The Black Dahlia

Seven

The phone woke me up early Wednesday morning, cutting off a dream featuring Tuesday’s Daily News headline — “Fire and Ice Cops KO Negro Thugs” — and a beautiful blonde with Kay’s body. Figuring it was the newshounds who’d been pestering me since the shoot-out, I fumbled the receiver onto the nightstand and dived back to slumberland. Then I heard, “Rise and shine, partner!” and picked it up.

“Yeah, Lee.”

“You know what day this is?”

“The fifteenth. Payday. You called me up at six A.M. to—” I stopped when I caught an edge of nervous glee in Lee’s voice. “Are you okay?”

“I’m swell. I ran Mulholland at a hundred ten, played house with Kay all day yesterday. Now I’m bored. Feel like doing some police work?”

“Keep going.”

“I just talked to a snitch who owes me big. He says Junior Nash has got a fuck pad — a garage on Coliseum and Norton, in back of a green apartment building. Race you there? Loser buys the beer at the fights tonight?”

New headlines danced in front of my eyes. I said, “You’re on,” hung up and dressed in record time, then ran out to my car and gunned it the eight or nine miles to Leimert Park. And Lee was already there, leaning against his Ford, parked at the curb in front of the only structure on a huge block of vacant lots — a puke-green bungalow court with a two-story shack at the rear.

I pulled up behind him and got out. Lee winked and said, “You lost.”

I said, “You cheated.”

He laughed. “You’re right, I called from a pay phone. Reporters been bothering you?”

I gave my partner a slow eyeballing. He seemed relaxed but itchy underneath, with his old jocular front back in place. “I holed up. You?”

“Bevo Means came by, asked me how it felt. I told him I wouldn’t want it for a steady diet.”

I pointed to the courtyard. “You talk to any of the tenants? Check for Nash’s car?”

Lee said, “No vehicle, but I talked to the manager. He’s been renting Nash that shack in the back. He’s used it a couple of times to entertain poon, but the manager hasn’t seen him in a week or so.”

“You shake it?”

“No, waiting for you.”

I drew my .38 and pressed it to my leg; Lee winked and aped me, and we walked through the courtyard to the shack. Both floors had flimsy-looking wooden doors, with rickety steps leading to the second story. Lee tried the bottom door; it creaked open. We pressed ourselves to the wall on opposite sides of it, then I wheeled and entered, my gun arm extended.

No sound, no movement, only cobwebs and a wood floor strewn with yellowed newspapers and bald tires. I backed out; Lee took the lead up the steps, walking on his toes. At the landing, he gave the doorknob a jiggle, shook his head no and kicked the door in, clean off its hinges.

I ran up the stairs; Lee moved inside gun first. At the top, I saw him reholstering his piece. He said, “Okie trash,” and made a gesture that took in the whole room. I stepped over the door and nodded my head in agreement.

The crib reeked of rotgut wine. A bed fashioned from two folded-out car seats took up most of the floor space; it was covered with upholstery stuffing and used rubbers. Empty muscatel short dogs were piled in corners, and the one window was streaked with cobwebs and dirt. The stench got to me, so I walked over and opened the window. Looking out, I saw a group of uniformed cops and men in civilian clothes standing on the sidewalk on Norton, about halfway down the block to 39th Street. All of them were staring at something in the weeds of a vacant lot; two black-and-whites and an unmarked cruiser were parked at the curb. I said, “Lee, come here.”

Lee stuck his head out the window and squinted. “I think I see Millard and Sears. They were supposed to be catching squeals today, so maybe—”

I ran out of the pad, down the steps and around the corner to Norton, Lee at my heels. Seeing a coroner’s wagon and a photo car screech to a halt, I sprinted. Harry Sears was knocking back a drink in full view of a half dozen officers; I glimpsed horror in his eyes. The photo men had moved into the lot and were fanning out, pointing their cameras at the ground. I elbowed my way past a pair of patrolmen and saw what it was all about.

It was the nude, mutilated body of a young woman, cut in half at the waist. The bottom half lay in the weeds a few feet away from the top, legs wide open. A large triangle had been gouged out of the left thigh, and there was a long, wide cut running from the bisection point down to the top of the pubic hair. The flaps of skin beside the gash were pulled back; there were no organs inside. The top half was worse: the breasts were dotted with cigarette burns, the right one hanging loose, attached to the torso only by shreds of skin; the left one slashed around the nipple. The cuts went all the way down to the bone, but the worst of the worst was the girl’s face. It was one huge purpled bruise, the nose crushed deep into the facial cavity, the mouth cut ear to ear into a smile that leered up at you, somehow mocking the rest of the brutality inflicted. I knew I would carry that smile with me to my grave.

Looking up, I felt cold all over; my breath came in spurts. Shoulders and arms brushed me and I heard a jumble of voices: “There’s not a goddamned drop of blood—” “This is the worst crime on a woman I’ve seen in my sixteen years—” “He tied her down. Lock, you can see the rope burns on her ankles—” Then a long, shrill whistle sounded.

The dozen or so men quit jabbering and looked at Russ Millard. He said calmly, “Before it gets out of hand, let’s put the kibosh on something. If this homicide gets a lot of publicity, we’re going to get a lot of confessions. That girl was disemboweled. We need information to eliminate the loonies with, and that’s it. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t tell your wives, don’t tell your girlfriends, don’t tell any other officers. Harry?”

Harry Sears said, “Yeah, Russ,” palming his flask so the boss wouldn’t see it. Millard caught the act and rolled his eyes in disgust. “No reporters are to view the body. You photo men, take your pictures now. You coroner’s men, put a sheet over the body when they finish. You patrolmen, stake up a crime scene perimeter from the street all the way to six feet in back of the body. Any reporter who tries to cross it, you arrest immediately. When the lab men get here to examine the body, you move the reporters over to the opposite side of the street. Harry, you call Lieutenant Haskins at University Station and tell him to send over every man he can spare for canvassing.”

Millard glanced around and noticed me. “Bleichert, what are you doing here? Is Blanchard here, too?”

Lee was squatting beside the stiff, writing in a pocket notebook. Pointing north, I said, “Junior Nash is renting a garage in back of that building over there. We were shaking it down when we saw the hubbub.”

“Was there blood on the premises?”

“No. This isn’t Nash, Lieutenant.”

“We’ll let the lab men be the judge of that. Harry!”

Sears was sitting in a black-and-white, talking into a radio mike. Hearing his name, he yelled, “Yeah, Russ!”

“Harry, when the lab men get here have them go up to that green building on the corner and test the garage for blood and latent prints. Then I want the street sealed—”

Millard stopped when he saw cars swinging onto Norton, beelining for the commotion; I glanced down at the corpse. The photo techs were still snapping pictures from all angles; Lee was still jotting in his notebook. The men milling around on the sidewalk kept looking at the stiff, then averting their eyes. On the street, reporters and camera jockeys were pouring out of cars, Harry Sears and a cordon of blues standing at the ready to hold them back. I got itchy to stare, and gave the girl a detailed eyeing.

Her legs were spread for sex, and from the way the knees buckled I could tell that they were broken; her jet-black hair was free of matted blood, like the killer had given her a shampoo before he dumped her. That awful death leer came on like the final brutality — it was cracked teeth poking out of ulcerated flesh that forced me to look away.

I found Lee on the sidewalk, helping string up crime scene ropes. He stared through me, like all he could see was the ghosts in the air. I said, “Junior Nash, remember?”

Lee’s gaze zeroed in on me. “He didn’t do this. He’s trash, but he didn’t do this.”

Noise rose from the street as more reporters arrived and a line of blues linked arms to restrain them. I shouted to make myself heard: “He beat an old woman to death! He’s our priority warrantee!”

Lee grabbed my arms and squeezed them numb. “This is our priority, and we’re staying! I’m senior, and I say so!” The words rumbled over the scene, causing heads to turn in our direction. I pulled my arms free and snapped to who Lee’s ghost was.

“Okay, partner.”

Over the next hour, 39th and Norton filled up with police vehicles, reporters and a big crowd of rubberneckers. The body was removed on two sheet-covered stretchers; in the back of the meat wagon a lab team rolled the dead girl’s prints before hauling her downtown to the morgue. Harry Sears gave the press a handout that Russ Millard composed, the straight dope of everything except the gutting of the stiff. Sears drove to City Hall to check the records of the Missing Persons Bureau, and Millard stayed behind to direct the investigation.

Lab technicians were dispatched to prowl the lot for possible murder weapons and women’s clothing; another forensic team was sent to check for latents and bloodstains at Junior Nash’s fuck pad. Then Millard counted cop heads. There were four men directing traffic and keeping civilian ghouls in line, twelve bluesuits and five plainclothesmen, Lee and me. Millard dug a street atlas out of his cruiser and divided the entire Leimert Park area into foot beats, then assigned each man his territory and mandatory questions to be asked of every person in every house, apartment and store: Have you heard female screams at any time over the past forty-eight hours? Have you seen anyone discarding or incinerating women’s clothing? Have you noticed any suspicious cars or people loitering in the area? Have you passed by Norton Avenue between 39th and Coliseum Streets during the past twenty-four hours, and if so, did you notice anyone in the vacant lots?

I was assigned Olmsted Avenue, three blocks east of Norton, from Coliseum south to Leimert Boulevard; Lee was given the stores and building sites on Crenshaw, from 39th north to Jefferson. We made plans to meet at the Olympic at 8:00 and split up; I started pounding pavement.

I walked, rang doorbells and asked questions, getting negative answers, writing down the addresses where no one was at home, so that the second wave of canvassing cops would have the numbers to work from. I talked to sherry-sneaking housewives and bratty little kids; to pensioners and on-leave servicemen, even an off-duty cop who worked West LA Division. I threw in questions on Junior Nash and the late model white sedan and showed around his mug shots. All I got was a big fat zero; at 7:00 I walked back to my car disgusted by what I’d blundered into.

Lee’s car was gone, and forensic arclights were being set up at 39th and Norton. I drove to the Olympic hoping for a good series of bouts to take the bad taste of the day out of my mouth.

H.J. Caruso had left tickets for us at the front turnstile, along with a note saying he had a hot date and wouldn’t be showing up. Lee’s ticket was still in the envelope; I grabbed mine and headed for H.J.’s box. The first prelim of an all-bantamweight card had already started, and I settled in to watch and wait for Lee.

The two tiny Mex warriors put on a good fight, and the crowd ate it up. Coins rained down from the top tier; shouts in Spanish and English filled the arena. After four rounds I knew that Lee wasn’t going to show; the bantys, both cut bad, made me think of the butchered girl. I got up and left, knowing exactly where Lee was.

I drove back to 39th and Norton. The entire lot was lit up by arclights — as bright as day. Lee was standing just inside the crime scene rope. The night had turned cold; he was hunched into his letterman’s jacket as he watched the lab techs poke around in the weeds.

I walked over. Lee saw me coming and did a quick draw, shooting me with finger pistols, his thumbs the hammers. It was a routine he pulled when he was jacked up on Benzedrine.

“You were supposed to meet me. Remember?”

Arclight glow gave Lee’s raw nerved face a blue-white cast. “I said this was priority. Remember that?”

Looking off in the distance, I saw other vacant lots illuminated. “It’s priority for the Bureau, maybe. Just like Junior Nash is priority for us.”

Lee shook his head. “Partner, this is big. Horrall and Thad Green were down here a couple of. hours ago. Jack Tierney’s been detached to Homicide to run the investigation, with Russ Millard backstopping. You want my opinion?”

“Shoot.”

“It’s a showcase. A nice white girl gets snuffed, the Department goes all out to get the killer to show the voters that passing the bond issue got them a bulldog police force.”

“Maybe she wasn’t such a nice girl. Maybe that old lady that Nash killed was somebody’s loving granny. Maybe you’re taking this thing too personal, and maybe we let the Bureau handle it and get back to our job before Junior kills somebody else.”

Lee balled his fists. “You got any other maybes?”

I stepped forward. “Maybe you’re afraid of Bobby De Witt getting out Maybe you’re too proud to ask me for help to scare him away from the woman we both care for. Maybe we let the Bureau chalk up that dead girl for Laurie Blanchard.”

Lee uncoiled his fists and turned away: I watched him rock on his heels, hoping he’d be fighting mad or wisecracking or anything but hurt when I finally saw his face. I made fists, then shouted: “Talk to me, goddamnit! We’re partners! We killed four fucking men together, now you pull this shit on me!”

Lee turned around. He flashed his patented demon grin, but it came off nervous and sad, used up. His voice was raspy, stretched thin.

“I used to watchdog Laurie when she played. I was a scrapper, and all the other kids were afraid of me. I had a lot of girlfriends — you know, kiddie romance stuff. The girls used to tease me about Laurie, go on about how much time I spent with her, like she was my real sweetheart.

“See, I doted on her. She was pretty and she was a trouper.

“Dad used to talk about getting Laurie ballet lessons and piano lessons and singing lessons. I was gonna work goon squad at Firestone Tire like him, and Laurie was gonna be an artiste. It was just talk, but I was a kid, and it was real to me.

“Anyway, right around the time she disappeared, Dad was talking up this lesson stuff a lot, and it made me mad at Laurie. I started ditching her when she went to play after school. There was this wild girl who’d moved into the neighborhood. She was- a roundheels, and she used to get tanked on bathtub and put out for all the boys. I was clicking her when Laurie got snatched, when I should have been protecting my sister.”

I reached for my partner’s arm to tell him I understood; Lee pushed my hand away. “Don’t tell me you understand, because I’ll tell you what makes it bad. Laurie got snuffed. Some degenerate strangled her or chopped her up. And when she died, I was thinking ugly things about her. About how I hated her because Dad thought she was a princess and I was a thug. I pictured my own sister cut up like that stiff this morning, and I laughed about it while I was with that floozy, screwing her and drinking her father’s booze.”

Lee took a deep breath and pointed to the ground a few yards away. A separate, inside perimeter had been staked, the two halves of the body marked in quicklime. I stared at the outline of the spread legs; Lee said, “I’m gonna get him. With you or without you, I’m gonna get him.”

I dredged up a ghost of a smile. “See you at the Hall tomorrow.”

“With you or without you.”

I said, “I heard you,” and walked back to my car. Hitting the ignition, I saw another empty lot a block to the north light up.

Eight

The first thing I saw when I walked into the squadroom the next morning was Harry Sears reading the Herald headline: “Hunt Werewolf’s Den in Torture Slaying!!!”; the second thing I saw was a chain of five men — two derelicts, two squarejohn types and one in county jail demins, manacled to a bench. Harry put his paper down, stammering, “C-c-confessors. S-s-said they s-sliced the girl.” I nodded, hearing screams coming from the interrogation room.

A moment later, Bill Koenig led a doubled-over fat man out the door, announcing to the bullpen at large, “He didn’t do it.” A couple of officers clapped satirically at their desks; a half dozen looked away, disgusted.

Koenig shoved the fat man out to the corridor. I asked Harry, “Where’s Lee?”

Harry pointed to Ellis Loew’s office. “W-with Loew. R-r-reporters, too.”

I walked over and peered through the crack in the doorway. Ellis Loew was standing in back of his desk, playing to a score of newshounds. Lee was seated at the DA’s side, dressed in his only suit. He looked tired — but nowhere near as edgy as he did last night.

Loew was sternly enunciating, “... and the heinous nature of the killing deems it imperative that we make every effort to catch this fiend as soon as possible. A number of specially trained officers, including Mr. Fire and his partner Mr. Ice, have been detached from their regular duties to aid in the investigation, and with men like them on the job, I think we can expect positive results soon. Moreover...”

I couldn’t hear for the pounding of blood in my head. I started to nudge the door open; Lee saw me, bowed to Loew and exited the office. He dogged me back to the Warrants cubicle; I wheeled around. “You got us detached, right?”

Lee put restraining hands on my chest. “Let’s take this slow and easy, okay? First off, I gave Ellis a memo. It said we got verified dope Nash blew our jurisdiction.”

“Are you fucking crazy!”

“Sssh. Listen, it was just to grease the skids. The APB on Nash still stands, the fuck pad is being staked out, every southside cop is out to cancel the bastard’s ticket. I’m gonna stay at the pad tonight myself. I’ve got binoculars, and I figure between them and the arclights I’ll be able to catch the plates on the cars that cruise down Norton. Maybe the killer’s gonna drive by to gloat. I’ll get all the license numbers, and check them against the DMV and R&I.”

I sighed. “Jesus, Lee.”

“Partner, all I want is a week on the girl. Nash is covered, and if he doesn’t get collared by then, we go back to him as our priority warrantee.”

“He’s too dangerous to let go. You know that.”

“Partner, he’s covered. Now don’t tell me you don’t want to build on your shine killings. Don’t tell me you don’t know that the dead girl is a better piece of pie than Junior Nash.”

I saw more Fire and Ice headlines. “One week, Lee. No more.”

Lee winked. “Copacetic.”

Captain Jack’s voice came over the intercom: “Gentlemen, everybody to the muster room. Now.”

I grabbed my notebook and walked through the bullpen. The ranks of the confessors had swollen, the new ones cuffed to radiators and heating pipes. Bill Koenig was slapping an old guy demanding to talk to Mayor Bowron; Fritzie Vogel was taking down names on a clipboard. The muster room was SRO, packed with Central and Bureau men and a shitload of plainclothes cops I’d never seen before. Captain Jack and Russ Millard were at the front, standing beside a floor microphone. Tierney tapped the mike, cleared his throat and spoke:

“Gentlemen, this is a general briefing on the 187 in Leimert Park. I’m sure you’ve all read the papers and you all know it’s a damn rough piece of work. It’s also a damn big piece of work. The mayor’s office has gotten a lot of calls, we’ve gotten a lot of calls, the City Council has gotten a lot of calls and Chief Horrall has gotten personal calls from a lot of people we want to keep happy. This werewolf stuff in the papers is going to get us a lot more calls, so let’s get going on it.

“We’ll start with the chain of command. I’m supervising, Lieutenant Millard is exec, Sergeant Sears is the runner between divisions. Deputy DA Loew is liaison to the press and civilian authorities, and the following officers are detached to Central Homicide, effective 1/16/47: Sergeant Anders, Detective Arcola, Sergeant Blanchard, Officer Bleichert, Sergeant Cavanaugh, Detective Ellison, Detective Grimes, Sergeant Koenig, Detective Liggett, Detective Navarette, Sergeant Pratt, Detective J. Smith, Detective W. Smith, Sergeant Vogel. You men see Lieutenant Millard after this briefing. Russ, they’re all yours.”

I got out my pen, giving the man next to me a gentle elbow to get more writing room. Every cop around me was doing the same thing; you could feel their attention rivet to the front of the room.

Millard spoke in his courtroom lawyer’s voice: “Yesterday, seven A.M.,Norton Avenue between 39th and Coliseum. A dead girl, naked, cut in half, right off the sidewalk in a vacant lot. Obviously tortured, but I’ll hold off on that until I talk to the autopsy surgeon — Doc Newbarr’s doing the job this afternoon at Queen of Angels. No reporters — there’s some details we don’t want them to know.

“The area has been thoroughly canvassed once — no leads so far. There was no blood where we found the body; the girl was obviously killed somewhere else and dumped in the lot. There’s a number of vacant lots in the area, and they’re being searched for weapons and bloodstains. An armed robbery-homicide suspect named Raymond Douglas Nash was renting a garage down the street — the place was checked for prints and bloodstains. The lab boys got zero, and Nash is not a suspect on the girl.

“There’s no ID on her yet, no matchup to anyone in the Missing Persons files. Her prints have been teletyped, so we should get some kind of report soon. An anonymous call to University Station started it all, by the way. The officer who caught the squeal said it was a hysterical woman walking her little girl to school. The woman didn’t give her name and hung up, and I think we can eliminate her as a suspect.”

Millard switched to a patient, professorial tone. “Until the body is ID’d, the investigation has to be centered on 39th and Norton, and the next step is recanvassing the area.”

A big collective groan rose. Millard scowled and said, “University Station will be the command post, and there’ll be clerks there to type up and collate the field officers’ reports. Clerical officers will be working up summary reports and evidence indexes. They’ll be posted on the squadroom board at University, with carbons distributed to all LAPD and sheriff’s divisions. You men here from other squads are to take what you hear at this briefing back to your station houses, put it on every crime sheet, every watch. Any information you get from patrolmen, you phone in to Central Homicide, extension 411. Now, I’ve got lists of recanvassing addresses for everyone but Bleichert and Blanchard. Bucky, Lee, take the same areas as yesterday. You men from other divisions, stand by; the rest of you men that Captain Tierney detached, see me now. That’s it!”

I jockeyed out the door and took service stairs down to the parking lot, wanting to avoid Lee and put some distance between him and my okay on the Nash memo. The sky had turned dark gray, and all the way to Leimert Park I thought of thunderstorms obliterating leads in the vacant lots, washing the sliced girl investigation and Lee’s grief over his little sister into the sewer until the gutters overflowed and Junior Nash popped his head out, begging to be arrested. As I parked my car, the clouds started to break up; soon I was canvassing with the sun beating down — and a new string of negative answers kiboshed my fantasies.

I asked the same questions I asked the day before, stressing Nash even harder. But this time it was different. Cops were combing the area, writing down the license numbers of parked cars and dragging sewers for women’s clothing — and the locals had listened to the radio and read the papers.

One sherry-breathing hairbag held out a plastic crucifix and asked me if it would keep the werewolf away; an old geezer wearing skivvies and a clerical collar told me the dead girl was God’s sacrifice because Leimert Park voted Democrat in the ’46 Congressional. A little boy showed me a movie pinup of Lon Chaney, Jr. as the Wolfman and said that the vacant lot at 39th and Norton was the launching pad for his rocket ship, and a boxing fan who recognized me from the Blanchard fight asked me for my autograph, then told me straight-faced that his neighbor’s bassett hound was the killer, and would I please shoot the cocksucker? The sane nos I got were as boring as the nut answers were fanciful, and I started to feel like the straight man in a monstrous comedy routine.

At 1:30, I finished and walked back to my car, thinking about lunch and checking in at University Station. There was a piece of paper stuck under the wiper blades — a sheet of Thad Green’s personal stationery, with “Official Police Witness — admit this officer to autopsy of Jane Doe #31, 2:00 P.M., 1/16/47” typed in the middle of the page. Green’s signature was scrawled at the bottom — and it looked suspiciously like the writing of Sergeant Leland C. Blanchard. Laughing against my will, I drove to Queen of Angels Hospital.

The corridors were crowded with nun-nurses and oldsters on gurneys. I showed an elderly sister my badge and inquired after the autopsy; she crossed herself and led me down the hall, pointing to a double-doored entranceway marked PATHOLOGY. I walked up to the patrolman standing guard and flashed my invitation; he snapped to attention and swung the doors open, and I entered a small cold room, all antiseptic white, a long metal table in the middle. Two sheet-covered objects lay on top of it. I sat down on a bench facing the slab, shivering at the thought of seeing the girl’s death smile again.

The double doors opened a few seconds later. A tall old man smoking a cigar came in, along with a nun carrying a steno pad. Russ Millard, Harry Sears and Lee followed them, the Homicide exec shaking his head. “You and Blanchard keep turning up like bad pennies. Doc, can we smoke?”

The old man took a scalpel from his back pocket and wiped it on his trouser leg. “Sure. Won’t bother the girl any, she’s in dreamland for keeps. Sister Margaret, help me get that sheet off, will you?”

Lee sat down on the bench beside me; Millard and Sears lit cigarettes, then dug out pens and notebooks. Lee yawned, and asked me, “Get anything this morning?”

I saw that his Benzedrine juice was all but dead. “Yeah. A wolfman killer from Mars did the snuff. Buck Rogers is chasing him in his spaceship, and you should go home and sleep.”

Lee yawned again. “Later. My best tip was the Nazis. A guy told me he saw Hitler in a bar on 39th and Crenshaw. Oh Jesus, Bucky.”

Lee lowered his eyes; I looked at the autopsy slab. The dead girl was uncovered, her head lolling in our direction. I stared at my shoes while the doctor rambled on in medicalese:

“On gross pathology, we have a female Caucasian. Muscle tone indicates her age is between sixteen and thirty. The cadaver is presented in two halves, with bisection at the level of the umbilicus. On the upper half: the head is intact, with massive depressed skull fractures, facial features significantly obscured by massive ecchymoses, hematomas and edema. Downward displacement of nasal cartilage. Through-and-through laceration from both mouth corners across masseter muscles, extending through temporal mandibula joints upward to both earlobes. No visible signs of neck bruises. Multiple lacerations on anterior thorax, concentrated on both breasts. Cigarette burns on both breasts. Right breast almost completely severed from thorax. Inspection of upper half abdominal cavity reveals no free-flowing blood. Intestines, stomach, liver and spleen removed.”

The doctor took an audible breath; I looked up and watched him puff on his cigar. The steno nun caught up with her note taking and Millard and Sears eyeballed the stiff deadpan while Lee stared at the floor, wiping sweat from his brow. The doc felt both breasts, then said, “Lack of hypertrophy indicates no pregnancy at time of death.” He grabbed his scalpel and started poking around inside the bottom half of the corpse. I shut my eyes and listened.

“Inspection of the lower half of the cadaver reveals a midline longitudinal incision extending from the umbilicus to the symphysis pubis. Mesentery, uterus, ovaries and rectum removed, multiple lacerations on both posterior and anterior cavity walls. Large triangular gouge on left thigh. Sister, help me turn her over.”

I heard the doors open; a voice called out, “Lieutenant!” I opened my eyes to see Millard getting up and the doctor and nun wrestling the stiff onto its stomach. When it was backside up, the doctor lifted the ankles and flexed the legs. “Both legs broken at the knee, and healing, light lash marks on the upper back and shoulders. Ligature marks on both ankles. Sister, hand me a speculum and swab.”

Millard came back and handed Sears a piece of paper. He read it and nudged Lee. The doctor and nun turned the bottom half of the body over, spreading the legs wide. My stomach flip-flopped; Lee said, “Bingo.” He stared at a teletype sheet while the doc droned on about lack of vaginal abrasions and the presence of old semen. The coldness in his voice made me angry; I grabbed the sheet and read: “Russ — she’s Elizabeth Ann Short, DOB 7/29/24, Medford, Mass. Feds ID’d the prints — she was arrested in Santa Barbara 9/43. Background check in progress. Report back to Hall following autopsy. Call in all available field officers. —J.T.”

The doctor said, “That’s it on preliminary postmortem. Later on I’ll have some more specifics, and I’ll run some toxicological tests.” He draped both halves of Elizabeth Ann Short and added, “Questions?” The nun headed for the door clutching her Steno pad.

Millard said, “Can you give us a reconstruction?”

“Pending the test results, sure. Here’s what she wasn’t: she wasn’t pregnant, she wasn’t raped, but she had had voluntary intercourse sometime during the past week or so. She took what you might call a gentle whipping within the past week; the last marks on her back are older than the cuts on her front side. Here’s what I think happened. I think she was tied down and tortured with a knife for a minimum of thirty-six to forty-eight hours. I think her legs were broken with a smooth, rounded instrument like a baseball bat while she was still alive. I think she either got beaten to death with something like a baseball bat, or she choked to death on her blood from the mouth wound. After she was dead, she was cut in half with a butcher knife or something resembling it, and the killer went in after her internal organs with something like a penknife. After that, he drained the blood from the body and washed it clean, my guess is in a bathtub. We took some blood samples from the kidneys, and in a few days we’ll be able to tell you if she had any dope or liquor in her system.”

Lee said, “Doc, did this guy know anything about medicine or anatomy? Why’d he go after that inside stuff?”

The doctor examined his cigar butt. “You tell me. The top-half organs he could have pulled out easily. The bottom organs he hacked with a knife to get at, like that was what interested him. He could have had medical training, but then again he could have had veterinary training, or taxidermist’s training, or biological training, or he could have taken Physiology 104 in the LA city school system or my Pathology for Beginners class at UCLA. You tell me. I’ll tell you what you’ve got for sure: she was dead six to eight hours before you found her, and she was killed someplace secluded that had running water. Harry, has this girl got a name yet?”

Sears tried to answer, but his mouth just fluttered. Millard put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Elizabeth Short.”

The doctor saluted heaven with his cigar. “God love you, Elizabeth. Russell, when you get the son of a bitch who did this to her, give him a kick in the balls and tell him it’s from Frederick D. Newbarr, M.D. Now all of you get out of here. I’ve got a date with a jumper suicide in ten minutes.”

Walking out of the elevator, I heard Ellis Loew’s voice, an octave louder and deeper than normal, echoing down the corridor. I caught “Vivisection of a lovely young woman,” “Werewolf psychopath” and “My political aspirations are subservient to my desire to see justice done.” Opening a connecting door into the Homicide pen, I saw the Republican bright boy emoting into radio mikes while a recording crew stood by. He was wearing an American Legion poppy on his lapel — probably purchased from the wino legionnaire who slept in the Hall of Records parking lot — a man he had once vigorously prosecuted for vagrancy.

