UC-NRLF
B 3 451 733



ARC CRNOVELOFSUSPENSE
RTERNÖVÉLOFSUSPENSE
ANOVÉ
PERNOVEC The girl's battered body was found the
The girl's battered body was found
in an empty lot in a Southern Califor-
nia city. Though Detective-Sergeant
Hackett disliked (his dislike partly
based on envy) his superior on the
case, Lieutenant Luis Mendoza, he
had to respect the way Mendoza
started out to find who had killed the
girl.
There were almost no clues, it
seemed, even after the police had
ENSEAHARPERNOV
LABPERNOVELOEST
DiscoZWZIS
DZIDITAS



ER
identified the victim—Elena Ramirez,
whose hair was peroxided and who
had been killed on her lonely way
home from a roller-skating rink.
Then later there was the doll—a
large, expensive doll that seemed to
have vanished.
And, unknown to Mendoza, there
was young Martin Lindstrom, big for
his age, a good student, who found a
spot of blood on the sleeve of his
jacket and thought to himself miser-
ably, Not again, not again. But when
he brought his worries to his strict,
hard-working mother, she told him to
be quiet, to forget it, to get on with
his homework.
Dell Shannon, whose first mystery
this is, has written an engrossing,
moving story of a most believable and
horrible crime, and the people in the
novel are people such as one might
find in any Southern California town,
people whose skins are varied in color
and whose backgrounds are everyday
-poor and middle-class, respectable
and less so. And she has created in
Luis Mendoza a working policeman
of real distinction.
ith
VELO
OFC
might ŚUSLE
the DESUSE
DanzMZIT
UDDZOUKIT
ERNOVELOFSUSPENSE
OZD


CASE PENDING


“THE CAUSE IS HIDDEN,


CASE PENDING
Copyright © 1960 by Elizabeth Linington
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
All rights in this book are reserved. No part of the book may be used or
reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For in-
formation address Harper & Brothers, 49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y.
FIRST EDITION
A-K
Library of Congress catalog card number: 60-5960


PS3562
Li 5450
Case Pending
1. 020





One
WHEN GUNN CAME DOWN THE HALL TO HIS OFFICE AT HALF-PAST
eight, he found Curtis waiting. Curtis was holding up the wall be-
side the door; he opened his eyes at Gunn's step. He looked tired
and rather dirty.
"And a good, good morning to you too, chief,” he said. Gunn
didn't like to be called chief.
"What'd you draw?" Gunn unlocked the door.
"Just what we expected. I won't come in-I'm going home to
bed-I can give it to you in ten words. Williams showed up about
eight, you'll get that on Henry's report. Went in, about twenty
minutes later came out with our Ma Williams, and they went down
to the Redbird bar on Third. Ten-forty, shifted to the Palace.
Henry called me from there and I took over at midnight. They
drifted home about half an hour later and stayed. His car's still
outside.”
"Well, now," said Gunn, pleased. “Fancy that.”
"And for your further information,” said Curtis, “I damn near
froze to death sitting it out in my car. Next time I'll take along
another blanket and a portable radio."
Gunn grinned benignly and told him to go home. He went on
through the stenos' room to the center of three partitioned-off
rooms at the rear, hung up his hat and coat, and sat at the desk.
Henry's report was neatly centered, waiting for him there; Henry


CASE PENDING
never missed getting in a written report immediately, however late
his duty. Williams in 7:57, it announced laconically, and the rest
of what Curtis had said. Very nice, thought Gunn.
So now they knew that Mr. John Williams hadn't deserted his
wife and four children. The county had been passing over sixty-
three dollars and fifty cents per month to Mrs. John Williams for
four months, on her claim of desertion and failure to provide. The
kids had to be fed, had to be sheltered and clothed-after a fashion
-by somebody. It appeared that once again the county had been
rooked. Williams was a skilled carpenter, probably making good
money on an out-of-town job. Gunn made a notation on the
report, Morgan to see, and sighed. Naughty, naughty, Mr. and
Mrs. Williams, collusion to defraud the state-and maybe next
time they'd think up something slicker.
He got out his file of current investigations, wrote a brief sum-
mary of the conclusions in the Williams case, and set the file page
aside for refiling among cases completed. He flicked over the rest.
He heard the girl stenos begin to drift into the outer office.
Rossiter. Brankin. Peabody. Prinn. Fraty. Kling. A new one,
Lindstrom. There were follow-up reports to be typed in on
six or seven of them; he took those out to the stenos. “Morning,
girls.” Morgan and Stack came in together.
"I want to see you about that Mrs. Gold,” said Stack.
“What about her?”
Stack followed him back into his office. “I told you I finally
caught up to the guy-the Reno D.A.'s office found him, he's
working in some joint there as a waiter. I had it all set up to crack
down on him, see, Reno says he ought to be good for seventy-five
a month, and I went round to give the glad news to the missus.
And then the rabbi puts the kibosh on it.”
"What rabbi?”
“Mrs. Gold's rabbi. He was there. He says please will we just
drop the whole thing and leave it to him-I guess he figures it'll
be less of a disgrace or something if he can handle it,"
“Oh,” said Gunn. “Well, he might have something there. If he
can get it without any fuss, so much the better. Man'd feel better
about it if he's persuaded instead of forced, the money'll come


4
CASE PENDING
that business last year; but the doctors wouldn't pass him for active
duty again. Nearly forty years' service, and then a home-made bul-
let out of a punk's zip-gun retired him. And Bill Andrews got the
promotion to head of Homicide instead. Way the cards fell, and
Bill was a good man; but Gunn hadn't known what to do with
himself that six months. He'd jumped at this minor post in the
D.A.'s office; and he could say now, a year later, he'd given
Kelleher something to talk about at the next election, by God.
It was a new department, this little corps of investigators-the
husband-chasers, inevitably they were called; and if Gunn couldn't
claim their job was as important as the one he'd done for forty
years in and out of uniform, at least the Scot in him took pride
in reckoning how much they saved the taxpayers. He'd set up the
organization himself, and it served as a model for those some other
counties were building, here and in other states. He and his crew
had tracked down over two thousand runaway husbands so far,
to pry minimum child-support funds out of them anyway. Au-
thorities in other states had co-operated, of course, but it came out
even: they'd picked up deserters for other D.A.'s offices from
Maine to Oregon, too. Gunn had the exact figure whenever
Kelleher wanted it; to date it was upward of half a million dollars
this office had saved the county in support of deserted wives and
children. There'd been a time a man could walk out and it was
nobody's job to locate him, make him provide for a deserted
family. These days, no. He couldn't go across the Arizona or
Nevada line and thumb his nose at the California taxpayers.
Gunn himself hadn't had any idea what a staggering sum casual
desertions cost the state, until he saw the figures last year. And he
could have doubled the amount saved by now if he could have
another dozen men, another dozen office clerks. This was the hell
of a big town, and it attracted the hell of a lot of indigents and
transients, as well as the usual shiftless ones any city had.
But he wasn't thinking about that as he looked after Dick Mor-
gan. He stood there passing a hand over his jaw in a habitual ges-
ture, a big hefty man with a round, amiable face and thinning hair,
and for a minute he worried about Morgan. Dick had had some
rough breaks: just out of college when the war came along, and he


CASE PENDING 5
was married and had a child by the time it was over so he never
did go back to finish his law course, but like so many others went
into a big-company job. Then they lost the child, one of those un-
necessary accidents, a drunk in a car, turning down their street
just at random. That had nearly finished Sue, because she couldn't
have another. ... Sure, they put the drunk in jail for man-
slaughter, but what good did that do a six-year-old girl, or Sue
and Dick?
Dick's father had been alive then and living with them, and
Gunn used to drop in there. Hadn't done old Rob Morgan any
good either, losing his only grandchild like that. After a while
they'd put their names down with a couple of adoption agencies,
but those places were so damn finicky; they'd waited almost five
years before they got Janny-but Janny was worth it. And just
about then had come one of those squeeze-plays, a company
merger, a few new hatchet men from the front office, and Dick
was out-at thirty-seven, with nowhere to go, a mortgaged house,
and less than a thousand in the bank.
Gunn wouldn't have blamed him for feeling bitter. At the same
time, being Gunn, he wouldn't have had Dick Morgan on his
staff-old Rob, sympathy, or no-if he hadn't known Dick could
handle the job the right way. It wasn't a job that paid anything
like what Dick had been earning before, but it was a job and Dick
had seemed grateful and certainly competent and reasonably con-
tented with it.
To anyone who didn't know him, Dick's manner just now might
suggest a touch of indigestion, or a spat with his wife at breakfast,
or an unlucky bet on the ponies. But Gunn knew Morgan for a
man of abnormally equable temper, and that little nervousness and
bad color meant a lot more than it would with another man. Be-
sides, Dick and Sue never had spats; Sue wasn't that sort. And Dick
didn't bet-or drink, either. Not since eight years ago.
Gunn hoped the boy wasn't in for another piece of rough luck
somehow. Janny, maybe-some illness? Some people walked all
their lives with bad luck at their shoulders.
No good worrying about it now.
His phone rang and he stepped back into his office to answer it.


6 CASE PENDING
The voice at the other end was the heavy bass of Captain Bill
Andrews. "Say, Ken, among your little brood of wives you
wouldn't have one Sylvia Dalton, would you?”
“Don't think so. Why?" Gunn riffled through the current file
before him.
"Well, it was just a thought. Maybe you noticed by the papers
that New York sort of misplaced Ray Dalton the other day. He
was up on a three-to-five and got himself paroled, but he never did
report in to his officer. New York thinks now—the usual informa-
tion received-he lit out west, specifically to these parts, and'll be
obliged if we can return the goods undamaged. Thing is, the party
that said he headed west also said it was to see his wife. I came up
with the bright thought that wives of crooks don't usually like
to work very regular, and maybe this one was accepting our
hospitality.”
"Not unless she's doing it under another name. It's a thought,
all right.”
"Yeah. You might just check for initials. I can give you a make
on her."
"I've got nothing else to do but your work,” said Gunn. “I don't
know every one of our customers personally, you know. Sure
somebody sees 'em all, but I've got eleven men on duty. Yes, sure,
I'll check with them. Send over the make. Don't I remember Dal-
ton? It rings a bell—”
"It ought to. The Carney job, five-six years back. Cameron and
Healey were on it-liquor store knocked over and two men shot,
proprietor and a clerk. We couldn't tie Dalton to it tight enough,
but he was in on it. I guess at that we made him nervous enough to
run back east, and New York put the arm on him for another job.”
"I remember," said Gunn. He leaned back in his chair and re-
garded the ceiling. For a minute, with the familiar shoptalk, he
almost had the illusion he was back at headquarters in a real job,
not this makeweight piddling business, and under Kelleher too ...
but, damn, a job worth doing. “It's worth a try," he said. “Any
kids?”
“One, a boy about twelve-thirteen.”
“O.K.," said Gunn. “I'll have a look, might come up with some-
thing."


CASE PENDING 7
MORGAN DROVE SLOWLY DOWN MAIN STREET, NOT CURSING AT THE
traffic; he handled the car automatically, stopping for pedestrians,
for red lights.
Mrs. Williams lived on a run-down street among those that
twisted and came to dreary dead ends the other side of Main. He
would surprise Mr. and Mrs. Williams together and deliver a little
lecture on the dangers of conspiracy to defraud. Maybe it wasn't
so stupid of them to pull the shabby little trick, the commonest
one in the list, with scarcely any attempt at secrecy; until the
formation of this new department, God knew how many people
had got away with it for years.
The problem created, Morgan thought as he had before, went
beyond the Williamses or any individual-or the amount of public
money. In essence, a social problem, and not a new one. If it
wasn't money from this county office, it'd be money from another:
people like the Williamses didn't give a damn. Williams, letting
himself be branded a wife- and child-deserter, getting a job and a
cheap room somewhere out of town, sneaking back for week-ends
with his family, all to cheat sixty-three-fifty a month out of the
county-on top of the three hundred or more he could earn as a
skilled workman.
At a bar last night with his wife until midnight. Last thing they'd
worry about was leaving the kids alone: four kids, the oldest
eleven. It was a shabby, cheap neighborhood, almost a slum, though
there were worse streets. People like the Williamses didn't care
where or how they lived: often they had more money than others
who lived better, but their money went on ephemeral things-on
flashy cars and clothes and liquor.
Morgan was driving a six-year-old Ford. He wouldn't be sur-
prised to find that Williams' car was a new model, and something
more expensive.
But all that was on the surface of his mind; he couldn't, for
once, be less concerned. Deeper inside a voice was screaming at
him soundlessly, What the hell are you going to do? Ten thousand
bucks. Ten thousand. . . . All right, so he knew what he ought
to do: Richard Alden Morgan, law-abiding citizen, who'd always
accepted responsibilities and stood on his own two feet, and where
had it got him? So it was just the breaks: everybody had bad luck.


8
CASE PENDING
But, God damn it, so much bad ... And a damn funny thing
to think maybe, but if he could blame himself (or anybody), some
concrete way, reason he'd just brought it on himself, he wouldn't
feel so bitter. Nothing like that with Dick Morgan, he thought in
savage sarcasm: respectable, righteous Morgan who paid his bills
and lived within his income, Morgan the faithful, considerate hus-
band and father-how did the old song go, everything he should
do and nothing that he oughtnit-O-and got kicked in the teeth
all the same. You could say “the breaks,” but it damn well wasn't
fair that Sue should be dragged under with him-Sue hadn't done
anything, neither of them had done anything to deserve-
Janny hadn't done anything. Except get born.
He coasted gently to the curb two doors from the apartment
house where the Williamses lived, and sat for a minute, getting
out the watchers' report, rereading it but not really taking it in.
Parked smack in front of the apartment was a year-old Buick, a
two-tone hardtop. That'd be Williams, sure; Henry had taken
down the license.
All right, so he knew what he ought to do. Go to the police,
tell the story. Honest citizen. Sure. The police would take care
of the man with the pock-marked face and dirty nails and cold
gray eyes and the rasping voice that said Ten thousand bucks, see.
And would that be the end of it? Like hell it would. The juvenile
court would have something to say then, miles of red tape to un-
wind, and in the end they'd lose Janny anyway-he knew how
those things went, how judges figured, how the cumbersome,
impersonal law read. It was all the fault of the damned pompous
law to start with: the silly God-damned inhumanly logical rules
of the accredited agencies.
Suddenly his control broke one moment and he pounded his
fist on the steering wheel in blind, impotent fury. Not fair, after
everything else—the panic in Sue's eyes, the panic he heard in his
own voice telling her-ten thousand-what the hell could he do?
The police. The money. No choice for him even here, it had to
be the police; he couldn't raise money like that.
You had to be logical about it. Juvenile hall, a state foster home,
an orphanage, still better than anywhere with that pock-marked
hood, the kind of woman he'd-


CASE PENDING 9
Ten thousand. The car wouldn't bring five hundred. They still
owed four thousand on the house, a second mortgage wouldn't-
Sue's engagement ring, the little odds and ends of jewelry they had,
maybe another five hundred if they were lucky.
He'd sat still to be kicked in the teeth for the last time. If he could
get from under this by forgetting every righteous standard he had-
But it wasn't so easy, it never was. So, go and rob a bank, hold up
a liquor store, sure, get the ten thousand. It wouldn't cancel out:
the threat would be just as potent, and in a month, six months, a
year, there'd be another demand.
He straightened up after a while and took a couple of long
breaths. It wasn't any good agonizing round and round in the
same circle, they'd gone over all this a hundred times last night.
He'd just have to play it by ear. Meanwhile he had a day's work
to do-conscientious, methodical Morgan, he thought tiredly.
He got out of the car, slipping the ignition key in his pocket.
See the Williamses and try to put the fear of God into them. The
county wouldn't prosecute this time, on a first offense involving
a relatively small amount: the courts were working overtime as it
was. Morgan looked up Commerce Street to the corner of Hum-
boldt, where something seemed to be going on-he could see the
tail end of a black-and-white police car, its roof light flashing,
and the fat Italian grocer had come out of his corner shop with
a few early customers. Whatever it was, a drunk or a fight or an
accident, it was round the corner on Humboldt.
He started up the worn steps of the apartment. After he'd dealt
with the Williamses he might as well drop in on Mrs. Kling, and
that new one was somewhere around here too, if he remembered
the address-he got out his case-notebook to look. Yes, Mrs.
Marion Lindstrom, 273 Graham Court.


Two
THERE WERE WORSE STREETS THAN COMMERCE, BUT IT WASN'T A
neighborhood where anyone would choose to live, except those
who didn't think or care much about their surroundings, or those
who couldn't afford anything better. Ironically, only a few blocks
away rose the clean modern forest of civic buildings, shining with
glass and newness and surrounded by neat squares of asphalt-
paved parking lots. Like many cities, this one sprouted its civic
and business center in its oldest section, inevitably bordered with
slums. It might look easy to change matters with the power of
condemnation, the expenditure of public money, but it wouldn't
work out that way if the city fathers tried it. There'd grow up
other such streets elsewhere if not here; there were always the
people who did not care, the landlords who wouldn't spend on
repairs. Every city always has its Commerce Streets.
Commerce started ten or twelve blocks up, at the big freight
yards, and dead-ended two blocks down from Humboldt. It was
a dreary length of ancient macadam lined mostly with single
houses-narrow, one-storey, ramshackle clapboard houses as old as
the century or older, and never lovingly cared for: here and there
was one with a fresh coat of paint, or a greener strip of grass in
front, or cleaner-looking curtains showing, but most were a uni-
form dun color with old paint cracked, brown devil grass high
around the front steps. About halfway down its length, the street


CASE PENDING
grew some bigger houses of two storeys, square frame houses not
much younger and no neater: most of those were rooming houses
by the signs over their porches. Interspersed with these were a
few dingy apartment buildings, a gas station or two, neighborhood
stores-a delicatessen, a family grocery; and in windows along
nearly every block were little signs-SEWING DONE CHEAP, CA-
NARIES FOR SALE, FIX-IT SHOP, HAND-TAILORING.
Agnes Browne lived behind one of the signs, that said primly,
SEAMSTRESS, in the ground floor right window of the house at the
corner of Commerce and Wade, two blocks up from Humboldt.
She worked as a waitress at a dime-store lunch counter; the sewing
added to her wages some, and anyway she liked to sew and figured
she might as well get paid for it. She didn't care much for going
out and around; it still made her kind of nervous. She couldn't
help but be afraid people were looking at her and thinking, Huh,
kind of dark even for Spanish, wonder if- When the landlady
said Browne didn't sound very Spanish, Agnes had told her it was
her married name and she was a widow. But she was kind of sorry
she'd ever started it now; it was like what the minister said for
sure, about the guilty fleeing where no man pursueth. It hadn't
been the money, she could earn as much anyway, maybe even
more, at a dozen jobs colored girls got hired for; but there were
other things besides money. Only she felt guilty at making friends
under false pretenses, and as for Joe, well, she just couldn't. Joe
was a nice boy, he had a good job at a garage, he was ambitious;
he'd asked her for a date half a dozen times, but it wouldn't be
right she should take up with him. Not without telling him. A
lot of girls would have, but Agnes didn't figure it'd be fair. All
the same, she liked Joe and it was hard.
She was thinking about it this morning as she started for work;
seemed like she couldn't think of anything else these days. She was
a little late, it was ten past eight already, and she hurried; she
could walk to work, it was only two blocks down to Main and
four more to the store.
As usual she cut across the empty lot at the corner of Humboldt.
There'd been a house on the lot once, but it had been so badly
damaged by fire a few years back that what was left of it was
pulled down. Now there was just the outline of the foundation


14
CASE PENDING
“When would you say?” he asked the surgeon.
"Oh-morning. Didn't hear you-you always move like a cat.
It's a messy one, Luis, see for yourself. Between ten and midnight,
give or take a little.” The surgeon hoisted himself up, a stoutening,
bald, middle-aged man, and brushed earth from his trouser legs.
"I'll tell you what she actually died of when I've had a better
look-strangulation or blows,my guess'd be the head blows. There
was a sizable rock_”
“Yes,” said Mendoza. He had already seen the rock, jagged,
triangular. “She was cutting across from Commerce, so she knew
these streets.” A faint track made by foot traffic, just out from the
corner of the house foundation, and the woman lay across the
track.
“Daresay," grunted the surgeon. Hackett strolled up and the
patrolmen followed, the recruit concealing reluctance. “No
identification yet but you probably will have if she's local. Either
she wasn't carrying a purse or he took it away with him.”
"Never get prints off that rock,” added Hackett to that. “You
see what I mean, Luis. First off, it looks like any mugging, for what
she had in her bag. I don't say it isn't. You take some of these
punks, they get excited-Doc'll remember the ten-dollar word for
it.” Hackett, who looked rather like a professional wrestler,
adopted the protective coloration of acting like one on occasion;
possibly, thought Mendoza amusedly, in automatic deference to
popular expectation. In fact he was-unlike Mendoza-a university
graduate: Berkeley '50. It was a theory that Mendoza did not sub-
scribe to: he had never found it helpful-or congenial-to pretend
to less intelligence than he had. “They're after the cash, but they
get a kick out of the mugging too. Horseplay."
"Yes, I know," said Mendoza. “This doesn't look like horse-
play."
"She wasn't raped," offered the surgeon.
"I can see that for myself. She's on her way home, at that time
of night-maybe from late work, from a friend's house. There's a
full moon, and she knows these streets-she doesn't think twice at
cutting across here. But something is waiting.” He sank to his
heels over the body, careful to pull up his trouser knees first, and
regarded it in silence for a long minute.


CASE PENDING
15
Before it had been a body it had been a young and pretty
woman: in fact, a very young one, under make-up lavishly applied.
The too-white powder, the heavily mascaraed lashes, the smeared
dark-red lipstick, was a mask turned to the pitiless gray sky of this
chill March day. The unfashionable shoulder-length hair, where
it wasn't stiffened with clotted blood, was bleached white-gold,
but along the temples and at the parting showed dark. “Coat pock-
ets?” he murmured.
"Handkerchief and a wool scarf,” said Hackett.
"To put over her hair in case it rained,” nodded Mendoza. “Then
she had a handbag too."
“So I figured. Dwyer and Higgins are looking around the
neighborhood.” A bag-snatcher, whether or not he was also a
murderer, seldom kept the bag long; it would be tossed away on
the run.
Her clothes were tasteless, flamboyant-tight Kelly-green
sweater with a round white angora collar, black faille skirt full-
cut and too short, sheer stockings, black patent-leather pumps with
four-inch heels, over all a long black coat with dyed rabbit round
the collar and hem. Mendoza felt the coat absently, expecting the
harshness of shoddy material: cheap, ill-cut stuff.
Two very different corpses, he reflected, this tawdry pseudo
blonde and Carol Brooks. Carol Brooks, six months ago, had been
an eminently respectable and earnest young woman, not very good
looking, and she had died in the soiled blue uniform-dress she wore
for work. Otherwise, no, the corpses weren't so different.
“Yes,” he murmured, and stood up. “He didn't intend murder,
to start with–I don't think. He hadn't any weapon but his hands.
And he didn't reach out to find one, blind, like that, and pick up
the rock-it wasn't used that way, Art. He had her down, she was
fighting him, trying to scream-he was strangling her, finding it
not quick enough-and he slams her down on the ground, hard,
just by chance on the rock. I can see it going like that. Unpremedi-
tated violence, but once it unleashes itself”-he looked down at
the body again—"insane violence.”
"Here comes Bert,” said Hackett, “with the handbag. Not that
it'll maybe take us very far.”
“That's a loaded question for the so-called expert,” said the


16 CASE PENDING
surgeon, looking interested over the flame of his lighter, “but I'll
say this, at least-he must have gone berserk for some reason.
Nobody can say sane or insane just on that evidence-unnecessary
violence. That sort of thing is apt to be vicious personal hatred, or
a couple of other quirks.”
“You're so right,” said Mendoza. “You'll make a report all em-
bellished with the technical terms, but to go on with for the
moment?"
"Her neck's broken. Excessive laceration of the throat. Half a
dozen head wounds, all but one on the back of the skull-the one
that killed her, I think, is this here, on the temple. Maybe she turned
her head in struggling and- The left shoulder is dislocated. She
was struck repeatedly in the face with a fist. You can see the
cyanosed areas, there. Her right arm is broken just below the
elbow. The whole torso has been damaged, kicked or maybe
jumped on. Fractured ribs, I think, and internal injuries. It's on
the cards some of that was done after death, but I don't know that
it'll be provable-probably a very short time after, of course.
There's some damage to the left eye, as if a finger or thumb had
been-”
“Yes. It was Dr. Bainbridge who made the autopsy on Brooks,”
said Mendoza. “You wouldn't remember. That is the one thing of
positive resemblance. Otherwise”-he flicked away the burnt match
and drew deep on his cigarette, shrugging—"any mugger after a
woman's bag, who used a little too much violence."
“So?" said the surgeon. "Ever catch that one?" Mendoza shook
his head.
"Well, here we are,” announced Hackett, who had gone to meet
Dwyer. "In plain sight in the gutter a couple of blocks away.” It
was the bag one would have predicted she would carry: a big
square patent-leather affair with a coquettisk white bow cluttering
the snap-fastener. “Ya lo creo, as we might put it, huh?"
Mendoza lifted his upper lip at it. “Before you get promotion
and cease to be my junior in rank, Arturo, you will have perfected
your vile accent. It may take years.”
Very delicately Hackett delved with two fingers into the bag's
interior and came up with a woman's wallet, bright pink plastic,
ornamented all round the border with imitation pearls. Mendoza


18
CASE PENDING
the recorded voice, a trifle rough as yet, a trifle uncertain, but the
essential quality there. However, his cold regret at missing her
murderer had nothing of sentiment in it. The reason was the rea-
son, in a wider sense, why Luis Mendoza was a lieutenant of de-
tectives, and-most of the time-regarded fondly by his superiors.
There are people who enjoy solving puzzles: he was not one of
them. But-probably, he told himself, because he was a great ego-
tist, and his vanity was outraged to be confronted with something
he did not know-once a puzzle was presented to him he could not
rest until he had ferreted out the last teasing secret. It was not often
that he was faced with a complex mystery; the world would grow
a great deal older before police detectives in everyday routine met
with such bizarre and glamorous situations as those in fiction. Por
desgracia, indeed: unfortunate: for complex problems inevitably
had fewer possible solutions.
This thing now, this was the sort of puzzle (a much more diffi-
cult sort) that Mendoza, and all police detectives, met again and
again: the shapeless crime that might have been done by anyone
in the city-mostly impersonal crime, this sort, with destiny alone
choosing the victim. The shopkeeper killed in the course of a
robbery, the woman dead at the end of attack for robbery or
rape, the casual mugging in an alley-nothing there of orderliness,
the conveniently limited list of suspects, the tricky alibis, the com-
plicated personal relationships to unravel: criminal and victim
might never have met before. Or perhaps it might be an intimate
business, a personal matter, and only arranged to look otherwise-
and if it were, so much the easier to find the truth, for one had
then only a few places to look.
But so often it was the casual, shapeless thing. And there are al-
ways, in any efficient city police force, the policemen like Luis
Mendoza, single-mindedly, even passionately concerned to bring
some order and reason, some ultimate shape, to the chaos. Not
necessarily from any social conscientiousness—Mendoza cared little
for humanity en masse, and was a complete cynic regarding the
individual. Nor from any abstract love of truth or, certainly, of
justice-for all too often the criminals he took for the law evaded
punishment, this way or that way; and Mendoza sometimes swore
and sometimes shrugged, but he did not lose any sleep over that.


