Felony File Read online

  TWO

  ON SATURDAY MORNING, with Sergeant Lake off and Sergeant Farrell sitting on the switchboard, they got Nick Galeano back; he'd been off yesterday. He'd heard about the Bullock's job on the news, and was interested to hear what had showed. But Piggott and Schenke on night watch had left them a new heist to work, with at least one suggestive lead—the bartender who'd been held up thought he recognized the heister as some dude around the neighborhood. Galeano and Conway went out on that.

  Five minutes after Mendoza came in, he hailed Conway, Palliser and Grace into his office, looking pleased. Hackett had a witness coming in, the second pharmacy clerk from Thursday night's heist; he showed up about eight-thirty and told Hackett just what the other one had. His name was Donald Hopper.

  "Could've knocked me down with a feather," he said. "A dame! With a real cannon, and who takes chances with a female with a gun?" He gave a faithful description: maybe about five-five, really stacked, shoulder-length blonde hair, a good deal of make-up, "and real loud clothes, a print dress all sorts of colors, and a bright-red coat. That's about it."

  "Just think this over," said Hackett. "Could it have been a man dressed up?"

  Hopper didn't have to think. He laughed. "No way," he said instantly, "and Bob'd say the same. I was near enough to tell—no way was that padding, see, and it was a dame's voice, a dame's hands—you couldn't mistake it. That idea don't go. It's damn funny all right, a female heister, but that's what it was, Sergeant."

  Hackett started to type up a statement for him to sign. He wondered if the female heister was in anybody else's records somewhere around.

  Glasser waited until nine o'clock to call the jail. He was assured that both subjects were in a condition to be questioned. "Care to sit in on round two?" he asked Wanda.

  "At the jail, yes."

  It had stopped raining about ten o'clock last night, but was looking threatening again. Today, everybody had worn raincoats.

  At the jail Glasser talked to the booking sergeant first. "Anything show in the medical examination? A doctor did look at both of them?"

  "They were both just drunk," said the sergeant, bored. "Doctor saw them about five yesterday. They're both yelling about getting busted for no reason. You can't hold them beyond, lessee," he consulted the record, "three P.M. Twenty-four hours."

  "I know, I know," said Glasser. As they went down the antiseptic-smelling corridor he added absently to Wanda, "They're both in records. First place to look. Rose has one count of prostitution about eight years ago, probation, and Fratelli did six months for a felony hit-run and involuntary manslaughter, four years ago."

  "Which I suppose they'd tell us might happen to anybody," said Wanda.

  "Nobody likes a cynical woman," said Glasser.

  They saw Rose Engel first. The matron had commented dryly, "She's as sober as she ever will be," and looking at her in the bare little interrogation room, they could see that she was far down the line, far gone: her hands shaking, her eyes dull. Her pedigree said she was twenty-nine now; she looked forty. It was doubtful that she'd ever been very intelligent, but the alcohol had dimmed whatever sense she'd had.

  "You got no right to hold me," she told them. "I didn't do anything."

  "We're not holding you," said Glasser. "You can go any time when you've answered some questions. You do realize your daughter Alice has been murdered?"

  "Yeah. Poor 1i'l kid."

  "Where's your husband, Mrs. Engel?"

  "Joe, you mean? He walked out on me a long time back—six, seven years. I dunno where he is, but he wouldn't hurt Alice."

  "What about the other children, are they his too?"

  They were younger than that.

  She was hunched over the bare table, not looking at them. She'd been bathed, and given a beige cotton uniform, but her dark hair was still unkempt, the dark-red polish on her stubby nails half worn off. "I dunno," she muttered. "I just couldn't say who it was, on Dicky or Linda, I guess I was drunk. Except the baby, it's Leon's."

  "All right, about Thursday night," said Glasser. "You left the kids at what time, you remember?"

  She shrugged. "I went to a party at Cora's. Cora Miller, she lives over the next block, on Mozart. Leon said he was tired, didn't want to go. I told him to get some hamburgers or something for the kids. The kids were O.K."

  "What time was it?"

  "I dunno, maybe seven-thirty."

  "When did you get home?"

