"You'd gone back to the car and reported in what it had turned out to be. How long did you sit there waiting for him?"
"About ten minutes, I guess. I remember I smoked a cigarette, it was just about finished when Joe came. I don't get what this is about, Lieutenant, it was just a routine-"
"Yes. Now when Bartlett came out of Number Three, did he come straight across to the car?"
"Yes, sir-at least, I'd think so. Wouldn't have any reason to do anything else, would he? I guess if you pinned me down I couldn't say I know he did, because I had my back to that side of the court, you know-he just came up and got in and said, ‘O.K., Frank, let's go.' The landlady came up behind him, with that funny raincoat over her head, and hopped up on her front porch and yelled ‘Thanks' at us and-well, that was that."
Mendoza sighed. "And if Bartlett didn't come straight from Number Three to the squad car, the landlady would know… " He could ask, but he had the feeling this was a dead end. Call it what, a minute, two minutes, for Bartlett to have seen something, heard something? " Que va! " he muttered to himself vexedly. "Can you think of anything else at all, Walsh, no matter how trivial it struck you at the time, that happened during the whole twenty minutes you were at this place?"
Silence. Walsh was looking nervous and perplexed. "I don't know what you're after," he said. "I just can't think- Well, a couple of the neighbors on each side of the drunks' apartment came out-I think one couple was out when we drove up, I seem to get a picture of them standing there on their front porch under the porch light. That'd be, I guess, Number Four-end apartment… What, sir? I think that was the only porch light on except the landlady's. Then when I came back g to the car, I saw the people on the other side-that'd be Number Two, in the first building-had come out on their porch. Wanted to see if we were going to take the drunks in, I guess, but there wasn't any need for that… I don't remember seeing anybody else out. I guess if it hadn't been raining they would have been-you know, the drunks making such a racket-but the way it was, it was just the people from the closest apartments to them who were outside-though probably everybody else was looking out their windows… I don't know what else I can. .. Oh, and just before Joe came up, somebody did open the door of the apartment next to the landlady's. And that's all I-what, sir? No, I they didn't come out on the porch, maybe when they saw it was raining so hard-"
"They,” said Mendoza, excluding any excitement from his tone.
"Two people, three, or what?"
"Oh-well," said Walsh vaguely, "I don't know. I said ‘they' because I couldn't see whether it was a man or woman who opened the door. The porch light wasn't on there. I think there was a light inside but not in the living room, maybe, not right by the door or behind it-I seem to I get that impression. I couldn't see-I don't know if anybody else was there besides who opened the door. I just, you know, sort of registered it in my mind, the door opening… This what you want, Lieutenant, about that? Well, let's see… I remember thinking, they've finally tumbled something's going on, and're looking out to see what-but I didn't notice whoever it was-and it was just a minute before the door shut again. Tell you the truth," said Walsh a little shamefacedly, "I was looking at the lightning really, I just kind of saw that door open out of the tail of my eye. I get a kick out of electric storms, and we never used to get them out here much, you know, it's only the last ten or twelve years… I was waiting for the thunder… "
"Yes,” said Mendoza. "Now, think about this one carefully. Someone was standing in the open door of Number Five-by the way, wide open?"
Walsh thought, shook his head. "I don't know. I don't think so, but I can't say for sure."
"O.K. Someone's there, and there's lightning in a flash-big stroke?"
"Pretty close. Lit up the whole sky-it was fine."
"Yes. And about that time Bartlett was, maybe, on his way to the car from Number Three? Could it be that whoever was standing there saw Bartlett by that big flash, and thought Bartlett might have seen him-or her?" But that was really reaching for it, surely, he added to himself. A flash of lightning. One little moment-to fix in mind the nondescript features of an ordinary cop-and an hour and a bit later, catch up to him and kill him? And Bartlett would probably have had his head down against the rain; whoever was in that doorway would also see that he couldn't be noticing…
Walsh's expression took on the glazed look of one trying to recapture a past time in photographic reproduction. He said almost at once, "No, sir. I got that piece clear, just remembering it by the lightning, now. This is how it went, see: there's the lightning, just after the door opened there-and I looked up, and kind of automatically started to count seconds, the way you do, you know-and it was close, it wasn't quite three seconds until the thunder-and then that door closed. And right after that-yes, I've got it now, funny how little things come back to you-I heard the other apartment door close, and that was Joe and the landlady coming out of Number Three. And almost right away, Joe opened the car door and got in beside me and said, ‘O.K., let's go.' " Walsh looked at Mendoza triumphantly, anxiously. "Is that the kind of thing you want, sir? I don't see what it has to do with-"
" Oye, oiga, frene!-Que se yo? " Mendoza sat up abruptly. "Wait a minute now, you were driving? Bartlett got in beside you, you said-you being behind the wheel."
"Why, yes, sir," said Walsh. "We generally change round like that, you know, if there're two of you on patrol, one drives the first half of the tour, the other the second half. That night, we changed after the coffee break, and Joe took the wheel."
Mendoza looked at him, but he didn't see Frank Walsh's square, honest, amiable face at all. He saw that ugly courtyard, on that dark rainy night-and a murderer opening a door (all right, no evidence, nada absolutamente, to back that up, but it made a picture, it filled in an empty space)-and being confronted with that black-and-white squad car, unexpected and so close; and in that moment, one great flash of lightning lighting the whole scene-pinpointing it in time and space. What picture in a murderer's mind of that one moment? A uniformed cop at the wheel of that car, looking up alertly-apparently toward the open apartment door. And Mrs. Bragg's porch light shining full on the front of the squad car and its L.A. police number.
That was all. That was enough. Mendoza's patrol days being far behind, that one little fact hadn't occurred to him, that a pair of cops in a squad car changed around at the wheel. The ordinary civilian wouldn't think of it.
So, there was the answer: and say it wasn't backed up by any kind of evidence the D.A. would look at-Mendoza knew surely it must be the right answer. All somebody had known, had been afraid of, was the driver of the squad car number such-and·such. It didn't matter then-the idea was that Twelvetrees should vanish, that he'd never be found in his makeshift grave down that kitchen trap-it didn't matter if the driver saw and remembered a face. Not if things went the way somebody planned. But just in case Twelvetrees was found, in case questions were asked, and the driver of that car was able to identify a face-Panic? Impulse? And a very damned lucky shot-or a very damned skillful one… into the wrong man.
And, after all, Frank Walsh hadn't seen whoever stood in that open door.
EIGHT
"Every other country in the world," said Alison, clutching Mendoza's arm, "puts decent lights in night clubs and bars. People go to such places to read newspapers and hold philosophical discussions over their drinks. Or at least so I'm given to understand. Why are Americans condemned to these caves of darkness, like moles?"
"It's the Puritan background," said Mendoza, stumbling over a pair of outstretched legs and apologizing. "We still suffer from the influence of all those high-minded, earnest people who had the idea that anything a little bit enjoyable, from a glass of wine to a hand of cards-anything that makes life a bit more amusing-is necessarily sinful. It's a holdover-ah, haven," as the waiter's dim figure stopped and hovered in the gloom ahead, indicating a table or booth, impossible to tell which. On cautious investigation it proved to be a booth, and he slid into it beside the vague slender figure that was Alison-at least, it smelled of the spiced-carnation and faintly aphrodisiac scent that said Alison. "-A holdover from the days when those righteous old colonists felt seven kinds of devil if they let the cider get hard, you know… Straight rye," he added to the waiter, "and I think a glass of sherry for the lady."