CASE PENDING 19
Being a realist, he said, Lo que no se puede remediar, se ha de
aguantar-what can't be cured must be endured. Nor from ambi-
tion, to gain in rank and wages through zeal-Mendoza desired no
authority over men, as he resented authority over himself, and his
salary would not begin to maintain his wardrobe, or a few other
personal interests. Nor even solely from earnest attention to doing
one's job well.
The only reason for such men, the end goal, is the contemplation
of the solved puzzle: the beautiful completeness of the last answer
found. It is so with all these men, whatever kind of men they may
be otherwise. Having the orderly mind, they must know where
every last odd-shaped small piece belongs in the puzzle, no matter
if the picture comes out landscape or portrait or still life, so to
speak.
Mendoza, in fact, forced to file away an unanswered question-
as he had six months ago in the Brooks case-felt very much the
way an overnice housewife would feel, forced to leave dinner
dishes in the sink overnight. It worried him; it irritated him; and
in every free moment his mind slid back to the thing left undone.
He said now absently to Hackett, “Eso se sobreentiende, it's not
so good that he's been loose for six months-one like that.” With
only a few people he didn't watch his tongue, or even let it drift
into the Spanish deliberately; and that (as Hackett was fully aware)
was a mark of affection and trust.
“Oh, I don't know, Luis. One dame every six months, pretty
damn moderate, come to think.” Hackett glanced at him sideways,
“So you think it's the same joker too."
“That eye. It's a little psychological point, maybe—” Mendoza
tossed away his cigarette and paused with his hand on the shop-
door. “Or am I being too subtle? In a fight with another man,
anything goes-one of you may have an eye gouged out. But to do
that to a woman, and a woman you have already made helpless-
Well, what do we call insane? You and I have seen it, there are
men lust turns sadistic, and they're not legally insane. But I don't
think this is one of those, Art. I didn't think so with Carol Brooks.
Because of that eye business. And Bainbridge says to me, de paso,
just what Dr. Victor says now-probably much of the damage is
made after death. Only just after, but, Dije para mí, it's a wild


20 CASE PENDING
one, never mind the doubletalk of the psychiatrists. A real, hun-
dred-percent, guaranteed genuine wild one-mucho loco.”
“Hell, I said the same thing. And you know what that means,
chico-work or brains don't count in catching him. He's got no
sane reason for picking this girl or that. It'll be luck, that's all, if
we do. My God, he might not know himself what he's done, and
a hundred to one the only way we'll ever put a name to him is if he
happens to have a brain storm in front of witnesses next time.
Probably he's living quiet as you please, an ordinary guy nobody'd
look at twice, maybe going to work every day, comin' home
prompt at six to kiss his wife and look at the sports page before
dinner-goes to church every Sunday-never done a thing any-
body'd think queer. It'll just be the way the cards fall, if and when
and how soon we get him.”
"It isn't always,” said Mendoza, “the hand dealt to you, so much
as the way you play it."
“You should know. How much do you average a year in poker
winnings, anyway?”.
"Sometimes enough to buy my shirts.”
“That ain't hay for you, at what, twelve bucks a throw.... You
know something else? When we do catch up with him, he's going
to be some guy who's got the reputation of being the kindest,
mildest, sweetest-tempered hombre God ever put on earth. Every-
body who knows him'll say, Oh, John couldn't be the one, he'd
never do such a thing, officer! Want to bet?”
Mendoza laughed, abrupt and mirthless. “Don't I know it! I
only hope he doesn't have another brain storm before we catch up
to him. No one's ever accused me of being a sentimental man, ino,
por Dios!—but I don't care for his notions of how to treat women.”
He swept the Homburg off, passed a hand over the thick, Indian-
straight black hair that grew to a widow's peak, and opened the
door.


Three
THE GIRL WHO HAD FOUND THE BODY WAS NERVOUS, TOO NERVOUS.
Not a nice experience, but it had been over an hour ago, and if she
had nothing to do with it, why was she trembling and stammering
and eying the policemen as if she expected the third degree?
Mendoza was mildly curious.
She was a rather pretty girl, about twenty-seven, neat rounded
figure, modest and dowdy in a clean cotton housedress. Fine olive-
tan complexion, big brown eyes, minimum of make-up: a respect-
able girl.
"Her name was Elena Ramirez. I realize you wouldn't be likely
to recognize anyone you knew under the circumstances-so, did
you know Miss Ramirez?”.
"Oh, no, sir, I never heard of her.” She twisted her hands to-
gether and her eyes shifted away. “I'll be awful late for work, sir,
I don't know nothing—”.
Mendoza let her go. "Sergeant Hackett will drive you to your
job and explain why you're late”; and to Hackett, “Conversation-
find out what you can about her, and then see what you can pick
up where she lives. I don't think she's got anything to do with it,
but one never knows. I'll see the family. That takes us to an early
lunch, maybe-Federico's at twelve-thirty, O.K.?-we'll compare
notes."
“Está bien," said Hackett, and joined Agnes Browne outside.


24 CASE PENDING
“Then we speak Spanish.”
"Ah, you have the tongue, that's good. I thank you-pardon,
mister, the name I did not-"
“Lieutenant Mendoza."
“Mendoza.” He gave it the hard Mexican pronunciation that
was ultimately Aztec, instead of the more elegant Spanish sibi-
lance. “You are-an agent of police?"
"I am. I'll ask you first-” |
“The gentleman's good to wait and be polite." It was the oldest
girl, coming up quietly, looking at him with open curiosity; she
was pale, but had not been weeping. She was not as pretty as her
sister had been, but not bad-looking, in a buxom way. “Of course
we know you got to ask questions, but look, Papa, no sense dis-
turbing Mama with it-I guess you and me can tell him whatever
he wants. Let's go in the kitchen, if that's all right, mister?"
“It is Lieutenant, Teresa,” said Ramirez distractedly; he let her
urge him through a shabby dining room. Mendoza strolled after:
she threw him a glance over her shoulder of mixed interest, anxiety,
and a kind of mechanical female blandishment. The kitchen was
big, cold, reasonably clean. "Please to sit down, sir,if you would
accept my hospitality, a glass of wine-it's only cheap stuff,”
Ramirez was trying to pull himself together; the conventional
courtesy was automatic.
"No, no, thanks. Tell me first, I believe your daughter lived
here with you?-then you must have been worried that she didn't
come home last night? Do you know where she was?”
The girl answered from where she had perched uneasily on the
kitchen table. "Sure, we were worried. But she might've gone to
stay overnight with a girl friend, or-well, you know how it is, we
· sort of talked back 'n' forth and kept waiting for her maybe to
call one of the neighbors with a message-Mrs. Gomez next door
lets us_”
"Where had she gone and when did she leave?”
“She was-she was just out on a date. I don't know where they
were going. Ricky, he was here for Elena about seven, I guess,
and they went right after.” In answer to the query only begun, she
added hurriedly, “Ricky Wade, he's a boy Elena's-Elena had been
going with a lot. A nice boy he is, you needn't go thinking any-


CASE PENDING 25
thing about him, see. I don't know where they were going, but
they did go to the Palace rink a lot-that roller-skating place, you
know. Silly, I say, but Elena's-Elena was just a kid, she liked it.”
"She would have had nineteen years only the next month,” mur-
mured Ramirez. “It was wrong, Teresa, I said so! We should have
gone to the police at once, at once! Elena was a good girl in her
heart, she was properly brought up, never would she have done
such a thing-all the talk around and around, I should have let you
and Mama talk and gone to the police myself—"
“What would she not have done, Miss Ramirez?” asked
Mendoza.
“Oh, well, I s'pose we got to say or you'll think it's funny we
didn't seem more worried.” Her mouth tightened. “We were going
to do something about it this morning, don't know what, but-
We were awful worried, you can see that, way Papa and I both
stayed home from work-it wasn't as if Elena ever did nothing like
that before, stay away all night and not call or nothing. But-well,
we got to thinking maybe her and Ricky'd eloped-you know,
over to Las Vegas or somewhere, to get married in a hurry,”
"It is not true!" exclaimed Ramirez excitedly, jumping up. The
bathrobe fell open to reveal his spindly legs and unexpectedly gay
pink cotton underpants. "It is a wicked lie, that Elena is got in
trouble with this fellow and has to run away and marry quick!
She is a respectable girl, never would she-oh, she does this and
that Mama and I don't like, sure, but she's young, it's different
times and ways now, I know that-she's impatient, she wants the
moon like all youngsters, but never would she_”
"I never said she did, I never! But after they made up and he
came back, she sure meant to keep him, she was set on marrying
him some day, you know good as I do. All I said was, if he all of
a sudden wanted to elope, she wouldn't take the risk of losing him,
she'd say yes quick!"
“Did you disapprove of this Mr. Wade, then?” asked Mendoza
of Ramirez casually.
“Disapprove_” He moved his thin shoulders wearily. “He is
not of the faith. I don't know, if Elena wanted so bad, I– You
don't have nothing to say about it any more, anyway, fathers. The
kids, they go their own way. She wouldn't have been happy in


CASE PENDING
27
in the Spanish misled Mendoza.
"No, it wasn't,” said Teresa. “It's-it was worth the money,
Papa, and that Miss Weir's real nice, you know I seen her once,
when I met Elena uptown to shop. It's a charm school”-turning
back to Mendoza,"you know, they teach you what's right to
wear and so on. Me, I say it was O.K. for Elena to try to improve
herself, sure. Even if she had to quit her job like she did, it's a six-
week course an' every day-she could get another easy enough
after. What was silly about it, those Wades aren't all so much that
she had to feel nervous about them! Mother of God, you'd think
they were millionaires with a butler maybe like in the movies, way
she talked. He's just a bookkeeper in some office, but-you know-
they're the kind put their noses in the air at us, dirty low-class
Mexes, they say to each other, an Catholic which they don't like
so much either. Me, I don't let people like that bother me, not one
little bit. Maybe we do rent a house instead of owning one, an'
maybe our street isn't so high-class, an’ we don't have no car or
telephone or electric washing machine-maybe Papa does just
drive a delivery truck-what's that got to do with anything? We're
respectable folks, Papa's worked for Mr. Reyes all the time since
he come over, and that's nearly twenty years, and we don't owe
nobody no money like I'll bet the Wades do. I got a good job
typing for El Gente Méjico, 'n' I've saved nearly three hundred
dollars toward furniture an' so on for when Carlos and me get
married this summer-which I'll bet is more than Mrs. Wade can
say she did!” Teresa gestured contemptuously. “People like them,
let them talk! But it bothered Elena, see.”
"You have much common sense,” said Mendoza with a smile.
“I think Carlos is lucky. So nothing was said last night about where
your sister and Mr. Wade were going?” She shook her head. “But
you would certainly have expected that he'd see her home?"
“Oh, sure. I can't figure out how she came to be alone-she
must've been, for whoever-did it-to sneak up on her. You said,
the corner at Commerce an' Humboldt? She must've been on her
way home then, and from that Palace rink too, coming that way.”
“We'll find out. Mr. Ramirez, you'll have to identify the body
formally, and there'll be an inquest, of course. I'll send someone to
take you down to the morgue."


28 CASE PENDING
"Identify-that mean you're not sure it is Elena?" asked the girl
sharply.
"No, that we know. It's only a formality of the law.”
“Yes, I understand,” said Ramirez. “You're kind, we thank
you."
Mendoza took the girl's arm and led her out to the dining room.
She looked up at him alertly, half-suspicious. “Well, what now?"
"No need to upset your father more," he said easily. “Will you
give me the address of this school your sister attended, please-
how long had she been going there?”
"A-about three weeks it was, yes, just three because today's
Saturday an' she began two weeks ago last Monday. I don't know
that it was doing her much good at that, she couldn't seem”
"Miss Ramirez, you're a smart girl. You can look at things
straight, and I don't think you'll lie to me just to defend your
sister's memory. Tell me, do you think she'd have let a stranger
pick her up, as they say?"
Teresa put a hand to her cheek. “That's a hard one to answer,
mister. Right off I'd say no, an' not to, like you said, make out
Elena was better than she was. When I said we're respectable folks,
that wasn't no lie either-us girls've been raised proper, know
what's right ’n' wrong, even if maybe we don't know everything
like about which forks an' spoons. No, sir, Elena wouldn't ever
have gone with a strange fellow, way you mean, somebody whis-
tled at her on the street or offered her a ride. But it might be she
would think it was O.K. if it was somebody she'd seen around, if
you know what I mean, and he acted all right. This rink place, f'r
instance, she went there a lot, belonged to some crazy club they
got for regular customers, and if some fellow there got talking to
her and maybe offered her a ride home, if she was alone, or said
he'd walk with her, she might've thought it was O.K., if he seemed
polite and all. She-she couldn't size people up very good. I know-
I told her time an' again-she made herself look cheap, bleaching
her hair and all that make-up, but she wasn't like that really. She
was,” her face twisted suddenly—“she was just a kid. Roller-
skating ..."
"I see, thank you. Someone will come for your father-you'll
see he's ready? I'll cease to intrude for the moment then, but as


CASE PENDING 29
this and that comes up, one of us will be back to ask more
questions."
“I s'pose you got to."
"Were you very fond of your sister, Miss Ramirez?” he asked,
soft and offhand.
She was silent, and then looked up to meet his eyes. "She was
my sister. That don't say I couldn't see her faults-nobody's all
good or bad. It don't seem fair-she should die like that before she
was even nineteen, hadn't had nothing much. But it's a thing that
happens, people dying, age don't seem to have an awful lot to do
with it sometimes. Little babies, like a couple of Mama's. You got
to figure God must know what He's doing. And think about them
that's still alive."
There was in her round brown eyes all the sad, inborn, fatalistic
wisdom of the primitive tribe living close with the basic realities
of life and death.
At the door, Mendoza met the priest just arriving: round-faced,
rich-voiced, middle-aged Irishman, the self-introduction as Father
Monaghan unnecessary to guess his ancestry. “You are—? Oh, yes-
but what an incredible, tragic thing, I can hardly believe- Before
I go in, then, Lieutenant, perhaps you would tell me in more de-
tail–” And when he had heard, steady blue eyes fixed on Mendoza,
he said quietly, “God grant you find this poor wicked man soon.
If there is any way I can be of help, I know this district well,
and most of those living here, you know—”
“Yes, thank you, we'll keep it in mind.”
“You said, Lieutenant-Mendoza? At least it must be some com-
fort to them that one of their own people should be investigating,
one of their own faith who—”.
“Not for some while of that or any, Father.”
“Ah,” said the priest, “but not forever, my son, will you say
that to God. One day you will return the full circle."
Mendoza smiled, stood back to let him pass, and went out to the
porch. Adjusting his hat, he said to himself, “¡Muy improbable,
venga lo que venga,nada de eso!”
The man called Tío Tomás was leaning on the porch railing. He
showed yellow snags of teeth in a brief grin. "Nothing doing-
that's what I say to them kind too. All they're after is money. For


30
CASE PENDING
a cop maybe you got a little brains.” The grin did not change his
wary cold eyes. His skin was bad, showing relics of the smallpox.
“You will be a brother to Manuel Ramirez, I think.”
"Sure, that's right, but I don't live here, I'm just visiting. Too
bad about Elena, she was a nice kid.”
Mendoza looked him over thoughtfully. "I'll hear your per-
manent address.”
"I live in Calexico, I got a business there, I didn't have nothing
to do withế”
"Indeed?” said Mendoza; small satisfaction warmed him for
something, however irrelevant and minor, to take hold of. The
most respectable families had black sheep, and this was one of
them, that he could see with half an eye. “You're a Mexican
national, not a citizen? I'll see your entry permit.” The man
brought it out promptly; it was in order. “Exporter. What do you
export?"
"I got a silversmithy,” said Ramirez. “Nothing big, you know,
just a man and four girls-jewelry. You know how the tourists go
for native stuff, and here too. I make a better profit on it up here
even with the duty, you can mark it up higher. I'm just up on a
little business trip.”
“With success?” asked Mendoza genially.
“Oh-sure, sure. Got to get back, though, the business don't run
itself.” His eyes shifted. "Say, I won't have to stay, just account
this thing about Elena? I didn't have nothing to do with, I mean,
it was some crazy fellow killed her, wasn't it,"
"It would be as well if you stay for the inquest,” said Mendoza,
gave him a last smiling inspection and went unhurriedly down the
walk to his car; he felt the man's eyes on him. He drove back to
Commerce and caught Higgins and Dwyer comparing notes before
leaving for headquarters. No one in the block had heard anything
unusual last night.
He had not expected much from that. He sent Dwyer with the
headquarters car over to Liggitt Street, to keep an eye on Tomás
Ramirez. “Maybe a waste of time. Maybe something for us, but
not connected with the murder. He's been in trouble, I think he's
been inside, anyway he doesn't like cops-not too close. Exporter,
his papers say. He might be just that, indeed.”


CASE PENDING 31
Dwyer said, “Marijuana-or the big H. Sure, he might. And how
about this, Lieutenant-the girl finds it out and either says she'll
turn him in or wants a cut, so he—"
“Whatever he is or isn't, he's small time. I don't think so, but
of course it's a possibility we'll have to check. Stay on him, I'll
send a man to relieve you.” He took Higgins back to headquarters
to pick up another car and ferry the father down to the morgue.
Himself, instead of returning to his office where he should be
attending to other matters, he set off to see the Wades. There
should be just time before lunch. It was a very routine errand,
something for Hackett or even one of Hackett's underlings, and
not until he was halfway there did Mendoza realize clearly why
he felt it important to see to it himself, why he had gone to the
Ramirez house. The sooner all this personal matter was cleared
out of the way, proved to be extraneous, the better. And he must
satisfy himself doubly that it was irrelevant, because it was always
dangerous to proceed on a preconceived idea. He had been seized
by the conviction, looking at the body, that this girl had been
killed by the killer of Carol Brooks—but it was little more than a
hunch, an irrationality backed by very slender evidence.
Carol Brooks, three miles away over in East L.A.-maybe a
bigger loss than this girl had been. A young, earnest, ambitious
girl, who had earned her living as a hotel chambermaid and spent
her money not on clothes but voice lessons with an expensive
trainer of high repute, too, who thought a good deal of her, was
giving her a cut price. He had said she needed constant encourage-
ment, because she didn't believe a black girl could get very far,
unless she was really the very best, and she'd never be that good.
Maybe she would have been; no one would ever know, now.
Nothing very much to support his conviction, on the surface
evidence. And he must guard against holding it blind, if other
evidence pointed another way. As it would-as it did. Nobody
lived long without giving at least a few people reasons for dislike,
sometimes reasons for murder. They might turn up several here.
And that was the easy way to look for a murderer, among only a
few, the immediate surroundings and routines of the girl who'd
been killed.
If he was right, they'd need to spread a wider net. For someone


32 CASE PENDING
quite outside, someone without logical motive. Someone, some-
where among the five million people in this teeming metropolitan
place sprawling in all directions-someone who was dangerous a
hundred times over because the danger from him was secret, un-
suspected.
This time Mendoza would like to get that one. Because he had
missed him six months ago, another girl was in a cold-storage tray
at the city morgue now.


Four
THEY MET FOR A NOT-TOO-LEISURED LUNCH AT FEDERICO's, OUT ON
North Broadway. Hackett left him to mull over what meager in-
formation they had; his own next stop was obviously the skating
rink. The waiter whisked away the relics of the meal, apologeti-
cally; they never hurried you at Federico's, you could sit as long
as you pleased. “More coffee, sir?”
"Please.” Mendoza brooded over his refilled cup; he should go
back to his office and occupy himself at being a lieutenant; there
were other cases on hand than this.
The girl who had found the body, nothing there immediately:
nothing known against her, but little emerged of her background
either. It was a very long chance that she had anything to do with
it, but of course she had to be investigated. As did every aspect of
the Ramirez girl's life. And after that, where to look?
He drank black coffee and dwelt for a moment on Mrs. Elvira
Wade. In her appallingly cluttered, tasteless, middle-class-and-
proud-of-it living room: a God-fearing upright citizen, Mrs.
Wade, who had spread a little too much in the waist and hips, not
at all in the mind.
“Of course we didn't like it, to say the least-a Mexican girl-
and such a girl, all that cheap-looking bleached hair and perfectly
dreadful clothes, but of course they're always so fond of garish
colors, you know. And then of course there was the religious ques-


CASE PENDING 35
iated-quite possibly she might have let a stranger pick her up, a
thing she wouldn't ordinarily do. Someone at the rink?
He wondered what Hackett would find out there. He paid the
bill, redeemed the Ferrari from the lot attendant, and instead of
turning back downtown for headquarters, negotiated his way
through the bottleneck round the Union Station and turned up
Sunset Boulevard. It had begun to rain steadily, after long threat.
The address Teresa had given him was close into town, along
the less glamorous stretches of that street. It proved to be the upper
half of a small office building, not new. A narrow door and a steep
stair brought him to a landing and a sign: THE SUNSET SCHOOL OF
CHARM. A mousy girl with a flat figure and harlequin glasses was
scrabbling among papers at the receptionist's desk.
“Miss Weir?”
“Oh, dear me, no.” She moved the glasses up to focus on him
better. "No classes on Saturday, sir, and we don't enroll gentlemen
anyway."
“Which is not what I am here for,” said Mendoza, annoyed at
the implication. “I want to see Miss Weir on private business.”
“Not here on Saturdays. ... Of course I have her home ad-
dress, but I don't know-oh, well, I suppose it's all right.”
New directions took him, tediously, several miles into Holly-
wood, to a street of solidly middle-aged apartment buildings, a
little shabby, thirty years away from being fashionable addresses,
but neatly kept up. The row of locked mailboxes in the foyer of
the Blanchard Arms informed him that Miss Alison Weir lived
on the fourth floor. A hand-lettered placard further informed him
that the elevator was out of order. Mendoza said mildly, “Damn,"
toiled up three flights of dark, dusty-carpeted stairs, pressed the
bell of 406 and, regaining his breath, hoped his quarry was in.
When the door opened to him, he was gratified for more rea-
sons than one. Miss Alison Weir was worth the drive through
traffic, worth a wasted afternoon. A middling tall young woman,
with an admirably rounded yet slender figure, less conventionally
pretty than charmingly provocative-rather square chin, a nose
too small, a mouth too large, alert gray-green-hazel eyes under
feathery brows, a magnificent matt-white complexion, and crisply
cut and curled hair somewhere between copper and auburn, which


36 CASE PENDING
was moreover nature's own choice for her. Her tailored dress
was exactly the color of her hair, there were discreet gleams of
topaz costume jewelry, her lipstick and nail polish were of the
same burnt-orange shade. Twenty-nine, thirty, he said to him-
self: recovered, thank God, from the arch uncertainty of girl-
hood, and miraculously not bent on maintaining it: one might
even suspect that great rarity in a woman, a sense of humor.
“Yes?” And her voice matched the rest of her, a warm con-
tralto.
As he produced his credentials, explained, he swore mentally
at the destiny which involved the woman in a case. It was not
a good idea to mix personal matters with the job, and he was
scrupulous about it. Until this woman was proved definitely to be
clear of any connection with the case-he would be extremely sur-
prised if she had, but it had to be checked, of course—strictly
business, Luis, he said to himself regretfully.
“Good lord!” she exclaimed. “Well, come in, Lieutenant-
you're lucky to catch me, I've just got in myself.”
“Then you're excellent advertisement for your business. Any
woman who can come in out of a rainstorm looking so charming-"
It was the usual apartment of this vintage, but the personal touches
were firmly individual: a good many books in cheap low cases
against the wall, a row of framed pen sketches above them, a
coffee table with Chinese teak underpinning topped with a large
Benares brass tray, in serene indifference to incongruity with the
rest of the furniture, and an enormous aerial photograph of a
suspension bridge over the simulated hearth. He sat down facing
that, at her gesture, on the sofa, and disposed his hat and coat
beside him.
"I shouldn't give myself away,” she smiled, “but I came in look-
ing like a drowned rat, I'm afraid. I'd be in a hot bath now if
Marge hadn't called to warn me that a mysterious sinister-looking
stranger—"
"That one's not such a good advertisement,” he grinned.
“But I can't keep books. What's all this about the Ramirez girl?
Cigarettes in that box, by the way-and don't you usually hunt
in couples?”
“I've got no business hunting at all,” said Mendoza, lighting her


CASE PENDING 37
cigarette, then his. “I ought to be in my office doing this and that
about a dozen other cases. As it is, I'm tying up loose ends”-he
gestured—“you might say, on the perimeter of this business. I
don't think it was a personal business, you see-I think it was
more or less chance that the Ramirez girl was the one killed-but
we have to be sure. I don't know what I expect from you, but
you've been seeing the girl five days a week for the last couple
of weeks, and anything she said to you—any little problem she
mentioned, maybe—?"
"I see.” Alison studied her cigarette. “You're always reading
about these things in the papers-never think of its happening to
anyone you know. The poor kid . . . I don't know that I can
tell you anything."
"I'm hoping you can't,” he said frankly. “We've already run
across a couple of things in her personal life that might-just
might-have led to murder. They have to be looked into. If you
tell me something else, that's got to be investigated too. And I
don't believe anything personal is behind it, I don't want to waste
time on that."
“I see,” she said again. “One of these psychos, blowing off steam
every so often, on anyone convenient at the moment.”
“They exist. Something like that, anyway. And I don't think
this is his first, either. I'd like to find him before he, shall we say,
has the impulse again.”
“Amen to that,” she said seriously. “But how on earth do you
even start to look for a man like that? It might be anybody."
“I could give you a superior smile and say, We have our meth-
ods.” He shrugged. “There are places to start looking. The
records of any recently discharged mental patients-our own
records of similar assaults-sex offenders who might have grad-
uated to something more serious. We went through all that on
the first case.”
“And didn't come up with anything? So then what do you do?”
“Then,” said Mendoza rather savagely, "you file all the records
neatly away marked Case Pending, and you wait for it to happen
again. Of course ideas occur to you about other places to look-
but to put them into effect, I'd need about three times the number
of men I've got.” He sighed and put out his cigarette. “Of course,


38 CASE PENDING
if one like that kills a dozen people a week, and obligingly leaves
evidence to show it's all his own unaided work, the upper echelons
get excited-and I get the men. But nobody, not even a lunatic
killer, reaches the top of his career all at once-there's a build-up."
"Everyone has to start small?” She smiled briefly. “I see what
you mean. Well, I don't think I can add anything to what you've
probably got from her family and so on, but fire away-what do
you want to know?”
"Did you have much to do with the girl personally? You teach
classes, or whatever they're called, yourself?”.
"Oh, lord, yes, I'm all there is. It may sound like a racket, Lieu-
tenant, and maybe it is in some cases, but I think I offer them
something, you know.” She leaned to the table to put out her
cigarette; her smile was wryly humorous. “The ones like this girl
-and some others who might surprise you. Natural good taste
and so on isn't standard equipment with the so-called upper classes.
I've known girls from the same sort of background as Elena
Ramirez who knew how to dress and had better instincts, as we
say, than girls from wealthy homes. Mostly I get girls who are
serious about improving themselves, but what they want to know,
all I try to get over to them, is pretty simple. The very basic
things about clothes and make-up and manners. You wouldn't
believe what some of them look like when they come-".
“But I would,” said Mendoza sadly. "I've seen them in the
street, for my sins. Generally in those things mistakenly called
toreador pants.”
She threw back her head and laughed, and he admired the clean
white line of her throat. “Oh, my lord, I know!"
"I have no moral objection whatever, you understand-in fact
it's enough to turn a man celibate for life—it's the aesthetic view I
object to."
"And how right you are, with most of them. Well, as you
might say yourself, ¿A qué viene eso? What_”
“You speak Spanish, Miss Weir?”
"By accident. I was born in Durango-my father was a structural
engineer and worked in Mexico a good deal. That”-she nodded
at the big photograph—"is his last piece of work. Funny sort of
décor for a living room, I suppose I'm sentimental about it-he
-
-
- -- -
-


CASE · PENDING PENDING
39
was very proud of it.” She lit another cigarette. “In a sort of
roundabout way, that's how I got into this business. You see, I'm
a painter–or shall we say I hope I am—and that doesn't bring in
much of a living unless you're really good-or at least known. Dad
didn't leave me much, and I have to earn a living some way. What
with moving around the way we did for his work, I got a rather
sketchy education, and then like a fool I quit high school to get
married-which turned out a mistake in more ways than one-
and, well, I thought I'd try this, and it's worked out surprisingly
well. Leaves me a fair amount of time for my own work, and at
the same time I really enjoy it, you know. Not to bore you—”.
“But how could you indeed?”
"And this isn't getting to what you want to know, anyway. It's
a fairly small group, I never take more than twenty-five in a class
and it's usually around twenty girls. I try to keep it on a more or
less personal basis, you see. The course is six weeks, five days a
week, but some of that time is spent on group reading and some
on-private counseling, to give it a fancy name. Generally, I'll
see each girl privately, oh, say a total of two hours or so a week.
So you see, while I knew the girl, you can't say I knew her
intimately."
“But you're no fool at sizing up people,” he said placidly, lean-
ing back, arms folded behind his head. “And the girl poured out
her problems into your sympathetic ear?”
"That she did. You probably know about that-the superior
boy friend and his family's objections. She was rather a pathetic
little thing, really-awfully earnest, but,” She paused for a word.
“The first one comes to your mind about her,” he prompted
softly.
“Stupid,” said Alison unhesitatingly. “She was stupid. She had
no imagination, subtleties of any sort just didn't penetrate-you
know the type. Oddly enough, her older sister is quite intelligent-
I met them in town one day,”
“Yes, that girl has brains.”
"Elena was honest, and-though she didn't look it-quite a
respectable girl, in the old-fashioned sense. Immature for her age.
But stupid.”
"Immature and honest,” he murmured. A little something there.


