Mr. Galeano. He was perfectly all right when he was sober, but when he got to drinking he always got in a fight."

"Led astray he was," said Mrs. Dixon, "by all the bad company he ran with."

It really didn’t matter much how Bob Chard had got himself killed. Galeano thanked them and dashed back to his car through the rain.

Landers and Glasser, out hunting those possibles on Sandra, accepted the rain as an added hazard. Landers was saying that Palliser was being too subtle anyway. "As far as I can see, Rank is the prime suspect here. The girl picked his mug-shot-sure, with a couple of others, but the same general type-and he’s got the right record for the job. He had access to a house in the right area. Well, only maybe, but he looks better than any of these X others to me. I say, bring him in again and lean on him, get a search warrant for the house-even now S.I.D. might turn up some evidence of the girls being there."

"Maybe," said Glasser doubtfully. "John saw her, and he’s pretty good at judging people, Tom."

They went looking, and of the nine they were hunting found just one at home, in a single room a block away from Skid Row. He had several counts of rape behind him, and except for the goatee he conformed to the description, but how long did it take to shave one off? They brought him in to question when it was apparent he couldn’t produce an alibi and seemed nervous. But of course there was nothing conclusive about it, and they let him go.

"Waste of time," said Landers.

At least Hackett and Higgins hadn’t had to go out on the legwork in the rain. They were still getting fed information from Pendleton Air Force Base, and so far, said Hackett when Glasser asked, they hadn’t come across any enlisted personnel who hailed from anywhere near downtown L.A. By some quirk, they hadn’t even found any originally from anywhere in California. There must be some, they just hadn’t showed up yet.

Landers wandered down to the Records office and said to Phil, "If you want to take off early, I’ll take you out to dinner."

"And what a night for it. I was rather looking forward to getting home, but I’d better take you up on that while you’re feeling generous. Not the Castaway-no night for a view."

"The London Grill," suggested Landers. "All quiet and dignified. I’ll even buy you a drink."

"It’s a deal. I’ll just tell the captain I’m goofing off."

They drove up to Hollywood separately. Ensconced in a booth over drinks, it was rather nice to watch the rain drumming down the windows. "I was talking to Margot Swain this afternoon," said Phil presently.

"That Conway. He was afraid she’d get a rope on him. I think he’s back to playing the field."

Phil laughed. "Don’t worry about Margot. She’s mad at him, but there are a few bachelors at Wilcox Street too. She’s been dating Bob Laird."

"Good."

"And, Tom, I’ve been thinking," she went on seriously, "about a house. Before we start a family. While we’re both still earning--"

"Hey!" said Landers, alarmed. "The payments--"

"But we’d be investing in something for the future, darling. It’s the same as rent really-"

"Phillipa Rosemary!" said Landers. "It’s not just the payments, damn it, there’s yard work and upkeep of everything and- What?"

"Excuse me, sir, would you care for another drink?"

"Yes," said Landers. "Now look, Phil-"

On Monday morning, his day off, Palliser got up and discovered that it had stopped raining. He reread some of the dog book over breakfast. "It sounds perfectly simple," he said to Roberta. "It shouldn’t be very hard with an intelligent dog."

"I’l1 reserve judgment," said Roberta. The baby began to yell and she added, "Damn," abandoned the dishes and headed for the nursery. Palliser said to Trina, "You’re going to be a smart girl and learn all the lessons, aren’t you?"

Her eyes and tongue assured him earnestly that she would. He took her leash and put it on; Trina, thinking they were going for a walk, leaped joyfully in circles and got the leash wound around his legs. "No! Come on now."

He took her out into the drive, shortened the leash, got her on his left side and said hopefully, "Now heel! Heel, Trina!" He took a few steps forward. Trina stayed where she was. "Come! Come on now, heel."’ She suddenly noticed the neighbors’ Siamese on the fence along the driveway and lunged forward, taking Palliser unaware and nearly pulling him off his feet. "No! Down! Come, Trina-heel!"

Ten minutes later, as he urged her patiently to Come and Heel, Trina was lying flat begging to know what she’d done wrong. Roberta said from the kitchen window, "Perfectly simple."

"It takes time and practice, damn it,” said Palliser. "You can’t expect her to learn all at once, Robin. The book said-"

"Look out!" said Roberta, too late. The Siamese floated down into the driveway with a contemptuous look for a dog on a leash, and Trina took off. Not expecting it, Palliser was yanked off balance and sprawled flat, losing the leash. The Siamese swarmed up the tree in front and Trina began jumping up and down barking.

"You know, John," said Roberta, watching him pick himself up, "I think it might be simpler in the long run if you just asked for Saturdays off so you could take her to that obedience class."

Landers wanted to discuss Rank with Mendoza; he thought Palliser was reaching on this one, when they had Rank under their noses. But the inquest on Sandra was called for this morning, and he’d have to cover that. At least it wasn’t raining, and the night watch hadn’t left them anything new.

Conway went out to finish talking to the witnesses on Ames, and Hackett and Higgins were still doggedly working through the list from Pendleton. Grace and Glasser started out again hunting the other possibles on Sandra. Galeano hadn’t come in yet.

He came in about eight-thirty; he hadn’t been able to get to sleep and then when he did overslept. He’d had a funny dream, of Marta driving that old Dodge up a snaky winding mountain road, and always somebody with her, but continually changing to different people: Rappaport, Jim Newton, Offerdahl, little bent-over Mr. Dixon, Conway, Carey, Mendoza. He got up feeling stale and unhappy, and when he got to the office he wanted to talk over this new idea with Mendoza, about the possible boyfriend but no involvement with the disappearance. Whatever else, Mendoza was always acute at diagnosing human emotions. But Mendoza had already gone out somewhere.