The bullpen was taken over by ham antics, so I walked across the hall to Tierney’s office. Lee, Russ Millard, Harry Sears and two old-timer cops I hardly knew — Dick Cavanaugh and Vern Smith — were huddled around Captain Jack’s desk, examining a piece of paper the boss was holding up.

I looked over Harry’s shoulder. Three mug shots of a showstopper brunette were taped to the page, with three-close-up face photos of the corpse at 39th and Norton affixed next to them. The slashed-mouth smile jumped out at me; Captain Jack said, “The mugs are from the Santa Barbara PD. They popped the Short girl in September ’43 for underaged drinking, sent her home to her mother in Massachusetts. Boston PD contacted her an hour ago. She’s flying out to ID the stiff tomorrow. The Boston cops are doing a background check back east, and all Bureau days off are cancelled. Anybody complains, I point to those pictures. What did Doc Newbarr say, Russ?”

Millard said, “Tortured for two days. Cause of death the mouth wound or the head bashing. No rape. Internal organs removed. Dead six to eight hours before the body was dumped in the lot. What else have we got on her?”

Tierney checked some papers on his desk. “Except for the juvie roust, no other record. Four sisters, parents divorced, worked in the Camp Cooke PX during the war. The father’s here in LA. What’s next?”

I was the only one who blinked when the big boss asked number two for advice. Millard said, “I want to recanvass Leimert Park with the mugs. Me, Harry and two other men. Then I want to go to University Station, read reports and answer calls. Has Loew given the press a look at the mugs?”

Tierney nodded. “Yeah, and Bevo Means told me the father sold the Times and the Herald some old portrait pictures of the girl. She’ll be front page on the evening editions.”

Millard barked, “Damn,” the only word of profanity anyone ever heard him use. Seething, he said, “They’ll be coming out of the woodwork to greet her. Has the father been questioned?”

Tierney shook his head and consulted some memo slips. “Cleo Short, 1020½ South Kingsley, Wilshire District. I had an officer call him and tell him to stay put, that we’d be sending some men by to talk to him. Russ, you think the strange-o’s will fall in love with this one?”

“How many confessions so far?”

“Eighteen.”

“Double that by morning, more if Loew got the press excited with his purple prose.”

“I would say I got them motivated, Lieutenant. And I would say my prose fit the crime.”

Ellis Loew was standing in the doorway, Fritz Vogel and Bill Koenig behind him. Millard locked eyes with the radio ham. “Too much publicity is a hindrance, Ellis. If you were a policeman you’d know that.”

Loew flushed and reached for his Phi Beta Kappa key. “I’m a ranking civilian-police liaison officer, specially deputized by the City of Los Angeles.”

Millard smiled. “You’re a civilian, counselor.”

Loew bristled, then turned to Tierney. “Captain, have you sent men to talk to the victim’s father?”

Captain Jack said, “Not yet, Ellis. Soon.”

“How about Vogel and Koenig? They’ll get us what we need to know.”

Tierney looked up at Millard. The lieutenant gave an almost imperceptible head shake; Captain Jack said, “Aah, Ellis, in big homicide jobs the whip assigns the men. Aah, Russ, who do you think should go?”

Millard scrutinized Cavanaugh and Smith, me trying to look inconspicuous and Lee yawning, slouched against the wall. He said, “Bleichert, Blanchard, you bad pennies question Miss Short’s father. Bring your report to University Station tomorrow morning.”

Loew’s hands jerked his Phi Beta key clean off its chain; it fell to the floor. Bill Koenig squeezed in the doorway and picked it up; Loew about-faced into the hall. Vogel glared at Millard, then followed him. Harry Sears, breathing Old Grand Dad, said, “He sends a few niggers to the gas chamber and it goes to his head.”

Vern Smith said, “The niggers must have confessed.”

Dick Cavanaugh said, “With Fritzie and Bill they all confess.”

Russ Millard said, “Shit-brained, grandstanding son of a bitch.”

We took separate cars to the Wilshire District, rendezvousing in front of 1020½ South Kingsley at dusk. It was a garage apartment, shack sized, at the rear of a big Victorian house. Lights were burning inside; Lee, yawning, said, “Good guy-bad guy,” and rang the buzzer.

A skinny man in his fifties opened the door and said, “Cops, huh?” He had dark hair and pale eyes similar to the girl in the mug shots, but that was it for familial resemblance. Elizabeth Short was a knockout; he looked like a knockout victim: bony frame in baggy brown trousers and a soiled undershirt, moles all over his shoulders, seamed face pitted with acne scars. Pointing us inside, he said, “I got an alibi, just in case you think I did it. Tighter than a crab’s ass, and that is air tight.”

Mr. White Hat to the hilt, I said, “I’m Detective Bleichert, Mr. Short. This is my partner Sergeant Blanchard. We’d like to express our condolences for the loss of your daughter.”

Cleo Short slammed the door. “I read the papers, I know who you are. Neither one of you would have lasted one round with Gentleman Jim Jeffries. And as far as your condolences go, I say c’est la vie. Betty called the tune, so she had to pay the piper. Nothing’s free in this life. You want to hear my alibi?”

I sat down on a threadbare sofa and eyeballed the room. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with shelves spilling dime novels; there was the couch, one wooden chair and nothing else. Lee got out his notebook. “Since you’re so anxious to tell us, shoot.”

Short slumped into the chair and ground the legs into the floor, like an animal pawing the dirt. “I was Johnny on the spot at my job from Tuesday the fourteenth at two P.M. to five P.M. Wednesday the fifteenth. Twenty-seven straight hours, time and a half for the last seventeen. I’m a refrigerator repairman, the best in the west. I work at Frost King Appliances, 4831 South Berendo. My boss’s name is Mike Mazmanian. You call him. He’ll alibi me up tighter than a popcorn fart, and that is air tight.”

Lee yawned and wrote it down; Cleo Short crossed his arms over his bony chest, daring us to make something of it. I said, “When was the last time you saw your daughter, Mr. Short?”

“Betty came west in the spring of ’43. Stars in her eyes and hanky-panky on her mind. I hadn’t seen her since I left that dried-up old ginch of a wife of mine in Charlestown, Mass., on March 1,1930 A.D. and never looked back. But Betty wrote me and said she needed a flop, so I—”

Lee interrupted: “Cut the travelogue, pop. When was the last time you saw Elizabeth?”

I said, “Back off, partner. The man is cooperating. Go on, Mr. Short.”

Cleo Short dug in with his chair, glaring at Lee. “Before punchy here got wise, I was gonna tell you that I reached into my own savings and sent Betty a C-note to come west on, then I promised her three squares and a five-spot a week mad money if she kept the house tidy. A generous offer, if you want my opinion. But Betty had other things on her mind. She was a lousy housekeeper, so I gave her the boot on June 2, 1943 A.D., and I ain’t seen her since.”

I wrote the information down, then asked, “Did you know she was in LA recently?”

Cleo Short quit glaring at Lee and glared at me. “No.”

“Did she have any enemies that you knew of?”

“Just herself.”

Lee said, “No cute answers, Pops.”

I whispered, “Let him talk,” then said out loud, “Where did Elizabeth go when she left here in June of ’43?”

Short jabbed a finger at Lee. “You tell your pal he calls me Pops I call him stumblebum! Tell him disrespect’s a two-way street! Tell him I repaired Chief CB Horrall’s Maytag 821 model myself, and I mean air tight!”

Lee walked into the bathroom; I saw him chasing a handful of pills with sink water. I put on my calmest white hat voice: “Mr. Short, where did Elizabeth go in June of ’43?”

Short said, “That palooka lays a hand on me, I’ll fix his wagon air tight.”

“I’m sure you will. Would you ans—”

“Betty moved up to Santa Barbara, got a job at the Camp Cooke PX. She sent me a postcard in July. It said some soldier beat her up bad. That was the last I ever heard from her.”

“Did the card mention the soldier’s name?”

“No.”

“Did it mention the names of any of her friends up at Camp Cooke?”

“No.”

“Any boyfriends?”

“Hah!”

I put my pen down. “Why ‘hah’?”

The old man laughed so hard that I thought his chicken chest would explode. Lee walked out of the bathroom; I gave him a sign to ease off. He nodded and sat down next to me; we waited for Short to laugh himself out. When he was down to a dry chortle, I said, “Tell me about Betty and men.”

Short giggled. “She liked them and they liked her. Betty believed in quantity before quality, and I don’t think she was too good at saying no, unlike her mother.”

“Be specific,” I said. “Names, dates, descriptions.”

“You musta caught too many in the ring, Sonny, ’cause your seabag’s leaky. Einstein couldn’t remember the names of all Betty’s boyfriends, and my name ain’t Albert.”

“Give us the names you do remember.”

Short hooked his thumbs in his belt and rocked in the chair like a cut-rate cock of the walk. “Betty was man crazy, soldier crazy. She went for lounge lizards and anything white in a uniform. When she was supposed to be keeping house for me she was out prowling Hollywood Boulevard, cadging drinks off servicemen. When she was staying here this place was like a branch of the USO.”

Lee said, “Are you calling your own daughter a tramp?”

Short shrugged. “I’ve got five daughters. One bad apple ain’t so bad.”

Lee’s anger was oozing out of him; I put a restraining hand on his arm and could almost feel his blood buzzing. “What about names, Mr. Short?”

“Tom, Dick, Harry. Those punks took one look at Cleo Short and amscrayed with Betty pronto. That’s as specific as I can get. You look for anything not too ugly in a uniform, you won’t go wrong.”

I flipped to a fresh notebook page. “What about employment? Was Betty holding down a job when she stayed here?”

The old man shouted: “Betty’s job was working for me! She said she was looking for movie work, but that was a lie! All she wanted to do was parade the Boulevard in those black getups of hers and chase men! She ruined my bathtub dying her stuff black, then she took off before I could dock the damage out of her wages! Prowling the streets like a black widow spider, no wonder she got hurt! It’s her mother’s fault, not mine! No-cunt shanty Irish bitch! Not my fault!”

Lee drew a hard finger across his throat; we walked out to the street, leaving Cleo Short screaming at his four walls. Lee said, “Jesus fuck” I sighed, “Yeah,” thinking of the fact that we’d just been handed the entire U.S. armed forces as suspects.

I dug in my pockets for a coin. “Toss you for who writes it up?”

Lee said, “You do it, okay? I want to stick at Junior Nash’s pad and get some license numbers.”

“Try and get some sleep, too.”

“I will.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I can’t shit a shitter. Look, will you go over to the house and keep Kay company? She’s been worried about me, and I don’t want her to be alone.”

I thought of what I’d said at 39th and Norton last night — that statement of what all three of us knew but never talked about, that move forward that only Kay had the guts to take. “Sure, Lee.”

I found Kay in her usual weeknight posture — reading on the living room couch. She didn’t look up when I walked in, she just blew a lazy smoke ring and said, “Hi, Dwight.”

I took a chair across the coffee table from her. “How’d you know it was me?”

Kay circled a passage in the book. “Lee stomps, you tread cautiously.”

I laughed. “It’s symbolic, but don’t tell anybody.”

Kay stubbed out her cigarette and put the book down. “You sound worried.”

I said, “Lee’s all bent out of shape on the dead girl. He got us detached to work the investigation when we should be going after a priority warrantee, and he’s taking Benzedrine and starting to go a little squirrely. Has he told you about her?”

Kay nodded. “A little.”

“Have you read the papers?”

“I’ve avoided them.”

“Well, the girl is being played up as the hottest number since the atom bomb. There’s a hundred men working a single homicide, Ellis Loew’s looking to get fat off of it, Lee’s cuckoo on the subject—”

Kay disarmed my tirade with a smile. “And you were front page news on Monday, but you’re stale bread today. And you want to go after your big bad robber man and get yourself another headline.”

“Touché, but that’s only part of it.”

“I know. Once you got the headline, you’d hide out and not read the papers.”

I sighed. “Jesus, I wish you weren’t so much smarter than me.”

“And I wish you weren’t so cautious and complicated. Dwight, what is going to happen with us?”

“The three of us?”

“No, us.”

I looked around the living room, all wood and leather and Deco chromium. There was a glass-fronted mahogany cabinet; it was filled with Kay’s cashmere sweaters, all the shades of the rainbow at forty dollars a pop. The woman herself, South Dakota white trash molded by a cop’s love, sat across from me, and for once I said exactly what was on my mind. “You’d never leave him. You’d never leave this. Maybe if you did, maybe if Lee and I were quits as partners, maybe then we’d have a chance together. But you’d never give it all up.”

Kay took her time lighting a cigarette. Exhaling a breath of smoke, she said, “You know what he’s done for me?”

I said, “And for me.”

Kay tilted her head back and eyed the ceiling, brushed stucco with mahogany wainscoting. Blowing smoke rings, she said, “I had such a schoolgirl crush on you. Bobby De Witt and Lee used to drag me to the fights. I brought my sketch pad so I wouldn’t feel like one of those awful women buttering up their men by pretending they liked it. What I liked was you. The way you made fun of yourself with your teeth, the way you covered up so you wouldn’t get hit. Then you joined the Department, and Lee told me how he heard you informed on those Japanese friends of yours. I didn’t hate you for it, it just made you seem more real to me. The zoot suit thing, too. You were my storybook hero, only the stories were real, little bits and pieces here and there. Then the fight came along, and even though I hated the idea of it I told Lee to go ahead, because it seemed to mean the three of us were meant to be.”

I thought of a dozen things to say, all of them true, and just about the two of us. But I couldn’t, and ran to Lee for cover. “I don’t want you to worry about Bobby De Witt. When he gets out, I’ll lean on him. Hard. He’ll never come near you or Lee.”

Kay took her eyes off the ceiling and fixed me with a strange look, hard but sad underneath. “I’ve given up worrying about Bobby. Lee can handle him.”

“I think Lee’s afraid of him.”

“He is. But I think it’s because he knows so much about me, and Lee’s afraid he’ll let everyone know. Not that anyone cares.”

“I care. And if I lean on De Witt, he’ll be lucky to talk at all.”

Kay stood up. “For a man with an up-for-grabs heart, you are such a hardcase. I’m going to bed. Good night, Dwight.”

When I heard a Schubert quartet coming from Kay’s bedroom, I took pen and paper from the stationery cupboard and wrote out my report on the questioning of Elizabeth Short’s father. I included mention of his “air tight” alibi, his account of the girl’s behavior when she lived with him in ’43, the beating she got from a Camp Cooke soldier and her parade of nameless boyfriends. Padding the report with unnecessary details kept my mind most of the way off Kay, and when I finished I made myself two ham sandwiches, chased them with a glass of milk and fell asleep on the couch.

My dreams were mug shot flashes of recent bad guys, Ellis Loew representing the right side of the law with felony numbers stenciled across his chest. Betty Short joined him in black and white, full face and left profile views. Then all the faces dissolved into LAPD report forms rolling out endlessly as I tried to jot down information on Junior Nash’s whereabouts in the blank spaces. I woke up with a headache, knowing I was in for a very long day.

It was dawn. I walked out to the porch and picked up the morning Herald. The headline was “Hunt Boyfriends in Torture Killing,” a portrait photo of Elizabeth Short centered directly below it. It was captioned, “The Black Dahlia,” followed by, “Authorities today were searching into the love life of 22-year-old Elizabeth Short, victim of the ‘Werewolf Murder,’ whose romances had changed her, according to friends, from an innocent girl to a black-clad, man-crazy delinquent known as the Black Dahlia.”

I felt Kay beside me. She grabbed the paper, skimming the front page, giving a slight shudder. Handing it back, she asked, “Will all this be over soon?”

I flipped through the front section. Elizabeth Short took up six whole pages, most of the ink portraying her as a slinky femme fatale in a tight black dress. “No,” I said.

Nine

Reporters were surrounding University Station. The parking lot was packed and the curb was lined with radio trucks, so I double-parked, stuck “Official Police Vehicle” signs under my wiper blades and pushed through the cordon of newshounds, ducking my head to avoid being recognized. It didn’t work; I heard “Buck-kee!” and “Blei-chert,” then hands grabbed at me. My jacket pocket was ripped loose, and I shoved myself the rest of the way inside.

The entrance hall was filled with day watch blues going on duty; a connecting door opened up into a bustling squadroom. Cots lined the walls; I saw Lee passed out on one of them, sheets of newspaper covering his legs. Phones were ringing at desks all around me, and my headache came back, the pounding twice as bad. Ellis Loew was tacking slips of paper to a bulletin board; I tapped him hard on the shoulder.

He turned around. I said, “I want out of this circus. I’m a Warrants officer, not a Homicide dick, and I’ve got priority fugitives. I want to get un-detached. Now.”

Loew hissed, “No. You work for me, and I want you on the Short case. That’s final, absolute and irrevocable. And I’ll brook no prima donna demands from you, Officer. Do you understand?”

“Ellis, goddamnit!”

“You get stripes on your sleeve before you call me that, Bleichert. Until then it’s Mr. Loew. Now go read Millard’s summary report.”

I stormed over to the rear of the squadroom. Russ Millard was asleep in a chair, his legs propped up on the desk in front of him. Four typed sheets of paper were tacked to the corkboard wall a few feet away. I read:

I turned around to find Millard watching me. He said, “Off the top of your head, what do you think?”

I fingered my ripped pocket. “Is she worth it, Lieutenant?”

Millard smiled; I noticed that rumpled clothes and a razor stubble didn’t dent his aura of class. “I think so. Your partner thinks so.”

“Lee’s chasing bogeymen, Lieutenant.”

“You can call me Russ, you know.”

“Okay, Russ.”

“What did you and Blanchard get from the father?”

I handed Millard my report. “Nothing specific, just more dope on the girl as a tramp. What’s with this Black Dahlia stuff?”

Millard slapped the arms of his chair. “We can thank Bevo Means for that. He went down to Long Beach and talked to the desk clerk at the hotel where the girl stayed last summer. The clerk told him Betty Short always wore tight black dresses. Bevo thought of that movie with Alan Ladd, The Blue Dahlia, and took it from there. I figure the image is good for at least another dozen confessions a day. As Harry says when he’s had a few, ‘Hollywood will fuck you when no one else will.’ You’re a smart bad penny, Bucky. What do you think?”

“I think I want to go back to Warrants. Will you grease it with Loew?”

Millard shook his head. “No. Will you answer my question?”

I choked down the urge to smash or beg. “She said yes or no to the wrong guy, at the wrong time, at the wrong place. And since she’s had more rubber burned on her than the San Berdoo Highway, and doesn’t know how to tell the truth, I’d say that finding that wrong guy is going to be a hell of a job.”

Millard stood up and stretched. “Bright penny, you go up to Hollywood Station and meet Bill Koenig, then you two go question the tenants at the Hollywood addresses on my summary. Stress the boyfriend angle. Keep Koenig on a tight leash if you can, and you write the report, because Billy’s practically illiterate. Report back here when you’re finished.”

My headache going migraine, I obeyed. The last thing I heard before hitting the street was a group of cops chortling over Betty Short’s love letters.

I picked up Koenig at Hollywood Station and drove with him to the Carlos Avenue address. Parking in front of 6024,I said, “You’re ranking, Sarge. How do you want to play this?”

Koenig cleared his throat loudly, then swallowed the wad of phlegm he brought up. “Fritzie does the talking, but he’s home sick. How about you talk, I stand backup?” He opened his jacket to show me a leather sap stuck into the waistband. “You think it’s a muscle job?”

I said, “Talk job,” and got out of the car. There was an old lady sitting on the porch of 6024, a three-story brown clapboard house with a ROOMS FOR RENT sign staked on the lawn. She saw me walking over, closed her Bible and said, “I’m sorry, young man, but I only rent to career girls with references.”

I flashed my shield. “We’re police officers, ma’am. We came to talk to you about Betty Short.

The old woman said, “I knew her as Beth,” then shot a look at Koenig, standing on the lawn surreptitiously picking his nose.

I said, “He’s looking for clues.”

The woman snorted, “He won’t find them inside that big beak of his. Who killed Beth Short, Officer?”

I got out pen and notepad. “That’s what we’re here to find out. Could I have your name, please?”

“I’m Miss Loretta Janeway. I called the police when I heard Beth’s name on the radio.”

“Miss Janeway, when did Elizabeth Short live at this address?”

“I checked my records right after I heard that news broadcast. Beth stayed in my third-floor right-rear room from last September fourteenth to October nineteenth.”

“Was she referred to you?”

“No. I remember it very well, because Beth was such a pretty girl. She knocked on the door and said she was walking up Gower when she saw my sign. She said she was an aspiring actress and needed an inexpensive room until she got her big break. I said I’d heard that one before, and told her she’d do well to lose that awful Boston accent of hers. Well, Beth just smiled and said, ‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party’ with no accent at all. Then she said, ‘See! See how I take direction!’ She was so eager to please that I rented her the room, even though my policy is not to rent to movie types.”

I wrote the pertinent info down, then asked, “Was Beth a good tenant?”

Miss Janeway shook her head. “God rest her soul, but she was an awful tenant, and she made me regret bending my policy on movie picture types. She was always late on her rent, always hocking her jewelry for food money kid trying to get me to let her pay by the day instead of the week. A dollar a day she wanted to pay! Can you imagine how much space my ledgers would take up if I let all my tenants do that?”

“Did Beth socialize with the other tenants?”

“Good lord, no. The third-floor right-rear room has got private steps, so Beth didn’t have to come in through the front door like the other girls, and she never attended any of the coffee klatches I put on for the girls after church on Sunday. Beth never went to church herself, and she told me, ‘Girls are good for chitchat once in a blue moon, but give me boys any day.’”

“Here’s my most important question, Miss Janeway. Did Beth have any boyfriends while she was living here?”

The old woman picked up the Bible and hugged it to herself. “Officer, if they’d come in the front door like the other girls’ beaus, I would have seen them. I don’t want to blaspheme the dead, so let’s just say I heard lots of footsteps on Beth’s stairs at the most ungodly hours.”

“Did Beth ever mention any enemies? Anybody she was afraid of?”

“No.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Late October, the day she moved out. She said, I’ve found more simpatico digs’ in her best California girl voice.”

“Did she say where she was moving to?”

Miss Janeway said “No,” then leaned toward me confidingly and pointed to Koenig, loping back to the car tugging at his crotch. “You should talk to that man about his hygiene. Frankly, it’s disgusting.”

I said, “Thank you, Miss Janeway,” walked to the car and got in behind the wheel.

Koenig grunted, “What did the cooze say about me?”

“She said you’re cute.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What else did she say?”

“That a man like you could make her feel young again.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I told her to forget it, that you’re married.”

“I ain’t married.”

“I know.”

“Then why’d you tell her that?”

I pulled out into traffic. “You want her sending you mash notes at the Bureau?”

“Oh, I get it. What did she say about Fritzie?”

“Does she know Fritzie?”

Koenig looked at me like was mentally defective. “Lots of people talk about Fritzie behind his back.”

“What do they say?”

“Lies.”

“What kind of lies?”

“Bad lies.”

“For instance?”

“Lies like he got the syph fucking hooers when he worked Ad Vice. Like he got docked off a month from duty to take the mercury cure. Like he got bounced to Central dicks for it. Bad lies, even worse stuff than that.”

Chills were tickling my spine. I turned onto Cherokee and said, “Such as?”

Koenig slid closer to me. “You pumping me, Bleichert? You looking for bad things to say about Fritzie?”

“No. Just curious.”

“Curiosity killed the kitty cat. You remember that.”

“I will. What did you get on the Sergeant’s Exam, Bill?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?”

“Fritzie took it for me. Remember the kitty cat, Bleichert. I don’t want nobody saying nothing bad about my partner.”

1842, a big stucco apartment house, came into view. I pulled over and parked, muttered, “Talk job,” then headed straight for the lobby.

A wall directory listed S. Saddon and nine other names — but no Linda Martin — in apartment 604. I took the elevator up to the sixth floor, walked down a hallway smelling faintly of marijuana and rapped on the door. Big band music died out, the door opened and a youngish woman in a sparkly Egyptian outfit was standing there, holding a papier mâché headdress. She said, “Are you the driver from RKO?”

I said, “Police.” The door shut in my face. I heard a toilet flushing; the girl returned a moment later, and I walked into the apartment uninvited. The living room was high-ceilinged and arched; sloppily made-up bunk beds lined the walls. Suitcases, valises and steamer trunks were spilling out of an open closet door, and a linoleum table was wedged diagonally against a set of bunks without mattresses. The table was covered with cosmetics and vanity mirrors; the cracked wood floor beside it was dusted with spilled rouge and face powder.

The girl said, “Is this about those jaywalking tickets I forgot to pay? Listen, I’ve got three days on Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb at RKO, and when I get paid I’ll send you a check. Is that all right?”

I said, “This is about Elizabeth Short, Miss—”

The girl put out a big stage groan. “Saddon. Sheryl with a Y-L Saddon. Listen, I talked to a policeman on the phone this morning. Sergeant something or other with a bad stutter. He asked me nine thousand questions about Betty and her nine thousand boyfriends, and I told him nine thousand times that lots of girls bunk here and date lots of guys, and most of them are fly-by-nights. I told him that Betty lived here from early November to early December, that she paid a dollar a day just like the rest of us, and I didn’t remember the names of any of her dates. So can I go now? The extra truck’s due any minute, and I need this job.”

Sheryl Saddon was out of breath and sweating from her metallic costume. I pointed to a bunk bed. “Sit down and answer my questions, or I’ll roust you for the reefers you flushed down the toilet.”

The three-day Cleopatra obeyed, giving me a look that would have withered Julius Caesar. I said, “First question. Does a Linda Martin live here?”

Sheryl Saddon grabbed a pack of Old Golds off the bunk and lit up. “I told Sergeant Stutter already. Betty mentioned Linda Martin a couple of times. She roomed at Betty’s other place, the one over on De Longpre and Orange. And you need evidence to arrest someone, you know.”

I took out my pen and notebook. “What about Betty’s enemies? Threats of violence against her?”

“Betty’s trouble wasn’t enemies, it was too many friends, if you follow my drift. Get it? Friends like in boyfriends?”

“Smart girl. Any of them ever threaten her?”

“Not that I know of. Listen, can we hurry this up?”

“Simmer down. What did Betty do for work while she was staying here?”

Sheryl Saddon snorted, “Comedian. Betty didn’t work. She bummed change from the other girls here, and she cadged drinks and dinner off grandfather types down on the Boulevard. A couple of times she took off for two or three days and came back with money, then she told these fish stories about where it came from. She was such a little liar that nobody ever believed a word she said.”

“Tell me about the fish stories. And about Betty’s lies in general.”

Sheryl stubbed out her cigarette and lit another one immediately. She smoked silently for a few moments, and I could tell that the actress part of her was warming to the idea of caricaturing Betty Short. Finally she said, “You know all this Black Dahlia stuff in the papers?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Betty always dressed in black as a gimmick to impress casting directors when she made rounds with the other girls, which wasn’t often, because she liked to sleep till noon every day. But sometimes she’d tell you she was wearing black because her father died or because she was mourning the boys who died in the war. Then the next day she’d tell you her father was alive. When she was out for a couple of days and came back flush, she’d tell one girl a rich uncle died and left her a bundle and another that she won the money playing poker in Gardena. She told everybody nine thousand lies about being married to nine thousand different war heroes. You get the picture?”

I said, “Vividly. Let’s change the subject.”

“Goody. How about international finance?”

“How about the movies? You girls are all trying to break in, right?”

Sheryl gave me a vamp look. “I have broken in. I was in The Cougar Woman, Attack of the Phantom Gargoyle and Sweet Will Be the Honeysuckle.”

“Congratulations. Did Betty ever get any movie work?”

“Maybe. Maybe once, but then again maybe not, because Betty was such a liar.”

“Go on.”

“Well, on Thanksgiving all the kids on the sixth floor chipped in for a potluck supper, and Betty was flush and bought two whole cases of beer. She was bragging about being in a movie, and she was showing around this viewfinder that she said the director gave her. Now lots of girls have got chintzy little viewfinders that movie guys give them, but this was an expensive one, on a chain, with a little velvet case. I remember that Betty was on cloud nine that night, talking up a blue streak.”

“Did she tell you the name of the movie?”

Sheryl shook her head. “No.”

“Did she mention any names associated with the movie?”

“If she did, I don’t remember.”

I looked around the room, counted twelve bunk beds at a dollar a night apiece and thought of a landlord getting fat. I said, “Do you know what a casting couch is?”

The mock Cleopatra’s eyes burned. “Not me, buster. Not this girl ever.”

“Betty Short?”

“Probably.”

I heard a horn honking, walked to the window and looked out. A flatbed truck with a dozen Cleopatras and pharaohs in the back was at the curb directly behind my car. I turned around to tell Sheryl, but she was already out the door.

