Dream Town

Chapter 13

The traffic on new year’s day was light, and Archer made good time on the drive back to Malibu. The place was named after a Chumash village, Humaliwo, where the “Hu” part was silent. In Chumash it meant “where the surf sounds loudly,” and there was no denying that.

Las Flores Canyon Road looked far different in the daylight. What was dark and foreboding then was now interesting and aesthetically pleasing. He parked in front of Lamb’s house and observed right away that the dark blue Ford was no longer there.

Okay, there could be two reasons for that. Either the cops impounded it, or someone else came during the night to take it. Maybe the owner, Cedric Bender.

Archer chastised himself because he couldn’t remember if the Ford was still there when he had left the house. His head had been hurting so badly he hadn’t bothered to notice.

He got out of the Delahaye after looking at the coroner’s black meat wagon standing by in the driveway behind the coupe. A sedan was behind it with the CORONER plaque hung in the window. There was an old Plymouth parked at the curb, with a radio squad car nearly touching its back bumper.

Archer was surprised they hadn’t taken the body away by now. He gave his name to the uniform on duty and was quickly admitted into the house.

Now, start to tap-dance really fast, Archer.

Phil Oldham was a big, blunt-faced homicide detective reluctantly housed in a Harris Tweed jacket and wrinkled gray slacks that nearly matched their owner’s skin. He had the reputation of being a decent cop with a sense of fair play on his good days. That made him about as rare as a politician who wasn’t on the take.

Oldham and two other plainclothes were standing near the body, over which someone had placed a dirty white sheet. The edge of an unlit, beaten-down stogie stuck out from the right corner of Oldham’s mouth.

“Hello, Archer,” he said with a nod. “I got buzzed on the two-way from Barry. Said you’d be heading over. You missed most of the show. We already took our pictures and drew our chalk line, case is practically solved.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Tell me something.” He took the stogie out and looked at it like he was wondering how it had gotten in his mouth. “Willie Dash has a good business going up north. And I hear you’re a worthy pavement pounder for him. So why play down here in the sand?”

“This one rolled right across my eye line,” said Archer.

“Understand she was a client, meaning the lady of the house.”

“That’s right. She said she thought someone was trying to kill her.”

“Well, unfortunately for this fellow, someone was looking to kill somebody and he got tagged to be the corpse. But maybe the wires got crossed, who knows?”

He lifted the sheet off and Archer pretended to be surprised. But in the light of day he was seeing things he hadn’t seen last night, which was the reason he’d wanted to come here.

“Got an ID yet?”

“Nope. No wallet on him. Not sure how he got here. No car, either.”

“Is that right?” said Archer. He looked around the body. “No blood.”

“Nope. Just a little on the stiff. Slug’s still in him.”

Archer bent low. “You shoot somebody that close, you’re gonna have blood all over. The floor, the banisters, the risers.” Archer eyed Oldham. “He was shot somewhere else.”

Oldham didn’t concede or deny this, but Archer knew the man had already concluded the very same thing.

He caught Oldham staring at a spot on his head. Archer notched his hat down to cover the edge of the bruise on his forehead. Oldham made no comment and Archer volunteered nothing. Cops took any words you said and used them to put you in a cage.

“Somebody worked him over good. I wonder why.”

Oldham shrugged. “To find out what he was doing and what he knew, why else? And where’d you get that bruise on your noggin?”

Okay, tap, tap, tap, Archer.

“It’s called dancing while drunk.” Archer stood. “Doesn’t look like they were satisfied with his answers.”

“If he gave any. So, where’s your client?”

“I called her office this morning. Nobody answered.”

“New Year’s Day. LA takes every opportunity not to work. But not us county stiffs.”

“With that new guy, Bill Parker, in charge at LAPD, you county boys feeling the pressure? Sounds like they turned over a new leaf in the City of Angels.”

Oldham snorted. “Yeah, all the rotten chumps Parker fired tried to get on with the county. We told them to go jump in the Pacific with lead feet.”

“Is that right?” said Archer. He was not going to point out that a number of county cops had been paid off to form a protective shield around the Clover Club, the nicest gambling joint in southern California and just outside of LA’s city limits. The gangster Mickey Cohen had been rousted by this squad to leave the Clover alone. He had retaliated by using a recording showing a high-ranking detective on the take. The ensuing scandal had brought down some top county and city cops.

Oldham was just getting worked up. “Yeah, that’s right. I don’t like dirty cops, never have. Sure, I could have looked the other way and got slipped extra dough in my pocket easy enough, and buy a nicer car with it or take the wife out to a nice place to eat. But I like my Plymouth and I like my wife’s cooking.” He turned to stare directly at Archer, his eyes hard, mean flint chips. “And LA is LA, Archer. No matter who they got in there to clean house, whether it’s this Parker guy or anybody else, at the end of the day the stink will come back, like flies on shit. It always does. City of Angels? Now, that’s a good one. Name me one vice you can’t buy in that town.”

“Well, LAPD did take down Mickey Cohen.”

Oldham barked, “No, the Feds did. That Senator Kefauver got him. On tax evasion. Hell, that don’t count.”

