Something Wrong

Book 0: An Ivor Maddox Mystery

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

'The best American police procedural of the year' Anthony Boucher Sergeant Ivor Maddox and the Wilcox Street precinct do not have time to rest on their laurels. Currently there is a curious wave of shoplifting among teenagers, an elderly pensioner has been shot dead from the window of a passing car, a six-month-old baby has disappeared from his pram and a pregnant fifteen-year-old has died of an overdose of an unusual drug - a terrible accident or murder?

Release date: July 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

“Talk about impudent!” said the fat man indignantly. “Right under my nose! I don’t know what’s come over kids these days, honest to
God!”

Policewoman Carstairs looked at the kids, and wondered slightly too. She reminded herself that she mustn’t start turning into an old hen at twenty-seven; you weren’t supposed to
start worrying about the Younger Generation until you were middle-aged at least; but looking at the pair of thirteen-year-olds crouched on the bench opposite Sergeant Daisy Hoffman’s desk,
she did wonder. One was dark and one mouse-colored. They both wore tight stretch pants, sloppy overblouses and car coats. The dark one’s pants and coat were mud color; the mousy one’s,
dingy olive green. Both peered at the world from under eyebrow-length chopped-off bangs, straight stringy hair to the shoulders, and the dark one was chewing gum.

“I’m sorry,” said the mousy one faintly. “I never did it before, honest, ’n’ I won’t again. Honest. I’m sorry.” She started to cry
noisily.

“You let her get away with it?” said the fat man, whose name was Lefkowitz. “Little hussy. Under my nose she tries it—a nineteen-ninety-five genuine
diamond-and-pearl pendant—and all this looting I’m fed up with! I tell you. I bet, a rough guess, this last six months I’ve lost five hundred bucks’ worth of stuff, the
shoplifting. And it’s just a small business, you know, nothing big. What the department stores get hit for—yi! But when the kids start— You aren’t gonna let her get
away with it?”

“I won’t ever again,” sobbed the mousy one.

“Well, now, Mr. Lefkowitz,” said Sergeant Hoffman, “sometimes a good scare when they first try it—”

Sue Carstairs glanced at the pair again. It was, of course, quite possible that it had been a first temptation. At thirteen. On the other hand—

“—And we don’t like to make a big thing, you see—this young a child— As long as you have got the merchandise back . . .”

“Ya!” said Lefkowitz bitterly. “You let her get away with it! Says she’s sorry. Big deal. I go to the trouble, I catch her red-handed, bring her up here, so now you give
me the double-talk, mustn’t call the little hussy bad names because she’s only twelve, thirteen! I swear—”

“Not exactly that, Mr. Lefkowitz,” said the sergeant, sounding annoyed. “Er—would you come out in the hall with me a moment? You girls wait here. I want a little talk
with you, all right?” The dark one chewed gum more furiously; the mousy one sobbed harder. “Oh, Sue, that Collins report just came in, would you take the carbon to Sergeant
Maddox?” She led Lefkowitz out.

Sue sorted out the carbon and followed. Lefkowitz was still growling, and Sergeant Daisy was going to have a time getting it tactfully across to him that there really wasn’t much they
could do with a much-under-age petty pilferer except put her on probation, until and unless it got to be a chronic case.

Still wondering, Sue went into the big office across from Sergeant Hoffman’s. The Wilcox Street precinct house was an old one, and this office, like all the rest, was in need of paint and
looked faintly grimy. Four of the detectives were in and, to anyone who knew them, looking very typical of themselves just sitting at their desks. César Rodriguez, neat and dapper as always,
was typing a report, occasionally swearing under his breath in Spanish. D’Arcy’s lank length was draped untidily in his chair; his long face looked gloomy as ever as he studied some
photo-stated mug shots. The Scourge of Wilcox Street, as Rodriguez had dubbed him, bumbling and elderly Detective Frank O’Brien, was sound asleep at a desk across the room, head back and
hands clasped across his paunch; he was snoring steadily. Sergeant Ivor Maddox was leaning back in his chair contemplating a sheet of scrawled figures.

