Angel in black

23

The bright lights of Hollywood Boulevard took on a shimmering radiance, neon burning in the coolness of dusk, the hard, unpleasant edges of an ugly one-industry town blurred into blemish-free beauty. Like an aging screen queen with a great makeup artist, a gauze-draped key light, and a Vaseline-smeared camera lens, Hollywood didn’t look half bad.

The little neighborhood around the corner from Grauman’s Chinese also benefited from twilight’s gentle touch, seeming even more idyllic, with its pastel stucco bungalows, nicely trimmed lawns, and scattering of palms and pepper trees, with flower gardens whose blossoms glowed vividly in the gathering darkness, lights struggling not to go out.

I parked in the driveway, purposely blocking it, and trotted up the winding walk to the two-story red-tile-roof pink stucco two-flat. I pressed the button and, on the third try, its little electric-chair buzz summoned an answer.

Framed there in the doorway, Patsy Savarino-her red hair tumbling to her shoulders, her mouth lushly lipsticked, the huge green almond eyes emphasized with matching eyeshadow-was proof positive that a woman eight months gone could still look alluring. The former stripper-though small in stature, she’d been voluptuous even before her pregnancy-wore a yellow-and-green abstract-pattern print maternity top and pedal-pusher denims. She was in her bare feet.

“If you’re looking for my husband,” she said, guardedly, “he’s not here.”

“Any of his pals over here? Your upstairs neighbors, maybe?”

“The Hassaus moved out.”

“That was quick.”

“This morning.” She began to shut the door. “I’m alone here and you’re not coming in.”

“Sure I am,” I said, pushing my way in, stepping past her, into the vestibule, at the foot of the stairs to the second-floor flat. It took more than an expectant mother to stop this detective.

Her eyes were wide with indignation-and perhaps a little fear. “Mr. Heller, you’ll have to leave!”

I shut the door and took out the nine-millimeter, to encourage her cooperation, and her fright. But the lush red lips only sneered at me. “Do you often threaten pregnant women?”

“I think this may be a first.” I nodded toward the living room with its array of new, mismatched furniture. “How about your friend Arnold Wilson?”

Her arms were folded over her bosom and her chin was high-for some reason, she reminded me of a barroom bouncer. “Who says he’s my friend?”

“Is he here?”

“Of course not.”

I gestured with the nine-millimeter. “We’re going to have a look around.”

“Are we?”

I took her by the arm and dragged her along-“Hey! Lemme go, you bastard!”-checking every room of the eclectically furnished flat, finding no Bobby Savarino or Arnold Wilson or anyone else. The master bedroom closet was bare, nothing but hangers and a couple empty shoeboxes; the dresser was half-emptied. No male clothing at all.

She stood sullenly in the doorway, leaning back against the jamb, folded arms resting on breasts that had been formidable even before they began revving up for the coming child.

I turned to her. “You have an upstairs key?”

“What if I don’t?”

“I’ll kick the fucking door in.”

She sighed. “Yes, I have a key.”

“Can you handle those stairs all right?”

“Do I have a choice?”

I shrugged. “I can leave you down here tied.”

She grunted a humorless laugh. “Would that be another first, Mr. Heller?”

“No, I just did it the other day-Oh, with a pregnant woman? I believe so.”

Soon, she was dragging her ass up the stairs-albeit a nicely shaped one in the denim slacks, and her legs didn’t look heavy, either; the former No-Pasties-for-Patsy still had pride in her appearance, and hadn’t allowed herself to gain any excess weight, beyond the kid she was carrying.

She unlocked the door and showed me in, and around, the Hassaus’ apartment. The lights weren’t on but they weren’t needed-what was left of the afternoon sun was finding its way through windows whose drapes had been removed. The entire place was fairly emptied out, only a few larger pieces of furniture remaining, chiefly a Colonial-style maple china cabinet in the dining room and a big walnut-trimmed wine-velour overstuffed sofa in the living room.

Otherwise, tumbleweed was blowing through the goddamn place.

“Christ,” I said, and-convinced I was now alone with the knocked-up former stripper-I slipped the nine-millimeter back into the shoulder holster.

Again, she positioned herself in the doorway, arms folded on her chest, like a harem eunuch on guard, if an improbably pregnant one. “They loaded up a trailer this morning.”

I went right up to her, leaned a hand against the wall. She smelled like Chypre De Coty perfume. “Your husband go with them?”

Her expression was blank. “My husband’s out on bail. You know he can’t be leaving town.”

“Henry Hassau’s out on bail, too. They both skipped, didn’t they?”

She shrugged-then nodded.

“Afraid of Dragna?”

