"Wait and see," agreed Palliser.
WHEN IT COULD BE EXPECTED that people would be up and dressed on Sunday morning, Galeano drove up to Beachwood Drive and at the little frame house found Cora Delaney at home. She looked at stocky dark Galeano-according to regulations in a whole business suit, white shirt and tie, when most men wore casual and sports clothes, and at the badge in his hand-with surprise and curiosity. She was somewhere around Rose Eberhart's age, short and plump and defiantly blond. She let him into a neat livingroom with a collection of old but good furniture, and Galeano told her about Rose Eberhart. She broke down and cried for five minutes and then sat up and blew her nose.
"We knew each other for forty-five years, since we were in kindergarten together. She was only forty-nine. But how could it have happened? You said it looked like she was attacked by somebody. I don't understand-a burglar-"
It hadn't been a burglar. The apartment had been intact, not ransacked, and there'd been thirty dollars in her wallet, a modest amount of good jewelry undisturbed.
"That's what it looks like, Mrs. Delaney. When did you see her last?"
"I talked to her on the phone Wednesday night. She sounded just her usual self, but of course she wouldn't know she was going to be attacked. She'd been feeling run-down lately, said she was taking extra vitamins." She blew her nose again. "Oh, and she was annoyed at some woman who'd been pestering her. Some woman named Arvin."
"What about?" asked Galeano.
"Oh, she was claiming Rose owed her some money and she didn't. It was some woman she used to work with. She hadn't seen her in a long time and ran into her at the corner market. She wasn't really worried about it, just annoyed. Have you talked to Alice-her daughter? Does she know?"
He told her about that, gave her the name of the funeral parlor. The body would probably be released tomorrow.
"Oh, I'd better call Alice, I'll be glad to make the arrangements. This is all the poor girl needed, a sick baby and her husband laid off. Yes, I've got her number, thanks." She began to cry again. "We were going out to lunch together today. It's her day off. I said I'd meet her at the Tick-Tock at twelve-thirty. It just doesn't seem possible she's dead."
Galeano drove up to McClintock's Restaurant. It was just open, no customers in yet. He ordered a cup of coffee from Marie Boyce, who said blankly, "I don't think I ever heard the name. Arvin? l can't recall anybody named that ever worked here. Since I've been here anyway."
Whitney came over and sat on the opposite side of the booth. "Arvin," he mused. "It seems to ring a faint bell. I've heard the name somewhere." He accepted a cigarette and brooded over it. "Somebody she used to work with. Well, she'd been here ten years. About as long as I've managed the place. I tell you, in that time there's been a little turnover in the staff. Most of our girls are pretty steady, but now and then we get one who isn't satisfactory and I let her go, or one doesn't stay for some reason. It could've been one like that-here for just a short while-sometime back. I just don't remember, Mr. Galeano."
Galeano went back to the office. Jason Grace had just come in, having taken the morning off. He had just bought himself a Polaroid camera, and he was passing around shots of the christening, a broad smile on his face. Galeano grinned at him over the snapshots. Grace's wife, Virginia, was a nice-looking woman, and the baby was a cute one, round and brown with solemn eyes and a little fuzz of hair. The little three-year-old girl was a honey, in a starched white dress and a red hair ribbon. "Nice family, Jase." Galeano had been a bachelor for a long time and he was looking forward to a family of his own.
He told Grace what meager information he had turned up and Grace said, "It doesn't sound like much, Nick, but we don't know one hell of a lot about this anyway."
MENOZA WASN'T supposed to come in on Sunday, but he usually did for a while, to keep track of what was going on. He drifted in about two o'clock and Lake said that Sergeant Donovan from Chicago had been asking for him. "So get him on the phone." Mendoza swept off the Homburg and went into his office.
"We've got damn all for you," said Donovan. "There are about a thousand and one Hoffmans in the greater Chicago area, but none of them seems to be missing a Ruth."
"I didn't expect so," said Mendoza. "That must've been a hell of a job. Thanks very much, Donovan."
"At least we could check by phone, didn't have to do the legwork in this damn heat. But thank God, it's beginning to cool off now, getting into fall."
"I wish I could say the same." He was just off the phone when an autopsy report came in from the coroner's office on Anthony Delucca. He had to think before he remembered-the teenager on the bus-stop bench. It had been an overdose of Quaaludes. He filed it and forgot it.
The office was humming along quietly, Higgins typing a report, Palliser on the phone, nobody else in. Hackett and Landers had gone over to the jail to talk to Gerber. Mendoza swiveled his desk chair around to the window and sat smoking, staring at the view over the Hollywood Hills, and tried to think if there was anything else to do on Juliette Martin. There wasn't. Wait for the French police. Hell, he thought. There must be a catch to that somewhere. X would know about that possibility, too. Wait and maybe never hear anything from France on Juliette. Why not? He didn't have any ideas about it at all.
Lake brought him a cable. It was from the Surete and said simply, PRINTS UNKNOWN OUR RECORDS. Mendoza snarled at it.
Of course, strictly speaking, it wasn't the Surete's fault. Passports didn't carry a typed address, only one filled in by the holder. But the French passport bureau might, for God's sake, have noted down something about the girl. What the proof of citizenship had been, something.
And he reflected moodily, they'd have to bury the poor girl eventually. They couldn't leave her down in the cold tray at the morgue indefinitely.
Hackett looked in the door and said, "Gerber gave us a statement. He admitted he was on the heist with Bauman, but it was Bauman had the gun and fired it."
" Naturalmente."
"So it's up to the D.A.'s office what to call it. Want to bet it'll start murder two and get reduced? Tom's doing the final report on it. Anything new gone down?"
"I don't know. Everybody seems to be out somewhere on something." Sunday was just another day to the men at Robbery-Homicide.
HACKETT WENT DOWN the hall for a cup of coffee, but he hadn't taken more than three sips before Lake buzzed him.
"Attempted heist, it's a liquor store on Wilshire and the squad's got him."
"No rest for the wicked," said Hackett, annoyed. He abandoned the coffee and went back downstairs to the parking lot. The liquor store was a little way out on Wilshire.
The heister had picked a wrong target on this one. The store owner was a hefty ex-Marine by the name of Nolan who worked out at a gym regularly, and the gun hadn't scared him worth a damn. He said to Hackett disgustedly, "For Christ's sake, the damn punk didn't even have his finger in the trigger guard! Does he think I'm a goddamn idiot? I just took one swing at him and put him out cold, and called for cops, and I bet some goddamn fool judge sends him up for sixty days, poor guy not responsible because his mama spanked him too much."
The heister was sitting on the floor propped against the counter. The patrolman had put the cuffs on him, and he was feeling his bruised jaw with both cuffed hands. He raised his head to look at Hackett, and Hackett said pleasedly, "Well, I will be damned if it isn't Baby Face."
The various descriptions had been faithful. The man looked about twenty-five and he was fairly tall and husky F but he had a round, boyish face, a shock of white-blond hair. He was very neatly dressed in brown slacks and a clean white sports shirt. He looked as if he was ready to cry.