On Friday morning, with Glasser off, Palliser roped Landers in to help out on the legwork on Sandra. The two likeliest suspects Stephanie had picked out of Records, on account of their pedigrees, were Richard Lamont and Earl Rank. Lamont’s latest address was Burbank, Rank’s Van Nuys, but as Palliser pointed out, people did move. They went looking.
Landers found Lamont after three tries. Lamont’s sister in Burbank thought he might be staying with a pal in Hollywood; the pal said Dick was living with a woman in the Atwater section, and there Landers ran him to ground, in one side of an old duplex, watching TV. Lamont fit Stephanie’s description, down to the little goatee, but he told Landers earnestly he was real clean. Last time he’d been in, the judge had sent him to one of those head doctors, cured him from wanting to do funny things to girls, and he’d never do a thing like that again.
"So you can tell me where you were last Tuesday?" asked Landers.
Lamont thought. "All day, sir? Well, I was at my job all day, it’s at McGill’s garage out Vermont, Mr. McGill’s teaching me all about engines and says I take to it good. I got to leave for the job pretty soon too, I don’t go on till noon ’cause we’re open tonight. I just come home-last Tuesday you mean, sir?-and Lilly Ann could say I was here, if that’s good enough, sir. She’s a real honest girl, never been in no trouble, we’re fixin’ to get married. She works at this upholstery place on Jefferson, you could ask and she’d say."
Landers went on to find Lilly Ann; there was no point in hauling Lamont in to lean on him heavier until they were a lot surer. Lilly Ann sounded positive, and had a clean record. This one was up in the air.
He came back to headquarters to find Palliser just bringing in a likelier suspect.
Earl Rank had the kind of record which made him likely, and he hadn’t any alibi; he was living alone in a single room on Fourth, but Palliser had found him at his mother’s place on a tip from a pal at the car-wash where he worked.
"A house down on Ceres," he told Landers. "Two-bedroom place, about what you’d expect, but it could tie in." Ceres Street was five blocks from San Pedro. "And his mother’s just got back from visiting a married daughter in ’Frisco, how about that?"
"I like it," said Landers. "It ties in very neat. Let’s see what he has to say about it."
They took him into an interrogation room and started asking questions. Rank was sullen and belligerent in turns, the usual attitude, and they didn’t get much out of him."Don’t you remember where you were last Tuesday, Rank?"
"Around. Just around." He was about thirty, a pale-skinned black with a wispy little goatee, a thin mustache, secretive eyes, a hard mouth. "I didn’t do anything."
"We’ve got a witness who says maybe you did. You picked up any juvenile females to sweet-talk lately, Earl?"
He’d done that at least once, by his record; the parents had reneged on letting her testify, and there’d been no prosecution.
"I never did no such thing. You can’t prove I done nothing."
They couldn’t. It might be interesting to hear what Stephanie would say about his mother’s house on Ceres Street; but they’d have to show cause and get a court order even to take pictures, and she might not recognize pictures. It was just suggestive, no real evidence at all. "And you know, Tom," said Palliser, scratching his nose, "that girl was so scared, by her own admission, I wouldn’t like to take her description of the man or the house as gospel truth. She couldn’t be certain. You stop to think, she only saw the man three or four times-in a car at night, and at the house. She spent some time at the house, but we couldn’t get much of a description-al1 she could say was, two bedrooms, no rugs, an old refrigerator, the TV was new. She also picked this other mug-shot, Steven Smith. He’s got no sex counts, just B. and E., but I suppose there’s always a first time. But I wouldn’t bet on it."
"They do train us to be thorough," said Landers.
"We’d better look for him too."
They let Rank go, at least temporarily, and went looking for Smith without any luck. He was off parole, he’d moved from the latest address in his tile, and nobody admitted to knowing where he was. There were no relatives listed for him. He could be Stephanie’s Harry, but he needn’t be.
And Palliser said, "I tell you, Tom, I wouldn’t rely on that girl. If I felt surer she’d been sure about that description, I’d like Rank for it a lot. As it is, she picked out two other shots too. In a way, I think we’d be safer just going by the general description and looking at mug-shots ourselves."
"You do like to do it the hard way. You talked to her," said Landers with a shrug. "So where do we go from here?"
"We go call on Earl Rank’s mother," said Palliser. "She may be a perfectly honest woman-nothing says she isn’t, though she didn’t like it much when I brought him in-and if Earl is the X on Sandra, possibly Mrs. Rank noticed something when she came home yesterday. Things missing from the refrigerator-or that nice little greenstriped plane case he forgot to get rid of."
"Well, we can ask," said Landers. He didn’t sound very hopeful.
Mendoza’s insatiable curiosity had fastened on the strange case of Edwin Fleming. There wasn’t much to be done, in the way of the usual routine, on the equally strange rape-assaults or the merely brutal pretty boys, but questions could be asked about Fleming. After a desultory glance at the night report, he went out to ask some; and he’d be covering ground Carey had already been over, but then Mendoza always preferred to ask the questions personally, and he flattered himself he’d get more out of those other girls than Carey had.
He started out at the Globe Grill, where he was resented because they were still busy with the late-breakfast trade. Rappaport wasn’t there. He used the badge without compunction, aware that Marta Fleming was watching him with smouldering eyes. The first one he talked to was Betty Loring, a black-haired buxom female of, he suspected, very medium intelligence.
"I don’t know her very well, like I told the other cop. I mean, she’s all business, she don’t talk much to the rest of us. No, I don’t mean she’s unfriendly exactly, just quiet. What you mean, Mr. Rappaport? Oh, he’s a real gentleman, he don’t allow any funny business from customers. I worked some p1aces"-she rolled her eyes"but he’s real strict. I don’t get why you’re asking about Marta, it’s her husband something happened to, I guess. Cops! All this fuss over him going off."
The other one, Angela Norton, was older and brighter. She said curiously, "All you cops around, just on account of her husband. I don’t know anything about it, she’s a quiet one, but it seems funny. Didn’t he just walk out?"
Mendoza told her about that, and she stared. "I didn’t know that, about him being paralyzed. That’s terrible. She never said a thing, and she’s worked here nearly six months. But you don’t mean you think she had anything to do with it? Honestly, she’s-she wouldn’t have-that other cop asking if she had boyfriends, that strikes me as silly, honestly-she’s so serious, all business. If you want to know, it’s my guess she’s been awful homesick. That sounds silly too, but I think she is."
Mendoza was slightly taken aback. Cigarette halfway to his mouth, he said, "Why do you say that?"
"Oh, well-she’s quiet like I said, but once we took a break together, and I forget what brought it up, somebody’s birthday I think, but she got to talking about Germany, and her family-someplace they’d gone on a picnic for her sister’s birthday, in the country, and she was all different, sort of gay and laughing hard. She’d never talked about her family to me before. I don’t know what you’re thinking about her, but honestly she’s so straitlaced, I wouldn’t think-"
"Cops don’t tell what they think," said Mendoza absently. The other two waitresses here worked different hours, didn’t know Marta as well even as these two had, and Carey hadn’t got anything out of them. Mendoza didn’t ask to talk to Marta; yesterday, with Carey’s report in his mind, he’d thought he had read her, and been amused at Nick Galeano. Now he took the Ferrari up Vermont Avenue to the office of Dr. Sylvester Toussaint, and used the badge to pull rank again.