“Afraid of doing time.”

I could see that: they were facing twenty years, as her husband had pointed out to me.

I said, “The Ringgolds are going to be out some major scratch.”

A tiny smile tweaked the full red lips. “Yes, but Bobby and Henry won’t be testifying against them, will they?”

“That’s why you needed my money, right? Raising a little traveling cash for Bobby?”

The green eyes were half-lidded now. “Gee. Ain’t you the genius?”

I leaned in, doing my best to intimidate her, though with a tough little cookie like this, that wasn’t easy. “And, now what? Bobby’s going to get settled somewhere? Mexico maybe, and after you have the baby, you’ll join him?”

She frowned-then she moved forward, so close her nose was almost touching mine. Her tone was near vicious when she demanded, “You want to talk? Let’s go downstairs where I can take a load off. You think it’s easy being pregnant?”

“Let’s save a trip-why don’t you go sit on that couch?”

Holding the small of her back with both hands, wincing in discomfort, she trundled across the empty room and sat. I plopped down next to her, giving her a little space.

“Did Arnold Wilson happen to go along with the boys on this bail-jump trip?”

She nodded. “Helen went, too.” Her arms were at her side, now, and she was staring straight ahead at a wall whose wallpaper showed the shadows of absent framed pictures.

I sat sort of sideways on the couch, nestling in the corner, so I could look right at her, as she avoided my gaze. “Wouldn’t happen to have been Arnold’s idea, would it? Leaving town?”

She shrugged.

“Arnold’s an interesting guy. To look at him, he seems like some small-potatoes lowlife-a nobody, a six-foot-four, pock-mark-pussed nebbish. Not a leader, certainly, like your husband. But sometimes you have to watch out for these guys out on the sidelines, hugging the fringes… You’re in show business, Patsy-ever hear of a play called Othello?”

“No.”

“It’s by Shakespeare.”

She shrugged. “ Romeo and Juliet.”

I folded my arms, crossed my legs-comfy here in the big mostly empty room. “Right. Friend of mine is thinking of making a movie out of it- Othello, that is. I’m not much of a reader, and most of the time, when I go to the theater, it’s to a house like your old stamping grounds, the Rialto.”

Now she looked at me, smiling faintly, crinkles of amusement at the corners of the almond-shaped eyes. “Ever see me?”

“I saw all of you. Any man who had would certainly understand how you could get in your current condition.”

“Is that your idea of a compliment?”

“Maybe you’d prefer me to commend your tassel work. Anyway, in that play, there’s this character off to one side, whispering in the hero’s ear, giving him bad advice. I forget the character’s name, but Arnold Wilson, he reminds me of that guy.”

“Does he?” Her gaze had returned to the wall of absent pictures. “That’s so very interesting.”

“For example, right before he brought me around here-to hear you and your husband expound on the subject of how Jack Dragna had the Short girl killed-Wilson stopped by the Beverly Hills Hotel. My wife and me, we’re staying in a bungalow there. Kind of a honeymoon.”

“What a lucky girl.”

“Arnold’s the kind of guy who knows how to seize an opportunity. That’s what separates the merely selfish, greedy, immoral sons of bitches, like most of us, from the really evil ones. You believe in evil, Patsy?”

“I guess.”

“You believe in God? In hell?”

Now she looked at me-apprehension creeping through her blank mask. “I suppose.”

I shrugged. “Me, I don’t know what I believe, other than I know that most of us are sinners, but that now and then you run into somebody who’s… wrong to the bone. Evil the way the Bible would define it. The psychologists call these people ‘sociopaths.’ ”

“Do they.” Her eyes tightened. “What does this have to do with me?”

“Let me finish, Patsy-if you don’t mind. I mean, you don’t have supper to fix, now that your man flew the coop.”

She granted me a sarcastic smirk. “Since I can’t seem to stop you-and you have a gun-please continue.”

“Thanks. So, anyway, Arnold waltzes into my bungalow at the hotel when I’m not around, convinces my wife he’s an old buddy of mine, that we were in the war together. Now, my wife has been around and she knows a criminal type when she sees one-and she knows I number criminal types among my acquaintances and even friends. In the course of conversation-he must have been waiting there for me, a good hour-she asks him a question. ‘Suppose I had a friend who was in trouble, and needed help?’ ‘What kind of trouble?’ Arnold asks. Well, to make a long story short, Wilson helped out my wife’s ‘friend’… which is to say, my wife… and arranged for her to get an abortion.”

