Mark of Murder

Dell Shannon
1964

. . . their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands. Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they know not . . .
----Isaiah 59:6-8

ONE

"Such a blessing," said Alison, "to be able to walk right off, with never a minute's worry. Máiri's such a dear, and so reliable. Isn't it a beautiful day!" She sat up in her deck chair and conscientiously inhaled several deep breaths of the sparkling sea air.

Mendoza grunted. "All the same, you're worrying because there wasn't a card or letter at Norfolk."

"I'm not really," said Alison. "She probably wasn't sure of catching us, and will write direct to the hotel in Bermuda."

Mendoza grunted again.

"For goodness' sake, look at the pretty ocean or--You're supposed to be enjoying yourself, on vacation."

"I know, I know," said Mendoza. He sat up and looked at the calm blue Atlantic, bright in the sun of early July, said perfunctorily, "Qué bello," and leaned back again. "I wish the damn boat would go faster. Maybe I can get a Times in Bermuda."

"And the first vacation you've had in years," Alison went on. "From what I can make out, whenever you have taken a few days, you've found some excuse to go back and hang around the office, and never got a proper vacation at all. It's ridiculous--"

Mendoza turned lazily and looked at her, from her wind-blown gleaming red head to her frivolous green linen sandals, which matched her sleeveless linen dress, which in turn displayed her very satisfactory figure.

"Things come up," he said. "You finally managed to drag me away, querida."

"Well, you might enjoy it a little more, that's all," said Alison.

"I am, I am." Mendoza sat up and looked at a man walking briskly past down the deck. "Well, fancy that," he said.

"What?"

"That fellow looked like Benny Metzer. We had the word he'd gone to working the liners since we chased him out of town the last time. I think I'll just--"

"You'll stay right where you are," said Alison firmly, "and enjoy the nice sea breeze--. I swear you're more married to your job than you are to me." She looked at him with her head cocked. "What's wrong, Luis? You did enjoy New York, and the first night and all. But ever since we've been on this ship you've been--fidgety. It can't be seasickness, you'd have succumbed by now."

"Damn it," said Mendoza, "it's just--three weeks. Out of touch. I wonder whether Art got anywhere on that body in the hotel. It looked damned anonymous. Damn it, I've just got the feeling I shouldn't be here, there's something going on that--”

"¡Qué disparate!" said Alison, and laughed. "And I know why, too. It's not that you're psychic, it's just that you're firmly convinced the L.A.P.D. can't operate efficiently without you there in the homicide office at headquarters. Egotist!"

Unwillingly he grinned. "And maybe you're right. But --" He stood up; he still felt undressed in the casual gray slacks and open-necked sports shirt; he felt uncomfortable without tie or jacket. "I'm going to take a walk," he said. "The way they feed you on these ships . . ." He didn't much care for the consciously superior service of the stewards and waiters either, as too, too British as this cruise liner. And he definitely didn't like--"Oh, my God," he said, looking up the deck, "I'm off indeed, here they come again. Those Kitcheners."

Alison giggled. "You've no idea how funny it is, watching you evade Evadne."

Mendoza said shortly that Kitchener ought to beat her, and fled up the deck; Alison was left to withstand the Kitcheners' onslaught. Evadne Kitchener had attached herself and her paunchy little husband to the Mendozas the first day out; professing to recognize Mendoza as a certain well-known actor incognito, she--as Alison put it--arched at him simperingly while her husband told Alison how vivacious dear Evadne was.

"Your charming husband not with you?" she called gaily now. "How too disappointing! I do trust he isn't straying toward that rather vulgar little blonde at your table. I must say, I thought--"

"He's brooding," said Alison gravely, "on all the murderers he might be arresting, instead of wasting time like this."

Evadne gave a little scream of mirth. "You will keep up your little joke! Calling himself a policeman indeed, when we both know who the dear man really--but we won't give you away, my dear. So thrilling--"

Mendoza paced moodily down the deck, ignoring the bright sun on the beautifully calm sea. He wondered what Art was getting on that corpse. If anything. And there'd been that deliberate wrecking of the S.P. Daylight too. Homicide got the train wrecks. The engineer being quick-witted, it hadn't been a bad one, nobody killed; but that switch had been thrown deliberately, and they'd have to find out who had done it. There'd been a couple of prints, but not in Records.

Well, damn it, Alison was probably quite right. Other men went off on vacation and the force struggled along without them. But ever since he'd been on this damn cruise liner he'd had the irrational feeling, the nervous feeling, that he hadn't any business to be heading leisurely for Bermuda and the luxury hotel. That he was needed in the office, that something big was happening and they needed him. Damn fool, he said to himself now, standing at the rail and staring back in the general direction of New York. Just, probably, because he'd never been away from the job this long before, in all the twenty-two years he'd been on the L.A. force.

He'd enjoyed a week or so of the vacation, and so had Alison--when she wasn't worrying about the twins, though she wouldn't admit it. Which was silly too, because that treasure Mrs. MacTaggart was completely reliable.

But suddenly now he felt--well, admit it, he thought ruefully, he felt homesick. For his own office, where he ought to be, in respectable city clothes, going over the latest cases with Hackett and his other sergeants, deploying men, making decisions.

There hadn't been much to get hold of, he thought, on that bloodily slashed corpse in the Third Street hotel room. The doctor had said, a distinctive knife, but . . .

He wondered how it had turned out. The damn New York papers didn't print news from anywhere west of the Hudson, unless it concerned a national catastrophe. They'd be in Bermuda tomorrow. Maybe Art had found time to write him a few lines. Maybe he could get an L.A. Times somewhere. Didn't most resorts stock papers from all over? Of course it was British territory ....

And, my God, there were the Kitcheners and Alison bearing down on him. Undoubtedly--he could see the words forming on Evadne's mauve-painted lips--to carry him off for pre-lunch cocktails. Foreseeing the present impossibility of detaching Alison without downright rudeness, Mendoza left her to her fate and, pretending he hadn't seen them, dived down the nearest companionway. He found himself at the door of one of the plush saloons and dodged in.

Almost at once he began to feel a little happier. Various groups, mostly of men, were sitting over cards here; in one corner he saw the man who looked like Benny Metzer just sitting down with four other men. He sauntered in that direction. That flat back to the man's head, and the left shoulder carried higher, and the lobeless ears . . .

It was Benny, all right. Dressed to kill in expensive sports clothes. Mendoza stood a little way off and watched with professional admiration as Benny, chatting genially with his companions, deftly got the innocent deck off the table and substituted his own--probably a deck of concave strippers. As another man cut the cards, Mendoza walked up and slapped Benny on the back.

"Well, fancy running into you, old pal, old pal!" he said heartily. "Introduce me round, friend, and invite me to sit in, won't you? I'm just in the mood for a few hands of draw!"

Benny showed his teeth like a cornered rat, recognizing him with starting eyes, an arm of the law that ought to have been thirty-five hundred miles away. "I--why, sure, old pal," he said between his teeth. "I--gennelmen, like you to meet--"

A prosperous--looking middle-aged man in too gay sports clothes said that any friend of Mr. Johnson's was welcome. Mendoza said that was fine, leaned over Benny's shoulder and as he added, "Haven't run across this old pal in many a year," rescued the honest deck from Benny's specially tailored coattail pocket. Benny felt it go and wriggled in helpless rage. Mendoza drew up another chair, sat down at the table, and casually swept the doctored deck into his left hand. "New deal, gentlemen--first cut?" He laid the honest deck out, neatly stacked, before his neighbor, and smiled at Benny. The others looked as if they could afford to lose a little, and he'd enjoy taking some of Benny's ill-gotten gains.

It was better than walking the deck, feeling homesick for the homicide office and his real job. All the same, better tell the captain--and the Bermuda police--about Benny. Mendoza sighed. Duty. He never could get worked up about the Bennys, himself. Largely harmless; and any fool who sat down to play cards with a stranger was asking for it.

He looked at a fair-to-middling hand and wondered what was going on right now back home, at the office.

* * *

Hackett came into the office, set a cardboard carton on Sergeant Lake's desk, and said, "Get that up to the lab pronto, will you? God, I wish Luis hadn't gone gallivanting off. He might have one of his famous hunches on this one.”

Lake looked at him and said, "Don't tell me--"

"That's right," said Hackett. "Looks like the same boy. That's four in ten days. The press boys've got him named now, in the afternoon editions. The Slasher. City terrified, et cetera. It looks like the same knife, on this new one. See what Bainbridge says, but it looks the same to me."

"I'll be damned," said Lake. "Another woman?"

Hackett shook his head, looking a little sick. "Fourteen-year-old Mexican boy. Everybody says, a good boy. On his way home from a Boy Scout meeting at the Y.M.C.A.”

"Oh, my God," said Lake, "what a thing. And another one just came in.”

"Oh, damn," said Hackett. By what they had on this Slasher--damn fool name to hang on him--that was going to be a tough one, a lot of plodding routine, using a lot of men. "What?"

Lake shuffled papers on his desk. "Call just came in, from the squad car. I was going to pass it to Palliser, he's the only one in, but-- Man found dead in his office. A doctor, I think. Shot. They've just found him. Address over on Wilshire."

Hackett wrote it down. "You sent a doctor and so on?"

"Just finished that when you came in. Bainbridge, and Marx and Horder to do the printing, and Scarne."

"O.K." Hackett looked into the communal sergeants' office, which was occupied solely by Palliser at the moment. Palliser's desk was littered with papers and he was reading one, his long dark face looking gloomy. "Take a little break," invited Hackett. "Come look at another corpse with me. I may have to turn it over to you, so you'd better be in from the start."

Palliser didn't object. "We'll never get anywhere on that train wrecking," he predicted as they walked toward the elevators. "Even when we've got prints off the switch."

"Doesn't look promising? Where've you been looking, in general?”

"Everywhere there is to look," said Palliser morosely. "We've collected about a hundred and fifty prints from possible suspects, but none's matched up and all the possibles are just that--men fired by the S.P. or some other local railroad. Nothing really says--"

But it would be nice, thought Hackett, to drop on that X. That could have been one hell of a train wreck ....Whoever had thrown that switch, just as the Daylight was past the Sun Valley intersection, had pretty evidently intended the train--traveling at a moderate clip there as its next stop wasn't until Glendale--to enter a short siding and plow into the rear of a chemical factory nearby. Owing to the quick eye of the engineer, who had spotted the switch standing wrong before they reached it and thrown on the brakes at once, the train had managed to stop before the end of the siding--four cars jack-knifed, the engine derailed, minor injuries. Not a major wreck, as had been intended.

Somebody who had once worked for a railroad and knew how to operate a switch . . . And the hell of it was, of course, he'd been right there on the scene, had to be, because the switch had been used twenty minutes before for a freight dropping off a few cars there. The signalman hadn't seen a thing; and in the confusion afterward . . .

They'd been plodding through the local railroads' records on past employees, concentrating on the Southern Pacific, but nothing said he was among those. He might just be somebody who liked to see train wrecks.

"You might know," said Hackett, "we'd get handed another one. July, after all. The rate always goes up in summer." Which, oddly enough, was true of other crimes as well as homicide.

The new one was at an address on Wilshire, close in downtown, just the other side of the Harbor Freeway. When they got there, in Hackett's car, they saw a rather elegant small building, new-looking, of stucco and synthetic decorative stone. The stucco was painted gray and the trim white. There was a sign swinging from a fancy wrought-iron post at the sidewalk: Dr. Francis Nestor, Doctor of Chiropractic, it announced.

A squad car sat in front of the building, and Hackett recognized Dr. Bainbridge's old Chevy.

The white door was open; they went in. The waiting room was well furnished in very modern style: gray carpet, low turquoise sectional, black plastic chairs, one of those modern paintings that to Hackett looked like the product of a kindergarten.

A woman sat on the sectional; she looked dazed and a little frightened. "But it just doesn't seem possible," she was saying, shaking her head. "Frank, dead. All of a sudden, like this."

The big uniformed man standing beside her came over to Hackett, who introduced himself and Palliser. "Glad to have you here, sir, I'm Bronson--I ought to be getting back on tour. That's the wife, by the way. See, what happened is, far as I can make it out, this guy--the chiropractor--had an evening appointment last night. He should've been in by at least midnight, only he wasn't. Naturally, I suppose, Mrs. Nestor sat up worrying, but maybe he used to step out on her once in a while, and she thought--well, anyway, it wasn't until about an hour ago she decided to do something about it and came down to his office. Found the front door locked, went round to the side, and saw that door'd been forced open--lock broken. She was afraid to go in alone, so she called in and I got chased over. And there he is, shot--and no gun, so I--"

"Well," said Hackett. "That about it? Wait a minute and show me that door, will you?" He went over to the woman. "Mrs. Nestor?"

She looked up at him. "Yes."

"We're from headquarters. I'll want to ask you a few questions, but not right now. Will you stay here or would you rather go home?"

"Oh," she said. "Of course. No, that's all right, I'll wait. It just doesn't seem possible, that's all. So sudden."

She was a woman in her early thirties, he judged, and ordinary-looking: not very attractive, what another woman might call mousy. Her hair was dun-colored, fluffed out around her thin sallow face in a too youthful style; she didn't have on much make-up, and she wore a plain, neat blue cotton dress, no stockings, a pair of saddle shoes with white ankle socks. Interestingly, she didn't seem to have been crying.

The patrolman led him out the single door at the rear of the room, to a short cross hall with several doors.

"Down here, sir." The second outside entrance was on the right side of the building. The door had been forced: crudely forced, with something like a tire iron or, of course, a jemmy. This building sat between two much larger ones; on this side its nearest neighbor, across a small parking lot, was a three-story office building. Without much doubt, nobody there at night. Hackett sighed, said, "O.K., I guess you might as well get back on tour."

He went down to the other end of the hall, past two open-doored examination rooms, to the scene of activity. This was a private office; there was a glass-topped walnut desk, a plastic-upholstered swivel chair behind it, a glass-fronted bookcase, a couple of other chairs. The floor was marble-patterned vinyl. This building, and the rooms they had seen, looked like class: Dr. Nestor had evidently been doing very well indeed with his practice.

"What does it look like?" he asked. In that confined space, several men were having difficulty avoiding each other or disturbing possible evidence as they went about their jobs. Dr. Bainbridge was squatting over the body.

Scarne was taking flash shots. Marx was printing the top of the desk, and Horder was printing the flat slab door. Bainbridge glanced up testily. "I've just got here. You can see he's been shot. Probably a small caliber, and until I've looked inside and so on I'll say roughly between-- oh, call it twelve and sixteen hours."

Hackett looked at his watch. "Putting it between eight and midnight last night." He bent and looked at the corpse.

Frank Nestor had been, probably, around thirty--five. Hackett's first thought was that, even dead, he looked an unlikely husband for the plain sallow woman out there in the waiting room. You could see that Nestor had been a very good-looking man, the type you could call a ladies' man. Not very big, middle size, but he had lean, handsome, regular features, with a hairline dark mustache and curly dark hair. And he was dressed to the nines, in beige flannel slacks, an expensive brown sports jacket, white shirt, and a beige silk tie with brown horse heads on it; that was neatly confined by a gold tie clasp set with a piece of carved jade. He was lying on his back directly in front of the desk, almost parallel to its length. One arm, the left, was flung out and twisted so that the back of the hand was uppermost; there was a heavy gold ring set with a black star sapphire on the little finger. The other arm was across the chest, and that hand was clenched. He'd been shot once in the forehead, very neatly. As Bainbridge said, probably a small caliber; there was very little mess.

Marx looked up and said, "It looks kind of ordinary, Sergeant. A break-in, and whoever it was didn't expect to find him here. There's a steel cashbox--the wife says he kept cash in it anyway--there."

"I see," said Hackett. The steel box, a smallish one about eight inches long, had evidently been kept in the left-hand top drawer of the desk; that drawer stood open, and the box was lying on its side a couple of feet away from the body. Its lid was open; a key was still in the lock, suspended from a ring that held others.

"His car's parked out there in the lot," Marx offered further.

That, of course, was just what it looked like: a simple break-in. The burglar running into Nestor, using his gun. Riffling the place, using Nestor's keys, and running. Only, equally of course, you had to look at all the possibilities. It could also have been set up to look like that.

Nestor the good-looking sporty type. Ladies' man? His clothes and this office spelled Success, spelled Prosperity. That unglamorous female in the waiting room didn‘t look like the kind of woman Nestor would have married. Conceivably, when they came to look, they'd find that he had indeed stepped out on her. Maybe she'd been jealous enough to . . . Or maybe somebody's husband had been jealous enough to . . . You never knew.

"Well," he said. "John, suppose you have a look through the desk and so on, and I'll ask Mrs. Nestor a few questions."

TWO

"Are you feeling well enough to answer a couple of questions, Mrs. Nestor?" Hackett sat down facing her, got out his notebook.

"Oh yes," she said obediently. "Of course it's been quite a shock, coming so suddenly. I can't realize it yet."

Her eyes were a greeny brown, oddly flat and dull. But she hadn't, he thought, done any crying. Of course that didn't say anything: some people didn't cry easily.

"Your husband seems to have been doing very well here."

She looked around the waiting room. "Oh yes, he was, I think. People liked him, I suppose. He put up such a good appearance, and made people like him. He'd always said he knew he'd be a success at it, he'd wanted to be a doctor--a real medical doctor, I mean--but of course this was a shorter course and not so expensive. Not but what it cost quite a bit at that, it's a four-year course now."

"How long had he been in practice?"

"Oh, only a little over three years."

Hackett, asking these questions he didn't really care about, to get her talking, was surprised. This office must have cost something to rent. "How long had he been here, in this office?"

"Oh, he started out here. He had--it was lucky--a legacy about then, and he said it was better to invest it in the office, because a good front always impressed people."

"I see. Well, he had an appointment last evening?"

She nodded. She spoke flatly, emotionlessly. "He'd do that for people who couldn't get in during the day. I think it was for eight o'clock."

"Did he tell you what time to expect him home?"

"No."

"It seems you didn't get really worried until this morning," said Hackett. "Enough to--investigate. I'm sorry to ask you, Mrs. Nestor, but was that because he had stayed away overnight--before?”

She looked at him thoughtfully, as if really seeing him for the first time; her expression didn't change at all. She dabbed at her pale lips with a wadded-up handkerchief and after a moment said deliberately, "I expect I'd better tell you why. It's not very pleasant, but I can see you'd have to know. I only hope it doesn't all have to come out in the papers. That wouldn't be very nice." She spoke like a woman of some education; but he thought that, whatever emotions she'd once had, they'd been driven out of her, or wasted away, somehow, for some time. "Yes, I'm sorry to have to say it, but he had stayed away like that before, without telling me."

"I see. Do you know of any other woman in his life?"

Hackett felt like apologizing for the cliché, but how else would you put it?

"I wouldn't know any names," she said. "I didn't know many of Frank's friends. Not any more. I expect I'd better say how it was, or you'll think that's awfully queer. You see, my father had quite a lot of money, and that was why Frank married me. I didn't realize that until Father died and we found he'd lost all the money some way--I never understood exactly how. Frank was--very angry about that. I expect he'd have left me then, but he'd got used to me. And I kept a nice place for him, a comfortable home, and good meals and so on. And of course as long as he had a wife no other woman could catch up to him, if you see what I mean. It was convenient for him. And then, of course, there was Mr. Marlowe.”

"Who is Mr. Marlowe?”

She dabbed at her lips again. "He was a friend of my father's. When--before Frank was doing so well, he'd drop around sometimes and give me little presents--to see we had enough to eat, at least." No trace of bitterness in her tone. "And he lent Frank the money for the chiropractic course. Of course Frank paid him back."

"l see. Your husband didn't keep any regular routine, about coming home?"

"Oh, you mustn't think we ever quarreled," she said. "It was just sort of understood. It wasn't like that--he was home to dinner most nights, or he'd call if he wasn't going to be. A few nights a week he'd be out somewhere, and sometimes--as I say--he wouldn't come home at all, but then he'd usually go straight to his office, from--wherever he'd been. He kept a razor and clean shirts there, I think."

"I see. Well now, why did you begin to get alarmed, Mrs. Nestor?" You ran into all sorts of things on this job, but you never got beyond surprise at the behavior of human people, the ways they lived and the compromises they made with life. That good-looking corpse in there . . . This woman had been alive once. Or had she? Probably--she'd never have been very pretty--she'd been wildly in love with him, and it had broken her when she found how he felt.

"Oh well, when I found he hadn't come to the office I did wonder. He was always prompt about that, because he really did like money, you see. And when Miss Corliss called and said he wasn't there--"

"Miss Corliss."

"She's his office nurse. She phoned me to ask why he wasn't there. She hadn't a key to the office, you see, and of course the front door was locked. Well, of course, as you can understand, I didn't care to have her know I didn't know where Frank was. I do hope all this won't have to come out in the papers.” Her flat, emotionless voice was beginning to raise the hairs on Hackett's neck. "So I told her he wasn't feeling well and wouldn't be in, she might as well go home. But it did seem peculiar, because it wasn't like him. So I came straight here--"

"Why, Mrs. Nestor? Apparently he wasn't here, you knew that."

"I knew that, of course. The thought that just crossed my mind was that he had possibly decided to leave me, or just gone away somewhere on a little trip, and he might have left a note here. I didn't know, but it was possible. But when I saw his car in the parking lot at the side, of course it looked even odder, and then I saw that the side door had been forced. I didn't like to go in alone. I thought--well, I don't quite know what I thought, but I walked up to the drugstore on the corner and called the police."

Hackett looked at her reflectively. That, he thought, was quite a story. From quite a female. Her dull eyes were unreadable. Had she still loved him enough to feel jealousy? Had she got to hating him enough to kill him? A very peculiar ménage that had been, to say the least. And did that ring quite true, about why she'd come to the office? Not a very natural thing to do, or was it? He thought he'd ask her to let the lab give her a cordite test, though that wasn't always conclusive.

"Were you at home all last evening?" he asked. "Alone?"

"Oh yes." She gave the address readily: Kenmore Avenue. "Frank left after dinner, about seven-thirty. I watched TV a little while, and did some mending, and then I realized he probably wouldn't be in until late, so I went to bed. That was about ten-thirty. It wasn't until this morning that I realized he hadn't come home at all."

Horne, thought Hackett. My God. "Do you have separate rooms?"

"Oh no, but, you see, I went to sleep."

He looked at her again. It was early to come to any conclusions; he wasn't sure exactly how he felt about her story. He said, "May I have your full name, please?"

"Andrea Lilian Nestor. My maiden name was Wayne."

He thanked her. "I think that's all I'll ask of you right now, Mrs. Nestor. We'll be in touch with you. I suppose you'd like to go home. Have you a car, or--"

"Oh no," she said. "I don't drive."

"I'll have a car come and pick you up."

"That's very kind of you," she said, sounding surprised. "I don't mind the bus. Could you tell me--I expect you'll want to do an autopsy, but should I make any arrangements?"

"For the--" That stopped him, the flatly practical question. He said, "Not until we officially release the body."

"Oh. I see. Well, thank you. I think," said Andrea Nestor meditatively, "I'll have him cremated?

Hackett went back to the private office down the hall. He felt shaken. He asked Marx if the phone had been printed; it had, and he called in for a car to take Mrs. Nestor home. He thought now, before he swallowed the obvious break-in and impersonal assault, he'd take a long hard look at Andrea Nestor and at Frank Nestor's social life.

And there was that Slasher, roaming around loose. Four in ten days. God. He wished Luis was home. He said to Palliser, "Picked up anything?"

"Not much. His files look a little interesting."

"Oh? How?"

"Well, this all looks very much in the money, doesn't it?" Palliser gestured round the room. "But, according to his files, he didn't really have many regular patients. Maybe I'm no judge, but I'd say a setup like this should indicate quite a large practice--maybe, what, at least eighty, a hundred, more regular patients. Files on just thirty-six, and only about twenty of those seem, by the appointment book, to have been coming at all regularly. He charged six bucks an office visit."

"You don't say," said Hackett.

"All right to take it away?" The ambulance had arrived; a couple of interns were looking in the door. Bainbridge had already left.

Hackett glanced down at the body and said absently, "Yes," and then, "Wait a minute." He squatted down beside it. The right hand, closed, lay across the chest; he lifted it, turned it over. There was something clutched between finger and thumb; with some difficulty he pried loose the dead man's grip. "Now this I don't believe," he said. "The clue straight out of Edgar Wallace."

Palliser bent to look, and said he'd be damned.

It was a button. A very ordinary-looking button, very dark gray or black, with four little holes, and a tiny strand of thread still caught in one. A button about half an inch in diameter.

Palliser straightened up. "Are we supposed to read it that he made a grab at the killer and got this instead of the gun? Talk about too good to be true--"

"Well, it could happen," said Hackett. "Just because it looks obvious-- You know as well as I do, it's usually just what it looks like.”

"Sure," said Palliser. "So it is. You want to take his files along?"

"I'll see them later, here." Hackett looked at his watch, said to the interns. "O.K., he's all yours," and looked round the office. Nothing much more to do here right now. Irrelevantly he thought of Roberto Reyes. Such a good boy. The fine marks at school. The priest talking about God's will.

In Hackett's book, the ones like the Slasher hadn't one damn thing to do with God's will.

Right now, he thought, his money would go--tentatively--on Andrea Nestor, as the X who had taken Frank Nestor off. Or maybe a jealous husband. Some work to do on it. But the hell of a lot more to do on the Slasher--as yet so very damned anonymous.

There was also the train wreck.

He said to Palliser, "Come on, let's go have lunch. I'll be concentrating on this thing for a while, and we'll let Bert or somebody take over the routine on that Daylight thing. Agree with you, probably come up with nothing definite in the end. But this Slasher--damn it, who made up that one, I wonder?--we'll be working but damn hard. You haven't seen all the statements--"

"No, I've really just seen the Times. You want me to take over the routine on that?"

"I don't know yet," said Hackett. "Look, let's drop by the office and get those statements, go up to Federico's, OK.? You'd better be briefed, just in case." Yes, this Nestor business looked like being tricky, but on the other hand the press was howling about the Slasher--and that was indeed quite a thing. Four in ten days .... The berserk killer, the lunatic killer, who killed for little or no reason? Looked like that. And as yet practically nothing on him.

He wished Luis were here. He might just have one of his hunches about the Slasher. Which was wishful thinking, because you didn't get anywhere on one like that with
irrational hunches. If you got anywhere it was by the patient plodding routine.

That woman. I think I'll have him cremated.

Let Palliser take over the routine on the Slasher? That I was getting the hell of a lot of publicity, the sooner they cleared it up the better. If they didn't yet have City Terrified of Random Slasher, they soon would have, way the press boys were carrying on ....

* * *

He drank sugarless coffee glumly and watched Palliser reading the statements.

The first one had been the Skid Row bum, found in a cheap room in a shabby hotel on Third Street. They didn't even know his last name; a bartender down on the Row had identified him as "a guy named Mike," familiar down there, a wino. He'd been savagely knifed, and the body slashed and mutilated after he was dead. The desk clerk couldn't give anything but a very vague description of the man who had rented the room. "They come 'n' go, you know," he said nervously. The scrawled signature in the register was almost illegible; it might be Fred Rankin or Frank Tomkin or in fact anything you could make of it. The clerk did say he hadn't any luggage. Naturally, the clerk was pressed, as were the people on that floor. Nobody was at all helpful; the man just hadn't been noticed, and he'd taken the room only twelve hours before. Naturally, too, he hadn't been back.

That was the situation when they found Florence Dahl. Or rather when the woman in the next room found her and made enough noise to bring the nearest traffic cop on the run. They knew most of what there was to know about Florence--she had a string of arrests and fines for soliciting and resorting--but that wasn't any help in finding who'd killed her. Florence had gone downhill in twenty years at the game and was taking any customers she could get. She'd been living in a sleazy rooming house on Grand Avenue, and a couple of women, the same types as Florence, who had rooms on the same floor, had told go them a little. From what they'd heard. Some man Florence had brought home that night, shouting and swearing something awful there in her room. Couldn't remember anything specific he'd shouted, except that one woman insisted he'd kept saying, "Every ham's gaining on me," which hardly made sense however you interpreted it. That had been about nine o'clock; only those two women and the landlady home, besides Florence. It hadn't gone on very long, or probably in due course the landlady--tolerant though she was--would at least have gone up and banged on the door. He'd stopped shouting, and maybe ten minutes later they'd heard the door of Florence's room slam, and heard him go downstairs and out.

None of them had laid eyes on him, of course.

And that was when he started to look more important, because Dr. Bainbridge and the lab had linked those two murders. On account of the knife, and the M.O. Florence too had been stabbed, slashed, and mutilated. "It looks like a very unusual knife," said Bainbridge. "From what we can figure out, measuring the wounds and so on, about half the edge is serrated-like a bread knife, you know. It's not a standard size--I don't think it's a commercially made knife, though that's just a guess. The blade's about eleven inches long, give or take half an inch, and unusually wide--about two and a half inches."

"Quite a snickersnee," said Palliser now, reading statements over coffee.

Hackett agreed glumly. In deference to his diet he'd ordered only a large salad and coffee, and was still hungry.

He tried not to imagine what Angel had had for lunch. They were still taking statements on Florence when the body of Theodore Simms was found in an alley on Flower Street, close in to downtown. All his identification left on him, but his mother said he'd have had a little over five dollars in his wallet, and that was missing. Simms had just lost his job as wholesale salesman for a small local firm--no fault of his, the company had been laying off,  having hit a slump--and was looking for another. He was Number Three all right, treated just like the first two--stabbed, slashed, and mutilated savagely.

Several people vaguely identified him as having been in a small bar on Flower Street about nine o'clock that night. The bartender was more definite; he said Simms had had two beers, and that the man sitting next to him had started talking to him. Said Simms hadn't done much of the talking, and he hadn't heard anything of what the other man said himself, but they'd left together. What had the second man looked like? "Hell, sort of ordinary, I guess. I was busy, I just noticed out o' the tail of my eye, you know? About medium height, I guess, not very fat or very thin--hell, I wouldn't want to guess how old. Only thing I do remember, he had two straight whiskies and he paid me with a silver dollar and two dimes."

End of the line on Simms. That alley would be pretty dark at night.

By then Hackett had reached the conclusion that this was a bad one, the kind that killed on impulse for no reason, or a lunatic reason. Fourteen-year-old Roberto Reyes just confirmed that.

Roberto's mother had called in last night, when he failed to come home after the Boy Scout meeting at the Y.M.C.A. "Always he is so good, to come straight home, and it is only the few blocks he has to walk. ¡Dios me libre! God forbid it, but I think of the accident--he knows to be careful, but children--"

But they hadn't found Roberto until the middle of this morning. A couple of kids, taking a short cut through another alley facing on Second Street, had found Roberto. Number Four.

Eventually, with the priest soothing Mama's hysterics and the other kids standing around crying, Hackett had got a few pertinent facts out of Manuel Reyes. The boy was always prompt about coming home; he wasn't supposed to be out late. The meeting would have been over about eight o'clock, and the Y.M.C.A. was only four blocks away from the Reyes home on Witmer Street. Yes, Roberto would have walked down Second Street on his way home. But he would not have talked to a stranger, gone anywhere with a stranger .... Well, perhaps, if some person had asked him for directions, something like that--he was a very polite boy, he would always want to be helpful. "¡Ah, qué atrocidad! ¿Para qué? That this should happen to us--such a good boy always, such line marks at school--"

"Se combrende," Hackett had said gently. "Lo siento en la alma. We'll find whoever did it, Mr. Reyes, and he'll be punished."

Which would mean a lot to Roberto, wouldn't it? he thought. And it was something to work, with practically no evidence on the killer. And no tie-up to any of the victims.

"A kid," said Palliser now. "No reason for it--you figure he just runs amok all of a sudden? And how the hell--"

"It's the only way you can figure it," said Hackett. "Come on, let's get back. And the hell of it is, no make on him at all. That damn bar so dark, nobody could say even what color he was. Though I suppose that desk clerk would have noticed whether he-- Yes, the ones like Florence are used to funny customers, so nobody investigated right away. And Simms-- Well, you can see there's practically no evidence on it, but we've got to work it. Because one like that--maybe those aren't the first people he's used that knife on, and they sure as hell won't be the last, unless we catch up to him."

"So, you have any ideas where to start looking?" asked Palliser.

"Some," said Hackett tersely. "For one thing, these four kills all happened inside a fairly small area--all downtown. Roughly inside about a twelve-block square. All right. We know that our Slasher--damn it, might as well call him that--once took a hotel room, and in that area. At least it's practically certain that the man who rented that room is the one who left the body in it. The fellow called Mike would probably go anywhere with anybody who promised him a drink, ¿cómo no? Anybody could get taken to Florence's room. The indication seems to be, on Simms, that this fellow got talking to him at the bar, for some reason followed him out. And we can't guess on the Reyes boy, but I want to talk to some of the other kids at that meeting, find out if any of them took the same direction. Or I did want to. Now, with this Nestor thing in our laps, I think I'll let you do that. See the kids. And we're also going to set every man we've got free looking at every hotel inside that area, for a signature to match up to the one in that hotel register. We've got photographs of it. Have some more prints made up if you need them, and send out some men."

"Hell of a job," said Palliser. "But, of course, the first thing to try, I see that. You're going to work the Nestor killing?"

"I think I'll go back and poke around his office some," said Hackett thoughtfully. "And it might be the obvious thing, just what it looks like, but on the other hand there are a couple of funny little things about it. And that woman-- Yes, you get on with that, I'll probably be back about three anyway to see if they got any interesting prints .... Everything always comes at once. I wish to God Luis was here .... "

THREE

When Hackett turned into the parking lot beside Nestor's office he saw a second car there beside Nestor's. Nestor's white Buick convertible was parked in the slot nearest the side door, and the other car had been parked in the next slot, so the Buick's length partly hid it. There was movement there at its rear; a woman straightened and began to walk around the car, saw him turning in, and paused.

Hackett pulled his Ford in on the other side of the Buick and got out. He ought to have left a man here, he thought, angry at himself. He went up to the woman, who had waited for him. "Detective Sergeant Hackett," he said curtly. "Are you one of Dr. Nestor's patients?" He wondered suddenly about that; if Nestor was doing so well, he'd scarcely have had a morning free of appointments, but nobody had shown up.

"Oh no, I'm his nurse. Margaret Corliss." She was a woman about forty, and not trying to look younger. A little too plump, and careless make-up; she had short, straight dark hair and dark eyes behind plastic-rimmed glasses. She was in a white uniform and sensible flat-heeled white shoes. "Mrs. Nestor called and told me the awful news, about Doctor. I couldn't believe it at first. It just doesn't seem possible. But then I thought I'd better come down and call all the patients who had appointments. I expected the police would be here, and it would be awkward, having patients coming in. It's dreadful--have you any idea who the burglar was yet?" She sounded sincere, anxious.

"Have you been in the building?" he asked.

"Oh no, I just got here."

"Well, come in with me now, please, I'd like to ask you a few questions? Just as well she was here. He took her down to the private office. She was quick, coming in, to notice the small stain on the floor, and recoiled slightly.

"Oh, is that where-- It's too awful! To think of Doctor--"

Palliser had left the top drawer of the one big file case open. Hackett drew it out and set it on the desk. "Sit down, Miss Corliss." He sat down himself in the desk chair and riffled through the cards in the file. They were stiff cards, lined, about eight by six; and most of them were blank. Only here and there, under different alphabet headings, was a card filled out. "Can you tell me who the doctor's appointment was with last night?"

"Why, I didn't know he had one," she said blankly. "Just a minute, I'll look in the appointment book." She found it on the desk and turned to the latest filled-in page.

"There's nothing listed. He certainly didn't mention one to me, and usually when he did make an evening appointment, of course he'd ask me to be here too. It's better policy, you see--especially if it's a woman."

"Wasn't that rather inconvenient? I should think--"

"Oh, it wasn't very often," she said. "Goodness, I just can't believe such an awful thing's happened. Mrs. Nestor said it must have been somebody breaking in to burglarize the place. It seems to me people are getting more lawless every day. The things you read--"

Well, it was possible, thought Hackett, that Nestor had used his office as a meeting place for his girl friend. Or girl friends.

"Would you say that Dr. Nestor had a good practice?"

"Oh yes, very good. He was a clever doctor, people liked him."

"I see. Would you come and look at these files, please? It doesn't look like a very large practice to me. Not big enough to start paying his office rent." He watched her; he saw her eyes move behind the glasses. She looked through the file drawer obediently.

"But, my goodness," she said, "he's taken a lot of the tile cards out. I wonder why? There should be ever so many more here--of course he had a lot more patients than just these!" She sounded concerned. And that "ever so many" gave her away: she'd been a long time away from England, but there remained the faintest trace of Cockney.

"Oh, is that so? Why do you suppose he'd do that, Miss Corliss?"

"Why, I've reely no idea, it does seem funny." That "reely" gave her away further. "Do you suppose the burglar could have done it? I mean, like vandals at the schools, you know--just out of mischief."

Hackett regarded her guileless expression. There was something about Margaret Corliss that smelled just faintly wrong to him, as this whole Nestor business did. And because, damn it, he'd had that Reyes kid and the Slasher on his mind this morning, he hadn't been giving full attention to this thing; he'd had no business to walk away and leave the office unguarded, with that side door open. They hadn't really looked around much here, just desultorily as yet. He hadn't, for instance, looked at the other file drawers .... Ought to have his head examined, doing a fool trick like that.

Had the woman been in the building? At the back of her car . . . He asked suddenly, "What were you putting away in your car trunk as I drove up, Miss Corliss?"

The brown eyes never flickered, only widened on him.

"In my trunk? Why, nothing, Sergeant. What would I be--I'd just driven up and parked, reely I had."

"Then what were you doing behind the car? I thought you seemed to be shutting the trunk lid."

"Well, reely, all the fuss about nothing," she said fretfully. "I should think you'd be better getting after the burglar, that's the important thing after all. I suppose you can see I drive an old car. The trunk lid's got a way of coming loose and flying up, and of course usually in the most awkward places, when I'm in the left-turn lane or something. It did that just as I came in, so of course I went round to shut it." She sounded a little annoyed now. "Ree1y, I don't know what you think I-- All I came down for was to call the patients and put them off."

"So you said," said Hackett. "It's now"----he looked at his watch--"getting on for two o'clock. It seems funny there weren't any patients scheduled earlier today, if he had such a large practice."

"But it's Wednesday," said Miss Corliss instantly.

"Doctor always took Wednesdays off. It's the patients for the rest of the week I want to--"

"I see." Something just a trifle wrong, but he couldn't put a finger on it. Not worth a damn. "Could you do your telephoning somewhere else? I'll be looking around in here. I saw a desk in a little cubicle off the waiting room--"

"Yes, of course, that's my desk. Certainly, Sergeant, and I surely do wish you good luck in finding out what awful fiend did it. just a dreadful thing, poor Doctor only thirty-six and doing so well. I expect it's all right to take the appointment book?" She picked it up casually. Well, Palliser had seen it. He got up after she'd gone out, and gently eased the door open; she'd closed it after her. The little cubicle adjoining the waiting room had only waist-high partitions on the sides that faced the waiting room and the hall. He heard a chair pulled out, shoved in, and after a short pause the little click as she lifted the phone .... "Mrs. Vandenburg? This is Dr. Nestor's nurse, Miss Corliss. I'm so sorry, but I'm afraid--"

On the level? Had she been putting something in the trunk? Been in here already and taken away--well, what? Something wrong about this setup. Those files--that was just damned silly, suggesting that a burglar . . . Why would Nestor have lifted a whole wad of file cards out? It made no sense. Mrs. Nestor wouldn't have had a chance, the patrolman had been with her. And whatever the Corliss woman might have taken out of here, if anything, it hadn't been the file cards (if any), because Palliser had already commented on that to Hackett. What the hell, he thought blankly.

He opened the other three drawers of the steel filing case. They were all bare.

What could she have wanted to lift, here? Echo answers what, thought Hackett irritably. Had she been putting something in the trunk? Go and look. Sure, without a warrant, and get hauled across the coals for it. Ten to one the trunk was locked anyway .... Funnily enough, his sister' s Dodge had a trunk lid like that. If she forgot to lock it, it was always flying up.

He walked down the hall, out the side door, and around Miss Corliss' eight-year-old Plymouth. The trunk was locked.

As he came back she was saying into the phone, "Mr. Weatherby? This is Dr. Nestor's nurse, Miss Corliss. I'm so sorry--" She had the phone on her lap, the appointment book on the desk before her.

Hackett sat down at Nestor's desk again. Nestor had been doing right well indeed, for a chiropractor in practice only three years. Of course, he gathered that some people swore by them, wouldn't go to an M.D. on a bet. But he seemed to remember that they were legally limited in certain ways, couldn't write prescriptions except for vitamins or give shots.

He opened the desk drawers. There wasn't much in any of them. A couple of prescription-form pads with Nestor's name and office address printed on them, a couple of ballpoint pens, in the top drawer. The next one down was filled with sample packages, mostly of different vitamins. In the bottom drawer he found a half-empty fifth of scotch, an expensive brand. The other drawers were empty. It looked as if Nestor hadn't used his desk much.

He got up and walked round the little office. The bookcase held mostly medical textbooks. But thrust carelessly on top of the books on the middle shelf was a large scrapbook with simulated leather covers. He took it out and opened it, and had a little surprise.

Evidently, and maybe it figured, Nestor had been a snob. Interested in high society. The book was half filled with clippings from newspaper society pages, and quite a few pictures. Mr. and Mrs. E. Montague Fairfield have announced the engagement .... The Richard Priors and their twin daughters Jean and Janet were entertained at a formal dinner by our charming visitors from Paris, M. and Mme .... The well-known hostess and clubwoman, Mrs. Lyman Haines, in her Bel Air home, displays Loper's new informal at-home gown, while her daughter Sheila. . .

A little funny, thought Hackett. There were several clippings not yet taped in; the uppermost one was quite a lengthy article, and the name Marlowe caught his eye. He scanned it briefly.

Mr. and Mrs. William Maxwell Marlowe have announced the engagement of their youngest daughter, Susan, to Baxter W. Stevens III. Miss Marlowe . . .

High society, all right. Hackett put the book down and did some more looking. Wandered down to the examination rooms. This kind of equipment, he thought, was probably damned expensive, and both examination rooms were fitted out the same. Both had tiled sinks. The steel examination tables, with handles to tilt them in various directions, and those gadgets for taking blood pressure, the latest type, attached to the wall. Steel lockers against the wall. Metal tables bearing glass jars of cotton swabs, tongue depressors, a lot of bottles filled with tablets and capsules. He opened the locker in the first room; it was empty. The other one had a padlock on it; he had Nestor's keys, found one that fitted the padlock. Inside the locker was a wrinkled white smock hanging neatly on a hook, and on the little shelf, folded together, a pair of rubber gloves.

Quite expectable, he thought sadly. What the hell was wrong here? Just something a little funny, that he couldn't put a finger on.

Palliser had found an address book in the desk. See what showed up there, but . . .

And back in the office, with Miss Corliss still telephoning in the background, he thought abruptly that those two examination rooms hadn't been quite the same. He went back to the rear one, next to the office. Near the door stood an electric cabinet, squarish, about three feet high. That hadn't been duplicated in the other room. It was white porcelain, baked enamel, and across its front was a neat metal plaque. Sterilizer.

