" No me empuje -don't push me! I've just got here." Mendoza's voice was muffled. "I need a flashlight, hand one down… Valgame Dios y un millen demonios! " That came out as he straightened too abruptly and hit his head on the floor joists. Like most California houses, this sat only a little above a shallow foundation; the space undemeath the floor was scarcely four feet high.
Hackett laughed unfeelingly. "He wants a flashlight-why didn't he think of that before? You got a flashlight, Woods?"
"I seldom carry one in the daytime," said Woods.
“That's funny, neither do I. Use your lighter!" he advised Mendoza heartlessly.
There followed a period of silence but for the muffled sounds of Mendoza moving around cautiously down there; then another curse and a longer silence. Suddenly Mendoza straightened up through the trap and demanded an implement of some kind. "Failing the trowel, a soup ladle or something-look in the drawers. The place is furnished, there ought to be tablespoons, a cake server-"
Hackett rummaged and offered him a tablespoon, a hand can opener, and a long wooden fork. "Nada mds? A big help you are," and Mendoza vanished again with the spoon and fork.
"Does it come on him often?" asked Woods sympathetically, offering Hackett a cigarette.
"Thanks. Five days out of seven he's as sensible as you please. I've thought tranquilizers might help, but on the other hand, just once in a while he does hit pay dirt. I got it figured that it's because essentially he's a gambler-he's in the wrong line, he ought to have been a cardsharp. He calls himself an agnostic, but that's a lie-he's superstitious as hell about his hunches, whether he'd admit it or not."
"Well, we all have foibles," said Woods. "I knew a fellow once who collected paper bags, had a closet full of them. Card player, is he? I kind of fancy myself at bridge, does he go in for it?"
"I think that's a little genteel for Luis, he likes poker. But he won't play for the kind of stakes you and I could stand."
Mendoza's upper half appeared through the trap; he rested an elbow on the ledge and laid the fork and spoon tidily on the floor. His shoulders had collected a good deal of dust and his tie was crooked, but he looked pleased with himself.
"If you've finished slandering my character, and the phone's still working, chico, you can go and call the rest of the boys."
"Hell and damnation," said Hackett incredulously. "You don't mean he is down there?"
"Didn't you hear me fall over the suitcases? Give me a hand." Mendoza hauled himself out of the hole up into the kitchen, and began to brush down his clothes fastidiously. "You can stop looking for your embezzler, Woods, and hand over what you've got on him to us."
"Holy angels in heaven," said Woods mildly. "No wonder I couldn't find him. How, when, and where exactly, Lieutenant?"
"Not being a doctor and having only the lighter, I'll pass that one. He's not very deep, only six inches or so on top of him, and I just dug away enough to be sure. The hell of a job it must have been to get him there-and of course I'm premature in saying it is Mr. Twelvetrees, but it's somebody, and in male clothing, I think. And, at a guess, he's been there just about the time Mr. Twelvetrees has been missing. About four feet from the trap, say under the door to the living room. And three suitcases alongside him, not buried."
"I will be damned," said Hackett. "This one you really got by radar, boy. And I suppose from now on you'll quote it every time anybody laughs at your hunches." He looked at the gaping black hole of the trap- "And how the boys are goin' to love that job." He went to call headquarters for a homicide detail.
FOUR
It was six o'clock before they were finished at the apartment. Mendoza went down again with the surgeon and the men to fix up some kind of light; all of them let out frequent curses, crowded together down there. Woods went down to look at the corpse when its face emerged; he provoked an outburst of profanity on his way up by inadvertently pulling out the wire from the nearest outlet down the trap, and plunging the laborers into darkness. He shoved the plug back in and said to Hackett tersely, "Twelvetrees, all right."
Down below, Mendoza could be heard telling someone to keep his clumsy paws to himself, they'd get to the corpse all in good time, but if there was any little something buried with it by accident, he'd like to see it before it got buried again. "Well, well," said Hackett. "It is, is it? How?"
"Surgeon thinks a bang on the head, or several bangs."
Hackett grunted. They sat smoking, carefully sharing the ashtray out of the Facel-Vega to avoid using anything here, until Marx and Horder climbed out of the hole laboriously with all their equipment and Marx called back down, "What d'you want up here, Lieutenant!"
"Everything, everything! And don't forget the bottoms of window sills and the tops of doors!”
Marx sighed and shrugged at Horder; they went into the bathroom to start. Mendoza came up and hauled out the suitcases, one by one, as they were handed to him. "O.K., boys, now we get busy." He sat down on the davenport and produced a folded envelope.
"Treasure-trove from the grave."
They looked at the thing he shook out into his palm-a small round pearl-finished button. "Could've fallen down the trap any time and rolled," said Hackett dubiously.
"Don't think so. It was about an inch under the surface, in the loose dirt shoveled over him. Couldn't have been there very long, either by the look of it, even if it just happened to be there when he was covered up. And I think it tells us what we're going to find out anyway-someone was smart enough to wear gloves."
"Why?"
"It could be off a number of things, this shape and size and color." It was flat on top like a stud, not rounded, it had a shank, it was amber-colored. "A woman's blouse. A man's sport shirt. A dress, even a skirt, though I'd say it was too small for that. But what I think it came from was a glove-a glove with a button, or buttons, at the wrist." He put it away carefully. "Now, the suitcases. They've all been printed outside, and they're clean. Which is very odd indeed, only not in this case, of course." He laid the first one beside him on the couch, brought out a key ring-“From the corpse, I haven't searched him, except for these, when I found the cases were locked"-and opened it. Clothing, neatly packed: six solid-colored sport shirts, in two layers, on top-just back from the laundry, by the way they were folded and pinned: the kind of shirts that sold for fifteen dollars and up. Two of them monogrammed.
Another half-dozen less expensive white dress shirts underneath. A leather case with eighteen or twenty ties neatly folded in it. Clean socks rolled up in pairs. Shorts and undershirts, almost all of knit nylon. Three pairs of silk pajamas, all of exotic colors. Two pairs of shoes, on trees and wrapped in paper: one pair tan suede, the other black.
"Thirty bucks at a guess," said Mendoza, setting them down carefully without touching the shoe trees. Under the tied-down flap of the lid was a leather case containing an electric razor, a manicure set, and a number of jars and bottles, all bearing the same green-and-gold label and, in tortured script, the words Flamme d'Amour .
" Que hombre! ” said Mendoza, removing the top from a bottle of cologne with handkerchief-shielded fingers, and sniffing.
"He wouldn't like himself much right now," commented Woods. Another fitted case with hairbrushes and comb. Six belts, tidily rolled up. A flat leather jewel case containing half a dozen pairs of links, tie clasps, a monogrammed sterling buckle.
"Don't," said Hackett to Woods earnestly, "ask him for any deductions or we'l1 be here all night. One of the things he's an expert on is clothes."