That got her attention. “I thought you were on your honeymoon…”

“I know, it disappoints me, a little, too, that my wife wanted to start out our married life by killing our kid. But we’ve worked that out-we’ve decided to have him, or her. The thing is, your husband’s friend Wilson-manipulative weasel that he is-sent my wife to a specific abortionist because a special friend of his worked there-a very sick individual named Lloyd.”

And, finally, I hit home. She couldn’t hide the reaction: wincing, gritting her teeth as if a red-hot poker had been placed against her flesh, she turned away from me.

I remained casual, chatty in tone. “None of that is important-it is, after all, a kind of… coda to the real story, here. The real story begins with a pair of sick psychopaths, who have known each other for many years, and have visited all kinds of hellish torture and perversion and murder upon women and men, usually striking the nameless, forgotten souls who litter the skid row of any major city. Arnold and this friend of his named Lloyd share a secret bond, as well as any number of unspeakable interests. Were you even aware that Arnold Wilson is a homosexual?”

The green eyes widened. “What?”

“That’s not really accurate-Wilson’s a bisexual. Gate swings, as they say, both ways… and that doesn’t offend me. I mean, whatever wets your wick, I always say. It’s just that both of the ways that Arnold’s gate swings are, well, a bit crooked. Arnold would quite naturally hide the homosexual aspect of his appetites from the all-male likes of your husband and the McCadden Group. He had to be one of the boys, right down to his war wound.”

Her red hair flounced as she shook her head. “You’ve gone wacky-Arnold is no queer…”

“Let me ask you this, where does Wilson live?”

That froze her. “I… I don’t know.”

“I’ll wager you have the phone number and address of every other friend your husband did business with, certainly the entire McCadden crew.”

She said nothing, but that was a confirmation of sorts.

“Late last summer and for part of the fall, Elizabeth Short was hanging around the McCadden Cafe. She and your husband became involved… Don’t bother denying it, don’t try to look surprised. Beth Short even became friendly with Hassau’s wife Helen-the girl became sort of a mascot to the McCadden Group, a little more than that to your husband.”

Staring at the wall again, her face hardened back into that blank mask.

I continued, saying, “Wilson was working for Al Green at the cafe as a cook, as well as being a member of the heist crew. So of course Wilson got to know Elizabeth Short, was friendly with her. But he also considered her a kind of… loose cannon. Wilson knew the Short girl was trying to raise money, for some kind of operation she was planning to get-he figured it was possibly an abortion, since she was consulting with a doctor who Wilson knew ran one of L.A.’s highest-class, most protected abortion mills.”

She gave me a glance, and a flinch of a frown. “Why are you telling me this? What the hell does this have to do with me?”

Outside the windows, magic hour was over-the darkness of night carried with it muffled traffic noise from nearby Hollywood Boulevard. I got up, switched on the overhead light, which bounced off the varnished wood floor. She winced, preferring the darkness. I sat beside her again.

“Wilson knew the Mocambo heist was going to be a big score. He also heard about the Short girl’s surprise when Beth discovered her new friends at the McCadden Cafe were a bunch of armed robbers. Wilson feared she might go to the cops, or otherwise sell them out, raising money for that supposed abortion. So he convinced his buddy Lloyd-who had been using his medical training to work for various abortionists on the West Coast-to apply for a job at that same abortion clinic where Elizabeth was enrolled as a patient. Fortuitously for Wilson, this was the perfect time for Lloyd to get work at the Dailey clinic: the chief doctor was failing mentally, slipping into senile dementia, and his female partner, a woman named Winter, could really use a good physician’s assistant about now, particularly one trained in the abortionist’s art.”

Patsy had turned away again. “You must like the sound of your own voice. I’m not even listening.”

“With Lloyd in place at the abortion clinic, the Short girl could be taken out, in a manner that-as a sick bonus-would allow these old pals in perversion to have a good old-fashioned debauched time. But Beth Short got spooked, with the Mocambo heist coming up, not wanting any part of a crime of that magnitude, and she fled to San Diego, where-typically-she freeloaded off a new friend she made. Several weeks later, before the heist, your husband and Helen and Hassau went down there to try to encourage Beth Short to come back to L.A.”

Her sharp glance indicated the latter was news to her.

“And, a month or so later, after the heist had been successfully pulled, Bobby and the McCadden Group apparently getting away clean, Beth decides to come home to the City of Angels, where she gets back in touch with Bobby and Helen. She decides to keep a low profile, since she now knows her ‘fiance’ already has a wife, a very pregnant one at that.”

Patsy closed her eyes; she might have been asleep.

“Now, all through this time, Beth Short is still actively trying to raise that money-perhaps with visions of running off with your Bobby-and Arnold Wilson may have seen her as a blackmail threat. But Wilson wasn’t the one, of course, who initiated the murder plan. That is where you come in, Mrs. Savarino.”

