A Nice Girl Like You (Lt. Andy Bastian Mysteries Book 2) Read online

  A NICE GIRL LIKE YOU

  Richard Wormser

  © Fawcett Publications, Inc 1963

  Richard Wormser has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1963 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.

  This edition published in 2017 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter One

  Walt Adams called me at home. “Listen, pal,” he said, “Ellie tells me you’re not coming to our party tonight.”

  “Affirmative,” I said. “I can’t. Drew Lasley had to go to some sort of meeting of the gun club, and Jack Davis has had the duty three nights in a row; and anyway, he’s chief, and he told me to take it tonight.”

  Drew Lasley was day lieutenant, I was night lieutenant, and Jack was captain of the Naranjo Vista police department.

  Walt said: “You’re killing me, pal. Ellie has invited the usual crowd of eggdomes, and there’ll be nobody for a simple-minded high school principal to talk to.”

  “Olga’s going without me.”

  I could hear Walt groan. “Andy, I love your wife with all that is pure and noble in me. She is attractive, intelligent and sympathetic. But, lad, she is an eggdome of the domiest. When it’s just you and I and Olga and Ellie and maybe a few of the boys from the backroom, Olga is my dream girl, and if you weren’t so big, I’d do something about it. But let her get where the ideas are flowing, and, man, she soars. What are you laughing about?”

  “You,” I said. “After all, couldn’t you call yourself doctor if you wanted to?”

  “A lousy Ph.D. in Education,” Walt said. “Listen, I have to go to that gun club meeting, too. The sharpshooters want to sponsor a junior rifle club in the high school. If I can talk your Lieutenant Lasley into taking over, will you show at my pad?”

  I said I would, we exchanged a few more insults, and hung up. I was still chuckling. Walt Adams was right. Naranjo Vista was a-crawl with eggheads; we were a three-year-old, five thousand residence subdivision, and our main reason for being was to shelter the white collars from a couple of electronic defence plants. Of course, that meant production men and purchasing agents and so on, but it also meant a large population of fellows who could split an atom as readily as I split infinitives, and Ellie Adams gloried in it. I, like Walt, have never enjoyed a conversation I couldn’t understand. The executives and so on ignored people like Walt and me because we could do them no good. I had a few friends in Naranjo Vista – just Walt and two or three more.

  Olga, of course, was right up there. I once heard her talk for a half an hour on cybernetics, a word I have been unable to find in the unabridged dictionary.

  Even if Drew Lasley didn’t want to take the duty, I could go to the party. With our department as small as it was, it was impossible for a commissioned officer to be in the station twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Jack required that each of us work forty-two hours a week, and actually we each put in a lot more that that, but there are sixty-four watches in a week. I am not a drinking man, and I could go to Walt’s party and still be on duty; I’d simply tell the sergeant on watch where to call me.

  So I dropped Olga off at the Adam’s and went down to the station to catch up on a little paper work until Drew got there, which would be the signal that Walt was home.

  The paper work concerned three break-ins that we’d had in the last ten days. They looked like teen-age stuff. In each case the icebox had been looted, cigarettes and liquor taken; but a damned fine transistor radio had gone out of one house, and that made it grand larceny, as well as breaking-and-entering.

  County and state had sent me some M.O. files on known break-and-entry men and I studied them. An experienced criminal investigation officer, which I am, could do it at a desk; and I hadn’t been working a half an hour before I was satisfied that none of the criminals known to be in Southern California had done our jobs.

  Also, I was satisfied that the Messrs. Stern, Spratt and Thorne had all been victimized by the same person or persons.

  Now all I had to do was catch said person or persons.

  I leaned back in my chair, wishing I had a pipe and a deer-stalker cap; this was one for the armchair detectives. Meaning, there wasn’t much I could do.

  The mark of a good executive – it says someplace – is a clean desk. It is much more important to get the cases off the blotter than it is to solve them. I picked up the phone and told Sergeant de Laune to get me Juvenile Division, Probation. This is an arm of the courts, and not a police organization at all.