40 CASE PENDING
The man Tomás, if there was anything in that, this girl would
probably have been too stupid to discover it. If anyone in that
household had seen something suspicious about the visiting uncle,
it would not have been Elena, but the sharp-eyed Teresa. “That's
no surprise,” he said, half to himself. “Even dead, she was-un-
subtle. I haven't met the boy yet-judging by Mrs. Wade, I'd say
that his persistence was less attraction to Elena than rebellion
against his mother."
"Like that?” She looked amused, and then sobered. “But that's
another thing that happens, Lieutenant-the old, old story. I've
never laid eyes on him either, don't know what kind of a boy he
is, but,"
“Oh, yes, that's the first thing one thinks of here-if it was a
private killing, so to speak. If she was pregnant, if she could make
trouble for him, if he lost his head- It's happened. It'll happen
again. We'll find out if it happened here."
"And how easy,” she said, "to talk about it like a-crossword
puzzle. After all, she's dead. Nineteen . . . She had a private
session with me yesterday. She said she'd decided to stop bleach-
ing her hair_” Alison stopped abruptly and looked up at him.
“I have thought of something, but it doesn't sound like much-"
"I'll tell you whether it does when I've heard it, Miss Weir-
or is it Mrs.?”
"I got my own name back after the divorce,” she said absently.
“It was only a year. And aren't you the autocratic male. Well, for
what it's worth, Elena asked me yesterday what to do about ‘a guy
annoys you'-that's how she put it-she said he 'sort of' followed
her and stared at her.”
"¡No me diga!” He sat up. “Don't tell me! That might be it,
you know. Tell me every last little word she said about it!”
“But there wasn't anything, really! I'm afraid I didn't take it as
very important. You mean it might have been—?"
"It might have been. There aren't any rules for lunatics-or
part-time lunatics-but even lunatics don't often kill utter
strangers without some reason. Nor what you or I'd call a logical
reason, but a reason. I'm not even at the point of guessing about that
here, but it's probable that at least he'd seen the girl before-con-
sequently she may have noticed him. Let's have it-all of it!"


CASE PENDING 41
Alison looked stricken. “You'll want to murder me, Lieutenant-
I didn't give her a chance to say much about it. In fact, I used it
as an excuse to give her a neat little lecture on Making Oneself Con-
spicuous. She said-let me think!—Miss Weir, what should you
do about a guy annoys you?' and I asked, Annoys you how? That
was when she said he 'sort of followed' her and stared at her. And
as I say, I seized the opportunity to point out that sometimes a
girl seems to invite such attentions by making herself look cheap-
and so on and so on-” Her voice died; she shut her eyes and
pressed both hands to her cheeks, trying to remember. “There
wasn't anything else-she said she understood about that, and that
was when she told me she'd decided to stop bleaching-we talked
about different things, you know, one thing leading to another,"
“That you needn't tell me! Women, they never keep to the
subject!”
“But there was something else, I know it. Yes—” She straight-
ened. “Just as she got up to leave, she said, “But it's not exactly like
that, Miss Weir, like he was trying pick me up or nothing like
that. It's just-funny. Awful funny.' And I said something like,
Well, just be sure you're not encouraging him, and that was that
-she left, her consultation time was up."
“God favor me with patience!” said Mendoza violently. “And
they say women are curious and fond of gossip! This girl tells
you some strange man is annoying her, and you talk about hair
dye and never ask one question? She says there's something 'funny'
about him, and you—"
“How should I know it was anything important? If I'd-no, but
listen, Lieutenant-she didn't say it as if she thought it was im-
portant, anything to be worried about! You see? If there'd really
been anything very queer about him, to frighten her_” Her voice
dropped.
“Yes, you've remembered that she was a stupid girl,” he said
sardonically. “And how did she mean that 'funny?”
"Extraño, like that-she said, 'It's just funny' or 'He's just
funny,' and then she said it in Spanish, as if the English word didn't
quite express what she meant. Es un muchacho extraño."
"I will be damned,” said Mendoza. "Something at last, maybe.
‘A queer boy.'” He looked at her in cold exasperation. “And you


42
CASE PENDING
didn't ask so much as where and when she saw him, what he looked
like?”
“There's a saying about hindsight,” retorted Alison, but meekly.
“Would you have?”
“No, but then I'm not a woman. My God, I'd have thought
you'd be a little curious! Well, it can't be helped.” He got up. "I'll
ask you to make a formal statement about this, if you will."
“Yes, of course." She went to the door with him. “Where do I
go and when?"
“Tomorrow will do.” Abruptly in better humor again, he
smiled down at her. “I'll take you down to headquarters myself,
not to expose any of my sergeants to temptation. I make it a rule
not to mix business with pleasure, but if you turn out to be ir-
relevant to business, I'll be back-con su permiso."
"Permission be damned, you mean! I do like your nerve,” said
Alison pleasantly, leaning on the open door. “When you're quite
satisfied that I didn't murder the girl-maybe because she was so
stupid-or egg your lunatic onto her, you'll condescend to find
me good enough to be seen with. Un hombre muy arbitrario, in
fact! And doesn't it occur to you that I might have a possessive
six-foot admirer hanging about to raise objections?”.
“What, to compete with me? I don't let those worry me any
day.”
“As if I needed telling. What time tomorrow?"
"In a hurry to be rid of me? One o'clock?”
“But naturally,” she said, widening her eyes at him. "I'm pant-
ing for you to get to work and absolve me of guilt, what else, with
such a reward offered? One o'clock-I'll be ready.” The small
amusement faded from her eyes then and she added, “I hope I have
helped. Good luck with it.”
"That I've had my share of for today. Until then.” Scarcely a
wasted afternoon, no-however you looked at it. He reflected
pleasurably and with anticipation on Alison Weir-a sophisti-
cated, shrewd, sensible woman (deliver him from romanticizing
and possessive young girls!) and a very lovely one-until he slid
behind the wheel and started the engine. He then removed his
mind from her firmly and thought about what she had told him.


CASE PENDING 43
HACKETT WAS WAITING FOR HIM IN HIS OFFICE; HACKETT HAD BEEN
busy, and there was quite a list of miscellaneous bits and pieces
to think about. Of greatest importance was the Ricky Wade
business. That had to be looked into: it was so obvious. Hackett
agreed with that: he would call there this evening, to catch both
the boy and the father at home: a phone call assured that they
would be, Mrs. Wade sounding surprised and uneasy (but what
have we to do with this sordid matter, her tone implied).
The proprietor of the rink had been out, but some useful in-
formation had been obtained from his two en ployees, and Hackett
was to see him at four. Two of Hackett's men were now out
chasing down the patrons definitely stated to have been in the
place last night. That was a place to be very thorough, the rink
and everybody connected with it, for the girl had almost certainly
been on her way home from there.
When Hackett left, Mendoza shoved aside everything to do
with this case, conscientiously went over all the other pending
matters under his authority. The still-unidentified corpse found in
the freight yards; Sergeant Clock hadn't come up with anything
new. The liquor-store holdup, a clerk shot; Sergeant Brice was on
a faint track there, from the usual anonymous Information Re-
ceived. The woman who'd shot her husband before witnesses:
nothing to investigate but much tiresome routine, collecting state-
ments for the District Attorney's office, in that sort of thing.
Sergeant Galeano thought he had it about tied up now. A new
memo from the captain's office, more routine: particulars of a
man New York wanted for parole violation, one Ray Dalton,
five-ten, one-eighty, age 42, Caucasian,
Mendoza swore to himself and reached for Hackett's notes
again.
The two men at the rink, Hayes and Murphy, described them-
selves as attendants. They kept the place cleaned up (Hackett's
comment: “This is news to anyone who's seen it”), one of them
was on the floor at all times during open hours, to hand out skates
and generally keep an eye on the patrons, and on occasion they
spelled Ehrlich, the owner-proprietor, at the ticket desk. Not
often, because Ehrlich didn't trust nobody much but himself with


44
CASE PENDING
money. Ehrlich's wasn't getting rich, but business was so-so: most
nights and Saturday afternoons they had maybe thirty, forty peo-
ple in. All kids, sure: teenagers; some of those were crazy about it,
maybe the ones had been too poor ever to have skates. They were
good enough kids, not punks: the kind of kids carried switch-
knives, roamed round in gangs, all that, got in trouble with the cops
-to them kind roller skating was for the birds. Sure, the kids got
noisy and rambunctious sometimes like kids do, but there wasn't
never anything real bad, knives pulled or an honest-to-God fight.
No, neither of them ever remembered an adult coming in-not to
skate. There'd been a kind of fad for it once, like that miniature
golf and ping-pong, that was when Ehrlich had opened this place,
but nowadays anybody grown-up, they'd feel like a damn fool
roller skating. Well, the chairs round the sides were for people
to sit and watch, sure, but this wasn't like an Ice Palace where
there was a show to see, for God's sake-just a bunch of kids
skating-nobody came just for that, the chairs were mostly used
by the kids themselves, resting and talking.
As for the club thing, it wasn't really a club but a kind of season-
ticket deal, see. You got a cut rate if you joined as a “regular
patron”: there weren't no meetings or nothing, all a card meant
was they'd paid three or six months in advance. All the kids with
cards didn't necessarily know each other: sometimes yes, some-
times no. A card was an automatic pass good for three nights a
week up to the date on it. What with kids sixteen and seventeen
getting maybe forty a week at some job, a lot of them had more
money than was good for them, to throw away.
Both men knew the Ramirez girl and confirmed that she had
been in last night. What with the row, they could hardly miss
her. Ehrlich had been damned mad about it too, the guy saying the
rink was a low dive and all: Ehrlich was death on liquor in the
place. This fellow barged right in, about twenty minutes to ten it
was, and pulled the kid off the floor-one that was with this girl.
Gave him hell, way the kids both looked: but not shouting,
private-like at the side of the rink, see, where it was kind of dark,
account the overhead lights were just in the middle, to light the
skating floor. The fellow took the boy out finally, maybe five
minutes later-practically dragged him, hardly give him time to


46 CASE PENDING
pulled up at the curb before the house Teresa Ramirez came out.
Scarf over her hair for the rain, shabby brown coat, folded string
shopping bag-on her way to market, probably for tonight's dinner.
(“You got to think about them that's still alive.") He lowered the
window and beckoned her.
She ducked in beside him for shelter from the rain, held the door
shut but not latched. “You found out anything yet?”
"A little. Something else I want to ask you about.”
"Well, O.K., only I got the shopping to do-but it don't matter,
I guess, if it'll help you catch this fellow.”
"I'll drive you wherever you're going. Did your sister"
“That's real nice of you, but I don't want to put you out. But
maybe you get gas allowance on the job?-excuse me, I don't mean
to sound nosy, but I guess you don't get paid much, driving such an
old car, and I wouldn't want you should go out of your way for
me”
"No trouble at all,” said Mendoza without a smile. “Tell me-and
take your time to think about it,did your sister say anything to
you recently about being annoyed by a man who followed her and
stared at her?”
“They did, sometimes,” she said, nodding. “I told her it was ac-
count of her looking so-you know and that Miss Weir at that
school said so too. But-you mean special, just lately? I can't re-
member she mentioned anything like that. . . . Wait a minute
though, she did! Only it wasn't a man like that, like you mean,
somebody whistling at her or making smart cracks. Way she
said it, it was more as if there was something sort of funny about
it. She didn't say much-just about some guy who stared at her,
got on her nerves, you know. She said she was going try find out
who he was, and get him to stop.”
Mendoza almost dropped his cigarette, suppressing an exclama-
tion. “She said that? It sounds as if he were someone local then,
someone who lives or works around here?”
“I don't know anything about that, I don't think she mentioned
any particular place she'd seen him-except-she did say, and I
guess that must've been what she meant, she thought she knew
somebody who knew this guy. A kid over on Commerce Street,
she said. . . . No, I don't know if this kid lived on Commerce


Five
MARTIN LINDSTROM PUT ON THE BLUE CORDUROY JACKET THAT WAS
getting too small for him, and buttoned it up slowly. He didn't
feel very good.
“Where you going?" she asked sharply.
“Just out awhile.” He still had fifteen cents left but that wasn't
enough to get into a movie, except the one over on Main that had
Mexican pictures, and those were never any good even if you
could talk Mexican, nothing interesting in them.
“You be back for supper, mind! I don't want you gallivanting all
over the streets alla time like these kids their mothers don't care
what they're up to. Why you got to go out, Marty? It's raining
something fierce, you better stay home.”
"I-I-got to see a guy, 's all,” he said. “One o' the guys at
school, Ma, I said I'd help him with his homework, see.”
“Oh.” Her tight mouth relaxed a little; she was proud of his
good marks at school.
It was a lie; and he didn't want to go out in the rain, but he
didn't want to stay here either; he felt bad, but he wasn't sure about
what exactly, just everything. He'd been feeling that way a long
while, all wrong but not knowing how or where, seemed like. Of
course he knew when everything had sort of started to get on
top of him like this, it was after Dad went. He wondered where
Dad was now. The funny thing was, and it was part of the bad


CASE PENDING 49
where you
not as if I like to con on charity DC,
feeling now, he ought to be feeling better about everything be-
cause of what that guy this morning said about finding Dad.
"Ma,” he said. “Ma, you think that guy will-you know-find
him, and—” He looked back at her from the door; right then, he
dimly knew himself, he was begging her for the reassurance,
Things will get like they used to be.
"I don't care if they do or not,” she said, and besides the
crossness in her voice there was the quivering fear he sensed from
her almost all the time now. "It's not right,” she whispered to her-
self, “asking a person all them questions. Just because you get
where you got to ask relief, they think they can go nosing into
ever'thing. Not as if I like to take charity-didn't ask till I had to.
Nobody in our family ever been on charity before-comes hard to
a respectable woman allus held her head up an' took nothing from
nobody. Way they act, you'd think I was doing something wrong,
ask for enough keep a roof over our heads 'n' food in our mouths.
Forty dollars a month!” She sat hunched in the rocker, thin armis
hugging her flat body. “County's got millions. Come poking
around with their questions before they let me have forty dol-
lars!”
“He only ast four-five things, Ma—".
“He ast four-five things too much! What business is it of
theirs? No, acourse, they won't find your dad, they'll never find
him.” She said that with fear, with hope, with insistence. “If your
dad was minded go off like that, he'd be real careful make it so's
nobody'd ever find him, an’-an' it's seven-eight months back he
went, too."
The boy was silent. He knew all sorts of things in the dumb,
vague way thirteen does know-hardly aware that he knew. She
made out she didn't mind Dad going off, except for the money,
but she did. She was afraid and making out she wasn't. He knew
there were things in her mind that for years she'd shut away some-
where, and now they'd got out, they were shapeless unseen 'mon-
sters crowding in on her and him both.
"Don't you stay out later than six,” she said. “Six is supper like
allus.”
Then, all of a sudden, he knew why he felt bad-why he'd been
· feeling like this all the time since. In awful clarity it came to him


50 CASE PENDING
that things never stayed the same, or even got back to what they'd
been before. However bad things were, you were safe, knowing
what a day would be like, tomorrow and next week; but it would
change so you didn't ever know, and you couldn't stop it any way.
She wanted to, and she thought she had, and now she'd found
nobody ever could. One of the invisible monsters right here with
them now was the threat and promise of change to come.
It was knowledge too big for thirteen, and he turned blindly and
ran out, and down the dark rickety stair into the rain.
The rain was cold coming down but like mostly in California
when it rained it wasn't really cold, not cold like back in Minnesota
with the snow and all. The snow was kind of nice, though-Dad
said–Dad didn't like California much-maybe he'd gone back east,
and-
He stopped, breathless, and leaned on the window of the drug-
store on the corner there, as if he was looking at the picture of the
pretty girl saying Instant Protection, but he didn't see anything in
the window. Oh, Dad! he cried in silent agony.
He'd lost Dad too, just then, and forever. It wouldn't matter if
Dad came back, things would never be like they were, ever again.
“Hi, kid,” said Danny behind him.
Marty turned, eager for companionship, for anybody to talk
to. “Hi, Danny, wh-what's new?" It came out kind of squeaky-
sounding, like a real little kid, and embarrassed him all the more
because of Danny being-well, Danny.
“Nothin' much. Say, Marty_"
Mr. Cummings had already turned on the lights in the drug-
store, the rain made it so dark-it was getting dark anyway, fast-
and Marty could see their blurred reflections in the glass of the
window. They looked funny together, him and Danny Smith, but
maybe only to anybody knew them. Because he was so big beside
Danny, he'd grown so fast just this last year-Dad said their family
always did start to grow awful young-last month when all the kids
got measured for gym in school, he'd been sixty-eight inches and
some over, and that was only four inches shorter than Dad. In the
glass there, sideways, he saw himself looking man-size, looming
alongside of Danny--but it was the other way round inside them.
Danny was like a grown-up somehow, things he knew and said and


CASE PENDING 51
did, not having to be in any special time, and always having money,
and sometimes he smoked cigarettes. It wasn't just Marty, he
guessed most of the guys around here felt the same about Danny,
and Danny sort of bossed them around, and they let him.
The figures in the window glass weren't sharp, just shapes like,
but just the way the smaller one moved you'd know it was Danny,
didn't have to really see his sharp straight nose and the way his
forehead went up Aat, not bulgy, into black hair that was wavy
like a girl's with a permanent, or his eyes that moved a lot and
were bluer than most blue eyes.
“Say, Marty, why'd you run off las' night?” Danny was ask-
ing. "At the show, alla sudden-we hadden seen it right through
yet either. You scareda your ole lady, hafta get home when she
says?”
"I didn't so sudden,” he said quickly. Danny and a lot of the
guys around here, they thought that was funny-both kinds of
funny; they sort of needled you if your mother said a certain time
and you did what she said. “I just decided to,” he said. “It wasn't
a very good pitcher anyway."
“You kiddin'? It was—"
"I seen it before,” said Marty, desperately.
Danny just looked at him. Then he said, "You been down tº see
where the murder was?”
Something moved a little, dark and uneasy, at the very bottom
of Marty's mind. “What murder?”
“Jeez, don't you know anything happens? Right down at Com-
merce an' Humboldt, you know where that house burn' down
across from the wop store. It was some girl, an' boy, was she a
mess, blood all over an' one of her eyes punched right out-who-
ever did it sure musta been mad at her-I dint get there till after
they took her away, but you could still see some o' the blood, oney
the rain—"
Marty's stomach gave a little jump. He put his right hand over
that place on the left sleeve of the blue corduroy coat, where the
mark was. It wasn't a very big spot, but it showed dark against
the light blue and it was stiff. It hadn't been there this time last
night when he put the jacket on; he'd noticed it this morning.
I got it in the theayter last night, he told himself. Of course it


52 CASE PENDING
wasn't blood. Something on the seat in there, it was.
Empty lot where a house had burned down. All of a sudden he
remembered how it had been, in the dark last night: something
tripping him, hard squarish cement something when he felt of it,
like what was left when a house was burned. A lot of grass around
it.
No, it wasn't, he said in his mind frantically, it wasn't like that,
I must remember wrong. His mind said back at him, Like you re-
membered wrong before?
Danny was going on talking but he couldn't listen. Please, oh,
please, it can't have happened again. It never did happen, nothing
happened before, you just remembered wrong is all. You can't ever
be sure in the dark, and it was night then too, of course it had to
be, it was always night when-
-When things happened. A light green shirt that time because
it was hot, it was summer, and the mark didn't come out when she
washed it, you could still see where it'd been. That wasn't blood
either, acourse it wasn't, how could it be?
He said louder than he meant to, “I–I got to go home, I better
not be late for supper," and walked away fast as he could. He
didn't want to hear any more about it, or he might remember too
much. There wasn't anything to remember, he was just making
up stories in his head to try and scare her, because he-
There were long times when he never thought about it, but
when he did, it was all right there sharp and clear, more like it
pounced at him instead of him remembering. That other night.
The first time. Wet red mark on the green shirt and her scolding-
because it was late. The big doll with the pink dress and goldy hair.
And next day people talking about–what had happened-to that
colored girl.
He was almost running now, trying to run away from the voice
in his mind, and he blundered into a man walking the other way.
The man said something and put out a hand to steady him on his
feet, but Marty pulled away and dodged round the corner into
Graham Court. He leaned on the broken-down picket fence of
the corner house and he hit it with his fist, the breath sobbing in
his throat, tears squeezing out from tight-shut eyes.
"I tole her," he said low in his throat. “I tried tell her!” It was all


CASE PENDING 55
not enough schoolin' for a decent job-you're a real smart boy,
Marty, you take after my folks, an' last thing I do I see you get
educated good, maybe even college. But you got to remember you
don't know ever'thing yet, see, an'-an' kids get mixed up in their
minds, like, that's all—”.
He whispered, “I'm not awful hungry, Ma.”
And all the while the secret was there in the room with them,
neither of them daring to look at it open: that she wouldn't see
for what it really was, that he was getting more and more afraid
of-that they had to live with somehow.
DANNY STOOD THERE BY THE DRUGSTORE AWHILE AFTER MARTY LEFT.
On top of his mind he thought, That big lummox of a Lindstrom
kid, sure a dumb one. But most of him was occupied with the job
he was on, and he felt kind of tensed-up because it was the first
time his dad had taken much notice of him, acted like he was a
person with any sense, and he wanted to do this right.
It had been a big surprise to him to feel the way he did. Asked
him last week, he'd have said it wasn't nothing to him, whatever
his dad did or said-been three and a half years since he'd laid eyes
on him, anyways—and that went other way round too, they'd
always just sort of stayed out of each other's way. Same as with
his mother, but she was just a nothing, like a handful of water,
and there was at least something to his dad. And he'd felt a new,
funny feeling when his dad said that: Kind of a sharp kid, you can
may be be some use to me.
Besides, this was different from hooking little stuff off store
counters or stripping cars at night. This was a big job.
When the man came, he spotted him right off from what his dad
had said he looked like; but he waited awhile, just went on looking
in the drugstore window. The guy stopped and stood there too,
waiting, under the store canopy. Nobody came past after him, and
when Danny walked down the block there weren't any cops
watching from alleys, nobody at all. It was all going just like his
dad had planned, but of course you had to play it smart. Danny
walked back to the drugstore; he didn't stop by the guy waiting
there, just slowed down, and he said, "He's changed his mind,
mister, he says meet him at the Paradise Bar on Second, right now."


56
CASE PENDING
The man said, “What?” sort of dumb and surprised, and then he
made as if to grab for him, but Danny slid away in the dark, into
the alley round the corner, and waited. After a minute the man
started to walk up toward Second Street, not very fast; he looked
back a couple of times, but once away from the corner lights it
was dark and Danny stayed close up against the buildings.
On Second Street there were more lights, but people on the
sidewalk, too, to hide him; he stayed farther behind, but he could
still see the guy when he turned in under the pink neon sign that
said PARADISE. So that was O.K. And no cops.
Danny turned and sauntered back to the corner; another man
stood there, looking in the window of the liquor store. “O.K.,”
said Danny. "He's in, and no cops.”
“You sure?”
“You think I can't smell a cop?”.
The man relaxed a little, grinned. “Maybe you ain't so smart as
you think, but I guess you're not so dumb neither. Chip off the
ole block like they say, huh? O.K., you go along. Now I just let
the guy stew awhile an' get real worried.” He went back to looking
in the window.
INSIDE THE BAR A JUKEBOX WAS POUNDING, AND THE BLOOD-HAMMER
in Morgan's head began to keep time with it. He went all the way
in to the last of the little booths opposite the bar, and sat down;
the waiter who came up gave him a sour look for taking a booth
instead of going to the bar, but he didn't say anything and he'd
come over promptly because Morgan was a lot better dressed than
the usual customer in here and might be drinking something be-
sides beer or wine.
Morgan asked for whiskey, but when it came he just left it
there on the table; he'd never been much of a drinker and not at
all the last eight years, since– Which was a useless gesture, maybe:
morbid.
He sat there and waited. The place wasn't crowded on a rainy
night, only ten or a dozen men at the bar. It was stuffy, too hot
after the street, and he realized he still had his coat on, slid out of
the booth to take it off, fold it beside him. The clock on one side
of the bar said half-past six, but Morgan knew he'd better keep


CASE PENDING 57
his eye off the clock-the man wanted him to sweat, and might not
show up for hours. In his mind he knew that, while all the rest of
him was tense and agonizing to get to it, have it done, the ultimate
doom arranged.
He lit a cigarette and set himself to wait, and wait, and wait
some more; and his intellect told him further (methodical, plodding
Morgan) that if he let himself go over and over this thing emo-
tionally, he'd be in just the softened-up state the bastard wanted,
at the end. So he made himself think about anything, everything
else than Sue and Janny.
The first thing he seized on to think about was that boy. Using
a youngster, for this. That was a conventional thought out of the
small neat circle of life he'd always lived in up to now: correction,
up to being on the job he held now, for that (even before his own
private nightmare) should certainly have taught him about lives
lived elsewhere and otherwise, where children weren't automati-
cally screened from the uglier realities because they were children.
It didn't occur to him that the boy was just relaying a message,
didn't know what he was mixed into: he'd seen his expression. And
there were two things about that, that turned this into something
like a real nightmare where ordinary sights and sounds made no
sense or a new monstrous kind of sense. That boy hadn't realized,
maybe, that there on the rain-swept empty corner, as he swaggered
past Morgan, the lights from the store fell unshadowed on him.
Oh, yes, the boy had known just what he was doing.
Morgan looked down at his hands on the wet, scarred table, and
as he looked they began to shake violently, so he put them in his
lap.
Quite a handsome boy. Even in that deceiving light, he had seen
the regular features, fair skin with the black hair and blue eyes all
the more emphasized for it, the thick brows going up in little
wings at the end. He knew that curve by heart, the very angle,
Janny's brows winging up at the corners of Janny's blue eyes,
Not to think about Janny, or Sue. Janny, just about now, being
tucked into bed with that ridiculous stuffed tiger Mrs. Gunn had
got her, that she was so crazy about. Warm and powdery from
her bath, buttoned into the woolly blue pajamas.
That boy had just had on jeans and a leather jacket. That boy