Her head swiveled on a dime, green eyes flashing. “Me? You’re a fucking lunatic!”

“Hey, it got me out of the Marines. We’re up to where Bobby and his pal Henry are arrested, and Bobby starts shooting his mouth off about Dragna trying to hire a McCadden Group hit on Cohen. Your husband wanted to make a deal with the cops, but all he succeeded in doing was spurring Dragna’s rage-that’s when the onslaught of death threats began. You and the rest of the McCadden Group and their families were targets for mob retaliation, if your idiot husband did not shut up, and soon. That’s when you went to Arnold Wilson with your plan.”

“My plan to do what? I did no such thing.”

“You suggested to Wilson that if Elizabeth Short were to turn up dead, in an apparent mob-style execution, Bobby would read it as a warning… and, at the same time, your competition for your husband’s affections would be eliminated.”

“That… that ‘Black Dahlia’ wasn’t a gangland killing; she was murdered by a sex fiend!”

“It was both those things, Patsy. You see, when you expressed an interest in having Beth Short removed, Arnold Wilson already had his friend Lloyd in place-settled in as a good little physician’s aide at the abortion mill, the very clinic where Beth Short was a patient. As I said, Wilson is a conniving sociopath of the first order: everything he did had sinister layers. He and Lloyd gleefully committed a sick sex crime that would send the police down the wrong road, even as the informer’s ‘smile’ they gashed in the girl’s face sent your husband a message. Then Wilson had the body dumped in a place where both Dragna and the abortion doctor could be implicated.”

She frowned, truly puzzled. “Why would he do that?”

“Since Arnold Wilson’s relationship with Lloyd was a secret one-a pact between human malignancies, a relationship acted out in the depths of human society, skid row bars and flophouses and the like-should Beth Short’s murder ever be traced back to Lloyd, it would be Lloyd-a known psychopathic murderer-who would take full blame.”

“Why wouldn’t this… ‘Lloyd’… tell the police about his friend, Arnold Wilson?”

“Because Lloyd likes to take full credit for his depravity. He has an ego as big as it is bizarre, which for example compels him to send taunting postcards to the detective tracking him. Wilson was suspected as Lloyd’s apprentice in those torso murders in Cleveland, ten years ago-but Lloyd steadfastly refused to implicate his friend… either out of loyalty, or a desire to hog all the ‘glory.’ ”

That was why Wilson-who obviously had recognized me and remembered my role in the original Butcher case-had maneuvered my wife into that abortion clinic today. Wilson had no doubt heard from Watterson that Eliot and I had cornered him-and released him, supposedly believing Lloyd’s story-but Wilson would easily have guessed that we’d be keeping Lloyd under surveillance, and that I would be informed immediately when Peggy went into that clinic.

The diabolical bastard knew, too, that I was likely to kill Watterson, if I burst in on him either aborting my child or butchering Peggy (didn’t matter to Wilson which), thereby closing off any investigatory avenue that might have implicated Arnold Wilson in the murder of the Black Dahlia.

“But, Patsy,” I said to the lovely pregnant redhead, “you didn’t just suggest this murder-you hired it done. Lucky devil, that Arnold Wilson: a murder he had been thinking about doing anyway, and somebody pays him to do it!”

She had a glazed expression, now. “What… what makes you think I paid Wilson to kill her?”

“Well, hell, that’s where your money went, your husband’s share of all that Mocambo heist loot. It was the Ringgold brothers who paid Bobby’s bail, after all. And yet you and Bobby were willing to tell a stranger anything he wanted to know, for a lousy hundred bucks.”

She mustered up a sneer. “And that makes me somebody who hired a murder? Is that what you call detective work?”

“Actually, it was Mickey Cohen who got me thinking like a detective again… What did Elizabeth Short do to deserve her fate? Not a damn thing, he said-if a gangster like Dragna wanted to send your husband a message, he’d have hit another member of the McCadden Group, some deserving crook, not a civilian dame who happened to be somebody’s mistress. So-why Beth Short? Who would benefit from her death? How about Bobby’s wife-Bobby’s pregnant wife.”

I’d said my piece.

We sat there for perhaps two minutes, maybe three-a long time to sit in silence. A horn honked. A dog barked. Some kids squealed in play. Two minutes, maybe three, of no conversation-a prisoner to your thoughts, in the presence of another, who has appointed himself your accuser.

Still, I was surprised, even startled, when she blurted, “All I wanted to do was shut my husband’s stupid mouth, before he got us all killed!”

I grunted a humorless laugh, then said, “You might have come up with another way.”

