Palliser abandoned his report and went out. It was Galeano's day off and everybody else was out hunting heisters or hospital visitors. They had descriptions on two more heisters now. There weren't, for once, any indictments or arraignments coming up to waste time in court. There wasn't anything to be done about the Robertson homicide. Higgins had talked to somebody in Juvenile and none of those kids she had complained about had any record with them. It wouldn't say much if they had.
There had been another teenager found dead by his mother in his own bed. It was another O.D. of the 'ludes, combined with liquor.
Mendoza wandered down to his own office and Hackett was alone when Grace came in with a possible suspect on one of the heists, so he sat in on that. It was all inconclusive. The man didn't have an alibi, but there was nothing else but his description to connect him to the heist. They decided to hold him overnight and arrange for a lineup in the morning to see whether the witnesses would pick him out.
PALLISER THOUGHT this was probably a waste of time, but he applied for a search warrant for Toby Wells' apartment. It came through on Saturday morning, and he and Galeano went out to execute it. There wasn't anybody at home in the apartment, but they showed the warrant to the manager and he agreed to let them in. He said the three young dudes who lived there seemed to be nice quiet boys. They all had jobs and paid regular.
They looked around the place. It was just a place for sleeping. No sign in the kitchen that much cooking was done there. There were two bedrooms, and the largest one contained twin beds, had a walk-in closet. In the other one there was a framed photograph of Mae Weaver on the dresser, so this was Toby Wells' bedroom. It just had a wardrobe with sliding doors. On the floor of that were five pairs of shoes-a pair of brown moccasins, a newer pair of black oxfords, another pair of moccasins-black-and some sneakers. Palliser had a look at them but couldn't see anything suggestive. He stashed them all in a plastic evidence bag and they drove back downtown to drop them off at the lab. Then they went up to that Thrifty in Hollywood to talk to Wells. He wasn't as amiable as before, when Palliser asked questions over again. "What the hell you want with my shoes, anyway? I didn't know cops could go right in a person's pad and just steal stuff."
"You'll get them back," said Galeano easily. "We may want to borrow the ones you're wearing too. Are all those I the only shoes you've got?"
"For Gossakes, what am I supposed to do till then? I don't know why you guys are bothering me, I never had anything to do with that-you know what I mean. I haven't done anything at all."
"So you've got nothing to worry about," said Galeano in a friendly tone. "We can't prove you did anything. We're just looking around, Wells."
"So you can go and look around somewhere else."
"You'd like us to find out who killed your grandmother, wouldn't you?" asked Palliser.
"Oh, sure, sure, I sure hope you do. But I told you where I was that night, you asked Mae and she told you, we were out at that disco all the time."
"Yes, we know you were."
"Then why are you bothering me? Go stealing my shoes! Cops! When do I get them back?"
"When we're finished with them," said Galeano. They went back to the parking lot and sat in the car and Palliser switched on the engine for the air-conditioning. "In a sort of way," said Galeano, "I see what you mean, John. Another Baby Face. A little too innocent to be true, but on the other hand-"
"Oh, I know, I know," said Palliser. "He's got no remote history of violence-only that one little count on him, and it's an honest upright family."
"What the hell is all this business about shoes?"
"I've got no idea," said Palliser. "It was Duke suggested it. He must have something in mind. Something they spotted in that apartment. But there wasn't any mention in the lab report."
"Well, I suppose they'll tell us sometime. My God, why does anybody stay in this climate?-and the way the smog's hanging on it'll likely be the middle of October before we get any relief."
"You like to start building seniority all over again, some place where it never gets over seventy degrees."
"Is there such a place this side of heaven?" wondered Galeano.
THAT SATURDAY NIGHT turned out to be a busy one for the night watch. It was still ninety-four at eight o'clock. September was the worst month for heat in Southern California. There was a bar on Third Street held up by two men at about nine o'clock and Conway wrote the report on that. There'd be eight witnesses to come in and keep the day watch busy making statements. They got a call to a mugging before he finished the report and Schenke went out on that. The victim had managed to get to a public phone and call in, but by the time Schenke got there he was looking green and couldn't stand up, so Schenke called an ambulance. He was a man in the sixties, Clarence Anderson, and all Schenke got was that he'd been working late in his office on Wilshire, been jumped when he came back to his car in a public lot. His home address, by the I.D. on him, was West Hollywood. He passed out as the ambulance arrived, but Schenke didn't think he was too bad. Probably a mild concussion.
However, they were supposedly there to serve the citizens, so when he came back to the office to find it empty, he called Anderson's wife and broke the news to her. Piggott and Conway came back at eleven-thirty. There'd been another affluent-looking couple jumped and manhandled and robbed in the parking lot of the Shubert Theatre. "Why wasn't there a crowd if the show was just over?" asked Schenke.
"They were about the last people to come back to the lot. They'd stopped for a drink at the Sushi bar on the way. The punks got about another fifty and some more jewelry."
"Hell," said Schenke. "I wish there was just some handle to it, some way to chase them down."
"Wel1, there isn't," said Conway. "And they seem to be fairly rough and ready with the M.O. One of these nights they're going to tackle somebody with a weak heart and leave a corpse for us."
"And still no way to chase them down," said Piggott dryly. The phone rang and he picked it up. "Robbery-Homicide." In the next thirty seconds his mouth went tight and the usually mild-mannered, easygoing Piggott was an angry man when he put the phone down and stood up.
"We'd all better ride on this one. It's a shooting and it's one of the uniformed men.".
"Christ," said Conway.
"The squad man said he didn't look too good. It's the corner of Hoover and Eleventh." They went downstairs in a hurry and piled into Conway's car.
Down there, a normally busy secondary main drag, at that time of night the streets were empty of traffic and the traffic lights had stopped working. There were three squads parked in a row at the curb in front of half a block of store buildings. One of the squads had the driver's door hanging open. The uniformed men were Bill Moss and Dave Turner and they were looking grim and shaken. "It was at the appliance store," said Moss. "A break-in." There had been a dim security light left on above the door. By the streetlight at the corner they could read the sign-PURDUE'S T.V. AND APPLIANCES. "All we've heard on it is, two men, and Dubois walked into it. He looked bad, Conway-a couple of slugs in the chest. The ambulance just left. A woman across the street in the apartment at the corner of Eleventh saw it and called in, and Dubois got chased over. She called again when she heard the shooting, but they were long gone when Dave and I got here."
Turner's hand was shaking as he raised the cigarette to his mouth. "We were in the same class at the Academy," he said.
"We haven't called the owner yet. The woman's in apartment Twelve-B."
"O.K." said Conway. "You get the emergency number off the door and contact the owner. We'll go talk to her."