The last address on Millard’s list was 1611 North Orange Drive, a pink stucco tourist flop in the shadow of Hollywood High School. Koenig snapped out of his nose-picking reverie as I double-parked in front of it, pointing to two men perusing a stack of newspapers on the steps. “I’ll take them, you take the skirts. You got names for them?”

I said, “Maybe Harold Costa and Donald Leyes. You look tired, Sarge. Don’t you want to sit this one out?”

“I’m bored. What should I ask them guys?”

“I’ll handle them, Sarge.”

“You remember the kitty cat, Bleichert. Same thing happened to him happens to guys who try to jerk my chain when Fritzie ain’t around. Now what do I roust them guys for?”

“Sarge—”

Koenig sprayed me with spittle. “I’m ranking, hotshot! You do what Big Bill says!”

Seeing red, I said, “Get alibis and ask them if Betty Short ever engaged in prostitution” Koenig snickered in reply. I took the lawn and steps at a run, the two men moving aside to let me through. The front door opened into a shabby sitting room; a group of young people were sitting around, smoking and reading movie mags. I said, “Police. I’m looking for Linda Martin, Marjorie Graham, Harold Costa and Donald Leyes.”

A honey blonde in a slacks suit dog-eared her Photoplay. “I’m Marjorie Graham, and Hal and Don are outside.”

The rest of the people got up and fanned out into the hallway, like I was a big dose of bad news. I said, “This is about Elizabeth Short. Did any of you know her?”

I got a half dozen negative head shakes, shocked and sad looks; outside I heard Koenig shouting, “You tell me true! Was the Short bimbo peddling it?”

Marjorie Graham said, “I was the one who called the police, Officer. I gave them Linda’s name because I knew she knew Betty, too.”

I pointed to the door. “What about those guys outside?”

“Don and Harold? They both dated Betty. Harold called you because they knew you’d be looking for clues. Who’s that man yelling at them?”

I ignored the question, sat down beside Marjorie Graham and got out my notebook. “What can you tell me about Betty that I don’t know already? Can you give me dates? Names of other boyfriends, descriptions, specific dates? Enemies? Possible motives for somebody wanting to kill her?”

The woman flinched; I realized I was raising my voice. Keeping it low, I said, “Let’s start with dates. When did Betty live here?”

“Early December,” Marjorie Graham said. “I remember because there was a bunch of us sitting here listening to a radio program on the fifth anniversary of Pearl Harbor when she checked in.”

“So that was December seventh?”

“Yes.”

“And how long was she here?”

“No more than a week or so.”

“How did she know about this place?”

“I think Linda Martin told her about it.”

Millard’s memo stated that Betty Short spent most of December in San Diego. I said, “But she moved out shortly afterward, right?”

“Yes.”

“Why, Miss Graham? Betty lived in three places that we know of last fall — all in Hollywood. Why did she move around so much?”

Marjorie Graham took a tissue from her purse and fretted it. “Well, I don’t really know for sure.”

“Was some jealous boyfriend after her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Miss Graham, what do you think?”

Marjorie sighed. “Officer, Betty used up people. She borrowed money from them and told them stories, and... well, a lot of pretty hard-nosed kids live here, and I think they saw through Betty pretty quick.”

I said, “Tell me about Betty. You liked her, didn’t you?”

“Yes. She was sweet and trusting and sort of dumb, but... inspired. She had this strange gift, if you want to call it that. She’d do anything to be liked, and she sort of took on the mannerisms of whoever she was with. Everybody here smokes, and Betty started smoking to be one of the kids, even though it was bad for her asthma and she hated cigarettes. And the funny thing is that she’d try to walk and talk like you, but she was always herself when she was doing it. She was always Betty or Beth or whatever nickname for Elizabeth she was going by at that moment.”

I kicked the sad dope around in my head. “What did you and Betty talk about?”

Marjorie said, “Mostly I just listened to Betty talk. We used to sit here and listen to the radio, and Betty told stories. Love stories about all these war heros — Lieutenant Joe and Major Matt and on and on. I knew they were just fantasies. Sometimes she talked about becoming a movie star, like all she had to do was walk around in her black dresses and sooner or later she’d get discovered. That sort of made me mad, because I’ve been taking classes at the Pasadena Playhouse, and I know that acting is hard work.”

I flipped to my notes from the Sheryl Saddon questioning. “Miss Graham, did Betty talk about being in a movie sometime in late November?”

“Yes. The first night she was here she was bragging about it. She said she had a co-starring role, and she showed around a viewfinder. A couple of boys pressed her for details, and she told one of them it was at Paramount, another that it was at Fox. I thought she was just fibbing to get attention.”

I wrote “Names” on a clean page and underlined it three times. “Marjorie, what about names? Betty’s boyfriends, people you saw her with?”

“Well, I know she went out with Don Leyes and Harold Costa, and I saw her once with a sailor, and I...”

Marjorie faltered; I caught a troubled look in her eyes. “What is it? You can tell me.”

Marjorie’s voice was stretched thin. “Right before she moved out I saw Betty and Linda Martin talking to this big older woman up on the Boulevard. She was wearing a man’s suit, and she had short hair like a man. I only saw them with her that one time, so maybe it doesn’t mean—”

“Are you saying the woman was a lesbian?”

Marjorie bobbed her head up and down and reached for a Kleenex; Bill Koenig stepped inside and hooked a finger at me. I walked over to him. He whispered, “Them guys talked, said the stiff peddled her twat when she got strapped bad. I called Mr. Loew. He said to keep that zipped, ’cause it’s a better caper if she’s a nice young cooze.”

I bit off an urge to spill the dyke lead; the DA and his flunky would probably quash it, too. I said, “I’ve got another quick one here. Get statements from those guys, okay?”

Koenig giggled and walked outside; I told Marjorie to sit still and moved to the rear of the lobby. There was a registration desk, an open ledger on top of it. I stood at the counter and leafed through the pages until I saw a childishly scrawled “Linda Martin,” with “Room 14” printed across from it.

I took the first-floor corridor back to the room, knocked on the door and waited for an answer. When none came after five seconds, I tried the knob. It gave, and I pushed the door open.

It was a cramped little room containing nothing but an unmade bed. I checked the closet; it was dead empty. The nightstand held a stack of yesterday’s papers folded open to “Werewolf Murder” brouhaha; suddenly I knew the Martin girl was a lamster. I got down on the floor and ran a hand under the bed, brushed a flat object and pulled it out.

It was a red plastic change purse. I opened it and found two pennies, a dime and an identification card for Cornhusker High School, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The card was made out to Lorna Martilkova, DOB 12/19/31. There was a photo of a beautiful young girl below the school’s crest; in my mind I was already typing out an all-points juvie runaway warrant.

Marjorie Graham appeared in the doorway. I held out the ID card; she said, “That’s Linda. God, she’s only fifteen.”

“Middle-aged for Hollywood. When did you see her last?”

“This morning. I told her I called the police, that they’d be coming by to talk to us about Betty. Was that the wrong thing to do?”

“You couldn’t have known. And thanks.”

Marjorie smiled, and I found myself wishing her a speedy one-way trip out of movieland. I kept the wish silent as I smiled back and walked outside. On the porch, Bill Koenig was standing at parade rest and Donald Leyes and Harold Costa were sprawled in lounge chairs with that green-at-the-gills look that comes with taking a few rabbit punches.

Koenig said, “They didn’t do it.”

I said, “No shit, Sherlock.”

Koenig said, “My name ain’t Sherlock.”

I said, “No shit.”

Koenig said, “What?”

At Hollywood Station I exercised the Warrants cops’ special prerogative, issuing an all-points juvenile runaway warrant and a priority material witness warrant on Lorna Martilkova/Linda Martin, leaving the report forms with the daywatch boss, who told me the APBs would hit the air within the hour, and that he would send officers over to 1611 North Orange Drive to question the tenants on Linda/Lorna’s possible whereabouts. With that taken care of, I wrote my report on the series of questionings, stressing Betty Short as a habitual liar and the possibility that she acted in a movie sometime in November of ’46. Before finishing it up, I wavered on whether to mention Marjorie Graham’s lead on the old dyke. If Ellis Loew got ahold of the dope he would probably quash it along with the skinny on Betty as a part-time prostie, so I decided to omit it from the report and give the information verbally to Russ Millard.

From a squadroom phone I called the Screen Actor’s Guild and Central Casting and inquired about Elizabeth Short. A clerk told me that no one by that name or any diminutive of the name Elizabeth was ever listed with them, making it unlikely that she had appeared in a legit Hollywood production. I hung up thinking of the movie as another Betty fairy tale, the viewfinder a fairy-tale prop.

It was late afternoon. Being free of Koenig felt like surviving cancer and the three interviews felt like an overdose of Betty/Beth Short and her low-rent last months on earth. I was tired and hungry, so I drove to the house for a sandwich and a nap — and walked straight into another installment of the Black Dahlia Show.

Kay and Lee were standing around the dining room table, examining crime scene photos shot at 39th and Norton. There was Betty Short’s bashed head; Betty Short’s slashed breasts; Betty Short’s empty bottom half and Betty Short’s wide-open legs — all in glossy black and white. Kay was nervously smoking and shooting little glances at the pictures; Lee was eyeballing them, his face twitching in a half dozen directions, the Benzedrine man from outer space. Neither said a word to me; I just stood there playing straight man to the most celebrated stiff in LA history.

Finally Kay said, “Hi, Dwight,” and Lee stabbed a shaky finger at a close-up of the torso mutilations. “It’s not a random job, I know it. Vern Smith says some guy just picked her up on the street, took her someplace and tortured her, then dumped her in the lot. Horseshit. The guy who did this hated her for a reason and wanted the whole goddamn world to know. Jesus, two fucking days he cut her. Babe, you took pre-med classes, you think this guy had medical training? You know, like some kind of mad doctor type?”

Kay put out her cigarette and said, “Lee, Dwight’s here” Lee wheeled around.

I said, “Partner—” and Lee tried to wink, smile and speak at the same time.

It came off as one awful grimace; when he got out, “Bucky, listen to Kay, I knew all the college I bought her would do me some good,” I had to look away.

Kay’s voice was soft, patient. “This kind of theorizing is just nonsense, but I’ll give you a theory if you’ll eat something to calm yourself down.”

“Theory on, teach.”

“Well, it’s just a guess, but maybe there were two killers, because the torture cuts are crude, while the bisection and the cut on the abdomen, which are obviously both postmortem, are neat and clean. Maybe there’s just one killer though, and after he killed the girl he calmed down, then bisected her and made the abdominal cut. And anybody could have removed the internal organs with the body in two parts. I think mad doctors are only in the movies. Sweetie, you have to calm down. You have to quit taking those pills and you have to eat. Listen to Dwight, he’ll tell you that.”

I looked at Lee. He said, “I’m too hopped-up to eat,” then stuck out his hand like I’d just walked in. “Hey, partner. You learn anything good about our girl today?”

I thought of telling him I learned she wasn’t worth a hundred full-time cops; I thought of spilling the dyke lead and Betty Short as a sad little floozy-liar to back the claim up. But Lee’s dope-juiced face made me say, “Nothing that’s worth you doing this to yourself. Nothing that’s worth seeing you useless when a bimbo you sent to Quentin is three days away from LA. Think of your little sister seeing you this way. Think of her—”

I stopped when tears started streaming from Lee’s outer-space eyes. Now he just stood there like the straight man to his own blood kin. Kay moved between us, a hand on each of our shoulders. I walked out before Lee began weeping for real.

University Station was another outpost of Black Dahlia mania.

A wager pool sign-up list was posted in the locker room. It was in the form of a crudely drawn crap table felt, featuring betting spaces labeled “Solved — pay 2 to 1,” “Random sex job — pay 4 to 1,” “Unsolved — even money,” “Boyfriend(s) pay 1 to 4,” and “ ‘Red’ — no odds unless suspect captured.” The “House $ man” was listed as Sergeant Shiner, and so far the big action was on “boyfriend(s),” with a dozen officers signed up, all plopping down a sawbuck to win two-fifty.

The squadroom was more comic relief. Someone had hung the two halves of a cheap black dress from the doorway. Harry Sears, half gassed, was waltzing around the Negro cleaning woman, introducing her as the real Black Dahlia, the best colored songbird since Billie Holliday. They were taking nips from Harry’s flask, the cleaning lady belting gospel numbers while officers trying to talk on the phone clamped hands to their free ears.

The straight business was frenzied, too. Men were working with DMV registrations and Huntington Park street directories, trying to put together a lead on the “Red” Betty Short left San Dago with; others were reading her love letters, and two officers were on the DMV police line getting info on the license numbers Lee had gotten last night while camped out at Junior Nash’s fuck pad. Millard and Loew were gone, so I dropped my questioning report and a note on the warrants I’d issued into a large tray marked FIELD DETECTIVE’S SUMMARIES. Then I took off before some ranking clown forced me to join the circus.

Being at loose ends made me think of Lee; thinking of Lee made me wish I was back at the squadroom, where at least there was a sense of humor about the dead girl. Then thinking of Lee made me mad, and I started thinking about Junior Nash, professional gunman more dangerous than fifty jealous boyfriend killers. Itchy, I went back to being a Warrants cop and prowled Leimert Park for him.

But there was no escape from the Black Dahlia.

Passing 39th and Norton, I saw rubberneckers gawking around the vacant lot while ice cream and hotdog vendors dispensed chow; an old woman was peddling Betty Short portrait glossies in front of the bar at 39th and Crenshaw, and I wondered if the charming Cleo Short had supplied the negatives for a substantial percentage cut. Pissed off, I pushed the buffoonery out of my mind and worked.

I spent five straight hours walking South Crenshaw and South Western, showing Nash’s mug shots and talking up his MO of statch rape on young Negro tail. All I got was “No” and the question “Why ain’t you after the guy who chopped up that nice Dahlia girl?” Toward mid-evening I surrendered myself to the notion that maybe Junior Nash really had blown LA. And still itchy, I rejoined the circus.

After a wolfed burger dinner, I called the night number at Administrative Vice and inquired about known lesbian gathering places. The clerk checked the Ad Vice intelligence files and came back with the names of three cocktail lounges, all on the same block of Ventura Boulevard out in the Valley: the Dutchess, the Swank Spot and La Verne’s Hideaway. I was about to hang up when he added that they were out of the LAPD’s jurisdiction in the unincorporated county territory patrolled by the sheriff’s department, and were probably operating under their sanction — for a price.

I didn’t think about jurisdictions on the ride out to the Valley. I thought about women with women. Not lez types, but soft girls with hard edges, like my string of fight giveaways. Going over the Cahuenga Pass, I tried to put pairs of them together. All I could come up with was their bodies and the smell of liniment and car upholstery — no faces. I used Betty/Beth and Linda/Lorna then, mug shots and high school ID combined with the bodies of the girls I remembered from my last pro fights. It got more and more graphic; then the 11000 block of Ventura Boulevard came into view and I got women-and-women for real.

The Swank Spot had a log cabin facade and double swinging doors like the saloons in western movies. The interior was narrow and poorly lit; it took long moments for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did I saw a score of women trying to stare me down.

Some of them were bull dykes in khaki shirts and GI issue trousers; some were soft girls in skirts and sweaters. One hefty dagger eyed me head to toe; the girl standing next to her, a svelte redhead, put her head on her shoulder and slinked an arm around her thick waist. Feeling myself start to sweat, I looked for the bar and someone with the air of top dog. I spotted a lounge area at the back of the room, bamboo chairs and a table covered with liquor bottles, all of it encircled by wall neon blinking purple, then yellow, then orange. I walked over, arm-draped couples separated to let me through, giving me just enough room to maneuver.

The lezzie behind the serving bar poured a shot glass full of whiskey and placed it in front of me, saying, “You from the Beverage Control?” She had piercing light eyes; neon reflections turned them almost translucent. I got a weird feeling that she knew what I was thinking about on the way over.

Downing the booze, I said, “LAPD Homicide” the dyke said, “Not your bailiwick, but who got snuffed?” I fumbled for my snapshot of Betty Short and the Lorna/Linda ID card, then placed them on the bar. The whiskey lubed my hoarse voice: “Have you seen either of them?”

The woman gave the two pieces of paper, then me, a long once-over. “You tellin’ me the Dahlia’s a sister?”

“You tell me.”

“I’ll tell you I’ve never seen her except in the papers, and the little schoolgirl twist I’ve never seen, because me and my girls don’t truck with underaged stuff. Capice?”

I pointed to the shot glass; the dyke refilled it. I drank; my sweat warmed, then cooled off. “Capice when your girls tell me that and I believe them.”

The woman whistled, and the lounge area filled up. I grabbed the pictures and handed them to a femme draped around a lumberjack lady. They checked the photos out and shook their heads, then passed them to a woman in a Hughes Aircraft jumpsuit. She said, “No, but USDA choice tail,” and gave them to a couple next to her. They muttered “Black Dahlia,” real shock in their voices. Both said, “No” the last lezzie said, “Nyet, nein, no, and not my type besides.” She shoved the pictures at me, then spat on the floor. I said, “Good night, ladies,” and made for the door, the word “Dahlia” whispered over and over behind me.

The Dutchess was two more free shots, a dozen more hostile looks and “No” answers, all in an old English motif. Walking into La Verne’s Hideaway, I was half juiced and itchy for something I couldn’t put my finger on.

La Verne’s was dark inside, baby spots affixed to ceiling beams casting shadowy light on walls covered with cheap palm tree paper. Lezbo couples were cooing at each other in wraparound booths; the sight of two femmes kissing forced me to stare, then look away and seek out the bar.

It was recessed into the left wall, a long counter with colored lights reflecting off a Waikiki Beach scene. There was nobody tending it, no customers sitting on any of the stools. I walked to the back of the room, clearing my throat so the lovebirds in the booths could jump off cloud nine and return to earth. The strategy worked; clinches and kisses ended, angry and startled eyes looked up at the coming of bad news.

I said, “LAPD Homicide,” and handed the pics to the nearest lezzie. “The dark-haired one is Elizabeth Short. The Black Dahlia if you’ve been reading the papers. The other one’s her pal. I want to know if any of you have seen them, and if so who with.”

The pictures made the rounds of the booths; I studied reactions when I saw that I’d have to use a bludgeon to get simple yes or no answers. Nobody said a word; all I got from reading faces was curiosity tinged with a couple of cases of lust. The photos came back to me, handed over by a diesel dagger sporting a flat top. I grabbed them and headed for the street and fresh air, stopping when I saw a woman behind the bar polishing glasses.

I moved to the bar and placed my wares on the counter, hooking a finger at her. She picked up the mug shot strip and said, “I seen her picture in the paper and that’s it.”

“What about this girl? She goes by the name Linda Martin.”

The barmaid held up the Lorna/Linda ID card and squinted at it; I saw a flicker of recognition pass over her face. “No, sorry.”

I leaned over the counter. “Don’t fucking lie to me. She’s fifteen fucking years old, so you come clean now, or I slap a contributing beef on you, and you spend the next five years eating pussy in Tehachapi.”

The lezbo recoiled; I half expected her to go for a bottle and brain me with it. Eyes on the bar, she said, “The kid used to come in. Maybe two, three months ago. But I’ve never seen the Dahlia, and I think the kid liked boys. I mean, she just cadged drinks off the sisters, that was it.”

Sidelong, I saw a woman just starting to sit down at the bar change her mind, grab her purse and make for the door, as if spooked by my words with the barmaid. The baby spotlight caught her face; I caught a fleeting resemblance to Elizabeth Short.

I gathered up my pictures, counted to ten and pursued the woman, getting to my car just as I saw her unlock the door of a snow-white Packard coupe parked a couple of spaces up from me. When she pulled out, I counted to five, then followed.

The rolling surveillance led me over Ventura Boulevard to the Cahuenga Pass, then down into Hollywood. Late-night traffic was scarce, so I let the Packard stay several car lengths in front of me as it headed south on Highland, out of Hollywood, into the Hancock Park District. At 4th Street, the woman turned left; within seconds we were in the heart of Hancock Park — an area Wilshire Division cops called “Pheasant Under Glass Acres.”

The Packard turned the corner at Muirfield Road and stopped in front of a huge Tudor mansion fronted by a lawn the size of a football field. I continued on, my headlights picking up the car’s rear plate: CAL RQ 765. Checking my rearview mirror, I saw the woman locking the driver’s side door, even from a distance her trim sharkskin figure stood out.

I took 3rd Street out of Hancock Park. At Western I saw a pay phone, got out and called the DMV night line, requesting a vehicle make and criminal record check on white Packard coupe CAL RQ 765. The operator kept me waiting for close to five minutes, then returned with his read-out:

Madeleine Cathcart Sprague, white female, DOB 11/14/25, LA, 482 South Muirfield Road; no wants, no warrants, no criminal record.

Driving home, the shots of booze wore off. I started wondering if Madeleine Cathcart Sprague had anything at all to do with Betty/Beth and Lorna/Linda, or whether she was just a rich lezzie with a taste for low life. Steering with one hand, I took out my Betty Short mugs, superimposed the Sprague girl’s face over them and came away with a common, everyday resemblance. Then I saw myself peeling off her sharkskin suit and knew I didn’t care one way or the other.

Ten

I played the radio on the ride to University Station the next morning. The Dexter Gordon quartet was bebopping me into good spirits when “Billie’s Bounce” quit bouncing, replaced by a feverish voice: “We interrupt our regular broadcast to bring you a bulletin. A major suspect in the investigation into the slaying of Elizabeth Short, the raven-haired party girl known as the Black Dahlia, has been captured! Previously known to the authorities only as ‘Red,’ the man has now been identified as Robert ‘Red’ Manley, age twenty-five, a Huntington Park hardware salesman. Manley was captured this morning at the South Gate home of a friend and is now being held and questioned at the Hollenbeck police station in East Los Angeles. In an exclusive handout to KGFJ, Deputy DA Ellis Loew, ace legal beagle working on the case as civilian-police liaison, said: ‘Red Manley is a hot suspect. We’ve got him pegged as the man who drove Betty Short up from San Diego on January ninth, six days before her torture-ravaged body was found in a vacant lot in Leimert Park. This looks like the big break we’ve all been hoping and praying for. God has answered our prayers!’”

Ellis Loew’s sentiments were replaced by a commercial for Preparation H, guaranteed to reduce the painful swelling of hemorrhoids or double your money back. I flipped the radio off and changed direction, heading for Hollenback Station.

The street in front of it was blocked off with sawhorse detour signs; patrolmen were holding reporters at bay. I parked in the alley behind the station and entered through the back door to the holding tank. Drunks jabbered in cells on the misdemeanor side of the catwalk; hardcase types glowered from the felony row. It was a jailhouse full house, but there were no jailers anywhere. Opening a connecting door into the station proper, I saw why.

What looked like the entire in-station contingent was crammed into a short corridor inset with interrogation cubicles, every man straining for a look through the one-way glass of the middle room on the left side. Russ Millard’s voice was coming out of a wall-mounted speaker: smooth, coaxing.

I nudged the officer nearest to me. “Has he confessed?”

The man shook his head. “No. Millard and his partner are giving him the Mutt and Jeff.”

“Did he admit knowing the girl?”

“Yeah. We got him from the DMV cross-checks, and he came along peacefully. Wanna make a little bet? Innocent or guilty, take your pick. I’m feelin’ lucky today.”

I ignored the offer, gently elbowed my way up to the glass and peered in. Millard was seated at a battered wooden table, a handsome young guy with a carrot-hued pompadour across from him fingering a pack of cigarettes. He looked scared shitless; Millard looked like the nice-guy priest in the movies — the one who’s seen it all and granted absolution for the whole enchilada.

Carrot top’s voice came over the speaker. “Please, I’ve told it three times now.”

Millard said, “Robert, we’re doing this because you didn’t come forward. Betty Short has been on the front page of every LA newspaper for three days now, and you knew we wanted to talk to you. But you hid out. How do you think that looks?”

Robert ‘Red’ Manley lit a cigarette, inhaled and coughed. “I didn’t want my wife to know I was chipping on her.”

“But you didn’t chip on her. Betty wouldn’t put out. She cock-teased you and didn’t come across. That’s no reason to hide from the police.”

“I dated her down in Dago. I danced slow dances with her. It’s the same thing as chipping.”

Millard put a hand on Manley’s arm. “Let’s go back to the beginning. Tell me how you met Betty, what you did, what you talked about. Take your time, nobody’s rushing you.”

Manley stubbed out his cigarette into an overflowing ashtray, lit another one and wiped sweat from his brow. I looked around the corridor and saw Ellis Loew leaning against the opposite wall, Vogel and Koenig flanking him like twin dogs awaiting the command to attack. A static-filtered sigh came over the loudspeaker; I turned back and watched the suspect squirm in his chair. “And this is the last time I’ll have to tell it?”

Millard smiled. “That’s right. Go ahead, son.”

Manley got up and stretched, then paced as he talked. “I met Betty the week before Christmas, at this bar in downtown Dago. We just started gabbing, and Betty let it slip that she was sort of on her uppers, staying with this woman Mrs. French and her daughter, sort of temporarily. I bought her dinner at an Italian joint in Old Town, then we went dancing at the Sky Room at the El Cortez Hotel. We—”

Millard interrupted. “Do you always chase tail when you’re out of town on business?”

Manley shouted, “I wasn’t chasing tail!”

“What were you doing, then?”

“I was infatuated, that’s all. I couldn’t tell if Betty was a gold digger or a nice girl, and I wanted to find out. I wanted to test my loyalty to my wife and I just...”

Manley’s voice died down; Millard said, “Son, for God’s sake tell the truth. You were looking for some pussy, right?”

Manley slumped into his chair. “Right.”

“Just like you always do on business trips, right?”

“No! Betty was different!”

“How was she different? Out-of-town stuff is out-of-town stuff, right?”

“No! I don’t chip on my wife when I’m on the road! Betty was just...”

Millard’s voice was so low that the loudspeaker barely picked it up. “Betty just set you off. Right?”

“Right.”

“Made you want to do things you’d never done before, made you mad, made you—”

“No! No! I wanted to fuck her, I didn’t want to hurt her!”

“Sssh. Sssh. Let’s go back to Christmastime. You had that first date with Betty. Did you kiss her good night?”

Manley gripped the ashtray with both hands; they shook, butts spilled onto the table. “On the cheek.”

“Come on, Red. No heavy pass?”

“No.”

“You had a second date with Betty two days before Christmas, right?”

“Right.”

“More dancing at the El Cortez, right?”

“Right.”

“Soft lights, drinks, soft music, then you made your move, right?”

Goddamn you, quit saying ‘Right’! I tried to kiss Betty and she gave me this song and dance about how she couldn’t sleep with me because the father of her child had to be a war hero and I was only in the army band. She was goddamn nuts cm the subject! All she did was talk about these horseshit war heros!”

Millard stood up. “Why do you say ‘horseshit,’ Red?”

“Because I knew they were lies. Betty said she was married to this guy and engaged to that guy, and I knew she was trying to make me look small because I never saw combat.”

“Did she mention any names?”

“No, just ranks. Major this and Captain that, like I should be ashamed of being a corporal.”

“Did you hate her for it?”

“No! Don’t put words in my mouth!”

Millard stretched and sat down. “After that second date, when was the next time you saw Betty?”

Manley sighed and rested his forehead on the table. “I’ve told you the whole story three times.”

“Son, the sooner you tell it again, the sooner you’ll be able to go home.”

Manley shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. “After the second date I didn’t hear from Betty until January eighth, when I got this telegram at my office. The telegram said she’d like to see me when I made my next sales run down to Dago. I wired back, saying I had to be in Dago tomorrow afternoon, and I’d pick her up. Then I picked her up, and she begged me to drive her up to LA. I said—”

Millard held up a hand. “Did Betty say why she had to get to LA?”

“No.”

“Did she say she was meeting somebody?”

“No.”

“You agreed to do it because you thought she’d put out for you?”

Manley sighed. “Yes.”

“Go ahead, son.”

“I took Betty with me on my rounds that day. She stayed in the car while I called on customers. I had some calls in Oceanside the next morning, so we spent the night in a motel there, and—”

“Let’s have the name of the place again, son.”

“It was called the Cornucopia Motor Lodge.”

“And Betty CT’d you again that night?”

“She... she said she had her period.”

“And you fell for that old chestnut?”

“Yes.”

“Did it make you mad?”

“Goddamn it, I didn’t kill her!”

“Sssh. You slept in the chair and Betty slept on the bed, right?”

“Right.”

“And in the morning?”

“In the morning we drove up to LA. Betty went with me on my rounds and tried to float me for a five-spot, but I turned her down. Then she handed me a cock-and-bull story about meeting her sister in front of the Biltmore Hotel. I wanted to get rid of her, so I dropped her in front of the Biltmore that night, right around five o’clock. And I never saw her again, except for all that Dahlia stuff in the papers.”

Millard said, “That was five o’clock, Friday, January tenth when you last saw her?”