* * *

"I guess that musta been the guy killed Roberto all right," said Miguel Garcia. He was still half scared, self-important, self-conscious, genuinely awed at his own good luck. "I guess it was lucky I ran."

"Maybe it was," said Palliser, beginning to feel a little hopeful. It was after five; he wondered if Bert or Landers had come up with anything at one of the hotels. He'd taken part of the hotel list himself, had drawn blank, and then started to hunt up all the boys who'd been at that Scout meeting. Miguel was the ninth one he'd talked to; none of the others had known anything. He'd found Miguel in this big schoolyard, pointed out by a couple of other kids, and was talking to him here on a rickety wooden bench in the still hot sun. Of course, he remembered absently, actually it was only a little after four, sun time.

"Tell me exactly what happened, Miguel." He lit a cigarette. "Everything you remember."

"Yes, sir. Excuse me, but nobody's supposed to smoke on the school ground.” Palliser started to say that it didn't matter, it was after school hours and he was grown up, and met Miguel's solemn dark eyes, and stepped on his cigarette. A kid like Miguel, several counts on him already, who unlike some kids down here seemed to have some respect for the rules, and parents who encouraged him to join the Scouts--well, no harm to set an example. He smiled at Miguel, who was small for his fourteen years and a nice-looking boy, if slightly grimy at this end of a day.

"Let's hear all about it."

"Yes, sir. Gee, it's awful--Roberto getting killed like that. When we heard about it, Danny Lopez was telling about it at lunchtime, gee, I thought right off it musta been that guy--and I better tell somebody about it, I was goin' to ask my dad when he gets home tonight--"

"Well, you tell me now."

"Yes, sir. See, like I was just tellin' you, I'm the only one went the same way as him, goin' home last night." A couple of the boys had been called for by a parent, an older brother or sister, but most of them hadn't been. Down here, kids were expected to be self-reliant pretty young. And it wouldn't have been quite dark yet, what with daylight saving--full dark about eight-twenty, in July. Dusk, deepening dusk, as the boys walked along Second Street. "So we went together, I mean, I kind of I caught up to Roberto, he left first. At the corner of Corto, about there. See, I had a lot further to go, we live on Angelina."

Palliser produced a city map and made him point out the place. Miguel was unhesitant. "See, I'd go the other way, up Douglas Street, about a block further along. It was the middle of that block, just before I'd go the other way 'n' Roberto'd be turning up Beverly, see. There was this guy standin' there by the curb--just standin' there's all." He warmed to his tale now, and his dirty hands flew out in gestures. "I dunno why he scared me, it was just something about him--way he stood, kind of still, or something. just as we come by, he stepped out nearer an' started to say somethin'--he said something like, ‘Hey, kids'--only then I looked at him, and when I saw his face I was all of a sudden awful scared, and I just went on, kind of fast. But Roberto stopped. An' I--an' I went on faster, up toward the corner, and then I looked back and . Roberto was still talkin' to the guy--I thought I'd call him, tell him come on, but then I didn't. And, well, the light turned green an' I--just ran. But gee, it musta been him. The one did it. That Slasher, like they call him. Why do you suppose he wanted to kill Roberto, anyways?"

"We don't know," said Palliser. "Now, what did the man look like, Miguel?"

"Gee," said the boy regretfully, "I didn't have much of a look at him, mister. It was funny, what scared me about him, I mean he didn't try to hit me or have a gun or nothing. Kind of the way he stood. I dunno. It was almost dark, you know, and not anywheres near a street light. He--he was kind of tall and thin, I guess--I don't remember nothing about his clothes--except, well, they seemed kind of loose on him, like they didn't fit good. And he had this kind of red face, kind of nasty-lookin'--"

Palliser took him over it again, but nothing else emerged. Miguel couldn't say what kind of face, thin or round, long nose or short, anything definite. The man had had a hat on, he hadn't seen his hair. "It was just a minute, see--and it was nearly dark--"

It was the most definite information in yet, and what did it amount to? A tall thin man with a red face. And considering Miguel's size, a medium-sized man might look tall to him. And come to think, in the dusk how had the boy seen the red face?

He thanked Miguel and went back to his car. Get a formal statement from the boy tomorrow. Report in, see if they wanted him to stay overtime--if not, might go to see Roberta, if she wasn't busy correcting her fourth-graders' papers. He yawned. He wondered if Hackett had got anything on that chiropractor.

This Slasher. Hell of a thing .... "Manners maketh man," he thought. If that Reyes kid hadn't been so well brought up, to stop and answer the stranger on the street, he might have been as alive as Miguel Garcia, who had providentially got scared and run.

But this was a little something, from Miguel. Piece by piece you built it up.

He drove back down Vignes to First Street, up to Los Angeles Street, and parked in the big lot behind the solid looming rectangle of the Police Facilities Building. He realized he was hungry. He took the elevator up to the homicide office and asked Lake if Hackett was in.

"No, he just called in. Said for you to call him at home."

"O.K.” Palliser passed on Miguel's story. "Not much, but more than we had before. You might circulate that very vague description around." That was easily said; it would entail a lot of work. Every patrolman had to be briefed, and because you couldn't confine it to just the one area--the Slasher might turn up anywhere next time, God forbid--every precinct station, the sheriff's' boys, and suburban forces. Just in case. They were running an extra car tonight, around that downtown area.

Higgins was on night tour this month; he lounged up to hear about it, and said start the phoning. "Hackett turn up anything definite on that new case?" asked Palliser.

"I don't think so," said Lake. "But he said he doesn't like the way it smells. Could be he's pinch-hitting for our Luis, havin' hunches."

Palliser yawned. "In Bermuda about now, I understand," he said. "I wish I was in Bermuda. Listening to some nice calypso over, say, a Cuba Libre .... ”

F0UR

"You will," said Angel, standing on tiptoe to kiss him at the door, "have to learn to curb your language, Art."

"What? What have I been saying wrong?"

She laughed. "I scolded Mark for pulling the cat's tail a while ago and he distinctly said, ‘Damn.' "

Hackett grinned. "Starting young. You all right? You left those trash cans for me to bring in, I trust."

"I did. Of course I'm all right. Once you get past the morning-sickness bit--I never felt better."

"Well," said Hackett doubtfully. It seemed quite an undertaking to him.

"Silly," said Angel, and her mountain-pool eyes that shaded from green to brown were smiling at him.

Mark Christopher, who would celebrate his second birthday two months from now, fastened like a leech on Hackett's left leg and demanded imperatively, "Kitty-kitty!"

"How the hell did we get into all this?" asked Hackett plaintively. "We said two, but if this isn't a girl--I know you--and I'm not a millionaire like Luis, just remember."

"I don't mind if it's not a girl," said Angel. They wouldn't know about that for five months. "We can always try again."

"That's just what I said. Nothing doing. These days, they all expect college--”

"The more we have," said Angel logically, "the better chance that one of them will make a lot of money and support us in our old age. And there's a sort of exotic new French casserole for dinner. Yes, I remembered about calories--though I think the doctor's silly about that, you're a big man, you need lots of good food. You're not really too fat."

"Not yet," said Hackett gloomily. Ten pounds off, the doctor had said firmly.

"And you don't have to go out again, do you?"

"Well, there's a new one come up, on top of this damned Slasher thing. I'd better call in, anyway, and if anything new has turned up--"

Angel made a face at him. "Why did I ever marry a cop?"

"You want to be reminded?" He reached for her again but she laughed and backed off.

"Fifteen minutes--I'll just get it out of the oven."

"Daddy get kitty-kitty!" said Mark Christopher. Hackett looked around and pointed out kitty-kitty: the big smoke-silver Persian curled in his basket by the hearth. "Kitty won't play!" said Mark tearfully.

"Well, old boy, I can't do anything about that," said Hackett, who had learned this and that about cats in the time since Mendoza had wished Silver Boy on them. He sat down in the big armchair.

That Nestor. The outside thing, or the personal, private kill? Something a little funny there, anyway. Those files . . .

Something nagging at him--some little thing.

Chiropractors. A four-year-course now.

The evening paper, the Herald, was unopened there on the ottoman. He didn't pick it up.

The Slasher. Quite the hell of a thing. The sooner they picked that one up . . .

Some little thing he'd noticed, there. And for some reason he didn't much like that Corliss woman. There was also the wife.

And . . .

"A sterilizer," he said aloud suddenly. "A sterilizer."

"Well, I try to keep the place reasonably clean," said Angel amusedly from the dining-room door. "Need we go quite that far?"

* * *

Alone out there in the night, a man walked a dark street. His mind was a confused jumble of thoughts, and all the thoughts were full of hate.

As long as he could remember, he had hated, and envied, and resented. He had learned to hate early, and learned why afterward.

He had hated the unknown mother who had left a baby to the orphanage. He had hated the unknown father who had begotten the baby. He had hated all the other children who laughed at him and called him names, and hated the women at the orphanage who called him stupid and punished him for breaking silly rules.

Other people had things, incomprehensibly and unfairly. Things he had never had and didn't know how to get--things he realized only dimly were good to have.

Other people concerned about them, and homes, and settled existences. He didn't know why. He didn't know why about anything, except that he hated.

He walked the dark street, an entity full of vague undirected hatred against the entire world, and his hand closed over the knife in its sheath, hard.

They had called him names, the other children. Laughed at him. People didn't like to look at him, you could see it in their eyes. As if he was a monster or something. Ever since the fire that time in the school, and the pain--the awful pain . . .

Nobody, he thought. Nobody. Everybody but him. Everybody against him. Bosses, calling him dumb. Girls . . . Everybody hating him. He could hate right back, harder.

But there was always the blood; He liked seeing the blood. Things felt better then. He got back at them then. For a little while.

He came to an open door, hesitated, went in. It was a bar, dark and noisy and crowded. He shouldered up to the bar and found a stool, ordered whiskey straight. He felt the weight of the knife in the sheath on his belt. The man on the stool next to him, raising an arm to light a cigarette, jostled him; instant red fury flowed through him like an electric current, but the bartender had put the shot glass in front of him and he picked it up with a shaking hand..

"Sixty-fi' cents," said the bartender.

He felt in his other pocket, threw a silver dollar onto the bar. He drank the whiskey, and as it jolted his insides he felt a little better.

"You like to buy me a drink, honey?" A hand on his arm, insinuating. He turned and looked at her. Another one like that last one--a kind he knew, knew all about, the only kind of woman he'd ever had, ever could have. She was a little high, her voice was slurred, she had a scrawny aging body and her lipstick was all smeared. "You buy a lil drink for Rosie, an' Rosie'll be nice to you, honey. I seen you before, ain't I? Around--"

He laughed and leaned into the light from the blaring TV above the bar, and she gave a little gasp and drew back: "You seen me before?"

"No--maybe not." She'd have stepped back farther, but he put his arm around her and closed his hand cruelly round the thin sagging breast. "I buy you all the drinks you want," he said savagely, "an' pay you besides. Is it a deal?"

"Sure--it's a deal," she said dully. "Can I have a drink now, honey?"

"Sure thing," he said. He hated her, hugging the hate to himself. The way she'd gasped and looked away. Everybody in the world, except him. His hand went secret and sure to the knife.

There was always the blood ....

* * *

Mendoza's turn at the newspaper and magazine counter finally arrived and the fatherly attendant turned his British beam in his direction. "Do for you, sir?"

"I see you stock some American papers--I don't suppose you've got a Los Angeles paper? A Times?"

The beam faltered. "Well, now, I'm afraid not, sir. I don't recall that I've ever been asked--"

"Well, could you get me one, please?"

"l really couldn't say, sir. I can try. Beg pardon, what was the name again?"

"The Los Angeles Times," said Mendoza hopefully. He looked around the vaulted immense lobby of the luxury hotel, the new sports jacket feeling uneasy on his shoulders, and felt homesick. Nearly two weeks out of touch now, and they were staying here another week before flying home.

"Beg pardon, would you mind--that's L-O-? . . . Yes, sir. Er--would that be California, I presume?"

"It's quite a well-known town," said Mendoza irritably.

"Yes, sir. I'll see what I can do, sir. ‘Kyou, sir." The beam turned elsewhere.

Mendoza turned away and a diffident voice said, "Another Californian? I just flew in myself--if this is any use to you, you're welcome." A big hearty-looking man in city clothes, smiling, holding out a folded newspaper. "Kind of foolish to extend the feud this far from home." The paper was a San Francisco Chronicle, with yesterday's date on it.

"Thanks very much indeed," said Mendoza. The big man waved away gratitude.

Carrying his treasure under one arm, Mendoza wandered down the lobby toward the alcove where he'd left Alison. Alison was enjoying the vacation anyway, he thought gloomily. And probably, just as she said, it was only egotism.

Alison was chatting with Mrs. Garven; inevitably, they were showing each other snapshots. Of Mrs. Garven's two rather plain daughters back in Montreal, and--of course--of the twins. When the Kitcheners abandoned them in favor of a round of night clubs, Mrs. Garven had attached herself. Garven was a prosperous businessman, with an ulcer to prove it, and all he talked about was common stock, its vagaries and inner economics, which Mendoza knew as much about as he knew or cared about the migration of lemming.

It was a fine hotel, and the weather was nice, and the service excellent, if they did keep pressing exotic rum drinks on you. But he still felt self-conscious without a tie, and he still felt uneasy about being so far from home. Suppose something big had come up. Or Art should have come down with Asian flu or something. Quizas, and so what? Other good experienced men in the office.

He sat down opposite Alison and Edith Garven and lit a cigarette. "Just eleven months,” Alison was saying rather wistfully. "But Teresa's walking already and Johnny probably is by now too. It does seem ages we've been away, but we have such a wonderful nurse--"

Mendoza opened the well-handled Chronicle and started to hunt through it for any news from L.A. The alleged feud was largely a joke, but for all that the San Francisco papers were a little chary of printing news about Los Angeles, and prone to treat it sarcastically where possible. The headlines were about forthcoming elections, a senatorial speech, an argument in the House. A socialite wedding. A dog show. He turned pages hopefully.

". . . must go up and dress, Ted and I are going to that amusing calypso place tonight. Have you been there yet?"

"Yes, last night. Well, I didn't exactly--”

"Of course the songs do tend to be rather . . . But I feel one should be broad-minded, my dear, especially in a foreign country. I--"

"¡Ca!" said Mendoza softly. The bottom corner of this page had been torn, but he saw the dateline, Los Angeles, and carefully held the torn pieces together to read the brief story tucked away on the third page.

Los Angeles,July I4.--A fourth victim of the latest mass killer roaming the City of Angels was found today, a teen-age boy. The Slasher, as he is locally known, has murdered and mutilated two men, a woman, and the boy within a period of less than two weeks. His first victim was left in a hotel room almost certainly rented by the murderer, but police as yet have apparently no clue to his identity.

"¡Por Dios!" said Mendoza to himself distractedly. "My God--that body in the hotel--I knew there was something about it . . ." He could vividly imagine all the desperate hunting, the try-anything routine, on a thing like that. And no details at all, of course, damn it--not from 'Frisco. He got up and paced down the lobby, muttering to himself. The Slasher, My God. My God, four people--a mass killer, one of those berserk killers. He wished to God there'd been just a few details. Damn. He thought, I could call Art, long distance. And what good would that do, to know the details?

"¿Qué ocurre, querido?" Alison put her arm through his. "I do wish you'd cheer up and enjoy yourself more. You look--"

He told her, thrust the folded paper at her. "I know what sort of job one like that is, damn it. I should never I have let you drag me this far from home. God knows what a mess that is, and don't I know it, the press needling us for not dropping on him inside twenty-four hours--probably damn all in the way of evidence--"

"Now look," said Alison reasonably, "there's Art, and John Palliser, and a lot of other perfectly capable men still there to cope with it, Luis. It's hardly as if you were--were shirking your duty or something like that. And it's silly to worry about it when there's nothing you can do. Look, it's nearly six o'clock. Let's go up and get dressed, and we said we'd try that Spanish place the taxi driver recommended. ¿Cómo no? Come on, be sensible and forget it."

"Oh hell," said Mendoza miserably. He trailed upstairs after her, to the luxurious big room that he disliked further because it had twin beds, and shaved and got into the uncomfortable evening clothes she'd insisted on; but he didn't forget the Slasher. He could just imagine what the boys were going through. And a few other cases on hand too, probably.

He hadn't any business to be here. He ought to be home, joining the hunt.

He could call Art. He could--"¡Mil rayos!" he said to the very bad rye that the Spanish place had produced with prodding. He'd had a feeling all along . . . There was a boy with a guitar who sang, but Mendoza hardly heard him. He was back home, with a harassed Hackett and all the rest of them, visualizing the routine they'd be setting up, the tiresome questioning, the eager follow-up of any small lead. On one like that. The Slasher. Hell. Thirty-five hundred miles . . .

* * *

"Well, you understand, I don't want to get anybody in trouble," said Mr. James Clay. "You couldn't help liking Frank, he was that sort of guy, but that doesn't say I exactly approved of all he did. Not that I'm a prude, but--"

Mr. Clay was being fairly helpful in building back-grounds, and Hackett drew him out hopefully. Frank Nestor had once worked as a salesclerk in Clay's sporting-goods shop on Hollywood Boulevard, and they had, Clay said, kept up. Clay only a few years older than Nestor, a friendly, pug-faced little man.

"He was doing real well the last few years, since he got to be a chiropractor. But from what he said here and there, I don't figure he was being just so ethical at it, if that's the word .... Oh well, he said once you'd be surprised how you could rook the old folks, selling 'em regular courses of special vitamins and so on, at ten and twenty bucks the bottle. Like that."

That figured right in with what Hackett was beginning to build on Nestor.

"Mind you, I guess most chiropractors are honest, like most M.D.s. I go to one regularly," said Clay, "chiropractor, I mean, for my sacroiliac, and he's good, too. I asked him about it once, after I'd heard Frank say that, and he said it's so, there are a few of 'em just in it for the money--well, like some M.D.s, I suppose--and they rake it in by overcharging for vitamin pills, supposed to be something new and different. I could figure Frank doing that, and just thinking it was smart. And yet you couldn't help liking the guy. He had what they call charm--you know?"

"That kind isn't usually shy with the opposite sex," suggested Hackett.

"Sure as hell he wasn't," agreed Clay. "That I can tell you. I started out feeling sorry for that wife of his, but in spite of everything I couldn't keep it up. And my wife said the same. So, anybody knew them knew he'd married her for the money--her old man was a millionaire, everybody  thought then. Turned out he'd lost most of it before he died. Frank was working for me when he married her, you  know--six, seven years back. She should've known what kind Frank was, when she'd been married a month. He was making a good salary here, but he always had expensive tastes--and he was always ready for a little session of poker. He didn't go out of his way to be mean to her, just the opposite--he wanted everybody to like him so bad he was nice to everybody, her included. But she just asked for it. Acting like a doormat, you know. Never complaining when he lost the grocery money at cards, or like that. Never standing up for herself, or trying to fix herself up a little. I never could take to the woman somehow .... "

It seemed that Nestor, Clay, and several others used to get together for poker a couple of times a month, and Nestor had talked, casually, about his girl friends, about his lucrative practice. "I don't mean he'd come right out with names and details--Frank wouldn't do that. On the women, I mean. But he'd say things like, he had a date with a hot number tomorrow night, or something like that. So I knew he was stepping out on his wife a lot."

"Did he ever mention a name to you at all?"

That was where Clay said again he wouldn't want to get anybody in trouble. "He did, once. About two weeks ago, last time I saw him, matter of fact. He had the tail end of a nice shiner--about three days old, you know--and I asked him about it. He laughed and said, oh, Ruthie's husband had caught up to him."

"Ruthie." There was a Ruth Elger, and an address, in Nestor's address book. "I see."

"I guess at that,” said Clay, "even if he wasn't just so level, at that job, he'd have been good at it. He'd always wanted to be a surgeon, he used to say, and he was good with his hands, any hand work. I understand now it's not like it used to be, this chiropractic thing, a six-week course anybody could take--it's like a regular college course, and they have to take all the pre-med classes. He may have turned quite a few unethical bucks, but he was really interested in it and no fool, you know. I don't know how much it's worth to you, Sergeant, because I couldn't say whether it was so, but he told me once his family had had a lot of money, he'd always had everything, and been going to go to medical school and so on, but after his father died his mother got hooked by some con man and lost it all. He said he'd made up his mind to get his however he could--he was kind of bitter about it."

"And that might figure too," said Hackett. "Could be. Now, you knew him pretty well, Mr. Clay. This could be what it looks like, the break-in after drugs or cash, and the impulsive assault. But not so many burglars carry guns. It could also be a private kill. And generally speaking, in a case of murder, the deceased has done something--or been something--to trigger it off. Could you make any guesses as to who might have wanted Nestor dead? Off the record--just between us."

"Hell," said Clay, "that's a thing to ask me, Sergeant? He looked down at his scarred old desk there in the back room of his store, the untidy pile of invoices, business letters. "I don't know about any--you know--specific person. Far as I know, everybody liked Frank just line. But I'll say this much. If it was like that, the private reason like you say, I'd make a guess that it was most likely over some woman. Some girl's husband or boy friend. He liked the girls--and they liked him."

"Yes. What about his wife? Do you think she--felt anything about him any more? Enough to--"

"His wife? Hell, I don't know," said Clay doubtfully. "That's--well, I don't know, I never could read that woman." That makes two of us, thought Hackett. He wanted to see Andrea Nestor again. "You think a woman might have--Lord, what a hell of a thing, old Frank getting murdered .... "

"Well, we'll see what turns up," said Hackett. He thanked Clay and went out to his car. One of the new Traffic Maids, on her three-wheeled cycle, was righteously making out an overparking ticket for him. Without compunction Hackett pulled rank on her and got the ticket torn up. No millionaire indeed, with another one coming along he needed every dollar he earned.

What, he wondered again, had Nestor wanted with a sterilizer? Chiropractors weren't allowed to give shots or do anything they'd need surgical tools for, were they? Instruments that would have to be sterilized. There was just the glimmer of an idea in his mind about that, but resignedly he thought there'd be no way to prove it--now. That Corliss woman. He could kick himself for such stupid carelessness, leaving the place wide open .... He wanted to see her again too. And he wanted another try at that desk clerk in the Third Street hotel, the man who'd been on the desk when the Slasher signed for a room. The man was hardly the world's greatest brain but he must have noticed more about the Slasher than he claimed to remember.

Hackett ruminated behind the wheel, uncertain where to go from here. There were a lot more places to look, on the Nestor thing, than there were on the Slasher. But that one was the one most urgent to catch up to. God,
yes.

The prints in Nestor's office had been mostly his and Margaret Corliss'. It would be largely wasted effort, probably, to track down all his patients and get their prints to compare to the unknown ones in the office; probably X had worn gloves or wiped off anything he'd touched. If it had been the casual thief, why hadn't he taken Nestor's star-sapphire ring and jade tie clasp, along with the cash? Of course, it could have been juveniles after drugs; in the dark they wouldn't notice from the sign that Nestor had been a chiropractor and wouldn't have any drugs on the premises. But . . .

Margaret Corliss had said at first that she'd come to call and put off the patients because--how had she put it?--it would be awkward having them come in while the police were there. And then later on she'd said that there never were any patients on Wednesdays. Hackett got out his notebook, turned to the page where he'd written down the facts of that odd little encounter with Miss Corliss, and added that one.

That button. By the thread hanging from it, maybe already loose; so when Nestor saw the gun, made a grab for it, he got the button instead? Button from, probably, a man's jacket. Just an ordinary dark gray button.

He couldn't sit here the rest of the afternoon. Where now?

They had the bullet out of Nestor's skull, and not too much damaged: a .22. When, as, and if they ever found a possible gun, Ballistics could probably say whether it was the right one.

Well, all right. Go and see Ruth Elger, whose husband had presumably given Nestor a black eye. Go and see everybody listed in his address book. See Mrs. Nestor again ....

While the berserk killer roamed around loose. Hell. Hackett started the engine. It was Friday afternoon, getting on to five o'clock. He'd promised Angel he'd be home for dinner, but he thought he'd go out again afterward. See that desk clerk: he was on the night shift, wouldn't be on until nine o'clock. See Mrs. Nestor. See--

FIVE

Hackett went back to headquarters to report in, see if anything had turned up that looked interesting. Something had, and how much was it worth?

"I happened to be in," said Palliser, "so I talked to her.

A Mrs. Constance Brundage. About fifty, too fat, nice motherly soul but not much in the way of brains. She made a statement. Your guess is as good as mine whether it's worth anything. She said she was waiting for a bus at the corner of Western and San Marino, last night about eight o'clock, when a man came up to her. She was alone on the corner. She said he looked ‘sinister' because he had a hat pulled down over his eyes and his jacket collar turned up, which looked funny on a warm night. Said he had a sinister voice too, like a gangster, she said."

"Yes," said Hackett. "Naturally. ¿Qué mas? And how much of that is imagination?"

Palliser shrugged. "What with all this press hysteria--Anyway, she said he came and stood ‘too close' to her, and she got nervous, and then he said he needed bus fare and she looked like a nice kind lady, would she give him a dollar? And she said no, and backed away, and he followed her--and goodness knows," said Palliser in obvious quotation of Mrs. Brundage, "what would have happened, except that the bus came just then and she got into it in a hurry, and the sinister stranger didn't. But on thinking it over, she was sure it must have been this terrible Slasher, and it was just the Lord's mercy she hadn't been his fifth victim. And--”

"¡Basta!" said Hackett. "Description?"

"Very vague--it was dark. Just one little thing made me think twice, and get a statement. She can't say anything about his features, and says vaguely he was about medium-sized. But she did say that his clothes didn't seem to fit, looked too big for him. And Miguel Garcia--who's a much better witness--said the same thing about the man Roberto stopped to talk to."

"So he did," said Hackett slowly. "Food for thought. I'll be damned. On the other hand, John, a lot of bums around town are wearing hand-me-down clothes that don't fit."

"True. I just mentioned it," said Palliser.

"And asking for money. Of course we don't know the hell of a lot about him. It could be. Corner of Western and San Marino--if so, out of the territory where he's been operating. Nice."

"You get anything new on Nestor?"

"This and that--maybe," said Hackett. "I don't know. I've got a funny little idea, but how the hell to prove anything? I want to see the wife again, and the people in his address book. And Ruth Elger's husband. I also want to have a heart-to-heart session with that desk clerk. He must have noticed something more than we've dragged out of him."

"I don't know," said Palliser. "It's not the kind of hotel where they give guests the eagle eye to see if they're respectable. And it was about ten o'clock at night."

"All the more reason for him to notice, damn it. Business'd be slow," said Hackett. "I want to talk to him again, anyway."

"Wish you luck," said Palliser, shrugging again. It had been a hot day, and he was tired. But he had a date with Roberta Silverman and was anxious to get away, to a cool shower and a shave and a clean shirt, and Roberta's dark eyes smiling at him across a table and a long cold drink. He didn't know then that this was an important conversation, that tomorrow he'd be racking his brains to remember just exactly what Hackett had said to him. 'The night shift was coming on. He told the night desk man where he'd be and went down to the lot for his car.

* * *

That night, at ten minutes past ten, the man full of hate took his pleasure in blood again. He had been with the old lush Rosie, but it hadn't lessened the taut violence in him. He had taken the half-empty bottle with him when he left, and on the street he stopped to drink from it. The raw spirit didn't seem to get to him, though he'd had four or five drinks before, with Rosie.

He walked on down the dark street, the vague hatred churning inside him. At the corner he turned; he had taken a room at a place on this street, just today. But he didn't feel like going there, to sleep.

There was a full moon, a great silver circle of serenity riding high above the city, casting clear silver light on the streets. He walked under it, hating.

At a corner two blocks up, a young and pretty Negro girl waited for her husband to pick her up. She had been visiting her sister and her sister's new baby, just home from the hospital; and her husband, Joe Lincoln, would pick her up here on his way home from work as a clerk at a local supermart. She was smiling, thinking about her new niece, for she was expecting her own first child in two months.

It was a nice warm night, and there was a bench here; Joe would be along in a few minutes. Besides the moon, there was a street light at the corner, it wasn't dark.

The man full of hate came up behind the bench and stopped to drink from the bottle again. She heard his steps and turned her head, and saw him clearly. Small shock registered in her eyes, and she turned quickly away. Another one, looking at him as if-- And a nigger girl too. Everybody always--

His hand closed on the knife in his pocket and he lurched toward the bench.

* * *

Most of the night shift were out on that one from ten-twenty on. The husband found her there--not fve minutes after she'd died, said the surgeon, in all probability, blood still flowing. She'd really been cut up, it was quite a mess, and they called every car in the vicinity to stop any and all pedestrians within six blocks. But again they drew blank--the Slasher seemed to have vanished into air. When they'd been that close, it was irritating to say the least. They'd go on hunting, but the longer he stayed loose the colder the trail.

Higgins came back off that at twelve forty-five, talking bitterly to himself about it. Really a mess. By all rights they should have picked him up as easy as-- He couldn't have been more than a couple of blocks away when the husband found her. Of all the Goddamned bad luck.

Sergeant Farrell, on the night desk, welcomed him in and said he'd go off for a coffee break, then, somebody to mind the desk. Higgins sat down at the desk dispiritedly and lit a cigarette.

He was still sitting there three minutes later when the call came in.

He said, surprised, "Why, yes, Mrs. Hackett ....

What?" As he listened to the distrait, carefully controlled voice, his hard-bitten face went grim. "I see. All right, we'll get on it. No, he hasn't been in tonight so far as I know .... Yes, I see. We'll find out. I'll be in touch."

As a realist, he didn't tell her not to worry.

He put the phone down. He thought something had happened all right. Not like Art Hackett, not to call her if he was held up this late somewhere.

Ten minutes to one.

Accident.

The first thing to think about. He called down to Traffic. "Just check it out, will you? Put an Urgent on it ....

He'd have had identification on him, but just in case--better take it down--yes. Arthur John Hackett, thirty-six, six three and a half, two hundred and thirty, medium-brown hair, eyes blue. He'd be driving a dark blue four-door Ford sedan, 1957 model .... "

His voice was expressionless, relaying that also to the Georgia Street Emergency Hospital and the General. All they needed, he thought, Hackett out of action. If Hackett-- Well, don't expect the worst. He looked up the license-plate number and relayed that to Traffic. In that first ten minutes, Traffic hadn't any record to tell him about. Farrell came back and went a little white, hearing about this.

"Does anybody know where he was going tonight?"

Which was a question that would be asked again.

* * *

"It's a heavenly beach," said Alison, groping in the closet for her beach sandals. "And morning's the best time really. Aren't you going to get up today at all?"

Mendoza was sitting up in bed smoking moodily.

"What the British call coffee is no inducement. And I thought one point about taking a vacation is that you can sleep late. It's only seven-thirty." As a matter of fact he hadn't slept much. He'd lain awake worrying, coming a dozen times to the conclusion that he really couldn't ask Alison to cut the vacation short. And, damn it, they'd planned to stop off in Illinois and see the Lockharts on the way home .... "Furthermore," he added, "what's the point in my going to the beach with you? I can't swim. Am I supposed to enjoy myself watching every other male present ogling you? And if I wasn't the nice indulgent husband I am, I'd absolutely forbid you to wear that outrageous bathing suit."

"It's not a bikini, I wouldn't dare--it's a perfectly decent bathing suit," said Alison. "Well, at least get up and get dressed while I'm gone. Don't just sit there brooding."

She came up to the bed. "Luis, amado, it's senseless. I know you feel you ought to be there, hunting down the murderer. You're not the only competent officer on the force."

"I know, I know!" said Mendoza. "Don't fuss, amante. Run along for your swim."

"We can have a nice leisurely breakfast afterward," said Alison, picking up her beach robe. And that was when the knock fell on the door; she pulled the robe around her and opened the door to a smartly uniformed boy who smiled at her.

"Mendoza? Cablegram f'r you--"

"Oh," said Alison.

But Mendoza was out of bed, finding small change on the dresser top, ignoring the polite, " 'Kyou, sir." He had the yellow envelope ripped open before the door was shut.

"Luis--," said Alison, watching him. "What--"

He had gone white as death, and his mouth tightened to a grim line. He thrust the sheet at her, sat on the bed, and picked up the phone. "Travel service .... When's the next plane out? I don't care where, Washington or New York, wherever I can get the quickest flight to Los if Angeles .... Well, look it up, for God's sake, and make it snappy!"

"Oh, my God," said Alison. She read it twice before she took it in. Hackett attacked on critical list outlook bad hell of mess here can you fly soonest. It was signed by the captain of detectives. "Angel," said Alison. "She'll be--"

She stopped, looking at his face as he spoke impatiently into the phone. She opened the closet door, got out suitcases, began hastily to pack. Thirty-five hundred miles, she thought distractedly. Whyever did I say Bermuda? Not Art, she thought. Not Art--and Angel--

"Can you get seats on it? All right. Two. Make sure of that right now, will you? Give me the desk again. Mendoza, room 284. We're checking out in an hour, I want the bill made up, please. Yes. N0. There'll be two tickets on the eight-forty plane to Washington, in my name, delivered at the desk. See they get into the right slot. I'll be down in twenty minutes." He flung off pajamas, started to dress.

"Luis--it'll be all right," she said, knowing how foolish that sounded. "Not Art--it couldn't be--"

"¿Y cómo no?" said Mendoza hardly. "It's not the safest job there is. You get on with that--we've got an hour or so to wait. God--ought to have some breakfast, I suppose. There's a plane to New York at noon, but this one being earlier, we might get better connections, get there sooner. We'll see."

"I'll never say you aren't psychic again," said Alison.

She found she was folding clothes blindly, through a haze of tears. Not Art, Art mustn't-- And Angel hadn't anybody, they had to get back.

* * *

It was the longest hour Mendoza had ever got through in his life. He ate an anonymous breakfast; they were at the airport by eight-fifteen, with twenty-five minutes to wait, but after several eternities the plane was there, and taking on passengers.

They hadn't talked much; there wasn't much to say. He sent a cable, and then they just waited. For the plane to take off, and then for the plane to land in Washington. There wasn't any use making idle speculations.

They landed in Washington a little before noon, and had all the nuisance of Customs to go through. There wasn't a flight direct west scheduled until nearly four, so they got the twelve-fifty flight to New York and landed there at one fifty-five. And then they waited some more, for the next flight scheduled to L.A., due to take off at three-ten.

"You ought to have something to eat, you didn't have any lunch," said Alison. "Coffee, anyway . . ."

He felt empty but not hungry; he got down a sandwich without tasting it, and a couple of cups of coffee. "At least with jet flights we can get back in a hurry. Ten years ago--"

No use in speculating. They'd know when they got there.

The three-ten flight from New York to Los Angeles was scheduled to land at International Airport at eight o'clock, but traveling east to west they gained three hours, and it was just five-thirty by L.A. time when they landed. "Can you cope with the luggage?" asked Mendoza.

"Of course, darling. Go and call right away."

He felt as tired as he'd ever felt in his life, and at the same time taut as a coiled spring. It was nearly six o'clock before they got to the taxi rank outside. Mendoza said to the cab driver, "Take all this stuff to 311 Rayo Grande Avenue in Hollywood." He passed over a bill and took the next cab in line from under the nose of an elderly dowager, thrust Alison in, and said, "White Memorial Hospital," to the driver. "Take the freeway for God's sake."

Alison held his hand tightly. "It's got to be all right," she said. "I don't mean to sound like a fool, Luis, but--whatever happened--they know so much more these days, and there's plasma, and--"

"Yes, querida. Wait and see."

It was six thirty-five when they got to the hospital. A brisk thin nurse directed them to the third floor, and a brisk fat nurse there directed them to a small waiting room at the end of a long corridor.

Angel was sitting there, dry-eyed, looking down at her clasped hands. She had dressed in haste, carelessly, and hadn't any make-up on; she looked as if she'd been sitting there, numbly, a long time. Hackett's older sister sat opposite her, and she'd been crying. Alison went to Angel at once. Mendoza went to find somebody who knew something, and ran into Scarne in the hall.

"Lieutenant--God, am I glad to see you! You must have made time back. They hadn't called in so long, I got chased up to see-- They said they'd call if there was any change, but--"

"Let's find a doctor, for God's sake. What happened and when?" snapped Mendoza.

"It's a miracle he's still alive. He went down a cliff off Canyon Drive, in his car--the car's one sweet mess, you should-"

"¡Vaya por Dios! How--"

"He was sent over, Lieutenant. He didn't get found until 2 AM. this morning, but then they got searchlights up there, the works, and you could see by the tracks. The car was aimed to go over--and he'd been tied up before--"

"¡Dios! You've got casts of the tire marks, you've--"

Mendoza caught the arm of a white-smocked intern passing. "Doctor--"

"That one," said the intern when they'd identified themselves. "If he hadn't the constitution of an ox he wouldn't be still with us. I'm sorry, we aren't committing ourselves yet, he's still in a deep coma. There was an extensive skull fracture and internal injuries--broken pelvis, both legs, a couple of ribs, and one a bit nearer a lung than we liked .... Dr. MacFarlane operated to relieve the pressure, but as I say he's still unconscious. We don't know when or whether he'll be conscious. All I can say is-- Well, you can see him, but--"

"Who've you got stationed here?" Mendoza asked Scarne. He knew there'd be somebody, to get whatever Hackett said when and if he regained consciousness.

"Fellow named Evans."

Mendoza knew Evans, a uniformed man bucking for rank. He nodded at him, installed in a chair beside the door not too far from the high bed. He stood over the bed and looked at Hackett. Hackett lay on his back, breathing slow and irregular. His face was drained of color; he looked gray. His head was bandaged, and one arm. A watchful nurse had a hand on his pulse, and they had an I.V. going.

"All I can tell you is we're doing everything we can," said the intern. "He's got a very sound constitution to help him fight. But we can't say one way or the other, not yet."

"Yes, Doctor. Will you please see that somebody calls in if there's any change? I know you've been briefed, but just remind the desk. You've got the headquarters number--ask them to call this number too, please." He scribbled their home number on the back of an envelope, handed it over. He looked at Hackett again and led Scarne out, to the little waiting room.

Angel was crying now. "I'm sorry, I don't mean-- I c-couldn't, somehow, until you c-came in and I--"

"Yes, all right, darling." Alison looked at Mendoza and, seeing his expression, asked no questions.

"Angel said-- I took the baby to your place, Mrs. Mendoza--your nurse--" Hackett's sister Elise Dunne looked at them helplessly.

"That's fine, Mrs. Dunne. Now, Angel--"

Mendoza came up and squatted down before Angel.

"You're doing no good sitting here, either of you. They're doing all they can, and they'll call when there's any change. I've asked them to call our number too, and"--he looked at Hackett's sister--"you can give them yours. Come on now." He urged Angel up. "Scarne, drive them to our place, will you? O.K. Alison, you look after her. God knows when you'll see me, but I'll be in touch."

"Yes, darling. Come on, Angel, it's only sensible--"

"And get back downtown as fast as you can," said Mendoza to Scarne. He kissed Alison, held her hard for a second, and went out and downstairs. He called a cab and waited for it impatiently. He had work to do.

SIX

He walked into the homicide office at seven-forty, and he didn't feel any particular joy at getting back home; he was intent on the job. Most of them were there--Palliser, Dwyer, Higgins, Landers, Glasser, Farrell: on one like this they weren't punching any time clocks. And they didn't waste any time asking about the vacation, making welcoming noises at him. They all looked relieved to see him; Palliser said tiredly, "Thank God. You made time, didn't you?"

"I want a breakdown on it," said Mendoza without sitting down. "In detail. From one of you who knows the detail."

"Me," said Palliser. "We knew he was missing, from about twelve-forty. Mrs. Hackett called in. He'd left home about seven-thirty, and we're not sure where he was going. He said to me he wanted to see that desk clerk again, at that Third Street hotel. That was on the Slasher--" He gave Mendoza a terse briefing on that, enough to put him in the picture. "He meant to see Mrs. Nestor again, that's another business, and you'd better hear about that too--"

"I want the facts on Art, John.”

"It's relevant," said Palliser, and told him about Frank Nestor. "Higgins called me back in and we had everybody alerted, everywhere around any area he might've been, but he didn't turn up until about two o'clock. An Edward Charlton, on his way home up Canyon Drive, spotted the wheel marks going off the road, in his headlights, and looked. The Ford had rolled about two hundred feet down--it's not a sheer cliff, just a steep hill, with underbrush and so on--turned over at least once--it was lying on its side."

"Dios," said Mendoza softly. "Why wasn't he killed?"

"Coming to that. When we got the ident from Traffic, we converged up there in strength. Because Traffic said it wasn't an accident. Anybody could see that by the tire marks. The Ford was backed around to face the drop square--there's a two-yard soft shoulder either side, loose dirt that takes marks just dandy. And gunned over. Not a sign of any attempt to brake. Traffic's taking the car apart looking for anything, they're the experts on that. And we figure, with what the lab came up with, that the reason he wasn't killed is that he was already unconscious, lying across the front seat, face down."

"I did wonder why there weren't any facial cuts," said Mendoza. He sat down at his desk and lit a cigarette. The desk needed dusting, and somebody had overfilled his ashtray. He didn't do anything about it.

"So did the interns in the ambulance," said Palliser.

"And for a civilian, we might not have committed lése majesté, but as it was we hauled Dr. Erwin himself out of bed and shot him over to the hospital. He saw him before they did the surgery, and went over his clothes." They were all avoiding Hackett's name; maybe the impersonal pronoun would help to keep this on the objective level, if anything could. As cops, they had all seen other cops killed on the job, and that was always bad; but this was something worse. Something really bad. The deliberate thing.

Dwyer got up in silence and took the lid off the shoe box sitting on the desk. "Erwin said," said Palliser, "he'd been tied up. Wrists and ankles. For one or the other, his own belt had been used." Dwyer lifted out the belt and passed it over. It was a worn brown steerhide belt with a plain buckle, and it was twisted out of its normal flatness still, where it had been used as a rope would be used. The fifth hole in it was the most worn and frayed, but evidently more recently the fourth hole had been in use. Hackett and his diet . . . Mendoza's eyes stung suddenly. He put the belt down. He said, "Yes."

"He'd got the worst knock on the head at the back of the skull, a little to the side, not the front. The interns said he was half on the floor, head on the passenger's side of the car. Glass all over from the windshield but he hadn't a cut on him."

"Yes. I see. You've printed the car. Anything?"

"What do you think?" asked Higgins savagely. "His, that's all, and his wife's. Steering wheel and gear selector clean. Naturally."

"Naturally. All right. Why?"

Dwyer looked at Palliser, "It's your fairy story," he said. "Tell the detective man,"

"And it's no fairy story,” said Palliser equably. He sat smoking quietly; he looked relaxed, but his mouth was grim. "What else could it be, for God's sake? Nobody's got any private reason for murdering Art Hackett. I'll tell you what it has to be--something he spotted on one of those cases. He was out looking, and he found out something, something definite, a giveaway. And somebody knew he had, right then. So he got knocked on the head then and there, and tied up, and the faked accident was set up later."

