The Ringer

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

'A Luis Mendoza story means superlative suspense' Los Angeles Times One of Lieutenant Luis Mendoza's most respected colleagues, young detective Tom Landers is under suspicion in a stolen car racket. Internal affairs are investigating but Mendoza is not going to leave his man to the uncertain processes of departmental routine. Defying orders and protocol, he decides to do some investigating of his own...

Release date: May 21, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

MENDOZA CAME BACK from lunch at one-thirty, and in the lobby of the big Police Facilities Building ran into Lieutenant Goldberg waiting for the
elevator.

“They keeping you busy, Saul?” he asked idly.

“So-so,” said Goldberg, bringing out the inevitable Kleenex. “As if I hadn’t enough on hand, Auto Theft coming asking cooperation. So we overlap some, let them do their
own damn routine.” The elevator landed and they got in; Mendoza punched the button for Goldberg’s floor. “They’ve been after this hot-car ring for months, and the Feds
sniffing around too on account of the interstate bit. That Van Allen.” Goldberg snorted. “We’ve all got our own troubles.”

“De veras,” agreed Mendoza absently as Goldberg left the elevator. He punched the next button and stepped out upstairs. In the Homicide office, Sergeant Lake was gloomily
contemplating a paperback book titled How To Stay Slim. “Anything new in?” asked Mendoza.

“Well, Jase just picked up that Sam Chase. He and John are leaning on him—don’t know if they’re getting anywhere.”

“Him,” said Mendoza. It didn’t much matter whether they got Sam Chase to open up and sing a pretty song; his prints had been all over the handbag rifled of about eleven bucks,
last Friday night, after a mugger had jumped the old lady from behind on her way home from the market. The old lady had been knocked down hard enough to brain herself on the sidewalk, which was why
Homicide instead of Robbery had been looking for Chase. Chase had a record back to age fourteen.

Mendoza dropped the black Homburg on his desk and went down the hall to look into the interrogation room where Jason Grace and John Palliser were leaning on Chase. They were both looking
pleased; they left Chase huddled in the chair, looking miserable and came over to Mendoza.

“At least he’s got just enough sense to realize we’ve got him nailed for it by those prints,” said Grace. “He came apart when we broke that to him.”

“And this time he may get a real sentence,” said Mendoza, “if it’ll be a charge of involuntary manslaughter—all we can hang on him.”

“On that I’ll take no bets,” said Palliser sardonically. Grace only brushed his narrow moustache, as dapper as Mendoza’s, and his chocolate-colored face wore a cynical,
sad expression.

Chase sat up a little and said, “Can I have a cigarette?” Palliser gave him one, lit it. Chase was a thin, unhealthy-looking fellow, not very big, with a pasty complexion and
china-blue eyes under nonexistent eyebrows. He was twenty-nine, and he’d done little stretches here and there, as a j.d. and afterwards: six months, nine months, a year on probation. He
looked at the three plainclothes detectives and said, “I been thinking. It’s kind of an accident you got me for that—and there’s that damn guy livin’ high on that job
he pulled last week. Things ain’t fair, you know?” He looked aggrieved. “Jesus knows he’d be the first one open his jaw about me, shoe on the other foot. I guess I’ll
tell you.”

“That’d be nice, Sam,” said Grace gently. “What job? What’s your pal’s name?”

“Guy. I said. Guy Godfrey. I never did but one job with him, we aren’t exactly pals. He did this job up in Hollywood—busted in a dame’s apartment. I ran into him inna bar
and he was telling me, see.”

“And what was the job you pulled together, Sam?”

“Well,” said Chase nervously, “it was his idea. And it was him did it. I mean the— Well, Jesus, the old lady’d seen both of us when we busted in, she’d
reckanize us, see? And that was Guy’s idea too. I said so all right, it’s his idea, he does it. He says, we’re in it together. So,” said Chase lugubriously, “we
ended up playin’ a hand of blackjack, loser do the old dame, see.”

“Well, I will be damned!” said Grace. They looked at each other.

“You never know,” said Mendoza, “when the rabbit’s going to jump out in front of you. Caray, I thought that one was dead.”

“Mrs. Reiner,” said Palliser. “That thing over on Constance Street, back in April. Be damned.”

“I never heard the name,” said Chase sadly. “I guess that was her. But it was Guy—”

That one they hadn’t had any leads on at all, and it had got shoved in Pending nearly six weeks back.

“That hand of blackjack laid out on the kitchen table always did bother me some,” said Grace now. “I had a little hunch it was something like that. So the loser took on the job
of strangling Mrs. Reiner, was that it, Sam?”

“Well, it didn’t matter how— And Guy lost the hand,” said Chase hurriedly. “I didn’t know nothing else about it—”

Mendoza laughed. “What odds do either of you give that Guy’ll say the same thing?”

