Felony File by Dell Shannon Read Free Book Online Page A

my boy friend,
Bob Boyd—to come get me and take me home, when she came in—and I
was so relieved to see it was a woman! I was! And then she said, you
all alone here, honey, and I said yes—and she got a great big gun
out of her purse and pointed it at me and said she wanted all the
money in the register! I thought I'd die! Honestly!" Sonia
gulped. "And poor Mr. Knight losing all that money—of course I
had to give it to her—"
    " Calm down," said Moss. "Can you tell
the detectives what she looked like?"
    " Oh, yes. She was—" Sonia hesitated and
finally chose, "flashy. She had on a red pantsuit and black
ankle boots and a big white plastic rain hat with a brim. It had
y-yellow flowers on it. And her hair was a real brassy blonde, pretty
long, down to her shoulders anyway, and she had a sort of—wel1, a
lot of figure, if you know what I mean—"
    " Stacked?" said Schenke dead-pan.
    " I guess you'd say so."
    " Any idea how much was in the register?"
    " I'm not sure. The tab'll say. At least a
hundred dollars."
    " Well," said Piggott, "she's not doing
so bad, Bob. That figures to about five hundred for two nights'
work."
    " Do you know her? Know who she is?"
    " I only wish we did," said Piggott.
    Surprisingly, that was the
only call they had on Saturday night.
    * * *
    Nothing much was accomplished on Sunday. Mendoza came
in very late; he wasn't supposed to be in on Sunday at all but he
generally was, if not for a full day, and nobody would dream of
mentioning Sunday Mass to him—he was a little touchy about getting
back into the fold after a good many years outside it.
    Yesterday Galeano had spent the whole day chasing
down the heist man, who had turned out to be one Randy Becket, still
on parole after a term for armed robbery. He felt he deserved a quiet
Sunday.
    When Mendoza finally came in, Higgins was waiting to
bring him up to date on Whalen.
    "It's damn all, Luis, and we might as well
forget the whole thing now. We'll never drop on them, to make a legal
case." He told Mendoza what he'd got from records, the very thin
leads.
    "I struck out on Scott, he's moved and nobody
knows where. I found Wiggett. He just got beat up by somebody's
husband and he's wearing a cast on a broken ankle. I also found
Early. He could be, couldn't be—we'd never prove it. Says he was at
the movies Friday afternoon."
    " It'll go in Pending," said Mendoza.
    "Damn it. That poor damned Whalen—maybe it
sounds as if he's feeling sorry for himself, but you can see the spot
he's in—his whole life destroyed, because the louts didn't care
what they did for a little loot. He'll probably have to go to a rest
home."
    " And I wonder," said Mendoza, "what
will happen to Merlin."
    " M— oh, the cat." Higgins regarded him,
amused.
    Mendoza was a cat man. A long time ago there had been
a case—when they'd finally identified the corpse, Mendoza had been
a lot more concerned about her starving cat than he had been with the
killer; and come to think, that was the cat he had wished onto Art
and his wife, Angel; they were cat people too.
    Mendoza called the lab; they hadn't had a kickback
from the Feds yet, on the lady in Lafayette Park. Of course the Feds
had computers too, but as Marx reminded him, they also had, as a
rule, a long backlog of requests for information. There'd be
something eventually.
    It was just sprinkling on and off today.
    Glasser came in next and told him about Alice Engel.
"We ought to get the autopsy report tomorrow. The bartender at
Pete's says Fratelli's a regular, in two or three times a week—puts
it down pretty heavy. Funnily enough, the place where he works—the
Eagle Grill—the owner says he never drinks on the job. Nobody at
Pete's remembers noticing him specially on Thursday night, the
barkeep says he was there but didn't notice when he left or if he was
alone. Nobody named Sam is one of their regulars. Of course, I
haven't chased down anybody else who was in the place then—the
barkeep parted with five names of