58
CASE PENDING
who was, who must be-
For God's sake! said his mind to him savagely.
He glanced sideways at the clock. It was twenty-five minutes to
seven.
He remembered a while ago, couldn't remember where, reading
an article on juvenile delinquents that had interested him. It was
funny, there was a clear picture in his mind of himself saying to
Sue, “The man's got something there, you know," but he couldn't
recall now who the author was, some official or a senator or what-
ever. Anyway. Often the most intelligent children, it said, those
with imagination and ability, the nonconforming minds any society
needs—but for this and that reason turned in the wrong direction
All right, yes; up to a point; some of them, the leaders. Most,
well-
Hell, maybe the man was right.
The boy-led to Janny and he mustn't think about Janny. Quick,
something else.
Another boy. Barging into him in the street there, dodging past.
Didn't know it was a boy-big as a man, as tall as Morgan himself-
until he heard the sobbing light breath, had a glimpse of him close
in the reflected street light. That was the Lindstrom boy, that one;
they lived around here, of course. Clumsy big ox of a kid, one of
those got all his growth at once, early, and wouldn't quite learn
how to handle his size for a while; and still so baby-faced, any
roundish, smooth, freckle-nosed thirteen-year-old face, that you
expected to see half a foot below where this one was. Lindstrom
was what, Danish, they grew big men mostly.
Generalizing again, he thought; you couldn't, of course. The
archetype Scandinavian wasn't a wife-deserter, but this one was.
That report wasn't made up yet either, and he had to have it ready
Monday morning for Gunn. ... Something queer there about the
Lindstroms, something that smelled wrong, hard to say what. It
could be another case of collusion to get money out of the county,
but Morgan didn't think so; he didn't think that, whatever was
behind the indefinable tension he'd sensed in that place, it came
from dishonesty. Anything so-uncomplicated-as dishonesty. The
woman was a type he knew: transplanted countrywoman, some-
times ignorant, frequently stubborn at clinging to obsolete ways


60 CASE PENDING
“Yes," said Morgan, cold and even. “I've been doing some think-
ing, but not about the money. I told you before, I haven't got that
kind of money."
The man who called himself Smith laughed, as the barman came
up, and he said, “You'll buy me a drink anyways. Whiskey."
The barman looked at Morgan, who shook his head; he'd had
just the right amount now to balance him where he was. “Don't
give me that,” said Smith when the man was gone. “You're doin' all
right. You got money to throw away once, you got it to throw
away twice.”
Money to throw •away . . . But that was perfectly logical
reasoning, thought Morgan, if you happened to look at things
that way. He looked at Smith there, a couple of feet across the
table, and he thought that in any dimension that mattered they
were so far away from each other that communication was im-
possible. He found, surprisingly, that he was intellectually inter-
ested in Smith, in what made him tick. He wondered what Smith's
real name was: he did not think the name the woman had used two
years ago, Robertson, was the real name any more than Smith.
Smith's eyes were gray: though his skin was scarred with the
marks of old acne and darkened from lack of soap and water,
it was more fair than dark. And his eyebrows curved up in
little wings toward the temples. Morgan stared at them, fascinated:
Smith had worn a hat pulled low when he'd seen him before, and
the eyebrows had been hidden. The eyebrows were, of course,
more confirmation of Smith's identity. With detached interest
Morgan thought, Might be Irish, that coloring.
“You know," he said, "you might not be in such a strong position
as you think. Your story wouldn't sound so good to a judge-not
along with mine."
“Then what're you doin' here?” asked Smith softly
And that of course was the point. Because it was a no man's land
in law, this particular thing. Anyone might look at Smith, listen to
what that upright citizen Richard Morgan had to say, and find it
incredible that any intelligent human agency could hesitate at
making a choice between. But it wasn't a matter of men-it was the
way the law read. And in curious juxtaposition to the impersonal
letter of the law, there was also the imbecilic sentimentality, the


CASE PENDING 61
mindless lip service to convention-the convention that there was
in the physical facts of parturition some magic to supersede in-
dividual human qualities. He could not take the chance, gamble
Janny's whole future, Sue's sanity maybe, on the hope that some
unknown judge might possess a little common sense. Because there
was also the fact that, as the law took a dim view of buying and
selling human beings, it didn't confine the guilt to just one end of
the transaction.
Smith knew that, without understanding it or needing to under-
stand it; but the one really vital fact Smith knew was that there
had never been a legal adoption. They had hesitated, procrasti-
nated, fearing the inevitable questions ....
“-A business proposition, that's all,” Smith was saying. “Strickly
legal.” His tone developed a little resentment, he was saying he
had a legitimate grievance. “You made a Goddamn sharp deal with
my wife, a hundred lousy bucks, an' you got away with it, she
didn't have no choice, on account she was up against it with me
away like I was, flat on my back in the hospital I was, an' the bills
runnin' up alla time-you took advantage of her not knowin' much
about business, all right! I figure it same way like a bank would,
Morgan-innerest, they call it, see?”
There was an appalling mixture of naïve satisfaction and greed
in his eyes; Morgan looked away. (Interest, just how did you fig-
ure that kind of interest? Twenty-six months of a squirming warm
armful that weighed fourteen pounds, eighteen, twenty-two, and
a triumphant twenty-nine-and-a-half?-he forgot what the latest
figure was, only remembered Sue's warm chuckle, reporting it.
Twenty-six months of sticky curious baby-fat fingers poking into
yours, into the paper you were trying to read, into what was almost
a dimple at the corner of Sue's mouth: of the funny solemn look
in the blue eyes: of ten pink toes splashing in a sudsy tub. That
would be quite a thing to figure in percentages.)
“You can raise the dough if you got to,” said Smith.
“Not ten thousand,” said Morgan flatly. “I might manage five."
And that was a deliberate lie; he couldn't raise five hundred.
"I don't go for no time-payments, Morgan.” The gray eyes were
bleak. “You heard me the first time. I give you a couple days think
about it, but don't give me no more stall now. Put up or shut up."


62 CASE PENDING
Poker, thought Morgan. Bluff?—that he'd bring it open, go to
law? You couldn't take the chance; and in this last five minutes it
had come to him that he didn't have to. There was only one way
to deal with Smith, and Morgan knew how it could be done, now:
he saw the way. He could take care of Smith once for all time,
and then they would be safe: if necessary later, he could handle
the woman easier, he remembered her as an indecisive nonentity.
There was, when you came to think of it, something to be said
for being an upright citizen with a clean record. And it would not
trouble his conscience at all. In the days he'd worn Uncle's uni-
form, he had probably killed better men, and for less reason.
There was hard suspicion now in the gray eyes; Morgan looked
away, down to his empty glass, quickly. He'd been acting too
calm, too controlled; he must make Smith believe in his capitula-
tion. He made his tone angry and afraid when he said, low, “All
right, all right-I heard you the first time! I-I guess if I cash in
those bonds-I might-but I'll get something for my money! You'll
sign a legal agreement before you touch—”.
“O.K., I don't mind that.”
“You've got to give me time, I can't raise it over Sunday—"
“Monday night.”
“No, that's not long enough—”.
"Monday,” said Smith. “That's the time you got-use it. Make
it that same corner, seven o'clock, with the cash-an' I don't take
nothing bigger than fives, see?” He slid out of the booth, stood up.
“Yes, damn you,” said Morgan wearily. Without another word
Smith turned and walked toward the door.
Morgan took out his wallet below the level of the table, got
out the one five in it, held it ready. When Smith looked back,
going out, Morgan was still sitting there motionless; but the second
Smith turned out of sight to the left, Morgan was up, quick and
quiet. He laid the five on the table and got into his coat between
there and the door; outside, he turned sharp left and hugged the
building, spotting the back he wanted half a block ahead.
Because Kenneth Gunn, who had been a police officer for forty
years and sure to God ought to know, had once said to him,
“They're a stupid bunch. Once in a long while you get a really
smart one, but they're few and far between. The majority are just


CASE PENDING 63
plain stupid-they can't or won't think far enough ahead.”
Maybe this was Smith's first venture into crookedness, but it
should qualify him for inclusion in that; Morgan hoped so. There
was a chance that the boy was posted to watch, of course; but he
had to risk that. The precautions about the meeting place, before-
hand, were to assure Smith that Morgan came alone: and satisfied
of that, Smith's mind might have gone no further.
Smith had made another mistake too, one frequently made by
men like him. They always underestimated the honest men.
It had stopped raining and turned very cold. This was the slack
hour when not many people were out, and it was easy to keep
Smith spotted, from pool to pool of reflected neon lights on the
sidewalk. If he had looked back, he'd have found it as easy to spot
Morgan; but he didn't look back. He walked fast, shoulders
hunched against the cold, round the next corner to a dark side
street.
When the trail ended twenty minutes later Morgan told himself,
almost incredulously, that his luck had turned; he was due for a
few breaks. ... He'd had a job to keep Smith in sight and still
stay far enough back, down these dark streets, and he'd lost all
sense of direction after they got off Second. But at that last corner,
stopping in shadow, watching Smith cross the narrow street ahead,
Morgan realized suddenly where they were. He was at the junc-
tion of Humboldt and Foster, a block down from Commerce; it
looked as if Humboldt ended here, where Foster ran straight across
it like the top bar on a T, but it only took a jog, started again half
a block to the left. What made the jog necessary was Graham
Court, a dreary little cul-de-sac whose mouth gaped narrowly at
him directly opposite. He'd been here before, just this morning.
And Smith was going into Graham Court.
Morgan jaywalked across Foster Street and under the lamppost
whose bulb had been smashed by kids, and into Graham Court. It
was only wide enough for foot traffic: there were three dark, dank,
big frame houses on each side, cheap rooming places, and right
across the end of the court, a four-story apartment building of
dirty yellow stucco. A dim light from one of the ground-floor
windows there showed Smith as he climbed the steps and went in.
“I will be damned,” said Morgan half-aloud. Luck turning his


Six
MENDOZA REALIZED THEY'D HAVE TO LET THE DANNY GO: IT MIGHT
not be impossible to find the Danny Elena Ramirez had known, if
it would be difficult; but more to the point, there was no way of
identifying the right Danny. What was interesting about this mat-
ter was that by implication it narrowed the locale.
He had formed some very nebulous ideas-mere ghosts of hy-
potheses-overnight, out of the evidence a second murder inevita-
bly added to the evidence from a first one; and he thought that a
restricted locale was natural, if you looked at it a certain way. At
least, it was a fifty-fifty chance, depending on just what kind of
lunatic they were hunting. If he was the kind (disregarding the
psychiatrists' hairsplitting solemn terms) whose impulse to kill
was triggered suddenly and at random, the odds were that his
victim would be someone in the area where he lived or worked:
and considering the hour, probably the former. If he was the kind
capable of planning ahead, then the place of the crime meant
nothing, or very little, for he might have cunning enough to choose
a place unconnected with him. But to balance that there was the
fact that madmen capable of sustained cunning generally chose
victims by some private logic: they were the ones appointed by
God to rid the world of prostitutes, or Russian spies, or masquer-
ading Martians. Like that. And to do so, they had to be aware of
the victims as individuals.


CASE PENDING 67
who for various reasons (not always venal) were sometimes
known by different names to different people, and who owned no
property. Landlords were not always concerned with keeping rec-
ords, and most rent was paid in cash. There were also, of course,
settled, householders, responsible people. For economic reasons or
racial reasons, or both, they lived cheek-by-jowl, crowded thick;
they came and went, and because they were of little concern to
anyone as individuals, their comings and goings went largely un-
noticed.
"If we had a name—but we'd get nothing for half a year's hunt,
not knowing what to look for. ¡Qué se le ha de hacer!-it can't be
helped! But if the general theory's right, there's a link somewhere."
"I'll go along with you,” said Hackett, “but I'll tell you, I think
we'll get it as corroborative evidence after we've caught up with
him by another route. Somebody'll see a newspaper cut, and come
in to tell us that our John Smith is also Henry Brown who used
to live on Tappan Street. We can't get at it from this end, there's
damn-all to go on.”
“I agree with you-though there's such a thing as luck. How-
ever!” Mendoza shoved the map aside. “What did you get out of
the Wades?”
“Something to please you.” Circumstantially, the Wades were
counted out. Ehrlich and his two attendants at the rink had seen
father and son leave, and agreed on the time as "around ten to
ten.” The girl had been a good ten or twelve minutes after them.
By the narrowest reckoning it was a twenty-minute drive to the
Wades' home, probably nearer thirty, and a neighbor had hap-
pened to be present in the house on their arrival, an outside witness
who was positive of the time as ten twenty-five. There hadn't been
time, even if you granted they'd done it together, which was ab-
surd. . . . The Wades, pater and mater familias, might be snobs,
with the usual false and confused values of snobs (though much of
their social objection to the Ramirez girl was understandable:
Mendoza, supposing he were ever sufficiently rash or unwary to
acquire a wife and family, would probably feel much the same
himself). But it could not be seriously conjectured that a respect-
able middle-aged bookkeeper had done murder (and such a mur-
der) to avoid acquiring a daughter-in-law addicted to double


CASE PENDING 69
He brooded over the map another minute when Hackett had
gone, and penciled in a line connecting the two circles. He
shrugged and said to himself, Maybe, maybe-folded the map
away, got his hat and coat and went out.
Downstairs, as he paused to adjust the gray Homburg, a couple
of reporters cornered him; they asked a few desultory questions
about the Ramirez girl, but their real interest was in Sergeant
Galeano's husband-killer, who was of a socially prominent clan.
The more sensational of the evening papers had put Elena Ramirez
on the front page, but it wasn't a good carry-over story-they
couldn't make much out of a Hartners' stock-room girl, and the
boy friend wasn't very colorful either. The conservative papers
had played it down, an ordinary back-street mugging, and by
tomorrow the others would relegate it to the middle pages. They
had the socialite, and the freight yard corpse, besides a couple of
visiting dignitaries and the Russians; and a two-bit mugging in the
Commerce Street area, that just happened to turn into a murder,
was nothing very new or remarkable.
Maneuvering the Ferrari out into Main Street, Mendoza thought
that was a point of view, all right: almost any way you looked at
it, it was an unimportant, uninteresting kill. No glamor, no com-
plexity, nothing to attract either the sensationalists or the detective-
fiction fans. In fact, the kind of murder that happened most fre-
quently. ... The press had made no connection between Elena
Ramirez and Carol Brooks. No, they weren't interested; but if the
cosmic powers had stacked the deck this time, and that one stayed
free to kill again, and again, eventually some day he would achieve
the scare headlines, and then-de veras, es lo de siempre, Mendoza
reflected sardonically, the mixture as before: our stupid, blunder-
ing police!
ONCE OFF THE MAIN STREETS HERE, AWAY FROM THE BLINDING GLEAM
of the used-car lots, the screamer ads plastered along store-fronts,
these were quiet residential streets, middle-class, unremarkable.
Most of the houses neatly maintained, if shabby: most with care-
fully kept flower plots in front. Along the quiet Sunday sidewalks,
dressed-up children on the way to Sunday school, others not so
dressed up running and shouting at play-householders working in


70 CASE PENDING
front gardens this clear morning after the rain. This was all
Oriental along here, largely Japanese. When he stopped at an in-
tersection a pair of high-school-age girls crossed in front of him,
“But honestly it isn't fair, ten whole pages of English Lit, even if
it is on the week end! She's a real fiend for homework_” One had
a ponytail, one an Italian cut; their basic uniform of flat shell
pumps, billowy cotton skirts and cardigans, differed only in color.
At the next corner he turned into Tappan Street; this wasn't the
start of it, but the relevant length for him, this side of Washington
Boulevard. He drove slow and idle, as if he'd all the time in the
world to waste, wasn't exactly sure where he was heading: and of
course he wasn't, essentially. It was a long street and it took him
through a variety of backgrounds.
Past rows of frame and stucco houses, lower-middle-class-re-
spectable houses, where the people on the street were Oriental, and
then brown and black; there, late-model cars sat in most driveways
and the people were mostly dressed up for Sunday. Past bigger,
older, shabbier houses with Board-and-Room signs, rank brown
grass in patches, and broken sidewalks: dreary courts of semi-
detached single-story rental units, stucco boxes scabrous for need
of paint: black and brown kids in shabbier, even ragged clothes,
more raucous in street play. A lot of all that, block after block.
Past an intersection where a main street crossed and a Catholic
church, a liquor store, a chiropractor's office and a gas station
shared the corners. Past the same kind of old, shoddy houses and
courts, for many more blocks, but here the people on the street
white. Then a corner which marked some long-ago termination
of the street: where it continued, across, there were no longer tall
old camphorwoods lining it; the parking was bare. The houses
were a little newer, a little cleaner: they gave way to solid blocks
of smallish apartment buildings, and all this again was settled
middle-class, and again the faces in the street black and brown.
At the next intersection, he caught the light and sat waiting for
it, staring absently at the wooden bench beside the bus-stop sign
on the near left corner. Its back bore a faded admonition to Rely
on J. Atwood and Son, Morticians, for a Dignified Funeral. There,
that night, Carol Brooks had got off the bus on her way home
from work, and some time later started down Tappan Street. She


72 CASE PENDING
Demarest. I wondered if you still lived here.”
“Why, where else would I be?” She was a tall, slim, straight-
backed woman, and had once perhaps been beautiful: the bones of
beauty were still there, in her smooth high forehead, delicate regu-
lar features, small mouth. Her skin was the color of well-creamed
coffee. She was neat, even almost smart, in tailored navy-blue dress
and coat, small gold earrings. She might be seventy, she might be
older, but age had touched her lightly; her voice was firm, her eyes
intelligent. “It's Mr. Mendoza,” she said. “Or I should say 'Lieu-
tenant.' You know, if I was a superstitious woman, Lieutenant, I'd
say there's more in it than meets the eye, you turning up. Did you
want to see me about something?”.
"I don't know. There's been another,” he said abruptly. “I think
the same one."
“Another colored girl?” she asked calmly.
“No. And miles away, over on Commerce Street."
“That one,” she said, nodding. “I think you'd best come in, and
I'll tell you. It's nothing much, though it's queer-but it's some-
thing you didn't hear about before, you see. At first I thought I
might write you a letter about it, and then I said to myself”, they
were halfway up the walk to the house, and he'd taken the brown-
paper bag of groceries from her—“I thought, it's not important, I'd
best not trouble you. But as you're here, you might as well hear
about it.” She had been away from Bermuda half her life, but her
tongue still carried the flavor, the broad A's, the interchange of
V's and W's, the clipped British vowels. She unlocked the front
door and they went into the living-room he remembered, furniture
old but originally good and well cared for. “If you'll just fetch
that right back to the kitchen, Lieutenant-you'll have a cup of
coffee with me, we might as well be comfortable and it's always
hot on the back of the stove. Sit down, I'll just tend to the Duke
here and then be with you.”
The cat surveying him with cold curiosity from the hallway
door was a large black neutered tom; he established himself on the
kitchen chair opposite Mendoza and continued to stare. "I didn't
remember he was the Duke," said Mendoza.
"The Duke of Wellington really, because he always thought so
almighty high of himself, you know. We got him Carol's second


CASE PENDING 73
year in high, and she was doing history about it then. Cats, they're
like olives, seem like--either you're crazy about them or you just
can't abide them. I remembered you like them. It's why I was out,
after his evaporated milk. Fresh he won't look at, and the evapo-
rated he lets set just so long till it's thick the way he fancies it. You
see now, he knows I've just poured it, he won't go near. You take
milk or sugar?-well, I always take it black too, you get the flavor.”
She set the filled cups on the table and sat in the chair across
from him. “You'll have missed your granddaughter,” he said. It
was another absurd superstitious feeling, that if he asked, brought
her to the point, it would indeed be nothing at all.
“Well, I do, of course. Sometimes it doesn't seem right that
there the Duke should be sitting alive, and her gone. It'd be some-
thing to believe in some kind of religion, think there was a God
Who'd some reason, some plan. I never came to it somehow, but
maybe there is. I've had two husbands and raised six children, and
luckier than most in all of them-and you could say I've worked
hard. It was a grief to lose my youngest son, that was Carol's dad,
but I had to figure I'd five left, and the other grandchildren too.
Take it all in all, there's been more good than bad-and what you
can't change, you'd best learn to live with content. I enjoy life
still, and I don't want to die while I've still my health and my
mind, but you know, Lieutenant, I won't be too sorry in a way
when the time comes, because I must say I am that curious about
the afterward part.”
“It's a point of view,” he agreed amusedly. “So am I now and
then, but I'd rather be curious than dead.”
She laughed, with a fine gleam of even white teeth. “Ah, you're
lucky, you're half my age! But I said I'd something to tell you. It's
just a queer sort of thing, maybe doesn't mean much.” She sipped
and put down her cup. “Maybe you'll remember that that night
when Carol was killed, I told you I hadn't been too worried about
her being late home, because she'd said something about shopping
along Hawke Street, that'd be when she got off the bus. It was a
Monday night, and all the stores along there, they stay open till
nine Mondays and Fridays. There's a few nice little stores, and it's
handy-not so crowded as downtown, and most everything you'd
want, drugstore and Woolworth's, besides a Hartners', and a shoe


74 CASE PENDING
store and a couple of nice independent dress shops, and Mr. Grant
at the stationery-and-card place even keeps a little circulating
library-and then there's Mrs. Breen's.”
He remembered the name vaguely; after a moment he said, “The
woman who had a stroke.”
“That's right. She's had that little shop a long while, and some-
times you find things there that're, you know, unusual, different
from the big stores. You mightn't remember, no reason you should,
but on the one side she's got giftware as they call it-china figures
and fancy ash trays and vases and such-and on the other she's got
babies' and children's things. Real nice things, with handwork on
them, the clothes, and reasonable too. You'll remember that your
men asked around in all the shops if Carol had been in that night,
to get some idea of the time and all. And that was the very night
Mrs. Breen had a stroke, so you couldn't ask her if Carol'd been
in there, and it didn't seem important because you found out that
she'd been in the drugstore and a couple of other places.”
"Yes-nothing unusual anywhere, no one speaking to her, and
she didn't mention anything out of the way to the clerks who
waited on her.”
“That's so. It didn't seem as if Mrs. Breen could've told any
more. She was alone in her place, you know, and all right as could
be when her daughter come at nine or a bit before, to help her
close up and drive her home. It was while they were locking up
she had her stroke, poor thing, and they took her off to hospital
and she's been a long while getting back on her feet. Well, Lieu-
tenant-let me hot up your coffee-what I'm getting to is this. It
went out of my mind at the time, and when I thought of it, I
hadn't the heart to bother about it, didn't seem important somehow
-and Mrs. Breen was still in the hospital and her daughter'd closed
up the shop. It'd have meant asking her, Mrs. Robbins I mean, to
go all through the accounts and so on, and with her so worried and
living clear the other side of town too, I just let it go.”
“You thought Carol had been in and bought something there?”
"It was for Linda Sue,” she said, and the troubled look in her
eyes faded momentarily. “My first great-grandchild, see, my
granddaughter May-that's Carol's cousin, May White-Linda
Sue's her little girl. May and Carol were much of an age, and


CASE PENDING 75
chummed together, and Carol was just crazy about Linda Sue. It
was along in June, I remember, Carol saw this in Mrs. Breen's, and
she wanted to get it for Linda Sue's birthday in October. She told
me about it then, and if I thought it was foolish, that much money,
I kept still on it-she wanted to get it, and it was her money.
Twenty dollars it was, and she asked Mrs. Breen if she could pay
a bit on it every week or so. Mrs. Breen's obliging like that, and
she said it was all right, but she left it in the window for people to
see, case anybody wanted one like it she could order another."
The Duke, who had been drowsing between them, suddenly
woke up and began to wash himself vigorously. Mrs. Demarest
finished her coffee and sighed. “It was a doll, Lieutenant-and
while that seems like an awful price for a doll, I must say it was a
special one. It'd be nearly as big as Linda Sue herself, and it was
made of some stuff, you know, that looked like real flesh—and it
had real hair, gold hair it was, that you could curl different ways,
and it had on a pink silk dress with hand smocking, and silk under-
wear with lace, and there was a little velvet cape and velvet slippers,
rose color. Well, Carol was buying it like that. I wasn't sure to a
penny how much she still owed on it, up to that night. And of
course Monday wasn't a payday for her, I didn't think it was likely
she'd stopped in at Mrs. Breen's that night, because she'd do that
the day she got paid, you see. It was just that she had paid on it, but
as I say, way things were, I didn't bother about going ahead with
it. There was time to sort it out, Mrs. Breen and Mrs. Robbins are
both honest. I got other things for Linda Sue's birthday, and once
in a while I just said to myself, some day I'd best ask about it,
straighten it out with Mrs. Breen.
"Well, just last week Mrs. Breen came into her shop again. She
was sick quite awhile, and then up-and-down like at her daughter's,
and now she's better, but not to be alone any more, and she's selling
off what stock she has and going out of business. So I went round,
last Thursday it was, to ask about Carol's doll.
“And Mrs. Breen says that Carol came in that night and paid
all the rest she owed, and took the doll away with her. She remem-
bers it clear-the stroke didn't affect her mind, she's a bit slower
but all there. She didn't hear about Carol for quite awhile,
naturally, being sick and all, and of course when she did, she


CASE PENDING 77
Foss—to say how sorry they all were, and give me a little collection
the hotel people'd taken up. They thought maybe I'd rather have
the money, you know, instead of flowers for the funeral—it was
real thoughtful of them. Well, Nella said that very afternoon
there'd been a lady just checked out of the hotel came back after
a valuable ring she'd left, and Carol'd already found it, doing out
the room you know, and turned it in. And the lady gave her five
dollars as a present. I expect Carol decided right off she'd finish
paying for the doll with it. At the time, I thought of course what
was in her purse, three-eighty-four it was, was what she'd had left
out of the five.”
“Yes . . . but so little time! Do we say it was the murderer
took it away? Just that?-not a finger on her handbag after cash?
And why?"
"Now, that I couldn't say,” said Mrs. Demarest, placidly. “It's
queer, certainly. I'd say the same as you-well, I guess detecting
things is just a matter of using common sense and reasoning things
out. I suppose somebody might think there was something valuable
in a big parcel like that, and steal it just on the chance-but a thief
who'd do that, it's just not logical he wouldn't take the handbag
too, at least rummage through it.” She cocked her head at him,
and her brown eyes were bright as a sparrow's. “Lieutenant, would
you think I'm a woolgathering silly old woman-you're too polite
ever say it, if you did-if I said, Maybe whoever took it knew right
well what was in that parcel?”
“You'd say whoever killed her? For a doll_”.
"I don't know that. Maybe somebody else, first-or afterward.
But I can tell you something else. I've studied about it, and I went
back to ask Mrs. Breen a couple other things. I said she'd left
the doll in the window, didn't I? Well, I go past there three-four
times a week, up to the market, and I do think I'd've noticed if
that doll had been gone out of the window right after Carol was
killed, and put two and two together, and asked then. But Mrs.
Breen took it out of the window about a week before, so I didn't
expect it there, if you see what I mean. And she says now, reason
she did is that she had notice from the factory or whatever that
made them, that they weren't making this particular doll any
more-so she didn't want to show it, and have to disappoint any-


* 80 CASE PENDING
smiled at her. “You know, it would be regrettable if you were lying
to me, Miss Weir.”
The little amusement died from her green-hazel eyes meeting his.
“Do you think I've lied to you? Why? I_”.
“No, I don't think so. Bút Teresa Ramirez says her sister meant
to tell you about this ‘queer boy,' and yet you don't know quite
as much as she told Teresa.”
"I told you about that. She probably did mean to tell me a lot
more, but I took up her consultation time with lecturing her. You
can't regret it any more than I do, Lieutenant! If I'd listened to
her_”
“Yes,” said Mendoza. He'd turned sideways to look at her, his
right arm along the seat-back; he laughed abruptly and slid his hand
down to brush her shoulder gently, reaching to the ignition. "I'll
tell you why I'm not just a hundred percent sure-I mustn't be. Be-
cause I'm working this on a preconceived idea, and that's danger-
ous. I find something that doesn't fit, I'm tempted to think, let it
go, it's not important-because I don't want to prove my beautiful
theory wrong. Just now and then I am wrong, and it's not an ex-
perience I enjoy.”
"I see. I also dislike egotistical men.”
"Mi gatita roja, what you mean is that you dislike the ones
honest enough to admit to vanity-nobody walking on two legs
isn't an egotist. And you should have more common sense than to
talk so rudely to a rich man.”
"Are you?”
"I am. None of my doing-in case you were thinking of bribes
from gangsters-my grandfather was shrewd enough to buy up
quite a lot of land which turned out to be just where the city was
expanding-office buildings, you know, and hotels, and department
stores-all crazy for land to build on. And fortunately I was his only
grandson. It was a great shock to everybody, there he was for
years in a thirty-dollar-a-month apartment, saying we couldn't
afford this and that, damning the gas company as robbers if the bill
was over two dollars, and buying secondhand clothes-my God, he
once got a hundred dollars out of me on the grounds of family duty,
to pay a hospital bill—and me still in the rookie training school and


CASE PENDING
81 :
in debt for my uniforms! And then when he died it all came out.
My grandmother hasn't recovered from the shock yet-she's still
furious at him, and that was nearly fifteen years ago.”
"Oh. Why?"
"For fifty-eight years she'd been nagging at him to stop his
gambling-she'd been telling him for fifty-eight years that
gamblers are all wastrels, stealing the food out of their families'
mouths to throw away, and they always die without a penny to
bless themselves. And that's where he got his capital-his winnings.
And to add insult to injury-because if she'd known about it,
she'd have found some way to save face and also, being a woman,
something else to nag him about-he managed to get the last
word by dying before she found it out. Frankly, I think myself
it wasn't all luck, the old boy wasn't above keeping a few high
cards up his sleeve, but you know the one about the gift horse.
And unfortunately,” added Mendoza, sliding neatly ahead of an
indignant bus to get in the right-turn lane, “by then I'd got into
the habit of earning an honest living, and I've never cured my-
self.”
"Well, it's an original approach to a girl,” said Alison thought-
fully. “Such a fascinating subject too—I've always been so in-
terested in money, if only I'd had the chance to study it oftener I
might have developed real talent for it. But I must say, I should
think you'd bolster up your ego more by doing the King Cophetua
business, instead of practically offering a bribe. Not at all subtle."
"I'm always loved for myself alone. And why? Es claro-a
woman of high principle like you, she's afraid to be taken for a
gold digger, so she starts out being very standoffish. She's so busy
convincing me she's not interested in my money, vaya, she's
never on guard against my charm.”
“Ah, the double play. I keep forgetting you're an egotist. But
what about the stupid ones?--the ones like Elena, all bleached
curls and giggles and gold ankle chains? The ones those tired
middle-aged businessmen—".
“¡Vaya por Dios! I never go near such females, except in the
way of work. There's no credit to the marksman in an easy
target.”


