Chance to Kill

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Two men involved in a heist are wanted for double homicide; the body of a young punk is found in an alley; the corpse of a girl lies in the dry riverbed. Everything is, in fact, more or less routine for Lieutenant Luis Mendoza and his colleagues in the Los Angeles Police Department. Then they get the news: the murdered girl was a police officer of fine standing - one of their very own. 'Convincing, compelling reading' Sun

Release date: May 21, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

For Southern California it was an unprecedentedly cool September. After a vicious heat wave in late July the skies had grayed and a cooling mass of air descended from the
north, and residents had breathed a sigh of relief. Not as heartfelt a sigh as had the entire L.A.P.D.—for soaring temperatures all too often mean a soaring crime rate, as tempers are
stretched and passions given rein in the sheer physical misery of heat.

Not that the crime rate was down; they just hoped it wouldn’t get any higher, and the nice weather was probably being helpful in that respect.

L.A.P.D. Homicide had plenty on its hands, but not so much as usual at this time of year, and for that they were grateful.

When Mendoza came into the office that Tuesday morning, a few minutes early, he found Sergeant Farrell yawning and preparing to depart. “Anything exciting overnight, Rory?”

“Nice quiet night, Lieutenant. Your heist boys gave it a miss again.”

“Small favors,” said Mendoza. The pair of heist boys had been busy; that was a pair they’d like to get all right. Since ten days ago they had—for pretty sure the same
pair—hit four liquor stores, three small markets, two bars, and a drugstore, for a total take of around eighteen hundred bucks; and they had left behind them one market owner dead and a
bartender in what the hospital described as a serious condition. Homicide had inherited the heist boys from Robbery and Theft only two days ago, when the market owner, one Mr. Abraham Isaacs, had
been shot. “And where the hell,” said Mendoza now, “is that ballistics report? We should have had it yesterday.”

“It’ll be here,” said Sergeant Farrell soothingly, and took himself off. Sergeant Lake came in and said Good morning. Mendoza went into his office and sat down at the desk;
there was a neat typed sheaf of statements awaiting him. Statements from the three witnesses to the latest heist job, and not much more in them than in the other statements he’d seen.

Glasser looked in and said, “Morning. Unless you’ve got anything else for me I’ll finish the report on that suicide.” He wandered on down the hall; Mendoza heard Jason
Grace’s soft voice greeting Lake, and then Piggott and Higgins. Palliser, the new-married man, wouldn’t be back from his honeymoon until next week. An ordinary workaday morning, all
more or less routine.

Mendoza frowned at the statements. Two customers present in the drugstore, and the clerk. They have eyes and see not, the scared citizens. But the little they did say added up to the
same pair. Both big men—six feet for one, a little less for the other. Stocking masks, dark clothes, and, reflected Mendoza thoughtfully, the same assurance reported on the other jobs. In and
out. With the gun and the paper bag. One of the customers: “They wasn’t in the place more than four minutes. They acted awful sure of themselves, know what I mean?”

Hackett looked in and said, “Morning. Anything interesting overnight?”

“No,” said Mendoza. “You know, Art, I rather think this pair of heist men have been there before.”

“Very possible,” agreed Hackett. “The way they lay it on. But what have we got to go by in Records?”

“The m.o. says—”

“Yes, but what’s that?” asked Hackett reasonably. He hoisted a hip on the corner of the desk, his sandy bulk looming over the smaller Mendoza. “Any experienced heister
goes at it like that—quick and sure. How many in Records? At a guess, about a hundred or so to haul in and lean on. We’ve looked at a dozen or so already—we’ll be looking at
some more today. But barring a real break—I mean, unless they’re stupid enough to have been throwing the loot around or—”

“Which a lot of that kind are just stupid enough to do,” said Mendoza, and Hackett agreed with that. Mendoza sighed and muttered, “ ‘Allow me the hunting of Man . .
.’ Yes. But not always so exciting at that—a damn bore of routine usually.”

“What?” said Hackett.

“Here’s that ballistics report,” said Sergeant Lake, coming in.

