Streets of Death - Dell Shannon Read Free Page A

was in and out of hospitals, but there wasn’t
anything the doctors could do--he was paralyzed from the waist down,
and he’d never get better. The boss had insurance that paid for the
hospitalization, but that was a1l--on account of technicalities here
and there, Fleming wasn’t eligible for any benefits from anybody,
the government on down. So there he was, a useless hulk as you might
put it, couldn’t earn, had to be tended like a baby--oh, his mind
was 0.K., he could even get around some in a wheelchair, but he
needed a good deal of attention."
    "When does this tale get to be business for us?"
asked Conway.
    "Ten days ago," said Carey. "Eleven,
now. A week ago last Friday, when his wife reported him missing. A
man in a wheelchair! It was damned fishy from the start, you can see
that. They didn’t have anything but what she could earn, she’s
working as a waitress at a restaurant on Wilshire, the Globe Grill.
They had an old car, but they’d moved to this place on Westlake so
she could walk to work, and they were trying to sell the car, she
says she couldn’t afford to run it. It’s a six-family apartment
and everybody else there is out at work all day except an old wino
named Offerdahl who doesn’t know anything and was probably too
drunk to see anything there was to see. The Flemings lived on the
second floor and he couldn’t get the wheelchair downstairs by
himself, obviously."
    Galeano yawned again. "Where’d she leave the
baby while she was at work?"
    "Oh, they lost the baby about six months ago--it
was a girl, I think, it got pneumonia or something and died. Anyway,
she calls for cops--this was about six P.M. that Friday--and tells
this tale, and of course it got passed on to me. I ask you!"
said Carey, and sat back looking contemptuous. "She has the gall
to tell me, all innocent and wide-eyed, that she comes home to find
her husband gone--a man in a wheelchair--and the wheelchair’s
there, but he’s missing. Vanished--whoosh--like that! He couldn’t
have crawled three feet by himself. She’s afraid, she says, he’s
committed suicide, he’d been very despondent about his condition
lately. I do ask you! If--"
    "The wheelchair’s still there?" repeated
Galeano, suddenly fascinated. "That’s like a magic trick."
He had a brief ridiculous vision 'of angels snatching Fleming up to
heaven, out of the wheelchair. Or little green men out of a UFO.
    "The wheelchair’s still there, and even if it
wasn’t, where could he go in it?" asked Carey reasonably.
"Even if he’d managed to get downstairs with it, which he
couldn’t have? There isn’t an elevator. Wheel himself over to
MacArthur Park and crawl into the lake?--even if he had thought of
suicide, and there’s not an iota of evidence he ever did. The
people in that apartment didn’t know them very well--they’d only
been there a little over two months--but I’ve talked to people
where they used to live, the few casual friends they have, and
everybody says Fleming had adjusted pretty well to being a cripple,
he’d talked about taking courses in handcrafts, maybe earning
something that way."
    "Have you dragged the lake in MacArthur?"
asked Conway.
    Carey uttered a rude word. "You can if you want.
He’d have floated by now. I don’t like having my intelligence
insulted, is all. This dumb blonde bats her eyes at me and says he
talked about suicide, he must’ve done it, she doesn’t know how
but he’s gone, he must have killed himself. And a child of two
could see there’s no way! If he really wanted to commit suicide, he
could have got out of a window--it’s all cement sidewalk below--or
cut his wrists or something, right there."
    "Where was the blonde all day? Alibied? Anybody
see him, and when and where?" asked Conway.
    Carey snorted. "She was at work, like a good
girl. Eight to two, and she was supposed to be back for the evening
shift, seven to nine. Sure, a neighbor saw him--woman lives across
the hall, a Mrs. Del Sardo, she left for work