  "Well, it sort of went on, the party. I stayed over with Cora, I guess we went to bed about four o'clock. I come home about noon, and that's when I found Alice. Like that. I couldn't get no sense out of Leon, so I went back to Cora's and she said I oughta call the fuzz, so I did."

  "There wasn't anybody else there with the kids but Leon when you left?"

  She shook her head. "They was O.K. Some real fiend musta got in while Leon was asleep. I dunno nothin' about it, you can't say I did."

  "Nobody's saying anything," said Glasser. "You can leave any time."

  Out in the corridor, Wanda said, "I hope you called the Board of Health."

  "I did. Rose may go home, but it won't be home anymore. Depending on their red tape, it'll get declared unfit for habitation today or tomorrow—I mean Monday. I wonder who owns the place. They'll find out. And probably," said Glasser, "the court will take the kids away from her—God knows they'd be better off at Juvenile Hall or nearly any foster home—and she'll stop getting the nice A.D.C money."

  Leon Fratelli wasn't as far down the road as she was, but on the way. He was at least cold sober now; he didn't like cops much, and answered them sullenly.

  "Listen," he said, "I'm sorry, what happened to the kid, but I don't know nothin' about it. All I know, I went out and got some hamburgers for the kids after Rose left, and then I went out for a couple drinks and when I come home I went to bed."

  "You usually sleep on the cot in the living room?"

  "No. I been thinkin', and it musta been that guy. Come home with me. I don't know who he is," said Fratelli. "I got talkin' to him in that bar."

  "Which bar?"

  "Uh, Pete's place up on North Main. I was awful tired, I'd hadda work two shifts, see, the night barkeep was off sick. That's at the Eagle Grill on Fourth, where I work. I was tired. I thought a couple drinks sort of relax me, is all. And I got talkin' to this guy, I never seen him before, he said his name was Sam. Maybe the barkeep or somebody there knows him."

  "How did he happen to come home with you?" asked Glasser. "You have a car?"

  "Yeah, yeah, I got a kind of beat-up old Ford. Well, that was sort of it. I guess I had a couple too many drinks, and—uh—once I got busted for drunk driving and I was nervous about it and—uh—he said he'd drive me home. He seemed like an all-right guy."

  "How was he going to get back?"

  "It was only up North Main. About six blocks. Listen, I don't know nothin' about all this, and you can't hold me. I sort of passed out and I never saw or heard nothin'."

  Glasser sighed. "You remember what Sam looks like?"

  "Sort of. Yeah. He was kind of tall, maybe six feet, and thin. About twenty-five. He had black hair, sort of long." Fratelli shrugged. "Listen, you can't hold me—"

  Glasser said, "You can leave any time." And halfway down the corridor he stopped and said, "Damnation. The Board of Health—"

  "I was going to say something," said Wanda, "but you're the detective."

  "Yes. They'll get evicted, and how are we to know where the hell they've gone? But there's the A.D.C. money."

  "What about it?"

  "She won't be getting it anymore. I think she'll stick to Fratelli as long as he's got a job, and we know where he works."

  * * *

  Mendoza had surveyed his three detectives pleasedly, lounging back in his desk chair.

  "Sometimes the routine pays off. We haven't any record of the M.O. on the Bullock's job, but I wondered if somebody else had—I sent a query on to NCIC's computers last night. We have here the
result." He tapped the yellow page on his desk blotter. "Two carbon copies. Last March in Philadelphia, last April in Pittsburgh."

  "You don't say," said Grace interestedly.

  "They decided to spend the winter someplace warmer, maybe," said Conway. "That's the hell of a long way off."

  "And if they took anything like the Bullock's haul seven months ago, how come they needed more loot?" asked Palliser. He added, "Don't bother to tell me, I know. The pros can get rid of it faster than a dozen extravagant females. Gambling, women, dope, booze, name it."