“And about time.” Mendoza slit the manila envelope and glanced over the single sheet. “Interesting, but until we come up with something definite it says nothing, of
course.” He handed it to Hackett. Isaacs had been shot twice with a Smith and Wesson .45.

The telephone rang in the anteroom. “Here we go,” said Hackett. “That’s a cannon, Luis. A lot of them floating around too.”

“You’ve got a new corpse,” announced Sergeant Lake, looking in. “That was the squad-car man. Out on Seventh past Rampart. Body of a man in an alley, and the squad-car man
says he’s been shot.”

“Oh, really,” said Mendoza, and after a moment got up. Homicide is a frequent occurrence in any big city, but still the majority of homicides are accidental or suicidal: deliberate
murder doesn’t happen all too often. When it does, it is apt to take a little—just a little—more routine work and unraveling than other kinds of death. “We’ll go take
a look at it. Come on, Art. Who found it?”

“Some guy who has a store next to the alley, opening up. He called in. I’ve put in a call for an ambulance,” said Lake.

“Wouldn’t you know,” said Hackett. “Something new, with this pair of wild men loose on the town. The last hospital report I saw, that bartender could pass out any time.
All we need—”

“Well, what are we here for?” Mendoza sounded irritated.

As they went out the door, Detective Grace’s mild voice said, “Oh, Lieutenant—something you’ll want to see, I think—”

“Later, Jase. We’ve got a new body to look at.”

They took the Ferrari, down to Wilshire and up that to Seventh up beyond the greenness of MacArthur Park. Just beyond the intersection at Rampart the black-and-white squad car told them where
the body was—the squad car angled into the curb, and the ambulance just arriving. Mendoza slid the Ferrari into a red-painted section of curb and he and Hackett got out.

This was an oldish section of town, some of it a little shabby and run-down. Miscellaneous business, and old buildings needing face lifting and paint. There was a drugstore on the northwest
corner, and behind that single corner building, which had apartments on the second floor, was a narrow alley running through the block; then a single half-block-long building which housed half a
dozen small businesses. The two uniformed men from the squad car were standing at the mouth of the alley, blocking it off from the small interested crowd which had inevitably collected at the first
hint of police activity.

Mendoza and Hackett by-passed the little crowd, with the interns behind them, and identified themselves to the uniformed men. “So what’ve we got, boys?”

“Looks as if he’s been shot, sir,” said one of the uniformed men. He stepped aside and gestured.

The man lay about ten feet up the dirty, unevenly paved alley, in a defenseless-looking posture, protectively curled up as though he were asleep. His knees were drawn up almost to his chest, and
his arms seemed to cradle his head as if in self-defense. Mendoza and Hackett went up to him; there was nothing at first or second glance around the body which might be connected with it. As always
in such alleys, there were empty bottles, thrown-away paper and odds and ends of trash. The dead man was a young man; he had thick dark hair, and he was wearing light-gray slacks and a white shirt.
Mendoza squatted over him. There was a good deal of blood on the left side of the man’s face, in the hair, and on the ground beside him; blood on the shirt where it had run down from the
jagged wound torn open at the left top side of the man’s forehead. But there was also a very obvious bullet hole in the man’s face, just below the left eye. That hadn’t bled
much.

“Just a little funny,” said Hackett. “He was hit with something—our old friend the blunt instrument—and then shot. A fight?”

“You might have a look up the alley,” said Mendoza. Hackett moved off. Mendoza lifted the body slightly, to feel in the pockets of the slacks; the body was stiff as a board, moving
all in one piece, and his mind said automatically, Over twelve hours or thereabouts: say between ten and midnight last night. He found a wallet in the left hip pocket and drew it out.

There was a little wad of bills in the currency compartment; it added to ninety-seven bucks. Probably loose change in the pocket too. And that made it look just a trifle odder, of course; even
if there’d been a personal motive, the killer was surprisingly unmercenary. Down here people tended to take it where they could get it. There wasn’t, elsewhere in the wallet, any of the
expectable identification: no Social Security card, no credit cards, no I.D. of any kind except for an expired driver’s license, a California license out of date since January of 1964. It had
been issued in January of 1963, which, to Mendoza, said that its owner had a poor driving record, four or more moving-violation citations in the year previous, or he’d have been issued a
license valid for a longer period. The license had been issued to one Edward Taylor, and at the time he’d been twenty-one, six feet, a hundred and sixty, black hair, blue eyes, no marks, no
notation about wearing glasses.