“That long a gamble I don’t take,” said Palliser. “I’ve got house payments to make these days.” He went out to start the machinery for a warrant on Chase, and
Grace took Chase off. When he’d deposited him at the jail he’d have a look in Records for Godfrey.

Mendoza wandered back to his office, called Wilcox Street precinct and asked Sergeant Barth if they had had an apartment break-in last week, in that territory. Barth said, with a vengeance,
thirtyish divorcée living alone had surprised the burglar, got beaten up, and was still in a coma with a skull-fracture. “You don’t say,” said Mendoza, reflecting that it
might have been Godfrey who accounted for Mrs. Reiner at that; he seemed to be disposed to violence. This count of violence on Chase was the only one that showed. “We’ve probably just
found out for you who did it. An erstwhile pal came apart. I’ll let you know the details when we get any ourselves.”

“And not to sound ungrateful,” said Barth, “but we’ve got a thing up here we’re thinking about handing over to you. We’ve been going round and round on it, no
smell of a lead at all, just a big fat mystery. Maybe you bloodhounds down at headquarters are smarter.”

“Well—June,” said Mendoza amiably. “Things a little slow at the moment. The nice weather. I don’t mind taking a look at it for you. What is it?”

“A mystery,” repeated Barth. “Which we do so seldom see. I think I’ll pass it on in person. We’re kind of busy up here with this gang of kite-flyers going around
town.” The precinct stations weren’t neatly divided up into the different bureaus; those detectives took whatever cases came their way. “I’ll see you sometime,” said
Barth, sounding harried. “G’bye.”

Mendoza put the phone down, lit a cigarette, and ruminated on the cases Homicide had on hand to work.

Chase had cleared up the mugging for them; and they’d now haul all the material on Mrs. Reiner out of Pending and try to nail this Godfrey on that, along with Chase. The blackjack game had
bothered Mendoza too; it was nice to have that explained; but just how much evidence there might be— The confession, of course, according to any smart lawyer Chase and/or Godfrey got, would
be a nasty invention on the part of the brutal cops. However.

There were other cases in Pending too, all of which would probably stay there.

Somebody, last Thursday night about midnight, had held up Mr. Roy Manfred as he was closing his small liquor store on Third Street, and either because Manfred had put up a fight, or for no
reason discernible, had shot Manfred dead. They had picked up some nice latent prints on the front door which belonged to a small-time pro named Lester Gumm, and of course that was frustrating.
Gumm was off parole from his last sentence, and there was no reason he shouldn’t walk into a liquor store and buy a six-pack of beer; he lived in a room just around the corner on Hartford
Avenue. And of course that was just what he said he’d done: gone in and bought some beer, and that was how come his prints were on the door. It could be true: there was a fifty-fifty chance.
If he’d shot Manfred, he’d got rid of the gun; they’d never tie that to him.

Then there was Carolyn Katz. She’d been a waitress at a small café, and had an apartment in an old place on Westlake Avenue. Last Tuesday night, a week ago today, she had come home
from a movie about eleven o’clock. Other tenants on the first floor had heard screams and come out to investigate; but too late to save Carolyn’s life. She hadn’t been raped, she
hadn’t been robbed, but she’d been beaten severely enough to die of a skull-fracture next day. And that X might have been any mugger or, take your choice, any rapist, in
Records—or not in Records.

Or it just possibly might have been someone who knew her who had a reason to want her dead.

There was the usual unidentified body found on Skid Row. Nothing much for Homicide to work.

There was the rather ambiguous case of Rose Plaidy, retired schoolteacher, Negro, widow without family, found dead in her own little house on Twenty-third Street, thus far of unknown causes.
Wait for the autopsy report.

There was a flyer out from the F.B.I, on one of their Ten Most Wanted men, Lloyd Arthur Jenkins, a long record of violence, thought to be in California.

There was a rather funny little thing that probably wasn’t anything for Homicide, but it was a sudden death and they had to look. An usherette—in fact the sole usherette—at a
little movie-house on Main that ran exclusively Mexican movies. She had apparently fallen from the balcony and broken her neck. She hadn’t any reason for visiting the balcony, so the manager
said, and so they were taking a second look. Hackett and Higgins were out on that.

Glasser was asking questions around the apartment on Westlake; Landers and Piggott were asking Carolyn Katz’s friends about discarded boy-friends and so on. That could have been a private
kill; it wasn’t very likely.

Mendoza yawned and lit another cigarette. Without much doubt, as these things died on them, or got solved and tied up, there’d be other cases coming along. But the pace was a little slower
than usual, which figured—the first week of a nice warm (but not too warm) June. And, thank God, the heavy cold which Higgins had brought back from his unwilling sojourn in the mountains last
April had run its course through the office and nobody was out on sick leave.

