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"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 anything 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 mi! -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 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-"

"A1l 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 attendants 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 esta! -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 incongruous 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?"

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 sangfroid 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, 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 himself. That was partly why he got the door shut again quick. She might know, alright, 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.