Sunset People. Herbert Kastle

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СКАЧАТЬ he said, raising his cup, his hand steadier now, “I drove Martin home. His car wouldn’t start.” He came to the table and sat down. “We pushed it, and I guess I over-exerted myself.” He brushed at his hair, his face. “Could you get me something to eat?”

      “Over-exerted yourself,” she muttered, rising. “You were deathly pale.”

      “Short of breath. Comes of being overweight. We really must stick to our diets, dear.”

      She worked around the stove. “I exerted myself a bit today too.” Her voice had softened, and he recognized that sudden change of tone.

      “My mother?”

      She turned. “That’s why I was so testy just now. I needed you tonight.”

      He sat waiting, the blood beginning to pound in his temples. When she hesitated, he said, “I’ll just go to her room . . .”

      “She’s not there. She’s at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Intensive Care.”

      He was standing without knowing it, “Oh, God.” He started for the foyer.

      “There’s no point in going now, Frank. She’s in a coma. They’ll call when she regains consciousness.”

      She made him sit down and served him dinner. He ate a lot, gulping, asking for more, as he always did when upset. She told him what had happened.

      At four, she’d been preparing the lamb stew he was eating. His mother had come into the kitchen and begun making herself a sandwich. Lila had stopped her, saying it would spoil her dinner. His mother had been in an “irrational mood,” and stormed out of the house. Lila had followed immediately, but before she could catch the old lady, there was an accident.

      “She walked right in front of a car.”

      Frank soaked up gravy with a fifth slice of bread, and groaned. “Christ, couldn’t you have let her have her sandwich?”

      “It’s too late for that, Frank! I blamed myself enough while waiting here for you!” She wiped at her eyes.

      He muttered, “Yes, sorry. What did the doctors say?”

      “Really, she was lucky. It could have been much worse. She has a broken hip. In falling, she also fractured her skull, and that’s causing the coma. But they feel there’s a good chance she’ll regain consciousness . . .”

      The phone rang. “Maybe that’s the hospital,” she said, and ran to the wall unit near the foyer. He took another slice of bread.

      “This is Mrs. Berdon,” she said. “Oh, wonderful! We’ll be right over. I know it’s late, but Dr. Meade promised we could see her, if only for a moment. Yes . . . thank you!”

      She hung up. “She’s regained consciousness! We can go now, Frank.”

      He was sagging in his chair. He was stuffed with food, emptied of emotion, eyes heavy, truly exhausted.

      “What is it?” she asked.

      “Have to lie down a moment,” he mumbled, and pulled himself out of the chair and stumbled to the bedroom, where he fell face forward on the bed and into a deep sleep.

      The man and woman had been found at about eleven p.m.; the first black-and-white had arrived at eleven-twenty, the ambulance almost immediately afterward. Larry Admer had been called at home, and pulled up to the scene as the ambulance was disappearing down the street, siren winding into high gear. He took the two responding officers aside to get whatever information they had.

      “Middle-aged male Negro,” one young officer said, tilting his notebook toward a street lamp, “and young female Caucasian, both shot with a small-caliber weapon.” He pointed at a dark Mustang parked at the curb, an officer standing guard over it. “They were seated in that car, the black behind the wheel, the girl in the passenger’s seat. They might’ve been making out because the girl’s dress was open and disarranged at the top, the black’s fly unzipped. Neither was robbed.”

      “Head wounds?”

      “Correct. The girl in the left temple. The black in the upper jaw, obviously a missed headshot.”

      “A bullet in the jaw killed him?”

      “He’s not dead, Lieutenant.”

      “Way to go!” Admer said, thinking of being able to show Diana that justice could triumph.

      “But he’s in bad shape, according to the ambulance intern. Looks like bone and bullet fragments entered the brain. Anyway, he wasn’t conscious to tell us anything.”

      Admer sighed. “What hospital?”

      “I didn’t get that.” He looked at his partner, who was as boyish as he was. “You get it, Matt?”

      “Nearest hospital to here: Cedars-Sinai.”

      “Who found them?”

      The first officer turned toward the entrance to a two-story, motel-like apartment complex, where an elderly woman stood holding a small white dog. She was hugging the animal and crying.

      “A Mrs. Clausen. She was taking her dog for a walk. Came out of that entrance and passed the car and heard what she thought was a groan. She didn’t stop, but on the way back she again heard the sound, and this time she glanced in.”

      “ID on the victims?”

      “Get the stuff,” the officer said to his partner. Matt hurried toward a black-and-white parked across the street.

      “Anyone hear the shots?”

      “We haven’t canvassed the neighborhood, but no one’s come forward. Mrs. Clausen lives in that ground-floor apartment right off the street.” He pointed at an open window almost in a direct line with the Mustang. “She says she was resting in bed beside the window, wide awake. But old ladies get hard of hearing, right?”

      Admer glanced over at her. “Doesn’t look that old. And two gunshots almost in her ear. She heard your questions all right, didn’t she?”

      The officer nodded.

      Admer looked up and down the street. A civilian male stood watching them from across the way. Three more were clustered half a block north, near the corner.

      “Gunshots on a quiet street like this . . . we should have had a mob scene.” He made some notes, did some thinking.

      Within the last three days, four people had been shot in the head, counting the black’s wound as a missed headshot. There’d been no robbery. No sexual assault, though he wanted to ask the black about the girl’s disarranged dress. No discernible motive in three of the four killings, the cabby cum Vegas-dealer being a possible professional hit.

      The two in the Mustang had been found four blocks from Diana’s sister, who had been found six blocks from the cabby, all in the West Los Angeles area, not far from the Sunset Strip.

      No gunshots had been heard in any of the four assaults, and this was beginning to worry him СКАЧАТЬ