"I've got just so many men and there are still only twenty-four hours in a day," said Arnhelm. "We can't go looking every place there's a possibility of fraud. Keeps us busy enough investigating complaints. Sure, we keep a little list, just on the chance we'll be looking into this or that some day-another fortune teller takes out a county permit, another funny cult gets set up, we file what information shows up on the applications and so on-but that's as far as it goes, unless somebody comes in with a complaint."
"Yes, and what are the odds on the information being false? It's like income tax returns, you can't check them all. I know those applications for permits, those affidavits-Have you ever served a prison-term, Have you ever been known by another name, and so on. Like asking when you stopped beating your wife. Nobody in his right mind is going to put down Yes, and give chapter and verse, but so long as he scratches in No with a post office pen and signs any name that occurs to him, it gets duly approved."
"I tell you," said Arnhelm, "you go out and recruit the force about five thousand more men, nice bright boys with superior I.Q.'s, and we might begin to do things the really efficient way. Check up on every single application for every kind of permit, among other things."
"All right, all right, I know the problem. And at that, those recruits would do more good walking beats the old-fashioned way-and five thousand just a drop in the bucket for that job, in this town."
Arnhelm agreed gloomily. "And the point is here, what's the difference? It's a way to milk the public, sure. So is any business, in the long view, except that some businesses sell things the public needs. Mostly it's things they just think they need, which is what's called human nature. You're got to gull the public in some way to sell anything, but the law draws a line as to how bad you can gull them. As long as people like the Kingmans keep inside the line, we can't go poking our noses into their private racket, any more than we can into the cosmetic business, or the automobile factories, for instance. And if we did it wouldn't do any good, they'd just find more pigeons. People are such damn fools. Why d'you think women go on buying some new brand of face powder? Because the ads say it'll make them look younger. Why do men go on buying hair restorer? Because they're damn fools. We can't cure that situation."
"All true, but it doesn't stop me wishing you had something more on the Kingmans," said Mendoza. “However, thanks very much for the lecture." He started back to his own office thinking about the little he'd got from Arnhelm. The Kingmans, according to the affidavits they'd supplied in the process of incorporating the Temple, hailed from Philadelphia, where Kingman had been in the hardware business. He was fifty-nine, she was fifty-one. References consisted of the people here who had supplied capital for establishing the sect. And that was just about the sum total of usable information.
Sergeant Thoms, who sat at Sergeant Lake's desk on Lake's days off, was still patiently working his way through the phone-book list of model agencies. He shook his head silently at Mendoza.
The autopsy report wasn't in yet. Ballistics was silent on the gun. Mendoza went out for coffee, and at the drugstore counter found Goldberg sneezing violently into Kleenex over a half-eaten sandwich.
"The very man I wanted to see," and he climbed onto the adjoining stool. Goldberg emerged from the Kleenex long enough to say that it was supposed to be his day off but something had come up.
“Whad cad I do for you?"
"Allergies," said Mendoza. "Everybody talks about them but when it comes down to it I don't seem to know much about them, except that they hit you different places. What are the symptoms?"
"Are you kidding?" said Goldberg. The paroxysm over, he put the Kleenex away. "We could sit here until tomorrow while I told you. Almost anything. Me, I've read all the books and spent a lot of money on specialists, and I've come to the conclusion that nobody knows anything about it for sure. They can tell you what you've got-sometimes-and sometimes what to do about it, but by the time you've got one allergy cleared up you've developed another one. What are your symptoms?"
"I haven't got any. What I want to know is this. If you find somebody using about three times as many handkerchiefs as the normal person, used handkerchiefs stashed away in every pocket, isn't it likely to be a symptom of an allergy? That's the way it takes most people?"
"That it does," said Goldberg. "Some people have hives too, and some people itch, and various other things, but you can say that practically anybody with allergies is going to have, to start with, the nasal drip and the stuffed-up sinuses, and so he's going to be using a lot of handkerchiefs. Or Kleenex. Why?"
"Yes, I thought so. My latest corpse did, I think. I wonder if he was going to an allergy specialist."
"If he was crazy or a millionaire, he was," said Goldberg.
"Don't they say it's psychosomatic?"
"Listen, damn it, you say it if you want a good punch in the nose-go on, say it's all emotional. That's what they tell you when they mean they don't know and can't do anything else for you. So I'm allergic to about forty things, see, like whiskey and cat hair and the glue on postage stamps; all right, so I get hay-fever when I haven't been near any one of the things I'm allergic to, so what do they say? They say, well, well, Saul my boy, you must have grown another allergy, maybe your wife's nail polish, we'll find out-but if I haven't got the ten or twenty or thirty bucks for more tests, then they say, it's psychosomatic, maybe you'd better see a head doctor. Passing the buck. The hell with them."
"I see. I suppose I can get a list of specialists from the Chamber of Commerce or somewhere."
"And I wish you joy of them," said Goldberg, beginning to sneeze again.
When Mendoza got back to his office Sergeant Thoms had finished calling the agencies, without result. "But being it's Sunday, I couldn't get hold of only about half of them, sir, and at most of those places it was an emergency number, not their office, and they couldn't say for sure without checking records. We're to check back tomorrow on those."
"Damn Sunday,” said Mendoza. "I suppose none of the doctors' offices would be open either." It would, of course, be easier to check with someone who had known Twelvetrees: always providing they told him the truth. But there couldn't be much in it… "When Frank Walsh comes, shoot him in." He had called Slaney to borrow Walsh for more questioning. He went into his office and called the Temple, got Kingman, and asked him if Twelvetrees had had an allergy problem. Why, yes, so he had. Was he going to a specialist? Yes, Kingman thought so, but couldn't tell him which one definitely-it had been a doctor on Fairfax Avenue, he remembered that, and the name was something like Grass or Glass.
Mendoza thanked him and had recourse to the phone book; and there was a Dr. Graas on Fairfax Avenue. Child's play, and what did it mean? Very likely nothing. Nevertheless, he'd ask. Just on the chance that there was something.
He called Alison. "Would you like to visit a place called the Voodoo Club tonight? I'1l pick you up about eight. Preferably in that amber silk thing."
"I can't say the prospect thrills me. Of the Voodoo Club, that is. You know I don't like night clubs-neither do you-why this sudden passion to be conventional?"
"I just want to take a look at it, it may be mixed up in a case."
"That doesn't reassure me," said Alison. "The first time I went out with you it was the same sort of thing, a place you just wanted to look at, and it ended in our getting shot at and my ruining a brand new pair of stockings."
" Mi carina bella, not that sort of thing at all. I hope. I'll take good care of you. Eight o'clock."
"Oh, damn," she said suddenly in his ear. "No, that's not for you, but that devilish kitten you insisted on giving me-Sheba, no!-I've been painting the view out the bedroom window, and she's got into the rose madder-Sheba, get down, not on the bed, darling-" The receiver crashed in his ear and Mendoza laughed.