"I don't care how you came by them," said Mendoza.
"Who did you get them from? Do you know his name?"
"What the hell are you insin-sinuating about me?" she flared up. "I know lotsa people, no reason I shouldn't-I'm a model, see, I got a good job all lined up, you guys can't-”
"Sure, honey," said Higgins, "we can see you're a real high-class girl. We just want to know which friend gave you the silver dollars." He sounded patient.
Mendoza wasn't. He leaned across the stained, scarred old table. "Listen to me, you stupid female! I don't give a single damn who you go to bed with, how often or for what price. There's the hell of a good chance that the man you got those silver dollars from is this killer, the Slasher. You can tell us what he looks like, and that's all I want from you, if you can get that much through your-"
It didn't penetrate at once, and then when it did she half screamed, "The- Oh, my Christ! No-I never saw him, I don't know whoLet me outta here for God's sake! Jesus, you don't-"
"I told you what I mean," said Mendoza coldly. "We think that man's the Slasher. Now will you tell me all about him or shall we take a little ride to headquarters?"
She made one sudden, convulsive effort to squeeze past Higgins again; she looked almost witless with fright. Then she said faintly, "O.K., O.K., you take me in and I tell you. Please take me in, mister-on account of if he knew I told--"
"Whichever way you want," said Mendoza. He dropped a couple of bills on the table and slid out of the booth. Higgins took her by the arm and followed.
They went single file down the narrow aisle to the door, the woman between and Higgins' hand on her arm. They came out to clean fresh night air, and Mendoza said, "Where's your car?"
"Up the block to your right- God damn!" said Higgins. Rosie was out of his grip like an eel, leaving a torn edge of her tawdry dress behind; she fled up the block wildly, dodged around the corner there, and was gone. They ran after her, swearing, and turned into the darker side street. They heard the clatter of her high heels, sharp on the sidewalk ahead, and then lost them.
"Go call up a car," panted Mendoza. "God damn the little-"
She was gone. He stood there waiting for the car, to start the futile block-by-block hunt. She'd be diving into whatever cheap rented room she called home, bundling her few possessions together to run on-maybe out of L.A.-thinking of her own skin, Rosie. The Rosies did that. And, being Rosie, she'd know how to go to ground, anonymous, in some other Skid Row.
Damn her, damn her. She might have given them a very damn definite description-if that was the Slasher-and he knew they'd never pick her up.
But he set up the routine hunt. You had to try.
That night he didn't sleep much. He lay and stared into the darkness and, senselessly, his mind went back over every detail of every case he and Art had worked together. A lot of cases. You got to know a man pretty well in that length of time.
No way to be certain… permanent brain damage…
He was still lying there at five-thirty when light out-lined the window, and El Senor got up, yawned and stretched, trampled over Bast and went to sit on the window seat and make chattering noises at the early sparrows in the tree outside. Bast sent a disgusted glare after him, wrapped her tail round her nose, and went to sleep again. Alison was heavily asleep still, lying motionless. He got up, shaved, and dressed. Went out to the living room. Hospitals were always awake. At six-fifteen he called. No change. They had said it could be days. And no way to be certain…
When he heard faint sounds from the kitchen he wandered out there, and the brisk little Scotswoman smiled at him. "Coffee in five minutes. And it's a senseless sort of thing to be saying to you, but it's never any bit of good worrying over a thing that's out of your hands entirely."
"I know, Mairi,', he said. "I know that."
"It's a great pity you've no religion to depend on. I don't know," said Mrs. MacTaggart, "but what I haven't stayed in this heathen household with the hope of reconverting you, my gallant man. And I'm making a novena for the sergeant, so you'll have to find your own breakfast if you want any… I've taken the wee boy into his mother, and our two are fast asleep still and likely'll stay so until I'm home."
"Yes," said Mendoza… He drank the coffee too hot. He watched her hurry off to the garage for Alison's car. Damned ridiculous, he thought. Superstitious… On her knees at the nearest one, the Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel, obeying the ancient meaningless ritual. What happened or didn't happen, to Art or Luis Mendoza or anybody else, it was just according to how the hands got dealt round.
They hadn't picked up Rosie.
The reproduced signature had made the front page of the Times, blown up twice life size. It was certainly an odd signature, almost totally illegible. Fred, Frank, something like that, and whether the second name started with a T or an L was hard to say, or what the rest of it might be. Anyway, there it was. See if anybody recognized it. It'd be in the afternoon and evening papers too.
Routine was chuming out background information, the kind of thing you collected automatically; none of it was at all suggestive.
William Marlowe was fifty-nine, and a Harvard graduate. He'd inherited an estimated ten or twelve million from his father; there'd been money in the family for some time. Oil money and other interests. They came originally from Connecticut, where the family had been since preRevolutionary days. He was married-his wife was a D.A.R. member-and had one son and two daughters. Andrea Nestor's father had been a self-made man. Self-made by gambling on the stock market. He'd died broke six and a half years ago. She had attended local private schools. No close friends had shown up; the neighbors hadn't known much about the Nestors. She seemed to be a neutral sort of woman-nothing to get hold of, good or bad.
Frank Nestor had come here from New Jersey about ten years back. No background showed at all before that; he never mentioned any relations, wrote no letters back home.
The only interesting thing turned up overnight was Larry Webster. Corliss had met him at a bar and grill on Grand Avenue for dinner, and they'd gone back to her apartment. The tail had got his name and address from the registration in his car, and called in.
Webster had a record. Mendoza rather liked the record. Lawrence Richard Webster, forty-four, Caucasian, six feet one, one ninety-five, complexion medium, eyes blue, no distinguishing marks. He'd served six months for aggravated assault in 1947, been picked up three times on a D.-and-D., and done a one-to-three for burglary.
Very nice, thought Mendoza. Just the boy friend for Corliss. And she said he'd been at her apartment on Friday night… He thought he'd like to have a little talk with Larry Webster. He put out a call on him.
He phoned down to Vice. Lieutenant Andrews had been out on a stake-out last night and wasn't expected in until about eleven. "O.K., tell him I want to see him-I'll be there."
That damned-that Goddamned stupid lush Rosie.
Who could have given them a description.
A description… You just had to try everywhere. Mendoza stood up abruptly. Palliser was a good man, but… He said to Lake, "If they pick up Webster, hold him for me. I probably won't be long."
"I know it was almost dark," he said to Miguel Garcia. It was nine-thirty. Miguel was attending summer school; he'd talked to the public-school principal, who had called Miguel out of class for him. They sat here in an empty classroom, Mendoza uncomfortably perched on the edge of a too small desk, and Miguel looked at him with round solemn eyes. "Maybe it's easier for you to tell it better in the Spanish, Miguel? I-”