82 CASE PENDING
“Or to the wolf who catches the smallest lamb? I see what you
mean.”
“So I'll let you have the last word. You'll do me a favor to-
morrow_”
“What?” She regarded him warily.
Mendoza grinned at her. “Don't sound so suspicious, I don't
operate so crude and sudden as that! Look, I want you to ask all
your girls if Elena said anything at all to them about this staring
man. Don't tell them much, don't lead them-a couple of them
might make up this or that to be important-but you'll be more
apt to get something helpful out of them if anything's there to
be got. Official questioning might encourage them to romanticize.”
“Oh, well, certainly I'll do that, I meant to anyway. Yes, I think
you're right about that.”
At headquarters he piloted her upstairs to his office. She looked
around curiously. "What exactly is the procedure? I've never
done this before.”
"I've made a rough draft, here, of the substance of what you
told me. Just look it over and see if you want to change or add
anything, and then we'll get it typed for you to sign. And
what do you want?” he added as Hackett wandered in after them.
“I thought you were safely occupied for the afternoon.”
“Una espectativa vana,” said Hackett, spreading his hands.
"Kids! It's the damnedest thing, they'll be budding Einsteins at
twelve, but the minute they hit their teens I swear to God they
all turn into morons. You'd think they were blind and deaf.” His
eyes were busy on Alison.
"It's a phenomenon known as puberty,” said Mendoza. “Noth-
ing?"
"Nada. You goin' to remember your manners, or do I count as
the hired help around here?”
“Miss Weir-the cross I am given to bear, Sergeant Hackett.”
“The brawn,” said Alison wisely, nodding at him. “I knew you
must have somebody to do the real work.”
“And she has brains too,” said Hackett admiringly. “You got
a visitor, Luis, before I forget. That Ramirez girl.” He jerked a
thumb.
"Oh?” Mendoza got up. "You'll excuse me, Miss Weir-if this


84 CASE PENDING
"See, she must've meant it was at the rink she saw him. Once,
anyways. Because where else would being nervous make her
almost fall down? I—".
“Yes, of course.” And there were a number of possibilities
there; a little imagination would produce a dozen different ideas.
He thought about some of them (Ehrlich, the attendants, the
other kids) as he thanked the girl for coming in. Alison came out
of his office with Hackett and was sympathetic, friendly with
Teresa, asking conventionally about the funeral. The girl was a
little stiff, responding, using more care with her manners and
grammar.
"Well, I-I guess that's all I wanted tell you, Lieutenant, I
better get home,”
Alison sent Mendoza a glance he missed and another at Hackett
which connected; he said he was going that way, be glad to drive
her home, and gave Alison a mock-reproachful backward look,
shepherding Teresa off.
"Your draft's quite all right. Hey, wake up, I said_”.
“Yes,” said Mendoza. "Is it? Good.” He summoned one of the
stenos on duty, took Alison back to his office to wait, gave her a
chair and cigarette but no conversation. She sat quietly, watching
him with a slight smile, looking round the room; when the typed
pages were brought in she signed obediently where she was told
and announced meekly that she could get home by herself.
Mendoza said, “Don't be foolish.” But he was mostly silent on
the drive across town. When he drew into the curb at the apart-
ment building, he cut the motor, didn't move immediately. “Tell
me something. Did you like dolls when you were a little girl?”
“Against my better judgment you do intrigue me. Most little
girls do."
He grunted. “Ever know any little boys who did?”
“When they're very young, otherwise not. Though I believe
there are some, but they can't be very normal little boys. The
psychiatrists”
“I beg you, not the doubletalk about Id and Ego and Superego.
Especially not about infantile sexuality and the traumatic forma-
tion of the homosexual personality. Esto queda entre los dos. Just
between the two of us, I find a most suggestive resemblance be-


86
CASE PENDING
block to Main, another to Liggitt and half a block more to home.
Little more than half a mile, but that could be a long way at night.
Main was neon lights and crowds up to midnight anyway, but
these other streets were dark and lonely.
It was a big barn of a building. Matson Street wasn't residential,
but strung with small warehouses, small business that must per-
manently balance on the edge of insolvency-rug cleaning, said
the faded signs, tools sharpened, speedy shoe repair, cleaning &
dyeing—and in between, the secretive warehouses unlabeled or
reticent with WHOLESALE PARTS, INC.-MASTERSON BROS.-ASSOCIATED
INDUSTRIES. At Matson and San Rafael, there was a graveyard for
old cars on one corner, with a high iron fence around it (SECOND-
HAND PARTS CHEAP), and warehouses on two other corners, and
on the fourth the Palace Roller Rink. The building wasn't flush to
the sidewalk like the warehouses, but set back fifteen or twenty
feet, to provide off-street parking on two sides.
Mendoza parked there, among six or eight other cars: mostly
old family sedans, a couple of worked-over hot-rods. It was ten
past four, a good time for the experiment he had in mind. He
fished up a handful of change from his pocket, picked out a
quarter, a dime, and a nickel, and walked up to the entrance.
There were big double doors fastened back, but at this time
of year, the place facing north, not much light fell into the foyer.
That was perhaps ten feet wide, three times as long up to the rest-
room doors at either end. There was a Coke-dispensing freezer
and a big trash basket under a wall dispenser for paper cups. In
the middle of the foyer was a three-sided plywood enclosure with
a narrow counter bearing an ancient cash register; and inside, on
a high stool with a back, sat Ehrlich the proprietor, a grossly fat
man in the late sixties, bald bullet-shaped head descending to
several rolls of fat front and rear, pudgy hands clasped over a
remarkable paunch: wrinkled khaki shirt and pants, no tie.
Ehrlich, peacefully drowsing-still, very likely, digesting a solid
noon dinner which had ended with several glasses of beer. Men-
doza surveyed him with satisfaction, walked quietly up and laid
the silver on the counter. The fat man roused with a little grunt,
scooped it up and punched the register, and produced from a box


88 CASE PENDING
seemed to be enjoying themselves, mostly skating in couples
round and round-one pair in the center showing off, with com-
plicated breakaways and dance steps-half a dozen in single file
daring the hazards lined down the far side, a little artificial hill,
a low bar-jump. Those girls shrieked simulated terror, speeding
down the sharp drop; the boys jeered, affected nonchalance. It
was all very innocent and juvenile-depressingly so, Mendoza re-
flected sadly from the vantage point of his nearly forty years.
But he hadn't come here to philosophize on the vagaries of
adolescence. . . . If you went straight down to the attendant,
to give up your ticket and acquire your skates, you would be
noticed; otherwise, he could easily miss seeing you. Mendoza had
wandered a little way to the side from the door, and stood with
his back to the wall; he was in deep shadow and he'd made no
noise. He stood there until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness,
to avoid colliding with anything, and moved on slowly. He knew
now that it was possible to come in here without being noticed,
but could anyone count on it five times out of five? There would
be times Ehrlich was wider awake, for one thing.
He sat down in a chair midway from the railing, twenty feet
from the attendant. In five minutes neither the man nor any of
the skaters took the slightest notice of him. He got up, drifted
back to the wall, and began a tour of the borders.
When he got round to the opposite side of the floor, he made
an interesting discovery. In the corner there a small square closet
was partitioned off, with a door fitted to it. He tried the door and
it gave to his hand with a little squeak. He risked a brief beam
from his pencil-flash: rude shelving, cleaning materials, an ancient
can of floor wax, mops and pails. Hackett was quite right; nobody
had disturbed the dust in here for a long time. He shut the door
gently and went on down the rear width of the building.
The jukebox was never silent long; it seemed to have a rep-
ertoire only of waltzes, and now for the third time was render-
ing, in all senses of the word, “Let Me Call You Sweetheart."
He came to the far corner and with mild gratification found
another closet and another door. “At a guess, the fuse boxes,” he
murmured, and eased the door open. A quick look with the flash
interested him so much that he stepped inside, pulled the door


90 CASE PENDING
found them tiresome. Hackett and Dwyer, summoned by phone,
if they didn't altogether agree with Ehrlich were less than enthu-
siastic over Mendoza's find; Hackett said frankly it didn't mean
a damned thing. He listened to the story of Carol Brooks' doll and
said it still didn't mean a damned thing.
"I don't want to disillusion you, but I've heard rumors that
real live dolls sometimes wear underwear with pink lace on-and
just like you say, it is nice and dark along here. Not havin' such
a pure mind as you, I can think of a couple of dandy reasons"
"And such elegant amenities for it!” said Mendoza sarcastically.
“A wooden bench a foot wide, or a pair of folding chairs! I may
be overfastidious, but I ask you!”
“There's a classic tag line you oughta remember: It's wonder-
ful anywhere.”
“So maybe it doesn't mean anything. Nevertheless, we'll hang
onto it, and I want a sketch of this place, showing that door and
the exact spot this was found.”
“O.K., will do.” There was always a lot of labor expended on
such jobs, in a thing like this, that turned out to have been un-
necessary; but it couldn't be helped. And in case something turned
out to be relevant, they had to keep the D.A.'s office in mind,
document the evidence.
“And what happened to you?” added Mendoza, turning on
Dwyer, who was sporting a patch bandage taped across one eye.
Dwyer said aggrievedly he ought to've run the guy in for
obstructing an officer. All he'd been doing was try to find out
more about that Browne girl who'd found the body-as per
orders. First he'd got the rough side of her landlady's tongue-the
girl wasn't home-for asking a few ordinary little questions, like
did the girl ever bring men home, or get behind in the rent, and
so on-you'd have thought she was the girl's ma, the way she
jumped on him-if the police didn't have anything better to do
than come round insulting decent women-! She's still yakking at
him about that when this guy shows up, who turns out to be some
friend of the girl's, and before Dwyer can show his badge, the
guy damns him up and down for a snooper and hauls off and-
"Me, Lieutenant! It was a fluke punch, he caught me off balance"


94 CASE PENDING
“So then, finish. Before Ricky gets over to take a close look,
Papa comes in breathing righteous wrath and yanks him out.”
This time Mendoza didn't swear, merely shut his eyes.
"And if you're still interested, Smith has tagged the Ramirez
uncle visiting what is probably a cat-house on Third—at least the
address rang a bell, and I checked with Prince in Vice-he pricked
up his ears and said we'd closed it twice, and he was glad to know
somebody had opened up again, they'll look into it. After that
Ramirez took a bus way across town to treat himself to a couple
of drinks at a place called the Maison du Chat, on Wilshire. Which
Smith thought was sort of funny because it's a very fancy layout
where you get nicked a dollar and a half for a Scotch highball, and
six dollars for a steak because it's in French on the menu."
"I don't give one damn about Ramirez' taste in women, let
Prince look into that. The other, yes, we'll follow it up-find out
what you can about it, it may be a drop for a wholesaler. If any-
thing definite shows up, throw it at Narcotics then and let them
take over.”
"I'm ahead of you. I got Higgins and Farnsworth on it. All
they got so far is the owner's name, which is Nicholas Dimitrios."
Hackett dropped his cigarette and put a careful heel on it. “Just
what's your idea about all this, anyway?-dolls, yet! I don't see
you've got much to get hold of."
";Me lo cuenta a mí!-you're telling me! But I'll tell you how
I see it happening. Somewhere around here is our lunatic-and
don't ask me what kind he is,nor I won't even guess why he finds
a back way into this hellhole and gets a kick out of watching these
kids on skates. It makes a better story if you say he was following
Elena. Anyway, here he is, and nobody else seems to have noticed
him particularly. Neither of the attendants has much occasion to
come down to this end of the floor, and if any of the kids noticed
him, they took him for one of themselves. And about that, de
paso, I think we can deduce that he's a fairly young man. Elena
called him a boy, and the odds are an older man would have been
noticed by others in here, would have stood out—as it is, I think he
was seen, casually, by some of the kids, and accepted as one of
them. On the other hand, he seems to have taken some care not to
be noticed much, sitting back against the wall,” Mendoza


CASE PENDING 95
shrugged. “It's pretty even, maybe, but I think the balance goes to
show he's fairly young. All right. She had seen him at least once
elsewhere, with another boy or several others, one of whom is
named Danny,”
“All of which is very secondhand evidence."
"Don't push me. He was here on Friday night, he saw her
leave alone. Evidently he hadn't made any attempt before to
approach her, speak to her, and I think he did then because he
saw her boy friend taken out and thought this was his chance.
He followed her, using his private door, so Ehrlich and the attend-
ants didn't notice him leave. So he had to walk round the building,
which put him just far enough behind her that he didn't catch up
for a block or so. Finish. And I don't know why he killed her,
if that was in his mind from the start or a sudden impulse. I'm
inclined to say impulse, because you couldn't find two girls more
different than Brooks and this one-so he doesn't pick victims by
any apparent system, though there's holes in that reasoning, I
grant you-he may have some peculiar logic of his own, of course.”
“I'll buy all that, but there's no evidence at all, a lot of hearsay
and a lot of ifs. And how do you tie in Brooks and the doll?”
“Oh, damn the doll,” said Mendoza. “I can't figure the odds
on that, if it ties in or not-it's just as possible that somebody
stumbled on Brooks after the killer left her, and stole the thing-
or that she was robbed of it before she ran into the killer. And I
can say-claro está!—it's a lunatic, and the same lunatic-and when
we find him, we'll find that last September he had some reason to
frequent Tappan Street. There's even less evidence on all that.”
He stood and took up his hat from the bench, flicked dust off it
automatically. "Here's Clawson. I'm going home.”
"I might've expected that-walk off and leave me enough work
so I can't try to beat your time with that redhead.”
“That,” said Mendoza, “to quote another classic tag line, would
be sending a boy to do a man's work. But you have my permission
to try, Arturo-I never worry about competition.”


Eight
ALL THE SAME, THAT DOLL INTRIGUED HIM; IT WAS SUCH AN IN-
congruous thing.
When he unlocked the door of his apartment, automatically
reaching to the light switch as he came in, the first thing that met
his eyes was the elegant length of the Abyssinian cat draped along
the top of the traverse-rod housing across the front windows, a
foot below the ceiling.
Which meant that Bertha was here. Bast intensely resented
Bertha and her vigorous maneuvers with mop, dustcloths, and
vacuum cleaner, and took steps to keep out of her way. He was
unsurprised to find her there on a late Sunday afternoon; the
seven or eight people who shared Bertha's excellent services were
used to her ways. If she felt like doing a thorough job on the
Carters' Venetian blinds when she ought to be at the Elgins', or
got behind because she'd decided to turn out all the Brysons'
kitchen cupboards, she was apt to turn up almost anywhere at any
time, and no one ever complained because, miraculously, Bertha
really did the work she was paid for, and had even been known
to dust the backs of pictures and the tops of doors.
She appeared now from the kitchen, jamming an ancient felt
hat over her tight sausage curls. "I was just leavin'. There you
go, switchin' on lights allovera place-your bill must be somethin'
sinful! You found out yet who that dead man in the yards was?”


CASE PENDING 97
know, it's that come now, I throu're takin. Tage minda
it's psychologies into your head_gord at you and you
· He admitted they had not; and yes, the forces of law were so
unreasonable as to have arraigned the society beauty for murder,
even after hearing all the excellent reasons she had for shooting her
husband. He looked at Bertha thoughtfully (the average mind?)
and said, “Do me a favor, and pretend you're taking one of those
word-association tests, you know, I throw a word at you and you
say the first thing that comes into your head_”.
"I know, it's psychological.” She looked interested.
“So, I say doll to you-what do you think of?”
"Witches,” said Bertha. “I just saw a movie about it last night.
The witch takes and makes this doll and names it and all, and
sticks this big pin right through—”.
“I get the general idea,” said Mendoza sadly. “Thanks very
much, that'll do.” Witches: that was all they needed! When
Bertha had slammed the door cheerfully after herself, he took off
his coat, brought in the kitchen step-stool, and spent five minutes
persuading Bast that it was safe to trust her descent to him. That
was one puzzle he would never, probably, solve: she had no
trouble getting up there, but hadn't yet found out how to get
down. As usual, she emitted terrified yells as he backed down the
steps, and, released, instantly assumed the haughty sang-froid of
the never-out-of-countenance sophisticate. She turned her back
on him and studied one black paw admiringly before beginning to
wash it.
There were times Mendoza thought he liked cats because, like
himself, they were all great egotists.
"Witches,” he said again to himself, and laughed.
"AND YOU PUT THAT COAT AWAY TIDY WHERE IT BELONGS! ON A
hanger, not just anyhow. Clothes cost money, how many times
I got to tell you, take care of what we got, no tellin' when we can
get new."
"All right,” said Marty. He got out of bed and picked up the
corduroy jacket. He couldn't take down a hanger and put the
jacket on it and hang it over the rod, all with his eyes shut, but
he did it fast and he tried not to look down at the floor. She was
fussing round the room behind him.
But he couldn't help seeing it, even if he didn't look right at it,


98 CASE PENDING
and anyway, he thought miserably, even if he never opened the
closet door, never had to see it, it didn't change anything-the
thing was still there, he'd still know about it.
So did she, and for another reason he only half-understood him-
self. That was partly why he got the door shut again quick. She
might know, all right, but she was different–if she didn't see it,
she could keep from thinking about it. He felt like he was in two
separate parts, about that, the way he felt about a lot of things
lately-twin Martys, like looking in a mirror. He didn't see how
she could, but in a funny kind of way he didn't want to make her
have to see it-long as she could do like that.
He got back in bed and pulled the covers up. It was just like
something was pulling him right in half, like two big black
monster-shapes were using him for tug of war. And he had to
just lie there, he couldn't do anything, because she wouldn't. And
even if she was wrong, she was his Ma, and-and-
She said from the door, “You be real good now, no horsing
round, you go right to sleep.” She sounded just like always.
A funny idea slid into his mind then, the first minute of lying
there in the dark-alone with the secret. He wondered if she'd
forgot all about it, if maybe now she could look right at it and
never really see it at all. Like it was invisible-because she wanted
it to be.
But even in the dark with the door shut, he could still see it.
The box had gone a long while ago, got stepped on, and the big
piece of thin white fancy paper and the pink shiny ribbon had got
all crumpled and spoiled pretty soon, from handling. ... The
doll wasn't new any more either. It sat in there on the closet floor,
leaning up against the wall, even when he shut his eyes tight he
could see it.
It had been awful pretty when it was new, even if it was just
a silly girl's thing. It wasn't pretty any more. The spangly pink
dress was all stained and torn, and most of the lace was torn off
the underwear, and one of the arms was pulled loose. The gold
curls had got all tangled and some pulled right off, and one of the
blue eyes with real lashes had been poked right in so there was just
a black hole there and you could hear the eye sort of rattle


CASE PENDING 99
around inside when you– The other eye still shut when the doll
was laid down.
Marty always had a funny hollow feeling when he heard that
eye rattling round inside. You'd think sometime it'd fall out, but
it never did.
He'd been lying here, felt like hours, still as he could, in the
dark. This was the worst time of all, and lately it had been getting
harder and harder to let go, and pretty soon be asleep. Because
in the dark, it seemed like the secret was somehow as big as the
whole room, so he couldn't breathe, so he felt he had to get out
and run and run and tell everybody-yell it as loud as he could.
He lay flat, very still, but he could hear his heart going thud-
thud-thud, very fast. You were supposed to say a prayer when
you went to bed, she'd made him learn it when he was just a
little kid and when they lived over on Tappan and he'd gone to
the Methodist Sunday school, it'd been up on the wall there in the
Sunday-school room, the words sewed onto cloth some fancy
old-fashioned way and flowers around them, in a gold frame. He
could see that now sort of in his mind, red and blue flowers and
the words in four lines. It was the only real prayer he knew by
heart and he was afraid to say it any more, because if you said any
of it you had to say it all and it might be worse than bad luck to
say the end of it. If I should die before I-
Most of the time, like at school, anyway in daylight, he could
stand it. But this was the bad time, alone with it. A lot of feelings
were churning around inside him, and they didn't exactly go away
other times, they were still there but outside things helped to
push them deeper inside, sort of-school and baseball practice and
being with other kids and all. But like this in the dark, they got on
top of him-a lot of bad feelings, but the biggest and worst of
all was being just plain scared.
There were times, like yesterday, when he thought she was
too; and then again, seemed like, she made up her mind so hard
that nothing so awful like that could be so, for her it just wasn't.
Maybe grownups could do that. He sure wished he could. Like
looking right at that doll and never remembering, never think-
ing-


100 CASE PENDING
Marty felt shameful tears pricking behind his eyes, but the fear
receded a little in him for the upsurge of resentment at her un-
fairness. . . . She'd told a lie, a lie, he knew it was a lie, he wasn't
crazy, was he?-if Dad had been there she'd never have dared say
he was the one telling lies, but-what could you do when a grown-
up, your own Ma-
"I bought it,” she'd said, and he thought he remembered it was
one of the times she sounded afraid too. . . . “I did so buy it,
Marty, you're just pretendin' not to remember!-you got to re-
member, all that money-I saved it up, and I bought it yesterday—"
About the money wasn't a lie; she had, but the rest wasn't so, he
remembered
What he remembered made terrible pictures in his mind, now
he put it all together.
The fear that was never very far away now, even at school-
outside-came creeping over him again like a cold hand feeling.
The doll. It had been awful pretty-then.
He wished he could forget that picture, all it said under it, in
the newspaper. She hadn't got it this time, she wouldn't talk or
listen about anything to do with it now—seemed like something
just made him get that paper, and it had cost ten cents too. Elena.
It was a pretty name. But he wished he could stop seeing the
picture because it was the same girl, he'd known it would be but
it was worse knowing for real sure—the picture-and the very
worst about it was something silly, but somehow terrible too.
The picture that looked like that doll when iťd been new. Before
the eye had-
He thought he heard a noise over by the closet door. It wasn't
really, he told himself. It wasn't.
In California they didn't hang people for murder, they had a
gas chamber instead. It sounded even worse, a thing maybe like
a big iron safe and with pipes that-
But other people, they shouldn't get killed like that,even if
he didn't know, didn't mean-even if Ma- It wasn't right. Dad
would say so too, whatever it meant, even something awful like
the gas.
Somebody'd ought to know, and right off too, before it ever
happened again. But Ma-


102 CASE PENDING
not. The visible Morgan, acting much as usual (at least he hoped
so), going about his job-and the inside one, the one with the
secret.
That one was still, in a detached way, feeling slightly surprised
at this Morgan who was showing such unexpected capacity for
cool planning. (The Morgan who'd been kicked around just once
too often and this time was fighting back.) The original Morgan
was still uneasy about the whole thing, but quite frankly, he
realized, not from any moral viewpoint: just about Morgan's
personal safety, the danger of being found out.
He wrote down the address as the man read it out to him.
“How's that spelled?-it's a new one to me."
“T-A-P-P-A-N. Over past Washington some'eres, I think.”
"Well, thanks very much," said Morgan, putting his notebook
away.
"I still can't hardly believe it,” said the clerk worriedly. “Lind-
strom, doing a thing like that! Last man in the world, I'd've said,
why, he thought the world of his wife and the boy. Never missed
a lodge meeting, you know, and I don't ever remember talkin'
with him he didn't brag on what good grades his boy got at
school, all like that. One of the steady kind, thät was Lindstrom-
no world-beater, but, you know, steady."
“That so?” said Morgan. He lit a cigarette. He felt a kind of
remote interest in this Lindstrom thing, no more, but it con-
stituted his main lifeline, and it must appear that he'd been work-
ing hard on it, been thinking of nothing else all today.
"Never any complaints on him, he always did an honest day's
work, I heard that from a dozen fellows been on the job with
him. He was working for Staines Contracting, like I said. He was
a member here for three years, always paid his dues regular.
We did figure it was sort of funny, way he quit his job and quit
coming to meetings all of a sudden. When his dues didn't come
in, we sent a letter, but it come back. But things come up in a
hurry sometimes, sickness or something. You know. Last thing
in the world I'd've expected a guy like Lindstrom to do–walk
out on his family.” He shook his head.
"You haven't heard anything from him since, no inquiries from
other lodges of your union?"
cad.