  At Probation, I talked to the switchboard; no use tying up our phones while they looked up my case number and got me the Probation Officer in charge. It turned out to be a Miss Virginia Bridge, a somewhat acid spinster I had dealt with before. By no coincidence, she was in the office. The load a Probation Officer carried, nighttime was the only time they could catch up on their office work.

  She said she’d gotten the case from me and read it, but – “My God, the case load I’m carrying – give me a minute to run over it – got it – yes. Three break-ins. What do you think, lieutenant?”

  “Juvenile,” I said. “Your pigeon, as they maybe say in England.”

  “I read it that way, too,” she said. “I’ve got it marked S&H.”

  “That’s a new one on me.”

  “Son and heir,” she said. “You can spot them a mile away. Those houses were almost undoubtedly robbed by kids living in them. Oh, my God, I don’t know when I can get over to Naranjo Vista.”

  “Don’t look at me,” I said into the phone. “You know the law. A police officer isn’t supposed to mess with juveniles unless an immediate arrest is necessary to protect life or property.”

  “You could go over to the school and read the riot act to them.” She sounded hopeful, but not very. “I’ve got to go up to lone this afternoon. I’ve got two clients getting out. I’ve got to be in court tomorrow. I’ve got a real messy one, teen-age prostitution, complete with a maid; she’s an adult, thank God. That will be all day tomorrow. Yes, Andy, be a sweet, be a dear, go over to the school and bawl them out. How’s Olga?”

  “Leave my wife’s name out of this. Sure, I can bawl them out, and if they call my bluff, where am I? We don’t even have a juvenile lock-up where I can hold them for questioning. No, baby.”

  She sighed. “Ah for the days of stupid flatfeet, who liked to yell at juveniles. Listen, Andy, would you do this? Ask your high school principal – Walt Adams, isn’t it? – if all three of the homes have sons, and if they’re the same age, and if they go around together.”

  “Can do. As a matter of fact, Walt wants me to come to a party this evening.”

  “Party!” Miss Bridge said. “If I have time for a second cup of coffee after dinner I think I am living riotously . . . Do that for me, Andy. If all that’s so, I won’t have to hurry; unless they’re feebleminded, they won’t use the same stunt twice, not for a long time, and the peace and quiet of Naranjo Vista will not be disturbed.”

  “Not to mention the law and order. Sure. I’ll ask Walt tonight.
If he doesn’t know, I’ll have Drew Lasley, he lectures there on traffic safety, just look in the files.”

  “You’re a darling. If I ever get an evening, will you and Olga drive up to the city and listen to some records and eat some of my lousy cooking?”

  She spared me another ten seconds for social chatter, and we rang off. She was, in a manner of speaking, an officer, but she was the kind of officer who has to have a couple of degrees in sociology, or something like it, to operate. She was much more of a pal of Olga’s than of mine.

  Finding it very convenient to have duty at Walt’s house, I gave his number to de Laune, who would be on the desk till midnight, and told the sergeant I’d check before leaving there, and we discussed baseball, me without much interest. I don’t know if he really cared about Los Angeles’s chances to do this or that, or not.

  At nine-thirty, Drew came in, in his second-best uniform. I was in plain clothes. His lips were pressed tight together and his eyes were narrowed; ordinarily he is as good-natured as a cop can afford to be, but he was mad now. He signed the blotter without saying anything, and walked down the hall towards his office, his heels hitting hard on the linoleum or acrylic vinyl or whatever the Bartlett Construction Company had seen fit to floor our hall with. He heard me behind him and turned into my office, and started pacing up and down it.

  I was his superior by a tiny margin, and I was also official night chief. I went and sat behind my desk and said:

  “Unload, pal,.”

  “You know Bailey Spratt?”

  Spratt was the name on one of the break-and-entries, so I did. But it took me a moment to place him. “Red-faced guy, about six feet, bulky; has a new-car agency over by the shopping centre?”