Mendoza was watching him. "I'll take that, John. What was he working on? Where was he?"

"We don't know, damn it," exploded Dwyer. "We couldn't press Mrs. Hackett too much, and she didn't seem to know anything definite anyway--"

"All he said to me--that was before he went home," said Palliser, "was that he was going to see the desk clerk, and maybe Mrs. Nestor, and maybe a couple of the people in Nestor's address book. He didn't like the way the Nestor case smelled--he thought it was a private kill, not the outside thing. We've got his notebook, with a couple of interesting ideas on that jotted down. But there's also the desk clerk, and that was on the Slasher, and I don't like the way the desk clerk smells."

"He denies Art came to see him?"

Palliser smiled bitterly. "You're ahead of me. Sure he does. I don't like him."

"This is where I part company," said Dwyer, "from our brain-trust boy, Lieutenant. I just don't see the Slasher, who we can build pretty easy as a hair-trigger lout with a low LQ., setting up that faked accident."

"You'll have to convince me on that too," said Mendoza, stabbing out his cigarette and immediately lighting another. "Nobody, a hotel desk clerk or anybody else, is collaborating with the Slasher. That's the berserk, unplanned thing."

"So it is," agreed Palliser. "Let George tell you how the Slasher vanished last night. After Number Five. The pretty Negro girl, seven months pregnant. Only she wasn't so pretty by that time. At the corner of Third and Hartley, which is about two blocks from that hotel. The interns said she hadn't been dead fifteen minutes when they saw her, and the squad car couldn't have missed him by more than ten. Where did he go?"

"¡Demonios!" Mendoza sat up. "You scoured the neighborhood, George?"

"Sure we did," said Higgins bitterly. "Five squad cars and fourteen men on foot. For six blocks all around. What else? Christ, the blood couldn't have been dry on his knife!"

"Tell me a story about that," said Mendoza to Palliser.

"Of a sort," said Palliser. "Maybe he's just smart enough--hearing the sirens so soon--to threaten the desk clerk into hiding him? Clerk'd be scared afterward to admit it--or there could be some other tie-up between them. Hackett thought the clerk must have noticed more about the man than he admitted. Why was he chary of talking? Look. If Hackett was at the hotel, it'd have been after nine o'clock--the clerk didn't come on until then. The call on Number Five--Loretta Lincoln--came in at ten-sixteen. Say that Hackett had just left the hotel, was heading home. He'd go straight up Third, making for the freeway exchange and the Pasadena Freeway. He could have been at that corner about then, even, my God, spotted the Slasher at work. And followed him when he ran. So you say the Slasher isn't one to set up the faked accident. Maybe not. Maybe Hackett tangled with him, got that knock on the head, there in the hotel, and somebody else got stuck with an assaulted cop and set up the accident. All I say is, it being the same general area--"

"Same general area the Slasher's been roaming right along," said Mendoza. "Nothing says Art was there. He just might have been."

"That's what I say," said Higgins. "God, I don't know how we missed him--he couldn't have been five minutes ahead of us! But on this thing, if Palliser's right, and I don't see what else it could be, it looks the hell of a lot likelier to me that Hackett maybe went to see Mrs. Nestor and caught her talking over Nestor's murder with a boy friend or something. Or went to see Nestor's office nurse--we know he didn't like her either and from what's in his notebook neither do I--and spotted something definite. All I say is, I think it's likelier it was something to do with the Nestor case, not the Slasher."

Mendoza put out his cigarette, looking around the group. His gaze came to rest on Higgins. "Of all of us big tough homicide cops," he said mildly, "you're the biggest, at least, George. Six-three, about a hundred and ninety? Yes. Could you handle Art, boy? Half an inch taller, forty pounds heavier? Barring a fluke, a very lucky first blow that put him out, not very many men--even big men--could put Art down and out very easy. And I really don't see any female doing that. Presumably somebody had to lift him into the car too."

"Which we also thought of," said Palliser sardonically.

"So she--whoever--had a boy friend. Or it was two people together."

"Yes. Damn it, if we only knew definitely where he'd meant to go, who he'd--" Mendoza lit another cigarette with a quick angry snap of his lighter. "All right, I'll go along with your story, John. It was something on a case he was working. Nobody had any reason to want him dead as Art Hackett--only as a cop on a case. Conforme. So, ¿pues qué? On the Slasher's sudden vanishing after Number Five, I might just buy--with a lot of reservations --your little idea of his scaring the desk clerk--or somebody--into hiding him. But I don't buy the idea of one like the Slasher setting up that faked accident. Of course, I will say that whoever set it up didn't take many pains with it. Didn't realize how obviously faked it looked. Which doesn't look like a brain .... You hadn't really settled who was handling which case. I see that. Art had been concentrating on the Slasher, most urgent, naturalmente, and then this Nestor thing came up and he got interested in that, sent you out on routine on the-- Yes. All right. He might have gone to see anybody involved in either case. I'll talk to his wife, see whether-- But I do not see one like this berserk lunatic--"

The office door opened and Marx came in. He had a couple of still damp five-by-seven prints in one hand. He asked, "How's Hackett?"

"No change. They'll call if-- What've you got?"

Marx came up to the desk and laid the prints on the blotter. They were enlargements, a trifle fuzzy that big, of two fingerprints. "I've got a lot of imagination," said Marx. "I think Palliser's got something about that desk clerk. And on principle I don't like cops getting clobbered. Nice to see you back, Lieutenant--you made time home, I guess. These jets. So I did some overtime for you. I thought I recognized that print when I saw it blown up, so I checked."

"Well? What is it?"

"This one",--Max lifted the first print----"is one of the prints we got off that S.P. switch. Whoever tried to wreck the Daylight. And this one, which is the exact same print of, probably, somebody's forefinger, I got off Loretta Lincoln's nice shiny plastic bag last night. After--like we know--our Slasher had rifled it. It's not hers or her husband's or her sister's."

"What?" exclaimed Palliser blankly. "For God's sake--you don't mean--"

Mendoza sat back and said, "¿Y qué respondes tri a esto? So the Slasher was the X who tried to wreck the Daylight. A hundred to one and no takers against. And that job called for a little planning ahead, didn't it? Pues si. He had to know what time to be there, what trains were coming through before, to throw that switch at the right time. So our Slasher isn't quite the brainless lout he looks, is he? Yes, and maybe somebody who likes to see train wrecks might take it into his head it'd be fun to send a car over a cliff. Maybe, instead of using his knife on a cop who dropped on him, he did set up the faked accident. On a sudden whim." He looked round the group. "Who wants to bet?"

The outside phone rang and all of them stiffened to frightened attention.

* * *

It was Rhodes of Traffic, calling from somewhere unspecified to say sadly that they'd done what they could with the wrecked Ford and nothing useful had turned up. Just the lack of prints on anything a driver would touch, which of course said that somebody other than Hackett had last driven it.

"Yes," said Mendoza. He thought somebody had better notify Hackett's insurance agent to put in a claim on the car. He thanked Rhodes. He put down the phone and said, "I don't suppose you've just been sitting around mourning all day, boys. What have you got?"

They hadn't got much. The desk clerk's denial. Neither Mrs. Nestor nor Margaret Corliss had been located to question, nor Ruth Elger and her husband. They had seen about half the people listed in Nestor's address book, all of whom denied that Hackett had called on them last night.

"I went up there and asked around--that canyon road," said Palliser. "I don't know how much it's worth, but the people who live in the place nearest where he went over--a Mr. and Mrs. Roy Baker--say they heard a car evidently being turned around in the road, about ten forty-five. It's rather an exclusive district up there, big places--quiet road. But the houses are set back, and you'd think if they'd heard that, they'd have heard the car go over--though, of course, it didn't hit anything to make a loud crash, just plowed through all that underbrush on the way down. They say the car sounded old and noisy."

"Yes." Detective sergeants with families couldn't afford nice new cars. "Doesn't say much, no." Mendoza looked at his watch. "You've all had a day and so have I, but there's a little of it left. I want Art's notebook." Palliser handed it over. "I'll go see the desk clerk and check back on Mrs. Nestor. John, would you feel like checking back on the Corliss woman? O.K. The rest of you can keep trying to locate the other names in his address book." He got up.

The Ferrari was home in the garage. He went downstairs and commandeered a patrol car, drove over to Third Street. The hotel was called the Liverpool Arms, ostentatiously. It was a fourth-class place, old and shabby: probably had more semi-permanents than transients. The block was solidly filled with parked cars; he left the squad car in front of a hydrant. It was just nine o'clock: the clerk would be here.

Inside, the lobby was narrow: bare wooden floor, a steep flight of stairs, uncarpeted, at the back; one ancient-looking self-service elevator. The desk was no more than a long narrow counter, with a sagging old armchair behind it, a makeshift shelf of mail slots hung on the wall. A door there led into some inner room. The register, closed and dusty, was on the counter; the clerk was in the chair, leaning back with closed eyes, half asleep.

Mendoza tapped on the counter and the clerk jerked upright. "Oh--all right, right with you," he said in a grumbling tone. He wasn't a very prepossessing specimen. About sixty, bald, with sagging jowls and a gross big paunch above his belt. His gray-white shirt and stained, wrinkled trousers had seen better days. He hadn't shaved that day or, probably, the day before, and he showed about five snaggly yellow teeth in his upper jaw, none below. He blinked at Mendoza. "You wanna room?"

"I want to ask you a few questions," said Mendoza sharply, and showed his badge. "A Sergeant Hackett's been here to question you before?"

"Yeah, but he wasn't here last night. I told 'em that. I ain't lyin' about it, why'd I lie about it?" The clerk's eyes shifted.

"I could imagine reasons," said Mendoza. "Look at me! What's your name?"

"Telfer. Adam Telfer. I got no reason--"

"Listen to me, Telfer. I'm in no mood to go the long way round on this! Look at me, not the floor. You know the man I mean?"

"I know him. Great big sandy feller. He's been here, but not last night. I ain't lyin'--" But his eyes kept shifting.

Mendoza reached out, took him by one shoulder, and shook him savagely. "Look at me! I can take you in, you know, and grill you better at headquarters! The truth, now!"

"You leave me be-- Why'd I lie about it? He wasn't here.”

"All right. You saw the other man--the one who rented the room where the body was found. Keep looking at me!" He tightened his grip.

"Yeah. I said so. But not good, see? It was only a minute."

"Tell me what he looked like."

"I told 'em--them other cops--I don't know. I didn't see him good at all. Honest I never. It was only a minute--he stood sidewise to the counter and he had a hat pulled over his eyes--I didn't--"

"He paid you two-fifty for one night and he signed the register. He was standing right here for at least three minutes, probably more, right under the overhead light. Tell me more, friend. What age was he? Dark or light? What was he wearing?"

"I didn't--" Telfer swallowed; he looked panicky. "I--they was a couple of bulbs out o' the light, it wasn't as light as it is now--”

"I don't want excuses, I want answers," said Mendoza very gently. He wanted suddenly, violently, to use his fists on this stupid creature obstructing him. He let go of the man's shoulder. "Begin at the beginning. It was about ten o'clock. He came in. What did he say?"

"Said he wanted a room, I guess. I told 'em all that before."

"You guess? Don't you remember?"

"Sure I remember. I remember that. But, like I say, the light wasn't so good then as it is now, and I--"

"Did you know him? Had you seen him before? Pal of yours maybe?"

"Jesus, no! Me, knowin' one like that? I said--"

"You saw him, God damn you, and you're going to tell me more or I'll take you in right now! Brace me, Telfer. We can help your memory down at headquarters--"

"I told 'em," said Telfer. He was nearly in tears. "He was--sort of medium, 's all. And he kept turned sideways, and he had this hat . . . And the light----"

"Anybody back you up about the dead bulbs?"

Telfer looked away, cringing. "I dunno if anybody else noticed, why should anybody--"

"Who put in new ones?"

"Damn it, I did. I don't hafta take-- I told 'em all I--"

Mendoza looked at him, feeling very tired. He said abruptly, "You'll be seeing more of us," and turned on his heel.

SEVEN

The apartment building on Kenmore Avenue where the Nestors had lived was an old one but reasonably well maintained. According to the mail slots, they had the left-hand front ground-floor apartment. The small lobby was a little dusty; the whole place was very quiet.

He pushed the door button and heard the shrill buzz from beyond the door. After an interval he pushed it again. He wondered if she'd gone away somewhere. But presently the door opened, a cautious few inches on its chain. "Who is it? What do you want at this time of night?”

He brought out his badge. "Just a few questions, Mrs. Nestor. May I come in?"

"Well, I must say it's a peculiar hour to come bothering at me. But I suppose if you must, you must." She unhooked the chain, stood back ungraciously to let him in. "I haven't seen you before. There were two other officers--"

"Yes. Lieutenant Mendoza. You remember Sergeant Hackett, who questioned you on Wednesday? You saw him again?"

"Why, yes. I expect we can sit down." She sat on the edge of the couch. She had undressed and was wrapped in an aged and ugly striped flannel bathrobe, hugging it round her primly. She had put her hair up in curlers, covered it with a pink scarf, and her sallow face was bare of either make-up or vanishing cream. She had on a pair of old run-down black mules with little pompons on the toes.

The room said this and that. Old furniture, most of it belonging to the apartment, very little ornament--the two pictures probably had come with the apartment too. But everything very neat and clean. The one floor lamp she had switched on in the living room cast light into the visible corner of the kitchenette, and it caught reflections from newly waxed linoleum there. She was, without much doubt, one of those persnickety housekeepers. He didn't wonder that charming, easygoing Frank Nestor had sought diversion elsewhere. He had a suspicion that when she'd made up her mind that he'd married her for her expectations and nothing more she'd subtly--and maybe unconsciously--taken revenge by turning herself into the obvious martyr.

He sat down facing her. "Where have you been all day, Mrs. Nestor? We've been trying to get in touch with you." "Oh, have you? Well, I had to go up to Forest Lawn to make the arrangements about the funeral. They had the inquest yesterday, and then that other officer told me they'd released the body, so I could make the arrangements. And then I went to buy a black dress because I didn't have one, and it will look better at the funeral."

Her voice was quite flat, expressionless, and her shallow eyes were empty. "But I was meaning to get in touch with you too, because they told me at the bank that you'd been asking questions and they'd showed you all about Frank's account there. I shouldn't think that would be allowed. And I don't understand why I can't have that money--I'm his widow and he hadn't any other relations at all--at least I never heard of any. Do you know, he had nearly five thousand dollars in his account. I never suspected he'd saved up that much."

And it was another interesting thing, thought Mendoza. Considering that Nestor hadn't stinted himself in any direction--his star sapphire ring, the Buick convertible, the four-hundred-a-month office--he must have been raking it in from somewhere, all right. Just the marked-up vitamins?

"Did Sergeant Hackett come to see you last night, Mrs. Nestor?"

"Why, yes, he did. Just for a short time. Mr. Marlowe was here. Why?"

"Mr. Marlowe?"

"Mr. William Marlowe, he's a very fine man, he was an old friend of my father's."

"What time was Sergeant Hackett here?" He was watching her. She answered him readily, without hesitation, but without interest either.

"Why, let's see, it was early. About eight o'clock, I think. He asked me a lot of questions all over again, things he'd asked before. I must say it seemed very inefficient to me. And about Miss Corliss too. I don't know much about her, I never interfered in Frank's business. Come to think, it'd've been a little before eight, because I happened to notice the clock when Mr. Marlowe left and that was ten past."

"Mr. Marlowe was here when the sergeant came?"

"That's right. It was nice of him, he came to see if I might need a loan to pay for the funeral, you see. He's a very wealthy man." And all the while her expressionless eyes stayed fixed on him as if she was memorizing him.

"He left before Sergeant Hackett?"

"Oh yes. Mr. Marlowe said he knew I was tired and didn't want company, and he left, and Sergeant--whatever the name was--he took the hint finally and left too, about half an hour later."

"And that was the last you saw of either of them?"

"Well, yes," she said. She dabbed at her mouth with a wadded--up handkerchief. "Why do you want to know all that? I'm sure, you all ask the oddest questions--I should think you'd be out looking for whatever burglar it was shot Frank, instead of bothering me."

"We're wondering whether it was a burglar, Mrs. Nestor," he said casually. "Whether it wasn't someone your husband knew. Or someone you knew."

"I?" she said blankly. "Why on earth should you think that? I don't know any burglars, for heaven's sake. Of all the ridiculous ideas. And to come asking questions at this hour of night, when I'd already gone to bed--"

Essentially an ignorant woman? Concerned with the practical matters only? The self-made martyr so wrapped up in herself she was oblivious to anything outside? Or something a lot deeper?

The tiredness was catching up to him now. The long, long day, most of it spent in enforced inactivity in the planes, with the frantic worry gnawing at his mind.

Art . . . He got up, and he had to haul himself up by the arm of the chair.

"All right, thanks very much, Mrs. Nestor," he said. "We'll be in touch with you." He pulled the door open.

"I'm sure I don't know why," she said. "That's the queerest thing I've heard yet, thinking I might know the burglar. I don't know why you have to come bothering me.”

"Don't you?" said Mendoza, swinging around on her suddenly. "Was there a burglar at all? We don't think so, you know. Have you ever owned a gun, Mrs. Nestor?" She stepped back, but there wasn't any shock or fear in the shallow eyes. "Well, for heaven's sake," she said flatly.

"I should think anybody could see how Frank came to get murdered. Of course l've never owned a gun. I must say I don't see the point of all this. That sergeant getting me down there for some kind of test, now I think it over, it's nothing more or less than an insuIt. I'm a good Christian woman and--"

The cordite test. Negative, but it wasn't always reliable by any means.

"We'll be in touch with you," said Mendoza wearily, and went out. It was ten o'clock. He got into the car and drove back downtown to drop it at the garage. He called a cab and had himself driven home, to the house on Rayo Grande Avenue.

There were lights in the living room. It seemed years since he had last walked up this flagstoned path, opened the wide oak door to the square entry hall.

"You shouldn't have stayed up, amada," he said as he kissed Alison. Bast and her daughter Nefertite ran to meet him, talking loudly, and he bent to pick them up, stroking the sleek heads. He sat down heavily in the nearest chair.

"You'll not sleep without you have a bit of whiskey in you," said Máiri MacTaggart. "Wait up indeed. Would we be going off to bed and you not in, as long a day as we've all had even so? I'll fetch it." Her kind, wise blue eyes smiled a little; she trotted out.

"Luis--"

"Well, they're not saying one way or the other," said Mendoza. "The longer he hangs on, of course, the better his chances--I suppose. He could stay in a coma for days." He roused himself to tell her the details, briefly, and what they thought about it.

"Oh, God," said Alison tiredly. She had, probably, had a bath and was wearing her newest housecoat; she had probably also had a meal, if he knew Mrs. MacTaggart.

"We got Angel to bed--she'd been sitting there since three this morning, you know--and Máiri coaxed some hot broth and toast into her, and I got her to take three aspirins, I hadn't anything stronger. But if it's going to be that long before we know--" She wandered around the room distractedly, sat down on the couch to stroke Sheba, who was diligently applying herself to the last bath of the day. Bast and Nefertite purred on Mendoza's lap; dimly he realized that it was nice to be home again, with the cats, and presumably the twins safely asleep in their own beds.

Mrs. MacTaggart came trotting back, looking like a plump little lamb in her woolly white dressing gown, gray hair standing out in little curls; she handed him an overgenerous supply of rye in a juice glass.

"Get that down you, man," she said in her soft Scots burr. "You're doing nobody any good getting yourself fagged to death so you can't think proper. It's a caution, imagine you two traveling more than three thousand miles since this morning.
You'll get that down and you'll both be going to bed.

And," she added to Alison severely, "you will not be up at the crack of dawn worrying about that poor young thing in there, her man at death's door and her carrying. She'll sleep in, all the pills you gave her, and I'll see to her when she wakes."

Alison smiled at her wanly and said, "You're a tower of strength, Máiri. I don't know what we'd do without you. She even remembered Silver Boy, Luis--”

"Somebody's needed to keep a little common sense. Why wouldn't I? When Mrs. Dunne fetched the wee boy here and told me of it, of course I would think of Mrs. Hackett's cat. And that Bertha was here by then, so I just ran over in Miss Alison's car--knowing you wouldn't mind it, mo croidhe--and took him to Dr. Stocking's where he'll be safe until we can sort matters out. And you'd best take the man and put him into his bed, achara, or he'll fall to sleep where he sits."

It had been a long, long day. But he wouldn't sleep, not with Art . . .

He shook his head muzzily. The rye had hit his empty stomach like a small bomb. He thought vaguely, Passing the love of women . . . He hauled himself up to his feet. "What would we do without you, Máiri? I haven't even said hello to you .... The twins O.K.? That's good.. . . Déjelo paras mañana .... It's got to be all right, hasn't it? Alison--"

"Come on, darling, bed. You look like death. Máiri--"

"You'll not be fussing. I'll see to everything. The wee boy's snug asleep in his cot by my own bed. You see to your man. They're troublesome creatures to love," said Mrs. MacTaggart, "and often enough bringing sorrow on us, but nought to do about that but the best we can."

In the big master bedroom Mendoza flung off his clothes carelessly. The whiskey--damn the whiskey--had turned his mind numb; he couldn't think.

El Señor, the miniature lion, had officially retired on the foot of the bed hours ago, and gave them a very cold green glare for disturbing him at this hour. "Señor Malevolencia!" said Mendoza sleepily. "Alison--"

"Here, let me help you."

"Don't be silly. Quite all right. Alison, you talk to Angel, tomorrow. Find out what he said before he left--anything he told her about those cases. Explain--"

"Yes, Luis. All right"

He wouldn't sleep, because there was Art . . . Passing the love of women . . . But he slept, his last conscious thought that it was good to be home, to feel Alison's warmth close, and to feel the warm heavy weight of four cats at the foot of the bed.

* * *

He was in his office at eight o'clock Sunday morning, shaved and tidy in gray Italian silk with the newest discreet dark tie, mustache newly trimmed, back to civilization and the job.

The hospital said, No change.

He had read Hackett's notes, and he had read Traffic's official report on the Ford. He was now listening to Palliser, who had found Margaret Corliss in her apartment last night.

". . . said she'd been out shopping and visiting friends, and hunting a new job. Maybe natural. But there's something offbeat there, I can't put a finger on it but--"

"You haven't interpreted Art's notes. Maybe we can, with a little cerebration," said Mendoza. "I want to see that office. She said he hadn't been to see her?"

"That's right. She was home alone all that evening, nobody came to see her."

"Really. Poor girl. And she ought to be home alone at this hour too. Jimmy." He got up and went to the door. "Call that Corliss woman, tell her to be home at one-thirty, I'll drop by to see her then .... Here's one thing," he added to Palliser. "His wife told Art that about the time Nestor graduated from his chiropractic course he had a legacy. Which he used to fit out his very classy new office. She said to me last night he hadn't any relatives. Suppose you check that out--where'd the legacy come from? Fond godfather maybe? I'd just like to know. I'd also like to know something about Andrea Nestor's background. And the background of that Telfer at the hotel."

"Well, all right," said Palliser. He sounded a little surprised. "My own thought was, if we can find out something definite about who Hackett did see Friday night--"

Mendoza stabbed out a cigarette, his tenth this morning, and laughed sharply. "Eso cae de su peso. Sure. But how do we pin it down for sure? Margaret Corliss says he didn't call on her--so if she's lying, how do we know? Ask the neighbors if they heard her doorbell ring? If they saw a 1957 Ford parked on the block?"

"Well, hell, I know, but--"

"We've committed ourselves," said Mendoza, "to the premise that he got something very definite on somebody--real evidence. Enough for an arrest right then, maybe. On the Slasher, or on the Nestor thing. And that X knew it and took steps right then to stop him passing it on. All right. Nobody involved is going to hand us the information for the asking. Anybody who says right away, ‘Why, yes, he was here'--like Mrs. Nestor--ten to one hadn't a thing to do with it. But we don't know how many places he'd been, because we don't know for certain what time he went over the cliff--or how long he'd been tied up before. ¿Cómo no? The only definite thing we're going to get is by following both of these up hard and heavy--get the Slasher, find out all about Nestor's taking off--and then we can put the finger on who sent Art over that cliff and why. And don't tell me it's the long way round. We'll be looking everywhere, but that's how it looks to me right now."

"Sense," said Dwyer laconically; he had just come in. "What chores do I get?"

"You work through the rest of Nestor's address book. Split it with Glasser--Nestor knew the hell of a lot of people. John, you look for the legacy. I'll be seeing Corliss and the Elgers. Who's on day shift? Let Galeano check into Telfer. And why in hell didn't somebody spot the one clue on the Slasher you were handed free gratis? Jimmy can check that out--"

"What? What clue?" asked Palliser blankly.

"¡Porvida!” said Mendoza. "I caught that one as soon as I read the statements! I'm surprised Art didn't pick it up. Estupidos--the silver dollar! That bar where, evidently, the Slasher got talking to Number Three--Theodore Simms. He had two straight whiskeys and paid with a silver dollar and two dimes. How recently have any of you seen a silver dollar?"

"My God," said Palliser. "I never thought-- Of course you don't much any more. Only--"

"Only!" said Mendoza. "Exactly. All this Goddamned inflation. We'd all be a damned sight smarter to feel like that, hard money or nothing. But the fact remains, where do you see silver dollars these days? Can any of you smart detectives tell me?" Glasser and Scarne had come in now, were listening silently.

"God's sake," said Dwyer. "Vegas. For the high-priced one-arm bandits."

"All right," said Mendoza. "Where else? I'll tell you. Up north. Through the gold country--anywhere from Sacramento down through the San Joaquin--inland. All those conservative rural types who like the feel of the hard money. So let's find out if any more bars down around Second and Third have taken in any silver dollars lately, and if anybody remembers anything about the fellow handed them over, if so. And let's also send out some inquiries in the direction of Vegas and up north."

"On what?" asked Glasser. "I don't see----"

"¡Ignorante!" said Mendoza irritably. "Art saw that. It's in the cards our Slasher hasn't gone off the rails so sudden. That our Number One in that hotel wasn't his Number One. Let's ask, anyway. Whether Vegas, or any place up north, has had some mysterious knifings--lately, or last year, or any time. Just for fun."

"Oh," said Palliser. "Yes, I see that. But--"

"¡Largo de aqui! Let's get busy and work this thing! Jimmy, get busy on all that--"8

"Will do," said Sergeant Lake.

"And the rest of you, out! John, where's Nestor's appointment book?"

"Far as I know, still in his office, why?"

"I want you to look at it. Meet me at Federico's at twelve-thirty for lunch." Mendoza got up, reached for his hat, and was out of the office ahead of them.

EIGHT

He stopped to have a few words with the captain--Wiley, who had got that desk when Holmes retired last year. Wiley was always a little on the defensive with Mendoza; he thought it should have been Mendoza's promotion; Wiley had been a fixture in the Forgery office for years. As a matter of fact Mendoza had been as pleased to stay where he was; as captain he'd have had an even more sedentary job, and he always hated to delegate authority.

"I hated like hell to call you back," said Wiley, "but I knew you'd want to come anyway when you heard about Hackett--the hell of a thing--and, damn it, I'm a delegate to this Peace Officers' convention in Denver, flying out tonight." He turned the whole mess over to Mendoza with undisguised relief.

Mendoza went to look at Frank Nestor's office. Hackett, the trained and experienced man, was also by nature a careful man. He remembered lessons and precedents. Unlike some others, he had it always at the back of his mind that through accident or some other cause another man might be taking over a case he was working; and sometimes you got asked tricky questions in court, too. Hackett took carefully detailed notes, not just cryptic jottings as self-reminders.

Sitting at Frank Nestor's desk, Mendoza opened Hackett's notebook again and reread two filled pages. He found the appointment book on the desk and looked through it thoughtfully. Quite an artistic job, he thought. He put it in his pocket and made a tour of the office.

The whole place had been searched, and the boys were usually thorough; but that was before Art had been sent over the cliff--maybe in connection with this thing. If they were doing it over now, they might take the place apart a bit more. Just in case, Mendoza looked. He upended the soiled-clothes hamper in the lavatory and was rewarded with a white smock that had a smear of old dried blood down its front.

He rather liked that, so he looked further. Stuck to the bottom of the metal wastebasket in the rear examination room he found a tiny scrap of paper with the two letters MO printed on it. It wasn't much, but he put that carefully away too.

He looked at the scrapbook full of high-society doings, and the start of a very tentative theory formed in his mind about that. He went down to the nurse's desk and looked that over very thoroughly, but evidently she'd been allowed to clear it of personal belongings. There were all five of the city telephone books there. A tedious little job for somebody, probably Sergeant Lake, but they'd have to be gone through; some people jotted down things in phone books, or underlined numbers. He took them out to the Ferrari.

He went back and looked at all the rooms again. He opened the top of the sterilizer; it was empty. He wished (as Hackett had before him) that Hackett hadn't overlooked the precaution of leaving a guard here that day, or had come back a little sooner. Couldn't be helped now. He took down the white smock hanging in the locker; it was unstained. But, after thought, he took the rubber gloves along with him. Give the lab boys a little more work.

He found, in the nurse's desk, a ledger. Whoever had kept the accounts had kept very sketchy ones. Maybe on purpose. He took that along too.

He had looked up the address and phone number before he left the office; now he dialed and asked whether Mr. Marlowe were home.

Yes, he was, who was calling, please?

Mendoza thought that sounded like a servant. Did anyone have butlers these days? A man's voice, anyway. He identified himself, said he'd be obliged if Mr. Marlowe could give him a few minutes, if he came by.

The address was on Kenniston Avenue, the other side of Rimpau. A very classy district indeed: wide quiet streets of big, very expensive houses. A good many houses sprawling over two or three city lots, with outsize pools behind them and walls everywhere for privacy. The Marlowe house, when he found it, was one of those. It looked vaguely as if it had been modeled on a French château,‘it had a three-car garage, and what looked like an honest-to-God butler opened the door.

He was a small man, pale-faced, in a neat dark suit; and Mendoza was a little surprise to him. He repeated his name doubtfully, taking a second glance at Harrington's tailoring, the Sulka tie, and the conservative black homburg he'd taken from Mendoza's hand. Mendoza suspected he'd check the brand name in that behind his back.

"If you'll come down to the library, sir," he said, wooden-faced. Mendoza followed him down a very wide carpeted hall, past a pair of double doors and several ordinary ones, all closed, to a door at the end on the right. The man opened this and stood back. "The--ah--lieutenant," he murmured. Very likely, before he saw the tie he'd have said, "The policeman."

Mendoza went into a large square room filled with heavy furniture that belonged in a British men's club and was another little surprise to the man who rose to welcome him. "Ah, yes--" said William Marlowe, and stopped as if he'd blown up in his lines. He eyed Harrington's tailoring and the tie too; he couldn't keep the brief flicker of surprise out of his eyes. Mendoza let his expression go very bland. He knew Marlowe's type at a glance, and he knew what Marlowe had expected to meet in a Lieutenant Mendoza.

"Well, and what can I do for you, Lieutenant? Do sit dowr1, won't you?" Marlowe was not a big man--about Mendoza's own height, Five-ten----but broader and stockier. He was about sixty, and well preserved: he'd kept his hair and not taken on much weight. He had a roundish face, regular features, the inevitable important-executive horn rims. His voice was an unfortunately high-pitched tenor, with the hint of a British accent. More probably New York and/or Harvard, thought Mendoza.

And Marlowe, prepared to condescend to a police officer, had expected one out of a 1930 detective story, had expected possibly the accent and low-class grammar, the deference to a rich man.

Harrington's Italian silk had shaken him. Mendoza sat down, smiling at him. Marlowe was wearing a dark blue suit of excellent and conservative cut, and a plain navy tie. Mendoza glanced at his shoes and said affably, "Do you visit England very often, Mr. Marlowe?"

"I--why-- Usually once a year or so," said Marlowe, taken aback. "How--"

Mendoza smiled. "The very British tailoring. Savile Row? Personally I like Harrington quite well, if you keep an eye on him." Marlowe would probably know how Harrington charged. "Just a few questions, Mr. Marlowe. You know Mrs. Nestor. You went to see her on Friday evening, I understand"

"Oh, it's about that," said Marlowe. "Yes, I did. I've always felt rather sorry for Andrea--I knew her father, poor man. She's always--" He hunched his shoulders. "She's one of those people, nothing ever turns out right for her. Perhaps it's partly her own fault--I shouldn't say so, but she's a rather stupid woman. That husband of hers, poor fellow, had all the drive and the brain."

"I believe you lent him the money for the chiropractic course?"

"Yes, so I did. I saw he was--in earnest about it, you see, and I had every confidence that he'd repay me. Which he did. That's a tragedy there. Such a wanton thing. I most certainly hope you'll find out who was responsible."

Marlowe bent to proffer a silver bowl of loose cigarettes.

"Thanks so much, I'll have one of my own," said Mendoza. "When you were at Mrs. Nestor's apartment on Friday evening you met one of my men there--Sergeant Hackett."

"Yes, that's right," said Marlowe, leaning back.

"Seemed a very pleasant fellow. He wanted to ask Andrea about a few things. That's a tragedy indeed, poor Frank getting killed that way. Just when he was doing so well. Probably one of these juveniles, or--"

"I understand that you left before the sergeant? Mrs. Nestor said--"

"Why, yes. Why?"

"I'd like to hear all the details," said Mendoza.

"Well, I'm afraid I don't quite see the point . . ." Marlowe looked puzzled.

"Sergeant Hackett had a most unfortunate accident later on that night," said Mendoza. "We're trying, just for the record, to trace his movements, see where he'd been and why he might have driven up to--the site of the accident, you see. Did he say anything at that time about where--” And that was very unlikely, but you never knew.

"Oh," said Marlowe. "Oh, I see. That's too bad, he seemed a very nice fellow. I hope he's not badly injured?"

"The hospital isn't very hopeful," said Mendoza. They had kept any hint out of the papers that it hadn't been an accident. Another accident wasn't very interesting news, and there'd been only a brief article about it on page eight of the Times. It was salutary that X should go on thinking that his faked accident had been accepted at face value.

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," said Marlowe politely. "Well, let me think back. I'm afraid I can't help you much. I only stayed, after he came, because I thought Andrea might--er--feel the need of a little moral support. He asked her a few questions about Frank, his usual routine and so on, and--"`He stopped, and then went on, "And I saw he was, ah, perfectly polite and so on--"

"Not likely to bully the poor girl, in other words," suggested Mendoza, smiling.

"Oh well, we ordinary citizens so seldom come in contact with the police! You'll have to forgive me, that was in my mind, the reason I stayed." Marlowe laughed deprecatingly. "Yes, when I saw that, I left."

"I see. And he didn't say anything to give you an idea where he was going next?" Of course he wouldn't have; that was clutching at straws. Marlowe said he hadn't. "Yes. Mr. Marlowe, you know Mrs. Nestor quite well, I understand. Did she and her husband quarrel much? Do you think she might have a--man friend outside her marriage?"

Marlowe stared at him. "What on earth gives you that idea? Absolutely not, I'd say. Oh, they didn't care for the same things, perhaps, but I think, between us, she was more or less resigned to his--call it extracurricular activities. And even if she hadn't been, I don't see what on earth you're getting at there .... After all, that could have nothing to do with--" Marlowe stopped, his mouth open foolishly. "Unless you're thinking it wasn't a burglary, that . . . ? Why, good God, it never crossed my mind--but Andrea! No, really, Lieutenant, if you're thinking along that line, it's quite ridiculous! I've known her since she was a child, and--" He stopped again, looking thoughtful, and then shrugged.

"Well, we try to be thorough," said Mendoza. "Do you mind telling me where you went from there?"

"Well, I came home," said Marlowe stiffly. "Here. I was here for the rest of the evening. Paul could tell you that. The rest of the family was out, but--"

"Thanks very much," said Mendoza, getting up leisurely. Marlowe hadn't quite recovered from his little surprise; covertly he was still studying Mendoza, from his sleek widow's peak, trim mustache, Sulka tie, and gold links to the custom-made shoes. And feeling puzzled. Let him, thought Mendoza. And he wondered what had suddenly entered Marlowe's mind just then, when he'd stopped and looked thoughtful, about Andrea Nestor.

He'd crossed her off--on Art--because she'd admitted he'd been there. But the assault on Art could trace back to the other case. So maybe Andrea had got fed up with her charming, crooked husband and got rid of him the permanent way.

Crooked. Pro crooked, he thought. And that was going to be one hell of a tricky thing to prove, all legal.

* * *

The Elgers lived at a nice upper-class address too, on Normandie in Hollywood. At eleven o'clock on Sunday morning he hoped to find them home.

Cliff Elger was listed twice in the Hollywood phone book: at the Normandie address and as Cliff Elger and Associates on Hollywood Boulevard. Mendoza deduced that that meant he was an agent of some kind.

The nearest parking slot that would take the Ferrari was half a block away from the apartment. Walking back, Mendoza was thinking that he'd been out of touch with the hospital for several hours. For a second something seemed to constrict his breathing.

Nothing he could do, nothing, but what he was doing.

Trying to do.

How many years had it been? Art had just made rank--detective--and he'd been new in the homicide office, as sergeant, after eight years down in Vice. Eleven years. A little better than eleven years. You got to know a man damn well, working with him for eleven years.

Not the safest job in the world, no. But the risk of a random bullet from some hood's gun, the unavoidable crash in a high-speed pursuit, you expected. The deliberate, private assault--that was something different. He had a moment of unprecedented black pessimism. This Nestor thing could easily be just what it looked like: the casual break-in. And that Slasher so damned anonymous. Trying to wreck the Daylight. Somebody who liked to watch train wrecks. So maybe somebody who'd set up another kind of wreck. And where to look for him? A thin man with a red face, said a boy ....

He thought it might be a useful idea to get the newspapers to run a photostat of that signature in the hotel register. Somebody might recognize it.

The apartment was a new one, very square and modern. There was a sign in front: Now Renting, 1 and 2 bedrooms, from $250. The hell of a lot of money to pay out every four weeks, he thought. He went into a square carpeted lobby and looked at the mailboxes. The Elgers were in apartment 1A.

It was the second door down, and there wasn't a bell, only a brass knocker, shield-shaped. He used it. He had to use it three times before the door was opened to him. If this was Ruth Elger, maybe Nestor had figured she was worth a black eye. She was about five-five, with a luscious figure and big dark eyes, a tilted nose; probably mouse-brown hair originally, but she wasn't letting nature dictate, and it was an expensive attempt at imitating Alison's burnished bright copper. Dressed and made up, she'd be something to look at. Right now, she was wrapped in a rather dirty silk housecoat, and she looked pale and sick, with dark circles under her eyes.

"Well?" she said.

Mendoza introduced himself, said he had a few questions to ask.

"Oh, God, it's a cop," she said, turning into the room.

"What did we do last night, Cliff? I don't remember going out anywhere."

"Didn't," said the man lying on the couch. He groaned. "Don't talk so loud, honey, I'm a tender plant 's morning." He was simply clad in a pair of red and white polka-dotted shorts, and he had an icebag balanced on his forehead. He opened one eye and squinted up at Mendoza, and groaned again. "False alarm. Maybe he's a cop, but I know why he's come. He wants to break into TV. It takes more than looks, brother."

"I really do want to ask you some questions," said Mendoza mildly.

"Oh, God, I feel awful," said Ruth Elger. "Why did we, Cliff?"

"Celebrate," said the man on the couch. Very slowly he rolled over, hauled himself to a sitting position, planted both feet on the floor. He pressed the icebag into place with one hand and managed to get both eyes open. He looked at Mendoza. "Looks, all right, you got. Latin lover-boy, mustache and all. Can you act? Can you sing? Besides, you're out of date. Ten years ago the Latin type was fine--maybe five years from now. Right now, what's wanted is clean-cut crew-cut red-blooded American boys, snub noses and all. God. They make me sick."

Mendoza produced his badge. "Hangover, Mr. Elger?"

"God," said Elger.

The woman came back from the kitchen with a cup of black coffee. She sat down and raised it to her mouth with both shaking hands.

"Celebration," said Elger. "I landed the Stoner contract for Jeffie. Bless little Jeffie's heart. Little two-hundred-grand-a-year Jeffie. Seemed reasonable at the time, celebrate. We didn't go out any place, I couldn't have hit anything or got a ticket, or did I?"

"About Frank Nestor," said Mendoza.

"Oh, my God," said Ruth Elger. "That awful thing.”

She put a hand to her head. "Poor Frank, getting shot by a burglar. Oh well, he was a bit of a bastard, but you couldn't help liking him."

"You couldn't," said Elger a little sulkily.

The room was--expectable, thought Mendoza. A lot of expensive modern furniture, everything wildly untidy, clothes flung over the backs of chairs, an empty gin bottle sitting on the color TV. "You gave him a black eye a couple of weeks ago," he said to Elger.

"That I did," said Elger. He put the icebag down on the couch beside him, stood up, and stretched. And Mendoza watched him, fascinated. Art Hackett was the hell of a big one, and it would take quite a lot of man to handle him. Maybe this was the man. Elger, naked except for the shorts, was quite something to see. He must be almost six-five, and he had a torso like the ads in the back pages of True Detective: You too can build muscular power. He might tip the scales at two-fifty, and all of it bone and muscle. Thick mat of hair on his chest, hairy legs. He had a square-jawed, nondescript face, shrewd blue eyes that right now were bloodshot and not quite focusing. "That I did," he said, and yawned widely.

"Oh, Cliff," she said, pouting. "I was mad at you about that idiotic Warren female. I didn't really think you'd-- But when you got plastered at the Andersons' party you were pawing her like mad, and I-- You know I wouldn't've--"

"Damn right,” said Elger. "That Goddamned little would-be charmer, twisting his damn mustache at you--"

He broke off, looked at Mendoza again. "Of course," he said seriously, "your type's always useful for villains. Funny thing, seventy-four per cent of all heavies always have mustaches. I made a graph on it once. It's damn funny, because a lot of females go for them. I'll bet you do right well with the females, cop or no cop."

"So I used to," said Mendoza. "Some straight answers, please, Mr. Elger. You thought--or knew--your wife was, shall we say, dating Dr. Nestor on the side. You had a fight with him--"

"I only met him twice," said Ruth Elger defensively, plaintively. "I wouldn't have-- But Cliff--”

"Suspected it," said Elger laconically. "Knew it was just to spite me. Didn't think it'd do any harm to teach him a lesson. Fight? Good God, man, him and me? I found 'em in Mike De Angelo's bar together, and sure I gave him a black eye. Pleasure. That's all. I hit him once and Ruthie and I left. What the hell? Ruthie said she was sorry, and I said I was sorry about the Warren girl--not that I'm admitting anything--and that was that. What the hell are the cops sniffing around for?" He eyed Mendoza interestedly and patted his crop of dark curly hair. "I'm feeling better, Ruthie."

"Oh, God, I wish I was," she said.

"Did a Sergeant Hackett of my office come to see you on Friday night?”

Elger turned away and sat down again. Mendoza couldn't see his eyes, read his expression. "Never heard of him. Was he supposed to? What about?"

"Where were you on Friday evening?"