CASE PENDING 105
merely his vivid and erratic imagination.
"I'm real glad I clean forgot to th’ow that ol' thing out,” said
Mrs. Breen, soft and southern, "if it's any help to you findin' that
bad man, suh. Ev'body knew Carol thought the world an' all of
her, nice a gal as ever was. Terrible thing, jus' terrible.”
Mendoza went on looking at the thing, fascinated. It was a good
sharp commercial cut, three by five inches or so, one of a dozen
in this dog-eared brochure, three years old, from a local toy fac-
tory. Mrs. Breen, maddeningly slow, determinedly helpful, had
insisted on hunting it up for him, and as he hadn't yet penetrated
her constant trickle of inconsequential talk to ask any questions,
he'd been forced to let her find it first.
"You can see 'twas a real extra-special doll. Tell the truth, I was
two minds about puttin' it in stock, not many folks'd spend that
much money."
Was it imagination? That this thing had looked a little-like
Elena Ramirez? After all, he told himself, the conventional doll
would. The gold curls, the eyelashes, the neatly rouged cheeks, the
rosebud pout, the magenta fingernails. The irrational thought oc-
curred to him that even the costume was exactly the kind of thing
Elena would have admired.
He said to himself, I'm seeing ghosts-or catching at straws.
What the hell, if the thing did look like her, or the other way
around? Dolls. The whole thing was a mare's nest. Overnight he
had begun to suspect uneasily that he was wrong, dead wrong about
this thing; he hadn't taken a good long look at all the dissimilarities
-he'd wanted to think this was the Brooks killer again, without any
real solid evidence for it. Wasting time. Look at the rest of the
facts!
Brooks: the handbag not touched. Ramirez: bag found several
blocks away. True, apparently nothing taken, for Teresa' said she
wouldn't have been carrying more than a little silver, to the rink
where she'd leave her bag and coat on a chair at the side.
Brooks: colored, not pretty, not noticeable. Ramirez: very
much the opposite.
Brooks: attacked on a fairly well-frequented street, in a fairly
good neighborhood-just luck that there hadn't been a number of
people within earshot. Ramirez: attacked in that lot away from


Nine
BECAUSE AFTERWARD, THOUGHT MORGAN (BOTH MORGANS), THERE
would be a time when Sue would look at him, that steady look of
hers, and want the truth. And he had better know what he was
going to say.
He wondered if he could tell her half the truth convincingly
(my God, no, I never meant-but when he got mad and pulled a
gun, l-and afterward, I knew I couldn't tell the police the whole
story, you know-) and go on forever after keeping the rest a
secret. He'd never been very good at keeping secrets from Sue. But
a big thing like this—and there was also the consideration, wouldn't
it be kinder, fairer, not to put this on her conscience as it would be
on his? Let her go on thinking it was-accident. Because he guessed
it would be on his conscience to some extent. You couldn't be
brought up and live half your life by certain basic ethics and forget
about them overnight.
All the while he was thinking round and about that, at the back
of his mind, he was talking to this woman, this Mrs. Cotter, quite
normally-must have been, or she'd have been eying him oddly by
this time. He saw that he had also been taking notes in his casebook
of a few things she'd told him, and his writing looked quite normal
too.
As usual now, he was having some trouble getting away: people
liked to talk about these things. You had to be polite and sometimes


108 CASE PENDING
they remembered something useful. He managed it at last, backing
down the steps while he thanked her for the third time.
His car was around the corner, the only parking space there'd
been half an hour ago; now, of course, there were two or three
empty spaces almost in front of the building. As he came by, a long
low black car was sliding quiet and neat into the curb there. The
car registered dimly with him, because you didn't see many like it,
but he was past when the driver got out. It was the car, a vague
memory of it, pulled Morgan's head round six steps farther on.
to him.
Morgan stopped. Absurdly, his mouth went dry and his heart
missed a few beats, hurried to catch up. You damn fool, he said to
himself. They're not mind readers, for God's sake!
But, he thought confusedly, but- An omen? Today of all days,
just run into one-like this. Casual
That was a man from Homicide, a headquarters man from Ken-
neth Gunn's old department. Lieutenant Luis Mendoza of Homi-
cide. Morgan had met him, twice-three times—at the Gunns', and
again when their jobs had coincided, that Hurst business, when one
of the deserted wives had shot herself and two kids.
Luis Mendoza. Besides the childish panic, resentment he had felt
before rose hot in Morgan's throat: unreasonable resentment at the
blind fate which handed one man rewards he hadn't earned, didn't
particularly deserve-and also more personal resentment for the
man.
Mendoza, with all that money, and not a soul in the world but
himself to spend it on: no responsibilities, no obligations! Gunn
had talked about Mendoza: ordinary back-street family, probably
not much different from some of these in neighborhoods like this
nothing of what you'd call background ... and the wily grand-
father, and all the money. What the hell right had he to pretend
such to-the-manner-born-if indefinable-insolence? Just the
money; all that money. Do anything, have anything he damned
pleased, or almost. And by all accounts, didn't he! Clothes-and it
wasn't that Morgan wanted to look like a damned fop, the way
Mendoza did, but once in a while it would be nice to get a new suit
more than once in five years, and not off the rack at a cheap store


112 CASE PENDING
but not every day. And Mis' Spinner thought I ought to know he'd
left, at least hadn't been there she didn't think four-five days, time
she told me. Well, they was paid up to the end of August, I didn't
go asking questions till then, none o' my business, but when Sep-
tember first come round, it was her come down to pay the rent
and then I did figure, better know where we stood, if you see what
I mean. Without wanting to be nosy,” added Mrs. Cotter vir-
tuously. “She wouldn't admit he'd gone and left her, froze right up
and said I needn't worry about the rent, and some rigmarole about
he was called back east sudden. But alla same, it wasn't a week
before she had to get herself a job, so I knew all right. And if you
ask me,”
“Where did she work, do you know?”
“Sure, it was a night job cleaning offices downtown-the Curtis
Building. And that's what I was goin' to say, Lieutenant-that kind
of job, it shows you what she was like, and you ask me, it all ties
in, it was prob’ly all her fault, whole thing. She was one of them
old maids married like they say, for sure. Went around with a sour
look alla time, never a smile or a friendly word in passing—and as
for looks! Well, I don't s'pose she was more than forty, and I tell
you, she looked like her own gran'mother! Hair screwed up in a
little bun behind, and skin like a piece o' sandpaper, you could tell
she never took any care of herself, prob’ly used laundry soap and
that's that-never a scrap of make-up, and cheap old cotton house
dresses was all I ever seen her in. You know's well as me there's no
call for a woman to let herself go like that, these days! And if she
acted to him the way she did to everybody else, even the youngster,
well, between you 'n' me 'n' the gatepost, I don't blame him for
walkin' out. A man can take just so much. She’d've been the kind
wouldn't let him sleep with her either, a regular prunes-an’-prison
old maid like they say, if you know what I mean. Why, if she'd
taken a little trouble, fix herself up and act nice, she coulda got a
better job, waiting in a store or something, you know, daytimes.
There's just no call for a woman to look like that, if she's got any
self-respect! But she wasn't one you could talk to friendly, you
know, give any advice, like-she was downright rude to everybody
tried to make friends, so after a while nobody tried no more, just
left them be. And I do think he'd have been different. Times he


CASE PENDING 113
came by to pay the rent, or if you met him goin' out or like that, he
always acted friendly and polite. I figure he just got good and fed
up with the whole way she was-it musta been like livin' with a
set bear trap.”
The detective grinned at that and she permitted herself a lady-
like titter, smoothing her defiantly brown pompadour. “I gather
you didn't exchange much casual talk with the woman at any time.”
"Nobody did, she wouldn't let 'em. . . . Ever hear her mention
goin' to buy a doll? That I did not. It wasn't a girl she had, it was
a boy, I thought I said. Marty, his name was. He favored his dad, I
must say he was a nice-raised boy. Always took off his cap to you,
and he was real quiet-for a boy, you know. He'd be about eleven
or a bit past when they come, and that last year they was here, he
all of a sudden'd started to shoot up, early like some do-going to.
be as big as his dad, you could see. A real nice boy, he was, not like
his Ma at all. . . . Well, I'm sure I don't know why she'd be buy-
ing a doll, unless it was for some of their fambly back east, might
be she had a niece or something. But for goodness' sake, Lieutenant,
won't you tell me what this is all about-what's she done?-or is
it him? I mean,”
“I don't know that either of them's done anything. It's a matter
of getting evidence, that's all, not very important.” He was stand-
ing up.
“Oh. I must say, I can't help being curious-two of you coming,
same day, ask about them! You can't blame me for that, couldn't
you just,”
"So Mr. Morgan was asking about the Lindstroms too?" He
looked thoughtful, and then smiled and began to thank her. She
saw she wouldn't get any more out of him, but that didn't stop
her from speculating. The Lindstroms, of all people!
Mrs. Cotter watched him down the walk to his car, heaved an
excited sigh after him, and hurried upstairs to tell Mrs. Spinner all
about it.
THE CLOCK OVER THE ROW OF PHONE BOOTHS, IN THE FIRST DRUG-
store he came to, said ten past twelve. Mendoza spent an annoying
five minutes looking up the number in a tattered book, finally got
the office, and just caught Gunn on his way out to lunch.


114 CASE PENDING
"Oh, Luis—how's the boy?-good to hear from you. Say, I'm
afraid Andrews' idea didn't pay off, you know, about that hood
New York wants for jumping parole. It was a long chance, find
him through the wife, and of course it may be she's collecting from
some other county agency. If he wants, What's that? Sure thing,
anything I can tell you . . . Morgan, well, he's probably having
lunch somewhere right now.”
“It's one of his cases, that's all. And all I want from you is the
present address. The name is Mrs. Marion Lindstrom. Apparently
she's only recently applied for relief.”
"If we're working on it, that's so, within a few months anyway-
it'll be right here in the current file, hang on and I'll look.”
Mendoza opened the door for air while he waited. He was rap-
idly developing a guilty conscience: wasting time over this mean-
ingless thing. He didn't get paid-or shouldn't-for listening to
inconsequential gossip. A dozen things he should have been doing
this morning besides
“-Graham Court,” said Gunn's voice in his ear.
“Oh? Any idea approximately where that is?”
"Somewhere down the wrong side of Main, that area-below
First or Second. We've got”
"¡No puede ser!" said Mendoza very softly to himself. “It can't
be, not so easy, I don't believe it. . . . When Morgan comes in,
tell him to wait, I want to see him. Call me at my office immediata-
mente-or even quicker! I want everything you've got on these
people. Let me have that address again.”
IT WAS GUNN, OF COURSE, AND NOT HACKETT, WHO SAID ALL THE
things Hackett might say later; before outsiders, like this, Hackett
paid lip service to rank. Gunn had once been Mendoza's superior;
he spoke up. By the same token, of course, Mendoza wouldn't have
talked so freely if Gunn hadn't been a retired Homicide man.
“You've got your wires crossed, Luis. What you've got here is
just damn-all, it doesn't mean a thing. First off, how many people
d'you suppose moved out of that section of town last September?
There's no narrowing it down to a couple of blocks, you have to
take in at least a square mile-call it even half a mile—at a guess,
seven-eight thousand families, because you're taking in apartments,


CASE PENDING 115
not just single houses. In that kind of neighborhood people aren't
settled, they move around more. And—”
"I know, I know," said Mendoza. “And that's the least of all the
arguments against this meaning anything at all. But say it-it's not
even very significant that the move should be from the twenty-
four-hundred block on Tappan to within two blocks of Commerce
and Humboldt, because those are the same sort of neighborhoods,
same rent levels, same class and color of people. All right. Evi-
dence-!” He hunched his shoulders angrily, turning from staring
at the view out Gunn's office window. “Say it. Even if it is the
same killer, no guarantee he lived anywhere near either of the
girls. So all this is cuentos de hadas, just fairy tales.”
Hackett made a small doleful sound at his cigarette. "I guess
you're saying it for yourself, Lieutenant.”
"You've got no evidence,” Gunn said flatly. “You'd just like to
think so, which isn't like you, Luis. What the hell have you got?
I_"
“I've got two dead girls,” said Mendoza, abrupt and harsh. “And
they don't matter one damn, you know. The kind of murders that
happen in any big town, this week, next week, next year. No
glamour, no excitement, no big names. Nothing to go in the books,
the clever whimsy on Classic Cases or the clever fiction, ten wise-
cracks guaranteed to the page, a surprise ending to every chapter,
where fifteen people had fifteen motives for the murder and fifteen
faked alibis for the crucial minute, conveniently fixed by a pre-
arranged long-distance phone call. They weren't very important
or interesting females, these two, and anybody at all might have
killed them. You know,” he swung on Gunn, “this kind of thing, it
doesn't go like the books, the clues laid out neat like a paper trail
in a game! You start where you can and you take a look every-
where, at everything—¿Qué más?-and then you start all over
again.”
“I know," said Gunn heavily. "What I'm saying is, you've got
nothing at all to link these two cases. The doll, that's really out of
bounds, boy, that one I don't figure any way. The odds are that
somebody found the girl, didn't report it, but picked up the
package"
"You're so right,” said Mendoza. “It was dark, and her handbag


116 CASE PENDING
Sutal way,
1 hat eye,” said Hackers nod-brute violence."
was half under her, almost hidden.”
"Well, there you are. They were killed the same general way,
but it's not a very unusual method-brute violence."
“That eye,” said Hackett to his cigarette.
Gunn looked at him, back to Mendoza. “If it's a real hunch,
Luis, all I've got to say is, keep throwing cold water at it-if it just
naturally drowns, let it go.”
“What else am I doing?” For they both knew that it wasn't ever
all pure cold logic, all on the facts: nothing that had to do with
people ever could be wholly like that. You had a feeling, you had
a hunch, and you couldn't drop every other line to follow it up,
but a real fourteen-karat hunch turned out to be worth something-
sometimes. Say it was subconscious reasoning, out of experience
and knowledge; it wasn't, always. Just a feeling.
“All right,” said Hackett amiably, “cold water. I don't like the
doll much myself. I said I'd buy all that about the guy at the skating
rink, but there's nothing there to show it's the same one. In fact,
the little we have got on that one, it suggests he admired the girl,
wanted to pick her up-like that, whether for murder or sex.”
"So it does,” said Mendoza. “And no hint of anything like that
for Carol Brooks.”
Gunn opened his mouth, shut it, looked at Hackett's bland ex-
pression, and said, “You saw both bodies, of course-you're a better
judge of what the similarity there is worth.”
"Oh, let's be psychological,” said Mendoza. “Not even that. Art
says to me before I looked at Ramirez, 'It's another Brooks'-maybe
he put it in my mind."
"Sure, lay it on me.”
There was a short silence, and then Mendoza said as if continu-
ing argument, "Nobody's interested in this kind of killing, no, ex-
cept those of us who're paid to be interested. But it's the kind
everybody ought to take passionate interest in-the most dangerous
kind there is—just because it's without motive. Or having the
motive only of sudden, impulsive violence. The lunatic kill. So it
might happen to anybody. Claro que sí, let one like that kill a
dozen, twenty, leave his mark to show it's the same killer, then
he's one for the books-the Classic Case. And don't tell me I've got
no evidence these were lunatic kills. It's negative evidence, I grant


CASE PENDING 117
here it is-welche Brooks girl, and Shinos we've got on
you, but there it is—we looked, you know. Nobody above ground
had any reason to murder the Brooks girl, and she wasn't killed for
what cash she had on her. The couple of little things we've got on
Ramirez, nothing to lead to murder-and she wasn't robbed either.
Not to that murder. I don't have to tell you that brute violence of
that sort, it's either very personal hate or lunacy."
Morgan cleared his throat; he'd been waiting in silence, a little
apart, his case book out ready, if and when they remembered him.
"I don't want to butt in, you know more about all this, but I can't
help feeling you're on the wrong track here, just for that reason.
These people-well, after all-I don't suppose you're thinking the
woman did it, and a thirteen-year-old kid—”
Again a short silence. Hackett leaned back in his chair and said
conversationally, “I picked up a thirteen-year-old kid a couple of
months ago who'd shot his mother in the back while she was watch-
ing T.V. She'd told him he couldn't go to the movies that night.
You remember that Breckfield business last year?—three kids, the
oldest one thirteen, tied up two little girls and set fire to them. One
died, the other's still in the hospital. I could take you places in this
town where a lot of thirteen-year-old kids carry switch-knives and
pull off organized gang raids on each other-and the neighborhood
stores. And some of 'em aren't little innocents any other way,
either. Juvenile had a couple in last week,and not the first-with
secondary stage V.D., and both on heroin.”
Morgan said helplessly, “But-this kid-he's not like that! He's
just a kid, like any kid that age. You can tell, you know.”
"Something was said,” cut in Mendoza, "about his size, that he'd
started to get his growth early. How big is he?-how strong?”
"Almost as tall as I am-five-eight-and-a-half, around there. Still-
childish-looking, in the face. But he's going to be a big man, he's
built that way-big bone structure.”
"Weight?"
“Hell, I can't guess about all this,” said Morgan angrily. “As far
as I can see you've got no reason at all to suspect the Lindstroms
of anything. I don't know what's in your mind about this boy-you
talk about lunatics and juvenile hoods, so O.K., which is he? You
can't have it both ways. The whole thing's crazy."
Mendoza came a few steps toward him, stood there hands in


118
CASE PENDING
pockets looking down at him, a little cold, a little annoyed. “I've
got nothing in my mind about him right now. I don't know. This
is the hell of a low card, but I've got the hell of a bad hand and it's
the best play I've got at the moment. Carol Brooks was killed on
September twenty-first, and these people left that neighborhood-
unexpectedly, and in a hurry-within twenty-four hours. The
woman was working at night, so the boy was free to come and go
as he pleased. Shortly before Brooks was killed, the woman showed
interest in an article Brooks was buying on time, and it now appears
that the girl had this with her before she was killed and it subse-
quently disappeared. I'm no psychiatrist and I don't know how
much what any psychiatrist'd say might be worth, here—the boy
just into adolescence, probably suffering some shock when his
father abandoned them. Let that go. But he's big enough and strong
enough to have done-the damage that was done. If. And I may
take a jaundiced view of the psychological doubletalk, the fact re-
mains that sex can play some funny tricks with young adolescents
sometimes. All right. These people are now living in the neighbor-
hood where Elena Ramirez was killed. I don't say they had any-
thing to do with either death, or even the theft. I'd just like to
know a little more about them.”
Morgan shrugged and flipped open his notebook. “You're wel-
come to what I've got. Mrs. Lindstrom applied for county relief
six weeks ago, and was interviewed by a case worker from that
agency. She says her husband deserted her and the boy last August,
she has no idea where he is now, hasn't heard from him since. She
took a job between then and a week or so before she applied, says
she can't go on working on account of her health. She was referred
to a clinic, and there's a medical report here-various troubles add-
ing up to slight malnutrition and a general run-down condition.
Approved for county relief, and the case shoved on to us to see if
we can find Lindstrom, make him contribute support. He's a car-
penter, good record, age forty-four, description-and so on and so
on-they both came from a place called Fayetteville in Minnesota,
so she said," and he glanced at Gunn.
“Yes,” said Gunn thoughtfully, “and what does that mean,
either? Sometimes these husbands head for home and mother, we
usually query the home town first-and I have here a reply from


CASE PENDING
119
the vital records office in Fayetteville saying that no such family
has ever resided there.”
“You don't tell me," said Mendoza.
“This I'll tell you," said Morgan, “because we run into it a lot.
Some of these women are ashamed to have the folks at home know
about it, and they don't realize we're going to check on it—the same
with former addresses here, and she gave me a false one on that
too, sure. It doesn't necessarily mean—"
“No. But it's another little something. What have you got on
the boy?”
“Nothing, why should I have? He exists, that's all we have to
know. He's normal, thirteen years old, name Martin Eric Lind-
strom, attends seventh grade at John C. Calhoun Junior High.”
Morgan shut the book.
“That's all? I'd like to know more about the boy. We'll have a
look round. No trace of the father yet?”
"It's early, we've only been on this a few days. Routine enquiries
out to every place in the area hiring carpenters-to vital records
and so on in other counties—and so on.”
“Yes. Will you let me have a copy of all that you've got, please-
to my office. We'll keep an eye on them, see what shows up, if any-
thing. Thanks very much.”
When the two men from Homicide had gone, Gunn said, “Get
one of the girls to type up that report, send it over by hand.”
“O.K.," said Morgan. “I suppose” He was half-turned to the
door, not looking at Gunn. "I suppose that means he'll have men
watching that apartment.”
"It's one of the basic moves. What's the matter, Dick?”.
"Nothing," said Morgan violently. "Nothing at all. Oh, hell, it's
just that, I guess Mendoza always rubs me the wrong way, that's
all. Always so damned sure of himself—and I think he's way off the
beam here."
"It doesn't look like much of anything," agreed Gunn. “But on
the other hand, well, you never can be sure until you check."


Ten
“I HAVE THE FEELING,” SAID MENDOZA-DISCREETLY IN SPANISH, FOR
the waiter who had seated them was still within earshot-"that I'd
better apologize for the meal we're about to have.”
“But why? Everything looks horribly impressive. Including the
prices. In fact, after that automatic glance at the right-hand col-
umn,” said Alison, putting down the immense menu card, “I have
the feeling I've been in the wrong business all my life.”
"I never can remember quite how it goes, about fooling some of
the people, etcetera.” Mendoza glanced thoughtfully around the
main dining room of the Maison du Chat, which was mostly
magenta, underlighted, and decorated with would-be funny murals
of lascivious felines. “It's curious how many people are ready to
believe that the highest prices guarantee the best value.” The waiter
came back and insinuated under their noses liquor lists only slightly
smaller than the menus. “What would you like to drink?"
“Sherry,” said Alison faintly, her eyes wandering down the right
column.
“And straight rye,” he said to the waiter, who looked shaken and
took back the cards with a disappointed murmur.
"Not in character. I'd expected to find you something of a
gourmet.”
“My God, I thought I'd made a better impression. The less one
thinks about one's stomach, the less trouble it's apt to cause. And


CASE PENDING
121
I know just enough about wine to call your attention to those
anonymous offerings you just looked at-port, muscatel, tokay, and
so on. At three dollars the half-bottle, and they'll be the domestic
product available at the nearest supermarket for what?-about one-
eighty-nine the gallon."
"They're not losing money on the imported ones either.”
“About a one hundred percent markup.” He looked around
again casually, focused on something past her shoulder, and began
to smile slowly to himself. “Now isn't that interesting ..."
“I couldn't agree more-I said I've always found the subject
fascinating. You're pleased about something, and it can't be the
prices.”
“I just noticed an old friend. And what's more, he noticed me.
He isn't nearly so pleased about it.” The waiter, doing his best with
pseudo-Gallic murmurs and deft gestures with paper mats to invest
these plebeian potions with glamour, served them. Mendoza picked
up his rye and sniffed it cautiously.“;Salud y pesetas! And if this
costs them more than a dollar a fifth wholesale, they're being
cheated, which I doubt.”
“Why did we come here? I gather it's new to you too."
“We came because I'm interested in this place, not as a restau-
rant-professionally. Of course I also wanted to impress you.”
"You have.”
"And I'm gratified to find you see through these spurious trap-
pings of the merely expensive. Next time I'll take you to a ham-
burger stand.”
"You will not. I like an excuse to get really dressed up occasion-
ally.” She had, after all, compromised with his dictation: pearls,
and a very modest décolleté, but for the rest an oyster-silk sheath.
"I complimented you once, don't fish for more so early,” said
Mendoza placidly. “And what I expected to get by coming-be-
sides rooked out of a little money-I don't know. Mr. Torres-
Domingo is an unexpected bonus. You see, the uncle of your late
pupil went out of his way to visit this place last night, which
seemed a little odd.”
“Oh! I should think so. Who is the other gentleman you
mentioned?"
“I wouldn't say gentleman. He just barely avoided an indictment


122
CASE PENDING
for homicide about eighteen months ago-he was then the proprie-
tor of a bar on Third Avenue. Another gentleman who later turned
out to have been a small-time wholesaler of heroin got himself shot
full of holes by a third gentleman who subsequently said that Mr.-
the first gentleman-had offered him a substantial sum of money to
do the job. We didn't doubt his word-after what showed up-but
unfortunately there just wasn't enough evidence. The first gentle-
man retired modestly across the Mexican border, though he is an
American citizen, and it's interesting to know he's back home. I
don't want him for anything myself, but Lieutenant Patrick Cal-
laghan will be very interested to hear that he's now the head-
waiter at a fashionable restaurant.”
"I deduce that the lieutenant is on the narcotics team, or what-
ever you call it.”
“And as you and I are not the only people in the world who
speak Spanish, we will now cease to talk shop. ... What are we
offered? All the standard Parisian concoctions. Women living
alone subsist mostly on casseroles anyway, no treat to you-I sug-
gest the one concession to Americanism, a steak.”
“Medium well,” she agreed meekly. And when the waiter had
gone, “May I ask just one question? People make a lot of money
in that-er-business you mentioned. Wholesaling you-know-what.
Why should they go to all the trouble of holding down regular
jobs too? I always thought of them as-as coming out at night,
slinking furtively down alleys, you know—like that,not punching
time clocks.”
“Oh, God!” he said. “Now you've taken my appetite away.
Well, there's a den of crafty bloodsucking robbers in Washington,
you'll have heard of them,"
"Which ones?”
"It says Bureau of Internal Revenue on the door. Now, the
L.A.P.D. couldn't get one useful piece of evidence against the gen-
tleman I mentioned—as we can't always against a lot of others in
a lot of businesses, and I do mean big businesses, on the wrong side
of the law. But we can't poke our noses into some things those
fellows can. A hundred-thousand-dollar apartment house-a new
Cadillac-a mink coat for the girl friend-you are doing well, Mr.
Smith, how come you never told your uncle about it? And if


CASE PENDING 123
Mr. Smith can't explain just where it all came from, he's got a lot
more grief than a mere city cop could ever hand him.”
“Oh, I see. I do indeed. Cover."
“And then,” added Mendoza, not altogether humorously, “when
uncle has stowed Mr. Smith away in jail for tax evasion, the indig-
nant public points an accusing finger at us and says, Corrupt cops!—
they must have known about him! Stupid cops! --if they didn't find
out! Why wasn't he arrested for his real crimes? You try to tell
them, just try, that it's because we have to operate within laws
about evidence designed to protect the public. . . . I wonder
whether I ought to call in and tell Pat's office about this.” Mr.
Torres-Domingo, who had made a precipitate exit on first catching
sight of him, reappeared round the screen at the service doors, pol-
ishing his bald head with a handkerchief. He shot one furtive
glance in Mendoza's direction, pasted on a professional happy
smile, and began to circulate among the tables, pausing for a bow,
a word here and there with a favored patron. “Oh, well, there's no
hurry-he won't run away, and for all I know he's reformed and
hasn't any reason to anyway.”
The steaks could have been less tough; the service might with
advantage have been less ostentatious. Mendoza asked her presently
whether she'd got anything useful from any of the girls.
“I wondered when you'd ask. Nothing at all, I'm sorry to say-
she hadn't said anything to any of them about that. But she didn't
know any of them well, after all.”
"No. I didn't expect much of that. I've got a queer sort of-can
I call it a lead?-from another angle, but I don't know that that
means much either. ... What do you think of the murals? I've
never asked you what kind of thing you paint.”
Alison said the murals constituted a libel on the feline race and
that she was herself unfashionably pre-Impressionistic. “This and
that-I'm not wedded to any one particular type of subject. Now
and then I actually sell something.” They talked about painting;
they talked about cats. “_But when you're away all day, you can't
keep pets, it's not fair.”
"Nobody keeps a cat. They condescend to live with you is all.
And as for the rest of it, I moved. It's miles farther for me to
drive, and the rent's higher, but it's on the ground floor and they


124 CASE PENDING
let me put in one of those little swinging doors in the back door,
out to the yard. You've seen the ads-let your pet come and go
freely. Yes, a fine idea, but she won't use it-she knows how it
works, but she doesn't like the way it slaps her behind, and she got
her tail pinched once. Fortunately all the other seven apartments
are inhabited by cat people. Four of them have keys to mine and
run in and out all day waiting on her, which of course is what she
schemes for. I believe Mrs. Carter and Mrs. Bryson,” he added,
looking around for the waiter, “alternate their shopping tours and
visits to the beauty salon-coffee, please—”.
“And pairhaps some of our special brandy, sair?”
“That I need,” said Alison, “after listening to this barefaced con-
fession. Battening on the charity of your neighbors like that,”
“One of the reasons I picked the apartment. The Elgins keep her
supplied with catnip mice, they buy them in wholesale lots, having
three Siamese of their own. Of course there is a man two doors
down who has a spaniel, but one must expect some undesirables in
these unrestricted neighborhoods.” The waiter came back with the
coffee, the brandy, and the bill on a salver, contriving to slide that
in front of Mendoza by a kind of legerdemain suggesting that it
appeared out of thin air, not through any offices of this obsequious
and excellent servant. Mendoza looked at it, laid two tens on the
salver and said now he needed the brandy too.
“I have no sympathy for you,” said Alison.
When they came out into the foyer, Mendoza hesitated, glancing
at the discreet row of phone booths in an alcove. “I wonder if I
had—” There had appeared no bowing, smiling headwaiter as they
left the dining room, to make the last honors to new patrons, urge
a return. “Oh, well,” and he put a hand automatically to his pocket
for more largesse as one of the several liveried lackeys approached
with Alison's coat.
"So 'appy to ’ave 'ad you wiz us, sair and madame-I 'ope you
enjoyed your dinnair? You mus' come back soon-Holy Mother o'
God, what the hell was that?” Between them they dropped the
coat; the lackey took one look over Alison's shoulder, said, “Jesus,
let me out of here!” and dived blindly for the door, staggering
Mendoza aside. The second volley of shots was a medley of several
calibers, including what sounded like a couple of regulation .38's.