And what there was about Maddox . . . Damn the man anyway, thought Sue Carstairs. Just a thin dark young man with blue eyes, not a very tall or husky man: their pessimistic dogged little
Welshman, Maddox. He’d pulled his tie loose and the dark mat of chest hair showed above the unbuttoned collar.

“—Think I will. She’s a bargain at twenty-nine-fifty—sells new for around seventy-three hundred here—only four-years-old, with thirty thousand on her. The
Frazer-Nash is starting to five-buck me to death.” Maddox and his cars. Women he didn’t have to worry about—they came chasing him from all directions. Which Policewoman Carstairs
had better sense than to do, but when he never looked at her except as a fellow peace officer, as it were, what was a girl to do? Reliable old Carstairs, thought Sue grimly.

And that Harvey Woodall asking her for another date yesterday. She wasn’t reduced to that yet, thank you.

“What did you say it was?” asked D’Arcy.

“Alvis,” said Maddox. “British made. That TD three-liter Series II drop-head coupé. Very nice job. Six cylinders in line. This one— Oh, hi, Sue.”

“Clean-up report on that child-beater,” said Sue, dropping the carbon on his desk.

“Mmh,” said Maddox. “What’s all the weeping and wailing across the hall?”

Sue told him, economically. “I wouldn’t take a bet on its being the first time the kid’s lifted a little loot, but what can you do? You know parents—and judges.
And really, by that age character’s more or less set anyway.”

“Mmh,” said Maddox again. “Preserve patience. Eventually she’ll turn eighteen and be eligible for jail. . . . Yes, it only ups the payments about five bucks a month, and
she’s very nice to handle.” He looked back at his calculations.

“Do you think,” said Sue thoughtfully, “more harm is caused by pure evil or just plain stupidity, Ivor?”

“Well, what prompts this highfalutin rumination?” asked D’Arcy, raising his brows.

“Oh, well, I went to church yesterday and that’s what the sermon was about. ‘A fool, a wicked man . . . He is perverse in his heart, he devises mischief continually; he sows
discord.’ It is rather a moot point, of course.”

“And what conclusion did the minister come to?” asked Rodriguez, looking up from his typewriter.

“None really, except that there’s a lot of both evil and stupidity around these days.”

“You didn’t have to go to church to find out about that,” said Rodriguez. “Any reasonably efficient cop could have told you that.”

“Oh, I know,” said Sue.

“At least we have probably got a make on that supermarket heist,” said D’Arcy. “That checker’s got a good eye. The sketch she built up pretty well matches the mug
shots in Records. One Daniel Petty, let loose from Quentin last year, second-count armed robbery.”

“Isn’t that just dandy,” said Maddox. “Now all we have to do is find him. Have we got an address?”

D’Arcy said no, dismally.

Sergeant Hoffman stuck her blonde head in the door and said, “Sue. We’d better have a heart-to-heart with these little darlings. Like to add some moral support?”

“Not particularly,” said Sue with a grimace, following her out. “So now he’s all wrapped up in a new car,” she added.

“That Maddox,” said the sergeant sympathetically.

Sue sighed. Maddox had been at Wilcox Street for over a year now, and if he was ever going to notice—with any personal interests—that Policewoman Carstairs was really quite a
good-looking girl in a modest way—and ever do anything about it—you’d think he would have before now. . . .

“She really is a very nice job to handle,” said Maddox, inattentively watching the two policewomen go out. Nice girl, Carstairs was—good officer.

Rodriguez ripped the triplicate report out of the typewriter, separated the carbons, stapled all three sets and lit a cigarette. “It is a kind of moot question all right,” he said
thoughtfully. “Evil and/or plain stupidity. Well, just the cases on hand right now—” This supermarket heist. A rather stupid deal, fellow not even masked, and now picked out of
Records at the first try by the sharp-eyed checker. Somebody had held up the attendant at a service station last night and got away with about a hundred bucks—very vague description on that
one. There was still some paper work to do on the suicide of last Friday, young high-school girl jilted by the boyfriend. And they were still looking hopefully for whoever had thrust an old
.357-magnum Colt out the window of a car traveling down Sunset, last Wednesday about midnight, and shot dead an elderly pensioner out walking his dog. “Evil,” said Rodriguez. “Did
you notice in the paper last night that Pierpont is in the hospital dying of cancer?”

