Hollywood Tough

Chapter 13

Nicky lived in one of two older steel-and-glass high-rise towers off Sunset, built in the late sixties. The condo buildings were called, appropriately enough, Hollywood Towers. Nicky Marcella had one of the East Tower penthouses, P-4.

Shane had been there before and knew they had security elevators, so he parked out front and pulled a big empty pizza box out of his trunk, which he sometimes used on occasions like this. He climbed back into the front seat, took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and waited. It was 12:50 A. M., but one of the advantages of working Hollywood was that the town never slept. They didn't roll up the streets at eleven.

Shane only had to wait about ten minutes before he saw an attractive thirty-year-old woman pull into the underground parking garage of the East Tower. She looked flashy, with blond hair and hoop earrings. He got out of the Acura, grabbed his pizza box, ran across the street into the building, and ducked under the closing garage gate. The woman was hurrying toward the tower elevator, where she used her security card. The elevator doors opened and she entered just as Shane arrived with the pizza box and caught the closing door.

"Hold it! Only three minutes till I'm over my half-hour time limit." He smiled, then crowded into the lift with her, easily bypassing the building's only general security feature. The woman seemed slightly annoyed and maybe a little frightened, so Shane tried to put her at ease. "Pizza Hut… I don't usually deliver, I'm the night manager, but this flu epidemic's got me down to three drivers."

She smiled, more relaxed as Shane pushed the "P" for penthouse.

The door opened on nine and she got off. Shane rode up to the penthouse on the twenty-fifth floor. When he stepped off the elevator, he was facing a smoked, marbleized mirror. Very sixties.

Nicky's apartment was at the end of the hall. Shane rang the bell. Nothing. He rang again. Still nothing. Then he reached into his back pocket and pulled out the leather case containing his lock picks. Fortunately, this door had dead-bolts. There were no electronic locks when the Towers were built. Nicky had not upgraded his security strange behavior for an ex-crook.

It took Shane four minutes to work the tumblers. First he slid in the long, flat, narrow pick, then fed in the smaller picks with hooks on the ends, jiggling each one until the pick lodged itself in a tumbler. When he had enough picks inserted into the lock so the tumblers were all engaged, he took the handful and turned them together. The lock clicked. The door opened.

The Hollywood Towers were old buildings, but they were well placed, and the views' were magnificent. Nicky had furnished his penthouse lavishly: plush pile carpeting, antique wood pieces, fawn-colored tie-back drapes. A few brightly painted Chinese screens hung on the interior wall. But the dominant feature was the magnificent view. Two walls were wrapped with floor-to-ceiling glass, which showed the twinkling lights all the way to Santa Monica.

Shane went through the place, frisking it quickly. He started in the bathroom, which all cops learn is the temple of human weakness. But Nicky was playing it pretty straight-no drugs, no Viagra. He was, however, using some hair color-Just for Men, Dark Brown.

When Shane finished searching the bathroom, he moved into the bedroom. In the closet hung twenty rather garish suits, including the orange-brown number Nicky had worn at Farrell's party. There was a rack of expensive shoes. On the top shelf, in a shoe box, he found a 9mm Beretta with two clips, both loaded. He replaced it, then finished the closet, remembering to search the suit pockets, but he found nothing. Next he moved to the dresser.

The sock drawer-always a treat.

Under Nicky's argyles, Shane found a small leather book with twenty Polaroid pictures of beautiful half-clad or naked women. They were carefully mounted under plastic, each with a code number written on a slip at the bottom. Shane flipped through it twice. Carol wasn't in the book. He put it back, wondering if it was some kind of out call or trick book.

Half an hour after entering, he had done his search. He settled himself in a big overstuffed chair in the living room, where he had a commanding view of the twinkling lights of the city. Off to the east, he could see the high-rises of the financial district; off to the west, about five miles away, the lights of Century City glittered. Shane watched them shine while his own spirits darkened.

Of course, there was very little he could do to escape the fact that he had probably played a key role in Carol White's murder. He didn't think Black Mills would beat one of his own meal tickets to death. Shane had found this poor girl for Nicky, had told Nicky where she was, and now, less than ten hours later, she was dead, hanging in a garage on West 11th in Rampart.

Shane looked down at Sunset Boulevard below and wondered at the allure of Tinseltown, the glitzy magnet of fame and stardom. Shane did a rough chronology, playing the "Where Was I Then" game.

When Mr. and Mrs. White had conceived Carol, where was Shane? He did the math. Was he still living with foster families? When she was still in high school, he was getting ready to join the Marines. Then she won Miss Solar Energy, came to Hollywood, and was almost a star. Almost… I was that close.

Yesterday their paths finally crossed. They looked at each other across the chipped linoleum-topped table in the Snake Charmers Bar. The cop and the hooker. She had told him who she was… not so much by what she said but with her eyes. He saw her lost dream in their sparkle as she remembered her chance at stardom. When she told that story like a zombie, she seemed to rise from the dead.

