When they came to sort it out, she had killed four people and injured eleven seriously and severely damaged three cars. The Dodge was totaled. And Mendoza said exasperatedly, "Iet the D.A. worry about what to call it. People!"
IT WAS IN THE MIDDLE of Monday afternoon, with a vague idea of clearing up a muddle before he left tomorrow, that he went up to Outpost Drive and talked to Joseph Alisio.
"We'll probably never know," he told Alisio. "With so many people there, it's been very difficult to check on who was where, when. It's all up in the air."
Alisio heaved a sigh. "I can appreciate that, Lieutenant. One lunatic among all those people. My God. Poor Carl. We knew he was on the way out, the first of us to go, and I don't suppose it makes any difference whether it was now or six mouths from now. But it's a terrible thing he had to go like that. We've all been shook up about it, but poor Randy-I never saw anybody so broken up. He's all to pieces and Mary says he's been drinking some. Well, he was Carl's favorite and I guess it's been a little worry to him, he'd been managing Carl's affairs for him since the cancer got diagnosed last year and Carl was so sick. It was the obvious thing to do, Carl had left him everything anyway, but it's probably made a little extra work for him." He passed a hand over his bald head. "I appreciate your coming, Lieutenant. No, I suppose we'll never know what happened. The lunatic getting into the hospital some way."
A small cold finger inched up Mendoza's spine. The other boys laughed about his hunches. Mendoza's crystal ball. But Luis Rodolfo Vicente Mendoza had been a detective a long time and he knew enough to respect his hunches.
He stood at the curb on Outpost Drive and looked at the haze of smog over the city below him. He said to himself, " Ridiculo." His imagination working overtime. He got into the Ferrari and drove over to Glendale to that new high-rise office building.
Randy Nicolletti was at his desk in the big office, but he looked gray and ill. He had dropped some weight. Mendoza stopped beside his desk and Nicolletti looked up at him after a moment, his expression dull and vague.
"You did it, didn't you?" asked Mendoza. "I'd like to know why."
And Randy Nicolletti said in an expressionless tone, "How did you know?"
EIGHT
HE DIDN'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, and what he said after some prodding was, "It was all my fault. I know that. Uncle Carl, I was his favorite, but he was always careful about money. The only times he ever got mad at me was about the gambling. I guess that's just in my nature. And he was dying up to a month ago-the doctor said he could go any time-and since he'd been so sick six months ago, he'd signed me onto his checking account, his savings account, so I could pay all the expenses-and it was all left to me anyway-it didn't matter. I got in pretty deep with a couple of fellows at a poker place in Gardena, it was over ten thousand and I was damned worried about it-one of them's kind of a tough customer. I thought it didn't matter, I paid up by cashing in one of the T-bills on his account. He hadn't been up to looking at the statements in months. And then I dropped a couple of thousand more and I paid that-and all of a sudden he got better-the doctor said, in remission and it might be three, four, six months."
He was staring dully at the floor of the little interrogation room at the jail. "He was sitting up and taking notice of things again, and just a couple of days before he'd asked me to bring in all the bank statements-and the first thing he said-that Sunday when I got there-had I brought them, and I had to say I forgot about it, but I knew he'd keep on about it, and he was always at me about the gambling. He'd raise all hell when he found out. He'd call me a damn thief. The rest of the family, they don't like the gambling either and it would be one goddamn king-size mess, and I just didn't know what to do. I'd thought by then it'd be all over and the will in probate." He passed a shaking hand over his face. "And that day, when I went back for my cigarettes, the last thing he said to me-don't forget to bring those statements the next time you come, boy. And I-and I-" He put his face in his hands.
Mendoza said to Higgins when they came out of the interrogation room, "And God knows I was the hottest poker player in town before the domesticities ruined my game, but the compulsive gambler I never was. More fatal than the drink, that. And in the end he's made even more of a king-size mess for himself than he had already."
"You and your hunches," said Higgins. "All the damned legwork we did on that, and all for nothing."
"He was ready to break, George. If I hadn't had the hunch, he'd have come in to confess within a matter of time."
THE DOCTORS were saying that Dubois would make it, but it would be a long convalescence for him. Most of the men at the Robbery-Homicide office were on that. They still had a long list of names of pickup-truck owners to process and nobody was taking any time off. Hackett had got deflected temporarily to arrange that lineup, but the witness couldn't definitely identify the suspect and they had to let him go.
On Tuesday morning, the computers in R. and I. turned up their first lead. The owner of a Ford pickup truck showed up in the records with a pedigree of armed robbery-Alfonso Barrios, last known address the same as the current registration, Maxson Place in El Monte. Landers and Galeano were alone in the office when the word came up and Galeano said, "If he's our boy, what the hell was he doing so far from home base? Don't say it, I know-freeways. And he won't have lived in El Monte all his life. Let's see if we can find him." The lab had told them yesterday that the slugs out of Dubois had been fired from a. 45 Colt.
Barrios' wife told them that he worked at a garage on Rosemead Boulevard and they picked him up there, brought him in. Higgins was back in the office by then and they stood over him and asked him questions. He was a wiry dark small man in the thirties, and he snarled back at them. "I'm clean since I got out last time, I done nothing. Just because a guy got a little record, the fuzz come down on him alla time-"
Higgins said, "All right, where were you on Saturday night?"
"Iast Saturday night? I was sittin' in a game of draw with four other guys. We went on late, they can tell you." He supplied names and addresses and they went to look, stashing him in jail meanwhile. The poker game, he said, had been in a private home in El Monte; and none of the other men had any police records. The wife of the householder said, "Do I know that Barrios? Sure he was here that night. These damn fool men and their cards, they went on till two in the morning and nobody got any sleep. That damn Barrios-he took nineteen bucks off Joe and I'll be short on grocery money all this week."
You won some, you lost some. They let Barrios go. It had just been a first cast.
PALLISER HAD BEEN our looking for one of the heist suspects up till noon on Tuesday. When he came back to the office after lunch, Lake said the lab had been calling him.
"Well, all right, put them through." He sat down at his desk and picked up the phone when it rang.
Duke said, "I'd have called you right away but I know you've been busy."
"We still are."
"You do any good on that shooting yet?"
"Not yet. What do you want?"
"Well, I'd like you to come and look at something interesting. You can get a warrant and clean one up on it. Come and see."