Dell Shannon - Extra Kill

The half-untouched food congealed on their plates. Goldberg went on eating, watching and listening interestedly. "Mix-up about that," said Woods. "We couldn't get the address for a while-the one the Kingmans had was three years old, the place he'd lived when he hooked up with them nearly four years ago. They knew he'd moved, they thought they had the address somewhere but couldn't find it. There'd evidently been no occasion to contact him at home. Thought they had the phone number too, but couldn't find that. That kind of peop1e-or making out they are-unworldly, you know. In the end we got it from one of the-er-members of the sect, phone number that is, and that was Wednesday morning. When I got the address from the phone company, I went out there, of course-Wednesday afternoon-and I looked it over. Well, I didn't take the floors up, but-"

"You didn't take the floors up," said Mendoza. "Maybe you should have done just that, Sergeant. Maybe. That-that perpetual talking machine Mrs. Bragg-she didn't follow you around pointing out all the amenities, I take it."

"I don't," said Woods, "encourage people to watch me work, no. I shut the door on her. And just how do you know about Mrs. Bragg and 267th Street? What's your interest in Twelvetrees?"

"I don't know that I've got any-yet. But I think you and I and my Sergeant Hackett will go out there right away and take a closer look at a couple of things. I'l1 explain it to you on the way, it's a funny little story-and I may be seeing ghosts, but it just occurs to me that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Twelvetrees is being slandered… All that blacktop, so inconvenient. And a trowel. Of all things, a trowel… Vaya, I must be seeing ghosts-it's even more far-fetched than what Walsh- But no I have to make sure."

They stood in the middle of the little living room, the three of them, at two o'clock that afternoon, and Hackett said, "You haven't got much to make this add up, Luis." They had got rid of Mrs. Bragg by sheer weight of numbers and official supremacy, but she might well be lurking outside, suspicious of their intentions toward her good furniture and rugs. "If you're just relying on a hunch, and the damnedest far-fetched one I ever knew you to have, at that-"

"Not at all," said Mendoza. "Sober deduction from sober fact, it's just that I happened to have a couple of facts Woods didn't have. I admit to you I've had a little funny feeling that something's fishy-it's been growing on me-but the facts are there to be looked at, and very suggestive too. Anybody could add them up. I don't say it's impossible Twelvetrees didn't decide to decamp with a month's take when he could have made it the whole bank account, and we all know from experience that people can disappear without trace. But it's odd he should go to so much trouble for a relatively small amount, when it involved abandoning an expensive car and the promise of more opportunity to come-after all, he'd been with this racket for four years, didn't you say, Woods? Evidently it paid off. Why should he walk out on it just for twenty-three hundred he wasn't entitled to? It isn't reasonable-I know crimes get committed for peanuts, but not by people of this kind."

"Which," said Woods, "did occur to me, Lieutenant, but there's a couple of ways it could have happened. Maybe some skirt was making things hot for him and he had to get out. Maybe he was afraid the Kingmans were going to fire him, or somebody was threatening to tell them the tale on him, and he'd be out anyway-and he figured he might as well take a little something along. Maybe it was just impulse. People aren't always reasonable, in fact I'd say very seldom."

"I know, I know," said Mendoza. "But look at a couple of other things to add up. Why a note to tell Mrs. Bragg he was leaving? All he had to do was go six steps from his own front door and tell her in person. She was home that Friday night, we know. He didn't leave in that much of a hurry, not when he took time to pack up all his personal belongings. Why in hell should he thumbtack that note to his front door instead of ringing her doorbell? And if he was in such a hurry, why did he take time out from his packing to do a little desultory gardening on that anemic-looking Tree of Heaven out there? She says she had her nice new trowel about noon that day, she knows, because she used it to pry open a can of paint."

"A trowel," said Hackett in exasperation. "A trowel, for God's sake."

"All right, all right, it won't take long to look!” Mendoza turned and went out to the kitchen. "I couldn't help remembering it, we get in the habit of noticing things automatically, that's all. Damn it, look-the man had lived here for nearly three years, and if he didn't cook his own meals he made coffee in the morning anyway, he used this table for something sometimes." He laid a hand on it; it was steady, but when he moved it to any other angle it rocked at a touch. “How does a table get shoved around out of its usual place? In the process of cleaning the floor, something like that. I doubt if Twelvetrees was that good a housewife. A bachelor living alone, mostly if he doesn't hire it done it doesn't get done-what the hell? But the table was in the wrong place on Wednesday morning-before you got here, Woods-and Mrs. Bragg said she hadn't got round to cleaning here yet. And that trowel was over there by the kitchen door. Why?" He shoved the table clear away from the trap door in the iioor at this end of the kitchen. It was about two feet by two and a half, the trap, and covered with linoleum like the rest of the floor; only a little dark line round it, and the small flat hinges, betrayed its presence. One of the makeshift arrangements to be found in such jerry-built new rental units, in a climate where jerry-building wasn't always detectable at once. Mendoza reached down and pulled up the trap by its dime-store bolt, which slid back and forth easily. "Who's going down?"

"Not you, obviously," said Hackett, "in that suit. I'll go."

"You've been gaining weight, I don't think you could make it. All right, it's my idea, I'll do the dirty work." Mendoza sat down and slid his legs through the opening.

"That's a lie, a hundred and ninety on the nose ever since I left college. Be careful, for God's sake, don't go breaking a leg-hell of a place to haul you out of."

"Hell of a place to get anything into," added Woods to that, gloomily.

"He gets these brainstorms," said Hackett, squatting beside the trap resignedly. "About once in a hundred times he's right, just by the law of averages, you know, and that convinces him all over again to follow his hunches. Well?" he bellowed down the hole, where Mendoza had now vanished.

" No me empuje -don't push me! I've just got here." Mendoza's voice was muffled. "I need a flashlight, hand one down… Valgame Dios y un millen demonios! " That came out as he straightened too abruptly and hit his head on the floor joists. Like most California houses, this sat only a little above a shallow foundation; the space undemeath the floor was scarcely four feet high.

Hackett laughed unfeelingly. "He wants a flashlight-why didn't he think of that before? You got a flashlight, Woods?"

"I seldom carry one in the daytime," said Woods.

“That's funny, neither do I. Use your lighter!" he advised Mendoza heartlessly.

There followed a period of silence but for the muffled sounds of Mendoza moving around cautiously down there; then another curse and a longer silence. Suddenly Mendoza straightened up through the trap and demanded an implement of some kind. "Failing the trowel, a soup ladle or something-look in the drawers. The place is furnished, there ought to be tablespoons, a cake server-"

Hackett rummaged and offered him a tablespoon, a hand can opener, and a long wooden fork. "Nada mds? A big help you are," and Mendoza vanished again with the spoon and fork.