Dell Shannon - Streets of Death

And Lake came in with a telex: the feedback from the FBI on the prints picked up in the Freeman house. Mendoza swore, looking at it. "Why can’t these hoods stay home, George? New to us-his record’s all in West Virginia. Neal Benoy, and he’s wanted for homicide, and that’s all they tell us. Well, we know he’s here, or was, but it’d be helpful to know something more about him. Jimmy, get me an outside line." After an interval, he got connected to a Lieutenant Devore of the Huntington force, and began taking notes. Devore gave him the gist of Benoy’s record. "He’s been just another no-good bum around town till he got together with a kindred spirit one night last August and murdered a harmless old black fellow. We picked them both up, but they made a break on the way to the courthouse for indictment. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were still teamed up-they’re buddies from way back. You want Benoy for something out there? A long way from home-he’s never been out of the state before, far as I know."

"We’ve tied him to a double homicide," said Mendoza. "The lab thinks it was a pair. Who’s the other one?"

"Tony Allesandro. Birds of a feather," said Devore succinctly. "You want his prints and particulars too?"

"Anything you can give us."

"I’ll shoot some stuff out."

" Gracias. We’ll get an A.P.B. out on both of them, just in case." Mendoza put the phone down. Higgins and Palliser had gone out, and Galeano had just come in, looking thoughtful. He sat down in the chair beside the desk. "Have you recovered from your aberration, Nick?"

"Damn you," said Galeano amiably, "it’s not. I said all along that girl is honest-if she wasn’t, she’d have thought up a hell of a lot better tale than that. I just want to put this in front of you-" and he plunged into the story of Marta’s revelations. Mendoza sat back, smoking.

"From the viewpoint of human emotions, interesante, " he said sardonically at the end, "but as for giving us any clue to what happened to Edwin, damn all."

"I know, I know. But it does show why she’d thought and done things to look suspicious. All perfectly natural," said Galeano.

"Maybe."

"And maybe you think she’s conned me!" said Galeano.

"Not necessarily. But I would damn well like to know what did happen to him," said Mendoza. "The hell of it is, the pair of them were so damned isolated-no close friends, the other people in that place strangers, and she-"

"Homesick," said Galeano. "Proud. Holding everybody at arm’s length. I hope she’ll learn better."

"And I’ve reluctantly come round to admit, at least, that there isn’t any smell of a boyfriend," said Mendoza sadly. "It shakes my faith in the eternal venality of human nature."

"They do say, it’s the exception that proves the rule. I just thought you’d like to think all that over," said Galeano, and went out.

Mendoza sighed and swiveled his desk chair around to stare out the window toward the Hollywood hills, invisible today in heavy gray mist. Every now and then something a little more complicated than usual showed up. As a rule the things that bailed them were just the anonymous crimes (like that dairy-store heist) where no possible lead showed and there was nothing much to be done about it. But once in a blue moon, a real mystery came along, where there should be leads and weren’t; and the mystery of Edwin Fleming was the most ballling one that had come their way in some time. He missed Hackett, off today, to talk it over with.

At five o’clock Palliser and Glasser came in with Scarne. "Well, we’ve got Sandra all tied up," said Glasser.

"These stupid jerks-Smith trying to get rid of the body and he couldn’t even do that efficiently-you wouldn’t believe the stuff he overlooked at that house. It’s still empty, luckily, nobody in to mess up the evidence for us. The first thing we found was Sandra’s green plane case. There were prints all over the house-"

"We had the Peacock girl’s and Sandra’s, we’ve sorted out quite a few of both," said Scarne. "Odds and ends of clothes the parents can probably identify, but the prints are solid evidence. He isn’t going to be able to claim that Sandra ran off and met up with some other X, the times are too tight. The other girl could say she was alive at seven, and the autopsy says she was dead between eight and ten."

"Good-solid evidence I always 1ike," said Mendoza.

"And something new just went down; we passed George and Jase going out in a hurry," said Palliser.

Landers had heard what the mechanic had to say about the Corvair without much surprise. The damn thing had been on its last legs for months. "You’d do better to junk it," said the mechanic. "It’s not worth putting money into."

Landers took a look at what they had on the used lot, but nothing looked like a good buy. He walked on down Hollywood Boulevard to the American agency, priced a couple of new models and winced, and went out to the used lot to browse around. Finally he settled on a little Sportabout, the pony-size station wagon, and made a deal for it. It was only three years old, had thirty thousand on it, which wasn’t bad.

But at least the Corvair had been paid for. What with the new payments on top of the rent and everything else, he reflected, Phil would have to stop talking about a house for some time.

Higgins and Grace looked at the new homicide and had the same thought at the same time.

"The Freemans," said Grace, touching his mustache thoughtfully. "Same earmarks, George."

"Such as there are," said Higgins. This was much the same kind of house as the Freemans’, in the same kind of neighborhood: modest middle-class. The householder had been Mrs. Myrtle Hopper, widow, who’d lived alone here since her youngest daughter got married. It was the daughter and her husband who had found her, coming to visit.

The front door wasn’t forced; the back door was locked. Mrs. Hopper was knifed and dead on the livingroom floor, and the place had been ransacked. At the moment the daughter was having hysterics at a neighbor’s house, but eventually they’d ask her what was missing.

"No phone book," said Grace. "Maybe they used another excuse this time. They didn’t get much at the Freemans’, and I don’t suppose they’d have got much here. What we’ve heard about this Benoy, maybe just mean by nature, doing what comes naturally."

"Could be," agreed Higgins. "Could also be, careless about his prints as he seems to be, he’s left some here too."

They’d thought at first the Freemans might have been killed by someone who thought he still had the church collection money, but now the prints had been identified as this Benoy’s, it looked like just the random thing, and this bore the same general appearance.

They called S.I.D. and imagined how the men would be cussing, a new one to work turning up at this end of shift. Higgins and Grace could go home, and hear what the lab had got tomorrow.

The wired prints of Benoy’s sidekick came in from West Virginia; by then there was an A.P.B. out on Benoy. It would be nice to know what he was driving, but there wasn’t a clue about that.

Alison was, she said, definitely better. The doctor had said it was just a question of time, and it didn’t usually last beyond the third month. Cats twined under their feet at the dinner table, and Cedric paced up and down looking for handouts.

Mairi came to summon them to the ceremonial good nights, and for once Terry and Johnny looked and behaved like angels, too tired from a full day for anything else.

"The darlings," said Alison. "I was ready to murder them yesterday, but a settled stomach makes a great difference. And by the way, I found out something very funny today," she added as they went back down the hall. "?Que ocurre? "