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… The hell of a thing."

"Yes, it was. Walsh much shaken up? He hasn't been in uniform long, has he?"

"No, sir, but he's a good kid. Sure, he was shook, but he'd kept his head-he acted O.K. I tell you, Lieutenant, I guess I was the one was shook-and I've been in uniform seven years this month and that wasn't the first time I'd picked up some pretty tough customers who happened to be Mexican-but I tell you, with those kids, it was the first time I ever felt ashamed of my name."

"Vaya, amigo, we come all shapes and sizes like other people-good, bad, and indifferent."

"Sure," said Gonzales bitterly, "sure we do, Lieutenant, but a lot of people don't remember it when the names get in the paper on a thing like this."

Alison sat up and said that it was a pity, while all this research was going on about a cure for cancer and the common cold, that nobody was looking for a cure for stupidity: it was needed much more. Gonzales grinned and said it sure was, hesitated, and added, "Excuse me, Lieutenant, but-the inquest was yesterday, I mean I was wondering if there was anything-"

"More?" said Mendoza. "Like maybe have I heard a little something from Frank Walsh?"

"Oh, he did see you? I didn't want to stick my neck out if he'd got cold feet." At which point Farber up ahead got impatient and came back to see what was going on.

When he heard, he said, "Walsh is O.K., but he's really reaching on this one, Lieutenant. Overconscientious." He was an older man than Gonzales, compact and tough-looking in the brief flare of the match as he lit a cigarette.

"Well, boys," said Mendoza, "they say better safe than sorry. It won't do any harm to take another look. But there's no need to-mmh-worry Bill Slaney about it unless it appears there's something to tell him. I don't want him breathing fire at me for encouraging one of his rookies in a lot of nonsense, and I don't want him coming down on Walsh for going over his head. I'll square him when the time comes, if it's necessary. Meanwhile, could one of you do me a little favor? You're on night tour, I see-Walsh is on days right now. Could one of you get a copy from him of his record book of last Friday night, and bring it to me tomorrow morning? I'll meet you somewhere near the station, or anywhere convenient."

Farber was silent; Gonzales said, "Sure, I'll do that, Lieutenant. If you think there's anything to be looked into. Frank talked to us about it, but it sounds-"

"Crazy, I know. I'm not saying yes or no yet. Just looking. Where and what time?"

"Corner of Avalon and Cole, say about ten-thirty?"

"O.K. Thanks very much. I'll see you then, Gonzales." As the two men walked back to the squad car, Farber was seen to raise his shoulders in an expressive shrug. Mendoza murmured, "Overconscientious

… I wonder," and switched on the ignition. Then he said, "Better places, yes, but just to be going on with, as long as we're here-" and postponed reaching for the hand brake a minute to kiss her.

***

At ten forty-five the next morning he sat in his car at one end of that cruise Walsh and Bartlett had been riding on Friday night, and read over the terse history of what jobs they had done between four-thirty and nine. It hadn't been a very exciting tour up to then. On Friday night, he remembered, it had been raining: gray and threatening all day, and the rain starting about three, not a real California storm until later, but one of those dispirited steady thin drizzles. Californians were like cats about rain, and that would have been enough to keep a lot of people home that night.

In the four and a half hours Walsh and Bartlett were on duty, up to the murder of Bartlett, they had responded to four radio calls and handed out seven tickets. At four-fifty they had been sent to an accident on Vineyard; evidently it had been quite a mess, with three cars called in and an ambulance, one D.O.A. and two injured, and they hadn't got away from there until five thirty-five. At six-three they'd been sent to another accident, a minor one, and spent a few minutes getting traffic unsnarled there. At six-forty they'd rescued a drunk who'd strayed onto the freeway, and taken him into the station for transferral to the tank downtown overnight. At seven thirty-five they'd been sent to an apartment on 267th Street, a drunk-and-disorderly. Apparently the drunks hadn't been very disorderly, for they were back on their route again by eight o'clock. At eight-twenty they'd stopped at a coffee shop on Vineyard, and were on their way again at eight thirty-five.

The tickets had all been for speeding, except two for illegal left turns. Mendoza started out to follow their route. He went to the scene of the first accident, and parked, and looked at it. It said nothing to him at all, of course: just a fairly busy intersection, with nothing to show that four nights ago it had been a shambles of death and destruction. He went on to the place of the second accident, and that said even less, eloquently. Again, of course… What the hell did he think he was doing? Waiting for his muse, Alison said. Waiting for that cold sure tingle between the shoulder blades that told him the man across the table was bluffing hard, or really did hold a full house. Or for that similar, vaguer sensation that for want of a better word was called a hunch.

Nothing said anything to him. An hour later he had got as far as the place where they'd subdued the D.-and-D., and had reached the conclusion that he was wasting time. It wasn't an apartment building, this, but a one-story court built in U-shape around a big black-topped parking area. There were four semidetached apartments on each side, in two buildings, and across the end a fifth building also with two apartments; at the street side of the first two buildings were double carports, and a single one at each end of the fifth. All the buildings were painted bright pink, with white door-frames and imitation shutters; they looked curiously naked standing there in the open, not a tree anywhere around, or any grass: only the blacktop and in the middle of it a large wooden tub in which was planted some anonymous shrub, which obviously wasn't doing very well-thin and anemic-looking. Six television aerials stretched importunate arms heavenward; presumably the other tenants possessed newer sets of the portable type.

In his exasperation with himself, Mendoza thought he'd never seen a more depressing place to live. Even a slum tenement gave out a warmer sense of life than this sterile, cheap modernity.

There was no parking lane along here, and he turned up onto the blacktop to make a U-turn, start back downtown, and quit wasting time. As he swung around by the twin front doors of the building across the end of the court, the left one opened and a woman bounced out in front of the car; so he had to stop.

"Was it about the apartment? You're lucky to catch me, I was just goin' to market. You're welcome to see over it, won't take a minute to it get the key-" She might have been sixty; she was an inch or so short of live feet and very nearly as wide, but every bit of her looked as firm and brisk and bouncy as a brand-new rubber ball. She had pug-dog features under a good deal of wild gray hair, and her cotton housedress was a blinding Prussian blue with a pink-and-white print superimposed.

"Not about the apartment, no," said Mendoza. Oh, well, as long as he was here… He got out of the car and introduced himself. "You, or someone here, put in a call to the police last Friday night complaining about a drunk-"

"Mrs. Bragg, that's me, how-do. Mex, hey? Well, I don't mind that, you're mostly awful polite folk, I will say, nor I don't mind the police part either-matter of fact it might be sort of handy sometimes, with them Johnstones. Now there, if I haven't got the key, musta picked up the wrong bunch-it's this apartment right here, what'd-you-say-the-name-is, and a bargain if I do say so-"