Manley nodded. Millard looked straight at the glass, adjusted the knot of his necktie, then stepped outside. In the corridor, officers swarmed him, hurling questions. Harry Sears slipped into the room; next to me a familiar voice rose above the commotion. “Now you’ll see why Russ keeps Harry around.”

It was Lee, grinning a shit-eating grin, looking like a million tax-free dollars. I cuffed him around the neck. “Welcome back to earth.”

Lee cuffed me back. “It’s your fault I look this good. Right after you left, Kay slipped me a Mickey Finn, some stuff she got at the drugstore. I slept seventeen hours, got up and ate like a horse.”

“Your own goddamn fault for bankrolling her chemistry classes. What do you think of Red?”

“A pussy hound at worst, a divorced pussy hound by the end of the week. You agree?”

“In spades.”

“You get anything yesterday?”

Seeing my best friend looking like a new man made it easy to twist the truth. “You read my FI report?”

“Yeah, at University. Good work on the juvie warrant. You get anything else?”

I lied flat-out, a trim sharkskin figure dancing in the back of my head. “No. You?”

Staring through the one-way, Lee said, “No, but what I said about getting the bastard still goes. Jesus, look at Harry.”

I did. The mild-mannered stutterer was circling the interrogation room table, twirling a metal-studded sap, whacking it hard into the tabletop each time he circuited. “Ka-thack’s” filled the speaker; Red Manley, arms wrapped around his chest, quivered as each blow reverberated.

Lee nudged me. “Russ has got one rule — no actual hitting. But watch how—”

I shrugged off Lee’s hand and stared through the one-way. Sears was tapping the sap on the table a few inches in front of Manley, his stutterless voice dripping cold rage. “You wanted some fresh gash, and you thought Betty was easy. You came on strong, and that didn’t work, so you begged. That didn’t work, so you offered her money. She told you she was on the rag, and that was the final straw. You wanted to make her bleed for real. Tell me how you sliced her titties. Tell me—”

Manley screamed, “No!” Sears smashed the sap into the ashtray, the glass cracked, butts flew off the table. Red bit his lip; blood spurted out, then dribbled down his chin. Sears sapped the pile of broken glass; shards exploded all over the room. Manley whimpered, “No no no no no” Sears hissed, “You knew what you wanted to do. You’re an old cunt chaser, and you knew lots of places to take girls. You plied Betty with a few drinks, got her to talk about her old boyfriends and came on like a pal, like the nice little corporal willing to leave Betty to the real men, the men who saw combat, who deserved to get laid with a fine cooze like her—”

“No!”

Sears hit the table, ka-thack! “Yes, Reddy-poo, yes. I think you took her to a toolshed, maybe one of those abandoned warehouses out by the old Ford plant in Pico-Rivera. There was some twine and lots of cutting tools lying around, and you got a hard-on. Then you shot your load in your pants before you could stick it in Betty. You were mad before, but now you were really mad. You started thinking about all the girls who laughed at that tiny little dick of yours and all the times your wife said, ‘Not tonight, Reddy-poo, I’ve got a headache.’ So you hit her and tied her down and beat her and cut her! Admit it, you fucking degenerate!”

“No!”

Ka-thack!

The table jumped off the floor from the force of the blow. Manley almost jumped out of his chair; only Sears’ hand on the back slats kept him from toppling over.

“Yes, Reddy-poo. Yes. You thought of every girl who said ‘I don’t suck,’ every time your mommy spanked you, every evil eye you got from real soldiers when you played your trombone in the army band. Goldbrick, needle-dick, pussy-whipped, that’s what you were thinking. That’s what Betty had to pay for. Right?”

Manley dribbled blood and spittle into his lap and gurgled.

“No. Please, as God is my witness, no” Sears said, “God hates liars,” and sapped the table three times — Ka-thack! Ka-thack! Ka-thack! Manley lowered his head and began to dry sob; Sears knelt by his chair. “Tell me how Betty screamed and begged, Red. Tell me, then tell God.”

“No. No. I didn’t hurt Betty.”

“Did you get another hard-on? Did you come and come and come the more you cut her?”

“No. Oh God, oh God.”

“That’s right, Red. Talk to God. Tell God all about it. He’ll forgive you.”

“No, please God.”

“Say it, Red. Tell God how you beat and tortured and ripped up Betty Short for three fucking days, then cut her in two.”

Sears smashed the table once, twice, three times, then hurled it over onto its side. Red fumbled himself out of his chair and onto his knees. He clasped his hands and mumbled, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” then started weeping. Sears looked straight at the one-way, self-loathing etched into every plane of his flabby juicehound face. He gave the thumbs-down sign, then walked out of the room.

Russ Millard met him just outside the door and led him away from the general crowd of officers, in my direction. Eavesdropping on their whispered conversation, I picked up the gist of it: they both thought Manley was clean, but wanted to shoot him with Pentothal and give him a polygraph test to make sure. Looking back through the one-way, I saw Lee and another plainsclothesman handcuffing Red, easing him out of the interrogation room. Lee was giving the man the kid gloves treatment he usually reserved for children, talking softly to him, one hand on his shoulder. The crowd broke up when the three of them disappeared into the holding tank. Harry Sears went back into the cubicle and began cleaning up his mess; Millard turned to me. “Good report yesterday, Bleichert.”

I said, “Thanks,” knowing I was being sized up. We locked eyes. I asked, “What’s next?”

“You tell me.”

“First you send me back to Warrants, right?”

“Wrong, but keep going.”

“Okay, then we canvass around the Biltmore and try to reconstruct Betty Short’s movements from the tenth, when Red dropped her off, to the twelfth or thirteenth, when she got snatched. We blanket the area and collate the FIs and hope to hell the legit leads don’t get lost with all phonies this publicity is getting us.”

“Keep going.”

“We know Betty was movie-struck and promiscuous, and that she bragged about being in a movie last November, so my bet is that she wouldn’t turn down a roll on the casting couch. I think we should query producers and casting directors, see what we get.”

Millard smiled. “I called Buzz Meeks this morning. He’s an ex-cop, works as head of security at Hughes Aircraft. He’s the Department’s unofficial liaison to the studios, and he’ll be asking around. You’re doing well, Bucky. Run with the ball.”

I wavered — wanting to impress a senior officer; wanting to roust the rich lezzie myself. Millard’s pump job came on as condescending, bones of praise to keep a young cop from balking at his unwanted assignment. Madeleine Cathcart Sprague framed in my mind, I said, “All I know is that you should keep an eye on Loew and his boys. I didn’t put it in my report, but Betty Short sold it outright when she needed money bad enough, and Loew’s been trying to keep it kiboshed. I think he’ll sit on anything that makes her look like an outright tramp. The more sympathy the public has for the girl, the more juice he gets as prosecuting attorney if this mess ever gets to court.”

Millard laughed. “Bright penny, are you calling your own boss an evidence suppressor?”

I thought of myself as the same thing. “Yeah, and a shit-brained, grandstanding son of bitch.”

Millard said, “Touché,” and handed me a piece of paper. “Betty sightings — restaurants and bars in Wilshire Division. You can work it single or with Blanchard, I don’t care.”

“I’d rather canvass around the Biltmore.”

“I know you would, but I want foot beat men who know the area to work there, and I need smart pennies to eliminate the phonies from the tip list.”

“What are you going to be doing?”

Millard smiled sadly. “Keeping an eye on the evidence suppressor shit-brained son of a bitch and his minions to make sure they don’t try to coerce a confession out of that innocent man in the holding tank.”

I couldn’t find Lee anywhere around the station, so I checked out the tip list as a single-o. The canvassing territory was centered in the Wilshire District, restaurant bars and juke joints on Western, Normandie and 3rd Street. The people I talked to were mostly barflies, daytime juicers eager to suck up to authority or gab with someone other than the usual boon acquaintances they found in gin mills. Pressing for facts, I got sincere fantasy — virtually every person had Betty Short giving them a long spiel taken from the papers and radio when she was really down in Dago with Red Manley or somewhere getting tortured to death. The longer I listened the more they talked about themselves, interweaving their sad tales with the story of the Black Dahlia, who they actually believed to be a glamorous siren headed for Hollywood stardom. It was as if they would have traded their own lives for a juicy front-page death. I included questions on Linda Martin/Lorna Martilkova, Junior Nash and Madeleine Cathcart Sprague and her snow-white Packard, but all it got me was stuporous deadpans. I decided that my FI report would consist of two words: “All bullshit.”

I finished shortly after dark, and drove to the house to grab dinner.

Pulling up, I saw Kay storming out the door and down the steps, hurling an armful of paper onto the lawn, then storming back while Lee stormed beside her, shouting and waving his arms. I walked over and knelt beside the discarded pile; the papers were carbons of LAPD report forms. Sifting through them, I saw FIs, evidence indexes, questioning reports, tip lists and a complete autopsy protocol — all with “E. Short, W.F.D.O.D. 1/15/47” typed at the top. They were obviously bootlegged from University Station — and the very possession of them was enough to guarantee Lee a suspension from duty.

Kay came back with another load, shouting, “After all that’s happened, all that might happen, how can you do this? It’s sick and it’s insane!” She dumped the papers beside the other pile; 39th and Norton glossies glinted up at me. Lee grabbed her by the arms and held her while she squirmed. “Goddamnit, you know what this is to me. You know. Now I’ll rent a room to keep the stuff in, but babe, you stick by me on this. It’s mine, and I need you... and you know.”

They noticed me then. Lee said, “Bucky, you tell her. You reason with her.”

It was the funniest Dahlia circus line I’d heard so far. “Kay’s right. You’ve pulled at least three misdemeanors on this thing, and it’s getting out—” I stopped, thinking of what I’d pulled, and where I was going at midnight. Looking at Kay, I shifted gears. “I promised him a week on it. That means four more days. On Wednesday it’s over.”

Kay sighed, “Dwight, you can be so gutless sometimes,” then walked into the house. Lee opened his mouth to say something funny. I kicked a path through official LAPD paper to my car.

The snow-white Packard was in the same spot as last night. I staked it out from my car, parked directly in back of it. Huddled low in the front seat, I spent angry hours watching foot traffic enter and leave the three bars on the block — daggers, femmes and obvious sheriff’s dicks with that edgy look indigenous to bagmen. Midnight came and went; the foot traffic picked up — mostly lezzies headed for the hot sheet motels across the street. Then she walked out the door of La Verne’s Hideaway alone, a showstopper in a green silk dress.

I slid out the passenger side door just as she stepped off the curb, giving me a sidelong glance. “Slumming, Miss Sprague?”

Madeleine Sprague stopped; I closed the distance between us. She dug in her purse, pulling out car keys and a fat wad of cash. “So Daddy’s spying again. He’s on one of his little Calvinist crusades, and he said you shouldn’t be subtle.” She switched to a deft imitation of a Scotchman’s burr: “Maddy girl, ye should not be congregating in such unsuitable places. It would not do to have ye seen by the wrong people there, lassie.”

My legs were trembling, like they did while I waited for the first-round bell. I said, “I’m a police officer.”

Madeleine Sprague went back to her normal voice. “Oh? Daddy’s buying policemen now?”

“He didn’t buy me.”

She held out the cash and looked me over. “No, probably not. You’d be dressing better if you worked for him. So let’s try the West Valley Sheriffs. You’re already extorting La Verne, so you thought you’d try extorting her patrons.”

I took the money, counted over a hundred dollars, then handed it back. “Let’s try LAPD Homicide. Let’s try Elizabeth Short and Linda Martin.”

Madeleine Sprague’s brassy act died fast. Her face scrunched up with worry, and I saw that her resemblance to Betty/Beth was more hairdo and makeup than anything else; on the whole her features were less refined than the Dahlia’s, and only superficially similar. I studied that face: panicky hazel eyes caught by streetlight glow; forehead creased, like her brain was working overtime. Her hands were shaking, so I grabbed the car keys and money, stuffed them into her purse and tossed it on the hood of the Packard. Knowing I might have a major lead by the short hairs, I said, “You can talk to me here or downtown, Miss Sprague. Just don’t lie. I know you knew her, so if you jerk me off on that it’s the station and a lot of publicity you don’t want.”

The brass girl finally composed herself. I repeated, “Here or downtown?” She opened the Packard’s passenger door and got in, sliding over behind the wheel. I joined her, flicking on a dashboard light so I could read her face. The smell of leather upholstery and stale perfume hit me; I said, “Tell me how long you knew Betty Short.”

Madeleine Sprague fidgeted under the light. “How did you know I knew her?”

“You rabbited last night when I was questioning the barmaid. What about Linda Martin? Do you know her?”

Madeleine ran long red fingertips over the wheel. “This is all a fluke. I met Betty and Linda at La Verne’s last fall. Betty said it was her first time there. I think I talked to her one time after that. Linda I talked to several times, just cocktail lounge chitchat.”

“When last fall?”

“November, I think.”

“Did you sleep with either of them?”

Madeleine flinched. “No.”

“Why not? That’s what that dive is all about, right?”

“Not entirely.”

I tapped her green silk shoulder, hard. “Are you lez?”

Madeleine went back to her father’s burr. “Ye might say I take it where I can find it, laddie.”

I smiled, then patted the spot I’d jabbed a moment before. “You’re telling me that your sole contact with Linda Martin and Betty Short was a couple of cocktail bar conversations two months ago, right?”

“Yes. That’s exatly what I’m telling you.”

“Then why did you take off so fast last night?”

Madeleine rolled her eyes and rolled “Laddie,” Scotch-voiced; I said, “Cut the shit and tell it straight.” The brass girl spat out: “Mister, my father is Emmett Sprague. The Emmett Sprague. He built half of Hollywood and Long Beach, and what he didn’t build he bought. He does not like publicity, and he would not like to see “Tycoon’s Daughter Questioned in Black Dahlia Case — Played Footsie with Dead Girl at Lesbian Nightclub’ in the papers. Now do you get the picture?”

I said, “In Technicolor,” and patted Madeleine’s shoulder.

She pulled away from me and sighed, “Is my name going into all kinds of police files where all kinds of slimy little policemen and slimy little yellow journalists will see it?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“What do I have to do to keep it out?”

“Convince me of a few things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as first you give me your impression of Betty and Linda. You’re a bright kid — give me your play on them.”

Madeleine stroked the wheel, then the gleaming oak dashboard. “Well, they weren’t sisters, they were just using the Hideaway to cadge drinks and dinner.”

“How could you tell?”

“I saw them brush off passes.”

I thought of Marjorie Graham’s mannish older woman. “Any passes stand out? You know, rough stuff? Bull daggers getting persistent?”

Madeleine laughed. “No, the passes I saw were very ladylike.”

“Who made them?”

“Street trade I never saw before.”

“Or since?”

“Yes, or since.”

“What did you talk about with them?”

Madeleine laughed again, harder. “Linda talked about the boy she left behind in Hicktown, Nebraska, or wherever it was she came from and Betty talked about the latest issue of Screen World. On a conversational level, they were right down there with you, only they were better looking.”

I smiled and said, “You’re cute.”

Madeleine smiled and said, “You’re not. Look, I’m tired. Aren’t you going to ask me to prove I didn’t kill Betty? Since I can prove it, won’t that put an end to this farce?”

“I’ll get to that in a minute. Did Betty ever talk about being in a movie?”

“No, but she was movie-struck in general.”

“Did she ever show you a movie viewfinder? A lens gadget on a chain?”

“No.”

“What about Linda? Did she talk about being in a movie?”

“No, just her hicktown sweetheart.”

“Do you have any idea where she’d go if she was on the lam?”

“Yes. Hicktown, Nebraska.”

“Besides there.”

“No. Can I—”

I touched Madeleine’s shoulder, more of a caress than a pat. “Yeah, tell me your alibi. Where were you and what were you doing from last Monday, January thirteenth, through to Wednesday the fifteenth.”

Madeleine cupped her hands to her mouth and blew a horn fanfare, then rested them on the seat by my knee. “I was at our house in Laguna from Sunday night through Thursday morning. Daddy and Mommy and sister Martha were there with me, and so were our live-in servants. If you want verification, call Daddy. Our number is Webster 4391. But be discreet. Don’t tell him where you met me. Now, do you have any other questions?”

My private Dahlia lead was blown, but it gave me the green light in another direction. “Yeah. You ever do it with men?”

Madeleine touched my knee. “I haven’t met any lately, but I’ll do it with you to keep my name out of the papers.”

My legs were Jell-O. “Tomorrow night?”

“All right. Pick me up at eight, like a gentleman. The address is 482 South Muirfield.”

“I know the address.”

“I’m not surprised. What’s your name?”

“Bucky Bleichert.”

Madeleine said, “It goes with your teeth.”

I said, “Eight o’clock,” and got out of the Packard while my legs could still function.

Eleven

Lee said, “You want to catch the fight films at the Wiltem tonight? They’re showing oldies — Dempsey, Ketchel, Greb. What do you say?”

We were sitting at desks across from each other in the University squadroom, manning telephones. The clerical flunkies assigned to the Short case had been given Sunday off, so regular field dicks were doing the drudge work, taking down tips, then writing out slips assessing the tipsters and routing possible follow-ups to the nearest detective division. We’d been at it for an hour without interruption, Kay’s “gutless” remark hanging between us. Looking at Lee, I saw that his eyes were just starting to pin, a sign that he was coming on to a fresh Benzie jolt. I said, “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got a date.”

Lee grinned-twitched. “Yeah? Who with?”

I changed the subject. “Did you smooth it out with Kay?”

“Yeah, I rented a room for my stuff. The El Nido Hotel, Santa Monica and Wilcox. Nine scoots a week, chump change if it makes her feel good.”

“De Witt gets out tomorrow, Lee. I think I should lean on him, maybe get Vogel and Koenig to do it.”

Lee kicked at a wastebasket. Paper wads and empty coffee cups flew out; heads darted up from other desks. Then his phone rang.

Lee picked it up. “Homicide, Sergeant Blanchard speaking.”

I stared at my routing slips; Lee listened to his caller. Wednesday, Dahlia kiss-off time, came into focus as an eternity away, and I wondered if he’d need weaning off the Benzedrine. Madeleine Sprague jumped into my mind — her nine millionth jump since she said, “I’ll do it with you to keep my name out of the papers.” Lee had been on his call for a long time without interjecting comments or questions; I started wishing that my phone would ring and make Madeleine jump away.

Lee put down the receiver. I said, “Anything interesting?”

“Another loony. Who’s your date tonight?”

“A neighbor girl.”

“Nice girl?”

“A honey. Partner, if I find you hopped-up after Tuesday, it’s the Bleichert-Blanchard rematch.”

Lee gave me an outer space grin. “It’s Blanchard-Bleichert, and you’d lose again. I’m getting coffee. You want some?”

“Black, no sugar.

“Coming up.”

I logged in a total of forty-six phone tips, about half of them reasonably coherent. Lee took off in the early afternoon, and Ellis Loew stuck me with the job of typing up Russ Millard’s new summary report. It stated that Red Manley had been released to his wife after conclusively passing lie detector and Pentothal tests, and that Betty Short’s love letters had been thoroughly gone through. A number of her swains had been ID’d and cleared as suspects, as had most of the guys who appeared in her photographs. Efforts to identify the remaining men were continuing, and the Camp Cooke MPs had called in with the word that the soldier who beat up Betty in ’43 was killed in the Normandy Invasion. As for Betty’s many marriages and engagements, a forty-eight-state capital record check revealed that no marriage licenses had ever been issued to her.

The report went downhill from there. The license numbers that Lee had glommed from the window of Junior Nash’s fuck pad had yielded zero; over three hundred Dahlia sightings a day were flooding LAPD and Sheriff’s Department switchboards. There had been ninety-three phony confessions so far, with four seriously cracked loonies without alibis held at the Hall of Justice Jail, awaiting sanity hearings and probable shipment to Camarillo. Field interrogations were still going full speed — 190 full-time men now on the case. The only ray of hope was the result of my 1/17 FI questionings: Linda Martin/Lorna Martilkova was spotted in a couple of Encino cocktail lounges, and a big push to grab her was being centered in that area. I finished up the typing job gut certain that Elizabeth Short’s killer was never going to be found, and put money on it — a double sawbuck on “Unsolved-pay 2 to 1” in the squadroom pool.

I rang the doorbell of the Sprague mansion at exactly 8:00. I was dressed in my best outfit — blue blazer, white shirt and gray flannels — and put money on myself as a fool for kowtowing to the surroundings — I’d be taking the clothes off as soon as Madeleine and I got to my place. The ten hours of phone work stuck with me despite the shower I’d taken at the station, I felt even more out of place than I should have and my left ear still ached from the barrage of Dahlia talk.

Madeleine opened the door, a knockout in a skirt and a tight cashmere sweater. She once-overed me, took my hand and said, “Look, I hate to pull this, but Daddy has heard about you. He insisted you stay for dinner. I told him we met at that art exhibit at Stanley Rose’s Bookshop, so if you have to pump everybody for my alibi, try to be subtle about it. All right?”

I said, “Sure,” let Madeleine link her arm through mine and lead me inside. The entrance foyer was as Spanish as the outside of the mansion was Tudor: tapestries and crossed wrought-iron swords on the whitewashed walls, thick Persian carpets over a polished wood floor. The foyer opened into a giant living room with a men’s club atmosphere — green leather chairs arranged around low tables and settees; huge stone fireplace; small Oriental throw rugs, multicolored, placed together at different angles, so that just the right amount of oak floor bordered them. The walls were cherrywood, and featured framed sepias of the family and their ancestors.

I noticed a stuffed spaniel poised by the fireplace with a yellowed newspaper rolled into its mouth. Madeleine said, “That’s Balto. The paper is the LA Times for August 1,1926. That’s the day Daddy learned he’d made his first million. Balto was our pet then. Daddy’s accountant called up and said, ‘Emmett, you’re a millionaire!’ Daddy was cleaning his pistols, and Balto came in with the paper. Daddy wanted to consecrate the moment, so he shot him. If you look closely, you can see the bullet hole in his chest. Hold your breath, lovey. Here’s the family.”

Slack-jawed, I let Madeleine point me into a small sitting room. The walls were covered with framed photographs; the floor space was taken up by the three other Spragues in matching easy chairs. They all looked up; nobody stood up. Smiling without exposing my teeth, I said, “Hello.” Madeleine made the introductions while I gawked down at the still life ensemble.

“Bucky Bleichert, may I present my family. My mother, Ramona Cathcart Sprague. My father, Emmett Sprague. My sister, Martha McConville Sprague.”

The ensemble came to life with little nods and smiles. Then Emmett Sprague beamed, got to his feet and stuck out his hand. I said, “A pleasure, Mr. Sprague,” and shook it, eyeing him while he eyed me. The patriarch was short and barrel-chested, with a cracked, sun-weathered face and a full head of white hair that had probably once been sandy colored. I placed his age as somewhere in his fifties, his handshake as the grip of someone who’d done a good deal of physical labor. His voice was cut-glass Scottish, not the broad burr of Madeleine’s imitation: “I saw you fight Mondo Sanchez. You boxed the pants off him. Another Billy Conn you were.”

I thought of Sanchez, a built-up middleweight stiff I’d fought because my manager wanted me to get a rep for creaming Mexicans. “Thanks, Mr. Sprague.”

“Thank you for giving such a dandy performance. Mondo was a good boy, too. What happened to him?”

“He died from a heroin overdose.”

“God bless him. Too bad he didn’t the in the ring, it would have spared his family a lot of grief. Speaking of families, please shake hands with the rest of mine.”

Martha Sprague stood up on command. She was short, plump and blonde, with a tenacious resemblance to her father, blue eyes so light that it looked like she sent them out to be bleached and a neck that was acned and raw from scratching. She looked like a teenaged girl who’d never outgrow her baby fat and mature into beauty. I shook her firm hand feeling sorry for her; she caught what I was thinking immediately. Her pale eyes fired up as she yanked her paw away.

Ramona Sprague was the only one of the three who looked like Madeleine; if not for her I would have thought the brass girl was adopted. She possessed a pushing-fifty version of Madeleine’s lustrous dark hair and pale skin, but there was nothing else attractive about her. She was fat, her face was flaccid, her rouge and lipstick were applied slightly off center, so that her face was weirdly askew. Taking her hand, she said, “Madeleine has said so many nice things about you,” with a trace of a slur. There was no liquor on her breath; I wondered if she was jacked on drugstore stuff.

Madeleine sighed, “Daddy, can we eat? Bucky and I want to catch a nine-thirty show.”

Emmett Sprague slapped me on the back. “I always obey my eldest. Bucky, will you entertain us with boxing and police anecdotes?”

“Between mouthfuls,” I said.

Sprague slapped my back again, harder. “I can tell you didn’t catch too many in the cabeza. Like Fred Allen you are. Come on, family. Dinner is served.”

We filed into a large, wood-paneled dining room. The table in the middle of it was small, with five place settings already laid down. A serving cart was stationed by the door, leaking the unmistakable aroma of corned beef and cabbage. Old Man Sprague said, “Hearty fare breeds hearty people, haute cuisine breeds degenerates. Dig in, lad. The maid goes to her voodoo revival meetings on Sunday nights, so there’s no one here but us white folks.”

I grabbed a plate and piled it with food. Martha Sprague poured the wine and Madeleine dished herself out a small portion of each item and sat down at the table, motioning for me to sit beside her. I did, and Martha announced to the room: “I want to sit opposite Mr. Bleichert so I can draw him.”

Emmett caught my eye and winked. “Bucky, you are in for a cruel caricaturing. Martha’s pencil never flinches. Nineteen years old she is, and a high-paid commercial artist already. Maddy’s my pretty one, but Martha’s my certified genius.”

Martha winced. She placed her plate directly across from me and sat down, arraying a pencil and a small sketch pad beside her napkin. Ramona Sprague took the adjoining seat and patted her arm; Emmett, standing by his chair at the head of the table, proposed a toast: “To new friends, prosperity and the great sport of boxing.”

I said, “Amen,” forked a slice of corned beef into my mouth and chewed it. It was fatty and dry, but I put on a yum-yum face and said, “This is delicious.”

Ramona Sprague gave me a blank look; Emmett said, “Lacey, our maid, believes in voodoo. Some sort of Christian variation on it. She probably put a spell on the cow, made a pact with her nigger Jesus so the beast would be nice and juicy. Speaking of our colored brethren, how did it feel to shoot those two jigaboos, Bucky?”

Madeleine whispered, “Humor him.”

Emmett caught the aside and chuckled. “Yes, lad, humor me. In fact, you should humor all rich men pushing sixty. They might go senile and confuse you with their heirs.”

I laughed, exposing my choppers; Martha reached for her pencil to capture them. “I didn’t feel much of anything. It was them or us.”

“And your partner? That blond lad you fought last year?”

“Lee took it a bit harder than I did.”

Emmett said, “Blonds are overly sensitive. Being one, I know. Thank God I’ve two brownies in the family to keep us pragmatic. Maddy and Ramona have that bulldog tenacity that Martha and I lack.”

Only the food I was chewing kept me from braying outright. I thought of the spoiled sewer crawler I was going to screw later that night and her mother smiling numbly across the table from me. The impulse to laugh came on stronger and stronger; I finally got my mouthful swallowed, belched instead of howled and raised my glass. “To you, Mr. Sprague. For making me laugh for the first time in a week.”

Ramona gave me a disgusted look; Martha concentrated on her artwork. Madeleine played footsie with me under the table and Emmett toasted me back. “Rough week you had, lad?”

I laughed. “In spades. I’ve been detached to Homicide to work on the Black Dahlia thing. My days off have been cancelled, my partner’s obsessed with it, and the crazies have been coming out of the woodwork. There’s two hundred cops working a single case. It’s absurd.”

Emmett said, “It’s tragic, is what it is. What’s your theory, lad? Who on God’s earth could have done a thing like that to another human being?”

I knew then that the family didn’t know about Madeleine’s tenuous connection to Betty Short, and decided not to press for her alibi. “I think it’s a random job. The Short girl was what you might call easy. She was a compulsive liar with a hundred boyfriends. If we get the killer, it’ll be a fluke.”

Emmett said, “God bless her, I hope you get him and I hope he gets a hot date with that little green room up at San Quentin.”

Running her toes up my leg, Madeleine pouted, “Daddy, you’re monopolizing the conversation and you’re making Bucky sing for his supper.”

“Shall I sing for mine, lassie? Even though I’m the breadwinner?”

Old Man Sprague was angry — I could see it in his rising color and the way he hacked at his corned beef. Curious about the man, I said, “When did you come to the United States?”

Emmett beamed. “I’ll sing for anyone who wants to hear my immigrant success story. What kind of name is Bleichert? Dutch?”

“German,” I said.

Emmett raised his glass. “A great people, the Germans. Hitler was a bit excessive, but mark my words that someday we’ll regret not joining forces with him to fight the Reds. Where in Germany are your people from, lad?”

“Munich.”

