the
other the junction of Commerce and Humboldt. Each covered
approximately a mile in diameter, to the map scale: call it a hundred
and fifty square blocks.
"Now isn’t that pretty!" said Hackett.
"And where would you get the army to check all that
territory—and for what? The idea, that I go along with, and if your
pretty circles happened to have prettier centers, say like Los Feliz
and Western, I’d say we might come up with something, just on a
check to see who’d moved where recently. But you know what you got
here!" He stabbed a blunt forefinger at the first circle. "About
half of this area is colored, and none of it, white or black, is very
fancy. Which also goes with bells on for the other area. Out on the
Strip, or along Wilshire, a lot of places, you’ve got people in
settled lives, and they leave records behind. City directory, phone
book, gas company, rent receipts, forwarding addresses. Here—"
he shrugged.
"You needn’t tell me," said Mendoza
ruefully. "This is just a little exercise in academic theory."
In these networks of streets, some of the most thickly populated in
the city, drifted the anonymous ones: people who wandered from one
casual job to another, who for various reasons (not always venal)
were sometimes known by different names to different people, and who
owned no property. Landlords were not always concerned with keeping
records, and most rent was paid in cash. There were also, of course,
settled, householders, responsible people. For economic reasons or
racial reasons, or both, they lived cheek-by-jowl, crowded thick;
they came and went, and because they were of little concern to anyone
as individuals, their comings and goings went largely unnoticed.
"If we had a name—but we’d get nothing for
half a year’s hunt, not knowing what to look for. ¡Qué
se le ha de hacer! —it can’t be helped!
But if the general theory’s right, there’s a link somewhere."
"I’ll go along with you," said Hackett,
"but I’ll tell you, I think we’ll get it as corroborative
evidence after we’ve caught up with him by another route.
Somebody’ll see a newspaper cut, and come in to tell us that our
John Smith is also Henry Brown who used to live on Tappan Street. We
can’t get at it from this end, there’s damn-all to go on."
"I agree with you—though there’s such a
thing as luck. However!" Mendoza shoved the map aside. "What
did you get out of the Wades?"
" Something to please you."
Circumstantially, the Wades were counted out. Ehrlich and his two
attendants at the rink had seen father and son leave, and agreed on
the time as "around ten to ten." The girl had been a good
ten or twelve minutes after them. By the narrowest reckoning it was a
twenty-minute drive to the Wades’ home, probably nearer thirty, and
a neighbor had happened to be present in the house on their arrival,
an outside witness who was positive of the time as ten twenty-live.
There hadn’t been time, even if you granted they’d done it
together, which was absurd .... The Wades, pater
and mater familias , might be snobs, with the
usual false and confused values of snobs (though much of their social
objection to the Ramirez girl was understandable: Mendoza, supposing
he were ever sufficiently rash or unwary to acquire a wife and
family, would probably feel much the same himself). But it could not
be seriously conjectured that a respectable middle-aged bookkeeper
had done murder (and such a murder) to avoid acquiring a
daughter-in-law addicted to double negatives and peroxide. And if he
had, it would hardly be in collusion with the boy.
"The boy," said Hackett, "hasn’t got
the blood in him to kill a mouse in a trap anyway—all you got to do
is look at him."
"I’ll take your word for it," said
Mendoza absently. He wasn’t interested in the boy, never had been
much; the Wades were irrelevant, but he was just as pleased that by
chance there was evidence to show that. And the Wades ought to be
very damned thankful for it
other the junction of Commerce and Humboldt. Each covered
approximately a mile in diameter, to the map scale: call it a hundred
and fifty square blocks.
"Now isn’t that pretty!" said Hackett.
"And where would you get the army to check all that
territory—and for what? The idea, that I go along with, and if your
pretty circles happened to have prettier centers, say like Los Feliz
and Western, I’d say we might come up with something, just on a
check to see who’d moved where recently. But you know what you got
here!" He stabbed a blunt forefinger at the first circle. "About
half of this area is colored, and none of it, white or black, is very
fancy. Which also goes with bells on for the other area. Out on the
Strip, or along Wilshire, a lot of places, you’ve got people in
settled lives, and they leave records behind. City directory, phone
book, gas company, rent receipts, forwarding addresses. Here—"
he shrugged.
"You needn’t tell me," said Mendoza
ruefully. "This is just a little exercise in academic theory."
In these networks of streets, some of the most thickly populated in
the city, drifted the anonymous ones: people who wandered from one
casual job to another, who for various reasons (not always venal)
were sometimes known by different names to different people, and who
owned no property. Landlords were not always concerned with keeping
records, and most rent was paid in cash. There were also, of course,
settled, householders, responsible people. For economic reasons or
racial reasons, or both, they lived cheek-by-jowl, crowded thick;
they came and went, and because they were of little concern to anyone
as individuals, their comings and goings went largely unnoticed.
"If we had a name—but we’d get nothing for
half a year’s hunt, not knowing what to look for. ¡Qué
se le ha de hacer! —it can’t be helped!
But if the general theory’s right, there’s a link somewhere."
"I’ll go along with you," said Hackett,
"but I’ll tell you, I think we’ll get it as corroborative
evidence after we’ve caught up with him by another route.
Somebody’ll see a newspaper cut, and come in to tell us that our
John Smith is also Henry Brown who used to live on Tappan Street. We
can’t get at it from this end, there’s damn-all to go on."
"I agree with you—though there’s such a
thing as luck. However!" Mendoza shoved the map aside. "What
did you get out of the Wades?"
" Something to please you."
Circumstantially, the Wades were counted out. Ehrlich and his two
attendants at the rink had seen father and son leave, and agreed on
the time as "around ten to ten." The girl had been a good
ten or twelve minutes after them. By the narrowest reckoning it was a
twenty-minute drive to the Wades’ home, probably nearer thirty, and
a neighbor had happened to be present in the house on their arrival,
an outside witness who was positive of the time as ten twenty-live.
There hadn’t been time, even if you granted they’d done it
together, which was absurd .... The Wades, pater
and mater familias , might be snobs, with the
usual false and confused values of snobs (though much of their social
objection to the Ramirez girl was understandable: Mendoza, supposing
he were ever sufficiently rash or unwary to acquire a wife and
family, would probably feel much the same himself). But it could not
be seriously conjectured that a respectable middle-aged bookkeeper
had done murder (and such a murder) to avoid acquiring a
daughter-in-law addicted to double negatives and peroxide. And if he
had, it would hardly be in collusion with the boy.
"The boy," said Hackett, "hasn’t got
the blood in him to kill a mouse in a trap anyway—all you got to do
is look at him."
"I’ll take your word for it," said
Mendoza absently. He wasn’t interested in the boy, never had been
much; the Wades were irrelevant, but he was just as pleased that by
chance there was evidence to show that. And the Wades ought to be
very damned thankful for it
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