  "Nobody was ever dropped on for either job," said Mendoza, brushing his moustache thoughtfully, "which of course is why the record was still in the NCIC computer. But all the details don't always get sent to NCIC. It might be useful to hear what Philly and Pittsburgh can tell us." He picked up the phone. "Rory, get me through to Philadelphia P.D. headquarters? The call went through in five minutes; he was handed around a little, but finally got a Captain Royce of Robbery detail, who said he'd handled that one. "Bueno," said Mendoza, and shoved the amplifier button. Royce had a heavy bass voice which boomed startingly loud in the room; it was a very clear connection. "We've just had the same exact job pulled here. By what we got from NCIC. Did you ever get any leads on them at all?"

  "What?" said Royce. "Is that so? It was the hell of a slick job—did you say Mendoza? They had the store's routine down pat, how the day's take gets handled—they knew just where to go and what time. They had to have some inside knowledge, but there wasn't a smell of a lead. All the security guards had records like new-fallen snow, and they'd all been at Gimbels for years. Nothing pointed to any of the regular personnel. None of our street informants knew a thing, and that was straight. For what it's worth, Mendoza, that said to me that maybe none of the gang is known—er—generally, on the street, if you follow me. It was a high-class job."

  "Yes. So was ours. You never got a glimmer of an idea?"

  "The hell I didn't," said Royce. "But it was just nothing, legally, and after all the city doesn't pay me to chase ghosts. We're always busy, and after a while it got stashed away in the unsolved file and I had to forget it."

  "Yes, I'm a big-city cop too. What was the idea?"

  "Well, after we'd looked everywhere else possible," said Royce, "we took a look at all the employees' records, and maybe I was just woolgathering but I wondered about this one woman. Employed as a salesclerk in the cosmetics department. One Marcia Wilmot. She only worked there for three months, and their personnel usually stay a lot longer than that. She quit her job two weeks before the job was pulled. Well, what could it say? I asked around, and there was nothing to say it wasn't all perfectly kosher. She told the other clerks that her mother had had a heart attack, she was going home to take care of her, even though she hated to give up a good job."

  "Home being?"

  "New York," said Royce.

  "Vaya historia," said Mendoza.

  "If that means what I think it does, the same to you in spades," said Royce. "It could have been absolutely straight. On the other hand, Wilmot was said to be a divorcée and nobody knew her maiden name. So try to look for her living with her mother in the Big Apple? And there really wasn't any reason to—it was just a handful of nothing. But I had a very strong hunch that she was tied in somehow."

  "How well I know the feeling," said Mendoza. "That's all very interesting, gracias. Did you get a description, by the way?"

  "Sure, for what it's worth. About thirty-five, medium height and weight, dark hair, brown eyes. Good-looking. She's not on record anywhere, at least under that name."

  "And I hate to think how many brunettes answer to that. And she needn't have stayed brunette. But thanks so much."

  He got less from Pittsburgh, where he talked with Lieutenant Wells. The job pulled at the Joseph Horne store had been another carbon copy, and Pittsburgh had gone through all the motions and come up blank. Yes, of course they had looked at the security guards, also at employees' records; but no employee had quit recently, they were all accounted for and not throwing money around.

  "However," said Mendoza, putting the phone down, "it may offer us a small pointer, boys."

  "You want us to wade through all Bullock's employment records?" asked Conway. "My God, it'd be a month's job."

  "I have," said Mendoza, grinning at him rather wolfishly, "great faith in hunches, Rich. Even somebody else's."

  "Shortcuts," said Grace meditatively. "The initials. Mary Webb or Margaret Willard or something. But she didn't show on the Pittsburgh job."

  "Not out in the open."

  "And we haven't checked back on all the guards yet," said Palliser.

  "The routine does pay off. A good detective, John, leaves no stone unlifted—"

  "Teach your grandmother? said Palliser resignedly. "All right, all right. I suppose we'd better get on with it."

  As they stood up, Farrell poked his head in the door. "New body. The squad just called. Under some bushes in Lafayette Park."

  "¿Qué es esto?" said Mendoza. He followed the others out; Hackett was just ripping a triplicate form from his typewriter. "So come on, Art—no rest for the wicked."

  * * *

  Higgins had done what there was to be done on Whalen. He typed up a statement from the answers they'd heard from Daniel, and took it up to the house on Portia Street. Daniel Whalen signed it, and gave him a more detailed description of the missing items.