CASE PENDING 125
From the dark end of the corridor off the foyer plunged a large,
shapeless man waving a revolver, and close after him the tuxedo-
clad rotundity of Mr. Torres-Domingo, similarly equipped. The
checkroom attendant prudently dropped flat behind his counter
as the large man paused to fire twice more behind him and charged
into the foyer.
“Wait for me, Neddy!” Mr. Torres-Domingo sent one wild shot
behind him and another inadvertently into the nearest phone booth
as he continued flight.
The first man swept the gun in an arc round the foyer. “Don't
nobody move-I'm comin' through,”
Mendoza recovered his balance, shoved Alison hard to sprawl
full length on the floor, and in one leap covered the ten feet to the
gun as it swung back in his direction. He got a good left-handed
grip on the gun-hand as they collided, his momentum lending
force to the considerable impact, and as they went down landed
one right that connected satisfactorily. Neddy went over back-
ward and Mendoza went with him; the gun emptied itself into the
ceiling as they hit the floor with Mendoza's knee in the paunch
under him; Neddy uttered a strangled whoof and lost all interest in
the proceedings.
Mr. Torres-Domingo yelped, fired once more and hit the plate-
glass door, turned and ran into the embrace of an enormous red-
haired man in the vanguard of the pursuit, which had just erupted
down the corridor. The red-haired man adjusted him to a conven-
ient position and hit him once in the jaw, and he flew backward
six feet and collapsed on top of Mendoza, who was just sitting up.
One of the three men behind the red-haired man dropped his gun
and sank onto the divan beside the checkroom, clutching his
shoulder.
There was a very short silence before several women in the
crowd collecting at the dining-room door went off like air-raid
sirens. Mendoza heaved off Mr. Torres-Domingo, sat up and began
to swear in Spanish. The red-haired man bellowed the crowd to
quiet, and turned to the man nearest him: "Find a phone and call
the wagon and an ambulance-and”– Alinging round to the man on
the divan—"just what in the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did
you think you were doing, you almighty bastard? You—"


CASE PENDING 129
planning anything underhand and secret-from robbing Junior's
piggy bank to murder: Keep it simple. Don't have too many lies
to remember, don't dream up the complicated routine, the fancy
alibi. The way he'd designed it was like that-short, straight, and
sweet. Now, if he went on with it that way, there'd be the plausible
lie to figure out and remember and stick to: just why the hell
had Morgan been hanging around here, obviously a man waiting
for someone?
Half-formed ideas, wild, ridiculous, skittered along the top
of his mind. You know how it is, officer, I met this blonde, didn't
mean any harm but a fellow likes a night out once in a while;
sure I felt guilty, sure I love my wife, but, well, the blonde said
she'd meet me, I tell you how it was, I'd lent this guy a five-spot,
felt sorry for him you know, guess I was a sucker, anyway he said
he'd meet me and pay, Well, I met this fellow who said he'd give
me an inside tip on a horse, only he wouldn't know for sure until
tonight, if I'd meet him,
All right, he thought furiously, all right; of all the damn-fool
ideas . . . So, produce the blonde, the debtor, the tipster! It
couldn't be done that way.
He stood now right at the building corner, close, out of the
druggist's view. Think: if, when Smith comes, what are you going
to do now? What can you do?
The little panic passed and he saw the only possible answer: it
wasn't a very good one, it put more complication into this than
was really safe, but that couldn't be helped. Obviously, get
Smith away from this place. The farther away the better. In the
car. Stall him and get him into the car, and Christ, the possibilities,
the dangers that opened up-couldn't drive far, maybe not at all,
without getting him suspicious. Sure, knock him out with a
wrench or something as soon as they got in, fine, and have it show
up at the autopsy later on. Great, shoot him in the car under cover
of the revving motor, and get blood all over the seat covers. All
right: think.
Yes. It could be managed, it had to be: the only way. In the
car, then, right away, and in the body, so the clothes would get
the blood. Have to take a chance. Then quick around to Humboldt
or Foster, only a few blocks, both dark streets too, thank God;


CASE PENDING 135
Said-
Pht bere to sends. Ting
about, that was bad to show, it was wrong because policemen
weren't like that at all any more, that was other times. A bright
light they had shining right in your eyes and they, But Dad
said-
Marty shut his eyes tight and tried to get back to that place,
couldn't remember how long ago or if it was Tappan Street or
Macy Avenue, where there'd been Dad just like always, sitting
at the kitchen table, digging out his pipe with his knife and look-
ing over the top of his glasses and saying-and saying-something
about policemen being your friends, to help you.
He couldn't get there, to Dad that time. Where he got to in-
stead was that night before Dad-didn't come home. He was right
there again, he saw Dad plain, awful mad he'd been for sure, his
face all stiff and white and a look in his eyes said how hard he
was holding himself in. Dad saying slow and terrible quiet, “I
can't stand no more, Marion-I just can't stand no more.”
And Marty knew right this minute just how Dad had felt when
he said that. Because he felt the same way, not all of a sudden
but like as if he'd only this minute come to know how he felt,
plain.
I just can't stand no more.
He relaxed, limp, against the headboard, and a queer vague
peace filled him. Like coming to the end of a long, long walk, like
getting there—some place—at last, and he could stop trying any
more.
It didn't matter what place, or what happened there. It was
finished. I just can't stand no more.
The gas, and the cops whatever kind and whatever they did or
didn't do, and even-more immediate and terrible-his Ma, and
what would happen afterward, when she found out. Anything,
everything, nothing, it wasn't anyways important any more.
Something had to happen, and what did it matter what or how?
Maybe there were those cops down there, even two or three
o'clock in the morning, and they'd see him when he came out with
-it-and take him to the police station. Maybe not; some other
way, the way he'd thought or–maybe they already knew, he
couldn't see how but they might. And in the end maybe they'd


CASE PENDING 137
grammar-she's had some education-but awfully timid and meek,
as if she was cowed. I recognized it right away-and she sounded
like a child reciting a lesson, as if she was reading the message
off_"
“The woman,” he said, "the woman. So she's still with him.
Yes, we didn't think she was lying then, about being married. Yes,
a cut above him all right, probably one of those natural doormats
-husband's just being the superior male when he knocks her
around. He-God, I was afraid-so it's just another breathing
space, until tomorrow night. I wonder why.”.
"I don't like it-can't stall with him forever, Dick-and in the
end we can't pay, he'll— What can you say to him any more, to
make him—""
"Listen," said Morgan, trying to sound authoritative, confident
(don't let her suspect how you're planning to deal with it, con-
vince her), “it's the money he wants, he's not in any rush to get
this thing open in court, that's the last thing he wants. It's his only
hold on us, he's not so anxious to let go of it."
“I-suppose not. But-Dick, I–I've got to where I just want
it over and decided, whichever way. This hanging on—"
“I know, darling, I know. Maybe tomorrow. I'll be right home-
half an hour.”
LIEUTENANT CALLAGHAN WAS A GOOD DEAL LESS THAN MOLLIFIED TO
be presented with such small fry as Tomás Ramirez; he had been
lying hopefully in ambush for a certain big-time eastern whole-
saler, and had-as he informed Mendoza bitterly-had a leash on
Mr. Torres-Domingo and assorted friends for some time. What
the hell good did it do to pick up a minnow like this Ramirez, who
just ferried the stuff across the border in small lots? If Mendoza
was interested, they had known about the Maison du Chat for
quite a while, and a usually reliable source of information had
led them to expect the wholesaler on the premises tonight, to set
up a deal with Neddy, Mr. Torres-Domingo being the middle-
man. At nine o'clock they'd expected him, and so it was very
probable that he'd been, maybe, a hundred feet away from the
kitchen door when Mendoza's bright boy had got a little too
close to the game and flushed it early. And so their chances of


CASE PENDING 139
watch yourself. I've got another piece of advice for you, lady-
whatever else you do with him's your own business, but don't
ever get into a hand of poker with him. And seeing you've done
about all the damage you can do tonight, Luis-on headquarters
business, that is—I guess you can get out of my sight and take her
home.”
Mendoza rubbed his nose and said he wouldn't presume to teach
Lieutenant Callaghan his job, but he did think that Ramirez,
“Oh, get out, scat!” said Callaghan. "He's on his way here
now, I sent two men after him while you were phoning your
bright little boy's wife. I can't hold him on anything, unless one
of these two involve him or we find the stuff in his possession-
both of which are likely to happen. Not that I give a damn about
him, but thank you so much for pointing him out, and now good
night to you."
Mendoza grinned at him, said, “;Uno no puede complacer a
indo mundo-one can't please everybody! Be good, Pat-hasta
más ver," and took Alison's arm down the hall to the elevator.
“And now,” he added, "la familia Ramirez is due for another
shock.”
“Yes, poor people. I must see them, to return half the tuition
she'd paid, you know. I didn't like to blunder in the very day after,
but I thought at the inquest I might have a chance to—"
"You haven't been subpoenaed, you notice. A very routine
affair. Maybe twenty minutes-adjourned awaiting further evi-
dence-that's how it'll go. Come if you like, but it'll be very dull,
I won't be there."
“I'd like to think that was a non sequitur,” said Alison, “but I'm
afraid you didn't mean it that way. I suppose that ex-football-star
sergeant will represent you. I think I will go. I've never been to
an inquest and it's an excuse to take the morning off. Besides, I
do want to see the family, only decent.”
Mendoza looked at her and shook his head, getting out his car
keys. "Occasionally I agree with Pat-astonishing how I seem to
acquire these high-principled women.”
“That,” said Alison sedately, “is a very premature verb.” And
twenty minutes later, at her apartment door: “Don't forget those
stockings. Size"


CASE PENDING
141
Joe, but no call for you to get in trouble account of me, it's my
own—"
"You got nobody to talk up for you, I guess your friends got
a right to,"
"You mustn't,” said Agnes in agony. “It's awful good of you,
Joe, but you don't know-you-you better just not b-bother about
me any more, because—" But she couldn't come out with it like
that, over the phone, hear what he'd say, know what he'd think-
she just hung up quick and went back to her room, shut herself in.
It'd been bad enough feeling guilty all the while, worrying, but
when it came to getting your friends in trouble, Agnes dried
her eyes and blew her nose and thought forlornly, Well, that's
that. And serve her right too. Tomorrow morning, go to them and
tell the truth-shame the devil, like her grandma used to say-and
have it done with, that was all. Whatever they'd do to her for it.
And afterward Joe and Rita and the others that'd been nice, that
she'd liked having for friends, they wouldn't want any more to
do with her when they knew, but you couldn't expect different,
she'd just have to take her medicine was all. Better go to the store
first, tell Mr. Snyder she was quitting, she'd have to anyway-
and it'd mean finding another room too, because Mrs. Anderson
wouldn't-
And it was silly, go on crying like this, when it was all her own
fault. ...


CASE PENDING
143
thing, but that dead girl over on Commerce, Saturday-you know.
I mean—"
They all looked at it again and Pete said what about it, and the
rookie said weakly, well, he'd just wondered if there could be
any connection. “I mean, it's crazy, but maybe the boys down-
town'd be interested—”.
“In this?” said the sergeant. "Now that'd be something. I can
just see myself calling headquarters, ask if anybody down there
wants to play dolls.”
“No, but-” The longer he looked at it, the funnier the feeling
got. They had a little more backchat, the rest of them kidding
him because that had been his first corpse and he hadn't acted as
hard-boiled as maybe he should have; and the sergeant finally said,
if he wanted to play detective so bad he could do it with his own
dime and be sure and tell whoever he talked to it was strictly his
own idea, none of the precinct's responsibility. They didn't think
he'd have the nerve to do anything like that, but by then he was
feeling stubborn about it, and he said all right, by God, he'd do just
that, and got Vic to change a quarter for him and called down-
town.
He got hold of Hackett after a little argument with Sergeant
Lake, and in the middle of talking with him Hackett broke off
to relay the news to Mendoza who'd just come in. The rookie
hung on, listening to the lieutenant's exclamation in the back-
ground, and then jumped as Mendoza's voice came crackling over
the wire: “Tell your sergeant I'm coming right around-leave it
as it is, and stay there yourself!”
“Yes, sir!" said the rookie, but the wire was already dead. Ten
minutes later Mendoza walked in and took a look at the doll before
he remembered to throw a good-morning at the sergeant.
“;Vaya una donación!” he murmured very softly to himself,
and his very mustache seemed to quiver with excitement. “Now
what does this mean? But by God, whatever it means, it's the
one-no odds offered!” He swung on the sergeant. “Let's hear all
about it!"
There wasn't much to hear, when they got down to definite
details. It had been sitting up against the left side of the double
doors, in a position where it wouldn't either interfere with that


144 CASE PENDING
door's opening or necessarily be noticed, in the dark; this was
an old precinct station, and the doors were set at the back of a
recessed open lobby at the top of the front steps, which was
temporarily unlighted due to defective wiring. Consequently
there was no terminus a quo; the thing might have been there
since midnight and gone unnoticed by the various patrolmen
going in and out during the night; or it might have been put there
ten minutes before Vic found it, though it was likelier to have
been before daylight.
And of course every man there had handled the thing, but it
was no good swearing about that now. Mendoza demanded a
sheet of wrapping paper and swathed the doll in it carefully;
Prints would have to isolate any strangers from the precinct men,
that was all.
“So I've you to thank for this,” and he turned to the rookie,
who was nearly as surprised as the sergeant. “What's your name?"
The rookie told him. "I'll remember that, you showed intelligence.
What struck you about it?”
"Well, l-it's crazy, Lieutenant, but the way it looked lying
there, it reminded me of that dead girl-the eye and all-it was just
a sort of feeling,"
“Yes. You're a good man. Any time you want to get out of
uniform, when you're qualified, I'll be glad to put in a word
for you.”
The rookie, who had heard a little more about Mendoza by this
time, stammered incredulous gratitude; the sergeant was struck
dumb; and Mendoza walked out with the doll cradled tenderly
in his arms.
He could not resist showing it to Hackett before he delivered
it to Prints; they looked at it lying there on his desk, mute, ugly,
and enigmatic, and Hackett said, “I laid myself open-say it-I
told you so.”
"I'm magnanimous this morning. But that's the only thing I
could say about it, boy-I'm just one big question mark about it
otherwise. What the hell has it got to do with this?”
“Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Ya veremos-I hope."
"Waiting for time to tell is just what we can't do, damn it.


CASE PENDING 151
pand spanking for-jujed " agreed Mrs. Dina whoever's had it.
"Well!” said Mrs. Demarest. “What kind of a mother would go
and let a child treat an expensive doll that way! Breaking things
up just out of mischief, it's a thing I always saw my children got a
good spanking for just leads to trouble later on.”
"A sinful waste-wicked,” agreed Mrs. Breen, looking horrified.
“A downright destructive youngster, must be, whoever's had it. I
never saw anythin' like"
"I've begun to think that might be an understatement-about
who's had it,” said Mendoza. “But is it the doll Carol bought?”
“Yes, suh, it is,” said Mrs. Breen promptly, “or-one just like it,
because if I got to swear, well, of course I couldn't do no such
thing. I just had the one in stock, not figurin' I could sell more'n
that, you know, an' I couldn't guess how many of 'em the factory
might of made, an' they'd be all just alike, except some was dressed
in blue and some in pink like this here. But it's just exactly like the
one Carol bought-or 'twas when it was new.”
“Would there be some kind of a serial number on it, I wonder?”
suggested Mrs. Demarest. “The factory maybe could tell what
store they'd sold it to. Little cheap things, there wouldn't be, but
a thing that was going to sell for twenty dollars—”.
“Yes, it's possible. I haven't looked, the thing's in such a state
I don't want to handle it more than necessary, and if there is a
number the factory'll know where to look for it. That we'll find
out. Now look at this.” He brought out the three-inch strip of
lace. “I'll swear to you this came off some part of the clothes, but
it's not possible to fit it on anywhere.”
They bent over it, over the doll, looking. “It's just like the lace
on the underwear," agreed Mrs. Breen. “Same exact color. I
reckon the factory could tell you for sure, 'bout that-but there's
not an awful lot o' the lace left on, an' if it got torn off different
times, well, there wouldn't be no fitting this piece where it was.”
"I can't get over the way it's been-” Mrs. Demarest raised
troubled eyes to him. “Can you tell us about it, Lieutenant, how
you came to find it?”
Mendoza leaned back and lit a cigarette. “I'll tell you what I
know-you tell me what it means! Carol bought this thing the
night she was killed. That morning, a Mrs. Marion Lindstrom
tried to persuade you,” stabbing the cigarette at Mrs. Breen, “to


152 CASE PENDING
sell it to her, and, when you refused, was insistent that you find out
whether you could get her one like it, and left her name and ad-
dress"
“Real uppity she was,” nodded Mrs. Breen, "as if I could, if
I wanted.”
“So. Carol was killed and the doll stolen. No evidence either
way, as to whether the killer or someone else took it. Now, Mrs.
Lindstrom lived just two blocks up from here, across Hunter
Avenue-and the next day, though it lacked a week to the end
of the month and her rent was paid to then, she moved-unexpect-
edly and hurriedly. We can conjecture it was pure chance she
ended up where she did, in a place called Graham Court, down
the wrong side of Main. She'd have to take what was available
right that day, if she was anxious to move at once-and what was
available, of course, within the limits of what she could pay. All
right. Time goes on, and last Friday night another girl is killed,
within two blocks of this Graham Court. Killed the same way,
and as was the case with Carol, there is absolutely nothing in her
private life which gave anyone reason to kill her. She wasn't as
bright a girl as Carol, she had very bad taste and not too much
education, but she was an honest girl and well enough liked-
and I don't suppose she wanted to die, you know.”
“Ah, poor thing," said Mrs. Demarest.
“She was on her way home from a roller-skating rink, alone
because her boy friend's father, who disapproved of her, had
come and hauled the boy home with him. Fortunately they're
out of it on evidence. This time the handbag was taken, found a
couple of blocks away, but as far as we can tell nothing was stolen.
Now, take a look at me,” said Mendoza, sitting up. “I'm visited
by a hunch-it's the same killer-and I've got no evidence what-
ever, that means anything, to back me up. Not until you told me
about this doll. Then I've got Mrs. Lindstrom's name, and then
I find out she's living in the same neighborhood this time too, and
where that does get me? If I checked back on all the people living
around there, I might find half a dozen others who'd moved there
from this general neighborhood in the last six months. One of
those things. . . . But, where d’you think I found this little piece
of lace? On the floor of that skating rink. There's some vague evi-


CASE PENDING
153
dence about a boy or a young man who's been in the habit of
sneaking into the rink by an unused door, and who-so the dead
girl complained to several people-stared at her in a 'funny way.'
I think he's the one, but that's mostly another hunch and I know
nothing else about him, I've got no line on him at all. Except that
may be he dropped this little strip there one time—and that doesn't
say it came from the doll. I say to myself, I'm woolgathering, all
this doesn't mean one damned thing. And then this morning some-
body leaves that doll carefully propped against the door of the
precinct station down there-three blocks away from Graham
Court.”
"Well, that is queer,” said Mrs. Demarest interestedly. “But this
Mrs. Lindstrom, she wouldn't be the one"
“There's not much to go on there either-yet. Her husband
deserted her about a month before Carol was killed. There's a
thirteen-year-old boy. All I know about him right now is that
he's a big, strong boy-shot up early-big as a man, and probably
strong enough to have done-what was done. I don't know if he
did, or why he might have. I'm getting what I can about him,
but”-he shrugged—“you can see I've got no real evidence to
warrant a full-scale investigation."
"I don't know 'bout your rules for that kind o' thing," said
Mrs. Breen, “but it shorely is queer, all that. Don't seem hardly
possible, though, that a boy thirteen-and why'd she want a doll
so bad, her with only a boy?”
Mendoza sighed and stood up. “I haven't even got an excuse to
go and ask her that—and she'd only tell me it was for her favorite
niece back east, anyway. I'm hoping the factory can identify this
definitely, and in that case I'll want you both to make formal
statements about it. . . . Thanks very much, I'll let you know as
soon as I can.”


Thirteen
THE PHONE CALL HAD COME THROUGH, SUE SAID WHEN SHE EVEN-
tually got Morgan at the office after lunch, about eleven o'clock.
It was the woman again, again sounding as if she were reading
the message, refusing to answer questions, say anything else.
“I tried to, I thought if I could appeal to her, remind her of
what she said before, what we--but she just gave a little gasp
and said, 'Oh, I couldn't, Mis' Morgan,' and hung up. Dick"
“Yes,” he said, making meaningless scribbles on the note pad
in front of him. Henry was there at his desk across the room, Stack
right alongside under the other window; Morgan couldn't say
much directly. “Go on.”
And what it came to was-right back to Graham Court. Seven
o'clock, Smith's message said, at Graham Court, the address and
apartment number carefully read out. Morgan might as well come
to him, ran the message (insolently phrased, sounding the op-
posite in the woman's soft voice), and he needn't think account
of things going haywire last night he'd stopped meaning anything
he'd said. He'd be waiting alone for Morgan at seven, and this
had better be the pay-off, or else.
“All right,” said Morgan steadily, “I've got that. Seven, that's
early. I'd better not try to make it home first. Mean?-just more
bluster, is all-don't worry, hon. You'd better expect me when
you see me, O.K.?”


CASE PENDING 155
He put down the phone and went back to his open case book
there on the desk, pretending to check notes, add a word here
and there, but not really seeing anything on the page.
Two things said themselves over in his mind. The apartment.
And, Alone. (Smith, of course, unknowing that he had any prior
knowledge of the apartment, any other reason to be there.) It
added up-for Morgan, and also to a couple of things that were no
concern of Morgan's but interesting: that alone suggested that
Smith had seen to it that neither the woman nor the boy had any
idea how much money he was expecting, and that and the reveal-
ing of his home address suggested that very likely he was planning
to decamp with the money, maybe at once.
What it added up to for Morgan the murderer was safety-
maybe. Depending on where Mendoza's men were. He thought
he might get some information on that point when he saw Men-
doza an hour from now, with this stuff from the school.
From the time on Saturday night when the cold fact had pene-
trated his mind that the only real lasting safety was Smith dead, cir-
cumstances had been forcing on Morgan certain changes of his
original plan he didn't much like. He looked at this one from all
the angles; it was better than the street holdup in a way, and it
would, of course, have to do.
You were always seeing something like that in the paper. A
man shot himself, hanged himself, slashed his wrists in the bath-
tub: no known reason, no prior threat.
The tricky factor was the timing. If Mendoza's men were in-
side, it couldn't be done at all: they'd be too close, and not unlikely
in a position to know at which floor Morgan stopped. But if they
were outside, then-which way, before or after the Lindstroms?
Before, he thought. Quick and quiet up to the third floor, and no
backchat with Smith: as soon as the door was shut behind him in
Smith's place, and Smith away from it. And no fooling around
with any attempt to muffle the shot, a suicide wouldn't bother and
there wouldn't be time. Gun in his hand: prints. Thirty seconds?
There had to be a good chance he'd have time to be outside the
door again, at least, before anyone else got there. There was a
narrower chance that he could get halfway down the stairs be-
fore that. People exclaimed, talked a little, wondered, before
originales; it was have to do. mething lik


CASE PENDING 157
The agencies' bright brisk assurances: we like to find just the
right child for the individual parents: patience! The endless
forms. The investigators: questions, questions. Time going by, and
both of them afraid, never, and Sue-
And then, that woman. Just by chance sitting next to Sue in
the lounge of a department-store rest room. “Such a lovely baby,
Dick, I couldn't help saying-only a month old, and darling, she
hasn't even named her, wasn't that interested-she-" Later they
both thought, less lack of interest in the baby than preoccupation
with the husband. Oh, obviously that curious mixture of obsession
(that couldn't really be called love), dependence, and fear ...
He was awful mad when he heard about the baby, he didn't
want another kid, they take a lot of time and all, you know. And
I can't go out to work now, with it to look out for. He's-my
husband, he's back east, he's-well, he's sick, see, awful sick, in
the hospital, and can't work. I'd just as soon—anyways, I guess itd
be better off with folks like you. ....
Yes, silly: dangerous. All that you forgot, confronted with the
warm round armful that would be Janet Ann Morgan. A little
sense you tried to use, you got the woman to sign a statement
saying she was relinquishing the child voluntarily, and you told
Dr. Fordyce that Sue was nervous, didn't trust the agency's
medical tests, wanted his report too. And Dr. Fordyce, very
probably, could make a pretty shrewd guess at the truth, but he
was an old friend and he figured, maybe, that it wasn't up to
him to be an officious busybody. And all the tests saying just
what Janny had been telling everybody since-such a lovely baby.
And now, Smith. Robertson, the woman said: Smith, Brown,
Green, what the hell if it was O'Kelly or Bernstein or Gonzales.
... There he was, and he was the danger: it would all come to
nothing if he were out of it, the woman was a nonentity with no
force in her. So that left it right up to Morgan, and this was the
only way he could see open to him.
When he came round to that point again, he got up and shut
the case book. On his way over to Police Headquarters, he told
himself that from another angle, it was safer really-if you came
to murder-to do it cold, thinking. If you had to, if you could,
if you could face the issue and take the only decision ...