"Where were we?" ruminated Elger. "Friday. What happened to Thursday? Oh, I remember, I had lunch with that guy from New York--that won't come to anything-- and we had dinner at Sardi's. Friday. Friday, I spent mostly with Jeffie, coaxing him to sign that Stoner contract. God, that man. Why do I stay in this business? Thinks he can ask half a million guarantee because he's made one picture and sends the teens. Maybe he can, eventually. I was beat. And we were meeting the studio lawyers yesterday--was yesterday Saturday? I've got a dim recollection-- Yeah, so I came straight home. Didn't I, Ruthie?"

"Friday," she said vaguely. "Yes, that's right. You said you needed a quiet night for once, on account of the lawyers next day. We had dinner here and didn't go anywhere."

"You were both here alone all that evening. And Sergeant Hackett didn't come to see you?"

"Nope, never heard the name. Why?" Elger cocked his head at Mendoza. "Now I look at you a second time--Knight Productions is doing a rehash of the Joaquin Murrieta thing, and you're just the type. You ever done any acting?"

"Only," said Mendoza, "in the line of duty, Mr. Elger. You were both home alone all Friday evening and no one came to see you."

"I said so," said Elger. He stood up again, towering over Mendoza, suddenly motionless, hands on hips. The only man Mendoza had run across in quite a while who would be capable of putting Art Hackett down and out.

"What's it all about?" he asked.

"Oh, God, I feel awful," said the woman.

NINE

When he got to Federico's out on North Broadway he called the hospital. He was passed around a little, until an annoyed nurse told him that the patient's condition was unchanged, and while they realized that people were concerned, it would be helpful if they'd refrain from calling in more than once an hour. There had been four calls in the last twenty minutes, she said crossly.

Mendoza deduced with no difficulty men going off duty for lunch and taking the chance to call in. He didn't apologize, but thanked her. He went on into the restaurant, found Palliser at a table alone, and joined him.

"Hospital says no change," said Palliser. "They still won't say yes or no."

"I know. Who'd you get, the nurse?"

"No," said Palliser. He looked very tired and grave; he spoke deliberately, looking at his cigarette. "I got a chatty young intern who's very interested in the case. He said that at this stage there's no way to be certain that even if he lives he won't have some permanent brain damage."

Mendoza didn't say anything to that. There wasn't anything to say. The tall Jamaican waiter came up and he said, "Bring me a drink, Adam. A double rye.”

"Scotch and water," said Palliser.

Adam didn't remonstrate with Mendoza for drinking in the middle of the day; he said softly, "Yes, sir. We were all mighty sorry to hear about Sergeant Hackett's accident, Lieutenant. They know yet whether he'll get better?"

"Not yet," said Mendoza.

Adam shook his head. "I'll do some earnest praying for him, Lieutenant. I'll fetch your drinks."

Mendoza took Nestor's appointment book out of his breast pocket and laid it on the table. "Last Wednesday morning," he said, "the call came in on Nestor, and you and Art went over to look at it. While Art talked to the wife you looked around the office, as the Prints boys finished with things. You looked at this appointment book. Carefully?"

"Well, I looked at the last filled-in page to see if his Tuesday evening appointment was listed, to give us a lead. It wasn't. Then I just riffled through it."

"Look at it again, please." Adam brought their drinks; Mendoza swallowed rye and lit a cigarette.

After a minute Palliser said, "Somebody's added a good deal to this, I think. As I remember it, it hadn't much written in it--big gaps on the few pages that had anything on them.”

"Soy del mismo parecer," said Mendoza, and swallowed more rye. "And right under Art's nose too. He had the glimmering of an idea about it, and once I'd thought over what he'd written down in his notebook, I had more than a glimmering .... Small steak as usual, Adam. You'd better have a substantial lunch, John, we've got an afternoon's work ahead of us."

"Same for me, medium. What are we going to do?"

"Try to break down the Corliss woman. After I went through that office I thought any finesse would be wasted. I called Jimmy--Scarne and Bert will meet us at her place with a search warrant. I'm not gambling that we'll find anything, but you never know.”

"And what did you see in your crystal ball about her?" asked Palliser.

"Where the money was coming from," said Mendoza.

"And she's a very levelheaded, cool, shrewd female, is the Corliss woman, and something to tackle. The way she took that gamble--my God. And nearly brought it off too, because Art hadn't seen through it all the way .... That, I'll lay you any money, was a very high-class abortion mill, and I'll bet Nestor was getting some fancy prices."

"For God's sake," said Palliser. "How do you make that out? Any evidence?"

"A little, maybe. Short way round if we can induce Corliss to talk, but on that I'm not taking any bets .... Details later. What did you find out on the legacy?"

"Nothing, because there's nothing to find out. Nestor never had a legacy in California. But I've been back into his bank records, and it makes a funny kind of picture. About the time he told his wife he had that legacy he paid in five thousand bucks in cash--"

"It fell out of the sky on him, maybe?"

"He said, all gratuitous, he'd had some lucky windfalls at Santa Anita. Now listen to this. For roughly the last two and a half years Nestor's been paying some nice round sums into his account every month. Paying some out too, but we know where that went--the Buick, the office, et cetera. It's run all the way between one and two thousand a month; lowest it ever fell was eight hundred. And about ninety per cent of it in cash."

"Yes, naturally," said Mendoza. "He'd ask for cash. He'd spread it out over each month, not to pay in a suspiciously large sum all at once. There'll have been a few checks for small amounts----he had some genuine innocent patients, the ones still on file."

"That's right," said Palliser. "And a couple of times when he did deposit a large amount told the teller--all very garrulous--he'd picked a lucky horse or had a lucky poker session. It does look as if you might have something. But what about this appointment book? When I looked at it before it didn't have a tenth of all those names in it--”

"Can you swear to that?"

"Yes, I can."

"Good," said Mendoza. "Right under Art's nose, by God. The nerve of the woman--I tell you, I don't think we'll shake her. I think we'll have to go the long way round to prove it."

"If Nestor was in that trade it'd be pretty certain she was in it with him, I see that."

"Almost without question. Because the money was coming in hand over fist--he must have been doing a roaring trade--and it's not the kind of business you put box ads in the Times about. Some woman helped him build up that trade. You notice it took a little while--about six months--and then the profits started rolling in. I could tell you a little story about it."

"You always tell interesting stories," said Palliser..

Mendoza looked at his steak meditatively. "Well, Clay said Nestor was out to get his, however it came. Also said that he'd probably have been very competent at his profession. I can see him, when he started in practice, envisioning possibilities in a mill, a first-class one, absolutely safe and reliable. Everything guaranteed. Aiming to draw the high-class females who could afford to pay a stiff price for the super service. I don't know where he picked up Corliss--she's not in our records but I think she may be in somebody's, because on all the evidence she's tough and experienced. I'll tell you what I think. I think that, round about three years ago, word began to get round here and there in the suitable places, about what number a girl should call if she was in the market for the super service. Around all the places where there'd be innocent daughters of wealthy fathers, any kind of money in combination with the kind of girls and women apt to find themselves in the market--married or not. In other words, he was trying to corner the market in that field, and I'd say he made a pretty good stab at it, judging by his income."

"That's quite a story," said Palliser. "Have we got anything to back it up?"

"The bank account. Overpriced vitamins wouldn't quite account for that kind of income. And at that, I expect all was grist to his mill, apologies for the pun, and he'd do some cut-rate ones to keep in practice. We've got a smock with a bloodstain on it, a pair of rubber gloves, a small scrap of a label which was once, probably, on an ampoule of morphine. And--"

"But listen," said Palliser, "if that was so we'd have found all sorts of evidence there! There'd be his instruments, and drugs, and hypos--"

Mendoza sighed. "We all make mistakes. Art was ready to kick himself when he began to suspect, from his notes. You started the usual routine on it, the photographs and printing and so on, but didn't begin an official search--and then Art sent you on the other case. And didn't bother to put a man on guard there while he went and had lunch." He finished his coffee and picked up the bill.

"Come on, let's go try to scare Corliss."

"I'll be damned!" said Palliser. "You mean she-- With him there? For God's sake. But--do you think she's the one shot Nestor?"

"I do not," said Mendoza. "In a left-handed sort of way, you've got to admire the woman. She must have had the hell of a shock when Mrs. Nestor called and told her. And what a gamble to take-- I tell you frankly, in her place I'd have packed a bag and bought a plane ticket to Japan. And the fact that she didn't--well, I don't think we'll get much change out of her."

* * *

Margaret Corliss faced the four men unblinkingly, stolidly. "A search warrant?" she said. "Well, reely, I never was so insulted--as if I had anything to hide! What the world is coming to, with the police thinking they can accuse honest women--" And she looked like a very ordinary honest woman, plain and indignant, in the middle of her ordinary, rather shabby apartment living room.

"I haven't accused you of anything yet," said Mendoza. "But we're going to take some short cuts, Corliss, because I'm not feeling very tactful or talkative. Go over there and sit down. All right, boys"--he nodded to Dwyer and Scarne--"take the place apart."

"Reely, I--"

"Sit down, I said! I know all about it," said Mendoza, standing over her where she flounced into a sagging armchair. "And if you don't come apart and admit it, we'll go the long way round to collect the nice legal evidence to prove it. So one way or another you're due for a little holiday at the taxpayers' expense. I'd guess a one-to-three, it you've never been inside before. Now, Frank Nestor was operating an abortion mill and you were in on it. He--"

"I don't have to listen to your insults--dirty Mex--"

"Sit still and pay attention!" he said coldly. "You'd done some leg work on it, passing the discreet publicity. Between you, you'd built up a nice business, profitable as all hell because you were charging what the traffic would bear."

Both he and Palliser were watching her for any betraying gesture or expression; she just sat, a plump plain fortyish woman, and stared back with cold eyes. But Palliser thought the eyes were watchful.

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you," said Mendoza hardly. "This I know. I know the hell of a lot. Everything had been running smooth as silk--you'd been doing a land-office business. Dios, at the prices you probably got, two or three a month would make a damn nice living for both of you. And as word got round by satisfied customers--everything guaranteed safe, a real doctor--business picked up, didn't it?"

"Talk all you please," she said stolidly. "I don't have to listen.”

"You'll listen. You had one hell of a shock when you heard that Nestor had been shot--"

"Oh, I thought you were going to say I shot him. Reely, blackening Doctor's name like this--wherever you got a nasty idea like that--"

"Weren't you at all surprised when his wife told you first that he wasn't feeling well, was at home, and then called to say he was lying murdered in his office? Did you know anything about Nestor's private life, or was it purely a business arrangement?" He looked her up and down, contemptuously. "Obviously he wouldn't be interested in you that way--probably nobody--"

She reddened indignantly: the one slur a woman might rise to. "Of course there wasn't anything between Doctor and me! I've got my own gentleman friend, he--"

"Oh, have you?" said Mendoza. "That's interesting. Was he here with you last Friday evening? What's his name?"

"I don't have to tell you anything! Coming here and--You've got me all confused--what's Friday got--"

"Never mind. When you heard Nestor had been murdered you knew you'd be in one sweet mess unless you could clear the evidence out of that office. You were taking the hell of a chance, but you moved fast and you had luck. You found the office open, and you found the evidence where it had been left, so you knew probably we hadn't searched the place thoroughly yet. You bundled it into your car trunk--and don't think I can't tell you what it consisted of." He gave her a wolfish smile. "There'd have been a few surgical tools, probably in the sterilizer--and whatever supply was on hand of the morphine he used for anesthetic--and we'll find where he was acquiring that too, probably from some local pusher--and I really do think Doctor had kept a record of all his under-the-counter  patients, and while he never let you lay hands on it, you knew where it was and you took that too. Once we had made any kind of search, the whole thing would have been obvious--and how obvious that you'd known all about it! As it was, there were a few more details you had to take care of, but just as you started back to the office your luck ran out. A big tough sergeant of cops drove up." Mendoza stopped; her silent tight-lipped watchfulness was raising wrath in him, Palliser thought. He'd heard that Mendoza was one of those, a drink or so turned him belligerent; and he'd had that double rye, and hadn't
eaten much of his steak.

"My God, you had one hell of a nerve, didn't you?" said Mendoza. "You went on taking the chance--to save yourself. If that came out, you'd be tied into it tight. So, right under the sergeant's nose, you went on hiding the evidence--and planting false evidence. Talk about nerve --eso ya es llover sobre mojado, adding insult to injury! You knew the minute we saw those files, listing that slim number of legitimate patients, we were going to start wondering like hell where all Nestor's money came from. That worried you, didn't it, that you couldn't do anything about the files? The sergeant was in there, you couldn't walk off with them or start adding fictitious file cards, to make them look. good. No. But you did what you could. By God, you did. You made the excuse of calling the patients, and you got hold of the appointment book. You sat there at your desk, the innocent efficient nurse, with that and the phone book, leaning over the phone so nobody could see you were holding down the tabs, talking to dead air--and while you canceled non-existent appointments you actually entered a lot of non-existent appointments in the book. Because on the surface it had to look as if Nestor had a large practice, to account for the income."

He laughed sharply. "Unfortunately, somebody had already looked at the appointment book and is ready to swear it's been extensively added to since."

"You can't prove that," she said. "You can't make me out--"

"You don't think so?" said Mendoza. He laughed again. "We'll prove it, Corliss! Check out every one of those names in the book--and nine out of ten'll show up as non-existent. What was a chiropractor doing with a bloodstained smock? Some patient had a nosebleed? ¡A otro perro con ese hueso! We'll prove it, and you'll be spending the next few years in Tehachapi."

Scarne came in from the bedroom. "Nothing," he said. "Nothing even unusual."

"I didn't expect it," said Mendoza without taking his eyes off the woman. "Corliss is a little too smart to keep incriminating evidence around, isn't she? Or thinks she is. What did you do with Doctor's records, Corliss? And all the rest of it? You might have got rid of the tools, but I think you'd hang onto the records. I think maybe you had the same bright little idea Doctor had about that, didn't you? Did you stash them away in a safe-deposit box maybe? If and when we charge you, I can get an order to open one of those, you know .... Well, don't just stand there!" he added to Scarne. "Go down and look at her car."

He picked up the bulging handbag lying on the table near the door. "Keys probably in here."

"You leave my things alone! You--"

"Search warrant, Corliss," said Mendoza. "All nice and legal!" He took a step and stood over her close. "No, you couldn't do anything about those damning files--files showing just the few legitimate patients he had. You told the big sergeant one very damn silly story about that, but it was really all you could say, wasn't it?--that a lot of file cards were missing, had been taken out. You could point to the appointment book, all righteous, and say that showed how many patients he had--but it wasn't quite the same thing, was it?"

"You've certainly got a nasty imagination," she said shrilly. "Not one word of that--you can't prove--"

"Sooner or later somebody might have begun to wonder," said Mendoza tautly. He bent a little closer to her. "Look at me! You know something, Corliss? Somebody had begun to wonder about it. That big tough sergeant, Corliss. He didn't like you, he was wondering hard about you. He wanted to see you again, rake you over the coals a little. Did he, Corliss?"

"I don't know what you--" Suddenly her eyes showed a little fright, at his nakedly savage tone.

"Did he? Last Friday night-- And did you, maybe, give yourself away somehow? So that you knew if the sergeant passed that on you'd be in one hell of a mess anyway?

And was, maybe, your gentleman friend here to lend you a hand at--"

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said rapidly, nervously. "What if Larry was here Friday night? That cop never-- I don't know what you mean--"

But her dark expressionless eyes shifted at last, once, and her tight mouth worked convulsively.

"¡Perro negra!" said Mendoza violently--and Palliser moved. He saw Mendoza's eyes, and he took one step, between them, to seize Mendoza's upraised arm.

For an instant they stood breast to breast, and Palliser was the taller man but he wondered if he could hold him. He said quietly, "You haven't been haled up to I.A. the last couple of years, sir, you don't want to break your record."

Mendoza drew a long breath. "No. No. All right, boy."

Palliser felt the violence of effort as he regained control. He let go of him and stepped back.

"--sue you for slander!" she was saying breathlessly. "That's right, try to hit a defenseless woman! Of all things, I never heard of-- All lies! You'll never prove--"

"You're wasting breath and effort, Corliss," said Mendoza. "We'll prove it on you. Larry who?"

"I don't have to tell you that," she said haughtily. "To drag him in. I never heard--”

"Are you a registered nurse? Where'd you train?"

"I don't have to tell you--"

Scarne came back, letting himself in with her key, and said, "The car's clean, Lieutenant."

"Yes," said Mendoza. "Just don't try to run, Corliss. We're watching you, and we'll get enough for a warrant sooner or later."

She was still sitting there, stolid and defiant, when they went out.

Dwyer dropped behind with Palliser. "Brother," he said sotto voce, "you took a chance there. I've seen him like that a few times. He might just as easy have knocked you into the middle of next week. For all he's not outsize, when he's in the mood he can be a tough one to take."

"Better me than a female citizen there's no evidence on," said Palliser tersely.

In the street Mendoza stopped beside the long black elegance of the Ferrari. He took off his hat and put a hand to his head as if it ached, and summoned a smile for the three of them. He said, "So we go the long way round. With the lab boys working overtime. A tail on her twenty-four hours a day, from now on. She knows we'll get there in the end. Somebody'll have to go through that appointment book, check out all the names. Get that set up, one of you, will you? Bert--you chase back to the office and start that. And when you and Scarne have finished checking your bit of Nestor's address book, I could bear to know the hell of a lot more about one Cliff Elger. Go talk to people about him. I'1l see you back at the office at six."

"O.K.," said Dwyer casually. He and Scarne walked on toward Dwyer's car down the block.

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant," said Palliser. "It was just--I mean, I know how you felt, that damn woman, but I couldn't let you----”

Mendoza tossed his hat in the open window of the Ferrari. He didn't say anything; he reached for a cigarette, lit it.

"I mean, my God, you know--the headlines," said Palliser. "That juvenile thing last year--all blown up out of nothing, but the chief is so damn scrupulous about that kind of thing, and Internal Affairs----"

"I know," said Mendoza. "Thanks very much, John. Make a fool of myself----that never accomplishes anything. We'll drop on Corliss, with any luck. That doesn't say. Let's talk this over a little." He got into the car.

Palliser got in after him. "Yes, sir."

"Build it for me," said Mendoza. "The way you see it, on Art. How did it happen?"

"Well, I don't see that we can--"

"From what we know. Construe,” said Mendoza.

Palliser considered. "One thing did occur to me. What was the last thing he wrote in his notebook?"

"You think, don't you?" Mendoza brought out Hackett's notebook. "But it's not much help .... "

TEN

It wasn't much help because Hackett didn't keep consecutive notes; he had used separate sections of the notebook for separate inquiries and people. There wasn't any way to know what he'd last written down. In the section on Andrea Nestor, the last thing he'd written was, "Any overheard quarrels with husband? Ask neighbors?" There wasn't anything about the Elgers at all.

"But of course," said Palliser, "wherever he was attacked, whoever did it, if we're right he probably wouldn't have had a chance to write any notes about that interview."

Mendoza agreed. It was always better not to produce a notebook at the actual interview with a witness, if you could avoid it, but to write your notes afterward; that would be what Hackett would have done.

"The only other thing that struck me," said Palliser, "is that it would have been a lot easier to set up that fake accident if there were two people involved. Because that canyon road's pretty long and winding. The site was about a mile up from where the road starts, above the end of Bronson. It's steep, too. When X had sent the car over, he'd be on foot, unless somebody had driven another car along to pick him up. And look, how would he know that the crash wouldn't be heard right away, bring people swarming around? How's he going to explain himself, there on foot? I think there must--"

"You said the houses, and not many of them, are set back. And that there wasn't really any crash, the Ford didn't hit anything big. A mile's not really very far. Of course it'd be more than a mile, maybe a lot more, because we don't know where X lives, where it happened. It'd have been easier for two people, but it wasn't at all impossible for a single X. I think we can make a few deductions anyway." Mendoza produced a folded paper from his breast pocket. "This is what Erwin had to say--and the surgeon at the hospital. The most serious injury is the head wound--massive skull fracture. They don't think he was hit with a weapon of any kind, and they don't think the injury occurred during the fall over the cliff. They say it's too big an area, and on account of certain technicalities and measurements they come up with the opinion that he was knocked against some hard, broad, flat surface with great force. That's Erwin--‘with great force'. Thus adding his own weight to the force of the blow. Erwin suggests a cement wall, the side of a building, or a flat stone hearth. There's a slight bruise under the jaw too, which backs that up. They think that happened a little while before he incurred the other injuries--which was obviously when the car was sent over. Anything occur to you from that?"

"Not much. Except that it's likelier, isn't it, that it happened inside somewhere, not on the street? I don't suppose X had thought it all out beforehand--he probably struck that blow on impulse, and probably just after Hackett had let him see he'd given himself away somehow."

"I'll go along on that. We can deduce something else, John. Why did X have to take Art's own belt off to tie him up? Obviously, because he hadn't any rope or stout cord handy--or maybe only enough for either the wrists or ankles. What does that say? Possibly an apartment, instead of a house. A house can usually produce something of the sort--clothesline, et cetera--but people living in apartments, unless they habitually wrap a lot of parcels for mailing-- Yes."

"Well, practically all of them do live in apart1nents," said Palliser. "The people we've come across so far."

"There'll be some of Nestor's friends living in houses, I suppose. All right. Say it was Corliss and her boy friend Larry--who I'd like to know more about too. We will. He was there. Suppose she somehow gave herself away to Art, or he spotted some evidence there while he was talking to her, and started to question her hard or even charge her--and the boy friend got mad and hit him, caught him off balance maybe and knocked him against that imitation marble hearth or even just the wall. I'll say this. I think we'll find that Larry is an amiable weak lout--Corliss' kind do pick up that type. Possibly he's had a few brushes with the law himself. So he'd be all too ready to help get rid of a cop."

"Um," said Palliser.

"And, if he is that type, it's a type that often comes apart fairly easily," said Mendoza. "I don't know but what I like the Elgers better, except that they look fairly normal --for their type--and there's nothing on them at all."

He told Palliser about the Elgers.

Palliser said, "You know--what Dr. Erwin said--that he was probably knocked against something. That sounds to me as if he was taken completely by surprise. Because, after all, it's second nature, isn't it?--you're questioning a suspect, a pretty hot suspect, even if you've just found that out--you're watching for any tricks. Aren't you? We've just had a reminder about that, last month--those two fellows stopped for speeding, who shot up the squadcar man. He never thought to check them for arms."

"Yes?"

"Well, what it might say," said Palliser, "is that it was somebody he'd never expect to attack him at all. Physically. Such as a woman or--or an eighty-year-old man, something like that. So he was off his guard entirely, and that was how he was caught off balance. And you know--"

"I rather like that," said Mendoza, "because in the ordinary way he would be taking care. Not being a fool, and having some experience. What you were going on to say was that obviously, if he'd had any reason to be suspicious of Cliff Elger, he'd have been taking double pains to be careful, a gorilla like that-bigger than Art himself."

"That's just what I was going to say."

"And you'd be right. And come to think," said Mendoza, "am I right about that belt? People living in apartments wouldn't have any clothesline lying around, but a good many people do keep cord for wrapping packages. For--for tying up things to put away, like Christmas decorations and winter clothes. I don't know. Maybe it was just the first thing X thought of. But maybe not too. Because--it wasn't a very cunningly faked accident, was it?"

Palliser shrugged. "The squad car first on the scene spotted it right away. By the tracks. No skid, no try at braking--the car was backed around deliberately to face the drop."

"Yes. Not a brain, whoever set it up. So he might not have realized that we'd spot how the belt had been used either. On the other hand, it must have made him a little more trouble. When he got up there he had to take the time to put it back on Art--rather an awkward little job, rolling a big heavy man around getting his belt through all the little loops. I think we're safe in saying that he used the belt in the first place because he couldn't lay hands on anything else in a hurry. And why tie him up at all? Yes, why? Here was a badly injured man, unconscious--he wouldn't be getting up and walking away anywhere."

"Well, so X didn't have any medical knowledge, to know that,"

"Yes, but also that says maybe he stashed Art away somewhere awhile, before he set up the accident .... Oh hell," said Mendoza, and started the engine. "There's not much in all that. I don't know. Let's go back to the office and see if anything's come in."

"By the way, you said to the Corliss woman you thought she'd had the same bright idea Nestor had had. What was that?"

"Maybe something to check--if we had any way of knowing where to look." Mendoza smiled. "That scrapbook full of the doings of high society. When I looked at it, one thing struck me. Every single clipping, whatever it was about, included a photograph. And every single photograph included at least one young woman .... I said I think Nestor was aiming at the moneyed women. He'd get others too, of course. Kinsey has alerted us to the fairly high incidence of abortion in unexpected places. And of course a lot of those customers would give false names. I think Nestor was keeping his scrapbook on the off-chance of recognizing former patients. I don't think he was above a little genteel blackmail."

"Oh," said Palliser, enlightened. "I get you. He recognizes Jane Smith, who came to him last year for a job, as being really a socialite debutante, and puts the bite on her--but how could he? Without giving himself away?"

"He couldn't, really, beyond threatening to tip off her parents, or boy friend, or husband for that matter, anonymously--but a lot of women in that position might not clearly realize that. I wonder if he'd found a victim yet, from all his diligent research? And, if he had, whether she'd paid up. Well, see what routine's turning up for us."

* * *

Routine had turned up a couple of interesting things. Sergeant Lake said, only half kidding, "I might have known things would start to move, Lieutenant, soon as you got home and had a hunch."

Landers, making the round of the bars in that downtown area asking whether silver dollars had been part of their take lately, had turned up two leads. A bartender at a hole-in-the-wall joint on Broadway remembered a fellow coming in several times who'd paid with silver dollars. He had made a statement, and if there wasn't much in it, there was something. He couldn't give any kind of description. "¡Natuiralmente!" said Mendoza irritably. "They will keep bars so damn dark." All he remembered about the fellow was that he was very poorly dressed, in what looked like somebody else's clothes, and usually kept a hat pulled down low on his forehead. Maybe, oh, four, five times he'd been in. Always at night, and once or twice quite late, staying until the bar closed at 1 AM. He was, said the bartender vaguely, medium-sized and kind of thin. And he always ordered bourbon, straight.

The other bartender worked at a place on Main. It wasn't quite down into Skid Row, but on the fringes; and he was a tough customer, who didn't much care for cops and was reluctant to open up with any information. Landers had persuaded him, finally, to come out with what he knew. And that wasn't much either, but again, something. There was this old bat, he said, kind of a regular--probably a setup, also a lush. He wasn't admitting that she was working out of his bar, naturally, because he didn't want to lose his license; but that, said Landers, was what it sounded like. Anyway, her name was Rosie--that was all the bartender knew. And the last couple of times she'd been in, she'd paid him with a silver dollar. He gave a vague description of her; no, he'd never heard her last name, and of course he didn't know where she lived--he could do the hell of a lot better than that for himself.

"Well--something, but what?" said Mendoza. "Put out a call on Rosie. Trace it down, and probably find the customer she got the silver dollars from just blew in from Vegas and has nothing to do with our Slasher. However--”

Nothing had turned up on that search of hotel registers in the downtown area. Mendoza called the city editors of the Times, the Herald, the Hollywood Citizen, and the Glendale News-Press, and requested them to run cuts of that signature they had from the Liverpool Arms register: promised to send over prints. He sent a man down to get the prints and deliver them by hand. The first body had been found the day before he and Alison had left for New York; he hadn't heard many details on it. Now he settled down to reread all the reports on the five victims .... He said to Lake, "That stuff we picked up in the hotel room--is it still around? Lab send it back?"

"I seem to remember it did----probably be in Art's desk." Lake looked, and brought him a shoe box containing a few odds and ends. "No prints, nothing suggestive."

Mendoza looked at it sadly. No guarantee either--the Liverpool Arms being what it was--that any of these things was connected with the Slasher, who had occupied that room such a short time. Found in the room with the body, but ten to one the rooms there weren't so thoroughly cleaned between tenants.

A half-empty packet of matches. A single penny, dark with age. An empty crumpled-up cigarette package, king-size Chesterfields. A dime-store handkerchief, soiled. A crumpled-up paper cup that had held bourbon at some time.

He picked up the matches idly and opened the cover. He looked at the dozen matches left in it and said to himself, "¿Y qué es esto? Somebody's slipping, either the lab or us. Jimmy!"

"What now?"

"This Mike. The first victim. I suppose you couldn't tell me whether he was left-handed?"

"Nor I don't know what color eyes his grandmother had either. Why the hell?"

"We can probably find out," said Mendoza. "He seems to have been known down on the Row. And I'd like to ask Bainbridge his opinion on this one too .... Why? Have all of you so-called detectives gone blind? Look at this packet of matches. The ordinary right-handed person, tearing off a match, holds the book in his left hand and naturally reaches for the first match at the extreme right. ¿Cómo no? He gradually works his way through the book from right to left. All right. Whoever started to use this book of matches did it just the opposite--all the matches that have been torn out were at the extreme left. If Mike wasn't left-handed, there's a fair probability that these were the Slasher's matches and that he is left-handed."

"Oh," said Sergeant Lake. "That might narrow it down, sure. From about seven million to only two and a half."

"Well, it's another something," said Mendoza.

Dwyer came in at five-fifteen, Scarne and Glasser after him; Landers had just finished taking the second bartender's statement. All the people in Nestor's address book looked ordinary--other chiropractors who'd been in his graduating class, men around his own age, salesmen, clerks--some family men, some not. Of the women, a few looked like typical tramps, a few others were married; one of those women, a Mrs. Anita Sheldon, had been scared, said Glasser, and begged him not to drag her name in--nobody knew she'd known Nestor, her husband would kill her if he knew. "Husband's a truck driver," Glasser added. "National moving firm. Those guys are usually pretty hefty."

There wasn't much there. They'd look harder at the Sheldons.

Dwyer said he'd seen Elger's two associates in their office, and they'd given him names of a couple of others who knew him, another agent and a producer. The consensus was that Elger had the hell of a hot temper, was known to fly off the handle over any little thing. "The kind who gets mad quick and then cools down fast and it's all over, you know. But everybody seems to like him."

"Yes. And that kind sometimes cools down fast to find an unintended body around," said Mendoza. "Especially when they're as big as Cliff Elger. Well, boys--any of you feel like doing a little more leg work tonight?"

None of them minded.

* * *

When he got home Alison met him at the door. "What's wrong, querida?" he asked, seeing her eyes. He held her close. The hospital was still saying, No change.

"Oh, Luis," she said shakily. "Nothing now. But--I didn't tell Angel, I asked the nurse not to. We were at the hospital this afternoon, and the nurse told me. They they thought he was going, this morning. Then his pulse picked up, for no reason, and he--"

Mendoza put his head down on her shoulder for a minute. "Well, he's still here anyway," he said. "Maybe Adam was doing some extra earnest praying about then. I want to talk to Angel. Can she--"

"Yes, of course."

He went into the living room, where Bast greeted him loudly and El Señor contemplated him evilly through green slits, from the top of the phonograph. The record-cabinet doors were open and El Señor had dragged out four albums. Mendoza said absently, "Señor Molestial" and put them away

Mrs. MacTaggart came trotting in with a shot glass and a saucer. "I heard the car," she said. "You'll be needing a drink before dinner, and that unnatural cat giving you no peace unless he has his share." She set the saucer down for El Señor, who had an unaccountable taste for rye and lapped eagerly. "And the longer the man hangs on there, the better chance there is, as I needn't be reminding you. Mercy on us, what's--"

Pandemonium broke out in the hall. Mark Christopher staggered in clasping a wildly struggling Sheba around the middle. "Kitty-kitty!" he was announcing triumphantly. Miss Teresa Ann, still very uncertain on her small feet, staggered after him wailing loudly, and bringing up the procession came Master John Luis on all fours, also wailing.

"Now what is all this indeed? Like banshees the lot of you-- Mark, put the kitty down now--" Mrs. MacTaggart hurried to Sheba's rescue.

El Señor finished the rye, thoughtfully licked his whiskers, and looking slightly cross-eyed jumped down to cuff Sheba, who was indignantly smoothing down her coat. She shrieked and spat at him.

"The happy home," said Mendoza resignedly to his drink. "Talk about the patter of little feet . . ."

When Angel came in with Alison he eyed her and said, "I think you could stand a small drink before dinner too."

"I'm all right," said Angel.

"Cocktails all made, waiting," said Alison with a show of briskness. "I thought we both could. I'll get them."

Mendoza sipped rye, looking at Angel. He and Art's nice domestic little wife had never appreciated each other to any extent; he couldn't say he knew her very well. He was rather surprised she wasn't weeping and fainting all over the place. She looked pale, but she'd put on make-up and combed her hair. Just another pretty dark-haired woman: but for the first time he noticed the firmness of her jaw and her steady eyes.

Alison came back with two glasses, and he waited until Angel had taken a sip. "Now, I expect Alison told you I want to hear every detail you remember, about what he said to you that night."

"Yes, of course," said Angel. "The worst of it is, I wasn't paying too much attention--of course I couldn't know it was important then. And what with coping with Mark pounding the table legs with one of his pull-toys--but I've tried to think back as well as I can. I know  definitely he said he was going to see that hotel clerk." She sipped her cocktail; her voice was steady. "He was worried about this mass killer, on account of all the fuss the newspapers have been making, what they were saying about the force. He said something about Nestor's wife I too, and a woman named Corliss. And he mentioned somebody named Elger. That's all I remember, I'm sorry."

"That's fine," said Mendoza. "He said definitely he was going to see the clerk at the hotel?"

"Yes, that I remember. He--" She stopped, and finished her drink rather quickly. "He left about twenty past seven.

He kissed me at the door and said, ‘Think I'll try those Elgers first, or the Nestor  woman--and, damn it, I'll be late because that clerk's not on until nine. Probably be home about ten-thirty.' That's--"

"O.K.," said Mendoza. "That's something. But he must have gone to see Mrs. Nestor first, and we know he was all right when he left there. Gives us a sort of terminus a quo, anyway." He stared into his nearly empty glass.

Suddenly she got up, came over to stand in front of him. "You'll find out, won't you?" she said.

Mendoza looked up at her. "We'll fond out. Whatever happens."

"Yes. I never--never liked you very much," said Angel. "It seems a little funny, but I guess now I can see I was a little jealous of you. Not just of you. All of them. The office. You because you're the important one there.

And he--thinks--so much--of you."

"Yes," said Mendoza. He stood up. "Yes, Angel. I know that."

"He thinks--you're so good," she said. Her eyes were very bright. "I never thought- But the way all of you have-- They've all called me, you know, to say-- There was even a letter from the chief. I never really understood how it is--with all of you. I--I used to resent the job, sometimes."

"As most cops' wives do,” said Mendoza. "Which just makes it all the tougher for the cops."

"Yes. I wouldn't feel that way any more," she said. "It's like--I see that--soldiers in line of d-duty. All together."

"And there is no discharge in that war," said Mendoza with a crooked smile.

"So you will find out who. You'll just go on until you do. Whatever happens. And I guess--maybe--he was right about you too. I didn't think you ever felt things much, that you were the kind of man who-- But you do. I see."

"Now I'll tell you," he said gently, "I never thought much of you either, but you're a good girl, Angel. I wouldn't have thought you'd stand up to this so well. Whatever happens, we'll get him, I promise you."

After a moment Alison said with a little catch in her voice, "Well, if the mutual admiration society'll break up, I think dinner's about ready .... I suppose it's silly to ask you if you're going out again."

"Tú debeas saberlo," said Mendoza. "I'm going out on what the British call a pub crawl"

"Bars?" said Alison. "Good heavens. You can't go into bars without drinking, and you know what three drinks do to you. You'll end up getting picked up for disturbing the peace, or assault and battery."

"¡Dios me libre!” said Mendoza. "I just hope to God we can turn up something useful."

ELEVEN

They were out in force down there tonight, most of the night shift and some of the day men, wandering in and out of the bars in the Slasher's territory. Palliser was stationed in the bar where the bartender said the lush Rosie dropped in; he'd stay until ten-thirty when Higgins would take over. The bartender didn't like it, but agreed to point her out if she came in. Piggott was sitting in the bar on Flower Street where the bartender remembered the fellow  who had paid him with a silver dollar and walked out with Theodore Simms, The rest of the men had only a very vague description to work from, but they'd be checking on anybody who matched it, getting names and addresses. That was the kind of dogged routine that often got you there in the end, especially on one like this. Mendoza went first to the bar on Main, the bar Rosie frequented. Palliser was sitting in the rear booth, and getting surly looks from the bartender for occupying a whole booth instead of a stool. He didn't come over to take Mendoza's order right away.

"Nothing yet," said Palliser.

"Couldn't expect it," said Mendoza. "Too early. If she's working tonight at all, she's still fixing herself up in her room .... No wonder nobody could offer any descriptions. I can hardly see you, let alone anybody across the room. 'These damn places--" He looked up as the bartender slouched over and said, "Nothing for me, thanks."

The bartender almost snarled at him. Palliser was taking an occasional small sip of a highball.

Mendoza drifted over to the bar on Flower Street, to have a word with Piggott. Piggott was the day tail on Margaret Corliss, and he greeted Mendoza with something like excitement. "I was just wondering was it worth while calling in, Lieutenant. See, I--"

"Something? . . . Straight rye," said Mendoza to the bartender, sliding into the opposite side of the booth.

"Not on this, no. It's that Corliss dame. You know I got a pretty good memory for faces. Well, when I first laid eyes on her today I thought right off I'd seen her before. Only I couldn't place where. I been thinking about it on and off all day, you know how a thing like that bothers you. Like some name you can't remember, but it's right on the tip of your tongue. It kept bothering me something awful, because I got to thinking it might be important. Well, I said to myself, lay it at the Lord's door and ask for help on it." Piggott looked at him earnestly over his glass of plain water; Piggott was a pillar of the Free Methodist Church and wouldn't have dreamed of touching the jigger of whiskey at his elbow. "And just five minutes ago, as I was sitting here not really thinking about it, the Lord came through and I remembered. I saw that woman down at headquarters once, Lieutenant. I couldn't tell you when, but I can tell you where--it was in the corridor right outside the Vice office. I'd been down there, some reason, and I saw Lieutenant Andrews with her--he had her by one arm, they were just going into his office."

"¡No me diga!" said Mendoza. "That's very interesting. That all you remember? Well, we know it wasn't a charge because her prints aren't on file, but if she was brought in for questioning even once, maybe Percy will remember something about it. Probably be somewhere in his records anyway. I'll ask him in the morning. That's very interesting indeed .... "

From there he wandered over, looking around several other joints on the way, to the bar on Broadway where the barkeep remembered the fellow with the silver dollars. He found Higgins sitting on the end stool there, over a nearly empty glass, watching the crowd. "He said he'd give me a signal if the guy came in, but he's not very sure he'd know him again."

The bartender came up, but only to take Mendoza's order and suggest a refill. Higgins shoved over his glass and Mendoza said, "You'd better nurse them along slower, George, it's still early."

Higgins laughed. "My God, place like this gets about sixty-five highballs out of a fifth, and only eighty proof to start with .... You sure see the types in these joints. Makes you wonder about people, how they get this far down.”

Presently Glasser and Scarne came in, and took a good look at all the customers. There was a man alone, round the horseshoe curve of the bar, who matched what there was of their vague description: medium height; thin, in .rather loose-fitting old clothes. Glasser went up to him,  they exchanged a few words, and the man, looking very frightened, went out with Glasser. Five minutes later he came back in, looking shaken, and ordered a new drink. Glasser would have his name and address.

Routine. It usually got you there in the end. Sooner or later ....

About ten forty-live Mendoza stepped into the lobby of the Liverpool Arms. The armchair behind the counter was empty; the inner door stood open.

Suddenly he felt that small cold bite up the spine that told him he was onto something, a new card was about to be handed him; and though he hadn't the remotest idea what it might be, he obeyed instinct blindly and stood still, making no move toward the counter.

The old shabby building was very silent at this time of night. From what he could see through the half-open door, the small room behind the counter was a storeroom of some kind; he had a glimpse of dusty shelves.

He heard the glassy clink of bottle on glass, and something was set down with a thud. A minute later Telfer the clerk came out and shut the door behind him. He moved with exaggerated care, and he was wiping the back of his hand across his mouth.

Mendoza walked up to the counter. Telfer noticed him then and stood swaying only a little, smiling his yellow-snagged smile. " 'D evening, sir," he said. His eyes were glassy and there was the saccharine-sweet smell of port wine about him. "Do for you?" He didn't seem to recognize Mendoza at all.

"Never mind," said Mendoza, and turned and went out. For God's sake! he thought. Every little lead they had turning out to be useless. Telfer a wino, and the odds were that was why he couldn't tell them anything about the man who'd taken that room. Probably so high he didn't remember a single damn thing about him. Of all the Goddamned bad luck . . .

But, damn it, was he going senile, not to have tried that? Like Art walking off and leaving that office wide open--sometimes you caught yourself forgetting the most elementary things.

Where was the Slasher sleeping? He hadn't signed into any other hotel in this area. He could be staying in a different flophouse every night, the fifty-cents-a-night, men-only places on the Row. Nobody asked for signatures in those places. But he could also have taken a room in some cheap rooming house. What was he living on, too? Did he have a job--or an unlimited supply of those silver dollars? Well, cover the rooming houses, anyway; ask about recent arrivals.

And the ordinary citizen might think that one like the Slasher would be easy to spot, that he'd behave so queerly or look so different that anybody could spot him at a glance. Unfortunately not so. As Higgins said, you ran into some funny ones down here, and a lot of them looked odd.

At eleven-thirty he wandered back to the bar on Main and found Higgins where Palliser had been sitting. Higgins had probably, of necessity, drunk four or five highballs this evening, and he looked and acted as sober as the proverbial judge. Mendoza, who had ordered five drinks and contrived to empty three of them inconspicuously on the floor, ordered a sixth and said, "You can drink it for me."

"I don't like rye," said Higgins.

"But I've already had two," said Mendoza. "You know what it does to me. We're on a job, damn it."

Higgins looked at him benevolently and said he'd look after him if he started picking a fight with the bouncer. The bartender came back with the rye and jerked an ungracious shoulder.

"You want Rosie, she just come in. There by the juke box."

Higgins got up. "I'll bring her," he said.

Thirty seconds later he ushered her into his side of the booth and slid in after her. "You said you'd buy me a drink, honey,” said Rosie.

"Sure.” She wasn't very high yet; she could probably take a good deal more. "You like rye? You can have this."

He reached and set Mendoza's glass in front of her. "Cigarette?"

"Thanks lots," she said. She put the rye down in one swallow and leaned to Higgins' lighter. "You just buy drinks for Rosie 'n' Rosie'll be nice to you. Both of you," she added, discovering Mendoza across the table. She beamed at them muzzily. "You're cute," she said to Mendoza.

"We'd just like to talk to you awhile, Rosie," said Higgins. He looked at Mendoza and they exchanged a silent opinion. They'd both seen about all there was to see, down here and elsewhere, of the bottom of things; but nobody ever quite got used to it.

She might have been pretty once, a shallow-eyed little blonde with the pert figure, out for the fun times and the romance. There were a thousand reasons for it, for the Rosies; this was a long time later.