Somehow, Shane had connected with her tragedy. He had sympathized. He wished that Franco Zeffirelli had let her out of that damn chair, because then she would have known. She would have been able to leave the memory behind. This way it had only served to defeat her. And now, because of Shane, she was dead.

Shane felt his chest tighten. He tried to tell himself it was inevitable. Hey, she was already on this trail before I met her. If it wasn't one thing that got her, it would have been another, right? The drugs or a pissed-off john. Death was the price of life. It was the inevitability of being. She was born to lose; born to die young. But he couldn't quite get there. Despite all the rationalization, he felt guilty and sad.

Shane knew these ruminations contained nothing useful for him, but he couldn't stop. They were the kind of thoughts rookie cops get when they roll on their first homicide and see maggots and green flies crawling in the victim's mouth. Or when they catch their first blood-soaked T. A., where they have to pry some poor guy off his steering wheel and watch his guts run down onto the dash. Where was I when he ran this stop? Where was I when the fatal shot was fired? Why couldn't I have stopped it? Am I doing anything here, or am I just a glorified janitor cleaning up the mess?

Then he heard a key in the lock and the door to Nicky's apartment opened. Shane sat very still as the little hustler entered the room. Nicky turned and relocked the door, then started across the living room. He was moving uncertainly, or maybe he was slightly drunk. He stripped off his tie and let it fall on the carpet as he entered the bedroom, not once glancing in Shane's direction.

Shane got to his feet and followed. He heard Nicky whistling something off-key in the bathroom. Shane crept silently across the carpet and stood in the doorway. Nicky was taking out his contacts. He had one finger up to his right eye, and was just about to remove a lens when he glanced in the mirror and saw Shane standing there.

"Hi," Shane said.

"Fuuuuckkk!" Nicky shrieked.

Shane took two steps into the bathroom, grabbed Nicky by his silk shirt, and pulled him out of the room. The little bullshitter stumbled and fell onto the bedroom carpet, then scrambled to get away. Shane reached out his foot and tripped him. Nicky sprawled.

"Stay there, Nicky," Shane ordered. But Nicky came up again and made a dash for the bedroom door. Shane grabbed him, spun him, then ran Nicky backward across the room and slammed him into the closet door.

"O0000hhhhf," Nicky gasped.

Shane jerked him around and held him by the collar of his expensive shirt, roughly yanking him close.

"Shane, what're you doing? Leggo!" the grifter croaked. "I don't like being played, Nicky."

"I… I I… I didn't. Whatta you talking about?"

"Carol White. I wanna know why you were looking for her, and if you try and tell me you wanted to put her in a movie, I'm gonna kick the shit outta you."

"Shane… I… she…"

"Your part called for translucent? She was about as translucent as a concrete wall. I should've smelled your con when I first saw her. It was all bullshit, hadda be."

"Shane, look… look, will ya, for Chrissake? Let go of me. This is a custom-made raw silk shirt here. I send to Hong Kong for these. You're gonna tear the stitches."

Shane turned him loose.

"Jesus H. Christ…" Nicky wheezed.

"You praying now, or are you just taking your Savior's name in vain?" Shane snarled.

"Shane, will you calm down, please? What's this all about?"

"She's dead, Nicky. Somebody beat the shit out of her, hung her from a rafter in a vacant garage in Rampart."

"Dead. G.?"

"Dead. Gone. On the ark with extreme prejudice. Somebody made it hurt, then they killed her."

"Oh, my God," the little hustler said as tears sprang into his eyes.

The tears surprised Shane, so he took a step back to reconsider.

"Oh, my God… Please, no. Not little Carol… not her…" Nicky wailed. "Are you sure?"

"I identified the body."

Nicky sank down on the bed and began to weep. It sort of threw Shane, who was right in the middle of one of his patented tough-guy performances. It was disconcerting to all of a sudden have the mark start crying. But Shane reminded himself that Nicky Marcella was a street hustler, a con man who could probably break down and cry at a Tupperware party.

"Cut it out," Shane finally barked.

When Nicky looked up, his lower lip was trembling. "I didn't mean for anything to happen to her. Honest, Shane, I swear."

"Who did you tell? Somebody else wanted you to find her. Who were you working for?"

"Look, Shane…"

"Nicky, in about five seconds I'm going to introduce you to the biggest shithead on the LAPD. His name is Lou Ruta. He's not a prince like me. He's a farting, growling nightmare with a rubber hose. He caught Carol's murder and he's gonna hang it on the first person he can find who looks half good for it. He'll lock you up in one of the iso cells they got at County, and before he's done, you'll be confessing to the Black Dahlia murder."

"Okay… okay… but this is… this is kind a ticklish."

"No it's not, Nicky. It's murder. A brutal first-degree homicide. And you're gonna start spitting out info or I'm takin' you downtown."

Then Nicky told Shane a story he found almost impossible to believe.