He was sitting at Higgins' desk and there were a couple of glossy eight by tens on the desk blotter. Conway looked at them appreciatively. He could see that the poor girl was dead, but she'd been a hell of a good-looker. "I wonder what this is about," he said.
Schenke, also a born bachelor, but not particularly a man for the girls, said indifferently, "No idea."
They got their first call at eight-fifteen, a heist at a liquor store on Third Street. The address rang a faint bell in Conway's mind. They both went out on it, and when they got there, the owner was mad as hell. "It's the third time I've been held up in five months, goddamn it. I have had it. I have had it up to here, I've goddamned well had my fill of this goddamned business. My wife's been after me to retire and move up to Santa Barbara- Hell, who can afford to retire with the goddamned Social Security about to go down the drain, and I'm only fifty-five but these goddamned punks roaming around-"
He looked vaguely familiar to both Schenke and Conway. His name was Bernard Wolf and he was a short, stocky, dark fellow with an unexpected bass voice. Schenke said, "Yeah, the latest one was back in July, wasn't it? We were both out on that then."
"I remember you," said Wolf. "You goddamned well were, and goddamn it, you never picked up that bastard, he got away with a hundred and seventy bucks-it was a Saturday night. You had me down there looking at pictures of all the punks and I couldn't make any, all of these god-damned louts look alike-"
"Well, can you give us any description of this one tonight, Mr. Wolf?" asked Schenke patiently.
Wolf let out a long exasperated sigh of resignation. "I don't know that I can, goddamn it. There'd be ten thousand punks look like him-all over this goddamned town. I was alone in the place-my wife's nervous about me being here at night, but the young guy I hired to come in, he's in the hospital with a leg in traction. Do I shut at six and miss all the business-the weekend coming up? There'd been a customer just left, the punk came in and showed me the gun and I gave him all the paper in the register and he went out-call it three minutes. All I can tell you, goddamn it, he was a spick."
"Latin," said Conway.
"Sure, maybe five ten, thin, black hair, little mustache, and he couldn't talk English so good, had a thick accent. He got maybe a hundred and fifty bucks. Goddamn it. God-damn it, I have had it. I can't afford to retire, but the hell with it. I'll get something for the business and maybe I can find a part-time job up in Santa Barbara. I have had it with this goddamned business and this goddamned town-"
"Did he touch anything in here?" asked Schenke.
"Nothing but the goddamned money," said Wolf.
They went back to the office and Conway typed the report on it. It was probably the only report there'd be. There would be a hundred possible heisters conforming to that description in Records, and they'd never pin the charge on any one of them. He stopped typing to light a cigarette. "At least it would be cooler up in Santa Barbara," he said. He had just finished the report when another call came in, and another a minute later.
The first was a heist at an all-night pharmacy on Beverly Boulevard, and the other was a body on Rosemont Avenue in the Echo Park area. Schenke went out on the heist and Conway looked up Rosemont Avenue in the County Guide. When he got there, it was a narrow, shabby old eight-unit apartment building. Four apartments down, four up. The man waiting for him at the entrance was about forty-five, a heavily built man with a bald head and rimless glasses. His name was Robert Peterson. He was the manager of the apartments, lived in the right front one downstairs. The door was open and an anxious-looking gray-haired woman was visible in there listening.
"I don't know what happened, Officer, but it's Mrs. Eberhart. Maybe a stroke or something, only she's not that old. Why, she could've laid there hours before anybody found her-a terrible thing-the Kohlers are off on vacation, they've got the apartment across the hall, they've gone to visit their daughter-you see Mrs. Eberhart's apartment is on the rear right. Why, she could've laid there all night, except that I took the trash out and naturally went out the back door and passed her apartment."
"So, let's have a look," said Conway.
Down the dim hall the door of the rear apartment on the right was open. With Peterson dithering in the background, Conway took a quick experienced look. The woman was dead. A big, buxom blond woman, the blond courtesy of peroxide, wearing a flowered cotton house robe. She was sprawled just inside the door and there was dried blood on one temple-just a trace. There was a table beside the door, standing sideways out from the wall. You could read it. She'd been knocked down, hit the table. The autopsy report would probably say, fractured skull. He thought resignedly, better get out the lab. It could, of course, have been accidentaclass="underline" Maybe she'd been drunk and fallen down, but also it could be something else.
He asked questions. Peterson said, "Well, her name's Rose Eberhart. I don't know about any relations. She's lived here about six years. Well, yes, I do know where she worked. It was McClintock's Restatuant on Sunset. She was a nice quiet tenant, Officer, never any trouble and always on time with the rent. I suppose it could've been a heart attack. That can happen to anybody, age doesn't seem to matter. Oh, for goodness' sake, no, I'd never seen her under the influence of alcohol."
A couple of men from the night watch at the lab showed up in a mobile truck. Conway said, "You better give it the full treatment, boys."
Just in case. And leave it to the day watch to look at further.
FOUR
SATURDAY WAS Sergeant Lake's day off and Rory Farrell was sitting on the switchboard. Mendoza glanced over the night report and passed it on to Hackett. "So we'd better find out something about this Eberhart woman, in case it is a homicide. Wolf's coming in sometime today to make a statement, but there's damn all on that, we can file it and forget it."
Hackett said, "I wonder if they've got the air-conditioning back on at the jail. “We've still got to talk to Gerber. Of course, Bauman had the gun, it's likelier he did the shooting. Which reminds me-" He called the lab and talked to Horder.
He had dropped the gun off at the lab on Thursday.
Horder said, "Oh, yeah, that's the equalizer, O.K. Matched the slug out of the body."
So they could write a report after they got the statement from Gerber, if he'd say anything, and send in the evidence to the D.A.'s office and forget it. This time, Bauman might go up for a sizable stretch.
It was Landers' day off.
On the other heist last night, the pharmacist had given a fairly good description, volunteered to look at mug shots. He'd be in this morning. Hackett went over to the jail to talk to Gerber. Palliser said, looking over the night report, "I suppose this restaurant won't be open until ten or so. Has the warrant come through on Aguilar?" It hadn't, but would be showing up sometime today.
Bernard Wolf came in about nine and made a brief statement, and Wanda Larsen took him down to look at mug shots. But there could be a thousand walking around who conformed to that description.
And finally the coroner's office sent up the autopsy report on the supposed Ruth Hoffman. Mendoza read it over rapidly, one hip perched on a corner of Higgins' desk, and passed it over. "So, a few possibly suggestive things," he said.
The report said that the girl had died of a massive overdose of a common prescriptive sedative, a phenobarbitol base. Interestingly, there were indications that it had been accumulative over a brief period of time. There had been the equivalent of a couple of strong drinks in the stomach contents. The percentage rate was. 010, and. 014 was the rate for legal intoxication. The estimated time of death was between eight and midnight last Tuesday night. There were no bruises or other marks on the body. She had been a virgin. She had had a meal about six hours prior to death, consisting of some sort of fish, potatoes, green vegetables.