“Not one that would get that bitch Beth Short out of our lives!”

That was when she broke into tears. I got a hanky out for her and she wept into it, and blew her nose a couple times, then offered the hanky back to me, which I declined.

Patsy Savarino had probably lived a tough life-I had no idea what her background was… Strippers came from everywhere, everywhere that was hard or abusive, that is. Good-looking girls with nice bodies like Patsy-who found themselves on burlesque stages with their talent hanging out, who ended up with guys who ran con games or gambled or did crimes-came from hardscrabble farms in West Virginia and Chicago slums and Podunk orphanages and even wealthy suburban homes where daddy liked to keep incest in the family.

But somewhere, at some point, Patsy had no doubt been a little girl with a doll, or anyway a little girl who wanted a doll, and maybe she had a dog or a fucking kitty, and played with blocks and jumped rope and, like all of us, started out as an innocent kid.

And while I knew that Patsy Savarino had initiated the murder of Elizabeth Short, I also knew that the horrendous depravity committed upon that girl by Arnold Wilson and Lloyd Watterson far exceeded Patsy’s worst wishes for the black-haired angel-faced woman in black-seamed stockings who’d been trying to steal away her husband.

“I never… I never meant… So savage, so cruel, so sick, so twisted… how could they… and make me part…?”

Then she was crying again. I went to the bathroom and got her a big wad of toilet paper and she used that for her tears and to blow her nose in. I put an arm around her. This went on for quite a while.

“I… I have terrible… nightmares… I see that girl… I see terrible things being done to her… Sometimes I’m standing there… in the dreams… watching myself do them. Cutting her… butchering her…”

“You can’t make a bargain with the devil,” I said, “and not get your ass burned.”

“What… what are you…?”

“Patsy, sweetheart, when you decided to have that girl murdered, all bets were off-all nicety, all morality, all decency, went out the window. You can’t commit a little murder just like you can’t be a little pregnant. When you let Arnold Wilson into your life-maybe the most evil son of a bitch I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a few-when you invited him in, his sickness became your sickness.”

“What… are you saying? That I’ll… feel like this… fucking sick-in-my-gut-and-my-heart guilty like this… with these awful terrible nightmares… as long as I live?”

I patted her shoulder. “It’ll let up, some. I only dream about combat once or twice a week, now. But to some degree, yeah-you’re going to carry this with you. That guilt. ’Cause it’s yours.”

The lipstick had been rubbed off by the hanky and toilet paper, but the lips remained full, and sensual, trembling now. “How can I… how can I go on living?”

I put my hand on her swollen belly-gently. “Because you have to. You have to put this behind you, much as you can, and raise this kid better than you were raised.”

She studied me for a moment, searching my face, then asked, “What are you going to do to me?”

I shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“A wife who kills to keep her husband, there’s worse crimes.”

Those almond-shaped green eyes were wide with astonishment, and relief. “You’re not going to… no police?”

“No police. Not in this town.” I sighed deeply, shook my head. “I’m goddamn sorry Elizabeth Short is dead-she really was a nice girl, somewhat screwed-up, like most of us… but she didn’t deserve what she got, not that anybody would, except maybe Arnold and Lloyd. But sending you to jail, Patsy, to have your kid inside… what good would that do? Anyway, I have a friend who needs this kept quiet… He’s the one who’s taking Lloyd back to the Crazy House… and me, I don’t much care to be in the middle of this, anymore.”

“What about Wilson?”

I pointed a thumb at myself. “That’s the deal you’re going to strike with this devil-when you talk to your husband, if he knows where Wilson is, find out and let me know.”

The green eyes narrowed. “You’re going after Wilson?”

“If it takes me the rest of my life.”

“What… what are you going to do to him?”

“Don’t know yet. I’ll think of something… appropriate. And it sure as hell won’t involve any cops.”

She was shaking her head, the red mane shimmering. “Mr. Heller… how can I thank you?”

I grinned at her. “If your marriage breaks up, and my marriage breaks up, maybe I can think of something. Otherwise, let’s skip it.”

“That another compliment?”

“I never saw anybody with better reverse-tassel action than you, Patsy.”

Her smile surprised me; her laugh was a shock to both of us.

Downstairs, as I was about to go out, she touched my arm and looked up at me. That pretty face-stripper hard but still alluring-softened, suddenly, and I could see the child she’d been. I hoped her child turned out better than she had-like I hoped mine turned out better than me.

The gorgeous pregnant redhead seemed almost embarrassed as she gazed up and said, “I was just… just trying to hold my marriage together.”

“Hey,” I said, tipping my hat, “I know the feeling.”