Mendoza looked at the dead man. He could very well be and probably was Edward Taylor.

“O.K., you can take him,” he said to the interns. He started to look around the mouth of the alley without much hope of finding anything. Hackett came back carrying a
two-by-four.

“This might be something to do with it,” he said. One end of the two-by-four was stained with what could be blood.

“ ‘For pleasure and profit together,’ ” muttered Mendoza. “Caray, but people bore me, Arturo. So we find out who Edward Taylor was and who didn’t
like him for what reasons, and we ask a lot of questions and talk to a lot of people and ten to one we find it was a damn-fool fight over a girl or a gambling debt and somebody just lost his
temper.”

“No, there’s nothing new about human nature,” said Hackett with a grin. “That his name? You got an I.D.?”

“An old one. Address over on Benton Way, a block up. Maybe he still lives there—maybe he was on his way home.” Mendoza lit a cigarette.

One of the uniformed men said, “Excuse me, sir, I had this Mr. Aldridge take a good look at him—he said he didn’t know him, never saw him before. He’s the one called in,
who found him. He was opening up his store there, right next.”

“Innocent bystander,” said Mendoza.

“It’s the secondhand bookstore there,” said the uniformed man.

“Oh,” said Mendoza. “Oh.” He went up to the sidewalk. It was a good-sized store, the first one in that block of shops up from the alley. There were a few books in the
window on this side, and in the window on the other side an ancient, enormous Bible was opened to show brown pages.

“He couldn’t tell us anything, Luis,” said Hackett hastily. “If he doesn’t know—”

Mendoza didn’t hear him. He stared into the rear window and then stepped into the dark old shop.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Hackett, “there he goes again! I swear to God—stuck here half the morning, especially if the man’s
got—Luis!”

The uniformed man said, “Aldridge just spotted the body—doesn’t know anything about it, sir. I—”

Hackett said exasperatedly, “He might as well have gone on dope. I swear to God I don’t understand it . . .” He met the uniformed man’s bewildered gaze with a
futile gesture and marched after Mendoza into the secondhand bookstore.

“Luis,” he said rather loudly to Mendoza, “it’s working hours. We’re on a job.”

“ . . . the Mandalay edition,” said the prim-looking elderly man, adjusting his rimless glasses. “In fine condition too. That’s all I have in at the present,
sir—just these two, but as you see there are two volumes reprinted in each—The Day’s Work and Many Inventions, and Traffics and Discoveries and
Actions and Reactions. I can accept a commission to set aside any which might come in, of—”

“I’ll take both of them,” said Mendoza, feeling for his checkbook.

“Yes, sir.”

“Luis,” said Hackett loudly.

Mendoza looked at him guiltily. “I swear to God,” said Hackett, “I don’t understand it.”

Mendoza said meekly that he supposed only the enlightened coterie did understand it, and he’d only wasted five minutes after all. . . . His strange enthralldom was still new and still
exasperating both his household and his colleagues.

“That’s thirteen ninety-seven, sir. This edition is appreciating in value all the time. Now if there was anything else in particular you’d like me to watch for,
sir—”

“Well, yes. Under the Deodars, and A Diversity of Creatures, and—”

The prim-looking man took notes, and Hackett raised his eyes to heaven. Mendoza of all people, he thought. The thing was ridiculous.

And it was all, of course, John Lockhart’s fault. Ex-Chief Lockhart of that one-horse burg in Illinois. It was Alison who wrote the letters mostly, but now and then Mendoza did bestir
himself; and when he wrote that letter to Lockhart he’d been feeling more than usually annoyed with the stupid citizenry. And when he got the next letter from Lockhart it had happened to be a
quiet Saturday night with his day off coming up and Alison absorbed in the newest Charlotte Armstrong. . . .

