Exploit of Death - Dell Shannon Read online

  Exploit of Death

  Dell Shannon

  1983

  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 fiancé, 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 c
lean-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."