“Ah, München! I’m surprised they left. If I’d grown up in Edinburgh or some other civilized place I’d still be wearing kilts. But I came from godawful Aberdeen, so I came to America right after the first war. I killed a lot of your fine German countrymen during that war, lad. But they were trying to kill me, so I felt justified. Did you meet Balto out in the parlor?”

I nodded; Madeleine groaned, Ramona Sprague winced and speared a potato. Emmett said, “My old dreamer friend Georgie Tilden taxidermied him. Scads of odd talents dreamer Georgie had. We were in a Scots regiment together during the war, and I saved Georgie’s life when a bunch of your fine German countrymen got obstreperous and charged us with bayonets. Georgie was enamored of the flickers; he loved a good nickelodeon show. We went back to Aberdeen after the armistice, saw what a dead dog town it was, and Georgie persuaded me to come to California with him — he wanted to work in the silent flicker business. He was never worth a damn unless I was there to lead him around by the snout, so I looked around Aberdeen, saw that it was a third-class destiny and said, ‘Aye, Georgie, California it is. Maybe we’ll strike rich. And if we don’t, we’ll fail where the sun always shines.’”

I thought of my old man, who came to America in 1908 with big dreams — but married the first German emigrant woman he met and settled for wage slavery with Pacific Gas and Electric. “What happened then?”

Emmett Sprague rapped the table with his fork. “Knock wood, it was the right time to arrive. Hollywood was a cow pasture, but the silents were moving into their heyday. Georgie got work as a lighting man, and I found work building damn good houses — damn good and cheap. I lived outdoors and put every damn good dime back into my business, then took out loans from every bank and shylock willing to lend money and bought damn good property — damn good and cheap. Georgie introduced me to Mack Sennett, and I helped him build sets out at his studio in Edendale, then touched him for a loan to buy more property. Old Mack knew a lad on the make when he saw one, being one himself. He gave me the loan on the proviso that I help him with that housing project he was putting up — Holly woodland — underneath that godawful hundred-foot sign he erected on Mount Lee to ballyhoo it. Old Mack knew how to squeeze a dollar dry, he did. He had extras moonlighting as laborers and vice versa. I’d drive them over to Hollywoodland after ten or twelve hours on a Keystone Kops flicker, and we’d put in another six hours by torchlight. I even got an assistant director’s credit on a couple of movies, old Mack was so grateful for the way I squeezed his slaves.”

Madeleine and Ramona were picking at their food with sullen faces, like they’d been captive audiences to the story before; Martha was still drawing, staring intently at me, her captive. “What happened to your friend?” I asked.

“God bless him, but for every story of success there’s a corresponding one of failure. Georgie didn’t butter up the right people. He didn’t have the drive to complement his God-given talent, and he just fell by the wayside. He was disfigured in a car crash back in ’36, and now he’s what you might call a never was. I give him odd jobs tending some of my rental property and he does some rubbish hauling for the city—”

I heard a sharp screechy sound, and looked across the table. Ramona had missed stabbing a potato, and her fork had slid off the plate. Emmett said, “Mother, are you feeling well? Is the food to your liking?”

Ramona stared in her lap and said, “Yes, Father” it looked like Martha was bracing her elbow. Madeleine went back to playing footsie with me; Emmett said, “Mother, you and our certified genius have not been doing a very good job of entertaining our guest. Would you care to participate in the conversation?”

Madeleine dug her toes into my ankle — just as I was about to try to lighten things up with a joke. Ramona Sprague forked herself a small mouthful of food, chewed it daintily and said, “Did you know that Ramona Boulevard was named after me, Mr. Bleichert?”

The woman’s out-of-kilter face congealed around the words; she spoke them with a strange dignity. “No, Mrs. Sprague, I didn’t know that. I thought it was named after the Ramona Pageant.”

“I was named after the pageant,” she said. “When Emmett married me for my father’s money he promised my family that he would use his influence with the City Zoning Board to have a street named after me, since all his money was tied up in real estate and he couldn’t afford to buy me a wedding ring. Father assumed it would be a nice residential street, but all Emmett could manage was a dead-end block in a red light district in Lincoln Heights. Are you familiar with the neighborhood, Mr. Bleichert?” Now the doormat’s voice held an edge of fury.

“I grew up there,” I said.

“Then you know that Mexican prostitutes expose themselves out of windows to attract customers. Well, after Emmett succeeded in getting Rosalinda Street changed to Ramona Boulevard he took me for a little tour there. The prostitutes greeted him by name. Some even had anatomical nicknames for him. It made me very sad and very hurt, but I bided my time and got even. When the girls were small I directed my own little pageants, right outside on our front lawn. I used the neighbor’s children as extras and reenacted episodes out of Mr. Sprague’s past that he would rather forget. That he would—”

The head of the table was slammed; glasses toppled and plates rattled. I stared at my lap to give the family infighters back some of their dignity and saw that Madeleine was gripping her father’s knee so hard that her fingers were blue-white. She grabbed my knee with her free hand — with ten times the strength I thought she’d be capable of. An awful silence stretched, then Ramona Cathcart Sprague said, “Father, I’ll sing for my supper when Mayor Bowron or Councilman Tucker comes to dinner, but not for Madeleine’s male whores. A common policeman. My God, Emmett, how little you think of me.”

I heard chairs scraping the floor, knees bumping the table, then footsteps moving out of the dining room; I saw that my hand was gripping Madeleine’s the same way I curled it into an eight-ounce glove. The brass girl was whispering, “I’m sorry, Bucky. I’m sorry.” Then a cheery voice said, “Mr. Bleichert?” and I looked up because it sounded so happy and sane.

It was Martha McConville Sprague, holding out a piece of paper. I took it with my free hand; Martha smiled and walked away. Madeleine was still muttering apologies when I looked at the picture. It was the two of us, both naked. Madeleine had her legs spread. I was between them, gnawing at her with giant Bucky Bleichert teeth.

We took the Packard down to hot sheet row on South La Brea. I drove, and Madeleine had the smarts not to talk until we passed a cinderblock auto court called the Red Arrow Inn. Then she said, “Here. It’s clean.”

I parked beside a line of pre-war jalopies; Madeleine went to the office and returned with the key to room eleven. She opened the door; I flicked on the wall light.

The flop was done up in dreary shades of brown and reeked of its previous inhabitants. I heard a dope sale being transacted in number twelve; Madeleine started to look like the caricature in her sister’s drawing. I reached for the light switch to blot it all out. She said, “No. Please, I want to see you.”

The narco sale burst into an argument. I saw a radio on the dresser and turned it on; an ad for Gorton’s Slenderline Shop ate up the angry words. Madeleine pulled off her sweater and removed her nylons standing up; she was down to her undergarments before I began fumbling at my clothes. I snagged the zipper stepping out of my trousers; I ripped a shirt seam unhitching my shoulder holster. Then Madeleine was naked on the bed — and the kid sister’s picture was obliterated.

I was nude inside of a second and joined with the brass girl inside of two. She muttered something like, “Don’t hate my family, they’re not bad,” and I silenced her with a hard kiss. She returned it; our lips and tongues played until we had to break for breath. I ran my hands down to her breasts, cupping and kneading; Madeleine gasped little words about making up for the other Spragues. The more I kissed and felt and tasted her and the more she loved it, the more she murmured about them — so I grabbed her hair and hissed, “Not them, me. Do me be with me.”

Madeleine obeyed, going between my legs like a reverse of Martha’s drawing. Captured that way, I felt myself getting ready to burst. I pushed Madeleine away so as not to explode, whispering, “Me, not them,” stroking her hair, trying to concentrate on an inane radio jingle. Madeleine held me harder than any fight giveaway girl ever did; when I was cooled down and ready, I eased her onto her back and pushed myself inside her.

Now it was no common policeman and rich girl slut. It was us together, arching, shifting and moving, hard, but with all the time in the world. We moved together until the dance music and jingles ended and the radio dial tone came and went, the cinderblock rutting room silent except for us. Then we ended it — perfectly, together.

We held each other afterward, pockets of sweat binding us head to toe. I thought of going on duty in less than four hours and groaned; Madeleine broke our embrace and aped my trademark, flashing her perfect teeth. Laughing, I said, “Well, you kept your name out of the papers.”

“Until we announce the Bleichert-Sprague nuptials?”

I laughed harder. “Your mother would love that.”

“Mother’s a hypocrite. She takes pills that the doctor gives her, so she’s not a hophead. I fool around, so I’m a whore. She’s sanctioned, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are. You’re my—” I couldn’t quite say, “whore.”

Madeleine tickled my ribs. “Say it. Don’t be a cop from squaresville. Say it.”

I grabbed her hand before the tickling made me helpless. “You’re my paramour, you’re my inamorata, you’re my sweetheart, you’re the woman I suppressed evidence for—”

Madeleine bit my shoulder and said, “I’m your whore.”

I laughed. “Okay, you’re my violator of 234-A PC.”

“What’s that?”

“The California penal code designation for prostitution.”

Madeleine waggled her eyebrows. “Penal code?’

I put up my hands. “You got me there.”

The brass girl nuzzled me. “I like you, Bucky.”

“I like you, too.”

“You didn’t start out liking me. Tell true — at first you just wanted to screw me.”

“That’s true.”

“Then when did you start liking me?”

“The moment you took off your clothes.”

“Bastard! You want to know when I started liking you?”

“Tell true.”

“When I told Daddy I met this nice policeman Bucky Bleichert. Daddy’s jaw dropped. He was impressed, and Emmett McConville Sprague is a very hard man to impress.”

I thought of the man’s cruelty to his wife and made a neutral comment: “He’s an impressive man.”

Madeleine said, “Diplomat. He’s a hardcase, tightwad Scotchman son of a bitch, but he’s a man. You know how he really made his money?”

“How?”

“Gangster kickbacks and worse. Daddy bought rotten lumber and abandoned movie facades from Mack Sennett and built houses out of them. He’s got firetraps and dives all over LA, registered to phony corporations. He’s friends with Mickey Cohen. His people collect the rents.”

I shrugged. “The Mick’s thick with Bowron and half the Board of Supervisors. You see my gun and handcuffs?”

“Yes.”

“Cohen paid for them. He put up the dough for a fund to help junior officers pay for their equipment. It’s good public relations. The city tax assessor never checks his books, because the Mick pays for the gas and oil on all his field agent’s cars. So you’re not exactly shocking me.”

Madeleine said, “Do you want to hear a secret?”

“Sure.”

“Half a block of Daddy’s Long Beach houses collapsed during the ’33 earthquake. Twelve people were killed. Daddy paid money to have his name expunged from the contractor’s records.”

I held Madeleine out at arm’s length. “Why are you telling me these things?”

Caressing my hands, she said, “Because Daddy’s impressed with you. Because you’re the only boy I’ve ever brought home that he thought was worth spit. Because Daddy worships toughness and he thinks you’re tough, and if we get serious he’d probably tell you himself. Those people weigh on him, and he takes it out on Mother because it was her money he built that block with. I don’t want you to judge Daddy by tonight. First impressions last, and I like you and I don’t want—”

I pulled Madeleine to me. “Be still, babe. You’re with me now, not your family.”

Madeleine held me tightly. I wanted to let her know things were copacetic, so I tilted her chin up. Tears were in her eyes; she said, “Bucky, I didn’t tell you all of it about Betty Short.”

I gripped her shoulders. “What?”

“Don’t be mad at me. It’s nothing, I just don’t want to keep it a secret. I didn’t like you at first, so I didn’t—”

“Tell me now.”

Madeleine looked at me, a stretch of sweat-stained bedsheet separating us. “Last summer I was bar hopping a lot. Straight bars in Hollywood. I heard about a girl who was supposed to look a lot like me. I got curious about her and left notes at a couple of places — ‘Your lookalike would like to meet you’ and my private number at the house. Betty called me, and we got together. We talked, and that was it. I ran into her again with Linda Martin at La Verne’s last November. It was just a coincidence.”

“And that’s all of it?”

“Yes.”

“Then babe, you’d better prepare yourself. There’s fifty-odd cops canvassing bars, and if even one of them gets hold of your little lookalike number, you’re headed for a trip across page one. There’s not a goddamned thing I could do about it, and if it happens, don’t ask me — because I’ve done all I’m going to.”

Drawing away from me, Madeleine said, “I’ll take care of it.”

“You mean your Daddy will?”

“Bucky lad, are ye telling me you’re jealous of a man twice your age and half your size?”

I thought of the Black Dahlia then, her death eclipsing my shoot-out headlines. “Why did you want to meet Betty Short?”

Madeleine shivered; the red neon arrow that gave the flop its name blinked through the window and across her face. “I’ve worked hard at being loose and free,” she said. “But the way people described Betty it sounded like she was a natural. A real wild girl from the gate.”

I kissed my wild girl. We made love again, and I pictured her coupled with Betty Short the whole time — both of them naturals.

Twelve

Russ Millard took in my rumpled clothes and said, “A ten-ton truck or a woman?”

I looked around at University squadroom starting to fill up with daywatch dicks. “Betty Short. No phone work today, okay, boss?”

“In the mood for some fresh air?”

“Keep talking.”

“Linda Martin was spotted last night out in Encino, trying to get served at a couple of bars. You and Blanchard go out to the Valley and look for her. Start at the twenty-thousand block of Victory Boulevard and work west. I’ll be sending some other men as soon as they report in.”

“When?”

Millard checked his watch. “Immediately, if not sooner.”

I eyeballed for Lee and didn’t see him, nodded assent and reached for the phone on my desk. I called the house, the City Hall Warrants office and Information for the number of the El Nido Hotel. I got a no answer for the first call and two no Blanchards for the others. Then Millard came back, with Fritz Vogel and — amazingly — Johnny Vogel in plainclothes.

I stood up. “I can’t find Lee, Skipper.”

Millard said, “Go with Fritzie and John. Take an unmarked radio car so you can keep in touch with the other men out there.”

The fat Vogel boys stared at me, then at each other. The look they exchanged said my unkempt state was a Class B Felony. “Thanks, Russ,” I said.

We drove to the Valley, the Vogels in the front seat, me in the back. I tried to doze, but Fritzie’s monologue on hooers and woman killers made it impossible. Johnny nodded along; every time his father paused for breath, he said, “Right, Dad.” Going over the Cahuenga Pass, Fritzie ran out of verbal steam; Johnny’s yes-man act fell silent. I closed my eyes and leaned against the window. Madeleine was doing a slow striptease in concert with motor hum when I heard the Vogels whispering.

“... he’s alseep, Daddy.”

“Don’t call me ‘Daddy’ on the job, I’ve told you a million goddamn times. It makes you sound like a nancy boy.”

“I proved I’m not no nancy boy. Homos couldn’t do what I did. I’m not cherry no more, so don’t say nancy boy.”

“Be still, damn you.”

“Daddy, I mean Dad—”

“I said be still, Johnny.”

The fat braggart cop reduced to a child grabbed my interest; I faked a snore-wheeze so the two would keep it up. Johnny whispered, “See, Dad, he’s asleep. And he’s the nance, not me. I proved it. Buck-tooth bastard. I could take him, Dad. You know I could. Job-stealing bastard, I had Warrants in the bag until—”

“John Charles Vogel, you hush this instant or I’ll take a strap to you, twenty-four-year-old policeman or not.”

The radio started barking then; I faked a big yawn. Johnny turned around and smiled. He said, “Catch up on your beauty sleep?” wafting his legendary halitosis.

My first instinct was to call him on his crack about taking me — then my sense of squadroom politics took over. “Yeah, I had a late night.”

Johnny winked ineffectually. “I’m a quiff hound myself. I go a week without it, I’m climbing the walls.”

The dispatcher droned, “... repeat, 10-A-94, roger your location.”

Fritzie grabbed the mike. “ 10-A-94, rogering at Victory and Saticoy.”

The dispatcher replied, “See the barman at the Caledonia Lounge, Victory and Valley View. Warrantee Linda Martin reported there now. Code three.”

Fritzie hit the siren and punched the gas. Cars pulled to the curb; we shot forward in the middle lane. I sent one up to the Calvinist God I believed in as a kid: don’t let the Martin girl mention Madeleine Sprague. Valley View Avenue appeared in the windshield; Fritzie hung a hard right turn, killing the siren in front of a mock-bamboo hut.

The bar’s mock-bamboo door burst open; Linda Martin/Lorna Martilkova, looking as fresh-scrubbed as her picture, burst out. I tumbled from the car and hit the sidewalk running, Vogel and Vogel huffing and puffing behind me. Linda/Lorna ran like an antelope, clutching an oversized purse to her chest; I closed the distance between us by sprinting flat-out. The girl reached a busy side street and darted into traffic; cars swerved to avoid hitting her. She looked over her shoulder then; I dodged a beer truck and motorcycle on a collision course, sucked wind and hauled. The girl stumbled over the opposite curb, her purse went flying, I made a final leap and grabbed her.

She came up off the pavement spitting and beating at my chest; I grabbed her tiny fists, twisted them behind her back and cuffed her wrists. Lorna tried kicking then, well-aimed little shots at my legs. One kick connected with my shinbone; the girl, off balance from the cuffs, hit the ground ass-first. I helped her up, catching a wad of spittle on my shirtfront. Lorna yelped, “I’m an emancipated minor and if you touch me without a matron present I can sue you!” Catching my breath, I push-pulled her over to where her purse was lying.

I picked it up, surprised by the bulk and weight. Looking inside, I saw a small metal film can. I said, “What’s the movie about?” The girl stammered, “P-P-Please, mister, my p-p-parents.”

A horn tooted; I saw Johnny Vogel leaning out the window of the cruiser. “Millard said to bring the girl to Georgia Street juvie.”

I hauled Lorna over and shoved her into the backseat. Fritzie hit the siren, and we leadfooted.

The run to downtown LA took thirty-five minutes.

Millard and Sears were waiting for us on the steps of Georgia Street Juvenile Hall. I led the girl in while Vogel and Vogel strode ahead. Court matrons and juvie dicks cleared a path for us inside; Millard opened a door marked DETENTION INTERVIEWS.I removed Lorna’s cuffs, Sears walked into the room, pulled out seats and arranged ashtrays and notepads. Millard said, “Johnny, you go back to University and work the phones.”

Fat Boy started to protest, then looked at his father. Fritzie nodded yes; Johnny exited, looking wounded. Fritzie announced, “I’m gonna call Mr. Loew. He should be in on this.”

Millard said, “No. Not until we have a statement.”

“Give her to me, I’ll get you a statement.”

“A voluntary statement, Sergeant.”

Fritzie flushed. “I consider that a goddamn insult, Millard.”

“You consider it what you damn well like, but you do what I damn well say, Mr. Loew or no Mr. Loew.”

Fritz Vogel stood perfectly still. He looked like a human A-bomb about to explode, his voice the fuse: “You whored with the Dahlia, didn’t you, girlie? You peddled your little twat with her. Tell me where you were during her lost days.”

Lorna said, “Screw you, Charlie.”

Fritzie stepped toward her; Millard moved between them. “I’ll ask the questions, Sergeant.”

You could have heard a pin drop. Vogel stood toe to toe with Millard. Seconds stretched, and then Fritzie squeaked, “You’re a goddamned bleeding heart Bolshevik.”

Millard took one step forward; Vogel took one step back. “Get out, Fritzie.”

Vogel took three steps backward. His heels hit the wall, and he pivoted out the door, slamming it. The echo reverberated; Harry disarmed the remnants of the bomb: “How does it feel to be the object of such a fuss, Miss Martilkova?”

The girl said, “I’m Linda Martin,” and tugged at the pleats of her skirt.

I took a seat, caught Millard’s eye and pointed to the purse resting on the table, the film can poking out. The lieutenant nodded and sat down next to Lorna. “You know this is about Betty Short, don’t you, sweetheart?”

The girl lowered her head and began sniffling; Harry handed her a Kleenex. She tore it into strips and smoothed them out on the table. “Does this mean I’ll have to go back to my folks?”

Millard nodded. “Yes.”

“My dad hits me. He’s a dumb Slovak, and he gets drunk and hits me.”

“Sweetheart, when you get back to Iowa you’ll be on non-court probation. You tell your probation officer your father hits you and he’ll put a stop to it damn quick.”

“If my dad finds out what I did in LA, he’ll hit me bad.”

“He won’t find out, Linda. I told those other two officers to leave to make sure what you say stays confidential.”

“If you send me back to Cedar Rapids, I’ll just run away again.”

“I’m sure you will. Now the sooner you tell us what we want to know about Betty and the sooner we believe you, the sooner you’ll be on the train and able to escape. So that gives you a good reason to be truthful with us, doesn’t it, Linda?”

The girl went back to playing with her Kleenex. I sensed a jaded little brain considering all the angles, all the possible outs. Finally she sighed, “Call me Lorna. If I’m going back to Iowa I should get used to it.”

Millard smiled; Harry Sears lit a cigarette and poised his pen over his Steno pad. My blood pressure zoomed to the tune of “No Madeleine, no Madeleine, no Madeleine.”

Russ said, “Lorna, are you ready to talk to us?”

The former Linda Martin said, “Shoot.”

Millard asked, “When and where did you meet Betty Short?”

Lorna mussed up her Kleenex strips. “Last fall, at this career girl’s place on Cherokee.”

“1842 North Cherokee?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you became friends?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Say yes or no please, Lorna.”

“Yes, we became friends.”

“What did you do together?”

Lorna bit at her cuticles. “We talked girl talk, we made casting rounds, we bummed drinks and dinner at bars—”

I interrupted: “What kind of bars?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean nice places? Dives? Servicemen’s hangouts?”

“Oh. Just places in Hollywood. Places where we figured they wouldn’t ask me for ID.”

My blood pressure decelerated. Millard said, “You told Betty about the rooming house on Orange Drive, the place where you were staying, right?”

“Uh-huh. I mean yes.”

“Why did Betty move out of the place on Cherokee?”

“It was too crowded, and she’d tapped all the girls for a dollar here, a dollar there, and they were mad at her.”

“Were any of them particularly mad?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you sure Betty didn’t move out because of boyfriend trouble?”

“I’m sure.”

“Do you recall the names of any of the men Betty went out with last fall?”

Lorna shrugged. “They were just pickups.”

“What about names, Lorna?”

The girl counted on her fingers, stopping when she got to three. “Well, there were these two guys at Orange Drive, Don Leyes and Hal Costa, and a sailor named Chuck.”

“No last name on Chuck?”

“No, but I know he was a gunnery mate second class.”

Millard started to ask another question, but I held up my hand to cut him off. “Lorna, I talked to Marjorie Graham the other day, and she said she told you the police were coming by Orange Drive to talk to the tenants about Betty. You ran then. Why?”

Lorna bit a hangnail off and sucked at the wound. “Because I knew that if my picture got in the papers as Betty’s friend my parents would see it and make the police send me home.”

“Where did you go when you rabbited?”

“I met a man in a bar and got him to rent me a room at an auto court in the Valley.”

“Did you—”

Millard silenced me with a chopped hand gesture. “You said you and Betty made casting rounds together. Did you ever get any movie work?”

Lorna twisted her fingers together in her lap. “No.”

“Then could you tell me what’s in that film can in your purse?”

Eyes on to the floor and dripping tears, Lorna Martilkova whispered, “It’s a movie.”

“A dirty movie?”

Lorna nodded mutely. The girl’s tears were rivers of mascara now; Millard handed her a handkerchief. “Sweetheart, you have to tell us all of it, from the beginning. So think it all out, and take your time. Bucky, get her some water.”

I left the room, found a drinking fountain and cup dispenser in the hall, filled a large paper container and returned with it. Lorna was speaking softly when I placed the cup on the table in front of her.

“... and I was cadging at this bar in Gardena. This Mexican man — Raoul or Jorge or something — started talking to me. I thought I was pregnant, and I was desperate wicked bad for money. He said he’d give me two hundred dollars to act in a nudie film.”

Lorna stopped, slugged down the water, took a deep breath and kept going. “The man said he needed another girl, so I called Betty at the Cherokee place. She said yes, and the Mexican man and me picked her up. He got us hopped on reefers, I think ’cause he was afraid we’d get scared and back out. We drove down to Tijuana, and we made the movie at this big house outside town. The Mex man worked the lights and ran the camera and told us what to do and drove us back to LA, and that’s all of it, from the beginning, so will you call my folks now?”

I looked at Russ, then Harry; they were staring at the girl impassively. Wanting to fill in the blank spaces of my own private lead, I asked, “When did you make the film, Lorna?”

“Around Thanksgiving.”

“Can you give us a description of the Mexican man?”

Lorna stared at the floor. “Just a greasy Mex. Maybe thirty, maybe forty, I don’t know. I was on hop, and I don’t remember too good.”

“Did he seem particularly interested in Betty?”

“No.”

“Did he touch either of you? Get rough with you? Make passes?”

“No. He just moved us around.”

“Together?”

Lorna whimpered, “Yes” my blood buzzed. My voice sounded weird to my own ears, like I was some ventriloquist’s puppet. “Then this wasn’t just nudie stuff? This was you and Betty playing lez?”

Lorna gave a little dry sob and nodded; I thought of Madeleine and pushed ahead, oblivious to where the girl might take it: “You lez? Was Betty lez? You do any lez pub crawling?”

Millard barked, “Bleichert, can it!” Lorna leaned forward in her chair, grabbed the soft daddy cop and hugged him fiercely. Russ looked at me and brought a flat palm slowly down, like a conductor asking the orchestra for a hush. He stroked the girl’s head with his free hand, then cocked a finger at Sears.

The girl moaned, “I’m not lez, I’m not lez, it was just that one time” Millard cradled her like a baby.

Sears asked, “Was Betty a lesbian, Lorna?”

I held my breath. Lorna wiped her eyes on Millard’s coat front and looked at me. She said, “I’m not lezzie, and Betty wasn’t, and we only bummed at normal-type bars, and it was just that one time in the movie because we were broke and on hop, and if this gets in the papers my daddy’ll kill me.”

I glanced at Millard, sensed that he bought it, and got a strong instinct that the whole dyke offshoot of the case was a fluke. Harry asked, “Did the Mexican man give Betty a viewfinder?”

Lorna muttered “Yes,” her head on Millard’s shoulder.

“Do you remember his car? The make, the color?”

“I... I think it was black and old.”

“Do you remember the bar where you met him?”

Lorna lifted her head; I saw that her tears had dried. “I think it was on Aviation Boulevard, near all those aircraft plants.”

I groaned; that part of Gardena was a solid mile of juke joints, poker parlors and cop-sanctioned whorehouses. Harry said, “When did you see Betty last?”

Lorna moved back to her own chair, clenching herself against another display of emotion — a hardcase reaction for a fifteen-year-old kid. “The last time I saw Betty was a couple of weeks later. Right before she moved out of the Orange Drive place.”

“Do you know if Betty ever saw the Mexican man again?”

Lorna picked at the chipped polish on her nails. “The Mex was a fly-by-nighter. He paid us, drove us back to LA and left.”

I butted in: “But you saw him again, right? There’s no way he could have made a copy of the movie before you all drove back from TJ.”

Lorna studied her nails. “I went looking for him in Gardena, when I read in the papers about Betty. He was about to go back to Mexico, and I conned him out of a print of the movie. See... he didn’t read the papers, so he didn’t know that all of a sudden Betty was famous. See... I figured that a Black Dahlia stag film was a collector’s item, and if the police tried to ship me back to my folks I could sell it and hire a lawyer to fight my extradition. You’ll give it back to me, won’t you? You won’t let people look at it?”

Out of the mouths of babes. Millard said, “You went back to Gardena and found the man again?”

“Uh-huh. I mean yes.”

“Where?”

“At one of those bars on Aviation.”

“Can you describe the place?”

“It was dark, with flashing lights out front.”

“And he willingly gave you a copy of the film? For nothing?”

Lorna eyed the floor. “I did him and his friends.”

“Can you improve on your description of him, then?”

“He was fat and he had a tiny little pecker! He was ugly and so were his friends!”

Millard pointed Sears to the door; Harry tiptoed quietly out. Russ said, “We’ll try to keep this out of the papers, and we’ll destroy the film. One question before the matron takes you up to your room. If we take you down to Tijuana, do you think you could find the house where the movie was shot?”

Shaking her head, Lorna said, “No. I don’t want to go down to that awful place. I want to go home.”

“So your father can hit you?”

“No. So I can get out again.”

Sears returned with a matron; the woman led hard/soft/pathetic/feisty Linda/Lorna away. Harry, Russ and I looked at one another; I felt the girl’s sadness smothering me. Finally the senior man said, “Comments?”

Harry kicked in first. “She’s hedging on the Mex and the pad in TJ. He probably beat her up and screwed her, and she’s afraid of reprisals. Aside from that, I buy her story.”

Russ smiled. “What about you, bright penny?”

“She’s covering on the Mex angle. I think she might have been screwing him regularly, and now she’s protecting him from a smut rap. I’d also lay odds the guy is white, that the Mex routine is a cover-up to go along with the TJ stuff — which I do buy — because that place is a cesspool, and most of the smuthounds I rousted working Patrol got their stuff there.”