She giggled up at Higgins a little foolishly. "Order me another drink, honey." Mendoza signaled the bartender, who shrugged and began to build a highball.

She might be no more than in her forties, but she looked sixty. That was a long time of too much careless make-up and too little washing. She was too thin, shoulder bones standing out sharply, her wrists and ankles like a child's. She hadn't much on under the old, mended, cheap black rayon evening dress, and the thin breasts pushed relentlessly out by the padded bra, the too thin body, were hardly provocative: only a little pathetic. Her hair, bleached too often and washed too seldom, was diy and uncurled, hanging untidily to her shoulders. She smelled of old sweat and cheap cologne and whiskey, and the coy painted smile was somehow a little obscene, as if a death's head had winked at them.

"We just want to talk to you," said Mendoza. The bartender came up and slapped a highball in front of her.

"Sure. That's what they all say," said Rosie, and giggled again. She drank thirstily.

"About silver dollars," said Higgins. "You've been spending a few lately. Don't often see silver dollars any more."

Rosie didn't say anything. She looked at him, setting her glass down, and small fright was in her eyes.

"Where'd you get them?" asked Higgins casually.

"H-how d'you know I had any silver dollars?" Suddenly she read them; Rosie would have had this and that to do with cops in the course of her misspent life; and she gasped and shoved violently against Higgins. "You're fuzz--you leave me be, I haven't done nothing--let me go!" She made no impression whatever on Higgins' solid bulk; but her voice rose, and the bartender came over in a hurry.

"I said no disturbance in here, bloodhounds! Listen--"

"We don't want you, Rosie," said Higgins. "Quiet down, you stupid little-- We just want you to answer some questions, damn it. We've got nothing on you, see? Take it easy--here, drink your drink."

She shrank into the corner of the booth. "I haven't done nothing,” she said sullenly.

"You've spent a few silver dollars, Rosie," said Mendoza. "That's all we want to know about. Where'd you get them?"

"Why's it matter to you, anyways?" She reached for her glass.

"It matters. Where?"

"From a friend o' mine," she said.

They could translate that. A customer. "What's his name, where'd you meet him?" asked Mendoza.

"I don't have to--it's no damn business of yours--"

"We'll go on sitting here," said Mendoza, "until you tell us, Rosie." Sharp savage irritation rose in him: obstructed every small step of the way! And Art-- Don't think about Art. "All we want to know is what he looks like."

"None o' your business. I didn't mean nobody gave 'em to me, I--l got this friend o' mine to change 'em for bills, see--" She was still busy defending herself on the obvious vice count.

"I don't care how you came by them," said Mendoza.

"Who did you get them from? Do you know his name?"

"What the hell are you insin-sinuating about me?" she flared up. "I know lotsa people, no reason I shouldn't--I'm a model, see, I got a good job all lined up, you guys can't--”

"Sure, honey," said Higgins, "we can see you're a real high-class girl. We just want to know which friend gave you the silver dollars." He sounded patient.

Mendoza wasn't. He leaned across the stained, scarred old table. "Listen to me, you stupid female! I don't give a single damn who you go to bed with, how often or for what price. There's the hell of a good chance that the man you got those silver dollars from is this killer, the Slasher. You can tell us what he looks like, and that's all I want from you, if you can get that much through your--"

It didn't penetrate at once, and then when it did she half screamed, "The-- Oh, my Christ! No--I never saw him, I don't know who- Let me outta here for God's sake! Jesus, you don't--"

"I told you what I mean," said Mendoza coldly. "We think that man's the Slasher. Now will you tell me all about him or shall we take a little ride to headquarters?"

She made one sudden, convulsive effort to squeeze past Higgins again; she looked almost witless with fright. Then she said faintly, "O.K., O.K., you take me in and I tell you. Please take me in, mister--on account of if he knew I told----"

"Whichever way you want," said Mendoza. He dropped a couple of bills on the table and slid out of the booth. Higgins took her by the arm and followed.

They went single file down the narrow aisle to the door, the woman between and Higgins' hand on her arm. They came out to clean fresh night air, and Mendoza said, "Where's your car?"

"Up the block to your right-- God damn!" said Higgins. Rosie was out of his grip like an eel, leaving a torn edge of her tawdry dress behind; she fled up the block wildly, dodged around the corner there, and was gone. They ran after her, swearing, and turned into the darker side street. They heard the clatter of her high heels, sharp on the sidewalk ahead, and then lost them.

"Go call up a car," panted Mendoza. "God damn the little--"

She was gone. He stood there waiting for the car, to start the futile block-by-block hunt. She'd be diving into whatever cheap rented room she called home, bundling her few possessions together to run on--maybe out of L.A.--thinking of her own skin, Rosie. The Rosies did that. And, being Rosie, she'd know how to go to ground, anonymous, in some other Skid Row.

Damn her, damn her. She might have given them a very damn definite description--if that was the Slasher--and he knew they'd never pick her up.

But he set up the routine hunt. You had to try.

* * *

That night he didn't sleep much. He lay and stared into the darkness and, senselessly, his mind went back over every detail of every case he and Art had worked together. A lot of cases. You got to know a man pretty well in that length of time.

No way to be certain . . . permanent brain damage . . .

He was still lying there at five-thirty when light out-lined the window, and El Señor got up, yawned and stretched, trampled over Bast and went to sit on the window seat and make chattering noises at the early sparrows in the tree outside. Bast sent a disgusted glare after him, wrapped her tail round her nose, and went to sleep again. Alison was heavily asleep still, lying motionless. He got up, shaved, and dressed. Went out to the living room. Hospitals were always awake. At six-fifteen he called. No change. They had said it could be days. And no way to be certain ....

When he heard faint sounds from the kitchen he wandered out there, and the brisk little Scotswoman smiled at him. "Coffee in five minutes. And it's a senseless sort of thing to be saying to you, but it's never any bit of good worrying over a thing that's out of your hands entirely."

"I know, Máiri,', he said. "I know that."

"It's a great pity you've no religion to depend on. I don't know," said Mrs. MacTaggart, "but what I haven't stayed in this heathen household with the hope of reconverting you, my gallant man. And I'm making a novena for the sergeant, so you'll have to find your own breakfast if you want any .... I've taken the wee boy into his mother, and our two are fast asleep still and likely'll stay so until I'm home."

"Yes," said Mendoza .... He drank the coffee too hot. He watched her hurry off to the garage for Alison's car. Damned ridiculous, he thought. Superstitious . . .On her knees at the nearest one, the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, obeying the ancient meaningless ritual. What happened or didn't happen, to Art or Luis Mendoza or anybody else, it was just according to how the hands got dealt round.

* * *

They hadn't picked up Rosie.

The reproduced signature had made the front page of the Times, blown up twice life size. It was certainly an odd signature, almost totally illegible. Fred, Frank, something like that, and whether the second name started with a T or an L was hard to say, or what the rest of it might be. Anyway, there it was. See if anybody recognized it. It'd be in the afternoon and evening papers too.

Routine was chuming out background information, the kind of thing you collected automatically; none of it was at all suggestive.

William Marlowe was fifty-nine, and a Harvard graduate. He'd inherited an estimated ten or twelve million from his father; there'd been money in the family for some time. Oil money and other interests. They came originally from Connecticut, where the family had been since preRevolutionary days. He was married--his wife was a D.A.R. member--and had one son and two daughters. Andrea Nestor's father had been a self-made man. Self-made by gambling on the stock market. He'd died broke six and a half years ago. She had attended local private schools. No close friends had shown up; the neighbors hadn't known much about the Nestors. She seemed to be a neutral sort of woman--nothing to get hold of, good or bad.

Frank Nestor had come here from New Jersey about ten years back. No background showed at all before that; he never mentioned any relations, wrote no letters back
home.

The only interesting thing turned up overnight was Larry Webster. Corliss had met him at a bar and grill on Grand Avenue for dinner, and they'd gone back to her apartment. The tail had got his name and address from the registration in his car, and called in.

Webster had a record. Mendoza rather liked the record. Lawrence Richard Webster, forty-four, Caucasian, six feet one, one ninety-five, complexion medium, eyes blue, no distinguishing marks. He'd served six months for aggravated assault in 1947, been picked up three times on a D.-and-D., and done a one-to-three for burglary.

Very nice, thought Mendoza. Just the boy friend for Corliss. And she said he'd been at her apartment on Friday night .... He thought he'd like to have a little talk with Larry Webster. He put out a call on him.

He phoned down to Vice. Lieutenant Andrews had been out on a stake-out last night and wasn't expected in until about eleven. "O.K., tell him I want to see him--I'll be there."

That damned--that Goddamned stupid lush Rosie.

Who could have given them a description.

A description . . . You just had to try everywhere. Mendoza stood up abruptly. Palliser was a good man, but . . . He said to Lake, "If they pick up Webster, hold him for me. I probably won't be long."

* * *

"I know it was almost dark," he said to Miguel Garcia. It was nine-thirty. Miguel was attending summer school; he'd talked to the public-school principal, who had called Miguel out of class for him. They sat here in an empty classroom, Mendoza uncomfortably perched on the edge of a too small desk, and Miguel looked at him with round solemn eyes. "Maybe it's easier for you to tell it better in the Spanish, Miguel? I--”

"It doesn't matter, sir." They were speaking English. "My dad says we got to know English real good, to get on, see. So we do good at school and all. Well, I mean. Get a good kind of job, see. My dad works for the city, for the parks department, keeping it all nice and the grass watered, see."

"WelI, I suppose you could say I work for the city too," said Mendoza.

Miguel gave him an uncertain grin. "Yes, sir. You carry a gun?"

"Well, no," said Mendoza. "I'm afraid not. Now look, Miguel. You saw this man--the one who probably killed Roberto. He's killed other people too, and we'd like to catch him."

"I sure hope you do, sir. That was just an awful thing, Roberto. My dad said I should help the cops--oh, gee, excuse me, he said you shouldn't say cops, you don't like it--the policemen all I can, and I told that other one--"

"Well, we're cops, like it or not," said Mendoza, smiling.

"I told him all I knew, sir. All I remembered."

"Try again, Miguel. Think back, hard. He said something to you, and for some reason you felt seared of him, and walked on past--"

"Yes, sir. I don't know why I got scared. He just stood so kind of still--and then stepped out and said something like, ‘Hey, kids.' Like that. I--"

"You told the other officer he was thin and had on clothes that looked too big for him, and had a red face."

"Yes, sir."

"How did you see that, Miguel? It was nearly dark, and the man had a hat on. You said there wasn't a street-light near. And what exactly did you mean, his face was red? Like a drunk?" Miguel, living down here, would know about that: the broken red veins of a lush.

"No, it was--gee," said the boy, "I don't know how to say about it, sir. It wasn't very light, almost dark, sure, but there was some light, from the drugstore on the corner--and he-- Well, I guess it was that sort of scared me. It was silly. I could see--it was red all over his face, and--sort of puckered, like. Like Pokey."

"Pokey?" said Mendoza softly.

"Yes, sir. My dad says you shouldn't make like you don't like looking at him, it isn't polite," said Miguel. "It's not his fault he got burned so awful bad like that, one time, on his face. He looks real awful, sir, one side of his face all drawed up like, and all red. But this was even worse, see, it was all over the middle of his face, and I guess it was that sort of scared me, it was silly."

"Who's Pokey?"

"Oh, he sells papers at Figueroa and Third, sir. I guess my dad's right, but--well, anyway, this guy was worse, see. I told the other policeman. Red all over his face, and--”

"Thanks very much, Miguel," said Mendoza fervently.

TWELVE

"A real break," he said. "Something more than definite--it might lead us to him in the next twelve hours. Evidently a bad scarring, from an old burn-red scar-tissue and the skin puckered, you know what I mean. God, if we'd had this before--"

"My fault,” groaned Palliser. "Damn it, if I'd had the sense to press the kid more--"

"You couldn't know. It was just one of those last-resort hopes that paid off. And of course it's not a hundred per cent sure, but damn near, that that fellow Roberto stopped to talk to was the Slasher. We'll get this on the wires right now--tell everybody. Yes, and no wonder it wasn't spotted in those bars, you can't see your hand in front of your face--"

"But why the hell didn't that desk clerk spot it?" said Dwyer.

"Telfer didn't spot it," said Mendoza exasperatedly, "because that night he was probably so full of cheap port when the Slasher came in, he wouldn't have noticed if the man had been painted bright green with red polka dots. I dropped in on him last night. I'd have a guess that, with cops all around, maybe last night's the first time he's dared risk drinking on the job again. It's not a very high-class place but all the same, if the owner or manager found out, Telfer would get fired safe enough. He's the kind who can carry it off--he looked just a little high, you know, and probably if I'd asked for a room he'd have assigned me one and found the right key, automatically. The way they say sleepwalkers never fall over anything. But he'd seen me before and didn't recognize me. I don't think he'd remember now that I came in last night."

"Tight enough to pull a blank, in other words. That's something all right," said Palliser. "I'll be damned. And of course that's why he was so cagey about giving a description. But at least he didn't mislead us by making up some description, and now we've got this--"

"You think he hasn't misled us?" said Dwyer. "So maybe last night wasn't the first time he'd taken the chance since. Maybe he was carrying a load on Friday night and doesn't know whether Art came in or not."

"¡Qué demonio!" said Mendoza. "I hadn't got that far. My God, that could be so. And we'll have to tackle him on it to make sure .... Hell. Jimmy, get this news about the Slasher's scar relayed out--with every cop in town looking for something as noticeable as that, we ought to lay hands on him inside twenty-four hours anyway."

"I've only got one head and two hands," complained Sergeant Lake. "Sure, that's urgent, I'll get it out, but could somebody give me a hand on this damn appointment book? I've been phoning for two days and haven't made a dent in it."

Which was understandable. Building up the fictitious large practice for Nestor, the Corliss woman had scribbled down nearly a hundred names throughout the book.

Under the circumstances, most of them had been very common names, and throughout the county area the same names made up long lists in all five phone books. And every name had to be checked out, that its owner had never been a patient of Dr. Nestor's, if they were going to prove that on her. It was, in fact, one hell of a job. Mendoza suggested that Dwyer lend a hand, and Dwyer groaned.

But as he started downstairs Mendoza felt a great relief at this new break: something as glaringly obvious as that disfigurement ought to mean that they'd pick up the Slasher within hours. Not too many people, even in a city as big as this, would possess such a disfigurement; and he seemed to be keeping inside the one area. Check every rooming house, every flophouse--run extra cars . . . With any luck, and God knew they were due for some luck, they should get him now. And before he used his knife again ....

He found Lieutenant Andrews just arriving and followed him in. "When did you get back?" asked Andrews. "I thought--oh, sure, they'd let you know about Hackett. How is he? . . . Hell of a thing. Do I come into it?" He yawned and sat down.

"Late night?”

"I sometimes wish I was down in Traffic or somewhere," said Andrews. "Or Records--that must be a nice peaceful place. I never used to believe it, but I'm beginning to--that sins don't get committed until after midnight. I didn't get home until five."

"Too bad. Well, what I want to know is, Percy, do you remember a woman named Margaret Corliss? I don't know whether she was calling herself that then, but an unspecified while ago you evidently had her in for questioning? He described her in detail.

Andrews leaned back and shut his eyes. "It rings a bell," he said. "It definitely rings a bell. Wait a minute, now. Traces of a Cockney accent, you said? What the hell was it on? Oh, my God, yes, sure, it was that Sally-Ann thing. Pierce"--he raised his voice to the sergeant outside--"look up the records on that beauty salon thing--two, three years back--you know, the Finn sisters."

"Have to dig for it," said Pierce. "O.K."

"Twin sisters," said Andrews, "named Finn. Ran this Sally-Ann Beauty Shoppe. Which was a blind for an abortion mill. The Corliss woman was an employee--the only employee. It comes back to me--"

"Very nice, very nice," said Mendoza. "You couldn't prove she was in on the deal?"

"We tried, but no. She is, if I remember rightly, a very canny customer. Kept her head, registered shocked indignation all the way, and there wasn't a thing to tie her in. Just the strong probability, you know."

"That's my girl," said Mendoza. "I think, with luck, we'll get her this time."

"They will go and do it once too often," said Andrews. "She tried it on her own and got involved in a homicide, I take it."

"Not exactly that way," said Mendoza. He was outlining his ideas about that when the sergeant came in with a manila folder. "Dates," said Mendoza. "Let's look at some dates."

Vice had got interested in the Sally-Ann Beauty Shoppe in May of 1961, three years and two months ago. The sisters had been arrested in mid-June, and investigation had continued for a week or so.

"Yes," said Mendoza. "How nice. Frank Nestor graduated from his chiropractic course that very June. He also had a legacy about that time--a little earlier--only it wasn't a legacy. Five thousand bucks. I do wonder, now, if that doesn't represent his first job in this line."

Andrews made an incredulous sound. "Five G's? For a lock-picking job? I've run into a lot in that trade, but I never heard of prices like that."

"No, it does seem a bit steep. Well, anyway, for whatever reason, he's thinking it might be very profitable to set himself up in that trade. He's inexperienced, and he sees right away that the main difficulty is publicity. The right kind of publicity. And--I suppose the Sally-Ann business got press coverage--one morning he opens his paper, and lo, here's mention of a woman who's recently been involved in such a business, and reading between the lines he could make out that it's only for lack of evidence you're not holding her. Very likely her address was given--it usually is. I'll have to check with the papers. But, yes, I can see him waiting for the all-clear until he saw she'd been released without charges, and then going to see her and propositioning her. Another little piece of the puzzle, explaining how they could have got together. Well, this fills in a little, thanks very much."

"Good luck on it," said Andrews through another yawn.

He got back to his office just in time to take Alison's call. When he heard her voice he found he was gripping the phone too hard, and felt a sudden constriction in his chest. "Luis--Luis darling--they just called, the hospital I mean--"

"Yes, amada."

"They think he's just a little better! Oh, the nurse was awfully cautious and--you know--roundabout, and said it didn't mean he'll be all right, he could easily have a relapse--you know how they are--but his blood pressure's up a little and his pulse is better. I didn't know if they'd call you, and I-- But it's got to mean-"

"Yes," he said. "Good news. We don't know whether it means- Thanks, querida .... "

He'd just put the phone down when Palliser came in, smiling. "The hospital just called, he's better, his pulse--"

"I know. But they're still not waving any flags. And there's the other question."

"Yes, there's that. But it's something."

"Something," said Mendoza. "And the more I think about that, the more--confusing--it looks. How the hell did it happen, let alone why? I don't know--" He passed a hand over his forehead. "Like to take a little ride with me before lunch?"

* * *

The first difficulty about it was, he thought, how had Art been put down~and out? If it had been Elger, no question there; so, on one like Elger, if he'd had reason to suspect him, Hackett would have been watchful--but Elger was enough bigger to have taken him.

But anybody else they knew of in either case would scarcely be a match for Hackett. Larry Webster was big, and he might be tough, but the women . . . Of course there was that truck-driver husband of one of Nestor's girl friends; he ought to go and see her, get what details on that he could.

And he hadn't asked the Elgers where they'd been on Tuesday night.

Cliff Elger, who had the hell of a temper. And also a reputation and a good business, which he'd want to protect.

"Just ahead," said Palliser beside him. "Stop here."

Mendoza pulled up the Ferrari and they got out. "We can probably see some traces," said Palliser. He led Mendoza up thirty feet and pointed silently.

This road wound up into the hills above Hollywood, through one of many little canyons. The lots were cut out of the hillside, and many of the houses looked down on the road from twenty or thirty feet up; a good many of them were set back, behind trees, fifty or sixty feet. Here and there the hill at one side or the other fell away, and dropped rather abruptly down to a tiny box canyon. There had been a cycle of dry winters, and the underbrush looked scrubby and brown--tall wild grass, a little sage, wild flowering shrubs. Few trees; these foothills didn't grow many trees except those deliberately planted.

At the roadside here, above a steep drop of several hundred feet, there were still traces in the loose earth where they'd taken casts of the tire marks. Some of the marks still showed. Palliser led him across the road and showed him others--the wheel marks of a car pointed straight across the road toward that drop. There had been a two-bar post and rail fence, and about ten feet of it was carried away. It had never been intended as a barrier, being only a couple of feet high; white-painted, it was meant for a guideline at night. No street lights up here, and not every house had a light by its drive.

Where the Ford had gone over, a great swath was cut in the underbrush, ending about two hundred feet down where a young pepper tree had been violently uprooted. "If that hadn't stopped him," said Palliser, "he'd have gone on down another hundred feet. God. And the ignition on--it could have gone up like----"

"Yes. Maybe that was intended," said Mendoza. "X wouldn't have noticed that tree in the dark." He looked around. The nearest house was just a glimpsed roofline about fifty yards away. "We've been very glib about this," he said slowly.

"I don't get you."

"Well, _in the first place, this is something very damned unusual," said Mendoza. "Not a cop getting attacked, but getting attacked in this way. Why did it happen?"

"He found out something on----"

"Yes, I know we said that. But, so he did, and X somehow managed to put him down and out. Why did X go to some trouble to fake this accident?"

"Because, obviously--"

"How much easier it would have been simply to--well, for instance, bash him again until X was sure he was dead, and leave him in the handiest dark street. Or--well, the point is, to start with, this is probably a long way from wherever the first attack happened--"

"Which is probably why," Palliser pointed out.

"Yes, that could be. What's in my mind," said Mendoza, "is a funny little discrepancy. Look, John. After the initial attack, wherever and whyever and however it was made, X could have disassociated himself in several much easier ways. He didn't need to make it look like an accident in order to disassociate himself. As I say, he could have bashed Art's head in, left him in an alley, to make it look like a mugger. But he went to all this trouble instead. What does that say?"

"He's overcautious?" guessed Palliser, following slowly.

"I don't see what--"

"We said, to disassociate himself, he set up this faked accident. lf he was working alone, he went to quite a little trouble on it. Another thing, was there any reason he picked this particular road? Was he familiar with it, for some reason? It'd be lonely and dark, but I don't think it's the kind of road to appeal to neckers, somehow .... Quite a little trouble. He'd have to drive up here, from wherever it happened. Stage the accident. Then he'd have to walk down, in the dark, to where he could pick up a bus--because he wouldn't have risked a cab, he might be remembered if we ever did ask--though at that he might have, considering. And you know, John, if it was after ten-thirty or so, there wouldn't be any buses running. Except a very occasional one to L.A.--I'll look it up--only about two between midnight and 6 AM., I think."

"Well . . ." said Palliser. He didn't get what was bothering Mendoza. Mendoza with quite a reputation as the smart boy, but for the first time Palliser got what Hackett meant when he said that Mendoza had a tortuous mind, looked for complexities and imagined subtleties where they didn't exist.

Mendoza got out a cigarette and lit it, carefully stepping on the match to bury it in loose earth. "I will grant you," he said, "that anybody wanting to set up a fake accident around here would be likely to think right off of a car going over a cliff. Brakes failing, or a moment's inattention, on a lot of roads around here . . . My own first thought would be, somewhere up in Griffith Park. But it's the summer season, the Greek Theater's open, and there'd be crowds up there, maybe to notice something. Or maybe, as I say, he knew this road for some reason."

"Yes," said Palliser patiently.

"Anyway, he was taking pains at it. Some effort and time spent. ¿Conforme?"

"Yes, sure."

"And then," said Mendoza, "when he came to the actual faking of the accident, our clever, cautious X did it in the damnedest silliest way possible. As if he thought we'd take one casual look, and say, ‘Too bad, the poor fellow must have missed that bend in the road,' and never take a second look. As if he hadn't any idea that the Ford would leave tire marks for us to see, that we can take casts of--that we'd obviously look for skid marks and not find any. He'd used Art's own belt to tie him up, and he took a little trouble putting it back on him. It wouldn't have taken another thirty seconds to get Art's prints on the wheel and gear selector, but instead, he just wiped them both clean, and of course that told the story right there. He had heard of fingerprinting. But apart from that--"

"I don't see what you're getting at," said Palliser.

"Apart from that," said Mendoza, "either he didn't know that police forces are quite bright these days, with scientific labs and all the rest of it. Or he didn't care."

"I don't--"

"We built up a nice theory here," said Mendoza, and he was looking tired, a little sad, a little grim. "We said, wishful thinking maybe, it must have been that Art had found out something definite on one of these cases, and whoever he'd dropped on managed to jump him, put him out of action. And set up this fake accident so he couldn't pass on the information .... You've been a cop long enough to know that the obvious thing is generally what happened. just look at the surface facts here and tell me whether we weren't reaching a little far out, toward the detective-story plot."

"Well, it's damned offbeat, sure, but--"

"He meant to see Telfer," said Mendoza. "We don't know whether he did. But that's not a very savory district around there. And didn't we say, not many men could put Art down and out just so easy. I'll tell you what's in my mind. just a little easier than I can see that offbeat, implausible plot, I can see him--maybe on the way back to his car--getting jumped by three or four or five louts. Juvenile louts, maybe riding high on liquor or H. And the louts, rolling him, finding out he's a cop, and saying, ‘Hey, let's have some fun with the cop.' And talking it over, forgetting about his wallet--I know he wasn't robbed--looking for his car, finding it. Tying him up in case he came to, while they argued about how to have fun with the big cop-- Maybe riding around in both cars awhile, talking it over. And finally-- And by that time so high they didn't take any special care about it. They'd have been disappointed the gas didn't explode. Can you see that?"

Palliser said, "Damnation. That's a story. Looking at it like that--just as a separate thing, I mean-- Hell, I've got to say it'd be just a little more likely-- I mean, well, expectable, if that's the word for it. But there's nothing to say--"

"We're like lawyers," said Mendoza. "We have to go by precedent. The obvious is usually just what happened. . . . I'll just say, let's keep open minds. It could be the way we thought--but it could be something altogether different too." He dropped his cigarette and stepped on it carefully. "Let's get back and see if they've picked up Webster."

* * *

At about the same time, Sergeant Nesbitt of the Wilcox Street detective bureau was feeling pleased with himself. There'd been quite a spate of break-ins lately, with practically nothing to go looking on, and it was gratifying to have enough to make a charge on one of them. Three young punks just starting to accumulate records; a good many cops would be seeing a good deal of them from now on. He just thought about that in passing; he wasn't a particularly imaginative man, and crooks were just crooks to him. It was his job to deal with them. He dealt with them very efficiently.

These particular crooks had had a couple of weapons on them--tvvo guns and a switch-blade knife.

He finished writing up his notes on it and said casually on his way out to lunch, "Oh, Bill. You better send those cannisters down to headquarters Ballistics. They're so damn fussy about checking everything. just in case."

"O.K., will do," said Bill, and subsequently sent them, by way of an annoyed plainclothesman who had hoped to finish the Times crossword puzzle before anything came up.

* * *

The man full of hate was feeling something new and pleasant now.

He was important. He was the Goddamnedest most important guy in L.A.

He was in all the newspapers, by God.

It was exciting, it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.

He couldn't make out why. Maybe it was different in a big town? Because there'd been others--he thought back, vaguely, to the others. He remembered a girl, a pretty girl, who had fought him and said, "Please." There had been that guy, Dago some kind, he'd been pretty high and hadn't fought him. And a while before that, another woman. He didn't remember where that had been, but in the country somewhere.

Not much fuss made about them. But of course he hadn't stayed around. Maybe there had been at that. He got out his knife and looked at it. He was proud of the knife. He had made it himself, back at Marlett's old farm workshop. Out of a piece of old iron he'd made it, in his spare time, and Jesus, he'd sweated blood over setting them teeth in it, like a saw. It was a good knife. It had made him somebody important.

He was in all the papers. When he'd heard some guys talking about it, in that bar last night, he'd gone out and bought a paper, and managed to spell out what it said. Some of the long words were hard, but he could read most of it. Right on the front page, it had been. Him! The Slasher, they called him. He liked that. He liked the new, exciting feeling of being important.

It was a thing he hadn't expected, hadn't reckoned on at all. He liked looking at the blood, but it was a personal, temporary thing. In a vague way he'd known that if they caught him they'd kill him--the law--just like he'd killed.

He didn't mind. No. His life hadn't been so good a thing to him that he minded. Ever since the fire in the school, back there when he was just a kid . . .

But now--now he was so important to millions of people!--he would mind. He thought back to the best one, the kid. Oh, Jesus God, he had liked that one, the feel of doing it. The kid, the damned little Mex kid, calling him sir. It had been all there ahead of him, the whole bit--his whole life, sex and fun and liquor and money--why the hell should he have it, when I never had nothing? I took it away from him, he thought. Like God or something.

Important. Hell, the whole state was talking about him, thinking about him. Just because . . .

He wouldn't have minded, a couple of days ago. Now, he thought furiously, delightedly, he'd like to do a lot more before that happened. Really show them--pay them all back, the whole world, for what they'd done to him. So he minded, now. He was thinking about that now. They'd be looking. Every man's hand against . . .

But it had always been that way.

He thought, and he made a plan. So they wouldn't find him.

He'd stayed in a lot worse places.

He hadn't much to pick up, in the room. He still had the money he'd saved on that job up north, a lot of money, nearly four hundred bucks. He put the bottle of bourbon into his pocket; and the cigarettes, the paper bag full of doughnuts, the extra shirt and sweater went into the little canvas bag.

He went out of his room, down the hall, and out the back door. Four houses up, along the little alley there, was Los Angeles Street. He walked up it to Temple, and on his way he passed the massive rectangular bulk of the Police Facilities Building, but he didn't know what it was.

As he walked up Temple a plainclothes detective was talking to the landlady in the house he had just left. "He had such a scarred face? What name did he give you?"

THIRTEEN

Just after four o'clock a very angry man burst in on Sergeant Lake and demanded, "This is the murder office, where they hunt the murderers? I will sue you all! Every man in the police I will sue! Infame! You call me a murderer, and it's a lie! You slander my good name!" He waved a copy of the Times in one hand and shook his other fist under Lake's nose. He was a little fat man about fifty, with a few strands of black hair plastered across a round bald head, a round olive-skinned face, and a pair of luxurious braggadocio mustaches. "Scoundrels!" he said richly. "I denounce you!"

Every man in the office heard him and came to find out what was happening. Mendoza said, "What's this all about?" and the little man swung to face him.

"Who is the chief man here? It is an outrage! My name you publish in the paper, and say it is that of this madman who kills children! I will sue you all--"

"Now just quiet down and come into my office, and let's hear all about this, Mr .... ?"

"Oh, you pretend you don't know my name! I am Tosci as you very well know-- Francesco Tosci--isn't it plain to see in my own writing here? And I'm a respectable man, never in my life have I killed anyone--it is infamous!" He glared at Mendoza. "In all the newspapers, plain to be read, my name!"

Mendoza exchanged a glance with Palliser. "Let's see what you're talking about," said Mendoza.

Mr. Tosci was more than willing. He flung down the Times and with a shaking finger pointed out the reproduced illegible signature from the Liverpool Arms register. "My signature, it is--this I admit--but I do not kill people! It is--"

Mendoza and Palliser got him soothed down between them, with elaborate apologies, and Mr. Tosci sat down, sizzling only gently. Mr. Tosci was, it appeared, a barber, with his own shop over on Flower Street, and he had never so much as had a moving-violation ticket. He had not seen the newspapers today until a customer left a Times behind and, in tidying up, Mr. Tosci had picked it up and to his horror recognized the reproduced signature on the front page. He had rushed straight out, leaving the shop in his assistant's charge, to come here and accuse them of slander. He--

"Libel," murmured Palliser.

"Me!" said Mr. Tosci. "My name all over the papers, and saying I am this fiend who--"

Mendoza apologized again. "But you were at that hotel that night, Mr. Tosci? You signed the register when?"

The little barber calmed down enough to explain. They would understand as fellow men that these things happened, it was a great pity but one was only human. He had had a little argument with his wife, and there had been a few hot words, and in the end Mr. Tosci had stormed out of the house and decided to spend the night at a hotel. "Women," said Mr. Tosci with a sigh. "Always the one word more. I thought by the next day she would be cooled down." He had gone to the Liverpool Arms more or less at random, and been given a room, spent an innocent night in it, and gone to his shop at nine the next morning, after having breakfast at a Manning's coffee shop on the way.

"And why you are thinking--"

"Yes," said Mendoza. "I want Telfer, and I want him now. Somebody go and get him! Now, Mr. Tosci, if you'll just wait a little and let me explain--"

"Who is this Telfer? It is an outrage----"

But they got him to wait, with explanation. Scarne went out in a hurry to pick up Telfer, who was located in his shabby room at the hotel, reading a sports sheet and drinking port. Scarne hustled him into his clothes and brought him in.

"That's the man," said Tosci instantly as Telfer was ushered into Mendoza's office. "He will say, he was the man I paid for the room, and he gave me the key."

"Well, Telfer!" said Mendoza. "Did this man come into the hotel the same night the Slasher did?"

Telfer looked acutely uneasy. "I--guess he did. Sure."

"You don't remember, do you?" Mendoza's tone was cold. "You don't remember because you were drunk. You were so drunk you pulled a complete blank. You carry it fine, you look just a bit high, but it was the hell of a lot more than that, wasn't it?"

The man licked his lips. "No, it wasn't--I was all right--I wouldn't do a thing like that, I promised Mr. Morley--"

"Oh, so you'd been found drunk on duty before?"

"No, I--only once,” said Telfer sullenly.

"You're going to stay here until you admit it," said Mendoza. "You were drunk. When Mr. Tosci here came in-- What time?" he broke off to ask Tosci.

"It would have been about ten o'clock, sir."

"--you were still competent enough to get him to sign the register, give him a key. But when the Slasher came in, some time later, you were blind drunk. My God, you don't even know whether he came alone, do you? You said so, but he might have brought that first victim with him. Yes. You handed him a key at random, and he never signed the register at all. Did he? Look at me! Did you remember that you'd handed out two keys that night, to two different men, or was it a complete blank? Well?"

"No-- I----you got it all wrong. There wasn't--it was just him, I remember all right--"

"Stop trying to cover up and let's hear the truth for a change! Do you remember anything about that night? Do you remember what room number you gave Mr. Tosci?"

"No, it's too far back, I--"

"It was number 118," said Tosci.

"Yes," said Mendoza, suppressing rage. The room where the body had been found was 214. As that had been the last signature in the register they'd taken it for granted it belonged to the Slasher. On Telfer's word.

"Damn you," he said rigidly, "do you know how much you've delayed us on this? Those other four victims are your direct responsibility! If you'd been in your right mind you could have given us a full description that next day, and ten to one we'd have got him within hours. How does it feel, Telfer, to be responsible for four murders? Two women, one of them pregnant, and a man and a little boy? They'd probably all be alive now, Telfer, if you hadn't been drunk that night! Do you realize that?"

"You can't lay it on me!" gulped Telfer. "I--that's not so--"

"You were drunk, weren't you? If you go on denying it, you know, I'm going to begin to think that you knew the other man--the Slasher--and had some reason to let him have a room without registering. Did you?"

"Jesus, no, I-- All right, if I got to tell you, I guess I was high. Only for God's sake don't go telling Morley, or he'd throw me out! I didn't mean to, and it was the first time since-- I'd had an awful bad headache all that day, see, and I thought maybe a couple glasses o' wine'd settle it, that's--"

"Medicinal purposes," said Mendoza sardonically. "You'd had a good deal more than that by the time Mr. Tosci came in, hadn't you? Do you remember him at all?"

Telfer looked at Tosci and said, "Kind of. Listen, you won't go telling old Morley, will--"

"I wouldn't doubt he'll be finding out for himself. Do you remember anything about the man who came in later on? Anything at all? Such as a scar on his face?"

Telfer suddenly came apart. "I mighta never seen him, I pulled a real blank--see, first I knew about that at all, when they found the body, and it was 214, and 214'd been empty last I knew--and there was this name on the register I didn't remember so I figured I musta waited on him sorta automatic-- I never--"

"Didn't you know that two rooms had been rented overnight? The maids--"

"I don't go talking with them," said Telfer sullenly. "How would I know? I'm only on the desk at night. If there wasn't no other name on the book--"

"You don't remember anything at all about the second man?"

"Mister, I pulled a blank, I said. I don't know if he was white or black. Listen, if old Morley--you won't go and give it out, will--"

"All right, that's all," said Mendoza. "You can go. But you might give some thought to what I told you, Telfer--if you hadn't been drunk that night those four people would probably still be alive today, and the Slasher would be in the County Jail instead of roaming around loose."

"I didn't have nothing to do--it was this real bad headache, see," whined Telfer.

"¡Basta!" said Mendoza. "Get out of my sight--somebody else can take a statement from you."

Telfer shuffled out quickly, and Tosci, wholly soothed and friendly now, shook his head gravely and said that he had always believed it, foolishness caused more evil than wickedness.

"A profound remark," said Mendoza wearily. "We're very sorry you've been upset, but you can see how the mistake was made.”

"Naturally, naturally! If I had not been so outraged, sir, I would have realized that our fine smart policemen would not make such a mistake without reason--and I must apologize for anything I said when I--"

"Yes, yes, quite all right, Mr. Tosci."

When they'd got rid of the little man Palliser said disgustedly, "It shows you how even what looks like solid evidence can be misleading. That damned old lush--my God, if he'd given us a description then!"

"Way the hand got dealt," said Mendoza.

Sergeant Lake looked in and said they'd finally picked up Larry Webster and he was here.

Mendoza said, "O.K., shoot him in." He felt very disinclined to talk to Larry Webster, and his head was aching slightly.

Palliser asked, "Anything wrong? You look--"

"Nothing. Nothing new," said Mendoza.

* * *

He had dropped in at the hospital after lunch, and for the first time got hold of the senior doctor on the case--MacFarlane, who had done the operation. MacFarlane, unlike some doctors, didn't mind explaining to laymen. He was a tall cadaverous old man with shrewd blue eyes.

"You understand," he had said, "that there's no certainty about such a case. He is holding his own, but I'm making no predictions as to whether he'll ever regain consciousness. If and when he does, it then remains to be seen whether there's any permanent brain damage."

"What effect might that take, Doctor?"

"Quite impossible to say. It would depend on what area of the brain was most severely damaged. We might find that his memory was entirely gone, for instance, or his speech. We're beginning to find out more about the brain, you know, and we do know that--in layman's terms--each section controls different functions. I have known of cases where the learned skills, such as reading and writing, were lost. I'll not minimize the situation, sir. At worst, if there's permanent damage, he could be a hopeless mental invalid, if he lives. At best, he could come out of this coma safe and sound with his mind intact. I was hoping to see his wife--"

"l don't think she should be told that," said Mendoza.

"I've always found that a policy of frankness is best. If the worst should occur, it would not be as great a shock."

"Well, I don't agree with you," said Mendoza bluntly. He remembered how his grandmother used to say, "Don't run to meet trouble. If she's got to be told sometime, I'll do it. I'll ask you not to tell her, Doctor. For one thing, she's expecting a child."

"Oh, I hadn't realized that. Well, perhaps in that case . . . And of course we'll hope that she need never know. It's quite possible that he'll recover entirely, though it was a massive fracture." MacFarlane shook his head.

"When will we know?"

"When and if he regains consciousness. Frankly, I'd be feeling much more hopeful if he wasn't keeping in such deep coma. It's been, what, around sixty hours now, and he's showing no signs of restlessness, which would be encouraging as a symptom of returning consciousness. When and if he should seem to be regaining consciousness we'll inform you at once, as I want someone who knows him, preferably not his wife, to be there when he does. That would be the immediate test, you see. Whether or not he would instantly recognize an old friend, understand what was said to him by such a friend."

"I see. Could you give me any idea how long it might be?"

"Sir," said MacFarlane sadly, "there are cases in a number of hospitals where a person has lived in a coma for months. He might regain consciousness tomorrow and recover quite normally, or he might lie like this for weeks--or he might die tonight. I don't know."

"That's frank anyway," said Mendoza evenly. "Thanks very much .... "

* * *

He looked at Larry Webster with dislike. The ordinary part-time, small-time pro, and looking it. A grown-up lout, with a graying crew cut, powerful shoulders; he had a rather stupid, weak face, with a loose mouth and small eyes. He was dressed neatly in working clothes, tan cord slacks and a shirt to match. You wouldn't have turned to look at him on the street, but Mendoza knew the type.

"Sit down, Webster," he said flatly.

Webster sat. "This is my day off, see, I din't know you fellows wanted to see me about anything, naturally, how could I? I been going straight ever since I got out last time, I got a good job at a garage, sir, the boss'll tell you. If I'd known you'd wanted to see me-- I'm clean, you ask me anything you want--"

That type. Mendoza looked at him reflectively and then without speaking to him went out and told Sergeant Lake to put in a rush on a search warrant for Webster's living quarters.

"Where does he live, by the way?"

"Cheap apartment hotel out on Olive. They picked him up at a bowling alley."

Mendoza went back to his office. "You know Margaret Corliss, Webster."

"Sure, sure, I know Madge. Madge is a nice girl; we been, you know, going around some together."

"How long have you known her?"

"Oh, gee, quite a while, I guess."

"Make a guess."

"Well--four, five years maybe."

"So you knew her when she was working at the Sally-Ann Beauty Shoppe?"

"I guess that was the name of a place she worked once, yeah."

"Where the proprietors were running a little mill."

"The cops said so," said Webster. "I don't know anything about that, nor Madge didn't either. Madge never suspected such a thing, she told the cops all she knew and they saw she didn't know anything about--"

"Insufficient evidence," said Mendoza, and laughed. "Sure. Did you know about the mill Dr. Nestor was operating? The doctor she was working for until he got himself murdered last Tuesday night?"

"Well, I knew she was working for this doctor, but he wasn't up to anything like that, Madge wouldn't--"

"She was working as a beauty operator at that shop? She's a qualified operator?"

"Sure, I guess so. That's right"

"Then how come she took a job as an office nurse? Quite a switch."

"Oh well, she said she thought she'd like a change, kind of. I guess it was like that. And this doctor, he didn't need a regular trained nurse, it was just somebody to--you know, answer the phone and put down about appointments and--"

"She certainly did that," said Mendoza without a smile. "Where were you last Friday night?"

"Friday night--well, I'd have to think----"

"Then think," said Mendoza .... Because, he thought, while the Corliss woman wouldn't have had any reason to murder Nestor, still there was something in that part of the puzzle. Art Hackett was no fool. He had started to suspect what was behind the Nestor setup, and maybe by Friday night he'd seen through it. And seen that possibly, if Nestor had kept any records of his illicit patients, that list would bear looking into. It could be that some frightened, ashamed young innocent had confessed to her parents, who had threatened Nestor with exposure--something like that. Hell, they didn't even know that the gun hadn't been Nestor's. Or there could have been an argument about money with a new patient's boy friend. Anyway, that list would be interesting: and if Hackett had seen through the Corliss woman's actions that Wednesday morning, he could have guessed that she'd have it. If, of course, there was one. And gone to see her . . .

"Think hard," he said. "Miss Corliss says you were at her apartment?

"Sure, that's right," said Webster. "I remember now. We had dinner together--"

"Where?"

"Uh--some grill out on Olympic. And we went back to her place and--and played cards--"

"¡Dámelo!" said Mendoza. "All very innocent. And how late did you stay, playing cards?"

"I don't know. Maybe midnight?

"Did anyone come calling on Miss Corliss that night while you were there?"