Praise heaven for small favors, he thought. . . . That was funny, Chase coming out with the answer to the Reiner murder, just like that. . . . The other curious case shoved in Pending, last
month, William Moberly with a knife in his chest and fifty bucks in his pocket, in the rest room of the Greyhound Bus station, probably they’d never have the answer on that one.

The inside phone buzzed and he picked it up. “Seventy-seventh Street think they’ve got that Jenkins spotted in a bar,” said Sergeant Lake tersely.

“So let them go pick him up,” said Mendoza. “Do they want us to come hold their hands or what?”

“Do I pay attention?” asked Mr. Carlos Hernandez, shrugging violently. “Me, I’m a married man, I got my family, I don’t go noticing girls I hire
here. Only two girls. At a time. To take the money, show people inside the theater. These girls, Dios. They’re lazy little good-for-nothings mostly. This one, I don’t know
nothing about her. Named Luisa Fantini, is all. Italian. She only worked here two weeks, about.”

The two big men stood looking at him: the twin bulks of Sergeants Hackett and Higgins, the two senior sergeants at Homicide. They’d worked together a long time, and they didn’t have
to use words to communicate. They were silently agreeing that Mr. Hernandez was probably an honest man telling them all he knew.

“How did you happen to hire her?” asked Hackett.

Hernandez shrugged more. “Other girl walks off job, I put ad in the paper. The Fantini girl answers it. It’s part-time, you unnastand, we open at six—six to two A.M. but the usherette’s here only till nine, I pay her five bucks for three hours, and it’s not worth it. I guess I don’t bother with another girl. Listen, are the
customers that dumb they can’t find seats for themselves? Do we get that many customers?”

“Do you know if she had another job somewhere?” asked Higgins.

“No. Maybe the ticket-girl would know. I guess they’d talk sometimes, maybe inna ladies’ room after work. Yes, I got her address. Ticket-girl is pretty good girl, worked here
nearly a year, Annie Sanchez. It’s Antonio Avenue— I got it wrote down somewheres.”

They were using Hackett’s screaming-red Barracuda; they left the theater and got into it where it was parked in the yellow zone in front. “Why the hell,” asked Higgins,
“are we jumping the gun on this, Art? It looked as if this Fantini girl just fell over the balcony. All by herself. We haven’t seen the autopsy report yet.”

“So we’re making work for ourselves,” said Hackett. “Luis just said it looked funny, because she wasn’t supposed to be up in the balcony at all. No, he didn’t
say he exactly had a hunch about it, but—it does look a little funny, George.”

“Funny hell,” said Higgins roundly. “She was off work at nine. She met a boy-friend in the lobby and they went up to the balcony to neck.”

“And the boy-friend pushed her over the rail?”

“They could have been drinking,” said Higgins. “They could have been high on Mary Jane or H. You know these run-down old houses, Art. The place wouldn’t be crowded, not
by a long shot. There probably weren’t a dozen people in the place—and half of those drunk, sleeping it off, and the rest neckers. And she fell over and he panicked and ran.”

“Well,” said Hackett. “I don’t know. It looks as if she went over after the place was closed, because she wasn’t found till next morning when Hernandez came
in.”

“You know these places, Art! Maybe nobody noticed her land. I say, wait for the autopsy report.”

“Which makes sense,” agreed Hackett. He sat back and lit a cigarette with no move to start the engine. He didn’t ask Higgins how the family was because he knew. Higgins the
confirmed bachelor, humbly falling for Bert Dwyer’s widow, had finally got her to marry him and acquired the secondhand family; and these days they were all looking forward to the firsthand
family due in October, and maybe the Dwyer kids Steve and Laura even more thrilled about it than Higgins.

“The one we ought to be working,” said Higgins suddenly, “is that Katz thing.”

“Not a smell of a lead,” said Hackett through a yawn. “We probably never will have.”

“You sound like Matt.”

“I tell you what it is, Tom,” said Piggott as they waited for Mrs. Ruth Sneed to open her door, “it’s just one of those things we’ll work our legs
off on, and never turn up a smell. The devil going up and down inciting to mischief.”

“There’s a lot of that going on all right,” said Landers, and automatically reached for his badge as the door opened. “Mrs. Sneed?”

“Why, yes—you’re police? Oh, about Carolyn! Oh, dear me. Come in, come in. I don’t know how I can help you at all, but anything I can do—”

It was just a chance that Carolyn Katz had been killed deliberately, or accidentally, by somebody she knew; that was the only reason they were asking questions of people she’d known. They
hadn’t got anything at all to bear out that idea, and they didn’t get anything new from Mrs. Sneed.

The picture that emerged, reinforced by the photographs taken of the corpse, was of a not-very-pretty, not-very-interesting young woman: a rather dowdy young woman who didn’t have any
steady boy-friends, or date much at all. She’d attended a Reform temple on Hill Street, but hadn’t mixed socially with any of the other regular attendants. She’d been a reliable
employee, said the manager of the small café where she’d been a waitress. The other two women working there said she never talked much about herself, had been a little
standoffish—or perhaps shy. Reserved.