Millard winked à la Lee Blanchard. “Bucky, you are a very bright penny today. Harry, I want you to talk to Lieutenant Waters here. Tell him to hold the girl incommunicado for seventy-two hours. I want a private cell for her, and I want Meg Caulfield detached from Wilshire Clerical to play cellmate. Tell Meg to give her a good pumping and report in every twenty-four hours.

“When you finish that, call R&I and Ad Vice for the rap sheets on white and Mexican males with pornography convictions, then call Vogel and Koenig and send them down to Gardena to check the bars for Lorna’s movie man. Call the Bureau too, and tell Captain Jack we’ve got a little Dahlia film to look at. Then call the Times and give them the smut lead before Ellis Loew sits on it. Give them a Jane Doe for Lorna, have them add an appeal for pornography tips and pack a bag, because we’re going down to Dago and TJ later tonight.”

I said, “Russ, you know this is a long shot.”

“The biggest one since you and Blanchard beat the crap out of each other and became partners. Come on, bright penny. It’s blue movie night at City Hall.”

A projector and screen had already been set up in the muster room; an all-star cast was awaiting the all-star smut movie. Lee, Ellis Loew, Jack Tierney, Thad Green and Chief of Police C.B. Horrall himself were seated in front of the screen; Millard handed the film can to the clerical stooge manning the projector, muttering, “Where’s the popcorn?”

The big chief walked over and gave me a gladhander’s shake. “A pleasure, sir,” I said.

“A mutual pleasure, Mr. Ice, and my wife sends her belated regards for the pay raise you and Mr. Fire got us.” He pointed to a seat next to Lee. “Lights! Camera! Action!”

I sat down beside my partner. Lee looked drawn, but not dope-juiced. A Daily News was unfolded on his lap; I saw “Boulevard-Citizens Mastermind to be Released Tomorrow — LA Bound After 8 Years in Custody.” Lee checked out my raggedy state and said, “Getting any?”

I was about to respond when the lights went off. A blurred image hit the screen; cigarette smoke wafted into it. A title flashed — Slave Girls From Hell — then a big, high-ceilinged room with Egyptian hieroglyphics on the walls came into view in grainy black and white. Pillars shaped like coiled serpents were stationed throughout the room; the camera zoomed in for a close-up of two inset plaster snakes swallowing each other’s tails. Then the snakes dissolved into Betty Short, wearing only stockings, doing an inept hoochie-koochie dance.

My groin clenched; I heard Lee draw a sharp breath. An arm entered the screen, passing a cylindrical object to Betty. She took it; the camera moved in. It was a dildo, scales covering the shaft, fangs extending from the large circumcised head. Betty put it in her mouth and sucked it, eyes wide open and glassy.

There was an abrupt cut, then Lorna, naked, was lying on a divan, her legs spread. Betty entered the picture. She knelt between Lorna’s legs, stuck the dildo inside her and simulated sex with it. Lorna buckled and rotated her hips, the screen went out of focus, then blipped to a close-up — Lorna writhing in phony ecstasy. Even a two-year-old could tell she was contorting her face to hold back screams. Betty re-entered the frame, poised between Lorna’s thighs.

She looked up at the camera, mouthing, “No, please.” Then her head was shoved down, and she worked her tongue next to the dildo in a shot so close in that every ugly detail seemed to be magnified ten million times.

I wanted to shut my eyes, but couldn’t. Next to me, Chief Horrall said calmly, “Russ, what do you think? You think this has got anything to do with the girl’s murder?”

Millard answered with a hoarse voice. “It’s a long shot, Chief. The movie was made in November and from what the Martilkova girl said, the Mexican doesn’t play as a killer. It’s got to be checked out, though. Maybe the Mex showed the movie to somebody, and he got a case on Betty. What I—”

Lee kicked his chair over and shouted: “Who gives a fuck if he didn’t kill her! I’ve sent Boy Scouts to the green room for less than that! So if you won’t do something about it, I will!”

Everyone sat there, shock-stilled. Lee stood in front of the screen, blinking from the hot white light in his eyes. He wheeled and ripped the obscenity down; the screen and tripod hit the floor with a crash. Betty and Lorna continued their sex on a chalked-up blackboard; Lee took off running. I heard the projector knocked over in back of me; Millard yelled, “Bleichert, get him!”

I got up, tripped, got up again and tore out of the muster room, catching sight of Lee stepping into the elevator at the end of the hall. When the doors shut and the elevator descended, I ran for the stairs, hurtled down six flights and out into the parking lot just in time to see Lee peeling rubber northbound on Broadway. There was a string of unmarked cruisers lined up on the Department’s side of the lot; I jogged over and checked under the driver’s seat of the nearest one. The keys were right there. I hit the ignition, then the gas, and took off.

I gained ground quickly, coming up behind Lee’s Ford as he swerved into the middle lane on Sunset, heading west. I gave him three short horn blasts; he responded by tapping his horn in the LAPD semaphore that meant “Officer in Pursuit.” Cars pulled over to let him through — there was nothing I could do but hit my own horn and stay glued to his tail.

We hauled ass out of downtown, through Hollywood and over the Cahuenga Pass to the Valley. Turning onto Ventura Boulevard, I got spooked by the proximity of the lez bar block; when Lee ground his Ford to a halt smack in the middle of it, I choked on a wave of panic and thought: He can’t know about my brass girl, there’s no way; the lezzie film must have flipped his switch. Then Lee got out and pushed through the door of La Verne’s Hideaway. Worse panic made me stomp the brakes and fishtail the cruiser into the sidewalk; thoughts of Madeleine and evidence suppression raps propelled me into the dive after my partner.

Lee was facing off booths full of daggers and femmes, shouting curses. I flailed with my eyes for Madeleine and the barmaid I’d rousted; not seeing them, I got ready to cold cock my best friend.

“You fucking quiff divers seen a little movie called Slave Girls From Hell? You buy your stag shit from a fat Mex about forty? You—”

I grabbed Lee from behind in a full nelson and spun him around toward the door. His arms were clenched and his back was arched, but I was able to use his weight against him. We stumbled outside, then tripped together in a jumble of arms and legs and hit the pavement. I kept the hold clamped on with all my strength, then heard a siren approaching and snapped that Lee wasn’t resisting — he was just lying there, muttering “Partner” over and over.

The siren wailed louder, then died; I heard car doors slamming. I extricated myself from Lee and helped him, rag doll limp, to his feet. And Ellis Loew was right there.

Loew had murder in his eyes. It hit me that Lee’s explosion came from his weird chastity, a week of death and dope and its pornographic capper. Safe myself, I put an arm around my partner’s shoulders. “Mr. Loew, it was just that goddamn movie. Lee thought the dykes here could give us a lead on the Mex.”

Loew hissed, “Bleichert, shut up,” then turned his velvet rage on Lee: “Blanchard, I got you Warrants. You’re my man, and you made me look like a fool in front of the two most powerful men in the Department. This is no lesbian killing, those girls were on drugs and hated it. Now I covered for you with Horrall and Green, but I don’t know how much good that will do you in the long run. If you weren’t Mr. Fire, Big Lee Blanchard, you’d be suspended from duty already. You’ve gotten personally involved in the Short case, and that’s an unprofessionalism I will not tolerate. You’re back on Warrants duty as of tomorrow morning. Report to me at 0800, and bring in formal letters of apology to Chief Horrall and Chief Green. For the sake of your pension, I advise you to grovel.”

Lee, his body limp, said, “I want to go to TJ to look for the smut man.”

Loew shook his head. “Under the circumstances, I would call that request ridiculous. Vogel and Koenig are going to Tijuana, you’re back on Warrants, and Bleichert, you’re to remain on the Short case. Good day, Officers.”

Loew stormed over to his black-and-white; the patrolman driver hung a U-turn out into traffic. Lee said, “I have to talk to Kay.” I nodded, and a sheriff’s patrol car cruised by, the passenger cop blowing kisses to the lezzies in the doorway. Lee walked to his car murmuring, “Laurie. Laurie, oh babe.”

Thirteen

I showed up at the Bureau at 8:00 the next morning, wanting to ease Lee through the ignominy of his return to Warrants and share the diet of crow Ellis Loew would undoubtedly be feeding him. Identical memo slips from Chief Green were on both of our desks: “Report to my office tomorrow, 1/22/47, 6:00 P.M.” The handwritten words looked ominous.

Lee did not report in at 8:00; I sat at my desk for the next hour, picturing him fretting over Bobby De Witt’s release, a captive of his ghosts, his ghost chaser redemption gone now that he was off the Dahlia case. Across the partition in the DA’s office, I heard Loew barking and pleading on the phone to the city editors of the Mirror and Daily News — Republican rags rumored to be sympathetic to his political aspirations. The gist of his talk was that he would help them cutthroat the Tintes and Herald with inside Dahlia info on the proviso that they soft-pedal their coverage of Betty Short’s roundheeled ways and portray her as a sweet but misguided young girl. From the hotshot’s self-satisfied farewells, I could tell that the newsmen went for it, buying Loew’s line that “The more sympathy we attract for the girl, the more juice we get when I prosecute the killer.”

When Lee didn’t show up by 10:00, I went into the muster room and read through the bulging E. Short case file, wanting to satisfy myself that Madeleine’s name wasn’t in it. Two hours and two hundred form pages later I was satisfied — her name was not listed among the hundreds of people questioned, nor was she fingered by tipsters. The only mention of lesbians was obvious nut case stuff — religious crackpots calling in poison phone clues, informing on rival sect members as “Nun dykes sacrificing the girl to Pope Pius XII” and “Lezbos performing communistic anti-Christ rituals.”

By noon, Lee still hadn’t put in an appearance. I called the house, University squadroom and the El Nido Hotel, with no success. Wanting to look busy so that no one would put me to work, I prowled the bulletin boards reading summary reports.

Russ Millard had compiled a new update before leaving for San Diego and Tijuana last night. It stated that he and Harry Sears would be checking the R&I and Ad Vice files for convicted and suspected pornographers, and would be searching for the smut movie filming site down in TJ. Vogel and Koenig had been unable to locate Lorna Martilkova’s “Mexican man” in Gardena, and were also going to Tijuana to work on the stag film angle. The coroner’s inquest had been held yesterday; Elizabeth Short’s mother was present, and identified her remains. Marjorie Graham and Sheryl Saddon testified about Betty’s life in Hollywood, Red Manley as to how he drove Betty up from Dago and dropped her off in front of the Biltmore Hotel on January tenth. Intensive canvassing of the area around the Biltmore had thus far yielded no verified sightings, the records of convicted sex loonies and registered sex offenders were still being combed, the four drool case confessors were still being held at City Jail awaiting alibi checks, sanity hearings and further questioning. The circus was continuing, phone tips flooding in, resulting in third-, fourth- and fifth-hand questionings — officers talking to people who knew people who knew people who knew the exalted Dahlia. Needle in a haystack stuff straight down the line.

I was getting goldbrick looks from the men working at their desks, so I went back to my cubicle. Madeleine jumped into my head; I picked up the phone and called her.

She answered on the third ring: “Sprague residence.”

“It’s me. You want to get together?”

“When?”

“Now. I’ll pick you up in forty-five minutes.”

“Don’t come here, Daddy’s having a business soiree. Meet you at the Red Arrow?”

I sighed. “I’ve got an apartment, you know.”

“I only rut in motels. One of my rich girl idiosyncrasies. Room eleven at the Arrow in forty-five?”

I said, “I’ll be there,” and hung up. Ellis Loew tapped the partition. “Go to work, Bleichert. You’ve been skating all morning, and it’s getting on my nerves. And when you see your phantom partner, tell him his little no-show has cost him three days’ pay. Now check out a radio car and roll.”

I rolled straight to the Red Arrow Motel. Madeleine’s Packard was parked in the alley behind the bungalows; the door to room eleven was unlocked. I walked in, smelled her perfume and squinted into the darkness until I was rewarded with a giggle. Undressing, my eyes got accustomed to the lack of light; I saw Madeleine — a nude beacon on a tattered bedspread.

We joined so strongly that the bedsprings banged the floor. Madeleine kissed her way down to between my legs, made me hard, then did a quick turn onto her back. I went in her thinking of Betty and the snake shaft thing, then blotted it out by concentrating on the ripped wallpaper in front of my eyes. I wanted to go slow, but Madeleine gasped, “Don’t hold back, I’m ready.” I pushed hard, slamming the two of us together, my hands braced on the bed rail. Madeleine locked her legs around my back, grabbed the rail over her head and pushed, pulled and gyrated against me. We came seconds apart, moving in a stretching, slamming counterpoint; when my head hit the pillow, I bit at it to stanch my tremors.

Madeleine slid out from under me. “Sugar, are you all right?”

I was seeing the snake thing. Madeleine tickled me; I twisted around and looked at her to make it go away. “Smile at me. Look soft and sweet.”

Madeleine gave me a Pollyanna grin. Her smeared red lipstick reminded me of the Dahlia’s death smile; I shut my eyes and grabbed her hard. She stroked my back softly, murmuring, “Bucky, what is it?”

I stared at the curtains on the far wall. “We picked up Linda Martin yesterday. She had a print of a stag movie in her purse, her and Betty Short playing lez. They filmed it down in TJ, and there was all this spooky stuff in it. It spooked me, and it spooked my partner bad.”

Madeleine stopped her caresses. “Did Linda mention me?”

“No, and I checked through the case file. There’s no mention of that note-leaving number you pulled. But we’ve got a policewoman planted in the girl’s cell to pump her, and if she blabs, you’re sunk.”

“I’m not worried, sugar. Linda probably doesn’t even remember me.”

I slid over to where I could eyeball Madeleine up close. Her lipstick was a bloody disarray, and I daubed at it with the pillow. “Babe, I’m withholding evidence for you. It’s a fair trade for what I’m getting, but it still spooks me. So you be damn sure you come clean. I’ll ask you one time. Is there anything you haven’t told me about you and Betty and Linda?”

Madeleine ran her fingers down my rib cage, exploring the welt scars I’d gotten in the Blanchard fight. “Sugar, Betty and I made love once, that one time we met last summer. I just did it to see what it would be like to be with a girl who looked so much like me.”

I felt like I was sinking; like the bed was dropping out from under me. Madeleine looked like she was at the end of a long tunnel, captured by some kind of weird camera trick. She said, “Bucky, that’s all of it, I swear that’s all of it,” her voice wobbling from deep nowhere. I got up and dressed, and it was only when I strapped on my .38 and cuffs that I felt like I’d quit treading quicksand.

Madeleine pleaded, “Stay, sugar, stay” I went out the door before I could succumb. In my cruiser, I flipped on the two-way, looking for good sane cop noise to distract me. The dispatcher barked, “Code four all units at Crenshaw and Stocker. Clear robbery scene, two dead, suspect dead, unit 4-A-82 reports suspect is Raymond Douglas Nash, white male, object fugitive warrant number—”

I yanked the radio cord and hit the ignition, gas and siren in what felt like a single swipe. Pulling out, I heard Lee pacifying me with “Don’t tell me you don’t know the dead girl is a better piece of pie than Junior Nash” speedballing downtown, I saw myself kowtowing to my partner’s ghosts even though I knew the Okie killer was a real live killer bogeyman. Jamming into the Hall parking lot, I saw Lee cajoling, wheedling, pushing, pulling and twisting at me to get his way; running up to the Bureau, I saw red.

I came out of the stairway yelling, “Blanchard!” Dick Cavanaugh, walking out of the bullpen, pointed to the bathroom. I kicked in the door; Lee was washing his hands in the sink.

He held them up to show me, blood oozing from cuts on the knuckles. “I beat up a wall. Penance for Nash.”

It wasn’t enough. I let the crimson loose all the way, smashing my best friend until my own hands were ruined and he was senseless at my feet.

Fourteen

Losing the first Bleichert-Blanchard fight got me local celebrity, Warrants and close to nine grand in cash; winning the rematch got me a sprained left wrist, two dislocated knuckles and a day in bed, woozy from an allergic reaction to the codeine pills Captain Jack gave me when he got word of the punch-out and saw me in my cubicle trying to tape up my fist. The only thing good that came of my “victory” was a twenty-four-hour respite from Elizabeth Short; the worst was yet to come — bracing Lee and Kay to see if I could salvage the three of us, without giving up my balls.

I drove to the house Wednesday afternoon, Dahlia kiss-off day and the one-week anniversary of the celebrity stiff’s first appearance. The confab with Thad Green was scheduled for 6:00 that evening, and if there was any way to work a patch job with Lee before then, it had to be tried.

The front door was standing open; the coffee table held a copy of the Herald, folded open to pages two and three. The detritus of my messy life was smeared all over it — the Dahlia, hatchet-faced Bobby De Witt homeward bound, Junior Nash shot by an off-duty sheriff’s dick after he knocked off a Jap greengrocer, killing the proprietor and his fourteen-year-old son.

“We’re famous, Dwight.”

Kay was standing in the hallway. I laughed; my bad knuckles throbbed. “Notorious, maybe. Where’s Lee?”

“I don’t know. He left yesterday afternoon.”

“You know he’s in trouble, don’t you?”

“I know you beat him up.”

I walked over. Kay’s breath reeked of cigarettes, her face was mottled from crying. I held her; she held me back and said, “I don’t blame you for it.”

I nuzzled her hair. “De Witt’s probably in LA by now. If Lee isn’t back by tonight, I’ll come and stay with you.”

Kay pulled away. “Don’t come unless you want to sleep with me.”

I said, “Kay, I can’t.”

“Why? Because of that neighbor girl you’re seeing?”

I remembered my lie to Lee. “Yes... no, not that. It’s just that...”

“It’s just what, Dwight?”

I grabbed Kay so she wouldn’t be able to look in my eyes and know that half of what I was saying made me a child, half made me a liar. “It’s just that you and Lee are my family, and Lee’s my partner, and until we get this trouble he’s in settled and see if we’re still partners then you and me together is just no damn good. The girl I’ve been seeing is nothing. She doesn’t really mean a thing to me.”

Kay said, “You’re just frightened of anything that doesn’t involve fighting and cops and guns and all that,” and tightened her grip. I let myself be held, knowing she’d nailed me clean. Then I broke it off and drove downtown to “All That.”

The clock in Thad Green’s waiting room hit 6:00, and there was no Lee; at 6:01 Green’s secretary opened his door and ushered me in. The Chief of Detectives looked up from his desk. “Where’s Blanchard? He’s the one I really wanted to see.”

I said, “I don’t know, sir,” and stood at parade rest; Green pointed me to a chair. I sat down, and the COD fixed me with a hard stare. “You’ve got fifty words or less to explain your partner’s behavior Monday night. Go.”

I said, “Sir, Lee’s little sister was murdered when he was a kid, and the Dahlia case is what you might call an obsession with him. Bobby De Witt, the man he sent up on the Boulevard-Citizens job, got out yesterday, and a week ago we killed those four hoods. The stag film was the capper. It set Lee off, and he pulled that stunt at the dyke bar because he thought he could get a lead on the guy who made the film.”

Green quit nodding along. “You sound like a shyster trying to justify his client’s actions. In my police department, a man checks his emotional baggage when he pins on his badge, or he checks out. But just to let you know that I’m not entirely unsympathetic, I’ll tell you this, I’m suspending Blanchard for a trial board, but not for his Monday night tantrums. I’m suspending him for a memo he submitted stating that Junior Nash blew our jurisdiction. I think it was a phony. What do you think, Officer?”

I felt my legs fluttering. “I believed it, sir.”

“Then you’re not as intelligent as your Academy scores led me to believe. When you see Blanchard, tell him to turn in his gun and badge. You stay on the Short investigation, and kindly refrain from fisticuffs on city property. Good night, Officer.”

I stood up, saluted and about-faced out of the office, maintaining my military gait until I was down the hall in the muster room. Grabbing a desk phone, I called the house, University squadroom and the El Nido Hotel — all with zero results. Then a dark thought crossed my mind, and I dialed the number of the County Parole office.

A man answered: “Los Angeles County Parole, may I help you?”

“This is Officer Bleichert, LAPD. I need the disposition on a recent parolee.”

“Shoot, Officer.”

“Robert ‘Bobby’ De Witt. Came out of Quentin yesterday.”

“That’s easy. He hasn’t reported to his PO yet. We called the bus depot at Santa Rosa, and found out that De Witt didn’t buy a ticket for LA, he bought one for San Diego, with a transfer to Tijuana. We haven’t issued an absconder warrant yet. De Witt’s PO figured he might have gone down to TJ to get laid. He’s giving him until tomorrow morning to show up.”

I hung up, relieved that De Witt didn’t head straight for LA. Thinking of prowling for Lee, I took the elevator down to the parking lot and saw Russ Millard and Harry Sears walking toward the back stairs. Russ noticed me and hooked a finger; I trotted over.

I said, “What happened in TJ?”

Harry, breathing Sen-Sen, answered: “Goose egg on the stag movie. We checked for the pad and couldn’t find it, rousted some smut peddlers. Double goose egg. We checked some of the Short girl’s acquaintances in Dago — triple gooser. I—”

Millard put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Bucky, Blanchard’s down in Tijuana. A border patrolman we talked to saw him, recognized him from all the fight publicity. He was hobnobbing with a bad-looking bunch of Rurales.”

I thought of De Witt TJ bound and wondered why Lee would be talking to the Mex state police. “When?”

Sears said, “Last night. Loew and Vogel and Koenig are down there too, at the Divisidero Hotel. They’ve been talking to the TJ cops. Russ thinks they’re measuring spics for a frame on the Dahlia.”

Lee chased smut demons through my mind; I saw him bloody at my feet and shivered. Millard said, “Which is crap, because Meg Caulfield got the straight dope on the smut man out of the Martilkova girl. He’s a white guy named Walter “Duke” Wellington. We checked his Ad Vice jacket, and he’s got a half dozen pandering and pornography beefs. All well and good, except Captain Jack got a letter from Wellington, postmarked three days ago. He’s hiding out, gun-shy from all the Dahlia publicity, and he copped to making the film with Betty Short and Lorna. He was afraid of getting tagged for the snuff, so he sent in a detailed alibi for Betty’s missing days. Jack checked it out personally, and it’s ironclad. Wellington sent a copy of the letter to the Herald, and they’re publishing it tomorrow.”

I said, “So Lorna was lying to protect him?”

Sears nodded. “That looks like the picture. Wellington’s still on the lam from old pimping warrants, though, and Lorna clammed up when she got wise to Meg. And here’s the kicker: we called Loew to tell him the Mex man was horseshit, but a Rurale buddy of ours says that Vogel and Koenig are still rousting spics.”

The circus was turning into a farce. I said, “If the newspaper letter kiboshes their Mex job, they’ll be looking for patsies up here. We should hold our info back from them. Lee’s on suspension, but he made carbons from the case file, and he’s got them stored in a hotel room in Hollywood. We should hold on to it, use it to store our stuff.”

Millard and Sears nodded slowly; the real kicker kicked me. “County Parole said Bobby De Witt bought a ticket for TJ. If Lee’s down there too, it could be trouble.”

Millard shivered. “I don’t like the feel of it. De Witt’s a bad piece of work, and maybe he found out that Lee was headed down there. I’ll call the Border Patrol and have them put out a detain order on him.”

Suddenly I knew it all came down to me. “I’m going.”

Fifteen

I crossed the border at dawn. Tijuana was just coming awake as I turned onto Revolución, its main drag. Child beggars were digging for breakfast in trash cans, taco venders were stirring pots of dog-meat stew, sailors and marines were being escorted out of whorehouses at the end of their five-spot all-nighters. The smarter ones stumbled over to Calle Colon and the penicillin pushers; the stupidos hotfooted toward East TJ, the Blue Fox and Chicago Club — no doubt eager to catch the early morning donkey show. Tourist cars were already lined up outside the cut-rate upholstery joints; Rurales driving prewar Chevys cruised like vultures, wearing black uniforms that looked almost like Nazi issue.

I cruised myself, looking for Lee and his ’40 Ford. I thought about stopping at the Border Patrol hut or Rurale substation to seek help, then remembered my partner was suspended from duty, illegally armed and probably stretched so thin that words from the wrong greaser would provoke him to God knows what. Recalling the Divisidero Hotel from my high school excursions south, I drove to the edge of town to seek American aid.

The pink Art Deco monstrosity stood on a bluff overlooking a tin roof shantytown. I intimidated the desk clerk; he told me the “Loew party” was in suite 462. I found it on the ground floor rear, angry voices booming on the other side of the door.

Fritzie Vogel was yelling, “I still say we get ourselves a spic! The letter to the Herald didn’t say stag movie, it just said Wellington saw the Dahlia and the other girlie in November! We can still—”

Ellis Loew shouted back: “We can’t do that! Wellington admitted making the movie to Tierney! He’s the supervising officer, and we can’t go over his head!”

I opened the door and saw Loew, Vogel and Koenig huddled in chairs, all of them holding eight-star Herald’s obviously hot off the presses. The framing session fell silent; Koenig gawked; Loew and Vogel muttered, “Bleichert,” simultaneously.

I said, “Fuck the fucking Dahlia. Lee’s down here, Bobby De Witt’s here and it’s got to go bad. You—”

Loew said, “Fuck Blanchard, he’s suspended” I beelined for him. Koenig and Vogel formed a wedge between us; trying to move through them was like bucking a brick wall. The DA backed off to the other side of the room, Koenig grabbed my arms, Vogel put his hands on my chest and pushed me outside. Loew evil-eyed me from the doorway, then Fritzie chucked my chin. “I’ve got a soft spot for light heavyweights. If you promise not to hit Billy, I’ll help you find your partner.”

I nodded, and Koenig let me go. Fritzie said, “We’ll take my car. You don’t look fit to drive.”

Fritzie drove; I eyeballed. He kept up a stream of chatter on the Short case and the lieutenancy it was going to get him; I watched beggars swarm turistas, hookers dispense front seat blow jobs and zoot suit youths prowl for drunks to roll. After four fruitless hours the streets became too car-choked to manuever in, and we got out and walked.

On foot, the squalor was worse. The kiddie beggars got right up in your face, jabbering, shoving crucifixes at you. Fritzie swatted and kicked them away, but their hunger-ridden faces got to me, so I changed a fiver into pesos and tossed handfuls of coins into the gutter whenever they converged. It spawned scratching, biting and gouging free-for-alls, but it was better than looking into sunken eyes and seeing nada.

An hour of prowling two abreast got us no Lee, no Lee’s ’40 Ford and no gringos resembling Bobby De Witt. Then a Rurale in black shirt and jackboots, lounging in a doorway, caught my eye. He said, “Policia?” and I stopped and flashed my badge in answer.

The cop dug in his pockets and pulled out a teletype photo strip. The picture was too blurred to identify, but the “Robert Richard De Witt” was plain as day. Fritzie patted the cop’s epaulets. “Where, Admiral?”

The Mex clicked his heels and barked, “Estación, vamanos!” He marched ahead of us, turning into an alley lined with VD clinics, pointing to a cinderblock hut fenced in with barbed wire. Fritzie handed him a dollar; the Mex saluted like Mussolini and about-faced away. I strode for the station, forcing myself not to run.

Rurales holding tommy guns flanked the doorway. I showed my badge; they heel clicked and let me in. Fritzie caught up with me inside; dollar bill in hand, he went straight for the front desk. The desk cop grabbed the buck and Fritzie said, “Fugitivo? Americano? De Witt?”

The deskman smiled and hit a switch beside his chair, barred doors in the side wall clicked open. Fritzie said, “Precisely what is it we want this scum to tell us?”

I said, “Lee’s down here, probably chasing smut leads on his own. De Witt came here directly from Quentin.”

“Without checking in with his PO?”

“Right.”

“And De Witt has a hard-on for Blanchard from the Boulevard-Citizens job?”

“Right.”

“Enough said.”

We walked down a corridor lined with cells. De Witt was alone in the last lock-up, sitting on the floor. The door buzzed open; Kay Lake’s defiler stood up. The years in stir had not been kind to him: the hatchet-faced tough of the ’39 newspaper pictures was now a well-used piece of work, bloated in the body, grizzled in the face, his pachuco haircut as outdated as his Salvation Army suit.

Fritzie and I walked in. De Witt’s greeting was con bravado tinged with just the right amount of subservience. “Cops, huh? Well, at least you’re Americans. Never thought I’d be glad to see you guys.”

Fritzie said, “Why start now?” and kicked De Witt in the balls. He doubled over, Fritzie grabbed his duck’s ass scruff and gave him a hard backhand. De Witt started to foam at the mouth; Fritzie let go of his neck and wiped pomade on his sleeve. De Witt hit the floor, then crawled over to the commode and vomited into it. When he tried to get himself upright, Fritzie pushed his head back into the bowl and held it there with a big spit-shined wing-tip brogue. The ex-bank-robber-pimp drank piss water and puke.