"I don’t know where," said Sergeant Lake. "The autopsies are in on that bum on the Row and somebody named Altmeyer. And we just had a new one go down-you can take it."

"Oh, hell," said Galeano. But the habit of routine was strong in him, after fifteen years on this force, and he took down the address and went.

It was an apartment over on Commonwealth, and there was a red truck outside: the paramedics from the Fire Department. They were both leaning on the truck, one smoking, waiting for him. "She was D.O.A. when we got here," said one of them, "but we went through the gestures. O.D. of some kind, just at a guess sleeping tablets-the mother had some, and says the bottle was nearly full. She left a suicide note, the girl." He spat aside. "Makes you wonder, only twenty. Life can be trouble and worry and work, but never a bore, hah?"

"You’ve got a point," said Galeano. "Where is it?"

"Upstairs, right."

It was a nice apartment, old but good furniture, everything neat except in the bedroom where the body was. There, the paramedics had created disorder, getting her off the bed to work on her. Galeano was gentle with the silent gray-haired little woman who said stiffly she was Mrs. Olson, it was her daughter Nella.

He looked at the body and like the paramedic he wondered. Nella Olson had been twenty, and pretty: a true blonde, neat small features, a nice figure. She’d put on a fancy pink nylon nightgown to die in. There was the suicide note, in a finicky small handwriting in green ink. Dear Mama, please don’t think I am not aware of what I’m doing. It’s just that when I know how much more beautiful it is over on the other side, I would rather be there than here. Daddy and I, and Grandma and all of them will eagerly await your coming. Your loving Nella.

Galeano said, "I’ll have to take this for the inquest, Mrs. Olson. Do you know what she meant by this? About the other side, and-"

Mrs. Olson said fiercely, "It’s all them wicked books she was always reading! There oughta be a law against people writing such awful books! Always bringin’ home another one from the public liberry, and even bought ’em she did, good money spent on all them wicked books!" She pointed with a trembling finger. "As the Lord’s my judge, if she hadn’t read all them awful books, she’d be alive this minute. They oughta put all them writers in jail."

Galeano looked. There was a bookcase under the window, with a good many books in it. Pornography? He bent to look. Hidden Channels of the Mind, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, Noted Witnesses for Psychic Occurrences, Life After Death, You Do Survive Death, a lot of paperbacks, True Experiences with Ghosts, Communications with the Dead, Telephone Between Worlds, Strange Spirits, Voices From Beyond. Galeano didn’t know much about this kind of thing, but he recognized one name on several books: Rhine. Respected scientist, he remembered from an article somewhere, not a crackpot.

"All them stories about dead people!" said Mrs. Olson with a sob.

"You don’t believe in any, er, afterlife?" asked Galeano, somewhat at a loss.

"Don’t you call me no heathen! Good people get to heaven and the rest go to the bad place, but if the Lord’d wanted us to know what heaven was like He’d have put it in the Bible," she said loudly. "Al1 that about dead people talking and it don’t make any difference what church you go to and all-it’s-it’s unsettling, that’s what, and if she’d never read all them books-"

Galeano might have found it funny, some other day; as it was, he got down names and facts for a formal report, and went back to base to type it up.

Mendoza attended the requiem Mass for O’Brien. He was feeling unaccountably annoyed at Carey, who had foreseen everything. That idle thought about Rappaport as Marta Fleming’s hypothetical boyfriend had now been squashed. Looking back through Carey’s voluminous reports, he had found that Carey had already thought of it. Rappaport had a good-looking wife he seemed to be crazy about, and a new house with somewhat astronomical payments. He hadn’t been straying from home.

And Marta Fleming was really no femme fatale. A boyfriend there very likely was, but where was he? Mendoza had also looked at Jack Frost, and discovered that Frost had for six months been working such odd hours at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital that it was unlikely he had time to be anybody’s boyfriend.

He went up to Federico’s for lunch and got back to the office about one-thirty. "Tom wants to see you," said Lake. "He just came in."

"About Sandra," said Landers, hearing him and coming out of the communal office. "I think John’s woolgathering. We’ve got this perfectly good hot suspect, this Rank-the Peacock girl picked him, and he’s got the right record. It’s a waste of time to-"

Lake swung around from the switchboard. "You’ve got another rape-assault, in the series, it sounds like. Just an attempt-but what Traffic says, it was the same one."

"?Pues vamonos ya! " said Mendoza. "Let’s go! What’s the address, Jimmy?"

Like all the other women, she was respectable and matronly: large-bosomed, elderly, slate-colored, indignant. The squad car was still there but they hadn’t called an ambulance; she wasn’t really hurt. But the men riding the black and whites were briefed on this and that the plainclothes divisions were working, and an alert patrolman had recognized the description.

Her name was Mrs. Alice Drews. "Hurt?" she said, sitting very erect in an awesomely flowered armchair in her crowded living room. "I didn’t take no hurt, after forty years with a man got mean in drink, many’s the time I wiped the floor with him, let him know who’s boss. I was just a bit surprised, you might say. This little bitty boy asking to cut my grass, real polite he acted, and then askin' for a drink, and bringin’ out that knife-but I just lowered the boom on him, little kid like that, and he skedaddled. Only I figured, him tryin’ a thing like that, police ought to hear."

"If you could give us a description-" And it would be the same one, unproductive.

"I surely can. It was kind of queer, when I first laid eyes on him I thought to myself, that looks like the Perkins boy from down where I useta live on Stanford Street. I moved here a year or two back, hadn’t seen that kid since, but this one surely looked like that Perkins boy," said Mrs. Drews. "But what I recall, he didn’t act like him!" She chuckled richly. "That Joey Perkins, he was sure-enough a piddlin’ no-account youngster."