"No leads from Records," concluded Mendoza.
"Not a smell. Couple of descriptions could match but they both belong to tough pros. He's first time out," said Hackett with conviction. "Just luck if we ever drop on him. There's the usual run of corpses, O.D.'s and winos. No mysteries. You can look over the reports. And I'll bet you're glad to be back in this hellish climate again after the British Isles."
Mendoza lit a cigarette with a snap of his lighter and said, "No hot weather, and the people are fine, Art. But I was inviting high blood pressure driving on the wrong side of the road. So I'd better look over the reports."
They were shorthanded. Henry Glasser was off on vacation, wouldn't be back for another week. Hackett's witness arrived to be taken down to S.I.D. for the session with the Identikit. Hackett hadn't come back yet when Sergeant Lake buzzed Mendoza and reported a new body. This time of year was always a busy one for Robbery-Homicide. Nobody else being in, Mendoza went out on it. It was, to a veteran officer of Robbery-Homicide and a cynical cop, an uninteresting body. The body of a kid about sixteen sprawled alongside a bench at a bus stop on Alvarado.
The patrolman was waiting for him. There were a few curious bystanders hanging around. "A woman came up to catch a bus and noticed him," said the patrolman. "He could've been here for hours, everybody thinking he was passed out. Probably an overdose."
"Probably," agreed Mendoza, after a look. The kid was just an anonymous teenager. Long, greasy hair, jeans, dirty shirt; but there was ID on him, a detention slip from Manual Arts High School signed by one P. Siglione. The name on it was Anthony Delucca. After the morgue wagon came and went, Mendoza drove up to the high school and asked questions.
Siglione was an English teacher, fat and midd1e-aged and disgusted. "That one," he said. "What the hell are we supposed to do with these kids, I ask you? Stoned on drugs and/or the liquor half the time, passing out in class. I don't know if it's the right answer, but most of us just ignore them. Most of the parents don't care or can't do anything about it. Sure, Delucca's in one of my classes. He turned up drunk as a skunk yesterday. I gave him a detention and sent him to principal's office. I doubt if he went."
Mendoza asked the principal's office for an address and got one down on Seventeenth Street. There he broke the news to an indifferent neighbor, on one side of a dilapidated duplex, who said, "Mis' Delucca, she's at work. I don't know where. There's nobody home till about six." Little job for the night watch, reflected Mendoza, breaking the news. He took himself out to lunch at Federico's and ran into Galeano and Landers. They had to hear all about the vacation, and told him this and that about the bank job. Not that there was much to tell. There weren't any leads on it at all.
Mendoza asked, "And how are the expectant ladies?"
The joke around the office these days was that there was something catching going around. Phil Landers was expecting a baby in December, Galeano's new bride, Marta, in March. The Pallisers' second was due in February, as well as the Piggotts' first.
Landers said lugubriously, "She would rope me into that house in Azusa, for God's sake. It needs everything done to it, what else, when we got it for seventy thousand, and I just hope to God she'll use some sense and not start on the painting herself. Women."
When they got back to the office Higgins was there typing a report, and broke off to greet Mendoza and hear all about the vacation. "It's good to have you back, Luis. We could use a few hunches on some things that have gone down lately."
"I don't produce them to order, George."
"And sometimes we don't need the hunches," said Hackett behind him. "I just shoved that hooker into Pending. We'll never get anywhere on that."
"I said so the minute I looked at the damn thing," said Higgins.
"What hooker?" asked Mendoza.
"The reports are somewhere on your desk. No big deal," said Hackett. "Smal1-time hooker in business for herself, Mabel Carter. Typical two-room apartment on Portland Street. Girlfriend walked in and found her dead. Stabbed and cut up, it was a mess, but no weapon left. Well, for God's sake, it could've been any john off the street. The hookers lay themselves open to it and she was on the way down. A lush. She'd pick up any prospect who'd buy a bottle and pay her the ten bucks. The lab didn't come up with anything. All the girlfriend could say, she hadn't had any trouble with anybody she knew of."
"So she picked up the wrong john," agreed Mendoza uninterestedly. But as he wandered back to his office, started to look over the recent reports, he felt vaguely that it was good to be back, to the shop talk. To all the many men he'd worked with so long, knew so well, to the never-ending monotonous crude jobs showing up to be worked. It might be a thankless and sordid job, but it was the job he knew. It was his job.
He left a note for the night watch about Delucca. That was probably an O.D. of one of the street drugs or a combination. On second thought, he sent a note up to Narco, to Goldberg's office, about it. Not that there was anything unusual about the O.D. The various drugs floating around, so easily obtainable, saw to that, and the damn fool kids getting hooked by the pushers. There wasn't much Narco could do about it any more than Robbery-Homicide.
He was still a little tired from the strenuous vacation, from the jet lag. He found himself yawning over the reports and left the office early. By all experience, he knew that the next couple of months would see a buildup in the cases on hand. The worst of the summer heat always brought the rise in violence.
The Night Watch came on, and Rich Conway scanned Mendoza's note and uttered a rude word. "More dirty work," he said. "I hate breaking news to the citizens." But it was automatic complaint. Conway, that man for the girls, was resigned to a tour on night watch now. He was dating a nurse who was on night duty at Cedars-Sinai. Piggot was looking morose.
Bob Schenke said amiably, "I'll toss you for the job."
Conway produced a quarter and flipped it. "Tails," said Schenke. That was the way it landed, and Conway handed over Mendoza's note.
"So I suppose I'd better get it over," said Schenke, and collected his hat and went out.
Piggott said, "These interest rates." As a practicing fundamentalist Christian, Piggott was not a swearing man, but his pauses could be eloquent. "We should've started buying a house when we got married, but you always figure there's time. Now, an apartment's no place to bring up a family, but who can afford the payments, even on a little place? We've been looking, but it's just impossible."
Conway, the carefree bachelor, wasn't much interested, but offered token sympathy. They didn't have any calls until Schenke came back an hour later.
He said cheerfully, "She cried all over me. Fat Italian woman with seven other kids, and the husband's a drunk. Had to tell me seven times how hard she tried to get the kid to stop using this awful dope. But kids don't listen to sense. If us lazy cops would just stop these terrible people selling the stuff, the kids would be all right."
"Oh, tell us," said Conway. Sure enough, ten thousand street dealers out there, anonymous.
"The devil," said Piggott, " getting around and about."
At ten-forty they had a call to a new heist, and Schenke and Conway went out on it. It was a twenty-four-hour convenience market on Beverly Boulevard, and the manager had been there alone. His name was Bagby. He was a small man about forty, and he was still flustered.
"I don't like to ask the women clerks to take the night shift," he said, " just on account of this kind of thing. The terrible crime rate. But it's the first time we've ever been held up. I was just so surprised because he looked like a-like an average young fellow. Not anybody you'd suspect-well, I don't know exactly how much was in the register, but it must've been around a hundred bucks-"