Murder Most Strange (21 page)

"In spades." Not getting anything useful
from the police, the press had had to fall back on the highlights of
Howard Upchurch's career and public life, and there had been pictures
of, an interview with, his attractive wife—who, the press said, was
prostrate with shock and grief. Pictures of four handsome children,
teen-age on down. The press was calling it a mysterious accident, and
Bainbridge repeated that now, rather thoughtfully.

"It's as useful a phrase as any. Wife's
good-looking, isn't she? Well"—he sighed—"you want
chapter and verse, and I can't give you much. He might have been
attacked suddenly, but he hadn't been in a fight, his hands aren't
marked. He could have had a sudden hard fall, onto a cement sidewalk
or something like that. Just as I told you, he died of a depressed
skull fracture—it's just behind the right temple. He might have
lived half an hour or an hour, but probably unconscious. Times—we'll
call it between six and ten on Saturday night. He'd had the
equivalent of about two double high-balls." Bainbridge puffed at
his cigar and added mournfully, "Fine healthy specimen, by the
way. Man in the prime of life. And he sounded like a very good man,
too—kind of man we need more of in Washington, hah? Well, there's
your report, and we're busy." He laid the manila folder on
Hackett's desk and stumped out.

Landers, who had just cast up his eyes at that, said
sardonically, "Man in the prime of life all right, him picking
up the blond floozy as soon as he landed here."

"Did you find out any more about that?"
asked Mendoza, grinning.

"Well, we asked around in the bar and restaurant
there," said Hackett, "but nobody seems to have noticed
anything.

He could have spotted the girl alone in the bar or
somewhere, or she could have been on the make—"

"Or," said Mendoza, "he might have had
a date set up with her, Art. Maybe Seton only thinks Upchurch didn't
know anybody here."

"Damn it, we can't do anything until these
places are open."

"Preserve patience. You'd better hear what
happened last night," and he told them about the brothers.

"I suppose that is the likeliest thing,"
said Hackett, "that one of them had a private fight with
Parmenter. He didn't seem to know anybody else."

Landers just said, "People."

"But you know, Luis, there was a funny feeling
about that street that day—I don't know, I couldn't say why. Just a
feeling." Hackett sat back and reached for a cigarette.

"That wasn't you I saw driving up in a Chevy a
while ago, was it?" asked Landers. Mendoza liked exotic cars,
and he could afford the taste, with all the loot his grandfather had
left.

Mendoza explained about the electric eye. "I
only hope it works," he added, sounding doubtful. "Some of
the ideas that girl has had—talk about one thing leading to
another—

¡Valgame Dios!
"

* * *

Of the four new heists, one was Mutt and Jeff again,
and this time they had dropped a receipt in the amount of sixty
dollars from a motel on Avenue Twenty. The others were all new to the
detectives: one description was of a short thin Mexican type, another
of a tall thin Negro, and on the fourth there was no description at
all: he'd been wearing a stocking mask.

They started to work it as they could. Higgins,
Glasser, Grace and Palliser went down to R. and I. and Phil Landers
took the descriptions and went away to feed the computer. In half an
hour they were handed no fewer than nineteen possible suspects from
Records to hunt for, whose descriptions and pedigrees made them at
least likely to have pulled these jobs. And that, of course, was
leaving out the fourth heist entirely.

Grace, Higgins and Palliser went out to start that
legwork. The addresses in Records for those men might not all be up
to date; criminals tended to drift around. They might not find any of
them. None of these men might be guilty, this time. But it was a
place to start.

Glasser and Wanda drove out to the motel on Avenue
Twenty. It was over in Lincoln Heights. It was a ramshackle, ancient
place with about twelve little wooden cabins, one of the front ones
occupied by the manager. He was a paunchy dark-brown fellow, with a
couple of front teeth missing, and he looked at the badge fearfully
and said, "Man, we never have no trouble here. All nice an'
quiet, I don't let in no junkies or drunks."