  "It wouldn't be any use your getting me to look at photographs," he said baldly to Higgins' suggestion. "I only saw them for a flash. We always keep the kitchen door closed, and I had no idea anything had happened—after Dave went out there—until I heard them run down the hall. I was here in the living room—I can't maneuver this thing very fast—and by the time I got to the hall door, they were just coming out of Dave's bedroom. All I can say is, they were both Negro, and pretty black, and young."

  "I see." Higgins ruminated. There weren't many areas now where some Negroes didn't live, if there were still the solid black areas very much in existence. He didn't think, however, that there were many, if any, right around here. He asked Daniel.

  "You forget, I don't get out and around, Sergeant," said Daniel bitterly. "But no, I don't think there are any right around here, for eight or ten blocks anyway. Dave and I had discussed moving—the crime rate up—but that's all over, and we'd never had any trouble, this is a quiet street. This was our old home, Father bought this house in nineteen thirty-nine when I was still in high school. We were comfortable, it was home. The bastards!" he cried suddenly, slamming one hand down on the arm of the wheelchair. "The bastards!" The cat Merlin jumped in his basket, startled at the sudden loud voice, and then sat up pretending not to have noticed, and yawned pinkly.

  Higgins muttered awkward sympathy. There wasn't much anyone could say to him. He wondered how Daniel could manage about the funeral. The invalid sank back in renewed apathy after the little outburst, shutting his eyes. After a moment he said, "No—we've had quite a few Orientals moving in around here, but they seem to be mostly quiet, decent people."

  "Yes," said Higgins, and suddenly for no particular reason thought of the Cambodian family who had handed Palliser the one link that had uncovered Larry Hoffman as Walt Robsen's killer, last August. Larry Hoffman's final court hearing was coming up on Tuesday; they'd have to cover it. None of them would much enjoy seeing Cathy Robsen, or Sergeant Bill Hoffman and his wife Muriel, again.

  "Mrs. Meeker's been very kind," said Daniel, "bringing in food. But I must see about getting in touch with that service—meals on wheels, isn't it? I can't depend on—"

  There probably wasn't a chance that a rumor of the Whalens having hidden cash in the house had called down the attack, when the killers hadn't come from the immediate neighborhood. And that crude a break-in was too common to be dignified with the name of modus operandi. But the routine sometimes rang bells. He went back to headquarters and spent some time down in R. and I., where these days they had computers. He turned
up three names, with addresses attached, which were not too near the Portia Street house but not miles away either: names of Negro males with records of the crude break-ins. Darren Scott, Rosemont Avenue: two years ago he'd broken in the back door of a house in Hollywood and offered violence to the widow who lived there, while stealing cash and jewelry. He'd been eighteen then, and had been handed six months' probation. Randolph Wiggett, Park Street: eighteen months ago he'd been caught by a hefty householder, ransacking an apartment after breaking in the back door. It had been his third felony arrest as an adult, and at one time that could have earned him a life sentence; these days, what he'd drawn was a one-to-three. He might be still inside. Dwight Early, Normal Avenue: six months ago he'd broken in a window in a house in Atwater, and been caught up to when a pawnbroker recognized stolen goods; it was his first arrest and he'd been given six months' probation.

  Higgins went up to the office and found it deserted. He called Welfare and Rehabilitation on Wiggett and learned without surprise that he'd been paroled after six months in. He called the lab and asked if they'd got anything from the Portia Street place. He was reminded that they had other things on hand but eventually would get to processing what prints had been lifted. He smoked a cigarette, staring into space, and got up reluctantly. There was half a day's legwork ahead of him and it would have been nice to have some company on it.

  "Where's the boss?" he asked Farrell.

  "Oh, he and Art went out to look at a body," said Farrell, hardly looking up from his Herald.

  Higgins went out and discovered that it was starting to rain again.

  * * *

  Mendoza stopped two feet away from the new body and said, "¡Oye! Now just where did this come from?"

  "Probably just another O.D.—or D.T.'s," said Hackett after a cursory glance; he was thinking about the house in Highland Park. Seventy thousand was all very well, but well under the inflated value. That place in the next block had gone for eighty-five, he knew. Still, a bird in the hand—