“Who—oh, that Pierpont,” said D’Arcy.

“That one. The wife-killer. He did thirty years, they let him out about a year ago. I met the fellow who made the arrest once, a while back—he’s retired now. He told me
Pierpont was the only man he ever knew who struck him as being purely evil. It is a fact,” said Rodriguez mildly, “we do run into the other thing a lot oftener.”

“Such as the supermarket heist,” said Maddox. “Have we got any lead on this Petty, D’Arcy?”

“Couple of relatives’ addresses.”

“Oh, well,” said Maddox, “at least it’s nice weather for the leg work.” California did sometimes produce nice weather, in between extremes. This early January was
mild and sunny, after the torrential rains and floods before Christmas. “I suppose,” he added, “we ought to—” and the inside phone rang on his desk. He picked it up.
“Maddox.”

“We might have some trouble,” said Sergeant Carter, on the desk downstairs.

“It’s come to the right place,” sighed Maddox. “What now?”

“Well, something kind of funny,” said Carter. “I got the call about forty minutes ago—fifty. I chased Stoner over first, and he called back for help, we got four cars
over there now, but it doesn’t look like just the simple little thing it did look like, if you get me, and I think maybe a couple of you brain-trust guys had better go ask some
questions and do some deducing.”

“On what?”

“Well, it’s a baby missing. I haven’t got many details, except that the squad-car boys have been over the area, and no go. No baby. Baby can’t walk yet. So it looks as
if—”

“Oh,” said Maddox. “But all sorts of things could have—”

“Could have, but apparently didn’t,” said Carter. “Two swimming pools on the block, both checked, both clear. Pretty thorough first hunt through the block, and look, it
had to be taken away by somebody, didn’t it, a baby? Out of a perambulator or whatever they call them? Anyway, Stoner just called in and said it looks very funny and I’d better
brief you. What do you think?”

“I don’t know enough to think anything yet,” said Maddox. “Where was the baby’s mother?”

“I don’t know all the details. It’s an apartment over on Romaine. By what I got from Stoner, the baby was left sleeping in its perambulator or whatever in the back yard, and
when the mother came to get it, no baby. That was about two-fifteen.”

“Oh,” said Maddox, glancing at his watch. It was three-twenty-five now. “Romaine. Hardly worth calling out the Feds for.”

“I know, I know,” said Carter. “I’m not telling you it’s a snatch, for God’s sake. There are things it could be. All I’m saying is, I kind of think
it’s a job for you think-boys. Or shouldn’t I have passed it on? I mean, after all, the baby’s gone, there doesn’t seem to be any immediate logical explanation, and the city
does pay you to ask the questions and make with the deductions, Sergeant.”

“Oh, yes,” said Maddox. “What’s the address? . . . I suppose there is some perfectly simple explanation,” he added to Rodriguez after hanging up, “but
we have to go find it. Come on.” D’Arcy was on the phone, presumably chasing down one of Daniel Petty’s relatives; he flipped a hand at them as they went out. O’Brien went
on snoring. He’d have to retire someday, and the Wilcox Street personnel would offer due thanks.

Romaine Street in this section of Hollywood was a carbon copy of a number of streets around, especially the last ten years or so with all the small apartments going up. These
streets of older little homes, on the standard fifty-foot city lots, had in those years become hybrid streets of old and new juxtaposed. The contractors had come along and here and there bought up
the little old houses, knocked them down and erected square new eight-unit and sixteen-unit apartment houses, so that in a typical block you found three or four of those bordered by the remaining
old houses, for the most part frame bungalows.

The address on Romaine they wanted was on a block like that. It was only about eight blocks from the precinct house. There was a brash new sea-green-painted stucco apartment on the corner, then
four little old frame houses reasonably well maintained, sitting behind lawns back from the street, then another apartment, two more old houses, and then the Catalina House, which was their
destination.

In the interests of squeezing as much rental property as possible out of the lots, the apartments of this type were usually built the long way of the lots, and the Catalina House was one of
those. It was an eight-unit apartment built on two lots; the two-story building ran back from the street a good hundred feet, with an off-street parking area and carports for the tenants to the
left, the sidewalk entry to the building on the right. There was a little token planting, a strip of grass, at the front, and a cement walk down past the entire length of the building, which was
painted a violent saffron with dull brown trim. There was a wooden stairway at both front and back of the building, and an open balcony along the second story onto which the four doors of the upper
apartments gave.