158 CASE PENDING
THE WAITER AT FEDERICO'S SAW MENDOZA COME IN, AND WHEN HE
presented the menu also brought the two fingers of rye that was
usually Mendoza's one drink of the day, and, five minutes later,
the black coffee. They never hurried you at Federico's, and they
knew their regular patrons.
Mendoza brooded over the coffee; he had something else to
think about now, which was probably quite irrelevant, and that
was Morgan.
Morgan, so much friendlier than he had been this morning, ex-
panding on what information he'd got at the school, and then
asking questions. Had Mendoza got anywhere on the Lindstroms,
anything suggestive from the men watching the apartment, and
just how did they go about that anyway, he'd think it was an
awkward job, that they'd be spotted ... oh, from a car, and
tailing the woman when she-and only up to midnight, that was
interesting. ...
Morgan, being affable in order to ask questions? And just why?
Morgan-now Mendoza looked at him with more attention-
strung-up, a little tense, putting on an act of being just as usual.
So all right, he was worried about something, he'd had a fight
with his wife, he was coming down with a cold or-quite likely-
he'd felt a trifle ashamed of his barely courteous manner this
morning and was trying to make up for it.
There were more interesting things to think about than Mor-
gan. Over his dinner Mendoza thought about them.
The school, somewhat bewildered at being asked but polite to
an accredited civic agency, said in effect that young Martin
Lindstrom was one of its more satisfactory pupils. A good student,
not brilliant but intelligent, co-operative, well-mannered and re-
liable. He had a good record of attendance and punctuality. He
was somewhat immature for his age, not physically or academi-
cally but socially: not a particularly good mixer with other chil-
dren, shy, a little withdrawn but not to any abnormal degree.
Mrs. Lindstrom had never attended any P.-T.A. meetings, none
of the teachers had ever met her, but that was not too unusual.
The tailers. Mendoza had debated about taking them off: a
waste of time? Not likely to come up with anything, and there
was no real reason to single these people out. . . . In twenty-four


162 CASE PENDING
ma. It was just starting to get dark then. She saw him, and she
made him stop, and said, “Oh, you're the boy lives downstairs,
aren't you? You know Danny, Danny S-Smith, don't you?”
“Yes, ma'am,” said Marty, and he took off his cap like Ma and
Dad both always said you ought to talking to a lady or when
you came inside, to be polite.
“Oh, have you seen him anywheres? Was he to school today?”
“No, ma'am, I guess he wasn't, I haven't seen-”.
“Oh, dear,” she said in her funny soft little voice. “I guess he's
for sure run off. I don't know what I better do about it. You see,
his dad was kind of nice to him awhile, just lately, an' then he
got mad at him, and I guess it sort of turned Danny-d'you sup-
pose? Boys, they're funny anyways-never know what they're
up to.” It was like she was talking to herself. “I better ask Ray
what to do. Only he said not to come home till eight anyways. Oh,
well,” and she smiled sort of absent-minded at Marty and went
past and he saw her stop and look at the ads outside the movie
house there and go in.
He couldn't be bothered, think much about her or Danny.
It got darker, and then it was really dark and getting cold too,
and his head began to feel funny, light, and he wasn't sure he could
keep on walking, like, even if he sat down somewhere he might
fall over.
There wasn't anything left to do but go home. And it'd be
worse now, after a whole day. . . . And worse too with Ma,
because he'd stayed away so long.
It took a long time to get there, and he thought for a while
he'd never get to the top of the stairs. And now he wasn't feeling
so awful scared any longer-like he'd got past that-part of him
was just feeling sick and so tired and wanting to get home because
that was the place to go when you felt that way, and another part
just wanted to have it all over with, whatever was going to happen.
He leaned on the door when he knocked and waited for her
to come, and so when the door opened he almost fell down, and
she grabbed at him. She hadn't called out sharp, way she always
did, who was there, first before unlocking-but he hardly noticed.
“Marty!” she said, and there wasn't so much crossness in her
voice as he'd expected, she sounded-almost like the way he'd been


CASE PENDING 163
feeling-plain scared. “Marty, where you been?-I been nearly
crazy all day-you got to say what you did, where you-go an' get
it back! Marty"
And that was the first time he ever remembered she didn't
right away lock the door-but he didn't notice that much either,
right then.
GUNN WAS STARTING A COLD, AND LEFT THE OFFICE EARLY. AS USUAL,
he denied the vague stuffy sensation in the head, the little soreness
in the throat, the general feeling of lassitude; he said he wouldn't
dare have a cold after the way she'd been stuffing him with Vita-
min C all winter. Christy, having been married to him for thirty-
nine years next June, ignored that, stood over him to see he fin-
ished the glass of hot lemonade and honey, and said he'd better
have something light for dinner instead of the hamburger, and
why didn't he get into his robe and slippers and be comfortable,
so far as she knew nobody was coming in.
Gunn said defiantly he felt perfectly all right, never better.
“Of course,” said Christy briskly, “but no law against making
yourself comfortable.”
“I suppose you'll give me no peace until I do,” said Gunn, re-
lieved at being argued into it. And then the phone rang, and she
said vexedly, There, if that was the MacDonalds wanting to play
bridge tonight they could go on wanting-not, of course, because
Gunn wasn't feeling well but because she didn't feel like it her-
self.
He had his tie off, in the bedroom, listening to her murmuring
protests at the phone, when she came to the door and said crossly
it was somebody who insisted on speaking with him, wouldn't
take no for an answer. So he went out and picked up the phone.
"Mr. Gunn?" said a male voice, confident, courteous, used to
doing business over the phone. “I've got a little deal for you,
sorry to disturb you at home, but I'm glad I've finally got hold of
you-your office let me have your number. You don't know me,
I'm Earl King, King Contracting out on Western—but your office
sent a memo to me, and I guess a lot of other places, about a fellow
named Lindstrom, wanting to know if he'd applied for work or
been hired, under that name or any other—".


164 CASE PENDING
“Yes?" Gunn sat down beside the telephone table.
"Well, I've got him for you. It was quite a little surprise to
me, I tell you, because of the kind of thing it is-deserting his
family-if you'd asked me, I'd have said he was the last man. He's
been working for me nearly six months, one of my steadiest men,
and under his own name too. When—"
"Well, that's fine," said Gunn. “We're glad to know where he
is, and in the morning,”
"Wait a minute, this is just the start. When I got your form
letter asking about him, well, there wasn't any doubt it was him,
name and description and all. But I tell you, it staggered me. I
couldn't help feeling there must be something on his side, you
know, because of the kind of guy he is. And I didn't want to go
and haul him off the job in front of the other men, make a big
thing of it. What I did, I met him at the job half an hour ago when
he'd be through for the day, and tackled him about it. No trouble
at all, he broke right down, said he was glad it'd come out and
he'd thought it would before this, and anyway he'd been feeling
so bad about it he couldn't have gone on much longer-”
“That's fine," said Gunn, yawning. “Glad to hear it. He's de-
cided to go back to his family? So that's that.” Surreptitiously
he swallowed, testing that soreness at the back of his throat.
"Well, not quite,” said King. “Now the dam's broken, he's
been telling me a lot of things, but more to the point he insists
on seeing you-you're the one's after him, so to speak, and he's
in such a state-well, he's one of those terribly honest fellows, you
know, can't sleep if they forget to pay for a cup of coffee at a
drugstore counter-you know what I mean. He's got to get it all
off his chest right away, to you.”
"In the morning,” said Gunn, remembering that Mendoza would
also be interested and want to see Lindstrom, “if he'll come”
“I can't talk him into that, Mr. Gunn. He's in such a state-not
wild, you know, don't mean that, but, Look, I can't help feeling
so damned sorry for the guy, he's sort of desperate-keeps saying
he can't rest till he explains how he came to-you see how it is.
Look, if you'll agree to see him tonight, I've said I'll drive him
over there. I know it's an imposition, but-there's one thing about
it, too, I don't know but what it'd be just as well for- Well, I
ne to see him ton But there's one te Well, I


CASE PENDING
165
think you'll be interested, and if_”
"Oh, hell,” said Gunn. But this was, in a way, a funny sort of
job, and you ran into these things sometimes. Strictly speaking it
was Morgan's case and he ought to be the one to handle this, but
let it go. At least it didn't mean going out again, and an hour should
take care of it. “All right, bring him here if it's like that. Have
you got the address?”
"Just a minute, I'll take it down. ... That's quite a little drive,
don't expect us much before seven, O.K.? Thanks very much,
Mr. Gunn, I hope this isn't interfering with any plans– I appreciate
it. He's really a nice fellow, I can't help feeling he- Well, we'll
see you about seven then, thanks again.”
Gunn hung up and said “Hell!” again. Christy wasn't very
pleased either, said she thought he'd given up being on twenty-
four-hour call when he retired. But she got dinner a little early,
and they'd eaten and Gunn was sitting in the front room in his
robe and slippers when the doorbell sounded, while she cleaned up
in the kitchen. He'd left the porch light on; he went and let them
in, brought them into the living room.
King, fortyish, nice-looking, responsible-looking fellow. And
Lindstrom, a big man, tall and also broad, still in his work clothes,
and yes, the very look of him making you think, The last man. A
steady type, you'd say-mild blue eyes behind steel-framed glasses,
square honest-looking face, big blunt workman's hands twisting
his white work cap.
“Come in, sit down, won't you?”
Lindstrom burst out, nervous, apologetic, “It's awful good of
you, see me this way, and Mr. King too, drive all this far over-
I got to thank you-I just got to tell, explain to you, sir, I–I don't
mind whatever you got to do to me for it, it was a terrible wrong
thing, I knew that all the while, I felt so bad after-but I-"
"No one's going to do anything to you, Mr. Lindstrom. It's just
that when a family is deserted, you understand, the county has to
support them, and we try to find the husband to save ourselves
a little money." Gunn smiled, to put the man more at ease. "It costs
the county quite a bit, you know. Even in a case like your wife's,
where there's only one child—”
Lindstrom looked down at his cap; for a minute it seemed as if


166 CASE PENDING
his big hands would tear it apart, straining and twisting. “That's
what I-you don't understand-I_” He raised desperate, suddenly
tear-filled eyes to Gunn. “I-we-got two boys,” he said. "Two.
The-the other one, Eddy, our oldest one, he's-not right. Not
noways. She wouldn't ever hear to-even when that doctor said,
But she allus kep him hid away from ever'body too, account of
being-shamed. Secret, like.”


Fourteen
MORGAN STEPPED INSIDE THE DARK, SMELLY FRONT HALLWAY OF THE
apartment building and shut the door after him. This was it, here
and now. And it was the damnedest thing, he'd expected it to feel
like going into action, but instead-a little ludicrously-he felt
exactly the way he had when he'd been in that senior play in high
school. Walking out on the stage, all the lights, painfully conscious
of every breath he drew, every slightest gesture, and yet somehow
divorced from himself so that he moved with a stranger's body,
spoke with a stranger's voice.
This was it, this was it. Start now. Remember-and as he went
up the first half-dozen steps, sudden sharp panic stabbing at the
back of his mind (the way it had been that time on the high-school
auditorium stage, oh, God, suppose I forget-) that he'd forget
just the one detail of his plan that would bring the whole thing
down like a house of cards on top of him.
Think about what you're doing. You'll be all right, you're get-
ting keyed up to it now, you know what you've got to do, you've
decided, and now time's run out, you're on-move!
₂Â₂Ò₂Â₂Òâm₂ ₂ ti\/₂₂/₂/₂/₂/₂/₂/₂₂/₂₂₂/₂₂ū₂₂₂
now, the timing is the important factor here. You'll be all right,
you can do it.
He went fast up the stairs. There were sixteen steps, and a tiny
square landing, uncarpeted, and then you turned up six more steps


168
CASE PENDING
to the left, to the second-floor hall. The door to the Lindstroms'
apartment was just across there, and the next flight right around
from the top of those stairs, left again. He got to the landing, and
his breath was coming too short, God, he'd never do it, out of
condition, another flight and he wouldn't have strength to aim
the damn gun, But he had to hurry, he had to-
A woman screamed ten feet away in the dark hall. And screamed.
And the third scream shut off sharp and final, cut off as with a
knife.
After that it was mostly reflex action for Morgan. The only
conscious complete thought he remembered having was, Not des-
tiny I should kill Smith: every time something happens to stop
it. That in his mind while the screaming sounded, and then he
was across the landing and plunging up the six additional steps,
and in the hallway-behind that door there, no noise now, no
screams, and then other sounds, and a boy's frantic voice, “No,
don't, Eddy, don't, please”
He expected the door to be locked, he pounded on it to let
them know someone was here, coming. Afterward he remembered
it wasn't until then he realized it was the Lindstroms' door-and
now, no voices inside but a queer grunting, thrashing-around noise
that raised the hair on his neck, and he put his shoulder to the door,
shouting warning.
It was not locked, it swung in under him, almost threw him
head foremost. Feet on the stairs below: a voice calling something.
He didn't see the woman, not then. Only one lamp on in the
dingy room, a body on the floor, a big dark figure crouched over
it, with hands reaching,
"What's going on here, what-” He was halfway across the
room; he stopped, seeing the woman then, twisted limp figure
sprawled across the threshold of the bedroom; he looked away
from her, dry-throated, saw the big figure had straightened to
come at him, lumbering. In the full light then, coming with gut-
tural mouthings, and Morgan saw what it was, saw-
Blind, instinctive, he clawed for the gun in his pocket. The butt
caught in the pocket lining; hands took hold of him and slammed
him back against the wall and he thought all the breath was
knocked out of him, he couldn't, Animal gruntings, a fetid breath


CASE PENDING
169
hot on his face. He tugged desperately at the gun and it came
free, the pocket tearing loose, as he went down full length on his
back, and hands lifting, holding, smashed his head down against a
chair leg.
Dark exploded inside his head, he was blind, he was done, but
the gun in his hand, and he jammed it into what was on top of him,
just at random, and pulled the trigger.
JOHNNY BRANAHAN HAD BEEN RIDING PATROL CARS FOR NEARLY
twenty years; he was growing a spare tire around his diaphragm
and he wasn't quite as quick on his feet as he'd been when he was
a rookie. He wasn't a particularly ambitious man, or the brainiest
man in uniform, but he was a good cop, within certain limits: he
did the job he was supposed to do the way it was supposed to be
done, and he wasn't one of those did just as little as he could get
away with, either. He was conscientious about studying the lists
of hot cars and wanted men.
The call came over at six minutes past seven, and they were
quite a way off, so even with the siren going they were the fourth
car to get there. An assault, it was, by the code number, and must
be a three-star business, some sort, with four cars called in. The
ambulance was already there, and quite a crowd-honest to God,
you'd think they grew up out of the ground, let anything happen-
Wilkinson and Petty, Slaney and Gomez, handling the crowd:
he spotted them as he braked the car, and Gomez caught his eye
and called to him as he and his partner got out. “Upstairs, Johnny-
second floor, the lieutenant's up there."
“Right,” said Branahan. He was puffing a little when he got to
the top of the stairs; it was the apartment right there, door open,
and he could see the white-coated interns inside, just lifting a
stretcher.
"This one's a D.O.A. too,” said one of them. “We'll come back
for those– O.K., boy, let's get the show on the road.” Goldstein
and Costello were handling the smaller crowd up here, tenants,
trying to get in to see the blood, see the corpses, honest to God
you wondered what got into people-
“All right, folks, let the doctors through, now”.
As the interns came out with the first stretcher, the crowd part-


170 CASE PENDING
ing reluctantly, he caught a glimpse of another man in there, one
of the downtown men, Lieutenant Mendoza from Homicide.
Quick work, he thought, and moved back himself to give room to
the interns at the top of the stairs.
That put him at the foot of the stairs to the next floor, and out
of the corner of his eye he saw a man crouched halfway down
those stairs, and got a flicker of movement as the man retreated a
little way, farther into the dark up there.
It wasn't brains made Branahan go up after him, any conscious
process of reasoning. It was just that as an experienced cop he knew
there must be something funny about anybody who didn't come
rushing up to join the crowd when anything like this was going
on.
He started up the stairs, and above him heard sudden movement,
and then the fellow began to run-light and fast-up toward the
next floor; so then of course Branahan ran too, and caught up
with him at a door the man was fumbling at, and swung him
around. It was damn dark up there, and he had his flash out ready;
he shot it in the man's face and said, “Hold it, brother, let's see
what you look like.”
The man swore and swung on him, so Branahan belted him one
on the side of the head with the flash, and the man staggered back
against the wall. Branahan took a second look and was pleased;
he'd had reason to remember this name and face on the wanted
lists again, because he'd picked this hood up once before, five-six
years back.
“Well, if it isn't Ray Dalton,” he said. “Up on your feet, boy.
Hey, Andy, up here! I got a deal for us! It's just a damn shame,
Ray, you so homesick for California you couldn't wait to head
west-but New York's kind of mad at you on account you spurned
their hospitality. You oughta learn better manners, Ray, No, you
don't, me bucko, just hold it now," and the bracelets clicked home
as Andy came pounding up the stairs.
BY NINE O'CLOCK THE EXCITEMENT WAS ABOUT ALL OVER; THEY WERE
tying up loose ends there at the General Hospital. If you could
say anything like this really ended, or ended satisfactorily, maybe
this had. The woman was dead, and the murderer was dead; the boy


172 CASE PENDING
Ashamed of him, but refusing to send him away. And quite pos-
sibly aggravating the whole mental state by the unnatural secret
life she forced on him in consequence-on all of them. Moving in
or out of places by night, watching, waiting, so that none would
see. Keeping him in by day, close-watched: if she had to go out,
the husband home from work, the boy home from school, to keep
watch. Taking him out like a dog for exercise after dark, keeping
to unlighted side streets. Training him like a dog, no noise inside
the apartment. Building three lives around the one unproductive
life, everything else subordinate to looking after Eddy and keeping
Eddy a secret from everyone else.
I figured she'd have to give it up, if I wasn't there. He got into,
well, like rages they was, times—any little thing'd set him off,
wanted to smash things, you know, an' she couldn't handle-Same
time, he knew lots o' things you wouldn't expect, an' it was like that
doctor said, when he got to be fourteen, fifteen, you know, getting
to be a man, like, he-It got harder, he kept wanting get out, away,
by himself, an' then when you'd bring him back, say no, he got
just terrible mad, couldn't see why-
Of course Lindstrom had argued with her. Not the kind of man
to be very articulate. Not the kind of woman to listen, reason,
understand clearly what she was doing and why.
And I never did think he'd ever turn on any of us-on his own
Ma! Didn't seem possible, if I'd thought that I'd never in this
world gone off like I did. I knew it was awful bad for Marty, sleep-
ing same room and all, 'twasn't fair-but she wouldn't never listen.
I just got to a place where-
Mendoza dug his cigarette into the tub of sand in the corridor
there and repeated, “Mother love."
“People,” contributed Hackett rather savagely. The pretty
blonde nurse came out and said they could see the boy for just
ten minutes, if they wouldn't let him get too excited, he'd been
in shock after all and needed rest and quiet.
The boy had tight hold on his father's hand, sitting up in bed
looking at them a little uncertain, a little scared still. “We don't
bite,” said Mendoza, smiling down at him. “There's just a few
little questions we want to ask and then we'll let you go to sleep.”
“Yes, sir. I-I want to tell you-how it was, it was my fault, I


CASE PENDING 173
know that–let him get away, when I knew how he was, he'd maybe
get in trouble. But I-but I–That first time, it was all account of
that doll, it was awful silly but he wanted it so bad, he saw it in
the store window, there was a light left on even when it was shut,
you know, and times I took him out, nights, we went past a couple
times and I couldn't hardly get him away from it, he-"
"He took funny notions like that,” said Lindstrom. “Don't you
get excited, Marty, I'm right here to watch out for you now,
and all they want to know, I guess, is about-about today." He
looked still a little dazed and shaken, but his voice was reassuringly
stolid.
“But I want to tell—about everything, have it over . . . Ma,
she'll be awful mad-I made things happen like they did.” He
hadn't been told about his mother yet; there was time. “I-I was
scared to tell her, first, that time-over on Tappan—and then I had
to, account of knowing what he'd done. Ma said-she told him
she'd buy it for him, see-the doll. She'd saved up the money—”.
“Waste, waste," muttered Lindstrom. "Foolish, but she'd do
such, whatever he—".
“And then I guess she couldn't, somebody else, And that night,
I was out with him, he ran off and I couldn't catch up-I looked
everywhere, I went to that store but they'd taken the doll out of
the window a while before, he wasn't, And when I f-found him,
he had it, a great big box and inside, I thought he'd stole it, I
shouldn'tve let him get away like that,"
"You take it easy now,” said Hackett, soothing; he glanced at
Mendoza. They could both reconstruct that one, Brooks, now.
Eddy peering in the shop window, seeing Carol come out with the
doll. His doll, that he'd been promised, that she had no right to.
Following, working up to anger at her thievery.
"I—when I heard-about that girl, and I remembered there was
a little spot on his shirt, like blood-I had to tell Ma, but she
wouldn't listen, she wouldn't believe he'd She said I'd just forgot,
she had so bought the doll, and I was making up bad stories,”
Mendoza sighed to himself; he had heard that animal mothers
too always gave more attention to the runt of a litter, the sickly
one . . . "I'd like to hear something about the skating rink, Marty.
This girl, this time.”


174
CASE PENDING
“Yes, sir. That was even more my fault, 'cause I knew how bad
he could do, then. I shouldn'tve-but Ma'd got kind of sick, she
was doctoring at the clinic and couldn't go out with him any more
nights, I had to every night. And sometimes it was kind of hard,
things I wanted to do with other fellows, like movies sometimes-
you know-I-he got away a couple times more, and once when I
found him he was at that place, he'd found a sort of little back door
that was open and he was getting in, and I had to go after, I had an
awful time getting him to come away-he liked the music, and he
liked to watch them going round and round. And, Dad, you
know how when he liked anything he'd be good and quiet, just sit
there still as could be, hours sometimes, I thought it was all right!
I-I went with him a couple of times, and he never moved, just sat
there watching and listening, see. So I thought, he'd do like that
long as that place was open at night, never bother nobody, nobody
knew we was there at all. And, Dad, it wasn't like cheating to
sneak in without paying like that, because we wasn't using it, I
mean didn't go to skate. I thought I could just, sort of, leave him
there and it'd be all right, he'd just sit and never do nothing. And
I did, a lot of times, I went off and to a movie or somewheres, not
to see it all through but mostly, you know—and came back to
get him, and he was fine, right where I'd left him.”
“And at the rink,” said Mendoza softly, "he saw a girl, a pretty
girl who looked like his beautiful doll. . . . How'd I know that?
Why, I'm a detective, Marty.”
"He was-funny-about the doll,” said the boy with a little
gasp. “I mean, I guess he sort of-loved it-but same time, he did
things to it-bad things. Yes, sir, it was like that,at that place, he
saw this girl, he got terrible excited about it, kept talking about
her, I mean, what-what he meant for talk, he couldn't ever talk
real plain, you know. It was really that, sort of, that'd tell you what
he was like, because just to look at him, he—”
Yes; not until you looked twice, saw the eyes, the lumbering
walk, or heard the guttural attempts at speech, would you know.
Otherwise, to the casual look, just a big young man, maybe a little
stupid.
“Once down on Commerce, when I was with him, I saw her
too-he-tried to go up and talk to her, I got him away then. And


176 CASE PENDING
Mendoza turned back to him. “There's no legal responsibility in-
volved here really, now the boy's dead, Mr. Lindstrom. I couldn't
say, it's an academic question, under other circumstances very
likely the D.A. and the grand jury might have decided to call it
criminal negligence. As it is, I scarcely think so. Certainly not
the boy, a minor couldn't be assumed responsible. ... I might
add, however, that at any time these seven years you could have
taken action, if and when it seemed-indicated. A word to any
of a number of agencies-police, county health, doctor, hospital"
"She made us promise!" burst out the boy. “She made us prom-
ise on the Bible.!”
Mendoza looked at them a minute more, smiled, said good
night, and followed Hackett out to the corridor. “Any comment?”
he asked, very soft and amused.
"Nada," said Hackett heavily. “Just-people. Leave it there. Are
we wound up here?”
“I want to see Morgan.”


178 CASE PENDING
amiable face got longer and more worried by the second. “Oh,
you damn fool, Dick-can't have been thinking straight-should've
come to me, gone to the police, he couldn't-".
"Oh, couldn't he! Can't he! I remember enough law– Extor-
tion? The law doesn't take your unsupported word, does it?”–
turning on Mendoza, who shook his head. “What could I do, what
else could I–? Well, there it is-wasn't intended, I guess—and now
we're right back where we were. God, I don't know—"
“Smith,” said Mendoza. “Description?” And when he'd pried
that out of Morgan, “Yes, well, he won't be troubling you for a
while. His real name's Dalton, he's a small-time hood on the run
from parole in New York, and we picked him up tonight in the
middle of the other excitement. He's got two years coming back
east.”
“Oh, God, you don't mean it-he's—all this for—".
“Take it easy, Dick,” said Gunn, sitting down, looking almost
sick with relief. “That doesn't mean you're out of the woods, but
it makes it the hell of a lot easier. If the woman's so-tractable, the
way you say, there shouldn't be any trouble. Put it through nice
and quiet, get her to see a lawyer with you, there shouldn't be
any contest, just a routine thing. Dalton wasn't after Janny, only
the money, he wouldn't-"
“You think-no hitch, do it like that? If we-oh, God, I hope
so, we've both been about crazy,” Morgan sat up and clutched
Gunn's arm. “You said Sue's coming?-want to tell her—tell her
it's all right, or almost,"
"Sue's coming, you lie down. I called Christy, she's gone over
to stay with Janny, and Sue'll be taking a cab down, on her way
right now, probably.”
Mendoza stood up. “There'll be an inquest, of course, but
purely formal. You needn't worry about it. Self-defense, justifiable
homicide. Which is a very damned lucky outcome for you, Mor-
gan. You don't know how lucky. If you want the Luger back,
you'll have to apply for a license.”
"Oh, well, keep it, I don't want it. I-I feel fine," said Morgan,
and laughed. “Wish Sue'd get here. You can have the damn gun.
Glad now-didn't use it-or the way I planned, anyway,”


CASE PENDING 179
“Just as well.” Mendoza looked down at him, smiling very faintly.
"I'd advise you, Morgan, not to get in a situation again where you
start thinking about murder. In the first place, it never solves any
problems, you know-only creates more. And in the second place,
from what you told me of your plans for this one, it wouldn't take
a full-fledged lieutenant of detectives to spot you for X about
half an hour after the corpse began to cool. However, as it is we're
all very happy you happened to be in the right place at the right
time—and congratulations on the rest of this working out for
you.” He nodded to Gunn, still looking amused, and went out.
After a minute Morgan said, “Damn him—that's when I thought
I was being so clever, too . . . but I suppose he's right, at that.
Just-something about him-puts my back up, is all.”
Gunn sneezed, said, “Oh, hell, it is a cold,” and took out another
cigarette. "Well, you know-Luis," he added soberly, "maybe
he's just what they call overcompensating, for a time he was
only another dirty little Mex kid in a slum street. You know? Tell
you one thing, Dick, he's a damned good cop-if a little erratic
now and then,” and he grinned. He found a packet of matches,
looked at it without lighting the cigarette. “He's also a very lonely
man. Which maybe he'll find out some day."
Morgan moved restlessly. “Give me another one of those,
will you? I wish Sue'd come ..."
TEIS a coup, je s right though.
"PHILOSOPHIZING?” MENDOZA CAME UP BEHIND HACKETT IN THE
lobby.
"Yeah, I guess you could say I was,” said Hackett, who'd been
standing stock-still, staring vacantly at the wall. “I guess so. You
know, this whole thing-it just struck mewhat for? What's it
mean?"
Mendoza laughed and shrugged. “¿Quién sabe?-¿Sabe Dios!
Nice to think it means anything."
“No, but it makes you wonder. You look at it and you can
work up a fine righteous wrath against that damn fool woman,
against the ignorance and false pride and plain damned muddle-
headedness that's killed three people-four, if you count him-and
all unnecessarily. But was it? The way things dovetail, sometimes,


180 CASE PENDING
Morgan just happening to be there, and with a gun on him-be-
cause if he hadn't had, you know, I don't think he could have
handled that one alone, I don't think any two men— Without the
gun, maybe Morgan dead too. And maybe it was all for some-
thing, Luis—that we don't know about, never will. To save the
boy-maybe he's got something to do here, part of some plan. You
know? Maybe," and Hackett laughed, "so Agnes Browne could
get all straightened out with her Joe. Maybe so the Wades can
keep their nice high-class superior-white-Protestant bloodline
pure.”
“Comforting to think,” repeated Mendoza cynically. “That's
why I'm a lieutenant and you're a sergeant, Arturo-every time
I formulate a theory, I want evidence to say it's so, or I don't
keep the theory. ¿Comprende? On that, there's no evidence. If
you want to theorize, chico, maybe it all happened so I could
meet this pretty redhead! Change, please, if you've got it-;Date
prisa, por favor!”
Hackett took the quarter and gave him three nickels and a dime.
“You watch yourself with that one, boy-I got a hunch you don't
get something for nothing there."
"All these years and you don't know me yet. Wait and see.
Hasta luego-eight o'clock sharp, we've a lot of routine to clear
up.” Mendoza went over to the row of public phone booths.
When Alison answered the second ring he said, "Luis. Would
you like to hear a story of human foibles and follies? ... Yes,
we've got him, it's all over. But for the routine. I'll be with you
in twenty minutes, you'll be interested to hear all about it."
“Well, yes, but it is rather late”
"Night's still young, chica. Twenty minutes," he repeated
firmly, and hung up on her reluctant laugh.
Hackett was gone. Mendoza stood on the steps, lighting a cig-
arette, and the dead man in the freight yards wandered through
his mind. The next thing, now. Tomorrow. A couple of rather
suggestive little things, there: might yield the ghost of a line to
look into. ... When he came out to the street, somebody in a
brash new Buick had sewed him up tight in the parking space; it
would take some maneuvering to get the Ferrari out. He swore,