Vogel said, “Lee Blanchard’s here in TJ, and you came here flush out of Big Q. That’s a goddamned strange coincidence, and I don’t like it. I don’t like you, I don’t like the syphilitic whore you were born out of, I don’t like being down here in a rat-infested foreign country when I could be at home with my family. I do like inflicting pain on criminals, so you had better answer my questions truthfully, or I’ll hurt you bad.”

Fritzie released his foot; De Witt came up gasping for air. I picked a soiled skivvy shirt up off the floor, and was about to hand it to him when I remembered the lash scars on Kay’s legs. The image made me throw the shirt at De Witt, then grab a chair from the catwalk and reach for my handcuffs. Fritzie swabbed the ex-con’s face, I shoved him into the seat and cuffed his wrists to the back slats.

De Witt looked up at us; his trouser legs darkened as his bladder went. Fritzie said, “Did you know that Sergeant Blanchard is here in Tijuana?”

De Witt shook his head back and forth, spraying off the remnants of his toilet dip. “I ain’t seen Blanchard since my fucking trial!”

Fritzie shot him a little backhand, his Masonic ring severing a cheek vein. “Don’t use profanity with me, and address me as sir. Now, did you know that Sergeant Blanchard is here in Tijuana?”

De Witt blubbered, “No”; Fritzie said, “No, sir,” and slapped him. De Witt hung his head, lolling his chin on his chest. Fritzie prodded it up with one finger. “No, what?”

De Witt screeched, “No, sir!”

Even through my hate haze I could tell he was coming clean. I said, “Blanchard’s afraid of you. Why?”

Twisting in the chair, greasy pompadour wilted over his forehead, De Witt laughed. Wild laughter, the kind that cuts through pain, then makes it worse. Livid, Fritzie balled a fist to punish him; I said, “Let him be.” Vogel relented; De Witt’s loony chuckles trailed off.

Sucking in breath, De Witt said, “Man o Manieschewitz, what a laugh. Lee beauty gotta be scared of me ’cause of how I flapped my trap at the trial, but all I know is what I read in the papers, and I gotta tell you that little reefer roust put the fear of God into me, if I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’. Maybe I was thinkin’ revenge up to then, maybe I was talkin’ trash to my cellies, but when Lee beauty killed them niggers and—”

Vogel right hooked De Witt, toppling him, chair and all, to the floor. Spitting blood and teeth, the aging lounge lizard moaned and laughed at the same time; Fritzie knelt beside him and pinched his carotid artery, shutting off the blood to his brain. “Bobby boy, I do not like Sergeant Blanchard, but he is a fellow officer, and I will not have syphilitic scum like you defaming him. Now you risked a parole violation and a trip back to Q for a trip down here. When I let go of your neck you will tell me why, or I will pinch your neck again until your gray cells go snap, crackle and pop like Kellogg’s Rice Krispies.”

Fritzie released the hold; De Witt’s face went from blue to dark red. With one hand, Vogel grabbed suspect and chair and placed them upright. Lounge lizard Bobby started to laugh again, then sputtered blood and stopped. Looking up at Fritzie, he reminded me of a dog who loves his cruel master because it’s the only one he’s got. His voice was a beaten dog whimper: “I came down to cop some horse and bring it back to LA before I reported in to my PO. The guy I got is supposed to be a softie, you tell him ‘Gee, sir, I been in stir eight years and I hadda get my ashes hauled,’ and he don’t violate you for bein’ late.”

De Witt took a deep breath; Fritzie said, “Snap, crackle, pop.” Bobby boy dog whimpered the rest of his confession rapidamente: “The man down here is this cholo named Felix Chasco. He’s supposed to meet me at the Calexico Gardens Motel tonight. The LA man’s the brother of this guy I knew at Quentin. I ain’t met him and please don’t hurt me no more.”

Fritzie let out a huge whoop and ran out of the cell to report his booty; De Witt licked blood off his lips and looked at me, his dog master now that Vogel was gone. I said, “Finish up on you and Lee Blanchard. And don’t get hysterical this time.”

De Witt said, “Sir, all that’s between me and Blanchard is that I fucked this cunt Kay Lake.”

I remember moving toward him and I remember picking him up two-handed by the neck, wondering how hard you had to squeeze a dog’s throat to make its eyeballs pop out. I remember him changing color and voices in Spanish, and Fritzie shouting, “His story checks.” Then I remember being hurled backward, thinking, so that’s what bars feel like. Then I remember nothing.

I came to thinking I’d been knocked down in a third Bleichert-Blanchard fight, wondering how much hurt I’d put on my partner. I babbled, “Lee? Lee? Are you all right?” then sighted in on two greaser cops with ridiculous dime store regalia on their blackshirts. Fritzie Vogel towered over them, saying, “I let Bobby boy go so we could tail him to his pal. But he blew the tail while you were catching up on your beauty sleep, which was too bad for him.”

Someone hugely strong lifted me up off the cell floor; coming out of my haze I knew it had to be Big Bill Koenig. Woozy and rubberlegged, I let Fritzie and the Mex cops lead me through the station and outside. It was dusk, and the TJ sky was already lit with neon. A Studebaker patrol car pulled up; Fritzie and Bill ushered me into the backseat. The driver hit the loudest siren the world had ever heard, then gunned it.

We drove west out of town, stopping in the gravel center of a horseshoe-shaped auto court. TJ cops in khakis and jodhpurs were standing guard in front of a back unit, holding pump shotguns. Fritzie winked and offered me his arm to lean on; I spurned it and got out of the car under my own steam. Fritzie led the way over; the cops saluted us with their gun barrels, then opened the door.

The room was a cordite-reeking slaughterhouse. Bobby De Witt and a Mexican man lay dead on the floor, bullet holes oozing blood all over them. Brain spatters leaking fluid covered one entire wall; De Witt’s neck was bruised from where I’d been throttling him. My first coherent thought was that I’d done it during my blackout, vigilante vengeance to protect the only two people I loved. Fritzie must have been a mind reader, because he laughed and said, “Not you, boyo. The spic is Felix Casco, a known dope trafficker. Maybe it was other dope scum, maybe it was Lee, maybe it was God. I say let our Mexican colleagues handle their own dirty laundry and let’s us go back to LA and get the son of a bitch who sliced the Dahlia.”

Sixteen

Bobby De Witt’s murder got a half column in the LA Mirror, I got a day off from a surprisingly solicitious Ellis Loew, Lee’s disappearance got a squad of Metropolitan Division cops full-time.

I spent most of the day off in Captain Jack’s office, being interrogated by them. They asked me hundreds of questions about Lee — from the reasons for his outbursts at the stag film and La Verne’s Hideaway, to his obsession with the Short case, to the Nash memo and his shack job with Kay. I played fast and loose with facts, and lied by omission — keeping it zipped about Lee’s Benzedrine use, his file room at the El Nido Hotel and the fact that his cohabitation was chaste. The Metro bulls repeatedly asked me if I thought Lee killed Bobby De Witt and Felix Chasco; I repeatedly told them he wasn’t capable of murder. Asked for an interpretation of my partner’s flight, I told them about beating Lee up over the Nash job, adding that he was an ex-boxer, maybe soon to be an ex-cop, too old to go back to fighting, too volatile to live a squarejohn life — and the Mexican interior was probably as good a place as any for a man like that. As the interrogation wound down, I sensed that the officers weren’t interested in securing Lee’s safety — they were building a case for his LAPD expulsion. I was repeatedly told not to stick my nose in their investigation and each time I agreed I dug my fingers into my palms to keep from hurling insults and worse.

From City Hall I went to see Kay. Two Metro goons had already paid her a visit, putting her through the wringer about her life with Lee, rehashing her old life with Bobby De Witt. The iceberg look she gave me said I was slime for belonging to the same police department; when I tried to comfort her and offer words of encouragement about Lee’s return, she said, “And all that,” and pushed me away.

I checked out room 204 of the El Nido Hotel then, hoping for some kind of message, some kind of clue that said, “I’ll be back, and the three of us will keep going.” What I found was a shrine to Elizabeth Short.

The room was a typical Hollywood bachelor flop: Murphy bed, sink, tiny closet. But the walls were adorned with Betty Short portrait pictures, newspaper and magazine photos, horror glossies from 39th and Norton, dozens of them enlarged to magnify every gruesome detail. The bed was covered with cardboard boxes — an entire detective’s case file, with carbons of miscellaneous memos, tip lists, evidence indexes, FIs and questioning reports all cross-filed alphabetically.

Having nothing to do and no one to do it with, I leafed through the folders. The bulk of the information was staggering, the manpower behind it more staggering, the fact that it was all over one silly girl the most staggering of all. I didn’t know whether to toast Betty Short or rip her off the walls, so I badged the desk clerk on my way out, paid him a month’s rent in advance and kept the room like I promised Millard and Sears — even though I was really holding it for Sergeant Leland C. Blanchard.

Who was somewhere out there in the Big Nowhere.

I called up the classified desks of the Times, Mirror, Herald and Daily News, placing a personals ad to run indefinitely: “Fire — Nightflower room will remain intact. Send me a message — Ice.” With that behind me, I drove to the only place I could think of to send him one.

39th and Norton was just a block of empty lots now. No arclights, no police cars, no nighttime gawkers. A Santa Ana wind blew in while I stood there, and the more I pulled for Lee to come back to me the more I knew my hotshot cop life was as gone as everybody’s favorite dead girl.

Seventeen

In the morning I sent the big boys a message. Hiding out in a storage room down the hall from my cubicle, I typed copies of a transfer request letter, one each for Loew, Russ Millard and Captain Jack. The letter read:

Finishing, I read the letter over, deciding that it worked in just the right blend of respect and exasperation, with the half-truth about the Sergeant’s Exam a good closing line. I was signing the copies when I heard a tremendous ruckus coming from the bullpen.

I folded the pages into my jacket pocket and went to investigate. A group of detectives and crime lab techs in white smocks were surrounding a table, looking down at it, jabbering and gesturing away. I joined the throng, muttering “Holy fuck,” when I saw what was jazzing them.

An envelope was lying on a metal evidence tray. It was stamped and postmarked and smelled faintly of gasoline. The front of it was covered with letters clipped from newspapers and magazines, glued to the plain white surface. The words spelled out:

A lab man wearing rubber gloves slit the envelope and pulled out the contents — a little black address book, a plastic-sheathed Social Security card and a thin stack of photographs. Squinting, I read the name on the card — Elizabeth Ann Short — and knew the Dahlia case had blown wide open. The man next to me was talking the delivery up — a postal carrier found the envelope in a mailbox near the downtown library, almost keeled from a heart attack, then grabbed a pair of radio car bulls, who code three’d the booty over.

Ellis Loew pushed his way up against the lab techs, Fritzie Vogel at his heels. The head tech flailed his hands in anger; a cacophony of speculation hit the pen. Then there was a loud whistle, and Russ Millard yelled, “Damnit, back off and let them work. And give them some quiet.—

We did.

The techs descended on the envelope, dusting it with print powder, leafing through the address book, examining the snapshots and calling out their findings like surgeons at an operating table:

“Two partial latents on the back flap, smudged, no more than one or two comparison points, not enough to run a make on, maybe enough to compare to incoming suspects—”

“No prints on Social Security card—”

“Pages of address book readable, but gasoline saturated, no chance of sustaining latents. Names and phone numbers mostly men, not listed alphabetically, some pages ripped out—”

“Photographs are of Short girl with servicemen in uniform, the men’s faces crossed out—”

Stunned, I wondered: Would a letter follow? Was my random snuff theory blown? Since the stuff was obviously sent in by the killer, was he one of the servicemen in the pictures? Was the mailing cat and mouse, or the precursor to surrender and confession? All around me, other officers were running with the same dope, the same questions, talking in knots of two and three, or looking rapt, like they were talking with themselves. The lab techs took off with the plethora of new leads, cradling them in rubber-gloved hands. Then the only calm man in the room whistled again.

And again the commotion froze. Russ Millard, poker-faced, counted the heads and pointed us over to the rear bulletin board. We lined up there; he said, “I don’t know what it means, except I’m pretty sure the killer sent the stuff. The lab boys are going to need more time on the envelope, then they’ll photograph the pages and give us a list of names to do interviews from.”

Dick Cavanaugh said, “Russ, he’s playing with us. Some of the pages were ripped out, and I’ll lay you ten to one his name was on one of them.”

Millard smiled. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he’s crazy and wants to get caught, maybe some of the people in the book know him. Maybe the techs will get latents off the photos or be able to identify some of the men from the insignia of their uniforms. Maybe the bastard will send a letter. That’s a lot of maybes, so I’ll tell you what we’ve got for sure: all eleven of you are going to drop what you’re doing and canvass the area around the mailbox where that envelope was found. Harry and I will be going over the case file to see if any of our previous suspects live or work around there. Then, when we’ve got the list of names from the book, we’ll go at it discreetly. Betty spread herself pretty thin with men, and homewrecking isn’t my style. Harry?”

Sears was standing by the wall map of downtown LA, holding a pen and clipboard. He stuttered, “W-w-we’ll do f-f-foot beats.” I saw my transfer request stamped “Rejected.” Then I heard an argument on the opposite side of the squad-room.

The arguers were Ellis Loew and Jack Tierney, both of them trying to score points and keep it sotto voce. They ducked behind a wall post for privacy, I ducked over to an adjacent phone cubicle to eavesdrop — hoping for skinny on Lee.

It wasn’t about Lee — it was about Her.

“... Jack, Horrall wants to take three quarters of the men off the investigation. Bond issue or no bond issue, he thinks he’s given the voters enough of a show. We can get around him by going at the names in the book a hundred percent. The more publicity the case gets, the more truck we’ve got with Horrall—”

“Goddamn it, Ellis—”

“No. Just listen to me. Before, I wanted to downplay the girl as a floozy. The way I see it now is that it’s too far out in the open already to sit on. We know what she was, and we’ll get it confirmed a couple of hundred times by the men in that little black book. We keep our men questioning them, I’ll keep feeding the names to my newspaper contacts, we’ll keep a head of steam on this thing until we get the killer.”

“It’s a sucker play, Ellis. The killer’s name probably isn’t in the book. He’s a psycho, and he’s showing us his backside and saying, ‘Make something out of it.’ The girl’s a gravy train, Ellis. I’ve known it from the beginning, just like you. But this has got to backfire on us. I’m working a half dozen other homicides with skeleton crews, and if the married men in that book get their names in the paper, then their lives will be shot to shit because they copped Betty Short for a quick piece of tail.”

There was a long stretch of silence. Then Loew said, “Jack, you know I’ll be DA sooner or later. If not next year, in ’52. And you know that Green will be retiring in a few years, and you know who I want to replace him. Jack, I’m thirty-six and you’re forty-nine. I may get another shot at something this big. You won’t. For God’s sake take the farsighted view on it.”

More silence. I pictured Captain Jack Tierney weighing the pros and cons of selling his soul to Satan with a Phi Beta Kappa key and a hard-on for the City of Los Angeles. When he said, “Okay, Ellis,” I tore up my transfer request and walked back to rejoin the circus.

Eighteen

Over the next ten days the circus turned into wholesale farce, with an occasional tragedy thrown in.

No other leads were gleaned from the “Death Letter,” and the 243 names in the book were divvied up between four detective teams, the low number of cops Jack Tierney’s ploy aimed at padding that part of the investigation into extended newspaper and radio juice. Russ Millard argued for twenty teams and a fast, clean sweep; Captain Jack, backstopped by the DA Satan, refused. When Big Bill Koenig was deemed too combustible to work the questionings and was given clerical duties, I was paired with Fritz Vogel. Together, we questioned fifty-odd people, mostly men, about their association with Elizabeth Short. We heard predictable stories of them meeting Betty in bars and buying her drinks and dinner, listening to her fantasies of being the bride or widow of war heros, bedding or not bedding her. A number of the men did not even know the notorious Dahlia — they were “friends of friends,” their names passed on out of pussy hound camaraderie.

Of our parcel of names, sixteen of the guys were what Fritzie labeled “Certified Dahlia Fuckers.” They were mostly lower-echelon movie minions: agents, talent scouts and casting directors who hung out at Schwab’s Drugstore chasing gullible would-be starlets, empty promises on their lips, Trojan “value packs” in their pockets. They told proud or shamefaced casting couch stories every bit as sad as Betty’s tales of bliss with studs in uniform. Finally, the men in Elizabeth Short’s little black book had two things in common — they got their names in the LA dailies and they coughed up alibis that eliminated them as suspects. And word filtered back to the squadroom that the publicity eliminated more than a few of them as husbands.

The women were a mixed bag. Most were just pals — girl talk acquaintances, fellow cocktail lounge cadgers and aspiring actresses heading nowhere. A dozen or so were hookers and semi-pro B girls, instant soulmates that Betty met in bars. They gave us leads that petered out on follow-up investigation — basically, the word that Betty sold herself freelance to conventioneers at several lower-class downtown hotels. They hedged that Betty rarely peddled it, and could not identify any of her tricks by name; Fritzie’s canvassing of the hotels got him an angry zero, and the fact that several other women — R&I confirmed as prostitutes — couldn’t be located, pissed him off even more.

Madeleine Sprague’s name did not appear in the book, nor did it turn up in any of my subsequent questionings. No dyke or dyke bar leads came out of the 243 names, and every night I checked the University squadroom bulletin boards to see if any of the other teams had latched on to her monicker. None of them did, and I started to feel very safe regarding my evidence suppression tango.

While the book queries got most of the headlines, the rest of the circus continued on: tips, tips and more tips wasted thousands of police man-hours; poison phone and poison pen communiques had local squadroom dicks bracing spiteful loonies implicating their enemies for hundreds of major and minor grievances. Discarded women’s garments were sifted through at the Central crime lab, and every piece of size eight black female apparel that was found launched another extensive neighborhood run-through.

The biggest surprise of my little black book tour was Fritz Vogel. Free of Bill Koenig, he possessed a surprising wit, and in his muscle fashion he was as adept an interrogator as Russ Millard. He knew when to punch for information, hitting fast and hard, fueled by personal rancor but capable of putting it out of his mind when the interrogee coughed up what we wanted. Sometimes I sensed that he was holding back out of respect for my nice guy questioning style, that the pragmatist in him knew it was the best way to get results. We became an effective Mutt and Jeff duo fast, and I could tell that I was a restraining influence on Fritzie, a check and balance on his admitted fondness for hurting criminals. He gave me a wary respect for the hurt I’d put on Bobby De Witt, and a few days into the temporary partnership we were bullshitting in broken German, a way to kill time driving to and from questionings. With me, Fritzie spoke less in tirades and came across as one of the guys — with a mean streak. He talked up the Dahlia and his coveted lieutenancy, but didn’t talk frames, and since he never tried to pull any railroad jobs around me and was straight in his FI reports, I got the notion that Loew had either given up the idea or was biding his time. I could also tell that Fritzie was constantly sizing me up, that he knew Koenig wouldn’t cut it as partner to Detective Division brass, but with Lee gone, I would. The appraisal process flattered me, and I kept myself razor sharp during interrogations. I had played second banana to Lee working Warrants, and if Fritzie and I partnered up I wanted him to know that I wouldn’t play stooge — or lacky — like Harry Sears to Russ Millard.

Millard, Fritzie’s cop antithesis, exerted his own pull on me. He took to using Room 204 at the El Nido as his field office, going there at end of watch to read Lee’s superbly cross-filed collection of paper. With Lee gone, time weighed heavy on me, so I joined him most evenings. When he looked at the Dahlia horror pictures, he always made the sign of the cross and murmured “Elizabeth” with reverence; walking out, he said, “I’ll get him, dear.” He always left at 8:00 on the dot, to go home to his wife and sons. That a man could care so deeply yet put it aside so casually amazed me. I asked him about it; he said, “I will not let brutality rule my life.”

From 8:00 on, my own life was ruled by two women, a crossfire of their strange, strong wills.

From the El Nido, I’d go to see Kay. With Lee gone and no longer footing the bills, she had to find full-time work, and she did — getting a job teaching sixth grade at an elementary school a few blocks off the Strip. I’d find her grading book reports and perusing kiddie artwork stoically, glad to see me, but caustic underneath, like maintaining a business-as-usual front would keep her grief over Lee’s absence and her contempt for my reluctance at bay. I tried denting the front by telling her I wanted her, but would only move on it when Lee’s vanishing act was resolved; she answered with overeducated psychological claptrap about our missing third, turning the education he bought her around, using it as a weapon against him. I exploded at phrases like “paranoid tendencies” and “pathological selfishness,” coming back with “he saved you, he made you.” Kay’s comeback for that was, “He only helped me.” I had no comeback for the truth behind the jargon and the fact that without Lee as a centerpiece, the two of us were loose ends, a family sans patriarch. It was that stasis that drove me out the door ten nights running — straight to the Red Arrow Motel.

So I brought Kay with me to Madeleine.

We’d rut first thing, talk later. The talk was always of Madeleine’s family, followed by fantasies that I concocted so as not to feel impoverished in the wake of her tales. The brass girl had robber baron Daddy, the Emmett Sprague, confrere of Mack Sennett in the Hollywood salad days; art poseur and elixir-guzzling Mommy, a direct descendant of the California land grant Cathcarts; genius sister Martha, hotshot commercial artist, rising star on Ad Agency Row downtown. For a supporting cast there was Mayor Fletcher Bowron, public relations-minded thug Mickey Cohen, “Dreamer” Georgie Tilden, Emmett’s former stooge, the son of a famous Scottish anatomist and wastrel nickolodeon artiste. The Dohenys and Sepulvedas and Mulhollands were also close friends, as were Governor Earl Warren and DA Buron Fitts. Having only senile Dolph Bleichert, the late Greta Heilbrunner Bleichert, the Japs I snitched off and fight acquaintances, I spun yarns out of thin air: scholastic medals won and proms attended; bodyguarding FDR in ’43. I dissembled away until it was time to rut again, grateful that we always kept the lights off between bouts, so Madeleine couldn’t read my face and know I was coming from hunger.

Or from the Dahlia.

The first time it happened accidentally. We were making love, both of us close to peaking. My hand slipped off the bed rail and hit the light switch on the wall, illuminating Betty Short below me. For just a few seconds I believed it was her, and I called out for Lee and Kay to help me. When my lover was Madeleine again, I reached for the switch, only to have her grab my wrist. Moving hard, springs creaking, light glaring, I made Madeleine Betty — made her eyes blue instead of hazel, made her body Betty’s body from the stag film, made her silently mouth, “No, please.” Coming, I knew it could never be that good with just plain Madeleine; when the brass girl whispered, “I knew she’d get to you sooner or later,” I dry sobbed that all my pillow stories were lies and poured out the nonstop true story of Lee and Kay and Bucky, straight through to Mr. Fire’s fix on the dead girl and his jump off the face of the earth. When I finished, Madeleine said, “I’ll never be a schoolteacher from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, but I’ll be Betty or anyone else you want me to be.” I let her stroke my head, grateful not to have to lie anymore, but sad that she — and not Kay — was my confessor.

So Elizabeth Short and I were formally joined.

Nineteen

Lee stayed gone and Madeleine stayed Betty, and there was nothing I could do about either transformation. Heeding the Metro goons’ warning, I kept my nose out of their investigation, constantly wondering if Mr. Fire took his powder preplanned or accidentally. I did check his bank records, finding an $800 balance with no recent withdrawals, and when I heard that a nationwide and Mexico APB had been issued on Lee and his ’40 Ford, yielding goose egg, my instincts told me he had fled way south of the border, where the Rurales used gringo police bulletins as toilet paper. Russ Millard told me that two Mexican men, both well-known dope traffickers, had been arrested in Juarez for the murder of Bobby De Witt and Felix Chasco, which eased my mind on Metro making Lee for the job — but then scuttlebutt filtered down from high, high brass circles. Chief Horrall had rescinded the APB and decreed, “Let sleeping dogs lie.” Thad Green’s secretary told Harry Sears that she had heard Lee was going to be dismissed from the LAPD if he did not show up within thirty days of the time he vanished.

January dwindled out, rainy days with only one spark of excitement. An envelope arrived by mail at the Bureau. It had a clipped word address, with a clipped word letter on plain bond paper inside:

Taped to the page was a photograph of a short, heavyset man wearing a business suit, his face scratched out. No prints or other forensic leads were gleaned from the snapshot or envelope, and since the servicemen pics from the first letter had been withheld from the press as a suspect elimination device, we knew letter number two was legit. The Bureau consensus was that the photo was of the killer, symbolically eliminating himself from the overall “picture.”

With the death letter and stag film leads ground to dust, a second consensus took over: we were never going to get the bastard. The odds on “Unsolved” dropped to even money in the squadroom pool; Thad Green told Russ and Captain Jack that Horrall was going to pull the chain on the Dahlia mess on February 5, returning a large number of officers to their normal duties. Rumor had it that I would be one of the returnees, breaking in Johnny Vogel as my partner. Bad Breath Johnny rankled, but going back to Warrants came on as Paradise regained. Betty Short would then exist the only place I wanted her to — as the spark point of my imagination.

Twenty

The distance between the bulletin board and Millard’s office was about ten yards; I covered it in about a tenth of a second. Russ looked up from his desk. “Hi, Bucky. How’s tricks?”

“Why wasn’t I on that transfer list?”

“I asked Jack to keep you on the Short case.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re getting to be a damn good detective, and Harry’s retiring in ’50. Want more?”

I was wondering what to say when the phone rang. Russ picked it up and said, “Central Homicide, Millard,” then listened for a few moments and pointed to the extension on the desk across from him. I grabbed the receiver, catching a deep male voice in mid-sentence:

“... attached to the CID unit here at Fort Dix. I know you’ve had a lot of confessions peter out on you, but this one sounds good to me.”

Russ said, “Go on, Major.”

“The soldier’s name is Joseph Dulange. He’s an MP, attached to the headquarters company at Dix. He made the confession to his CO, coming off a bender. His buddies say he carries a knife, and he flew to Los Angeles on furlough on January eighth. On top of that, we found bloodstains on a pair of his trousers — too small an amount to type. Personally, I think he’s a bad apple. He got in a lot of brawls overseas, and his CO says he’s a wife beater.”

“Major, is Dulange near you right now?”

“Yes. He’s in a cell across the hall.”

“Do this for me, please. Ask him to describe Elizabeth Short’s birthmarks to you. If he does it accurately, my partner and I will be on the next transport flight out of Camp MacArthur.”

The major said, “Yes, sir”; the Fort Dix half of the conversation broke off. Russ said, “Harry’s got the flu. Feel like a trip to New Jersey, bright penny?”

“Are you serious?”

“If that soldier comes up with the moles on Elizabeth’s rear end, I am.”

“Ask him about the slash marks, the stuff that didn’t make the papers.”

Russ shook his head. “No. It might excite him too much. If this is legit, we’re flying out on the QT and reporting in from Jersey. If Jack or Ellis get hold of this they’ll send Fritzie, and he’ll have that soldier in the electric chair by morning, guilty or otherwise.”

The Fritzie crack irked me. “He’s not that bad. And I think Loew’s given up on the frame idea.”

“You’re an impressionable penny, then. Fritzie’s as bad as they get, and Ellis—”

The major came back on the line: “Sir, Dulange said the girl had three little dark moles on the left cheek of her, uh... derriere.”

“You could have said ass, Major. And we’re on our way.”

Corporal Joseph Dulange was a tall, hard-muscled man of twenty-nine, dark-haired, horse-faced, with a pencil-thin mustache. Dressed in olive drab fatigues, he sat across a table from us in the Fort Dix provost marshal’s office, looking incorrigibly mean. A judge advocate captain sat beside him, probably to make sure Russ and I didn’t try the civilian third degree. The eight-hour plane ride had been bumpy; at 4:00 A.M. I was still on LA time, exhausted but keyed-up. On the ride over from the airstrip, the CID major we’d talked to on the phone had briefed us on Dulange. He was a twice-married combat vet, a boozehound, a feared brawler. His statement was incomplete, but buttressed by two hard facts: he flew to LA on January eighth, and was arrested for Plain Drunk in New York City’s Pennsylvania Station on January seventeenth.

Russ kicked it off. “Corporal, my name is Millard, and this is Detective Bleichert. We’re from the Los Angeles Police Department, and if you convince us you killed Elizabeth Short, we’ll arrest you and take you back with us.”

Dulange shifted in his chair and said, “I sliced her,” his voice high and nasal.

Russ sighed. “A lot of other people have told us that.”

“I fucked her, too.”

“Really? You cheat on your wife?”

“I’m a Frenchman.”

I moved into my bad guy role. “I’m a German, so who gives a shit? What’s that have to do with you cheating on your wife?”

Dulange flicked his tongue like a reptile. “I give it the French way. My wife don’t like it like that.”

Russ elbowed me. “Corporal, why did you take your furlough in Los Angeles? What were you interested in?”

“Cunt. Johnnie Red Label. Excitement.”