There was also, at the moment, quite a little crowd in front of the apartment, and more people out along the block, staring and talking. Down the block a big man in uniform was talking to a man
and a woman, his notebook out. In front of the apartment, the uniformed Stoner and Barker were listening to a couple members of the crowd.

“Along here,” said Rodriguez, getting out of the Frazer-Nash. “What—about ninety a month? It can hardly be a snatch.”

“No. Could be an estranged husband or something,” said Maddox. “Or a nut. If it wasn’t an accident of some kind.” They walked up to the crowd. Ordinary frame
bungalow next door to the right—low cement-block wall between. Maddox looked at the people interestedly; and right now he didn’t think this was a very big thing, but if there was any
one single quality which made a man deliberately choose to be a cop, maybe it was a perennial interest in people. Who did forever come all sorts.

Stoner, turning in relief— “Glad to see you, sir. We’ve looked all we can, it sure looks very funny—I mean, a six-month-old baby couldn’t just—” Barker
over there questioning a bright-eyed old lady. A jolly-looking youngish fat woman, bleached blonde hair, magenta lips and nails, who had unfortunately chosen to put on a pair of shocking-pink
capris, but one of those salt-of-the-earth souls, judging by her sympathetic expression, had one protective arm around a thin dark pretty girl, who was crying.

“A course you take good care, honey, we all know that, nobody’s got a right to say you don’t and you couldn’t help it if—”

An elderly couple, little bent fellow with a cane, the woman lank, a pursed-up mouth, disapproving eyes. Maddox knew instantly what she was thinking, by a kind of osmosis. These young people,
irresponsible, we weren’t raised like that. A man in his thirties standing aside smoking, looking detached. Another young woman, gamin type, Italian haircut, no figure but cute, gabbling
excitedly to a big calm-looking blonde about forty.

“—Just can’t imagine—”

“And such a cute baby—”

“—Can’t conceive simply leaving a baby like that and not checking—”

“—But they’ve looked everywhere, all down the block, back yards and all, there’s just no place else to—”

“It looks,” said Stoner to Maddox, “funny. What could have happened, except somebody taking it? Just a minute, I’ll see if— Mrs. Spencer—” He detached
her gently from the bleached blonde. “Mrs. Spencer, these are detectives from the precinct, if you’d just tell them what—”

She wasn’t, of course, thinking very straight, or at all. Just, you could say, feeling. And being human, at least some of her feeling was directed toward justifying herself. She
wasn’t really seeing either Maddox or Rodriguez. She’d be a pretty young woman, normally: long dark hair, a nice figure in a blue cotton house-dress, fair complexion, big dark eyes. She
wasn’t in any state to be questioned, and they really didn’t have to just then.

“D-detect—” she said. She sobbed and hiccuped and swiped the back of one hand across her eyes. “But I do take care—I do! Anybody can say! My darling
Brian—I do! And it isn’t a busy street—all quiet neighbors—and a thousand times I’ve just left him there like that in his carriage—you don’t see baby
carriages much any more, you know, but Jim’s folks gave it to us—it’s a special English one—so crazy about the baby they are and oh my God what will Jim
say—” A strangled sob. “A thousand times, I told the officer—right there all safe and quiet because it’s just down the stairs from our front door—our
own yard—not ten seconds away from me when I’m—and a nice sunny day and good for him to be out in the sun—you can see, back from the street, we’ve got
8B, the last apartment upstairs, nobody’d be coming into the yard but people who belong here, and why should—nobody can say I don’t take good care, but I’ve left him
there—maybe not that long but I never thought anything about—”

“Just take it easy now, Mrs. Spencer,” said Maddox. He could get any details from Stoner.

“It never occurred to me to worry about—I didn’t mean to leave him so long, but a thousand times he’s had his nap down there and nothing nothing
nothing—” She sobbed again. “I’d got the meat loaf all fixed for dinner, I was just going down to bring him in, when the phone rang and it was Betty and we got
talkin. . .