"Who I’m very glad to have around, she’s a good watchdog. I’m home most of the day, you let me have a try at it."
"All I can do is wish you luck, Robin."
Hackett, Galeano and Higgins had gone out on the anonymous Schultz thing. Glasser and Conway were looking for possibles on the heist jobs, and Wanda was typing a report across the hall, when Jason Grace wandered into Mendoza’s office on Monday just as Sergeant Lake put through a call.
"What’s on your mind, Jase? Just a minute. Robbery-Homicide, Lieutenant Mendoza."
"Sergeant Richards up here in Santa Barbara," said a heavy male voice. "You’ve got an A.P.B. out on a Mr. and Mrs. King, sixty-three Ford sedan, plate AGN-740. We just picked them up."
"Thank you so much," said Mendoza. "We think they may be connected to a homicide here."
"Well, you’ll have ’em on possession anyway," said Richards. "There was about a pound of marijuana in the car. Which is wrecked, by the way, they tried to run when the squad spotted them and King had a little load on and piled it up in a ditch. Do you want somebody to ferry ’em down there'?"
"Well, we are a little busy," said Mendoza. "It’d be a nice gesture, thanks."
"Glad to oblige. I don’t mind a little drive down the coast. Be with you sometime this afternoon," said Richards, and hung up.
Mendoza passed that on to Grace. He’d been sitting here practicing stacking the deck, and looked, as Grace told him, like an old-style riverboat cardsharp, hair over one eye where he’d run fingers through it, cigarette in mouth corner. "I’ve been brooding over Fleming, Jase. What have you got?"
"Just a little idea." Grace sat down and lit a cigarette. "This Mrs. Hopper. As George said, really not much M.O. about it, and Benoy and Allesandro denied it. The daughter told us her credit cards were gone, so I got on to the companies. Daughter also told me"-he grinned at Mendoza-"and don’t say there’s nothing to this race business, she’d never have come out with it to Art or you or George-that she’s got a sister. Very unsatisfactory sister-they’re all ashamed of her-lived around with this man and that, couple of illegitimate kids, on the welfare. Carla said Isabel had stolen things from Mother before, and it could be she’d helped herself to the cards, it mightn’t have been the murderer."
" Interesante."
"I thought so. When I talked to the BankAmericard people-I didn’t get any satisfaction on Saturday, of course-I just now heard that Mrs. Hopper had reported it herself, last Tuesday, and put a stop on any charges. Which looked possibly suggestive. I talked to Carla again and she told me her mother had put up with a lot from Isabel. Every time, Isabel all remorseful, never do it again, but she always did. And Mother wasn’t playing any more."
"Are you heading where I think you are?"
"That’s just where. Just for fun I looked in Records, and there’s Isabel Hopper big as life. Soliciting, prostitution, possession, petty theft, and she’s been tied up with a couple of mean characters. Maybe she still is, or could find one when she needed one."
"Probably," said Mendoza, his eyes on the cards. "And if Mother phoned her and said she knew who’d snitched her credit cards and this time she was going to prosecute- Dios, Jase, I have had it too, with these brainless brutes who hit first and think later! But that hangs together. Have you located her yet?"
"She’s not where she was the last time she was picked up, but the welfare board will know where she is. I’m just waiting for somebody to come in to go with me, in case she’s got one of the mean characters sharing quarters with her. I don’t want to end up as a statistic in our files.”
Mendoza laughed. "I won’t volunteer. It’s started to rain again. She’s all yours, Jase."
Hackett had come in by the time Richards got there with the Kings. He shook hands around, said, "Glad to oblige. You’ve got quite a place here, haven’t you?" He eyed Hackett interestedly, one big man to another. "If you don’t want this pair, we do."
"Maybe you’d better hang around until we find out."
Mendoza looked at the Kings, who were huddled together on the bench beside the switchboard. "Tom in, Art? He’s the one decided we were interested." Hackett went to see, and came back with Landers. They shepherded the Kings down the hall to an interrogation room while Mendoza offered to show Richards around.
The Kings looked like birds of a feather. They were in the early twenties, both with the long hair, both slightly scruffy and unkempt. Gerald King was short and sandy, with the red-rimmed eyes and persistent cough of the user; Nita was short and inclined to be too fat. They sat behind the little table and looked at the police fearfully, sullenly, defiantly.
"About Rodrigo Peralta," said Landers. "We’ve heard several people say you were going to see him that night, a week ago tonight. What about it, did you?"
They didn’t look at each other, and neither said anything. "Come on, did you'?" repeated Landers.
"No," said the girl. "No, we didn’t see Roddy that night, not for a long time."
"Then why did you pack up and run away?"
"We wasn’t running anywhere," said King. "We just went off on a trip."
"With Roddy’s supply of marijuana?" said Hackett. "It wasn’t his, it was mine."
"Where’d you get it?" asked Landers.
"None of your damn business, pig."
It went on like that for quite a while, and Hackett and Landers were thinking it was a waste of time, until Landers happened to mention that one of their informants from the disco was Leona Petty. Nita turned on her husband and said, "I told you to lay off that bitch! You hanging around her again that night, sweet-talking hey just because I danced a couple times with Rusty-"
"Couple times! You were with him half the afternoon," said King, "and I’ll talk to who I damn please, and you can-"
"And you had to tell her we was going to see Roddy, ask for the grass, so naturally she spills it to the damn pigs and they-"
"Well, Jesus’ sake, how’d I know what was going to happen when we got there, damn it? I never meant to kill anybody, did I? But-oh," said King. "Oh." He looked at Hackett and Landers. "Oh, hell."
"So why did you'?" asked Landers.
"Him!" she said with an angry sob. "The big man! Roddy askin’ too much bread, and he has to think, pull the knife and scare him, only Roddy tried to grab it-"
"Let’s go book them in, Tom." In the corridor outside Hackett added, "I see just what George means. It’s a wonder we retain any brains at all, associating with these-these so-called homo sapiens. I swear my five-year-o1d’s got better sense!"
It stopped raining on Tuesday, but only momentarily, and on Wednesday the weather bureau made the front page: the most rain in one continual fall since 1877, but clearing promised for tomorrow and no more to come. Everybody made satiric remarks about that: wait and see. Grace hadn’t found Isabel Hopper yet; she hadn’t been home since Monday, and the neighbor left to baby-sit the kids hadn’t an idea where she was.
Higgins was off, and the rest of them wandering around looking for the possibles on the heist jobs. Hackett had come back briefly just as they had a call from Traffic to a new body. Swearing, he went out on that, passing Galeano on his way. It had somehow got to be two-thirty. "Look," said Galeano, "we’ll never get anywhere on this Schultz thing. Rich and I have been out on it, and there’s nothing. Naturally S.I.D. didn’t pick up anything at the scene, it was wet as hell. I vote we stick it in Pending now."