"Nobody said you did," said Glasser, and
showed him the receipt. "Do you remember these two men?"

"I go look in the book." They went in with
him, to a crowded little fusty room with a black-and-white TV
blaring. He shut down the sound, found a thick old ledger, leafed
back. "Oh, them, yeah," he said. "They was here three
nights. Ten a night."

"They each rented a cabin?"

"Naw, naw. There was two couples. Mr. and Mrs.
Smith, Mr. and Mrs. Brown. One short fat guy and one tall thin guy—"

"What about the women?" asked Wanda.

He shrugged. "I only saw 'em that one time. Just
a pair of broads. I couldn't tell you what they looked like."

"What car were they driving? Did you take the
plate number?"

"Naw, I don't bother with that. Most people not
here very long. I think it was white, a Ford or Chevy or something, I
don't know."

"Oh, well," said
Glasser as he slid under the Gremlin's wheel, "they're such a
pair of bunglers they'll probably get dropped on eventually."

* * *

Palliser and Grace had wasted all morning trying to
catch up to just one quarry, one Alfonso Marquez, who sounded like
one of the likeliest on that heist last night. He had changed jobs,
and as soon as he was off parole last month he had changed
apartments; and through the vague memories of old neighbors and
someone who knew his brother who lived in Glendale, they finally
chased down his newest address over in Pasadena. There wasn't anybody
home. A man came out of the apartment next door and said, "You
lookin' for Al?"

"That's right," said Palliser. "You
know where he is?"

"Well, he's in jail," said the man. "The
cops picked him up Saturday night for heisting a gas station and I
guess he couldn't make bail."

Just to be sure, they checked with the Pasadena jail,
and he was there. "This is," said Palliser, "one of
the times I wish I'd decided to be an English teacher."
 
"Dad wanted me to go in for
medicine, naturally," said Grace, whose father was a
gynecologist. "I never had any ambition that way, but there was
a time I thought of the ministry. Believe it or not. Decided I didn't
have any real call. And isn't it about time for lunch?"

They had lunch at a place in Pasadena, and started to
look for Rafael Torres. Surprisingly, he was where his latest record
said he should be, at an address in Boyle Heights, and they brought
him back to base to question him. He couldn't tell them where he'd
been last night, he said frankly; he'd gone to a party and there'd
been some high-grade grass and a few other things, and everybody must
have had a good time and moved on, because the party had started at
Doris's but when he woke up he was at Roberto's.

Whoever had pulled the heist last night hadn't been
stoned, so they let him go. They were both feeling a little tired
then so they sat there for a while smoking before they started
looking for Rolando Garcia, and they were still there when the new
call went down and Lake buzzed them.

"It's a body, at Seventh and Hill."

"My God, am I having a premonition?" said
Palliser.

At that very busy corner, right in front of Bullocks'
department store that ran through from Seventh to Eighth, of course
there was a crowd. With the realization that something had happened
or was happening, a lot of people tended to crowd up just to gawk,
and the Traffic man first on the scene had evidently had to call a
backup to make some effort at preserving order. There were three
uniformed men standing spaced out behind one of the benches at the
corner, and a fourth was standing in the street in front of it.
Standing beside him was a civilian who was talking excitedly. And the
body, slumped sideways on the bench, with quite a lot of blood all
around it . . . "I knew it!" said Palliser savagely as they
came up. "God damn it—"

"But didn't I say he's getting nuttier? Of all
the places to commit a murder . . ." This was one of the most
crowded spots in downtown L.A., where pedestrians and buses and cars
made a hodgepodge of the narrow sidewalks and streets. During the
middle of the day, on weekdays, it was nearly wall-to-wall people.

The Traffic men greeted them with relief. "It's
been a job just to keep people from coming up to poke at the corpse,"
said Gomez feelingly. "I'd say you want to take him in as soon
as possible, or we'll have traffic stalled."

"The lab will want photographs, though it's a
waste of time," said Palliser. "Not one goddamned lead on
this joker—”

"Well, you're going to get a good one,"
said a cheerful voice. Palliser turned.