  “That’s the bastard,” Drew said. He was ordinarily a mild talking man. “Also president of the gun club, sergeant of the local squad of the sheriff’s posse; a very big man, Andy.”

  “All right, all right, what did he do? Ride you about not catching the varmints who robbed his icebox? I just checked that to Juvenile Division, by the way.”

  Drew flung himself into the straight-backed chair at the side of the desk. Since I had chosen it to keep visitors from loitering, it didn’t take to being flung into. I kept from grinning at the look on his face. “Oh, that started it,” he said. “He made a speech about it, in his official capacity as head of the posse squad.”

  “But that was a gun club meeting.”

  Drew Lasley picked up a pencil from my desk and snapped it between his fingers, tossed the broken ends into the wastepaper basket, without ever looking at what he was doing. “All the posse men are also gun club members, of course. He also offered to take in, as special members, the other men in the club. ‘Naranjo Vista needs men who can tell one end of a gun from the other,’” Drew Lasley quoted, and looked as if he were about to spit on my floor. “Also, he proposes to arm and drill special squads of high school kids, and that’s where the trouble started.”

  To me it sounded as if the trouble had started a good deal before that, but he was telling the story. I contented myself with asking: “Was this because his house was broken into?”

  “He said, and I quote: ‘My house doesn’t matter. I’ve got a gun and I know how to protect my property.’ Unquote. But it seems a dozen other houses have been entered. It seems a decent woman’s life isn’t safe in Naranjo Vista, in her own home. It seems the police department has broken down, and it is time for citizens to act, in the spirit of the old vigilantes, who made our great state what it is.”

  “No,” I said. “There’ll be no gun-happy amateurs riding this town while I am second-in-command. I’m sure Jack feels the same way.” I reached for the phone book to get Bailey Spratt’s number, then remembered something. “According to you, you had not yet gotten to the trouble in your story.”

  Drew Lasley said: “The trouble is with Walt Adams. This Spratt loudmouth wants all senior and junior boys in the high school to take an hour’s drill a day in the use of firearms. Walt reared back like a .155 recoiling. It surprised me; I didn’t know he had it in him. No kids in his school are going to be excused from classes for target practice, and if a high school gun team is started, they’ll have to be under the supervision of a paid police officer. Spratt socked him. He’d make two of Walt Adams, but Walt got in one good wallop before he got knocked down. Then Bailey Spratt’s pals held him, and Walt waved me away and walked out under his own steam. His face was pretty badly maced.”

  “The high school auditorium is public property,” I said. “You had every right to make an arrest.”

  Drew Lasley shrugged. “I’m Jack’s assistant on the day watch, I’m traffic control officer, and I’m public relations man, but I don’t set department policy. I had to keep telling myself that,” Drew Lasley said, and his face was a nasty red. “Over and over I told myself that, to keep from removing Spratt’s mastoids with my gun butt. Walt Adams is a damned nice little guy. But can we afford to start feuding with the citizens?”

  “Since you reminded me I’m your superior, you’re off duty by my orders. Go home and get drunk, or stay around and listen to me chew Mr. Spratt’s tail.”

  “Use your dullest teeth,” Drew Lasley said, which was pretty good.

  After I dialled, the phone rang only three times before it was answered. I listened carefully as a man’s voice said hello. There was masculine grumbles in the background; Bailey Spratt had taken his cronies home with him. Fine. If I had gone to his house, I would have had to humiliate him in front of his friends: over the phone, I could let him save any part of his face Walt Adams hadn’t bruised.

  “Mr. Spratt,” I said, “this is Lieutenant Bastian at the Police Department.”

  “I’m sure you’re at the Police Department,” he said. “You wouldn’t be out patrolling after dark. The bogey man might get you.”