“What you’re complaining about,” Lockhart had written in his sprawling hand, “is just human nature, boy. Which has been around awhile. And will be awhile yet. You got to
kind of get a perspective on it. So you can laugh at it instead of being annoyed. Me, since I been retired, I don’t get mad at it so much. Or maybe it’s just old age. But anyway, maybe
it’s old-fashioned of me, but I always found it was kind of helpful to reread Kipling. He’s always got the word for it, whatever comes along. Nobody ever read human people better. And
it’s kind of comforting”—thus ex-Chief Lockhart—“to see the same exact bits and pieces of human nature showing up, whatever the year happens to be.”

And Mendoza would always listen to Lockhart with respect. And being at loose ends, he had wandered into the den where all the books were kept. When they moved into the house on Rayo Grande
Avenue, he had fetched along his mostly new books and Alison had brought her heterogeneous collection of old and new, the latter mostly her father’s. And it was from among those that Mendoza
plucked, that fatal evening, a rather valuable Doubleday, Doran edition, The Humorous Tales of Rudyard Kipling, and almost idly opened it upon “The Taking of Lungtungpen.” Some
ten minutes later Alison, coming to investigate the cause of the helpless mirth her spouse was emitting, found him mopping his eyes and exclaiming, “Oh, by God, but that’s—
And,” with a suddenly thoughtful glance at the page, “isn’t it the truth, haven’t I seen the newest innocent rookies dash in where angels—
¡Pues si, como no!”

In that moment Mendoza had fallen a helpless victim to a virulent addiction shared by a small and select company, and would remain forever under the spell of the art of Rudyard Kipling. He had
swallowed Kipling in large doses via the public library and was now single-mindedly collecting Kipling, to have all the works at hand for his very own.

“Yes, sir, I’ll—”

“And Puck of Pook’s Hill, and Rewards and Fairies.”

“I’ll let you know if I get any of those in, sir. Thank you very much, sir.” The cash register trilled.

“Luis,” said Hackett.

Mendoza tucked his parcel of books under his arm fondly. “All right, all right. Only five minutes—”

“I don’t know what’s got into you,” complained Hackett. “Goofing off this way—half the time find you buried in some dusty old book instead
of—Kipling, for God’s sake—the White Man’s burden and—”

“Oh, my God, you don’t know,” said Mendoza. “Always a word for it, how true. Anything that comes along. The more things change the more they— ‘Brother
to a prince and fellow to a beggar . . .’ Mmh, yes. Never mind. You’re either a true believer or not.” He sighed. “I suppose we’d better do some work on
this.”

“It’s what we’re paid for,” said Hackett. And when he had the time, he enjoyed a good book as much as anybody else, but since Luis’ sudden madness he’d tried
Kipling—a little—and he just didn’t see it. Maybe he hadn’t read the right bits, but—

The ambulance had taken the body away, and the crowd had mostly broken up. They went back to the Ferrari and drove up a block to the address on Benton Way. It was an old apartment house. In the
slot of the mailbox numbered fourteen a dirty strip of paper bore the single name Taylor in shaky hand printing, but they got no response from apartment fourteen. They tried the door
downstairs marked Manageress.

“Mis’ Taylor?” said the manageress. She was a fat woman with a distinct mustache, and she was wearing a dirty pink cotton housecoat. “She’ll be to work, I guess.
What you want with her? You’re cops? Oh, I s’pose it’ll be about that no goodnik son of hers. Eddy.”

“That’s right,” said Hackett.

She sniffed. “She’s a good tenant, pays on the dot and never a peep outta her—’less he’s there, times . . . One like that kid. I know for a
fack—Mis’ Therault in nineteen she told me Mis’ Taylor told her in strick confidence, he’s done time. In jail. For robbery or somethin’. And she thinks maybe he takes
dope. I don’t know what young people are comin’ to these days. What? No, that’s what I say—he ain’t always here, just times. I s’pose, times he’s broke. I
wouldn’t know. Only Mis’ Taylor, she pays on the dot even since it’s been raised and she’s a good quiet tenant and I don’t— What? Oh, she does domestic
work, cleaning for people and like that. She’s got different regular jobs, every day different people. I wouldn’t know where she’d be today, but she usually comes home about six.
What’s he done now? You. . .