"This is Mr. Trotwood," said Gomez. "Your
only witness, Sergeant. And you might offer him some heartfelt
thanks, he's been a big damned help in keeping the people away."

"Have to preserve the scene," said
Trotwood. "It's Carl Trotwood, Sergeant, and I was glad to help
out. I'm too short to pass the physical, but I've kind of made a
hobby of—you know—police work. Police business." He was,
quite simply, delighted to have stumbled into this, to be meeting
real-life detectives. He looked at Palliser and Grace almost with
affection. "To think it was me just happened to sit next to that
guy! But see, Sergeant, I trained myself to have a good memory for
faces—always thought, I ever happen to be a witness to something
important, I want to be a reliable one. And I got a very good close
look at this killer—you put me at a table with an artist and an
Identikit, and I'll give you a photograph of him! And I'll tell you
something else very funny." Mr. Trotwood was a short broad dark
fellow about thirty-five, with a homely round face and a big nose.

"That's fine, Mr. Trotwood, and we're very
grateful for the help you gave the officers," said Palliser.
"But just let us look at what we've got here—we'll get back to
you presently."

"Oh, sure, sure, anything you say."

Grace was on the mike in one squad, to get a lab
truck out. The body was a medium-sized man around sixty,_in ordinary
sports clothes; he had thinning gray hair, a pair of rimless
spectacles had fallen to the sidewalk, and this was a messier kill
than the others, a lot more blood spilled. There was a large canvas
bag full of library books propped up against the bench beside him;
all the books had been checked out today at the main library,
Palliser discovered while they waited for the lab men.

The lab truck came, with the morgue wagon behind it;
Horder took a couple of pictures for the record and then searched the
body and handed a billfold to Grace.

There were a driver's license, a couple of credit
cards, sixteen dollars in bills. His name was Eric Gustafson, he'd
been fifty-nine and lived at a Hollywood address.

After the morgue wagon left, the crowd began to drift
away, and Palliser and Grace took Carl Trotwood back to Palliser's
car and put him in the back seat.

"Say, you know, I'm sorry as hell a man got
killed," he said. "But all my life I've been interested in
police work, in crime, and this is the first time I've ever been
mixed up with it for real. I don't mean to sound as if I'm happy
somebody got killed, but—well, I'm glad to be able to help you. I
can tell you just what he looked like." He laughed. "Kind
of a bonus, get out of going to the dentist."

"Oh? You were on the way to the dentist?"

"That's right, had an appointment at two-thirty.
You see, I work right here at Bullocks', I drive one of the delivery
vans. And we live in Atwater but I never drive to work on account of
the parking being so expensive down here, leave the car to my wife. I
had an appointment to have my teeth cleaned, Dr. Wilhelm out on
Beverly, so I took off about one-forty to come down and catch the
bus. And that guy was already sitting there, only one on the bench.
The bus—my bus—was due about one-fifty. I wasn't paying any
attention to the guy, just sitting there. And then this other one
came up. He came right around in front of the bench"—Trotwood
gestured—"and those benches are pretty close to the curb, you
know, he was standing in the street—and on account of what he said
I looked at him. Lots of people going by, but I don't suppose anybody
heard him but me. He said, you're the one killed her, I found you
now—and he just pulled this knife out of his pocket and starts
stabbing the guy"—the gesturing was graphic now—"back,
forth, back, forth, like lightning—I'm on my feet, he's maybe five
feet away from me, I yell something like what the hell you think
you're doing, and he turns and runs-up toward the corner, around on
Seventh and I tried to chase him, but I kept running into people, and
all the crowds—he's gone. I came back, there's already people
milling around on account of the blood. God, the fools there are in
this world. I couldn't do everything at once," said Trotwood
apologetically. "There's a pay phone on the corner, I called in
to headquarters, but I couldn't swear that some of those damn people
didn't leave prints all over, only I don't suppose it matters because
he took the knife with him, and I never saw him touch the bench."