  Drew got full marks, as our limey cousins say, for not gun-butting this jerk. But I was in my twenty-second year of police work; you learn to take it. “We got a full watch on duty tonight, Mr. Spratt,” I said. “What I called you about was that little matter at the high school tonight. I can understand you’re riled about having your house broken into; but that’s no reason to give up your leisure and your sleep to patrol Naranjo Vista. Leave that to us, Mr. Spratt; we’re paid for it.”

  “Mister, I know you’re paid for it. And my friend, the sheriff, is going to look into why you’re paid.” Unless he had holes in his hand as well as in his head, he didn’t bother to palm the mouthpiece as he called to his pals: “I’m telling off one of those broken-down MPs at the police station.” Then he turned his valuable attention back to me. “We’re taking over, and there’s no stopping us. Law and order are coming back to Naranjo Vista.”

  Taking a deep breath, I let him have it. I had been as patient as my oath required. “Correction, Mr. Spratt. You are not, repeat not, starting a patrol. You are not, repeat not, going to carry guns on these streets after dark. You are not, repeat not, going to stop one pedestrian or one car, and if you do I will have you arrested and held the legal forty-eight hours for investigation.”

  His voice was inarticulate on the other end. I caught snatches: “Know who you’re talking to . . . friend of the sheriff . . . damned impudent cop. . . .”

  When he stopped for breath, I said: “A little law, Mr. Spratt. Using one of those courtesy posse badges without direct orders from the sheriff, or in case of a crime committed before your eyes – and that’s been held to apply to felonies – can be construed as impersonating an officer.”

  He didn’t back down. “In case of an emergency, copper?”

  “There’s no emergency here, Mr. Spratt.” I hung up. To my amazement, my hand was shaking, and I was breathing hard. It is difficult to make me lose my temper; Bailey Spratt had managed it. I said: “Stand by, Drew, while I dictate a report on that call for the blotter.”

  “I’ll go down to the muster room and find the duty stenographer. Take a drink of water – or a drink –
before he gets here. You did real good, Andy, real good.”

  When I was alone, I calmed down a little. I didn’t think I’d done so well. There might be something wrong in the way we’d policed Naranjo Vista if it took me that long to calm down a citizen; there was something wrong if I couldn’t calm him down at all without threatening him with arrest.

  Maybe twenty years in the MPs didn’t fit me for a civilian job. Of course, as constabulary in Germany, Egypt, Japan, and Korea, I’d had to deal with civilians from time to time; but usually they were enemy civilians in captured territory. Very different from guys who paid many grand for houses and felt they had hired you to protect those houses. . . .

  After I’d dictated my statement, with Drew kicking in stuff I’d forgotten, I told Patrolman Merril I’d sign it in the morning, and made Drew leave the station house with me. He’d wanted to stay on duty in case any of our cruisers ran into the vigilantes. But somehow I didn’t think there’d be any amateurs on patrol for a while.

  Now I know I should have called the sheriff and had him call his pal, Bailey Spratt. But the county sheriff is a big office, and the job is held by a big politico, and I didn’t want to bother him at home. Tomorrow I’d put the report on Jack Davis’s desk, and he could take the whole thing up through channels to the sheriff.

  Cops always stick together, I remember thinking; I’ll be all right.

  Chapter Two

  Some of the Adams’s guests had walked to the party, so I was able to park my car fairly close to the house. As I crossed the front garden, so very much like ours, I could hear the party going full steam ahead, or up, or wherever parties go. I let myself in without ringing.

  Ellie Adams, bent over a record player, looked up when the fresh air blew into the room, and waved at me. Then she bent over the records again.

  I didn’t see Walt anyplace. I threaded my way back to the kitchen, got a glass of quinine water so I’d look like I was drinking, and then, on an impulse, looked in the bedroom. Walt wasn’t there. He must have gone to a doctor to have his face bandaged up, or maybe he was sitting in his office, brooding. I went back into the living room, a little worried. When I had a chance, I’d call him at his office, or tell a patrolman to cruise by there. But the phone was hemmed in by guests, so I waited a minute for a clear field. Drew Lasley had said Walt walked out under his own power.