Everybody Landers and Piggott had talked to had said, Wasn’t it terrible what had happened, these awful muggers and sex-fiends—and had asked discreetly, Had she been raped?

She hadn’t been. And there had been thirty-four dollars in her handbag, dropped beside her. And that might be because he’d been scared off, by the other apartment people coming out,
hearing her screams: he might have meant to rifle the handbag, and not had time. Or he might have meant to kill Carolyn for some private reason.

Landers was beginning to doubt that. When they’d wasted nearly an hour hearing much the same things from Mrs. Sneed they’d heard from everybody else who’d known Carolyn, he
said so to Piggott. And Mrs. Sneed had known Carolyn somewhat better than anyone else they’d seen: she had worked at the café with her before she got married, five years back, and they
had “kept up.” Mrs. Sneed struck both Piggott and Landers as another one like the Carolyn they’d heard about: a plain, uninteresting woman with not much to offer.

It didn’t seem very likely that anyone had felt strongly enough about Carolyn Katz to care whether she lived or died.

“Just the mugger after her bag,” said Piggott as they got into Landers’ Corvair. “Or, take your choice, the rapist. Most of ’em don’t care what the girl looks
like—just so it’s female.”

“’S right,” said Landers. “And it might have been any of a thousand guys around town.”

“No lead,” agreed Piggott.

But they both knew where they went from here, on Katz. Look in Records for the similar M.O.’s—and on a thing like this there’d be literally hundreds of possible
choices—and start the routine on it. The boring legwork.

They sat thinking about that, dispiritedly. Landers sighed and said, “I think I’ve still got a little spring fever, Matt. I just don’t feel like doing the damn legwork.
Who’s going to miss Carolyn Katz?”

“Now that’s no way to look at it,” said Piggott seriously. Piggott was an earnest fundamentalist Free Methodist, if he was also the perennial pessimist. “Equal in
God’s sight, you know.”

“Oh, sure, sure,” said Landers hastily. “I just hope the lieutenant isn’t feeling all eager on any of this piddling stuff we’ve got to work, to put us doing the
overtime.”

“Well, tomorrow’s my day off anyway,” said Piggott. “Lucky to get Wednesday for a change, choir practice and all. You have a date?”

“Tomorrow night,” said Landers. He started the engine. “Might as well go back and do a report on this—handful of nothing.” He laughed suddenly, shook his head at
Piggott’s inquiring look. He was thinking about his date.

Landers had taken out quite a few girls in his time. Of course, he had a little problem there: for whatever genetic reason, he had one of those faces that would look about twenty-one until he
was a grandfather, and he was nearly resigned by now to having witnesses tell him he didn’t look old enough to be a cop. Mrs. Sneed just now hadn’t said it, but he’d seen the
words, as it were, trembling on her lips.

Still, he’d known quite a few girls, and he was scarcely the innocent he looked. And some of the nice girls he’d known had been impressed because he was a plainclothes detective, and
attached to Homicide at that. They just didn’t know, he thought ruefully, how utterly unglamorous, how drearily undramatic, the job could be. The thankless and frequently boring job.

At least, he thought—looking forward, with an eagerness he’d never thought he might feel for a girl, to tomorrow night—at least this girl would never make that fundamental
mistake. . . .

He’d been out with her three times in three weeks, the three weeks since they’d met.

He’d gone down to Records to check out a pedigree with the computer there, and he’d run into her quite literally, coming round a row of file-cases with a pile of manila envelopes in
her hands. Papers scattered, and Landers apologized, bent to help her gather them.

“Never mind, they’re all out of order now,” she said philosophically. “There are still quite a lot of things computers can’t do, that’s what they keep us
around for.”

“You’re new here,” said Landers, looking at her. Sergeant O’Brien came up behind him and clucked at the mass of untidy papers.

“These damn bloodhounds,” he said. “They don’t understand paper work.” And Landers was so bemused he didn’t even try for a retort on that. “She’s
new all right. Miss O’Neill. Detective Landers, Homicide.”

She wasn’t anything like any of the female officers Landers had ever noticed before. She didn’t, even in her neat navy uniform, look like a policewoman at all.

“I’ve been at Hollenbeck,” she said briskly, giving him a friendly nod. And Landers never remembered afterward whether he’d said a polite Hello or How-do-you-do.

She must be over twenty-one, but he couldn’t guess how much. She was only about five-three, and slim; and she had very thick, very curly, very flax-blonde hair in a neat short feathery
cut, and, astonishingly, navy-blue eyes. He didn’t discover that until the third time he looked at her. He’d never known anybody could have navy-blue eyes.

He’d taken her out . . .