What looked like genuine surprise showed in Webster's eyes. "Why, no, sir."

"A sergeant of detectives? Sergeant Hackett?"

"No, sir. I never heard that name. Excuse me, why you asking all this, sir? Madge wouldn't be up to anything wrong, honest, sir. She was awful sorry about Dr. Nestor getting shot like that, it was some burglar broke in, wasn't it, and--"

"I'll bet she was sorry. Suddenly losing a profitable job. Do you know what cut he gave her?"

Webster shifted uneasily. "I dunno what you mean. Listen, we're both straight, Madge never--"

"That's fine," said Mendoza. "Then you won't object to my having your apartment searched, as we searched Miss Corliss'."

After a moment Webster said, "Why, I got no objection. I'm clean."

"Let's just see if the warrant's come through .... Did Miss Corliss ever give you anything to keep for her?"

"No, sir."

"If she did, better tell me now," said Mendoza.

"No, she never. I don't know what you're getting at. I told you all I know, can I go now?"

"No," said Mendoza. "You'll stay right here until a couple of men have looked through your place." He looked at his watch; they'd be night-shift men. He took Webster out to the anteroom. The search warrant was on its way up; Sergeant Lake was just leaving. Mendoza told Sergeant Farrell, just coming on, about the warrant, to send out a couple of men.

He went back to his office and called Alison to tell her he'd be late. Possibly not home at all until God knew when.

"All right, darling, we won't expect you .... Yes, she's fine, we've been so relieved ever since they called this morning? Alison laughed. "And, Luis, Máiri's taking all the credit for it--her solemn novena beginning to work, you know!”

"One good Christian soul to intercede for the heathen," he said. "Yes. Expect me when you see me, hermosa."

Time enough to tell them, if . . .

He put the phone down.

It was a definite headache now. He hadn't wanted much lunch, and come to think he hadn't had any breakfast. Ought to go out and get something.

Sixty hours, said Dr. MacFarlane. My God, thought Mendoza in vague surprise, is this still only Monday? These long, long days, since he'd ripped open that yellow envelope in the Bermuda hotel room . . .

* * *

It was seven-fifty, and he'd taken two aspirin Sergeant Farrell had found for him, which hadn't done much for the headache, when Glasser and Higgins came back from Larry Webster's apartment. Higgins said, "Sorry, we'd have been here before but we thought they ought to be checked for prints, just in case. Webster's are all over most of 'em--they checked Records." He laid a manila envelope on the desk; he was looking pleased.

Mendoza upended it and a dozen little glass ampoules rolled out. The kind containing one set dose each, for convenience in filling a hypodermic syringe. They were all neatly labeled. Morphine.

"¡Qué bello!" said Mendoza. "Where?"

Higgins smiled. "In the middle of a couple of pounds of sugar in a cannister in the kitchen. A lot of people don't realize we're halfway bright."

Mendoza said, "Fetch him in.”

Webster came in smiling ingratiatingly. "Now you found out I'm clean, I never--"

Mendoza crooked a finger at him. "Come here, friend. Where'd you get these pretty little things? Are you breaking in on the big time, with dope?"

Webster looked at the ampoules and said despondently,

"Oh hell. Hell and damnation. I never figured you'd fnd 'em where I hid 'em. But they're not mine. Honest, sir, I never-- Madge asked me to hold 'em for her. I'm not taking no narco rap, not even for Madge. I'm leveling with you, they're hers, see-"

Mendoza said resignedly to Higgins, "Go bring her in, George. Fast. Tell Farrell to get the warrants, Webster and Corliss--narco possession. And he might send out for a sandwich and coffee."

"With pleasure," said Higgins, and went out.

"You can't hold me-- I didn't have anything to do--it was Madge! I--"

"Sit down, Larry," said Mendoza tiredly. "You're going nowhere for a while."

FOURTEEN

Margaret Corliss didn't come apart as easily as Webster had, of course. She went on stolidly denying it, calling Webster a liar, saying they couldn't prove anything. Mendoza kept at her for some time before the sense of what he was saying seemed to reach her.

"We will prove it, you know. We're already on the way to proving that most of those names in the appointment book are fakes, and who else could have put them there and why? On that bloodstained smock, we're going to find that no legitimate patient ever bled in his office, and we know it's not his type of blood, but it is his smock. Why did he want a sterilizer? Why did he want morphine? And so on and so on. You'd be surprised what evidence the lab can find when they go looking, and they'l1 be taking those examination rooms apart. Now we've charged you with something, I can get an order to open that safe deposit box you've got at the Bank of America, and I'll bet I'll find some interesting things in it."

That was what got to her. She shrugged and sat back, accepting it coolly: a gambler who'd lost this throw. "I guess you will," she said calmly. "You win. I did all I could--it was reely very awkward, Doctor getting shot like that, you can see it was. But if you open that box, well, you'll get the evidence all right. Just how the luck goes. Can I have a cigarette?"

He gave her one. "Now, let's have some straight answers."

"I don't know why I should tell you anything."

"Look," he said. "You'll get a one-to-three and serve the minimum term, on a first offense. You're still ahead in a way--I expect you've saved some of your cut. But whoever killed Nestor, again in a way, put you in this spot, didn't he? All I want to know--"

She was quite informative, eventually. Once she saw she couldn't get out of it, she told him what he wanted to know; and he thought she was telling the truth. Frank Nestor had approached her much as Mendoza had imagined, seeing her name in the paper in connection with the beauty shop. He'd said frankly he intended to set up a mill and needed a woman contact. She'd sized him up and thrown in with him, and it had turned out a very profitable venture. In one way, thought Mendoza, those two had been much alike: all business, taking the main chance.

"Doctor was very clever," she said. "He had a lot of ever so clever ideas. You know those ads in the personal columns that say, Any girl in trouble call this number? Well, of course they're put in by real charities or social workers, like that, and they don't exactly mean the kind of help Doctor meant." She smiled. "But he had a lot of cards printed with that on, and my phone number. I left them all sorts of places, places he picked out--at the college libraries at U.S.C. and U.C.L.A., and so on, and in ladies' rooms in all the expensive night clubs and big hotels--"

"Quite the little publicity agent," said Mendoza, "wasn't he?"

"Oh, I said he was clever. And once you get a business like that started, you know, the women tell each other--it gets around. Not that I ever had any experience of it before," she added hastily. She wasn't, at this late date, going to connect herself again to the Sally-Ann business.

"And he was good, too. Never the hint of any trouble, he was always so careful, everything all sterile, and he always put them right out with the morphine .... I don't know where he got that. No, that's level, I reely don't. I know he'd have liked to use a regular anesthetic, like sodium pentothal or something like that, but there was no way for him to get hold of it, you see. He was very careful, about the morphine--he always tested their hearts first and took their blood pressure. He'd have made a good surgeon. Right from the first, it all went as smooth as could be .... You'd be surprised, how many of the girls who called me, who'd meant to go on and have the baby and put it out for adoption, because they didn't know where to go, you see--they jumped at it, when they found how Doctor wanted to help them."

"How did he charge?"

"Well, that was the only trouble there ever was," admitted Margaret Corliss. "Not all of them could raise the kind of money he was asking. You see, the--well, call them patients--he wanted to get, he said from the first, were the ones with money. Who could pay anything up to five hundred or more. You know, the college girls with big allowances, or society girls and women. Like that. And we did get some of those, too. Sometimes he'd be sorry for a girl and do it for less. The way we worked it was, I'd meet the girl outside somewhere, like in a park, and size her up, what she was good for, and make the deal. Then, when she'd raised the money, we'd make an appointment at my apartment. Doctor'd meet us there and drive us to the office--it was always at night, and he'd go round all different ways so she wouldn't be quite sure where she was, see--and do the job, and then I'd keep the girl overnight. But he was so careful, there was never any trouble. They never knew a thing about it, under the dope, and it was just like in a regular hospital, everything sterile and all. They never knew his name, of course .... The lowest I ever remember was two hundred, he was sorry for that girl. He always asked five at least and if we could see it was a woman with real money he'd get seven-fifty. A couple of times we got a thousand. Because it was all guaranteed absolutely safe, you see. Those two were older women, and we figured they were married--maybe society women of some kind, you know."

"Did he keep a list of them?"

A little reluctantly she said, "It's in the safety box. Of course most of them gave wrong names, I suppose" "Just about as he started practice--both legitimate and otherwise," said Mendoza, "he claimed to have had a legacy. Do you know anything about that five thousand bucks?"

She shook her head. "Not reely. He spent a lot of money fixing up the office, and I did ask him how he could afford it, because he paid cash. He just laughed--he was always laughing, Doctor, such a handsome man . . ." She brushed away genuine tears. "And he said something about casting your bread on the waters."

"Oh, really. Well, and so who was the appointment with on Tuesday night?"

"There wasn't one. No, reely there wasn't. I'd know, I was always there, just like I told you. There wasn't any job set up for that night. I don't know what he'd be doing at the office."

"All right. You knew he was stepping out on his wife--did he use the office to meet women?"

"I wouldn't know," she said primly. "It was just business between Doctor and me-- I'd heard him say things about women he went out with, but not to reely know anything about them, or where he took them or like that. He might have, but I wouldn't know."

He accepted that. Quite a story, he thought; Nestor had been an enterprising fellow. Saw where there was money to be had and went for it the shortest way. And when you looked at it from one angle, it could be he'd saved a lot of suffering and maybe a few lives, those women coming to him, instead of some drunken old quack or dirty midwife.

"Was there any recent trouble over a patient? Over the payment, or anything else?"

No, there hadn't been, she said. There had been a couple of girls lately who'd had difficulty raising the money, and one of them--this had been about a month ago--had somehow managed to get it, and came back, but Nestor had refused to do the job because it was too late, he said--over three months. "You see how good he was, he said it wouldn't be safe for her. She was awf'ly mad, and argued with him a long time, but he stuck to it."

Nestor a very canny one, too. Legally speaking, the abortion of a foetus more than three months old was manslaughter. Which Nestor had undoubtedly known.

"Well, what do you think happened?" he asked suddenly. And he'd once thought, maybe it was this woman and Webster had assaulted Art, if . . . But he was a long way from being sure about that now. He thought she was leveling, and at a second look he didn't feel she'd be capable of that. "You hadn't any quarrel with him--"

"The idea! Of course not, we got along fine, Doctor was reely a very nice man."

"Did he keep a gun in the office? He didn't. Well, who do you think shot him?"

She looked a little surprised. "Why, it was the burglar, wasn't it? Did you think it might be some--some private reason? Oh, that reely couldn't be. Nobody had any reason to want him dead. Everybody liked him. He had ever so many friends, he was always going to parties .... Well, sometimes it'd be with his wife, sometimes not, I guess, from what he said. Nobody seemed to like her much, she's a funny kind of woman, the little I've seen of her. But he was popular .... "

She was helpful, but not to the extent he'd hoped.

Still, it cleared this part of the puzzle out of the way; and he thought she'd spoken the truth when she denied that Nestor had had an appointment--a professional appointment--that Tuesday night.

Meeting a woman in the office, maybe, and her husband suspecting, following her?

Glasser took Margaret Corliss up to the County Jail and saw her booked in, with Webster. Mendoza sent a routine note up to the Narcotics office about them, though the narco charge wasn't anything really, a formality.

It was ten-forty; he ought to go home. He sat on of inertia, reading reports .... There'd been men out, covering this crowded downtown area, asking questions wherever rooms were rented, at hotels, at random. They had reported evidence from several places of men with burnscarred faces, and they had turned up three such men, all on Skid Row. Considering the importance of that, all were being held overnight for the Garcia boy to look at in the morning. One little lead looked more promising, even though it had come to nothing. A man with such a scarred face had taken a room at a house on Boardman Street, giving the name of John Tenney. The landlady had thought he was in, but when they looked, he wasn't, and all his few possessions were gone. It was possible he'd overheard the plainclothesman asking questions and slipped out the back door. But of course that didn't say he'd been the Slasher--and it didn't say where he'd gone. Ought to go home, thought Mendoza. He wasn't accomplishing anything here .... He heard the phone ring on Farrell's desk, and Farrell's voice. And then, "Lieutenant? Call in from a squad car--another Slasher job, but the woman got away--"

"¡Dios! Where?"

"San Pedro, between Emily and Myrtle. It just happened ten minutes ago."

"I'm on my way. Send another car."

* * *

When he did get home, at two-thirty Tuesday morning, he was feeling the way Higgins had felt on Friday night. How the hell had they missed him? The men in the first squad car couldn't have been five minutes behind him, and they'd had four other cars there within ten minutes, and men on foot to search that whole area.

Etta Mae Rollen had sobbed, "It was like he come up out of the ground--all of a sudden he was just there, and g-grabbed for me, and I saw his knife--"

Etta Mae had been very damn lucky indeed. She had managed to tear herself away from him, and she had run. A block up she had seen a squad car coming toward her, and run to it screaming. The men had called in for assistance at once and gone back with her to where he'd been, but if he'd appeared out of thin air he'd disappeared that way too.

They weren't doubting it had been the Slasher, because Etta Mae had got a good look at him, and she offered a description before they asked any questions. She'd been coming home from her job as waitress at a coffee shop on Broadway. Just past the corner of San Pedro and Emily streets, where there was a good bright street light, there was a TV store where the lights were left on all night. She'd had a good look at the man with the knife. "He wasn't awful tall but he was mighty strong, only he just had hold of a piece of my coat mostly, and it tore all down the seam--you can see--when I got away from him. Oh, he had a terrible sort of face-- I'll never forget it to my dying day!--it was all thin and sneery and he had this great big red scar, all puckered, right across the middle of his face, and his eyes kind of glittered--”

Her coat hadn't been torn, but partly cut with a knife where he'd missed his first stroke. Probably the lab would tell them it had been a partly serrated blade.

`They'd covered all the alleys and back yards, they'd routed out the few night watchmen left in warehouses, to search the premises; they'd really covered that area. And nothing had shown. Where the hell had he gone? At least he hadn't killed again. But if they didn't get him soon . . .

Mendoza had been tired, earlier this evening. Now he wasn't conscious of tiredness--he'd worked past that point--and he ought to sleep but he knew he wouldn't. He ought to have something to eat, too, but he wasn't conscious of hunger. His mind kept going over and over all this--what they had, on both cases, and on Art. Was the assault on Art linked with either, or had that been the extraneous thing? He didn't know; he couldn't make up his mind.

Canyon Drive, in Hollywood. The Hollywood hills.

Very exclusive, expensive houses up there. Had X been familiar with it, or picked it at random?

He slid the Ferrari into the garage; he went out, pressed the electric-eye button to close the door. Very quietly he let himself into the dark house. But as he went down the hall he saw light there under the nursery door and softly opened it to look in.

"Well, you are late and no lie," said Mrs. MacTaggart.

"What's wrong, Máiri?"

"Nought at all much. I've been up a bit with young Johnny, but they run a wee temperature for nothing at all, times. He's gone off peaceful as you please now, you can see. Just a bit fretful like.” El Señor, self-appointed guardian of the twins, had joined her sleepily and was sitting on the foot of Master John's crib, playing watch cat.

"Sure?" Mendoza looked down at the flushed sleeping twins. It was very odd, suddenly, the idea that they were his; he could hardly disown it, young Master John with that uncannily identical widow's peak, if he had Alison's hazel-green eyes. He didn't know much about the twins, thought Mendoza suddenly. The little monsters who'd kept them awake at night until they found that treasure, Mrs. MacTaggart. Of course at this age, he supposed, they hadn't developed very distinct personalities maybe. He wasn't around them enough to say, really.

Miss Teresa moved restlessly and one pink thumb found its automatic way to her mouth. Mendoza yawned. He thought vaguely, start any sort of job, you ought to see it's done properly. He ought to know more about them. Try to be around more.

But things came up ....

"You are tired to death, man," said Mrs. MacTaggart softly. "Can I not get you something? A nice cup of hot broth now? Or a hot whiskey and lemon maybe?"

"No, thanks, Máiri, I'm fine."

She surveyed him calmly, drawing him out to the hall.

"If a lie could have choked you, that would have done it. We are only waiting on God's will. Go to your bed, man."

He went on down the hall. El Señor had opened the bedroom door to join Mrs. MacTaggart when she'd first gotten up to check on the twins. Mendoza shut it and began to undress. Alison was asleep, but stirred and muttered his name drowsily as he got into bed.

He would not sleep, of course. Another full day tomorrow. Go and see that Anita Sheldon? No, first get the court order to look at the Corliss woman's safe-deposit box. That list. Yes, and what would that tell him? Nothing really. No real lead there; she'd said there hadn't been trouble over a patient. Hell.

Cast your bread upon the waters . . . How did it go on? Something about, it shall be returned to you in many days. That didn't sound quite right. Scriptures. Prayer. Only there was nothing to pray to .... just the way the hand got dealt round.

He decided quite suddenly that if Art died he'd resign from the force. Even apart from this thing--working overtime at the job, the fascinating job, when it wasn't necessary. Not fair to Alison; not fair to the twins, as time went on.

He lay thinking about that, staring into the darkness. And El Señor, shut out from his mother and sisters, rattled the doorknob impatiently until he tripped the latch, slid in, and landed with a thud on the bed on top of Nefertite, who spat at him sleepily.

Who might get his desk? Mendoza wondered. If? Higgins was the next senior sergeant after Art, but they'd probably bring in somebody from outside--the senior sergeant from Vice or Narcotics. Little shake-up all round. If.

What would he do with himself all day? Learn to live a new kind of life. Play a little. More time with Alison and the twins.

More than half his lifetime, jettisoned. And God, he'd seen friends killed on duty before, but . . .

He had known he wouldn't sleep, but he slept, heavily; and woke feeling stupid and slow. It was six o'clock. That much sleep anyway. Six o'clock Tuesday morning, and-- He got up, shaved and dressed, went out to the living room and called the hospital. The patient's condition was unchanged.

He thought, Friday night. Call it eighty hours. MacFarlane: be feeling much more hopeful if . . .

He went out to the kitchen. Mrs. MacTaggart was already there, making coffee. Of course, of course. Her damned novena: out to the church first thing for nine days.

"You will stop for breakfast somewhere," she said severely.

"Yes, all right." Suddenly he realized he was ravenous. He did stop, at a Manning's coffee shop on Vermont, and had three eggs, a double order of bacon, and four cups of coffee. When he got to the office he was feeling more like the old Mendoza, the boy with a little reputation on this force.

* * *

By the time the lab man came in he'd got quite a bit done. He'd started the machinery going to get that court order on Margaret Corliss' safe-deposit box. He'd looked over the night reports--they'd had four men looking all around that area of the Slasher's latest job, but they'd turned up nothing. He had got the other warrant on Corliss, charging her with complicity in Nestor's abortion trade. He'd talked that over with the D.A.'s office, and the charge on Webster. The D.A.'s office didn't think they'd press an accessory charge on Webster: too vague.

He had called Mrs. Anita Sheldon to ask if she'd be at home this morning; he wanted to talk to her. She had sounded very frightened. "You can't come here! Oh, please--if Bob ever got to know, he'd-- And it's his day off, I can't--”

"Would you prefer to come to my office? Say eleven o'clock?"

"Oh dear. Oh, I guess so--if I've got to--there won't be any reporters, will there? I don't know anything to tell you about Frank, really, I didn't know him very well--"

He had called the Elger apartment and got no answer. Called Elger's office and been told Elger was out somewhere with a client.

When the lab man came in Mendoza was studying the official shots of Nestor's body. They weren't telling him much. He had a little box full of the contents of Nestor's pockets on his desk; he looked at it and picked up the button. That ordinary little button that had been clutched in Nestor's dead fingers. The clue out of the detective story.

"Morning," said the lab man, whose name was Duke.

"Say, I've got a little something, I--"

"Hold it a minute," said Mendoza. "Jimmy! I must be going senile. Jimmy, I want search warrants for the quarters of every male in the Nestor case. Let's see, Webster, Elger, this Bob Sheldon, every legitimate male patient he had, every man listed in his address book, every male he knew. To look at their clothes. Just in case. It's possible X didn't realize he'd lost a button. You never know where you'll hit pay dirt. Damn it, it's a very long chance, but--"

He looked at Duke. "What have you got?" `

Duke laid a pair of shoes on the desk. "We're always damn busy," he said, "but we've been concentrating on Hackett the last couple of days. As you can imagine."

Duke was snub-nosed, freckle-faced, and right now looking pleased with himself. "We've been going over his clothes, for any little thing that might show up. Now it is your job to say what this might mean, but for what it's worth, it looks kind of interesting to me. Not to say suggestive. These are his shoes, I just got to them this morning."

"Yes?" said Mendoza.

They were a pair of black moccasin-type shoes, middling expensive, well worn but polished. Mendoza thought absently, Size 11B.

Duke lifted them and held them toward him heel first. "Look at that. They're not new shoes, but they've been taken care of. Kept polished. But here, on both heels--that is, the back of both shoes above the heels--is this deep scrape. The surface of the leather's entirely gone, violently scraped off--more on the left than on the right one."

"Yes, I see."

"Well, that wasn't done when he went over the cliff in his car, you know. It wasn't done on anything in the car. I've had these under the microscope, and I took scrapings to look at closer. You know what was in those scraped spots? Asphalt. Asphalt and," Duke added dreamily, "crankcase oil, and bird droppings, and decayed leaves. Traces, you know."

Mendoza sat up. "What the hell? Does that say--"

"Me, I'm only a chemist,” said Duke. "You're the detective. But we aren't exactly disinterested in this one, and I saw what Dr. Erwin said about that skull fracture. The back of the skull, more to the left side. I think this does tell us a little something?

"Asphalt---"

"The way I read it," said Duke, "and stop me if I don't make sense, is that he got that first blow outdoors, on the street. Literally on the street--a blacktop street. He got knocked backwards, maybe tripped over something or it was just a very hefty blow--and his feet went out from under him, scraping the street, and he went down hard on something--as Erwin said--broad and hard and flat."

"But not the street itself," said Mendoza slowly, "because there wasn't a trace of anything like that in the wound or on the scalp. Of course he had on a hat, but you didn't find anything like that on it. Nothing extraneous."

"That's right" said Duke. "I just thought I'd pass it on.”

"And isn't it interesting," said Mendoza. "Thanks very much .... " He thought about that story he'd built up, on Art. The louts jumping him. The outside thing? Or, if you were bound to link it with another case, had he shown some suspicion, and been followed outside?

The nice neat detective-story plot--Art stumbling across the X in the Nestor case, or the Slasher--he had bought it, but now he wasn't so sure.

Art attacked in the street. A blacktop street. Like how many thousand streets in L. A. County?

What the hell?

And that was when the man from Ballistics came in. A paunchy, elderly fellow named Hansen, who said, "I think we've cleared one up for you, Lieutenant. That chiropractor that got himself shot. We've got the gun."

"¡Parece mentira! Don't keep me in suspense--where the hell did you--"

"Well, the Wilcox Street boys sent it down, and I fired a few test slugs, and they looked sort of familiar--I did the tests on that slug out of the chiropractor. It's a Harrington and Richardson Sportsman 999--nice little gun. Nine-shot revolver, retails for about fifty bucks." He laid it on Mendoza's desk.

"And where did the Hollywood boys get it?"

"Attempted break-in at a drugstore, Saturday night," said Hansen. "Three juveniles. They got this off one of them.”

"¡Un millén demonios!" said Mendoza exasperatedly. "¡Ya se ve! So it was the outside thing on Nestor--just what it looked like. The outside thing--too."

FIFTEEN

Mendoza called Wilcox Street and set up an immediate date with Sergeant Nesbitt at the County Jail. Damn it, this turned the whole case upside down. The facts that Nestor had been an abortionist, had been cheating on his wife, didn't matter a damn; he hadn't been murdered for a personal reason; it had been just what it looked like, the break-in, the burglars finding him there, using the gun in panicky impulse. So the Nestor thing hadn't anything to do with the assauly on Art; he hadn't stumbled onto the personal killer there because there wasn't one. And there wasn't any way he could have stumbled onto these actual killers, either.

So, a hundred to one, the assault on Art had been the outside thing too. Because, to hell with the train wreck, Mendoza didn't see one like the Slasher setting up that faked accident--elementarily faked as it had been. If Art had stumbled onto the Slasher that night, the Slasher would probably have just yanked out his homemade knife and . . .And, buying the detective-story plot, they'd wasted three days on that. Where to look now? Nowhere. They hadn't a clue as to where or when the first assault on Art had happened.

He said to Sergeant Lake, "If I'm not back when Mrs. Sheldon comes in, ask her to wait, will you?" He went downstairs to the lot and headed the Ferrari for North Broadway.

Wait a minute. Were there any leads? Even small ones. It could have been the way he'd outlined it to Palliser, a little gang of juvenile louts drifting the streets, jumping Art on impulse. In that case, a very small chance indeed that they could ever be identified, charged. But--the terminus a quo. He was all right when he left Mrs. Nestor's apartment on Kenmore. He'd meant perhaps to see the Elgers, see the Corliss woman, see the desk clerk, but they didn't know where he'd actually headed from Mrs. Nestor's. But Mendoza thought that Margaret Corliss was leveling with him now, and she'd denied again that Art had been to see her that night. All right. Mendoza was thinking again about Cliff Elger. None of these people had had anything to do with taking Nestor off, and it looked pretty farfetched that any of the rest of them could have had anything to do with the assault on Art; but Cliff Elger? That big boy, bigger than Art, who had the hair-trigger temper? Could he have got so mad at something Art said--about his wife, probably--that he struck that first violent blow, and found himself stuck with a badly injured cop? And with the reputation to preserve . . .Art attacked in the street. His heels scraping a blacktop street as he fell--but he hadn't fallen onto the blacktop, or there'd have been the same traces of asphalt and so on in the wound.

"I'm a fool," said Mendoza to himself suddenly, braking for a light. It was, when you thought about it, obvious. Whoever had struck that blow. Art standing at the curb or in the street--he could see it--car keys in his hand, ready to walk round the car to the driver's door. Either he'd been already facing someone, talking, or someone had spoken to him and he'd turned. And the blow struck--the violent blow--and he had fallen backward, feet sliding out from under him, and gone down hard on the broad, flat expanse of the car trunk. There wouldn't have been traces on the car, after the accident; he'd been wearing a hat.

That said a little more, but it wasn't any lead to who. Cliff Elger, roaring mad at something Art had said, following him down to the street, getting madder when he couldn't rouse Art's temper in return . . . Maybe. Normandie was a blacktop street.

So was the street Madge Corliss' apartment was on. So were a lot of streets--including Third and the side streets around there. Wait a minute again. If that little build-up about how it happened was so, didn't it say probably that the car had been parked along the curb, not diagonally? And that wasn't much help either, because on most streets in L.A. and Hollywood the street parking wasn't diagonal. You got that in a lot of towns around--Glendale, Pasadena, Beverly Hills--but not much here.

"Hell," said Mendoza, and parked, pocketed the keys, and walked up to the jail.

Sergeant Nesbitt was waiting for him at the top of the steps. "Lieutenant Mendoza? Nesbitt." He was a square, solid man about forty, with a square stolid face. "I understand you're going to claim my young punks on a murder rap. Well, glad to oblige. They're all under eighteen, though, you won't be getting the gas chamber for them."

"What's the story?" They went inside.

"Well, we've been having quite a little wave of break-ins up in my stamping ground. Drugstores, independent markets, dress shops, and so on. The cheaper stores. where the buildings are old and the locks not so good, you know. It's been mostly petty stuff, we figured it was juveniles--not much cash, and stuff they wouldn't get much for-- I think myself some of it was stolen to give away to their girl friends, make them look big. You know. Cigarettes, liquor, clothes from the dress shops, and so on. Well, Saturday night a squad car touring out on Fountain spotted what looked like a flashlight in the rear of this drugstore on a corner, took a closer look, found the back door forced, and picked these three up in the stock room. They had an old Model A Ford sitting by the back door, half full of stuff they'd already piled in it." Nesbitt rummaged and produced his notebook. "One Michael Wills, Joe Lopez, George Kellerman. They're all from down around your part of town, and they've all been in a little trouble before. Wills was picked up and warned once for carrying a switchblade, and the other two have one count each of Grand Theft Auto--little joy riding, you know. Probation. Wills and Kellerman are seventeen, Lopez sixteen."

"Well, they've got into big trouble this time,” said Mendoza. "Who had the .22?"

"Wills. I'd say he's the ringleader."

"O.K., let's go in and look at them."

Nesbitt told the desk man whom they wanted to see; in a few minutes they were let into one of the interrogation rooms, and the boys were brought in by a uniformed jailer.

Mendoza looked at them coldly, resignedly. They were about what he'd expected to see, from the black leather jackets and wide belts and dirty jeans to the expressions on their faces. And there was a lot of talk about it, from a lot of different people, and a lot of different solutions offered to cure the problem. It was a problem all right. They said, clean up the slums. A fine idea, but it wasn't going to cure the problem, because quite a lot of very respectable citizens--Luis Rodolfo Vicente Mendoza among others--had grown up in the slums. They said lack of discipline, which was a little more realistic, but it was theoretically a free country and you couldn't tell people how to bring up their kids. They said prejudice, they said inadequate public schools. What nobody among all the do-gooders would ever admit was that some people just came equipped that way, and that more people were just naturally the kind who'd play along with any strong character to be one of a gang; and you weren't going to change character overnight.

Wills was tall and thin, with an angular pale face, sullen pale eyes, and lank dark hair; he looked older than seventeen. Kellerman was a fat lump, big and awkward and blond. Lopez was a little runt of a kid, skinny and dark, with terrified eyes. They just stood and looked back at him.

"Well, let's get the show on the road," said Mendoza sharply. "Which of you shot Nestor last Tuesday night?"

They looked surprised; and then Lopez looked almost idiotic with panic. "We n-never shot nobody, mister. ¡Se lo digo, no! Honestamente, we never--we never do a thing like that--"

"You got rocks in your head?" said Wills coldly. "What makes you think we shot a guy?"

"I don't think, I know," said Mendoza. "There's no point going the long way round here. You've been pulling a series of break-ins. Probably in other places than Hollywood. Last Tuesday night you broke into the office of Dr. Frank Nestor, on Wilshire Boulevard. Only you found the office wasn't empty--Dr. Nestor was there." Why had he been there, by the way? Not very important? "Wills, you had the .22. When Dr. Nestor showed up, did you panic and shoot on impulse, or did you kill him deliberately? You did have the .22--It's your gun?"

"For Christ's sake!" said Wills incredulously. "That's crazy, man! We was never near no doctor's office, Tuesday night or any other! We never heard o' that doctor. Why the hell'd we want to break in a doctor's?"

"I can think of reasons," said Mendoza.

"Oh--dope. We don't go for that crap," said Kellerman. "Not me, boy! I seen what it done to my brother. You're nuts--we'd never do a real bad thing like that. Gee, what was a couple cartons cigarettes and--"

"I said, let's not go the long way round," said Mendoza.

"I've got other things to worry about than you three louts." He took a step toward them and Lopez cringed back. "Now listen--"

"You c'n beat me all you want!" cried Lopez in a high frightened voice. "Just go on 'n' try--you never make me-- ¡Santa Maria y Josejo-- I never--"

"Oh, for God's sake, Joe," said Wills contemptuously, "they don't dare lay a hand on us!" He gave Mendoza an insolent leer. "They got to stay little gents--ain't that so, bloodhound?"

Mendoza pasted a careful, bland smile on his mouth. Never let them see they were getting to you. It was sometimes difficult. Sure--that juvenile thing last year. All the careful rules and regulations to protect the citizenry--and the L.A.P.D. with a lot of private rules on that too, especially about the minors, and what it came to was that the punks could call you every name in the book, tell the most obvious lies, accuse you of anything from wife beating to sodomy, and you had to take it without even a word or two in reply. Sometimes a man lost his temper a little and roughed up one of them--which was the only way to reach a lot of them--and then you got the press screaming about police brutality and the tenderhearted public excitedly demanding investigation. Mendoza smiled at these three young punks, pityingly. The only other way to reach them was to talk to them like the immature children they were. "Look, Mikey boy," he said very gently, "I've got no time to waste playing games with little boys. I'll give you just five minutes to tell me a straight story, but whether you do or not, I'm getting warrants on all of you for murder. As of now. That .22 is the gun that killed Frank Nestor, that we know, and it was in your possession on Saturday night. Which of you had it on Tuesday night?"

Evidently he reached them with that. Lopez started to say a fervent Hail Mary, with his eyes shut; Kellerman just looked worried. Wills suddenly dropped his sneer and said, "Listen, is that on the level? Somebody got killed with that gun? Jesus--"

"I told you there was somethin' a little funny about it, Mike," said Kellerman.

"That's level," said Mendoza. "What fancy story are you going to tell me now?"

"Jesus," said Wills. "I'm not taking no murder rap! I never had that gun until Thursday night, bloodhound, and that's level in spades. I never laid eyes on it till Thursday."

"¡No me tome el pelo! Don't kid me," said Mendoza skeptically. "So where'd you get it?"

Wills licked his lips. "We found it," he said.

"Oh, for God's sake," said Mendoza, "can't you think up a better one than that?"

"No, honest--honest, mister, we did!" said Lopez eagerly. "It was down on Main, we was all together--we saw this guy drop something, just ahead of us, see, and Mike picked it up-- I saw him--honestamente--"

"That's right," said Kellerman stolidly. "I saw him too. It looked like a swell gun, not so old either--but I told Mike, see, when I see the serial number's filed off, I said, get shut of it, maybe it's hot."

"You've got all the answers," said Mendoza. "Do you really think I'm going to buy that one?"

"It's the truth!" snarled Wills. "It's all I can tell you. Jesus, I wish now I'd tossed it in the first alley we passed, but I didn't. It was mostly loaded, too--eight slugs in it. That's God's own truth, this guy dropped it and I picked it up. Right in the street, see--on the sidewalk."

His tone was passionate. Mendoza looked at him. "So now suppose you produce a nice tight alibi for all three of you for last Tuesday night."

"Hell!" said Wills violently. "You Goddamn cops--"

"I ain't taking no murder rap either, Mike,” said Kellerman. His broad forehead wrinkled painfully with thought.

"It ain't sense. So maybe we get hit a little tougher if we tell them, it's still not murder. Gee, none of us'd do a bad thing like a murder!" He looked at Mendoza earnestly. "We couldn't've, because we was down in Boyle Heights last Tuesday night, we cracked a TV store and got a lot of stuit. You can check it, I guess--lessee, we was with them girls up to about nine, and then we did the store, and we sold a lot of the stuff at a pawnshop on Whittier Boulevard, that'd be about ten-thirty, wasn't it, Mike? And--"

"Oh hell!" said Wills sullenly. "Well, all right. That's where we was, just like George says."

"That's right, mister, honestamente--"

Mendoza looked at Nesbitt and raised his eyebrows. Nesbitt shrugged.

"We'd sold stuff there before--the old guy's name is Behrens. Honest, he'd tell you we was in, about ten-thirty, and--”

"All right, what's the address?" Mendoza wrote it down. "I'll probably be seeing you again." He turned on his heel. Walking down the corridor, he asked Nesbitt, "What do you think?"

"Finding a gun," said Nesbitt. "I ask you."

"Down on Main," said Mendoza absently. He thought suddenly, suppose you had a gun you wanted to get rid of? A hot gun. Maybe one you had a license for, so the serial number could be traced. You could sell it, but the transaction would be traceable too. You could pawn it, but all pawnbrokers were supposed to keep records of serial numbers. You could just dump it somewhere, in anzio empty lot, but there was always the chance of someone seeing you, or Ending it and reporting it. Really, a very excellent way of getting rid of it would be to file away the serial number and then drop it somewhere, casually, in a district like Skid Row, where the chances were that whoever picked it up would keep it for his own nefarious purposes or pawn it for drinking money.

He wished now he'd asked those punks if they remembered anything about the hypothetical man who'd dropped the .22. But it had almost certainly been after dark, and they wouldn't remember any details. Hell. And no way to . . .

"We'd better check," he said to Nesbitt. "The pawnbroker, and his stock. Just in case."

"Sure," said Nesbitt sadly. "We have to check everything."

Boyle Heights--Wl1ittier Boulevard. That would be the Hollenbeck station, and Mendoza thought he'd get them to check it out for him. He thanked Nesbitt for cooperation and drove back to headquarters, thinking about the gun.

The Sheldon woman hadn't shown, though it was after eleven. He called the Hollenbeck station, and the sergeant he talked to groaned but said he knew they were keeping busy with this Slasher down at headquarters, and they'd check out the pawnbroker for them. "How's that sergeant of yours doing in the hospital?"

"Not so good," said Mendoza. But a sudden queer warmth spread through him, for the real concern in the man's voice. That sergeant over at the Hollenbeck station had probably never laid eyes on Art Hackett. This was a big police force, though perennially undennanned for the population it served, and it took pride in itself for being, for all that, the top force anywhere. He realized suddenly that every man on this force who had read that brief newspaper story--Veteran Homicide Officer in Near Fatal Accident--was pulling for Hackett. Just because he was another cop.

Cops had to stick together.

He put the phone down. Palliser came in, looking annoyed, and said that Miguel Garcia hadn't recognized any of the three men with burn-scarred faces they'd held overnight. "I got the Rollen girl to look at them too, she said definitely no. So we let them go."

"Yes. It won't be as easy as that," said Mendoza. "Have those search warrants come through yet?"

"A few. Your idea was that button? Well, if that is a real clue," said Palliser, "and Nestor really did snatch it off his killer, I should think X would have felt it go. And--" He stopped.

"Yes," said Mendoza. "Belatedly, I saw that too. If he realized that Nestor had snatched it, maybe in reaching for the hand that held the gun, how easy simply to take it back when Nestor was dead. So he doesn't know it's gone from his jacket or whatever. Or didn't then. So maybe he's hung the jacket away in his closet for us to find .... I thought for a little while we'd cleaned up Nestor, but I'm having second thoughts." He told Palliser about the young punks, about the gun.

Palliser said thoughtfully, "Well, I'm bound to say, if I had a hot gun to get rid of, that might be a damn safe way to do it. Down there, nobody'd be likely to hand it to the nearest patrolman and say, ‘Look what I found-- Of course you're checking with the pawnbroker."

"Naturalmente--or rather, Hollenbeck is. You and Bert and whoever else is available had better go out on these warrants. Of course, there's every chance that since the murder X has noticed the missing button and, taking no chances that he dropped it somewhere incriminating, has got rid of the jacket or suit--or replaced the button. Anyway, have a good look for that--a button that doesn't quite match the rest .... l want to see Elger again--and this damn Sheldon woman--"

The outside phone rang, and Sergeant Lake looked in and said, "It's your wife."

All Mendoza's muscles semed to tighten. If the hospital . . . He said, "O.K.," and picked up the phone, seeing his fears mirrored in Palliser's dark eyes .... "Querida?"

"Luis," she said. "Luis--we're at the hospital. Angel's just got the doctor to tell her--how it really is."

"Oh," said Mendoza. Some of the tension went out of him, and Palliser, seeing it, drew a breath and went out.

"I'm sorry about that."

"He kept looking so serious, and-- When we'd thought-- And he tried--but Angel kept at him, and he finally told us--how it might be. Luis, it can't happen, can it?"

"I don't know, belleza. It's a thing, we wait and see."

"I know--but--”

"How is she taking it?"

"All right," said Alison. "It's no good fainting and having hysterics, but-- She's--all right, so far. But I can't bear--"

"Yes,” he said. "There's more to Art's Angel than I'd thought. She's a good girl. But I'1n sorry she knows. I'd hoped--"

"Protecting us!" said Alison with a little angry half sob. "Just not running to meet trouble, amante."

"No. I know. But--"

Neither of them said anything for a moment; there was nothing more to say. The line hummed between them, a small comforting contact.

"Alison," he said. "Alison."

"Yes."

"How would you feel about it--if I resigned from the force?"

There was another little silence. "You mean . . . ? I--I don't know, darling," said Alison. "Would you--want to? I mean--"

"I don't know," he said.

"What would--you do with yourself?"

"Something, I suppose. Find something. Esa es cuestión aparte. I don't know."

"If you really wanted to--" she said. He heard her draw a little breath. "Will you be home at all? I know how you're working at it--"

"I don't know that either, my darling. I'll call. You take care of Art's girl--and yourself."

"Yes," she said forlornly. "Yes, Luis."

He put the phone down. He looked around the office.

He really didn't know. Twenty-two years. Riding a squad car. In plain clothes, down in Vice--spotting the pro gamblers mostly, because maybe he was half a pro gambler himself. And eleven years in this office, sergeant and then lieutenant.

He'd sat at a desk up here for eleven years, working the cases as they turned up. Always plenty of cases to work. He wondered how it would feel, to be plain Mister instead of Lieutenant. To have nowhere special to be at a specified time every morning. To have no work to do at all. Just time to play.

The job wasn't necessary. All that nice money, in giltedged securities, in real estate. No. But . . .

Sergeant Lake looked in and said, "That Sheldon woman's here, Lieutenant."

Lieutenant. He had a place in life, as lieutenant. But maybe not fair to Alison, to the twins--and if Art . . . But meanwhile, thankfully, he had the job to do. He said, "O.K., Jimmy, shoot her in." He snapped his lighter, lit a cigarette.

SIXTEEN

Anita Sheldon was a vapid-looking little blonde with china-blue eyes, and she was very frightened. She hadn't known Frank Nestor very well, she didn't know anything about him really, it'd just been like meeting him for cocktails somewhere, nothing bad, but Bill had got so mad about that Youngman guy that time, there hadn't been anything in it, but Bill--if he got to know about this--He didn't understand, him away off on some job maybe four or five days, and a girl liked a little fun . . .

Within five minutes Mendoza put her down as a shallow little tramp; and when he heard that she'd been married to Bill for five years he provisionally crossed off Bill, who must have found her out in that time if he wasn't mentally deficient. Bill hadn't got mad enough to shoot any of her other pickups; it wasn't likely he'd shot Nestor. When he learned that Bill had been on his way up to Santa Barbara with a truckload last Tuesday night he crossed him off definitely.

Well, she had met Nestor in his office on two occasions."But not to stay there, of course, we'd go on to some nice restaurant, somewhere like that."

When Mendoza thanked her, told her she could go, she shot off like a scalded cat. Evidently, he thought, Nestor had picked up whatever came handy: and from all he knew of him, that ran true. Ladies' man, not too particular. The ones like Anita Sheldon flattered and caught by his charm--but Ruth Elger had been something else again. Going out with him because she'd had a fight with her husband. Using Nestor. And maybe the first time she'd strayed, and Elger . . . But would Elger have shot him? Hair-trigger Elger more likely to have beaten him up, maybe?

Mendoza took out the button and looked at it. Well, see what turned up there. He felt harried; he was getting nothing on all this at all, and time was catching up to him--he had the worried feeling that there was something, some relevant fact, right under his nose, if he wasn't too stupid to see it.

He forced himself to sit still, take a couple of deep breaths. He was trying to go at it too fast, do everything at once. Sit and think calmly over the evidence, take it easy.

