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he went to
the library about once a week regular—and then he spotted him at
the market, and then, he said, be damned if the guy wasn't on the bus
when he started home. And seemed to be watching him sort of funny. I
thought he must be imagining things, though that wasn't like Joe. It
was probably just a coincidence, but—well, it's funny."
    "Did he tell you what the fellow looked like?"
asked Hackett.
    "He just said, a young fellow—blond, ordinary
clothes, ordinary sort of looks, nobody he ever recalled seeing
before. It sounds crazy—Joe just an ordinary guy, never did any
harm to anybody, nobody have any reason to—but now this happens, it
sort of sticks in my mind, y'know? But it is crazy. Somebody knifing
Joe. Mr. Moreno said he never heard a thing, after he heard Joe leave
about an hour before—and he would have, if Joe had had time to yell
or put up a fight—just there he was, all bloody and the bag of
groceries scattered around—" He shook his head. "Crazy.
Sergeant Palliser seems to think—"
    "Well, it's interesting," said Palliser.
    "So somebody had time to rob him," said
Mendoza.
    "Yes, that's the point," said Palliser
absently. "A little off-beat."
    "Well," said Hackett, "it may mean
something or not, but I can't see any connection with your Skid Row
derelict."
    Palliser rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. "I never
said there was, Art. Except, funnily enough, there was a kind of
resemblance—they were both in the sixties, middle-sized, sandy
coloring—that's just coincidence. Hell, he could have imagined
this, but why should he?"
    "But why in hell should anybody be shadowing
Joe?" asked Simms reasonably.
    Palliser said, "Well, I'll get a statement typed
up for you to sign. God knows what it means, but we'll put it in the
record."
    "Whatever you say. Just, after it happened, I
got to thinking about it, y'know." Simms sat back and looked
interestedly about the big office.
    Higgins came in with another suspect heister to
question, and Hackett went to sit in on that, which was also
inconclusive. The suspect offered an alibi; he'd been at a big party
and a lot of people would say so. What that was worth was moot; he
had quite a long record, was four months on parole from a charge of
attempted homicide, and his associates were probably of the same ilk.
But they had to go through the motions. Hackett went out to start
checking while Higgins wrote the follow-up report.
    Mendoza wandered down the hall to the coffee machine
about two forty-five; Grace and Landers were just coming in with
another possible suspect. "Nick and Henry are killing time down
in R. and I. waiting for those witnesses to pore over the mug shots,"
said Grace. "I think myself Mutt and Jeff are newcomers to the
crime scene—pair of morons, they'd have been dropped on before now,
and nobody's made them yet, and the lab did pick up some latents from
the register on that first job." His regular-featured
chocolate-brown face with its narrow mustache as neat as Mendoza's
registered amused annoyance. "It's a dull job lately—nothing
but these damn stupid heisters. To think anybody can still imagine
it's a glamorous exciting job—and when I think of all the offbeat
complex mysteries in the damn-fool detective novels—"
    "Don't complain, or we may come in for a couple
of those," said Mendoza sardonically. He took his cup of coffee
back to his desk and sat looking out over the city view, ruminating
idly on Mr. Simms, and desultorily on the man with the Doberman.
There was no going anywhere on that, of course. When the new call
went down at three-thirty, everybody else was out or interrogating
suspects, and Mendoza went out on it with Higgins.
    It was an old apartment building, about sixteen
units, on Vendome down from Beverly. The black-and-white squad was
sitting in front; mostly on the Central beat they ran two-man cars,
and Patrolman Zimmerman was at the entrance waiting for them, said
Gomez was upstairs securing the scene.
    "Looks like some sort of