Streets of Death - Dell Shannon Read Free

Connemara marble. It was a gift from his old parish priest
when he entered the seminary, and I believe it’s several hundred
years old. Any of us could identify it at once, if it should turn up
anywhere."
    Mendoza thanked him and watched him hurry up the
street to a newish Ford. Let the S.I.D. boys come and go over the
Pontiac for possible physical evidence, in case O’Brien had been
jumped in or near it: a very small chance there’d be anything. Put
out a description of the crucifix to the pawnshops, just in case.
    He got into the big black Ferrari and lit a
cigarette, thrusting the key into the ignition; his eyes were cold.
Hackett was quite right: the pretty boys had got under Mendoza’s
skin. It was reasonless, in a way: it was only that much more of the
sordid, wanton violence that stalked any big city in this year of
grace, which any cop learned to live with. It wasn’t a dramatic,
important piece of crime, the kind that would get written up in the
case-history books. The victims weren’t good-looking or very
interesting or important people. The louts, when they caught  up
to them--as by God they would, if the luck ran their way--probably
would turn out to be two-bit thugs, not very interesting or important
either, just thugs with low I.Q.’s.
    But the pretty boys had
touched Mendoza on the raw--Mendoza who had been looking at the blood
and violence and death for nearly twenty-six years--because in a
sense they were a stark symbol for all of it: all the incredibly
brutal bloody happenstance of crime in the city. He’d like to catch
up to them. He tossed the cigarette out the window, laughed, and said
to himself, " ¿Pues qué? "
Catch up to them, and then see one of the softheaded judges hand them
a six-month sentence with time off for good behavior. He often
wondered why he stayed on at this job.
    * * *
    Nick Galeano listened to what Carey had to say a
little sleepily. He’d been on night watch for over two years, and
his metabolism or something wasn’t yet used to the different hours
and sleeping at night. He was night-people anyway and wasn’t
operating on all cylinders until past noon. In a way he was glad of
the change; there was usually more action on day watch, and more men
to work with. He’d only met Lieutenant Carey of Missing Persons a
few times before. Carey was a serious, snub-nosed, stocky fellow who
wore a perennially morose expression: possibly the result these days
of all the myriad missing juveniles he had to look for, thought
Galeano, yawning. But what he’d brought to Robbery-Homicide sounded
more interesting and definitely offbeat.
    "Look," he said, slapping his manila
envelope down on Galeano’s desk and shrugging massively at Galeano
and Rich Conway. "I can’t prove it’s a homicide, but that’s
what it’s got to add up to. It’s a very funny one, boys. And I’ve
done all I can on it, and the man’s got to be dead, so I bring it
to you and let you go all round the mulberry bush on it. I mean, one
way it’s open and shut, but nobody’ll ever prove anything--I
don’t think."
    "Why not?" asked Conway, his gray eyes
interested. "What’s the case?"
    "I’ll give it to you short and sweet,"
said Carey.
    "Here’s this Edwin Fleming. Twenty-nine,
raised in Visalia, dropout from high school but no record. No
relations--he was an only child; his father died when he was just a
kid and his mother two years ago. He did a hitch in the Army and got
sent to Germany, where he married this girl--her name is Marta, she’s
a reasonably good-looking blonde, twenty-six. This was four years
ago. He gets out of the service, they come here, and he has trouble
finding a job, finally gets one in construction--he’d done that
before--only it’s a small-time operation, kind of
boss-and-one-helper thing, I gather. I’m just giving you the
background. His wife has a baby about a year ago, and just after that
he has an accident on the job--fa1ls off a scaffold or something and
ends up paralyzed. He