Nestor's high-society scrapbook was lying on his desk along with a few other things; he picked it up. It occurred to him that possibly, if his guess as to its purpose was the right one, and if Nestor had even once recognized a patient, he might have indicated it in some way. Either in the scrapbook or on that list in Madge Corliss' safety box. Idly he started leafing through the book.

The first item taped to the page was short: Miss Susan Marlowe, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Marlowe, spent a delightful Easter weekend cruising aboard the yacht of the J. Haskin Treadwells. No pictures on that. Of course Nestor would have been interested because of his slight connection with Marlowe. He went on looking; the year-in, year-out social affairs, the races, operas, first nights, teas and dinners and lectures. A lot of pictures, but Nestor hadn't scribbled anything in the margins. "¡Nada!" said Mendoza, and shut the book.

And the outside phone rang on Sergeant Lake's desk. . . . "It's another one, Lieutenant. Another Slasher job. Just found."

"Hell!" said Mendoza. There was nobody else in the office. "Where?"

"San Pedro and Fifth. Squad car just got there."

"All right. Rout out Bainbridge?

There was quite a crowd around when he got there; a second car had arrived and two uniformed men were rather helplessly trying to move the crowd on. The press had also arrived; he saw the flash bulbs going off, and Wolfe of the Citizen gave him a tight-lipped humorless grin as he pushed into the crowd.

"They do say the population's rising too fast, Lieutenant. This is one way to cure it, I guess. But we always thought you boys were a little smarter."

"Like to change jobs?" said Mendoza curtly. "Let me through, please .... What have you got on it so far, boys?”

They hadn't got much. The body--looking much the same as all the other bodies the Slasher had left behind him hadn't any identification on it. It was the body of a middle-aged man, and the only items on him were half of a Greyhound Bus ticket from San Diego to Los Angeles, three single dollar bills and some change, in an otherwise empty wallet, and a Hat pint bottle of scotch, nearly empty. His clothes were old and shabby, and he looked unkempt.

The body had been left where, probably, it had become a body, in the middle of a narrow alley between two buildings. It had been found by a couple of truck drivers backing in there to make deliveries.

Nothing much to be done on the spot. Quite impossible to say whether an item or so among the many dirty, miscellaneous items in the alley had been dropped by the Slasher.

"All right," said Mendoza. "You know the routine."

Lake would be chasing up somebody to come and take pictures. "When the surgeon's seen him and we've got some pictures, let the ambulance boys take him. Drivers' names? . . . O.K. We'll try to identify him through the bus ticket--I'll take that stuff now."

But as he pushed out through the crowd again a hand touched his arm timidly. "Please, you are one of the Polizei, sir? I--I--maybe I know something about this terrible man, sir. I--"

He looked down at her. The careful English was thick with German accent. She was a little plump blonde, a real blonde, about thirty-five; she looked like the illustration on bars of very good Dutch chocolate, pink cheeks and all. She was wearing a mightily starched white apron over a very neat blue house dress. "Please," she said anxiously, "I am Gertrud Flickschuster, sir."

The interested crowd surged nearer, and Mendoza said, "For God's sake, can't you get these ghouls to move on? Mrs.--Flickschuster?--come over here, please. What is it you think you know?"

"I hear the poor man is found, it is another from--by this terrible murderer, so I come. To find a--the word I don't know--Geheimpolizist--to tell. I think I have seen this man. In our delicatessen he comes"--she pointed up the street--"last night."

"You'd better come back to headquarters and make a statement," said Mendoza.

She hesitated. "You will--I may come out again? There is Rudi alone in the shop--"

"Yes, of course." He smiled at her; by the accent, she hadn't been in the theoretically free country long. He put her, starched apron and all, into the Ferrari, drove back to
headquarters, and took her up to his office. "Take some notes on this, Jimmy. Now, Mrs. Flickschuster?"

It seemed that the Flickschusters, who had come here four years ago, kept a delicatessen. They stayed open until nine most evenings, and one or the other of them or both were always behind the counter. And just before they closed last night a man had come in and bought a half pound of sausage, a pound carton of potato salad, and a quart of milk. Gertrud had waited on him and remembered him well--"Because he is so ugly, sir, a terrible face. It has the hollow cheeks like a death's head, and this terrible mark on his face--vernarben--die narbe on his face, from the burn, it looks--all red, across the nose. But it is not until Rudi has been reading the newspaper that I have known--it is saying about this man--"

"Yes." And that might be a more interesting and significant little story than it looked at first glance. Mendoza got her signature to a statement, phoned for a car to drive her back to the delicatessen .... The Slasher, buying precooked food at night. The man was staying somewhere, damn it, but with the press relaying his now known description to the public, he hadn't rented another room as yet--that they knew. Nobody was likely to rent him one when they'd had a look at him.

Etta Mae Rollen attacked at San Pedro and Emily. The latest unknown corpse near San Pedro and Fifth. Mendoza frowned at a city map: about four blocks apart.

The Slasher holed up somewhere, in hiding? Sense enough to read the papers, know he had to hide? But where, for God's sake, in that rabbit warren of crowded downtown streets? Business of most kinds was thriving--there wouldn't be many empty buildings. And, true enough, the population increasing at such a rate that there wouldn't be many empty houses, either. In that section people lived cheek by jowl, there wasn't much privacy. What hole could a loner like the Slasher have found? Hell. He wondered what, if anything, the Hollenbeck station was getting from that pawnbroker. It would be a help to clear those juveniles out of the way, know definitely they had an alibi for Nestor--if they had. Which would say that their story about the gun was probably gospel truth. He decided it was too soon to call Hollenbeck and ask.

Sergeant Lake came in and said that Nestor woman was here, asking to see him. "You haven't had a chance for lunch at all, shall I tell her to wait or come back?"

"No, that's O.K.--shove her in." He was curious to know what she wanted.

As Madge Corliss put it, a funny kind of woman indeed. He didn't think any disillusionment with Nestor was responsible for her flat emotionlessness. He remembered what Marlowe had said of her and silently agreed: rather a stupid woman.

She came in and sat down in the chair beside his desk. Her mouse-brown hair in its old-fashioned shoulder-length bob hung lank about her face. She had on a printed cotton house dress, bright pink, and a shabby green cardigan over it; white ankle socks with the kind of cuban-heeled black oxfords made for old ladies with fallen arches. She hadn't any make-up on except lipstick, and most of that had worn off.

Nestor's essential character aside, reflected Mendoza, it really wasn't hard to see why he had . . .

"Yes, Mrs. Nestor?"

"Well, I'd just like to know," she said in her fiat nasal voice, "when I can get into his office. You people have put a seal on the door. The rent'll be due in ten days and of course I don't want to pay another month's rent. And there are some valuable things there I could sell for quite a lot of money. To another doctor."

"Well, I'm afraid I can't tell you anything on that," said Mendoza. "We don't know, it may be we'll want to have another look around there. But I see your position, and we'll try to arrange to free it before the end of the month."

She did not thank him. "It's been a nuisance, I must say," she said. "The bank not giving up that money and so on." The news of Madge Corliss' arrest had made minor headlines this morning, the revelation of Nestor's undercover trade; evidently Mrs. Nestor didn't read newspapers and had no kind friend to tell her about it, for she didn't mention it at all. But with one like that, who could say? She might, if he asked her, say, Oh, that. I'd suspected it all along.

"As long as you're here, Mrs. Nestor, I'd just like to go over it with you again--about Friday night, when Sergeant Hackett came to see you .... " He took her all through it again, and she gave him the same answers, disinterested.

He let her go, dispiritedly. His head had begun to ache again. He couldn't see where to go from here--if nothing turned up on that button. But he didn't know yet that those juveniles were in the clear, of course. And if they weren't, where else to look on Art?

It was one forty-eight. It seemed to him that lately, the last few days, time had slowed down somehow so that there were twice as many hours in a day. He wondered what the boys were getting on their searching jobs. Sergeant Lake came and looked at him disapprovingly and told him to go get some lunch.

"Yes," said Mendoza, and dialed the offices of Cliff Elger and Associates. He was told that Mr. Elger was out to lunch with a client. Where? Well, probably Frascati's on the Strip or the one on Wilshire.

Mendoza tried Frascati's on the Strip first, as the nearer place, and spotted his man at once. Elger's great bulk, clad in loud tweed, was perched on a bar stool. He was doing most of the talking, gesturing widely, laughing. The man sitting next to him was much smaller, presenting a thin, narrow-shouldered back and a bald spot.

Mendoza climbed up on the stool at Elger' s other side. Elger was halfway through a martini: probably not his first. The other man, a depressed-looking middle-aged man, was staring silently at a glass of beer.

"--just got to take it in your stride," Elger was saying heartily. "You know? Script writers always change a book around some. What should you care, you've got the money. You worry too much, friend."

The depressed-looking man said in a surprising Oxford accent, "But she wasn't a chorus girl, she was the vicar's daughter. It all seems quite pointless to me, and rather silly."

"Now you just stop worrying, old boy," said Elger.

The bartender came up and Mendoza said, "Straight rye. Mr. Elger!"

Elger swung around, looking surprised. "Oh--it's you," he said.

Mendoza smiled offensively at him. "Business as usual? I thought you'd be keeping a closer eye on your Ruthie. Or have you hired a private eye?"

Instantly Elger's expression darkened. "What the hell d'you mean by that? That bastard Nestor--and I wasn't surprised when I saw the Times this morning! Ruthie told you how it was, she hardly knew the guy, it was just to spite me she--"

"Naive, Mr. Elger!" said Mendoza cynically. "They can sound quite convincing, that sex."

"Damn you--"

Mendoza picked up the shot glass and swallowed half the rye. "Don't sound so upset," he drawled. "Happens in the best of families--"

Elger swung on him and he ducked, alert for it, and caught the man's wrist in both hands. It had been an awkward swing, from a seated position; but if Elger had been on his feet . . .

He said incisively, "Hold it, Elger! Take it easy. Now what did I really say? Nothing much. You lose your temper that easy very often? Because, if you do, I'm surprised you haven't got stuck with a corpse--or a near corpse--long ago!"

"What the hell,” said Elger sullenly. He shook his arm free of Mendoza's grip. The other man was watching interestedly. "You talking about Ruth--damn cop--"

"To see what little thing might set you off. Look at me!" said Mendoza sharply. "Did you lose your temper last Friday night, Elger? Did you? Because of some little remark Sergeant Hackett made to you? Did--"

"I told you I never heard of that guy!"

"Did you follow him down to the street and attack him there, Elger? And then find you'd nearly killed him? And there he was, right in front of your apartment--and if he came to, he'd talk--or he might just die, so we'd get you for manslaughter if nothing worse--and there's your business and reputation gone. Was it like that?"

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," said Elger roughly. He threw the rest of his martini down his throat so fast he nearly choked on it.

"So you thought of the clever little plan-- If you did that, Elger, by God, I'll get you for it? said Mendoza. In that moment he was nearly persuaded that Elger was his man: Elger so quick to hit out in blind fury, over very little; and the suppressed savagery in his tone, the expression in his eyes, made Elger draw back a little.

The bartender was looking worried. They didn't like disturbances in a high-class place like this. Mendoza finished his rye. "Make no mistake," he said, "if it was you, we'll get you. I'll be seeing you again, Elger." He slapped down a bill and stood up ....

And where had that got him? He knew that a very small thing might trigger Elger's temper.

The lab, he thought. They really did work miracles these days, those boys. Would there be any difference in the composition of blacktop--could they tell its age, or degree of wear--something to pin down the locality?

A forlorn hope. He could ask.

He ate a flavorless sandwich at a drugstore and went back to the office. Sergeant Lake was leaning back reading a teletype.

"Here's our boy," he said, handing it over. "Not that it helps us much on catching him."

Mendoza read the teletype standing. It was from the sheriff of El Dorado County up north of Sacramento. The inquiries on any known knifings with the same M.O. as the Slasher's had been out for nearly three days; this was the first response.

What Sheriff Jay Hampton had to tell them was that there'd been two murders in a little place called Georgetown, about three months back. Quite a surprise to Georgetown, which had a population of about eight hundred--Mendoza found on consulting an atlas--and probably hadn't had a murder since the frontier was officially closed in 1890, You could read between the lines of Sheriff Hampton's terse statement. The first victim had been Betty Riley, a local girl well known and liked. Engaged to the son of the town's bank president; her father was one of two doctors in town. A pretty girl, popular and virtuous. She had been to see a girl friend, Martha Glenn, a block away from her own home, on the night of April thirtieth. Had left there about nine o'clock to walk home, and next turned up dead on her own front lawn, at ten-forty. Found by her father as he came home. She had been stabbed and slashed to death, and mutilated afterward. The sheriff had called in the state boys, the B.C.I. from Sacramento, and their crime lab had said that the knife used had a partly serrated edge. Absolutely no clue had turned up; it looked like the random killing of a lunatic. She had not been raped, and evidently hadn't had time to scream.

"¿Y pues qué?" said Mendoza irritably.

The second victim, found next day in a field outside of town, had been one Giorgiono Cabezza, an itinerant agricuItural laborer who'd just been fired from his job on a local ranch. Here they turned up something more definite. Cabezza had been seen in several bars the night before; he'd been talking about leaving town, finding another job farther south. Toward the end of the evening, around midnight, he'd been seen with another man, a transient just passing through--nobody in town knew him--possibly a hobo. Nobody in Georgetown had ever seen him before, and nobody had heard his name. But the surgeon said Cabezza had been killed about 2 AM., and the transient was the man last seen in his company. They had a good description of him: a man about forty, very thin, hollow-cheeked, middle height, and he had a very noticeable scar from an old burn across the center of his face. No evidence actually pointed to him as the murderer, but he had not been seen anywhere around since, and Georgetown had had no more knifings.

"What the hell does that tell us?" demanded Mendoza. "For God's sake!" He'd been hoping that if the Slasher had killed before, especially in a small town, something more definite might have been got on him. This was just nothing but continnation of what they knew. And he should have known it wouldn't be anything more; if any other force had got anything definite on the man there'd have been flyers sent out.

And the papers yelling their heads off about inefficient police. Mostly. Spare a moment to be grateful to the Times, which had run a thoughtful editorial pointing out all the difficulties of the hunt for the random killer. He put the teletype down and dialed the Hollenbeck station. "Well, I was just about to call you, Lieutenant," said the sergeant he'd talked to before.

"Anything?"

"It seems your Ballistics man gave you a false alarm. Our boys just got back from checking. I looked up the record on that break-in--TV store on Soto Street--and it didn't close until eight-thirty so the break-in was after that. This Behrens, the pawnbroker, naturally didn't know from nothing about those three juveniles, never laid eyes on them, never bought anything off them--but he hadn't expected any check, of course, and there were four transistor radios and a portable TV in his back room, and the owner of the TV store could identify them by the serial numbers. From his place, all right. Well, you said your chiropractor was getting himself shot between eight and midnight. Kind of tight times, when you think--and not very likely the kids would pull two in one night, so close together. They probably broke in that store between nine and nine-thirty, or a bit later. The pawnbroker's not talking, but they say they were in his place about ten-thirty. Well, they'd probably--"

"¡Basta ya!" said Mendoza. "I know. Go out on a little spree with the cash from the pawnbroker, with or without girls. Not go looking for another likely place to break in. So the fancy story about finding the gun is probably--definitely--true. Thanks very much."

"Sometimes you get a tough one," said the sergeant sympathetically. . .

Mendoza stared intently at the desk lighter. So it was back to the private thing. Was it? Not those juveniles, but maybe an older pro? Entirely too coincidental that those juveniles should end up with the gun. No, it had been the private kill, on Nestor.

Well, what about Elger for it? A gun used, and then that canny, cautious plan to get rid of the gun . . . Not in character?

Andrea Nestor, now . . .

Some other jealous husband?

Look thoroughly at everybody in Nestor's address book. That Clay had sounded quite level, but there might be . . . Palliser came in. He said, "I don't know what anybody else may have turned up, but I've drawn blank on your button."

"More good news," said Mendoza. "Sit down and tell me who you've eliminated."

SEVENTEEN

The man who wanted to kill was seething with hate and anger, where he lay hidden in the place he had found for himself. He had thought of killing, more killing, to pay them all back, but his slow mind had told him that they would come hunting him, they would hunt him out--a place like that room. He needed a secret, safe place to be when they came hunting. So he had come here.

But for the rest of it, it had all gone wrong. He had only caught one of them to use the knife on, make the blood come. A man more than half drunk, who came lurching up the street toward him in the dark, and was easily pulled into that alley.

And people looked at him queerly, even more than usual, almost as if they knew what was in his mind. That woman at the place he'd bought food, last night . . .

He'd gone into a bar and heard some men talking. They were talking about him--him, the big important one, the Slasher, and what they said did not fill him with panic but with rage. How they knew what he looked like now, there'd been an artist's drawing in the paper, they said, and how they were telling everyone not to go walking alone at night, to be careful.

There hadn't been people out, near as many as usual --he'd noticed that. He'd drifted, a dark shadow, in the shelter of buildings around many streets, and when they came past him it was in groups, two or three together and walking fast. On account of him. Dim pride rose in his mind; but it was no good, it spoiled everything, if it stopped him killing any more of them. He wanted in sudden furious rage to kill and kill--pay them back. They mustn't hunt him down, to stop him.

He had almost reached out for the nearest of those two women who had come along, hurrying, not talking--he could take her, let the other one scream and run, he could be gone before . . . But he was some way off from his safe, secret place, and he didn't.

Instead, he had taken out his knife and looked at it: not really looked, there in the dark, but felt it. He liked to use it to make the blood come, and it came quiet and easy. But you had to be near, to kill with the knife ....

He'd had a gun of his own, once. Back the first place he'd worked after the orphanage, old man Haskell's farm outside of Younker, back in Georgia. You went out shooting birds, come fall, everybody did, and he got to be a pretty good shot on an old gun Haskell let him use, and he saved up and bought himself a new gun. It was a .zz rifle, and he'd been pretty good with it. That was a long time back. He didn't remember how long, he'd been a lot of places since, and he didn't remember what had happened to that rifle.

You could kill from a ways oft with a gun. With guns. It wouldn't be as good, there wouldn't be as much blood, but you could kill more of them and still keep safe .... He'd laughed and laughed excitedly, thinking about it, how it would be, do it like that. Slip out at night, and he could be maybe half a block away, and get them maybe two, three at a time, and then while they were running around like a flock of scared chickens, hunting him, all the time he'd be back in his secret place--waiting for the dark and to go out again. It would be like that.

And he knew where he could get the guns. There was a place not far away, guns in the window.

Vague memory stirred in his mind, about guns .... He'd been a lot of places, but mostly country places, because he couldn't do many city jobs. Country places, where people hunted things. Rabbits and birds. Going out rabbit hunting, a man would say, passing along the fence by where you were. That's a nice stand of corn--and you with a day's work ahead .... Going out people hunting, he thought to himself, and shook with laughter again. So he'd started up through his secret place, to go there and get the guns. This was a big, dark, strange place, with him the only one in it. He came out from where he'd made a kind of bed from an old  broken-down sofa left there, and he was in a vast empty underground room cement-floored and walled. There were shapes against the walls, a big square furnace, pipes disconnected and rusty, a row of ancient refuse barrels, and empty shelves all along one wall. At the far end of the big room were stairs.

He'd drifted up them silently, though he knew there was none to hear anywhere around. At the top he was on a little square landing and there was a door, but it was half off its hinges, hung drunkenly open so he could see beyond. He stepped past the door, onto bare dusty flooring, to an irregularly shaped wide corridor. There was another door to the right there: it had something painted on it but a couple of letters were partly worn away and he didn't know what it meant--it said L D ES. Down at the middle of the corridor it widened out and there was something like a bar standing there.

He didn't go that way. He turned to the left and went through an open arch into another vast dark place: but he knew the way. He felt along carefully by the wall, until his feet told him he was nearing the door. The door was very heavy and had an iron bar across it inside; he pushed against that hard, and reluctantly the door creaked open and he came out into the night.

There was no moon, but he knew where he was. He was standing at the side, almost at the very end, of a big brick building, and ahead of him was a steep cement ramp leading to the street. He went up it.

It was late; he'd lain a long while thinking about all this, before deciding. There wasn't anybody around at all, streets dark and empty, and he walked quickly. After he'd got the stuff, he thought, he'd like to do one tonight, but it was too late--nobody around, nobody at all ....

And he'd had a little job, to get it all back to the safe place. Because he was going to kill, and kill, and kill . . .

They'd never find him, and he'd need lots to kill so many. . . . But he had it all there at last, and he was satisfied. Only, too late to go out and hunt any of them tonight. Have to wait for the dark again ....

All day he had lain here, waiting for the dark. Now he was hungry, and what he'd got at that store last night was gone. He sat up, thinking about that slowly. For the dozenth time he picked up the newspaper and carried it to a place under the ventilation grill in the ceiling where light came in. He'd spelled out the words under the picture. Artist's sketch of the Slasher from his description. Have you seen this man?

It didn't look an awful lot like him, he thought. Except there was the mark--the terrible red mark--right across the face .... They'd laughed at him, they'd called him -- And there had been a pretty girl named Ellen, who had screamed and run. In sudden red fury, he crumpled up the paper and flung it away into a corner.

It wasn't dark yet. It wouldn't be dark for a while. But he was hungry. But they mustn't hunt him down. He was going to-

After hesitation, he started up through the dark, for his door to the outside. He had his hat pulled low over his eyes, and he thought he could pretend to have a cold, keep his handkerchief up.

There was a hamburger joint a block up where you could take it away with you, didn't have to eat there. He walked up to it fast. There were some other people there, eating or waiting for their hamburgers. He asked for two; when they were shoved across the counter at him he put down a silver dollar.

"Buck an' ten cents, mister."

He found the extra dime. He walked back quickly, carrying the food. Down in his safe place he ate slowly, enjoying the greasy hot flavor of beef and onions and pickle .... Now he was lying here hungry for something else. For the dark. For the dark to come down, so he would know it was time. The right time to go out and start his night's hunting.

He held a gun on his lap, and now and then he touched it almost lovingly. The knife was good, but the gun would be good too. Better, now. Better for him. I'm a people hunter, he thought, and laughed. Most important guy in the whole Goddamned town. In all the papers. Everybody talking about him. The Slasher. Be the hell of a lot more important before he was done ....

Laughing at him. Not wanting to look at him. Stupid, they said. The girls, the pretty girls looking at him and--He was on his feet, pacing excitedly, cradling the gun. A pretty girl named Ellen, screaming when he tried to kiss her . . .

Suddenly he yelled in a high savage voice, "What d'you think of me now, you bastards? All you Goddamned bastards--show you--show all of you--"

Nobody heard him at all, and after a while he stopped. Jesus God, wouldn't it ever get dark tonight?

* * *

Dwyer and Scarne came in while Palliser was still talking. Nothing had shown up, of course. Palliser had been a little excited to find a button missing from Cliff Elger's topcoat. "But it was a bigger button, and a different color, and who'd be wearing a topcoat in July?" And as for asking whether anybody had given away any clothes for salvage lately, you couldn't expect anything on that. If X had belatedly realized he'd left that button behind, and couldn't replace it on the jacket or cardigan, and gave it away to be rid of it, he wouldn't say so. The canny way he'd got rid of the gun . . .

Mendoza agreed inattentively. He had a county guide open in front of him and was studying the big detailed map of the downtown area.

"I only dropped in to report no progress too," said Dwyer. "I'm on my way down to Santa Monica to have a look at the wardrobe of a fellow named Ross. Don't know how well he knew Nestor--he's just there in the address book. And you'll likely be getting a formal complaint from a Wall Street type by the name of Marlowe. He wasn't home when I got there--seems he has a butler who also acts as his valet, all veddy--veddy, but it was his day off; the maid was scared of me and my warrant, and let me in. The master arrived just as I was looking over his second-best evening jacket, and he didn't like me at all. He said so. Police, he said, and it was a dirty word coming from him, pawing over his clothes--very highhanded, and the idea of trying to connect him to a sordid crime-- Quite a little pile there, I'd say."

"Money and family," said Mendoza, sounding faintly amused. "But you're not going anywhere else. All that can be put off--our Slasher is the hell of a lot more important. That one we've got to get, and in a hurry."

"You have any bright ideas how to do it, beyond what we're doing? Somebody'll recognize him and say so--he's got to eat, he'll be showing somewhere--”

"Eventually!" said Mendoza. "It's not good enough. Yes, I've got a bright idea. Jimmy! Call down to Traffic and ask Fletcher to come up here. Now look." He pointed at the map. "He's stuck to the downtown area up to now, and never above Third. This is his part of town. Incidentally, remembering what we got from up north, the part of any town where that sort does land--the drifters, the almost bums. On and around Skid Row. All right. We had one quite promising lead, you remember, from that leg work on men with scarred faces. A man like that had rented a room over on Boardman, said his name was John Tenney. Had, we subsequently found, paid the landlady partly in silver dollars. Only he skipped before we laid hands on him. He could have skipped because he heard our man questioning the landlady--we don't know."

"Are you heading any particular direction?” asked Dwyer.

"Paciencia. After that we got the attempt on the Rollen girl and the murder of this late unknown. Both along San Pedro, four blocks apart. I'll tell you where I'm heading. I think he's just smart enough to have realized that, with his description in circulation, he's got to have cover, some safe hole to lie up in. I think he's found one, and it'll be somewhere not too far from where he attacked those two. I can't offer a guess where it might be, an empty building--if there are any--or what. But he's got to be somewhere around there, and he won't be coming out of his hole until after dark. We're going to get a lot of men, the more the merrier, and conduct a building-to-building search in a twelve-block square between Main and San Pedro, between Temple and Third."

"For God's sake!" said Scarne. "Do you realize how much territory that covers?"

"Some of it," said Mendoza, "is taken up by the Civic Center. We're sitting on one perimeter of it right here. I know. A lot of residential streets, a lot of business--and part of Skid Row. Nevertheless, we're going to do that. We're going to pry into every nook and cranny--"

"Now?" said Dwyer.

"There's four and a half hours of daylight left. Set it up, get it started. After dark, they can search in pairs. And--" Mendoza stopped, and said, "Yes. The dogs. I want the dogs. Damn it, where's Fletcher?"

The L.A.P.D. had been slow to start using dogs. Maybe some prejudice of the chief's; the chief liked dogs and maybe was reluctant to see them used that way. But with increasing evidence of their great usefulness, the force had finally acquired a few. Oflicially they were under the Traffic office; Mendoza wasn't quite sure how many there were yet, fully trained and ready for action. But on this kind of action, as on many others, a trained dog would be worth two men--seeing and hearing and smelling where a man wouldn't.

"My good Christ," said Dwyer mildly. "Look at it." He flung the map down. "Dozens of little side streets and courts--rooming houses, apartments--along the main drags, warehouses, all those joints on the Row with flop-houses and a few cat houses, probably, upstairs--my God, with a hundred men it'd take three days to be sure you'd covered--"

"So we take three days, or three weeks!" said Mendoza.

"Did you like the afternoon headlines, Bert? We're going to work this the only way we can. Damn." He massaged his temples, elbows on the desk. "I've fumbled around at this . . . I thought Art's business tied up to the Nestor thing, I've been concentrating on that--but--I don't know . . ."

"Who's called the hospital last?" asked Palliser.

"Jimmy. Just before I came in," said Mendoza. "They say he's getting a little restless, which they seem to think is a good sign. But of course--"

"Yeah," said Dwyer. They all knew about that. A clean dying one thing: the permanent brain damage another. "You don't think now it was tied up to either case?" He looked at Mendoza thoughtfully.

"¿Qué sé yo?” said Mendoza. "I don't know. There's nothing really that says yes or no. I'll say this much, I doubt very much whether that is linked with our Slasher. In spite of his being the one who derailed the Daylight. It doesn't fit--it isn't the right shape. But it could have been the outside thing. And if it was"-he sat up straighter, automatically brushing ash off the desk, aligning the desk box and blotter--"if it was, by God, or if it wasn't, we'll get the X on that and get him but good. But--"

"Amen to that," said Palliser.

"But in the meantime we've got the Slasher on our hands. I say, let's go all out to get that one, and then we'll have the slate clear--and the damn press off our necks--to hunt down the other one. Plural or singular? Hell, I don't know," said Mendoza. "I don't even know whether the motive on Nestor came out of his abortion trade or something else--his girl friends, his marriage. ¡Basra! Forget about that for a minute--" He looked up as the door opened.

"What's the urgent summons to my lowly office?" asked Fletcher of Traffic. He was a big, heavy, amiable man, about due for retirement.

"How soon can you get me about fifty men?" asked Mendoza. "More if you can. And all the dogs available? For a house-to-house search of about one square mile of downtown?"239

Fletcher just looked at him. "Are you serious? Right now? What the hell on? Not--"

"That's just what," said Mendoza. "We've got to get this boy, Jack, and the sooner the better. I've got a hunch he's holed up somewhere inside that area, and I want a thorough hunt. Leave the rest of the citizenry to its own devices awhile, and haul in some men off tour. I can't make rules for your department, but everybody in this office is working round the clock as from now. Maybe you saw the afternoon headlines too."

Fletcher laughed shortly. "I did. The citizenry! It's been told often enough, by a lot of people who should know, it's got one damn good police force, but let a thing like this come along, you'd think we're a bunch of morons, way they talk."

"Some people," said Mendoza, "just naturally think we've got to be morons, to be cops in the iirst place. Sometimes I almost agree with them." And he thought, If Art died . . .

Fletcher rubbed his jaw. "Use your phone," he said, and it wasn't a request. He used it, ruthlessly, for ten minutes. When he put it down for the last time he said, "God help the innocent citizenry tonight. And bless the Hollywood boys--they can pull men off a lot of nice genteel places where nothing ever happens, without much danger .... Crews of twenty cars to report in within fifteen minutes, that's thirty-six men. Another twenty called in from stationary traffic duty, and God help the drivers at downtown intersections. Lessee, it's four-forty. Call it five o'clock for briefing. Where?"

"Your sergeants' office. I want every man issued with extra ammo," said Mendoza. "I know our Slasher isn't on the Most Wanted list--not on any list, his prints unknown--but he's the hell of a dangerous boy. We don't want any more casualties, do we?"

"I'll see to it," said Fletcher briefly. "O.K., twenty minutes." He went out.

"We're going to be fairly busy for quite a while," said Mendoza. "Maybe you'd all better snatch a sandwich or something while you can." Dwyer and Scarne drifted out after Fletcher. The outside phone rang and Mendoza picked it up .... "Yes, querida," he said. Palliser watched him for a moment, saw he wasn't getting any bad news, and went out unobtrusively.

"They said he's been restless. They seem to think--it might be a sign that he'll be conscious soon. I--oh, damn," said Alison. "I know they're doing all they can, and--and they know so much more now, but they're so horribly impersonal about it. That afternoon nurse--they've got specials on, you know--talking about the patient this and the patient that when it's Art."

"I know," said Mendoza. "Just how they are, amante. All in the day's work to them."

Alison said forlornly, "She's a Seventh-Day Adventist. She gave us some Improving Literature to read, about vegetarian diets. Well, she seems kind enough, but--”

"Yes, darling. What about Angel? I said she ought to see her own doctor."

"Yes, he gave her some tranquilizers but she won't take them. Luis. Did you mean what you said--about r--resigning? I don't know what you'd do. I don't know--"

"No se preocupe," said Mendoza. He thought, Have to borrow a gun somewhere. He couldn't go home for his own .38 in the handkerchief drawer, the shoulder holster, or Alison would know . . .

"--Luis?"

"No," he said. "I won't be home. We've got a little project on down here. It's expect me when you see me, I'm afraid."

"Yes," said Alison. A little silence, and then she said, "It's just, it feels as if everything's in slow motion, somehow. That it's days since I've seen you, and--everything taking so long to happen--Luis--"

"Yes,” he said. "It does feel rather like that."

"Mairi says to tell you to get a proper dinner somewhere." Alison uttered a little laugh.

"I will if I have time."

"And El Señor broke that jardiniere you don't like. The green one the Mawsons gave us for a wedding present. He knocked it over quite deliberately----"

"¡Señor Comedido!" said Mendoza. "How tactful of him .... I don't know when I'll see you, amante. Take care .... " He put the phone down and said to Sergeant Lake, "Get me a gun somewhere, will you? And a cup of coffee if you can."

"See what I can do," said Lake, and got up. In the doorway he collided with Lieutenant Goldberg of Burglary, just coming in.

EIGHTEEN

"Well, and what can we do for you, Saul?" asked Mendoza. Goldberg asked first about Hackett and shook his head at the latest report. "It's more the other way around, I'm afraid. I just thought it'd be neighborly to mention it, in case anything does happen."

"Make it short, we've got quite a night's project mapped 0ut."

"Well," said Goldberg, "there was a break-in last night at a gunsmith's shop over on Spring. Quite a lot of stuff gone, and--"

"Your problem," said Mendoza.

"It could turn into yours. I don't like it," said Goldberg. "All they took was guns--and the hell of a lot of ammo for them. There was other valuable stuff there--he had a color TV in the back room he was keeping for his wife's birthday, and he does a side line in transistor radios, there were about twenty of those. And he'd left a few bucks in the register. Well, the first thing a burglar looks for is cash, usually. But all somebody, or several somebodies, was interested in, was guns. We've been all round the suspected fences and pawnbrokers today, and not a smell has turned up. Which makes it look as if whoever the somebodies were, they just wanted guns--as guns."

"Oh,” said Mendoza. "I begin not to like it too. My God, on top of--"

"Listen to the list," said Goldberg, unfolding a sheet of paper. "They or whoever took an old Springfield .22 rifle, a Ruger Standard Single-Six .22, an S. and W. .357 Magnum, a .38 CoIt Trooper, an Iver-Johnson Supershot .22, a Whitney Lightning .22 automatic, and three of the gunsmith's own target revolvers--he's a pro shot--a CoIt Python .357 Magnum, a CoIt Cfficers' Match Model .38 revolver, and an S. and W. Target .45. And about twenty rounds of ammo for all nine guns."

"¡Santa Maria!" said Mendoza. "Is he starting a little private war?"

"That may be too close for comfort," said Goldberg soberly. "Tell you what just crossed my mind--a gang of juveniles. Planning a rumble with something new added."

"¡Por Dios! And you could be right," said Mendoza. "God, on top of all the rest of this-- We can only hope, if that's so, the rumble isn't planned for tonight. Thanks for the warning, anyway."

"I could be just woolgathering," said Goldberg, sneezing and groping for the inevitable Kleenex. "Just thought you ought to know. All but one of them handguns, you know, and all that ammo--"

"Yes indeed."

Sergeant Lake came back and handed Mendoza a .38 Police Special, a shoulder holster, and a box of ammunition.

"Hey, what's up?” said Goldberg. "You never pack a gun unless it's something damn serious."

"I think," said Mendoza, taking off his jacket, "we're on damn serious business tonight, Saul."

* * *

Nobody else thought so for quite a while. Dwyer said to Scarne, "Work our tails off on an all-night job, just because he gets a wild hunch! There's nothing to say the Slasher's holed up in that area. Why just that area?"

"First cast," said Scarne gloomily, "I guess."

"My God, sure, we sweat it out all night and don't find him because he's a block outside the line our Luis drew on the map!"

But Mendoza was the one who gave the orders. They set it up, with the fifty-six men from Traffic and those available in the homicide office--Dwyer, Scarne, Palliser, Piggott, Landers--and Higgins and Galeano would be in later.

There were some residential streets in the area they were covering, but more of it was business. The residential streets were shabby and poor, and a lot of those old houses had derelict shacks built at the rear of the lots; a few still had henhouses standing from years back before the town was a city. But along the main drags--San Pedro, Main, Los Angeles, Third and Second, First and Temple--were many kinds of small business and some large: a solid block of warehouses, some, they discovered, empty. Store owners were called, keys to the empty buildings were sent for, the men were briefed. They assigned one crew of men, in pairs, to two-square-block sections, and started them out. It was, of course, very unlikely that their boy was holed up in a private residence; but if there was an empty house somewhere even that was possible.

They got the men all down there by five-thirty, with seven cars roaming at random, and the operation started. Dwyer, paired off with Landers, was still grumbling. They were let out of a squad car with the other two men, both uniformed, who were on this particular block with them; Dwyer looked at the building on the corner, a four-story warehouse, blank-faced. "Hell of a waste of time," he said. "Just because Mendoza the brain gets a hunch--"

"Hey, I've heard of him," said one of the uniformed men interestedly. "Is this one of his deals?"

"One of his wild deals. We're supposed to look for an open window or something this boy could have got in by--but I've got the keys. You go round to the side and look, and then come back."

In many streets other men were dropped, began their search. They made polite requests of householders and shopkeepers; in almost all cases they met no resistance. Over on Stevens Street, Officers Carlson and Ramirez ran into a belligerent householder who tried to start a fight, so they hailed a patrol car, put him in it to cool, went through the house, and found several hundred gallons of homemade beer in the garage. But there weren't many cases like that.

The dogs and their handlers arrived. By that time the word had got out that a mass raid of cops was in the neighborhood, and people came out to stare, form little crowds. The dogs fascinated them, of course.

And then it was getting on for eight-thirty, and the dark had come down full, not insidiously and reasonably as it does elsewhere; the sky changed from pink-streaked silver blue to full dark within fifteen minutes, and after that the dark was studded with the men's flashlights, little eyes of light moving along the sidewalks, and, here and there where a house or building was empty, moving past windows inside.

Mendoza was over on Temple Street with Palliser then. "For God's sake," he said to the driver of a squad car at the curb, "can't we get these people off the streets?" Little knots of people stood about, at front doors, under street lights. "They've been warned--they ought to know--"

"You think he might try another one, with all this force out and about?"

"We don't know," said Mendoza. "With one like that, who can say?"

"Well, we can tell 'em to go home," said the driver, "but it's supposed to be a free country." He gunned the car up to the nearest little group, got out, and began to talk to them.

* * *

That kind of job was always a tiresome one; at the same time, tonight, the men were all a little keyed up at the thought that they might, just might, find themselves unexpectedly facing the Slasher ....

It was ten twenty-three when Patrolmen McLelland and Leslie, both of the Wilcox Street station, came out of an ancient brick office building on Los Angeles Street and paused to light cigarettes. The office building was on a corner, and a little wind had got up; they went round the side of the building to get their lights, and Leslie said, "Half these old places ought to be knocked down. Did you see the state of those lavatories?"

McLellar1d opened his mouth to answer, and there was a sharp crack; Leslie staggered, dropping his cigarette and shoving McLelland against the brick wall. "Jesus!” he said. "That was a--" A second shot barked and the slug hit the building an inch from McLelland's right ear.

Both men dropped flat in the next second. "You hit?"

"Just nicked me, I think." Leslie explored, said, "Went through the shoulder padding. VK/That the hell--Where's he shooting from? Can you--"

"Over there--kitty--corner across the intersection, I think. Try to cover me." McLelland, gun out, crawled up toward the corner and around it. The side street was all dark, across there, and the street lamp at the corner was out. This block of Los Angeles Street was deserted at night, and not well lighted.

About four buildings up, just passing under one of the feeble street lights, were two men walking in his direction. McLelland debated about calling to warn them to stop. Then a gun spoke again--a heavy gun, by the sound--and one of the two men spun round and fell flat. The  other one stopped in his tracks and then stooped over the first man, so the second bullet flew over his head and made a sharp spat on the building front.

McLelland turned and sent a snap shot toward where he thought the gunman was. This thing had started so suddenly that he'd hardly had time to feel surprise. He just found himself thinking blankly, What the hell? Now, lying there, he heard footsteps across the intersection--soft, but audible; steps walking, then running--away. Leslie heard that too. He came up panting. "For God's sake--" he said. "You hit? What--"

The other man came up to them. "You're cops?" he said, seeing McLelland in uniform. "Thank God. Mac's dead. Did you see that? He's dead. We were just walkin' along, talking about politics, and he'd just been saying about all this lousy foreign aid, and then-- He's dead. And his eye's all--his eye--" He leaned over, retching, and Leslie took his arm. McLelland, gun still in hand, ran down to where the man lay; he'd been neatly drilled through the left eye, probably a fluke shot.

He looked up the street and saw a black and white squad car coming. It screeched to a halt beside him.

"Were those shots?" asked the driver.

"Sounded like a .38," said McLelland. "This poor devil's a D.O.A. A sniper-- I think he was just shooting at anything that showed, way it--"

From about a block away a gun began to talk--a fusillade of shots, in rapid succession. "For God's sake," said the squad-car driver, "has war been declared?" He picked up the hand radio. "Car 104 at L.A. and Woods. Sniper just shot a man here. Shot at two of our boys."

"He went up Woods," said McLelland.

"He went up Woods toward Main."

The radio crackled excitedly at him. They heard more shots, a little farther off. "Awk!" said the radio as if in comment. "Join car 194 at junction of Main and Woods. Repeat--"

"What about us?" asked McLelland. But the radio didn't say anything about that, so they stayed there and got the names of the two men, quick and dead, and after the ambulance came they went on with the search. That had been their orders.

* * *

Mendoza and Palliser were in an empty factory on Third Street when they heard about the sniper. A uniformed man came down the corridor looking, said, "Lieutenant? They sent me over to find you. There's a sniper loose. Last they heard of him, he was on Woods Street somewhere--killed a civilian and shot at two of our men. Then he took some shots at a squad car along Main--"

"¡Porvida!" said Mendoza, and then he said suddenly, "That's our boy. Come on. You've got a car? Let's get going."

"But how could-- A sniper?" said Palliser incredulously. "You mean like that Corning thing last year? Just some nut loose with a gun? I don't--"

Mendoza was hustling him along. "¡Vamos, vamos! It's our boy--I see how his mind works, pues si. I said, just enough sense. He wants to kill, he likes to kill with the knife, but we've told people what he looks like now--and you can kill people from a distance with a gun. With guns. My God, yes--Goldberg's boy too, and that young arsenal--"

They got over to the corner of Woods and Main at about eleven o'clock. Men were looking at the squad car, whose right front door was riddled with bullet holes. A uniformed man was propped against it ‘with his jacket off and a makeshift bloody bandage round one arm. "For God's sake, isn't anyone following him up? Any idea which way he went?" demanded Mendoza.

A shattering explosion of shots in the distance answered him. He commandeered the nearest squad car, piled three men in the back and Palliser beside him, and gunned it in the direction of the shots. They roared up Main, with its lights and crowds thinning here, to Winton Street; down there to the right were three squad cars, slewed around in the street, and a little crowd, and four uniformed men. Mendoza swung the car down there.

"For the love of God, haven't you people any sense?" one of the men was demanding impatiently. "Scatter--get away--" A second man in uniform was leaning against the side of a car, clasping his shoulder; blood seeped between his lingers.

The gun barked, and the other man's plea was heeded. Several women screamed, the crowd scattering back into the shadows of hedges and houses. This was a residential street. The sniper was apparently behind a hedge across the street.

There was a woman lying in the street beside the cars. "She's only winged," said one of the patrolmen. "I put a tourniquet on, and the ambulance is on its way. Now let's have a look at you, Bill---"

They were all crouched clown, now, behind a squad ear, and they all had their guns out.

"What the hell is all this, anyway?" asked the wounded man, sounding indignant. "All of a sudden--"

"It's our boy," said Mendoza calmly, peering round the bumper long enough to fire a shot at that hedge. "I know. We've flushed him."