Archer was done with the professional chit-chat. “Got a time of death yet?”

Oldham looked at him funny. “Why do you need to know that?”

“Just professional curiosity.”

“Damn, the coroner told me, but I plum forgot.”

Archer eyed the other plainclothes who were staring at him with unfriendly eyes. Maybe Oldham wasn’t such a good egg after all, he thought. Or maybe Archer had finally worn out his welcome with the county’s thin blue line.

“You find a weapon?”

“Nope. From the hole it made in his head, I’m thinking a .38 or bigger.” He side-eyed Archer. “Maybe your client mistook him for a burglar, shot first, saw what she did, got spooked, and hightailed it. Dames do that, you know.”

“And the lack of blood?”

“She shot him outside and dragged him in here.”

“If she thought he was a burglar, why go to all that trouble? She was within her rights. She’d call the cops, end of story.”

“But maybe she knew the guy? Maybe she wanted to kill him.”

“That’s a lot of maybes, Phil. Let me throw one back at you. Maybe somebody killed Lamb and took her body and left this stiff behind to confuse things. And, as to your theory? I’ve met Lamb. She’s less than half this guy’s size. She wasn’t dragging his butt anywhere.”

“She could’ve had help.”

“You find blood outside?”

“Still looking.”

“And you’re saying she went on the lam. And yet there’s a Chevy coupe in the carport. It belongs to Lamb. Hopefully her body’s not inside.”

“We’re going to pop the lock and see.”

“Well, if she did run, I guess she wouldn’t want to do so in her own car,” noted Archer. “You talk to the cab companies yet? Maybe she took one to the train or bus station or the airport.”

“Working on it. But first things first, we need to identify the stiff, and the sooner the better. So, where’d you meet her?”

“At Chasen’s last night. I was having dinner with a friend of hers and she showed up and dropped her story on me when she found out what I did for a living.”

“Chasen’s, huh?” He slipped out the stogie and looked at his colleagues. “You two ever been to Chasen’s?” They shook their heads. “Me neither. Out of the range of my salary. Didn’t know you moved in such uppity circles, Archer. You on the take or what?”

“What do PIs have to offer?” Archer countered.

“You still drive that fancy car? The one with the steering wheel on the wrong side?”

“Yeah. But I basically won that playing roulette in Reno.”

“You that lucky?”

“I was that night.”

Oldham lazily scratched his chin. “And she thought someone was trying to kill her?”

“Yeah. I was going to go by her office this morning to talk to her.”

“And why didn’t you?” said Oldham sharply, going in for the kill now. “And how the hell did you know to call Barry in the first place about this? Come on, gumshoe, spill it. I don’t have time to kick the shit around with you or anybody else.”

“Heard the call out about a body being found at Lamb’s address on the police radio.”

That merely inflamed Oldham’s inferno. He chest bumped Archer. “That call came in well before dawn. You called Barry this afternoon and said you heard from a friend of a friend. You sure it wasn’t you who called in the body?”

Archer was ready for this. “I was nowhere near. What I meant was a local associate of mine heard the call out and didn’t think anything of it because he didn’t know Lamb had retained me. I was actually supposed to meet Lamb at her office this morning. I called there, like I said, just to make sure we were still on. When no one answered, I started to get worried. I talked to my associate and that’s when I found out. Then I called Barry.”

“What’s the name of this local associate?”

“I start answering those sorts of questions, I might as well turn in my license, Phil.”

Oldham didn’t seem convinced by this, but he also didn’t seem inclined to pursue it. He put the stogie back in his mouth and clamped down on it.

“Any of the neighbors hear anything?” asked Archer.

“Old lady named Danforth didn’t. Said she was sound asleep. She looks to be a hundred, so I tend to believe her. The neighbors on the other side are out of the country. Danforth says they’re in France.” Oldham put the stogie in his jacket pocket, unwrapped a stick of chewing gum and stuck it in his mouth. “I was in France once. Only there was a war going on.”

“Yeah, me too. It was a real kick.”

At that moment a short, white-haired, flabby man in a three-piece dark suit with a soiled shirt collar and a straight black tie appeared from somewhere looking tired and uninterested. “All right, Phil, we can get the body outta here now.”

A stretcher had been leaned against the wall and the two plainclothes were about to lift the body onto it when Archer bent down to help. “I got this side, fellas.”

They heaved and the body went on the stretcher and was carried out by the two men.

The coroner turned to Oldham. “I’ll do the postmortem this afternoon. I’ll take a leap and say a bullet to the head killed him.”

As Archer watched the coroner leave he flexed his fingers. Rigor mortis had completely passed on the body. Archer calculated that the man had been dead no later than around two or three in the afternoon yesterday, or around five hours before Lamb had approached them at Chasen’s.

He looked up to see Oldham staring dead at him. The homicide man made a show of glancing in the direction of where the stretcher had disappeared and then looked at Archer’s hands.

“Guess you got your answer on when he bought it, Archer.”

“You going to file a missing person’s report on Lamb?”

“Not up to me.”

Archer turned to leave.

“Oh, and Archer?”

“Yeah?”

“Happy fucking New Year, you prick.”