"The-- That's crazy," said the other patrolman. "Excuse me, sir, but he's always used a knife, I don't see--"

"I think he's beyond caring how he kills," said Mendoza, firing another shot. Two more bullets hit the other side of the squad car, and then there was silence. The woman lying in the street moaned. "Don't tell me we've got him? Cover me, please." He moved around the car, bent low, made a dash for the shelter of the hedge across the street. His flashlight flicked on briefly; he straightened.

"Gone--fan out after him--all directions! John, come with me--call up some more cars, will you?"

Palliser ran to keep up with him as he started down toward San Pedro. "I don't see how you make this out--all of a sudden--"

"He wouldn't have expected all this," said Mendoza.

"He didn't know we were out hunting too. His first night's target practice with the arsenal--yes--but maybe getting his fire returned has shaken him a little. Damn, I'm out of condition. Wait a minute. Listen."

There were distant sirens; Palliser couldn't hear anything else. Then from the corner of San Pedro down there a squad car came bucketing around the corner fast, and its headlights caught a man running diagonally across the street. Just one flash, and he was gone; he'd been nearly at the opposite curb; but they both saw the guns, one dangling from each hand. The squad car braked loudly, and Mendoza fired across its hood. "Searchlight, for God's sake!" he snapped.

The light came on, swung to point where they'd seen him. Two men scrambled out of the car. A bullet came out of the dark and hit the top of the light, and they heard a man running.

"One of you follow me--the other call in a Code Nine," said Mendoza, and plunged across the street. Another shot plucked at Palliser's sleeve as he ran beside him.

"He's heading back--to his hole," panted Mendoza. "Bet you--" But these damn dark streets, and they were only guessing he was ahead of them ....

Then they saw him, for just another half second. There was a street light at the corner, and they saw him--a darting thin figure in clothes that flapped loose about him--turn left there, running awkwardly in great strides. They came round the corner after him, and skidded to a haIt.

"Where the hell did he go?" gasped the uniformed man. This silent empty street was fairly well lighted; along here all the buildings were dark, but they could see the full block ahead, and no living thing moved on it.

"Damn!" said Mendoza. "into one of these buildings. The nearest one, for choice. I want men--a lot of men--we're going through every building on this block--"

A squad car screeched to a stop beside them, with one man in it. "O.K.," said Mendoza tautly. "You call up reinforcements--tell them where we are. You two go round to the side of this place--and be damn careful, no flashlights! John, let's see what we've got here." He moved to the front of the corner building. "I think this has got to be it, we weren't thirty feet behind him--he didn't go far past the corner. What in God's name is this place?"

It was an old building; and they saw now, in the yellow light from the old-fashioned street lamps, that this whole block of buildings was waiting for demolition. In the last few years a good many of these shabby old streets had come in for renovation; the city was building itself new city and county buildings, and big companies were buying up this valuable downtown land to knock down the derelict old buildings, put up shiny new skyscrapers.

A start had been made on demolishing the buildings near this corner. A great pile of knocked-apart lumber and twisted metal lay in a heap alongside the corner building, which had two wings enclosing a square open entrance. For a second that looked vaguely familiar to Palliser, but he couldn't place it. A department store of some kind? But no sign of display windows. The whole place looked ready to fall down, and up there past the wings it was dark as the mouth of hell. But Mendoza was walking up toward where the door would be, quite cool, gun in hand.

"He'll be lying quiet," he muttered, "hoping we won't realize this is where he's got to be."

There had been a door, probably; it was missing now, they found by feeling along a rough stucco wall. They went in shoulder to shoulder--into whatever it was, and Palliser thought, an extra-wide doorway.

Bare wooden floor. Mendoza wasn't trying to be quiet. He took a few steps straight ahead and, holding his flashlight at arm's length away from his body, switched it on briefly.

"Christ!" said Palliser involuntarily.

It sprang at them out of the darkness, terrifying, incredible--a dark-skinned giant in a great feather head-dress and long glittering cloak, double life size.

He heard Mendoza take a breath, and then laugh. "Wall mural," he said. "Polynesian god of some sort?" His voice echoed oddly. "Where are we, anyway, John?"

Palliser held his own flashlight out and pointed it to their right. A long wide corridor, thick with dust. There was a door, closed, at the far end: they could just make out, painted on it, the mute legend GENT ME .

Nothing stirred: no gun spoke out of the darkness. Mendoza turned his flashlight ahead, lower. There was a wooden counter there, like a bar; fittings of some kind had been removed from it. The light flashed around nervously, here and there, and a pair of giant hula dancers seemed to undulate at them from another wall.

"I think--" said Mendoza, and at that moment the light showed them a face. A face not fifteen feet away--a face of nightmare. The man was pressed against the wall there, rigid, looking toward them. Not a big man: a thin man in ragged clothes too big for him, nondescript clothes. His face was a mask of blind hate and rage and terror: and splashed across it was the mark--the red scar mark of death, that in the end had triggered death.

For an instant they all stood there motionless; then the Slasher made one quick, convulsive movement and vanished out of the circle of light. Mendoza plunged after him, the flashlight sweeping a wide arc.

Black as the Earl of Hell's weskit, thought Palliser ridiculously, hurrying after him. His grandmother used to say that. Black as . . .

But the flashlight showed a rectangular blackness--and another--and then they were through the nearest one, and he understood where they were.

This was a derelict movie theater. That had been the candy and popcorn stand out there. All the fittings taken out--carpets and curtains--probably the plumbing--and, here, the seats.

It was a vast, black, empty great place, with the floor sloping sharply away under his feet. The two flashlights found the man again, running diagonally across the uneven floor, stumbling, turning up toward the archway that had once led to the last left aisle. Mendoza fired at him and evidently missed.

Then the quarry was out of the light, and the roar of Mendoza's gun was echoed by anther--a bullet slammed past Palliser's shoulder, close. He fired blindly.

They were running, up the slanting floor now, and Mendoza fired again. Dimly Palliser was aware of sirens somewhere in the distance, and loud excited voices nearer ....

He rammed into a wall, and swore. He had missed the archway--he groped for it and came out into unexpected light.

They had parked two squad cars directly in front, and headed their searchlights up here. It wasn't very bright, but you could see in here now. Palliser saw.

The man who liked to kill was standing against the wall there twenty feet away, his terrible face contorted. He still had both his guns. Mendoza was facing him, ten feet down from Palliser.

Men were coming, pouring into the lobby excitedly.

The man fired, and missed, and raised the other gun. Then a shot spat at him from another direction, and he fell back against the wall and slid down it slowly, and sprawled full length.

"Thanks very much, Bert," said Mendoza. "That was my last slug. I never claimed to be a marksman."

Dwyer walked up to the body and looked down at it, gun still in hand. "You can say I told you so if you want," he said. "You and your hunches!"

NINETEEN

There was quite a bit of clearing up to do; Mendoza didn't get home until two-thirty again. There were all the reporters swarming around. And they found the Slasher's secret place and the rest of his arsenal; they found out who he had probably been, from an old union card in his wallet. The Railroad Brotherhood. So for a start they looked for that name, John Tenney, on the list of former S.P. employees, and there it was--he'd been hired, briefly, as a trackwalker, some years back.

"In a kind of way, you might feel sorry for him, if he hadn't . . ." said Palliser, leaving that unfinished. And Mendoza said, "That damned lush Telfer! Look at all this mess! Seven people killed----I don't suppose anyone's missing the wino or Florence, or the other Skid Row type we found this morning, but there's the boy, and Loretta Lincoln, and Simms--and several more hurt, including a couple of cops. My God, and if Telfer hadn't been drunk that night we'd probably have picked the Slasher up inside twenty-four hours, with a full description."

"It isn't going to trouble Telfer's conscience," said Palliser dryly.

"No, probably not .... "

And when he did get home he couldn't sleep. Had the assauly on Art been tied up to Nestor? How and why? Had to get at that thing again in the morning .... Cliff Elger? He still didn't know where the Elgers had been on Tuesday night when Nestor was shot ....

But, he thought suddenly, coming to complete wakefulness from an instant's half-sleep, it had to come back to that appointment in Nestor's office that night. Didn't it? He had told his wife he had an evening appointment. It might have been a date with a girl, but--vide Anita Sheldon--they wouldn't stay there. Naturally. So if it had been that, then he must have been killed very close to the eight o'clock margin Bainbridge gave them, or he wouldn't still have been in the office. But if it hadn't been a girl friend . . .

That scrapbook. He'd been thinking, Nestor not above a little blackmail. Had it been something like that? Have a good look at that list of patients, when the court order came through .... By what Bert and the others said, the other women in Nestor's address book had been casual pickups, not exactly the kind to inspire the grand passion--to the point of murderous jealousy. But of course you never did know. People . . .

Art. If that wasn't linked to Nestor, was the outside thing, where the hell to start looking? Dead end. Hell. Andrea Nestor?

No. No. A man. They knew that much, because it had been a man who got rid of that gun. Maybe two people?

Andrea Nestor scarcely a woman to do murder for, either ....

He drifted off uneasily at last, but woke for good at six. El Señor was chattering at the birds outside the window. Mendoza shaved and dressed, went out to the living room and called the hospital. Established routine now, he thought. Part of these long, long days .... The nurse's impersonal voice said, "Oh yes, sir--just a moment, Dr. MacFarlane wants to speak to you personally, if you'll wait a moment."

"All right," said Mendoza. He waited, wondering academically how far his pulse rate had shot up.

"Lieutenant? Yes. He's been increasingly restless," said the doctor. "I think the chances are good that he'll regain consciousness sometime today. I'd like either you or someone else who knows him well to-er-stand by for a call, as it were. You understand."

"Yes, Doctor."

"You'll be called as soon as we know .... Well, we're still not making any guesses, of course. Wait and see. You'll have someone standing by?"

"Yes." Much as he would like to be the man, he couldn't; he had things to do today. "Thanks very much, Doctor."

"We'll just keep hoping," said MacFarlane sadly. Even Mrs. MacTaggart wasn't up, this morning. He got out the Ferrari and stopped for breakfast at the Manning's on Vermont, but he couldn't get much of it down; he had three cups of coffee and began to feel slightly more alive.

He got to the office before the night shift was off; told them the latest news. When Dwyer came in he said, "You're taking a little holiday, Bert. Stick around in case the hospital ca1ls." He explained.

"O.K.," said Dwyer, looking grim.

Mendoza looked at the clock irritably; he couldn't decently arrive at the Elgers' apartment before nine o'clock. He sat at his desk thinking about that appointment of Nestor's on Tuesday night.

An appointment with Ruth Elger? And Elger--

So X discovered belatedly that he'd lost a button and, just in case he'd lost it in Nestor's office, gave away the jacket if he couldn't replace the button. How were you going to prove it?

A button. Suddenly, now, Mendoza was wondering whether that might have been what Art had spotted. If there was a tie-up. Whether X hadn't noticed the missing button until Art noticed, and questioned him about it. Whether . . .

Such a very ordinary little button. He got it out and looked at it. And another thought crossed his mind about it too, as a faint possibility of a lead--probably very faint. In these days of mass production. However . . .

All the morning papers had screaming headlines about the capture of the Slasher.

Nine o'clock found him using the knocker on the Elgers' apartment door.

Ruth Elger let him in; she wasn't dressed yet, but looked better this time--no hangover, and make-up.

"Well, for heaven's sake, what do you want?" she asked rather crossly.

"Answers to a few questions, Mrs. Elger, if you don't mind." The room wasn't much neater than when he'd seen it first, and it hadn't been dusted in some time. She told him ungraciously to sit down, perched herself on the arm of a chair.

"Well?"

"Do you remember what you and your husband were doing on Tuesday night a week ago? A week ago yesterday?"

"Heavens, I don't know. I suppose we were here, if we weren't-- Oh no, the Werthers' party was on Wednesday, wasn't it?"

"It's not so very long ago," said Mendoza.

"Why on earth you want to know-- Oh. That--that was the night Frank was shot, wasn't it? For heaven's sake. You can't be thinking we had--"

"Just try to remember, please."

"Oh well! It was--yes, we went out to dinner--to the Tail o' the Cock, I think. Tuesday. Oh, I do remember, yes, as a matter of fact we were arguing all through dinner about that silly charge-account thing, and all the way home for that matter, and it wasn't long after we got home that Cliff got really mad and sort of slammed out--"

"Arguing over a bill you'd run up?" said Mendoza. "And he left the apartment. When?"

"Heavens, I wasn't watching the clock, about half past nine, I suppose .... No, I don't know where he went. What does it matter? I expect to a bar somewhere, he was a little high when he came home."

"At what time?"

She shrugged petulantly. "About midnight, I guess. I was in bed."

"Mrs. Elger, has your husband ever owned a gun?"

"A-- Well, of course not," she said. "What on earth--You simply can't be thinking-- Frank? Good heavens, it was just----just an episode. Not important."

"What's important or not," said Mendoza, "depends on who's looking at it. Thanks very much .... "

He sat in the car thinking about that. Cliff Elger in a temper, and he might be quick to hit out at a man, but probably not the type to knock a woman around; so, rushing out, in his temper. To a bar? Or had he, on the way, started brooding over Ruth and Nestor again? And . . .

Wait a minute. How could he have known Nestor would be in his office at that hour? Had he known Nestor's home address? Well, it was in the phone book. He'd have tried there first, wouldn't he? But he hadn't.

Mendoza was still liking the idea of Cliff Elger for Nestor, because--admit it--he'd like to think the Nestor thing was behind the assault on Art, and Elger was the only man they'd run across so far who could certainly have handled Art without too much trouble.

All right, he thought. Suddenly he saw another, more plausible picture. Elger rushing out to a bar. Downing three or four highballs. Maybe it affected him the way it affected Mendoza; but whether or no, say he was brooding. And worked up a rage at Nestor. Maybe she'd been lying about the gun, or maybe he kept one at his office and she didn't know that, maybe Nestor had had the gun unknown to Madge Corliss. That sounded more plausible; a man Nestor's size might well reach for a gun, if he had one, when a gorilla like Elger came in mad. Yes, say that whatever Nestor's appointment had been, it was over, and Nestor was maybe just about to leave when Elger burst in--

Why Nestor's office? How had he known--

Say he was drunk, but--

Hell.

He drove back to the office. The hospital hadn't called. They had, however, got an ident on that unknown victim of the Slasher, through the Greyhound Bus office and the San Diego police. His name was George Snaid, and he'd been picked up for vagrancy in San Diego and given the usual twenty-four hours to leave town. Nothing more was known about him. Another of the victims who wouldn't be missed.

The court order to open Madge Corliss' safe-deposit box hadn't come through yet. "Damn judges," said Mendoza. He wanted to see that list.

He sent Lake out for coffee. He sat at his desk chain smoking nervously. Dwyer, with nothing special to do, was playing solitaire desultorily, laying out the cards on top of a filing case, wandering over to stare at the phones on the desk every Eve minutes. He wasn't much of a cardplayer, and his inept, awkward shuffling of the deck got on Mendoza's nerves.

"I did think of something," he said presently. "A little thing. You know how that dame in the room next to Florence Dahl said the Slasher kept shouting something like ‘Every ham's gaining on me'? It came to me what it was. Every man's hand against me. Out of the Bible, isn't it?"

"I couldn't say," said Mendoza. "Very likely. Yes, that's probably what it was. I wonder if we could trace him back at all. Where he started, how he got that way. That landlady on Boardman Street said he had a Southern accent."

But he wasn't thinking about the Slasher; that was over and done, and there was other work to do. "Bert?"

"Well?"

"You talked to those old pals of Nestor's who used to play poker with him. Any of them mention anything about that?"

"About what?"

"What kind of poker player he was."

"Oh." Dwyer considered, looking at the deck in his hand. "One fellow--another chiropractor--said he was a wild gambler. Take any long chance, he said. So he lost oftener than he won."

"Yes. That kind of poker player," said Mendoza. "But that wasn't why he lost oftener than he won. That was because he didn't play enough poker. The man who's playing any game regularly, day to day, always has an edge over the occasional player .... Do you have to try to tear the deck in half every time you shuffle? Look."

He took the cards from Dwyer and shuffled them. "Gentle and easy, see?"

"I'm not a pro gambler," said Dwyer.

"No." Having the cards, Mendoza kept them; absently he shuffled, squared the deck neatly, cut it, and turned up the ace of diamonds. "Tuerto," he said. "A lucky card."

He shuffled the deck again, squared it and cut, to show the ace of diamonds again.

"Don't ever ask me to play cards with you," said Dwyer. "It's just a trick." Mendoza shuffled again, using a different method, and began to deal him a poker hand, calling the cards as he tossed them face down. "King of spades. Deuce of clubs. Ace of hearts. Four of hearts--"

"Wrong. Three of clubs."

"Hell, I'm out of practice at crooked deals .... " The cards moved restlessly between his hands. "Did I tell you about meeting Benny Metzer on that cruise liner? I took twenty bucks off him--he could have killed me." Mendoza laughed sharply.

"One of your pro gambler acquaintances? Do tell." Dwyer was watching the telephone again.

"That's right, you came up here from Forgery, didn't you?"

"And a damn dull job that was," said Dwyer absently.

"Sometimes it can be." Mendoza dealt himself a straight poker hand and quite by chance drew a full house. "So it can happen," he muttered.

Think about this thing, damn it. Nestor. If that nice story he'd built up about Cliff Elger was so, then--when Nestor was still in his office--his appointment, whatever it was, must have taken up some time. Not the usual job, because Corliss hadn't known about it. The spot of genteel blackmail? And, naturally, the blackmailee arguing, and the sparring back and forth about the price? Only, really, why bring in Elger, in that case? Blackmail was quite a reasonable motive for murder.

Only what did the blackmail have to be? Threat of revealing an abortion. These days, with the relaxed morals . . . And besides, Nestor couldn't have carried out such a threat without revealing himself and his part in it, which anybody with common sense would . . .

All right. All right. Some featherbrained woman, not seeing that, shooting him in panic? A man had got rid of the .22. So, the woman confessing to some protective male--father, husband, boy friend--who had thereupon set up the bogus burglary and got rid of the gun.

And that would say for pretty sure that the assault on Art had been the outside thing.

Wouldn't it? Well, for ninety-eight per cent sure. Art hadn't known about those illicit patients--couldn't have known who they were, of course. Hard to see how he might have inadvertently stumbled across . . .

Mendoza shuffled and cut, and turned up the knave of clubs. He stared at it for a moment, slapped the deck together, centered it on his desk, and stood up. "Do you know what the knave of clubs means in cartomancy?"

"I don't even know what cartomancy means," said Dwyer.

"Fortunetelling with cards. The knave of clubs," said Mendoza, "stands for a bearer of unexpected news. I'm going out to find him. I probably won't be long."

"Let's just hope it's good news," said Dwyer after him. This was a will-o'-the-wisp, of course. Just an idea. But sometimes you grabbed at any small hope there might be, looking for a lead.

He went straight out Wilshire, and there wasn't much traffic this early. It wasn't ten o'clock yet. Just on ten. The street signs changed to elegant black on white, and he was in Beverly Hills. He turned left on Beverly Drive and went down four blocks to a line of  expensive-looking shop fronts. Miraculously he found a parking slot, and found he had a nickel in change. He yanked the handle on the parking meter; nothing happened; he shook it hard, and it condescended to bury the red Violation sign in its insides. He walked back to the most expensive-looking shop front of all. It presented a genteel pale fawn facade with tinted glass double doors. There was no legend on the doors at all; the only designation it offered to reveal its commercial purposes was a single discreet name in lower-case giIt letters above the door: herrrington.

Mendoza went in. There was pale fawn carpeting, nothing so vulgar as a counter; this room, an anteroom to the high mysteries beyond, was only about fifteen feet square. An exquisite young man in pale fawn dacron drifted up, identified him, and murmured, "I'll fetch Mr. Harrington, sir. Do sit down."

Mendoza didn't sit down. He wandered over to one of the full-length triple mirrors and decided absently that the Italian silk was too dark a gray. He adjusted his tie. "You again," said Harrington abruptly behind him. "Good God, I just made you two new suits and those evening clothes. You're a vain bastard, Mendoza."

Mendoza turned around. "You malign me. No, I don't want anything new. I want some information."

Harrington was a solid, round little man of some heft, with a bald round head and pudgy little hands. He also had a pair of very sharp black eyes. He cocked the bald head at Mendoza. "Oh?"

"Which you probably can't give me," said Mendoza. He handed over the button, the little ordinary button. "Can you tell me anything about that? It occurred to me it's in your line. You're quite a specialist on anything to do with male attire, aren't you?"

Harrington looked at the button, turning it over in his fingers.

"I know it's a very ordinary sort of thing," said Mendoza apologetically.

"My God, and you a detective!" said Harrington. "Of course, maybe only a specialist would spot it. I can tell you this and that about it, of course. To start with, it's obviously a button from the sleeve of a jacket. Too small to be an ordinary jacket button. It's--"

"The sleeve of a-- But--"

"No, I know. Those conservative bastards,” said Harrington with a chuckle. "Grandpa had buttons on his sleeves, so naturally you go on putting buttons on sleeves. No scope--no progress. I haven't put any buttons on sleeves since, lessee, about 1939, but they still do. Most of 'em. I get some of their stuff in for repair occasionally."

Mendoza was staring at him. "Harrington," he said, "did you ever wonder how that fellow in the Bible felt when his ass started to talk to him? Not that I mean to imply-- Whose stuff?"

Harrington tapped the button thoughtfully. "There you are," he said, "something else. Bone. Old-fashioned. Practically everybody uses plastic these days. Well, I could give a random guess. Either Rowlandson, or Herrick and King, or possibly Shattuck. Savile Row, of course."

"Of course," repeated Mendoza gently .... And quite suddenly, in one single lucid moment, everything fell into place and he saw it unreel before him like a moving picture. Of course.

"Say something to you?" asked Harrington interestedly. But Mendoza was raptly placing the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle where they belonged. "A delightful Easter weekend," he said absorbedly. "Oh yes .... have announced the engagement . . . Five thousand bucks, but he'd be willing to pay high for-- Oh yes, I see. Smart up to a point. And then--and then--" His eyes turned cold, and he whispered to himself, "The bastard--just a cop--to cover it up. And naturally, cops being morons or they wouldn't be cops, and he--"

"Did I say something?" asked Harrington, sounding more interested.268

Mendoza focused on him with a little difficulty. "Harrington," he said earnestly, "you are indeed the knave of clubs. A bearer of news. I forgive you that tweed monstrosity you palmed off on me two years back. I forgive you-- Well, never mind. My heartfelt thanks. Give me that thing." He almost ran out.

"Knave of clubs?” said Harrington after him, blankly. Mendoza gunned the Ferrari up Beverly as fast as the law allowed. By God, he'd have a siren installed in this thing before he was a week older .... He got onto Wilshire and headed back downtown, and all the way the jigsaw pieces went on fitting themselves together, so nice and neat ....

Oh yes. Andrea Nestor. The belt, of course. And the button. Kenmore Avenue--but a dark stretch along there . . . And--

It was ten--fifty when he came fast into the office and looked round. Palliser was just coming out of the sergeants' office with a teletype sheet in his hand.

"We've got in a little more on Tenney. The S.P. told us he listed his birthplace as Younker, Georgia, and we--"

"¡No importa!" said Mendoza. "I only dropped in to pick up somebody--to keep an eye on me while we drop on the X who shot Nestor and sent Art over that cliff. Might as well be you, John. ¡Pues vamonos ya! Let's be on our way!" .

Palliser stared at him and dropped the teletype. "You know--”

"I know all about it," said Mendoza grimly. "Let's go and take him. And if I will be resigning from this force, I'd like to leave a fairly clean record, so if I start to lose my temper, boy, you restrain me .... That Goddamned self-important stupid bastard! That--"

"Evidence?" said Palliser.

"Oh, there'll be evidence," said Mendoza. "By God, there will! Has the hospital called?"

"Not yet."

"Come on--1et's go and take him," said Mendoza.

TWENTY

The impassive manservant blinked up at Mendoza. "I'm afraid Mr. Marlowe has just finished breakfast, sir, I don't know whether he'll see you--"

"Oh, he'll see me!" said Mendoza. He walked in past the man. "Where is he?"

His tone made the man blink again; a rather sly smile crept over his mouth. "In the library, sir."

Mendoza led Palliser down to that door and opened it. Marlowe, in a handsome tailored silk dressing gown, was sitting at the desk opening his mail. He glanced up, and his expression darkened. "What do you--"

"I've come for you, Marlowe," said Mendoza. "I've run across a lot of stupid killers before now, but you're one of the silliest. I want you on the charge of murdering Francis Nestor and assauly with intent to murder on Arthur Hackett. Will you wait for the warrant here or downtown?"

Marlowe went an ugly red. "You must be a lunatic, sir. I don't know what you're-- That's quite absurd! Why should I have wanted--Paul! My servant can tell you that I was here all that evening, and I'm sure you must-- Ah, Paul. Just--"

"I'll do the asking," said Mendoza. "Was Mr. Marlowe here, from about eight forty-five on, a week ago Tuesday night?"

The man said, wooden-faced, "He certainly came in around then, sir. He came to this room and said he didn't want to be disturbed. I didn't see Mr. Marlowe again that evening, sir."

"Interesting," said Mendoza.

"But of course you knew I was here, man! Why on earth--"

"I can tell you the whole story now," said Mendoza. "And I don't give a damn about Nestor, but for what you did to Hackett, we're going to get you but good. It's never very smart to try to kill a cop, Marlowe. First let me ask you if you own a gun?"

Marlowe said coldly, "You needn't think you'll get away with such highhanded-- Yes, I own several guns, but--"

The manservant coughed. "There is a small amateur target-shooting range in the basement, sir, beside the recreation room. The young gentlemen--"

Marlowe said furiously, "You may go, Paul!"

Mendoza sat down on the arm of a chair. "And that just about puts the lid on your stupidity, doesn't it? You did get rid of the gun, and the way you did that wasn't such a bad idea either, but you never really expected to be connected to the case in any way. You stupid bastard, don't you realize we can dig all those slugs out of the sandbags or whatever your target backs up to down there, and find quite a few to match up to that gun that killed Nestor?"

Marlowe took a step back, and his mouth tightened. "I had no reason--"

"You had a couple of very good reasons. You want to know what I know? I'll tell you," said Mendoza. "A little over three years ago you found that your youngest daughter Susan had got herself, as they say, in trouble. You think the hell of a lot of your line old family name, don't you? Yes, so maybe you didn't think the young man was good enough for her--inconceivable that he wouldn't have jumped at marrying this kind of money! Well, you didn't have any contacts with an abortionist, and anyway you wanted to be sure of a good safe job. And you thought of Frank Nestor, the bright young man you'd staked to the chiropractic course. It's quite a serious training these days, and he'd know enough to do the job and do it nice and clean. And you didn't think he'd jib much at it. He didn't, did he? Maybe it wasn't that Easter weekend she was supposed to be yachting, but maybe it was too. Anyway, he obliged you--and Susan-for, I think, the cancellation of his debt and the nice round sum of five
grand .... How am I doing, Marlowe?"

Marlowe sat down again in the desk chair. "That's--no, I--"

"We'1l cut this short," said Mendoza abruptly. "That was that. I don't suppose you knew you'd put ideas in Nestor's head and he'd set up a profitable little abortion mill. But he did like the long green, didn't he, and when your daughter recently got engaged he saw how he might get some more out of you. For his silence." Mendoza smiled. "Has she, maybe, caused you a little trouble, Marlowe? The wild type? So you were only too pleased at the prospect of getting her respectably married? And in this one case Nestor could have told what he knew. Could have told the young man--or his parents--how he knew she'd once been in the market for an abortion, because you had asked him to do it, which of course he'd righteously refused to do. Not a thing a young man--or his parents--would like to hear about his fiancée, was it? Especially a young man named Baxter W. Stevens III. And you saw right then that if you paid him once--this time--every time Nestor ran a little short, or was in the mood, he was going to threaten that again. And, yes, you're very proud of your name and your social position, aren't you? You'd feel a lot happier if the one outsider who knew about that was--out of the way.

"So you agreed to pay, and you set up an appointment at his office, a week ago last night. But you didn't bring money--you brought a gun. You shot him, I think, almost as soon as you got into the office. And just before you fired, when he saw the gun, he tried to grab your arm. But you didn't know he'd got a loose button off your sleeve, did you? No. You didn't know that until--

"You set up the fake burglary by breaking open the door, stealing the petty cash. And you came home satisfied that the dumb cops wouldn't look beyond the end of their noses. Oh, just in case there was any little investigation, you got rid of the gun--or did you do that hoping some shady character down there would pick it up and after his next arrest get charged with Nestor on the strength of the gun? Very possibly. You're only smart up to a point, Marlowe.

"Then on Friday night--"

"I won't listen to this----this rigmarole," said Marlowe rigidly. "Insulting me like this in my own--"

"You'll listen! On Friday night you played friend of the family, paid the little call on Andrea Nestor. It was just bad luck--and not all his, Marlowe!--that you were wearing the same suit, and that Sergeant Hackett came calling just after you .... Yes, you were a little surprised yesterday when a man came to paw through your wardrobe, weren't you? And considerably upset. It was just chance again that it was your servant's day off and you could tell the dumb cop, no, you hadn't given away any clothes recently. I think I'd like to hear what your Paul has to say about that."

"No--" said Marlowe in a high frightened voice. Mendoza jerked open the door, which wasn't quite shut. As he'd expected, the manservant was just moving away from it. Mendoza spoke his name, crooked a finger at him.

"In."

"Yes, sir?" The man looked from him to Marlowe, bland and inquiring.

"You look after Mr. Marlowe's clothes?"

"Yes, sir, you could say so."

"Has he told you to give away any of his clothes recently, or have you noticed any missing?"

"Paul--"

"Why, yes, sir," said the man in a colorless tone. "The gray summer-weight tweed, sir. He told me it was getting too shabby, to give it to the salvage people. But as a matter of fact, sir"--he coughed gently--"as it had quite a lot of wear in it still, I gave it to my brother-in-law, who is much the same--er--build as Mr. Marlowe."

Marlowe said thickly, "You're fired! Get out of this house--damn you for a--"

The manservant looked at him thoughtfully, blinking, and faded silently from the room.

"More nice available evidence," said Mendoza, smiling. "Shall we go on with the story? On Friday night, at Mrs. Nestor's apartment, Sergeant Hackett spotted that button missing from your sleeve. And you noticed him staring at your sleeve, and for the first time realized you'd lost a  button. And the fact that the sergeant looked interested in that more or less told you where you'd probably lost it, didn't it? Now, he didn't know it was anything but a coincidence, it didn't tell him right away that you were the X who had shot Nestor. But he wanted to ask you questions about it, and look at the other buttons on that jacket to see whether they matched. He'd have come to see you about that later--he let you go then. But you hung around there, waiting, after you'd ostensibly left, to go back and ask Mrs. Nestor whether the sergeant had asked any questions about you. Didn't you? And you didn't keep enough out of sight, and he spotted you when he came out, so he started questioning you then. Maybe more suspiciously than he would have before, because why were you hanging around? And you panicked, didn't you? You knew that that button would be very easy to trace to you, because of your British tailoring. All we had to do was look. And this big tough sergeant knew you had a button missing--but he was the only one of us who did know. And in panic and desperation, you were idiot enough to attack him."

"I--" said Marlowe. He was shaking and white. "Please, I don't understand--how you--"

"Ordinarily, of course, you'd have stood no remote chance of putting him down, far less out. But I can see just how that happened, too. He didn't know what he had, he didn't know its importance, and he wouldn't be expecting any physical trouble from one like you, he was off guard. Shall I tell you how it went? He was standing in the street, behind his car--maybe thinking he'd almost finished with you for the time being--and you were on the curb where you'd both been standing talking. Which brought you about level with him. You hit out as hard as you could for his jaw, and you hit hard enough to catch him off balance--maybe he slipped on some oil left there--and his feet went out from under him and he crashed down on the trunk of his own car.

"And when you found he was unconscious, a really desperate notion occurred to you. You'd done one murder. If the sergeant should, say, be killed in an accident, nobody would ever know about that missing button. You could get rid of the suit, cover up.

"Well, you acted at once. Kenmore's very dark and quiet along there, there wasn't a street light near, only the little light from the apartment entrance. Nobody had heard or seen. But a dog-walker or somebody might come along at any minute, and you hurried. He was a big, heavy man, and dead weight, but they do say"--Mendoza smiled--"needs must when the Devil drives. And you look to be in pretty good condition. You pulled him around and dragged him into the car somehow. The one thing you saw at all clearly right then, I think, is that you'd have to underline the fact that he'd driven off in his own car. So you found his keys, and you drove the Ford up a block or so, to another dark, lonely spot, and parked it. He was still out--but you didn't know how badly he was hurt, you had to--immobilize him. You hadn't any rope to do it with, so you used his belt and yours. And I think you also gagged him, just in case."

Marlowe was watching him, gray-faced, as if hypnotized.

"No, you can't do this to me," he muttered distractedly. "My name--my family-disgraced-- I have influence with--"

"Nobody influences the cops in this town," said Mendoza coldly. "Which you'd know if you knew more about us. But you don't know much about us, do you? . . .

You tried in a clumsy sort of way to give yourself an alibi, but you never really thought anybody'd look at you, did you? You left him there, and you drove home, to set up your crude little alibi here. We've just seen how easily it went to pieces. When you were sure the servant was at the back of the house you slipped out, having left your car parked in the street, and you drove up to the vicinity of Bronson and Franklin and parked it. I wouldn't put it beyond you to have left it in a public lot with an attendant! And then you took a cab back to the vicinity of Kenmore where you'd left the Ford. We'll find the cab driver without much trouble. And into the Ford again and up to that steep canyon road--"

"No, please, I--" Marlowe gasped. "The disgrace--my wife would--" He turned suddenly, blindly, pulled open a drawer; Mendoza was on his feet in a flash, but Marlowe turned holding a small revolver in shaking hands.

"I hope you won't be silly enough to use that," said Mendoza. "But you seem to be silly enough 'for anything. Didn't you think we had any sense, Marlowe? To look at the tire marks, test the car for prints? You had heard of fingerprints--you wiped yours off everything a driver would touch. But that in itself looked very funny, you know .... Why Canyon Drive? Maybe you know somebody who lives in that very classy section, and knew the road? Anyway, you"--he stopped, controlling his voice to steadiness--"set up your accident, and a very God-damned stupid way you did it too, and you walked down the mile or so to where you'd left your car. You knew the rest of the family would be out late--yes, there are probably quite a few prenuptial parties going on for Susan, aren't there? . . . For God's sake, do you really think we're all such fools, Marlowe? I think you really did put us down as a bunch of morons. The way you went to work at it. Well, as you see, we've got a lot of nice evidence on you now, and I'm taking you--"

"No,” said Marlowe. His eyes were wild, but his hand had steadied on the gun. "No--I can't face that--the disgrace, my wife, Susan--this can't be happening--there was no way for you to find out--"

"Give me that," said Mendoza softly, advancing on him. "Let me--"

"No!" shouted Marlowe in sudden savage desperation. He sprang up and plunged for the door, slammed it behind him before Mendoza could reach it. And before Mendoza could turn the knob there was the sharp crack of a shot in the hallway outside ....

They looked at the sprawled body in silence for a moment. He had put the muzzle of the gun in his mouth, and there was a little mess. "God damn him to hell!" said Mendoza viciously. "So he does get away after all! I was looking forward to seeing him pulled down in the mud--"

"Vindictive," said Palliser wryly. "Not so good for the family .... How much of that was bluff, by the way?"

"Not much of it," said Mendoza, "really. Once I knew by the button it was Marlowe, there was only one logical motive. Only one way it could have happened. Damn him. Of course, if he hadn't caught Art off guard, he'd never have stood a chance of--but--"

The colorless manservant came quietly up the hall and looked down at the body. He said to Mendoza gravely, "I thought that was a shot. The rest of the family is all out, sir. I trust you'll be attending to the--er--formalities?"

"Quite right," said Mendoza. "Are you accustomed to your employers committing suicide?"

"Dear me, no, sir," said the man. "What a tragedy. I presume, sir, you'll be wanting that suit back from my brother-in--law?"

"You presume quite right," said Mendoza, and went back to the library to call the office and an ambulance. . . . The bastard, slipping away from him at the last minute . . .

He left Palliser, Scarne, and Landers to go through the house, pick up any more desultory relevant facts. So, on this one, there'd be no publicity after all, just the relevant evidence quietly attested to and the file put away marked closed. A nice discreet verdict of the usual suicide while temporarily insane, and that was that.

God damn him. To protect his precious name and position . . .

Still filled with cold wrath, he came into the office. "Understand you've broken the Nestor thing. Who and how?" asked Sergeant Lake.

"Marlowe--damn him." He was in no mood for long explanations. He went into his office. Dwyer was still there, fiddling nervously with the cards. It was five minutes past one. Of this new long, long day.

"I keep expecting it to ring," said Dwyer. "Damn it, they said--"

And at that moment the outside phone rang. And Sergeant Lake called in to them, "Hospital, Lieutenant." Mendoza picked up the phone. His hand tightened on it, and his mouth drew to a grim line. "Yes, Doctor .... Yes. I'll be there in ten minutes--"

"Let me go," said Dwyer.

"No.” Mendoza almost ran out, toward the elevators, and went all the way down to the garage; he commandeered a patrol car and had the siren going before he was off the ramp onto Temple Street. By God, he'd have one installed in the Ferrari tomorrow.

He made it in just over ten minutes. The doctor was waiting for him; they started for the elevators. "You understand, Lieutenant, if he doesn't recognize you, or seems mentally hazy in any way, it doesn't tell us definitely that he won't make a complete recovery. After all, he has been in a deep coma for something like five and a half days. And we know something about mental therapy, too, to help. But this will be a useful--ah--test."

"Yes," said Mendoza. The elevator landed; they walked down the corridor. The hospital atmosphere was thick all about them. No noise, only a faint hint of ether, of medicines, in the air; but the aura of professional busyness, of impersonal efficiency.

There were two nurses in the room, at the far side of the bed. The rails were up on each side. One of the nurses said, "I'm sorry, Doctor, we had to discontinue the I.V. He was so restless--"

"Quite all right," said McFarland absently.

Hackett's big bulk was moving uneasily on the bed; he had thrown off the sheet. His color was bad, an ashen gray, and all the bandages looked alarming. He was muttering incoherently. "His pulse is up to nearly ninety," said the other nurse.

"Yes," said MacFarlane. "I think it should be very soon now. I'm sorry, Lieutenant, we just have to wait--”

"Yes," said Mendoza.

"Mmh . . . mmh . . ." Hackett was mumbling; he sounded to be making a desperate effort.

"How is his wife standing up?"

"All right," said Mendoza, watching Hackett.

They watched in silence as Hackett tossed and muttered. Five minutes. Ten minutes. The nurse said, "His pulse is very fast, sir, I don't like--"

MacFarlane bent over the bed and used a stethoscope. "Constitution of an ox," he murmured. "His heart's sound enough. Don't worry."

Hackett quieted down and lay still for a little while, and then quite suddenly he opened his eyes. He stared vaguely up at the ceiling for a moment, and the doctor touched Mendoza's arm and mouthed, "Wait a minute."

"His pulse is down to normal, sir," said the nurse. Hackett turned his head weakly in her direction. Mendoza stepped closer to the bed. He had his mouth open to speak Hackett's name when Hackett said, "Nurse. You're a--"

"That's right," said the nurse, smiling at him.

"Marlowe," said Hackett with great effort. "Tell--”

"Art," said Mendoza. "Art?"

Very slowly Hackett turned his head on the pillow. His blue eyes looked slightly unfocused still, and his voice came weakly in little gasps. "Luis," he said. "They--hauled you back--off vacation. Sorry. Have--a nice--time?"

Mendoza managed a grin. "I never want another one like it, boy," he said. And then the doctor was leading him out, and he sat down rather suddenly on the bench along the corridor.

"Very satisfactory indeed, of course," the doctor was saying. "He'll probably make a quite normal recovery now. Say three months. Very gratifying indeed--such a deep coma, and that massive fracture--but that looks very conclusive, of course."

Mendoza thought, Ought to find the nearest phone: let the girls know, call the office. Everything O.K. He heard himself laugh, and belatedly realized why: Art could forget his diet for a while, anyway.

"--as I said, Lieutenant."

"Yes," said Mendoza. Lieutenant. It sounded a lot better than Mister: the hell of a lot better. He started to get up, to go and find that phone, and suddenly all the lack of sleep, the worry and strain, the long, long days had caught up with him, and he had to lean on the bench.

"Doctor," he said, "maybe you'd give me a shot of benzedrine or something? I might just manage to make it home .... "

* * *

"I am not going to wake him up," said Alison's voice. "I should think you'd realize--"

Mendoza opened his eyes. He knew where he was at once. On the long sectional in the living room of the house on Rayo Grande Avenue. He'd just made it that far before it all caught up to him and he went dead out as if he'd been knocked on the head.

It was almost dark. A little past eight o'clock, he thought vaguely. Around there. Somebody had taken off his jacket and tie and shoes, and unbuttoned his collar. And there was a cat coiled up on his chest, and he thought another one near his feet.

"You know what he's been through," said Alison's voice. Alison trying to keep her voice low. Sounding annoyed.

Mendoza lifted his head an inch and squinted down at his chest. He identified El Señor by the blond mask and slitted green eyes. Automatically he lifted a hand and rubbed behind El Señor's ears.

"I absolutely refuse--" said Alison.

Mendoza yawned and sat up, bringing El Señor with him in one arm. Annoyed to have his position changed without his official consent, El Señor hissed at him and escaped to the far end of the sectional, where he sat down on top of Bast and began to smooth his ruffled coat.

Nearly dark, but light enough still to see Alison with her back to him, shoulders looking very stiff, at the telephone table across the room. And Angel in the entrance-hall doorway watching her. Somewhere in the distance one of the twins was wailing.

"He can't possibly--"

Mendoza yawned again. He felt, he decided, all right.

He got up and crossed the room, put one arm around Alison, and took the phone away from her. The twin stopped wailing abruptly.

"Oh!" said Alison. "Luis--"

"Mendoza here."

"Well, I'm sorry to wake you up," said Higgins, "but we've got a sort of funny one down here. Just turned up."

"Luis!" said Alison. "You are not----"

"Mmh?" said Mendoza. He felt, on the whole, pretty good, he thought.

"Woman strangled with her own belt, it's obviously murder, but there was the damnedest odd note left beside the body----"

"¡Qué interesante!" said Mendoza. "All right, I'll come down and look at it.” He put the phone down.

"Luis, no!" exploded Alison. "You ought to sleep the clock round--"

"But you've got," exclaimed Angel from the door, "to have something to eat before you--"

"With," said Mrs. MacTaggart firmly, coming up the hall, "a wee drop of whiskey to hearten you beforehand."

Mendoza kissed Alison and started toward the bedroom for tie, jacket, and shoes. "Get me a cup of coffee, that's all. I'm O.K."

And Alison and Angel sent one unanimous bitter comment after him.

"Cops!" they said.