“You could have found that across the river in Manhattan.”

“Sunshine. Movie stars. Palm trees.”

Russ laughed. “LA’s got all of that. It sounds like your wife gives you a long leash, Joe. You know, furlough all by yourself.”

“She knows I’m a Frenchman. I give it to her good when I’m home. Missionary style, ten inches. She got no complaints.”

“What if she did complain, Joe? What would you do to her?”

Deadpan, Dulange said, “One complaint, I use my fists. Two complaints, I slice her in half.”

I broke in: “Are you telling me you flew three thousand miles to eat some pussy?”

“I’m a Frenchman.”

“You look like a homo to me. Gash divers are all repressed fruits, it’s been proven. You got an answer for that, shitbird?”

The soldier-lawyer got up and whispered in Russ’s ear; Russ nudged me under the table. Dulange cracked his deadpan into a big grin. “I got my answer hangin’ ten hard, flatfoot.”

Russ said, “You’ll have to excuse Detective Bleichert, Joe. He’s got a short fuse.”

“He’s got a short pecker. All Krauts do. I’m a Frenchman, I know.”

Russ laughed uproariously, like he’d just heard a real knee-slapper at the Elks Club. “Joe, you’re a pisser.”

Dulange waggled his tongue. “I’m a Frenchman.”

“Joe, you’re a hot sketch, and Major Carroll told me you’re a wife beater. Is that true?”

“Can niggers dance?”

“They certainly can. Do you enjoy hitting women, Joe?”

“When they ask for it.”

“How often does your wife ask for it?”

“She asks for the big tensky every night.”

“No. Asks to get hit, I mean.”

“Every time I’m pallin’ with Johnnie Red and she cracks wise, then she’s askin’ for it.”

“You and Johnnie go back a ways?”

“Johnnie Red’s my best friend.”

“Did Johnnie go with you to LA?”

“In my pocket.”

Sparring with a psycho drunk was wearing me down; I thought of Fritzie and the direct approach. “Are you having the DTs, shitbird? You want a little rap in the cabeza to clear things up for you?”

“Bleichert, enough!”

I shut up. The JA man glared at me; Russ straightened the knot in his necktie — the signal for me to keep it zipped. Dulange cracked the knuckles on his left hand one by one. Russ tossed a pack of cigarettes on the table, the oldest “I’m your pal” ploy in the book.

The Frenchman said, “Johnnie Red don’t like me to smoke ’cept in his company. You bring Johnnie in, I’ll smoke. I confess better in Johnnie’s company, too. Ask the Catholic chaplain at North Post. He told me he always smells Johnnie when I go to confession.”

I started smelling Corporal Joseph Dulange as an attention-seeking drool case. Russ said, “Booze confessions aren’t valid in court, Joe. But I’ll tell you what. You convince me you killed Betty Short, and I’ll make sure Johnnie comes back to LA with us. A nice eight-hour flight would give you plenty of time to renew your acquaintance with him. What do you say?”

“I say I chopped the Dahlia.”

“I say you didn’t. I say you and Johnnie are going to stay parted for a while.”

“I chopped her.”

“How?”

“On her titties, ear to ear and in half. Chop. Chop. Chop.”

Russ sighed. “Let’s backtrack, Joe. You flew out of Dix on Wednesday, January eighth, you landed at Camp MacArthur that night. You and Johnnie are in LA, anxious to sow some wild oats. Where did you go first? Hollywood Boulevard? Sunset Strip? The beach? Where?”

Dulange cracked his knuckles. “Nathan’s Tattoo Parlor, 463 North Alvarado.”

“What did you do there?”

Crazy Joe rolled up his right sleeve, revealing a forked snake’s tongue with “Frenchy” emblazoned below it. Flexing his bicep, the tattoo stretched. Dulange said, “I’m a Frenchman.”

Millard pulled his patented reversal. “I’m a cop, and I’m getting bored. When I get bored, Detective Bleichert takes over. Detective Bleichert was once the tenth-ranked light heavyweight in the world, and he is not a nice man. Right, partner?”

I balled my fists. “I’m a German.”

Dulange laughed. “No tickee, no washee. No Johnnie, no story.”

I almost leaped across the table at him. Russ grabbed my elbow and held it, viselike, while he bargained. “Joe, I’ll make you a deal. First you convince us you knew Betty Short. Give us some facts. Names, dates, descriptions. You do that, and when we take our first break, you and Johnnie can go back to your cell and get reacquainted. What do you say?”

“Johnnie pint?”

“No, his big brother Johnnie fifth.”

The Frenchman grabbed the pack of butts and shook one loose; Russ had his lighter out and extended. Dulange took a monumental drag, exhaling a rush of words along with the smoke:

“After the tattoo joint, me and Johnnie got a cab downtown and got a room. Havana Hotel, Ninth and Olive, deucesky a night, big cockroaches. They started makin’ a ruckus, so I put out mousetraps. That killed ’em. Me and Johnnie slept it off, then the next day we went cunt chasin’. No luck. Next day I get me this Filipino cunt at the bus depot. She says she needs bus fare to Frisco, so I offer her a fivesky to take on me and Johnnie. She says tensky minumum for two guys. I say Johnnie’s hung like Jesus, she should pay me. We go back to the hotel, all the cockroaches got loose from the traps. I introduce her to Johnnie, tell her he goes first. She gets scared, says, ‘You think you’re Fatty Arbuckle?’ I tell her I’m a Frenchman, who does she think she is, thinks she can high-hat Johnnie Red?

“Cockroaches start howlin’ like niggers. The Filipino says Johnnie’s got sharp teeth, no sir. She runs like sixty, me and Johnnie hole up till late Saturday. We want cunt bad. We go by this army-navy on Broadway, and I get me some ribbons for my Ike jacket. DSC with oak leaf, silver star, bronze star, ribbons for all the Jap campaigns. I look like George S. Patton, only hung bigger. Me and Johnnie go to this bar called the Night Owl. Dahlia sashays in, Johnnie says, ‘Yes sir, that’s my baby, no sir, don’t mean maybe, yes sir, that’s my baby now.’”

Dulange stubbed out his cigarette and reached for the pack. Russ jotted notes; I figured time and location, remembering the Night Owl from my days working Central Patrol. It was on 6th and Hill — two blocks from the Biltmore Hotel, where Red Manley dropped Betty Short on Friday, January tenth. The Frenchman, DT recollections notwithstanding, had gained another notch of credibility.

Russ said, “Joe, this was Saturday the eleventh into Sunday the twelfth you’re talking about?”

Dulange fired up another cigarette. “I’m a Frenchman, not a calendar. Sunday follows Saturday, you figure it out.”

“Go on.”

“Anyhow, Dahlia, me and Johnnie have a little chat, and I invite her over to the hotel. We get there and the cockroaches are loose, singin’ and bitin’ at the woodwork. Dahlia says she won’t spreadsky ’less I kill ’em. I grab Johnnie and start boppin’ ’em with him, Johnnie told me it don’t hurt. But the Dahlia cunt won’t spreadsky till the roaches are disposed of scientific style. I go down the street and get this doctor. He gives the roaches poison injections for a fivesky. Me and Dahlia fuck like bunnies, Johnnie Red watches. He’s mad, ’cause Dahlia’s so good I don’t want to give him none.”

I threw in a cut-the-shit question: “Describe her body. Do a good job, or you won’t see Johnnie Red until you get out of the stockade.”

Dulange’s face went soft; he looked like a little kid threatened with the loss of his teddy bear. Russ said, “Answer the man’s question, Joe.”

Dulange grinned. “Till I cut ’em off, she had perky little titties with pink nipples. Kinda thick legs, nice bush. She had them moles I told Major Carroll about, and she had these scratches on her back, real fresh, like she’d just took a whippin’.”

I tingled, remembering the “soft lash marks” the coroner mentioned at the autopsy. Russ said, “Go on, Joe.”

Dulange ghoul grinned. “Then Dahlia starts actin’ nutso, sayin’, ‘How come you’re only a corporal if you won all them medals?’ She starts callin’ me Matt and Gordon and keeps talkin’ about our baby, even though we just did it once, and I wore a safe. Johnnie gets spooked, and him and the cockroaches start singin’, ‘No sir, that ain’t my baby.’ I want more cuntsky, so I take Dahlia down the street to see the roach doctor. I slip him a tensky, and he gives her a fake examination and tells her, ‘The baby will be healthy and arrive in six months.’”

More confirmation, smack in the middle of a DT haze — the Matt and Gordon were obviously Matt Gordon and Joseph Gordon Fickling, two of Betty Short’s fantasy husbands. I thought 50–50, let’s close it out for Big Lee Blanchard; Russ said, “Then what, Joe?”

Dulange looked genuinely puzzled — past bravado, booze-brain memories and a desire to be reunited with Johnnie Red. “Then I sliced her.”

“Where?”

“In half.”

“No, Joe. Where did you perform the murder?”

“Oh. At the hotel.”

“What room number?”

“116.”

“How’d you get the body to 39th and Norton?”

“I stole a car.”

“What kind of car?”

“A Chevy.”

“Make and model?”

“’43 sedan.”

“American cars weren’t manufactured during the war, Joe. Try again.”

“’47 sedan.”

“Somebody left the keys in a nice new car like that? In downtown LA?”

“I hot-wired it.”

“How do you hot-wire a car, Joe?”

“What?”

“Explain the procedure to me.”

“I forget how I did it. I was drunk.”

I cut in: “Where’s 39th and Norton?”

Dulange toyed with the cigarette pack. “It’s near Crenshaw Boulevard and Coliseum Street.”

“Tell me something that wasn’t in the papers.”

“I cut her to ear to ear.”

“Everybody knows that.”

“Me and Johnnie raped her.”

“She wasn’t raped, and Johnnie would have left marks. There weren’t any. Why’d you kill her?”

“She was a bad fuck.”

“Bullshit. You said Betty fucked like a rabbit.”

“A bad rabbit.”

“All cats are gray in the dark, shitbird. Why’d you kill her?”

“She wouldn’t go French.”

“That’s no reason. You can get French at any five-dollar whorehouse. A Frenchman like you should know that.”

“She gave bad French.”

“There’s no such thing, shitbird.”

“I chopped her!”

I slammed the tabletop à la Harry Sears. “You’re a lying frog son of a bitch!”

The JA man got to his feet; Dulange bawled, “I want my Johnnie.”

Russ told the captain, “Have him back here in six hours,” and smiled at me — the softest smile I’d ever seen him give.

So we left it at 50–50 moving toward 75–25 against. Russ left to call in his report and dispatch an SID team over to Room 116 of the Havana Hotel to check for bloodstains; I went to sleep in the BOQ room Major Carroll assigned us. I dreamed of Betty Short and Fatty Arbuckle in black and white; when the alarm went off I reached for Madeleine.

Opening my eyes, I saw Russ, dressed in a clean suit. He handed me a newspaper and said, “Never underestimate Ellis Loew.”

It was a Newark tabloid job bearing the headline: “Fort Dix Soldier Culprit in Sinsational Los Angeles Murder!” Below the banner print were side-by-side photos of Frenchman Joe Dulange and Loew, posed theatrically behind his desk. The text read:

I laughed. “What did you really tell Loew?”

“Nothing. When I talked to Captain Jack the first time, I told him Dulange was a strong possible. He bawled me out for not reporting before we left, and that was it. The second time I called I told him Dulange was starting to look like another crazy. He got very upset, and now I know why.”

I stood up and stretched. “Let’s just hope he really killed her.”

Russ shook his head. “SID said there’s no bloodstains in the hotel room, and no running water to drain the body. And Carroll had a tri-state bulletin out on Dulange’s whereabouts January tenth through the seventeenth — drunk tanks, hospitals, the works. We just got a kickback: Frenchy was in the jail ward of St. Patrick’s Hospital in Brooklyn January fourteenth to the seventeenth. Severe DTs. He was released that morning and picked up in Penn Station two hours later. The man is clean.”

I didn’t know who to be mad at. Loew and company wanted to clear the slate any way possible, Millard wanted justice, I was going home to headlines that made me look like a fool.

“What about Dulange? You want to brace him again?”

“And hear about more singing cockroaches? No. Carroll confronted him with the kickback. He said he made up the killing story to get publicity. He wants to reconcile with his first wife, and he thought the attention would get him some sympathy. I talked to him again, and it was nothing but DT stuff. There’s nothing more he can tell us.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“The savior indeed. Joe’s getting a quickie discharge and we’re getting a flight back to LA in forty-five minutes. So get dressed, partner.”

I put on my stale clothes, then Russ and I walked out to the sallyport to wait for the jeep that would take us to the airstrip. In the distance, I could see a tall uniformed figure approaching. I shivered against the cold; the tall man got closer. I saw that it was none other than Corporal Joseph Dulange.

Reaching the sallyport, he held out a morning tabloid and poked at his picture on the front page. “I got the whole hog, you’re small print where Krauts belong.”

I smelled Johnnie Red on his breath and sucker-punched him square in the chops. Dulange went down like a ton of bricks; my right hand throbbed. Russ Millard’s look reminded me of Jesus getting ready to rebuke the heathens. I said, “Don’t be so goddamn proper. Don’t be such a fucking saint.”

Twenty-one

Ellis Loew said, “I called this little meeting for several reasons, Bucky. One is to apologize for jumping the gun on Dulange. I was precipitious in talking to my newspaper people, and you got hurt. I apologize for that.”

I looked at Loew, and at Fritz Vogel sitting beside him. The “little meeting” was in the living room of Fritzie’s house; the two days of Dulange headlines portrayed me as no worse than an overeager cop on a wild goose chase. “What do you want, Mr. Loew?”

Fritzie laughed; Loew said, “Call me Ellis.”

The setup hit a new bottom in the sublety department — way below the highballs and bowl of pretzels Fritzie’s hausfrau had served as amenities. I was supposed to meet Madeleine in an hour — and off-duty fraternizing with my boss was the last thing in the world I wanted. “Okay, Ellis.”

Loew bristled at my tone. “Bucky, we’ve clashed a number of times in the past. Maybe we’re even clashing now. But I think we agree on a few things. We’d both like to see the Short case closed out and get back to normal business. You want to go back to Warrants, and as much as I would like to prosecute the killer, my part in the investigation has gotten out of hand, and it’s time that I returned to the old cases on my docket.”

I felt like a bush league cardsharp holding a royal flush. “What do you want, Ellis?”

“I want to return you to Warrants tomorrow, and I want to give the Short case a last go before I return to my old caseload. We’re both comers, Bucky. Fritzie wants you for his partner when he gets his lieutenancy, and—”

“Russ Millard wants me when Harry Sears retires.”

Fritzie took a belt of his highball. “You’re too raw for him, boyo. He’s told people you can’t control your temper. Old Russ is a sob sister, and I’m much more your type.”

It was a good wild card; I thought of the disgusted look Russ gave me after I coldcocked Joe Dulange. “What do you want, Ellis?”

“Very well, Dwight, I’ll tell you. There are four confessors still being held at City Jail. They’ve got no alibis for Betty Short’s missing days, they weren’t coherent when they were first questioned, and they are all violent, frothing-at-the-mouth lunatics. I want them reinterrogated, with what you might call ‘appropriate props.’ It’s a muscle job, and Fritzie wanted Bill Koenig for it, but he’s a bit too enamored of violence, so I picked you. So, Dwight, yes or no. Back to Warrants or Homicide shitwork until Russ Millard gets tired of you? Millard is a patient, forbearing man, Dwight. That might be a long time.”

My royal flush collapsed. “Yes.”

Loew beamed. “Go to the city jail now. The night jailer has released waivers for the four men. There’s a drunk wagon in the nightwatch lot, keys under the mat. Drive the suspects to 1701 South Alameda, meet Fritzie. Welcome back to Warrants, Dwight.”

I stood up. Loew took a pretzel from the bowl and nibbled it daintily; Fritzie drained his glass, his hands shaking.

The loonies were waiting for me in a holding tank, wearing jail denims, chained together and manacled at the ankles. The waivers the jailer had given me came with mug shots and rap sheets carbons attached; when the cell door was racked electronically, I matched pictures to faces.

Paul David Orchard was short and burly, with a flat nose spread across half his face and long, pomade-lacquered blond hair; Cecil Thomas Durkin was a fiftyish mulatto, bald, freckled, close to six and a half feet tall. Charles Michael Issler had enormous sunken brown eyes, and Loren (NMI) Bidwell was a frail old man, shaking from palsy, liver spots covering his skin. He looked so pathetic that I double-checked his sheet to make sure I had the right man; child molesting beefs running back to 1911 told me I did. “Out in the catwalk,” I said. “Roll it up now.”

The four shuffled out, scissor-walking sideways, their chains dragging the floor. I pointed them to a side exit adjoining the catwalk; the jailer opened the door from outside. The loony conga line scissored into the parking lot; the jailer held a bead on them while I found the drunk wagon and backed it up.

The jailer opened the wagon’s back door; I checked the rear-view mirror and watched my cargo climb aboard. They were whispering among themselves, taking gulps of the crisp night air as they stumbled up and in. The jailer locked the door behind them and signaled me with his gun barrel; I took off.

1701 South Alameda was in the East LA Industrial District, about a mile and a half from the city jail. Five minutes later, I found it — a giant warehouse smack in the middle of a block of giant warehouses, the only one with its street facade illuminated: KOUNTY KING LUNCH MEAT — SERVING LOS ANGELES COUNTY WITH INSTITUTIONAL FOOD SINCE 1923. I tapped the horn as I parked; a door beneath the sign opened up, the light went off, Fritzie Vogel was standing there with his thumbs hooked in his belt.

I got out and unlocked the back door. The loonies stumbled into the street; Fritzie called, “This way, gentlemen.” The four scissor-walked in the direction of the voice; a light went on in back of Fritzie. I secured the van and walked over.

Fritzie ushered the last loony in and greeted me in the doorway. “County kickbacks, boyo. The man who owns this place owes Sheriff Biscailuz, and he’s got a plainclothes lieutenant who’s got a doctor brother who owes me. You’ll see what I’m talking about in a while.”

I shut the door and bolted it; Fritzie led me past the scissor-walkers and down a hall reeking of meat. At the end, it opened into a huge room — sawdust-covered cement floors, row after row of rusted meathooks hanging from the ceiling. Sides of beef dangled from over half of them, in the open at room temperature while horseflies feasted. My stomach looped; then, at the rear, I saw four chairs stationed directly beneath four unused hooks and got the picture for real.

Fritzie was unlocking the loonies’ manacles and cuffing their hands in front of them. I stood by and gauged reactions. Old Man Bidwell’s palsy was going into overdrive, Durkin was humming to himself, Orchard sneered, his head cocked to one side, like his butch-waxed pompadour was weighing it down. Only Charles Issler looked lucid enough to be concerned — he was fretting his hands and looking from Fritzie to me, his eyes constantly darting.

Fritzie took a roll of tape from his pocket and tossed it to me. “Tape the rap sheets to the wall next to the hooks. Alphabetically, straight across.”

I did it, noticing a sheet-draped table wedged diagonally into a connecting doorway a few feet away. Fritzie led the prisoners over and made them stand on the chairs, then dangle their handcuff chains loosely over the meathooks. I skimmed the rap sheets, hoping for facts that would make me hate the four enough to get me through the night and back to Warrants.

Loren Bidwell was a three-time Atascadero loser, the falls for aggravated sexual assault on minors. Between prison jolts, he confessed to all the big sex crimes, and was even a major suspect in the Hickman child snuff case back in the ’20s. Cecil Durkin was a hophead, a knife fighter and a jailhouse rape-o who played jazz drums with some good combos; he took two Quentin jolts for Arson and was caught masturbating at the scene of his last torch — the home of a bandleader who had allegedly stiffed him on payment for a nightclub gig. That fall cost him twelve years in stir; since his release he’d been working as a dishwasher, living at a Salvation Army domicile.

Charles Issler was a pimp and career confessor specializing in copping to hooker homicides. His three procuring beefs had netted him a year county jail time; his phony confessions two ninety-day observation stints at the Camarillo nut farm. Paul Orchard was a jack roller, a male prostitute, and a former San Bernardino County deputy sheriff. On top of his vice beefs, he had two convictions for grievous aggravated assault.

A little surge of hate juice entered me. It felt tenuous, like I was about to go into the ring against a guy I wasn’t sure I could take. Fritzie said, “A charming quartet, huh, boyo?”

“Real choirboys.”

Fritzie curled a come-hither finger at me; I walked over and faced the four suspects. My hate juice was holding as he said, “You all confessed to killing the Dahlia. We can’t prove you did, so it’s up to you to convince us. Bucky, you ask questions about the girlie’s missing days. I’ll listen in until I hear syphilitic lies.”

I braced Bidwell first. His palsy spasms had the chair rocking underneath him; I reached up and grabbed the meat hook to hold him steady. “Tell me about Betty Short, pops. Why’d you kill her?”

The old man beseeched me with his eyes; I looked away. Fritzie, perusing the rap sheets on the wall, picked up on the silence. “Don’t be timid, boyo. That bird made little boys suck his hog.”

My hand twitched and jerked the hook. “Come clean, pop. Why’d you snuff her?”

Bidwell answered in a breathless geezer’s voice: “I didn’t kill her, mister. I just wanted a ticket to the honor farm. Three hots and a cot’s all I wanted. Please, mister.”

The geez didn’t look strong enough to lift a knife, let alone tie a woman down and carry the two halves of her stiff out to a car. I moved to Cecil Durkin.

“Tell me about it, Cecil.”

The hepcat mocked me. “Tell you about it? You get that line from Dick Tracy or Gangbusters?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Fritzie watching, measuring me. “One more time, shitbird. Tell me about you and Betty Short.”

Durkin giggled. “I fucked Betty Short and I fucked your mama! I’m your daddy!”

I one-two’d him in the solar plexus, hard little shots. Durkin’s legs buckled, but he kept his feet on the chair. He gasped for breath, got a lungful and went back to bravado: “You think you clever, don’t you? You the bad guy, your buddy the nice guy. You gonna hit me, he gonna rescue me. Don’t you clowns know that bit went out with vaudeville?”

I massaged my right hand, still bone bruised from Lee Blanchard and Joe Dulange. “I’m the nice guy, Cecil. Keep that in mind.”

It was a good line. Durkin fumbled for a comeback; I turned my attention to Charles Michael Issler.

He looked down and said, “I didn’t kill Liz. I don’t know why I do these things, and I apologize. So please don’t let that man hurt me.”

His manner was quietly sincere, but something about him put me off. I said, “Convince me.”

“I... I can’t. I just didn’t.”

I thought of Issler as a pimp, Betty as a part-time prostie, and wondered if there was a possible connection between them — then remembered that the hookers in the little black book questionings said she always worked freelance. I said, “Did you know Betty Short?”

“No.”

“Did you know of her?”

“No.”

“Why’d you confess to her murder?”

“She... she looked so sweet and pretty and I felt so bad when I saw her picture in the paper. I... I always confess to the pretty ones.”

“Your rap sheet says you only cop to hooker snuffs. Why?”

“Well, I...”

“You hit your girls, Charlie? You get them gone on hop? You make them service your pals—”

I stopped, thinking of Kay and Bobby De Witt. Issler bobbed his head up and down, slowly at first, then harder and harder. Soon he was sobbing, “I do such bad things, nasty, nasty things. Nasty, nasty, nasty.”

Fritzie walked over and stood beside me, brass knuckles coiled in both fists. He said, “This kid gloves routine is getting us nowhere,” and kicked Issler’s chair out from under him. The confessor-pimp screamed and flopped like an impaled fish; bones snapped as the cuffs caught the brunt of his weight. Fritzie said, “Watch, boyo.”

Shouting, “Jack Roller!” “Nigger!” “Baby fucker!” he kicked the other three chairs to the floor. Now there were confessors dangling four abreast, shrieking, grabbing at one another with their legs, an octopus in county jail denim. The screams sounded like one voice — until Fritzie zeroed in on Charles Michael Issler.

He roundhoused the knuckle dusters into his midsection, left-right, left-right, left-right. Issler screamed and gurgled; Fritzie yelled, “Tell me about the Dahlia’s missing days you syphilitic whoremonger!”

My legs felt like they were about to go. Issler screeched, “I... don’t... know... anything.” Fritzie shot him an uppercut to the crotch.

“Tell me what you know!”

“I knew you at Ad Vice!”

Fritzie winged rabbit punches. “Tell me what you know! Tell me what your girls told you, you syphilitic whoremonger!”

Issler retched; Fritzie moved in close and worked his body. I heard ribs cracking, then stared off to my left, to a burglar alarm lever on the wall by the connecting doorway. I stared and stared and stared; Fritizie ran into my field of vision and wheeled over the sheet-covered table I’d noticed before.

The loonies flopped on their hooks, moaning low. Fritzie got right up next to me, cackled in my face, then whipped off the sheet.

The table held a naked female corpse, cut in half at the waist — a pudgy girl coiffed and made up to look like Elizabeth Short. Fritzie grabbed Charlie Issler by the scruff of the neck, hissing, “For your cutting pleasure, may I present Jane Doe number forty-three. You’re all going to slice her, and the best slicer buys the ticket!”

Issler shut his eyes and bit through his lower lip. Old Man Bidwell went purple, starting to foam at the mouth. I smelled loosed feces on Durkin and saw Orchard’s wrists broken, twisted to right angles, bones and tendons exposed. Fritzie pulled out a pachuco toad stabber and popped the blade. “Show me how you did it, you filths. Show me what didn’t get in the papers. Show me and I’ll be nice to you and make alllll your hurt go away. Bucky, take off their cuffs.”

My legs went. I stumbled into Fritzie, hurled him to the floor, ran for the alarm and pulled the lever. A code three response siren went off so good, so loud, so hard that it felt like its sound waves were what propelled me out of the warehouse and into the drunk wagon and all the way to Kay’s door with no excuses and words of loyalty for Lee.

So were Kay Lake and I formally joined.

Twenty-two

Tripping that alarm was the costliest act of my life.

Loew and Vogel succeeded in putting the hush on it. I was booted off Warrants and back into uniform — swingwatch foot patrol out of Central Station, my old home. Lieutenant Jastrow, the watch boss, was thick with the demon DA. I could tell he was checking out my every act — waiting for me to snitch or rabbit or somehow follow up on the big wrong move I had to make.

I did nothing about it. It was the word of a five-year officer versus a twenty-two-year man and the city’s future District Attorney, backed by their hole card: the radio car officers who responded to the alarm were made the new Central Division Warrants team, a piece of serendipity guaranteed to keep them quiet and happy. Two consolations kept me from going crazy: Fritzie didn’t kill anybody, and when I checked the city jail release records I learned that the four confessors had been treated for “car crash injuries” at Queen of Angels and shipped to different state ding farms for “observation.” And my horror pushed me where I’d been too scared and stupid to go for a long, long time.

Kay.

That first night she was as much my grief catcher as my lover. I was afraid of noise and abrupt movement, so she undressed me and made me be still, murmuring, “And all that,” every time I tried to talk about Fritzie or the Dahlia. She touched me so softly that it was hardly touching at all; I touched every whole and healthy part of her until I felt my own body cease to be fists and cop muscle. Then we roused each other slowly and made love, with Betty Short far away.

A week later I broke it off with Madeleine, the “neighbor girl” whose identity I had kept secret from Lee and Kay. I didn’t offer a reason, and the rich gutter crawler aced me as I was about to hang up the phone. “Find somebody safe? You’ll be back, you know. I look like her.”

Her.

A month passed. Lee didn’t return, the two dope traffickers were convicted and hanged for the De Witt-Chasco killings, my Fire and Ice ad continued to run in all four LA dailies. The Short case moved from headlines to back pages, tips fell off to almost zero, everyone but Russ Millard and Harry Sears went back to their regular assignments. Still assigned to Her, Russ and Harry kept putting in straight eights at the Bureau and in the field, spending evenings at the El Nido, going over the master file. When I got off duty at 9:00, I’d visit for a while on my way to see Kay, quietly amazed at how obsessed Mr. Homicide was becoming, his family neglected as he prowled paper until midnight. The man inspired confession; when I told him the story of Fritzie and the warehouse, his absolution was a fatherly embrace and the admonishing, “Take the Sergeant’s Exam. In a year or so I’ll go to Thad Green. He owes me one, and when Harry retires you’ll be my partner.”

It was a promise to build on, and it kept bringing me back to the file. With my days free and Kay at work, I had nothing to do, so I read it over and over. The “R,” “S,” and “T” folders were missing, which was an annoyance, but other than that it was perfection. My real woman had Betty Short pushed back across a Maginot Line into professional curiosity, and I kept reading, thinking and hypothesizing from the standpoint of becoming a good detective — the road I was on until I tripped that alarm. Sometimes I felt connections begging to be made, sometimes I cursed myself for not having ten percent more gray matter, sometimes the report carbons just made me think of Lee.

I continued with the woman he saved from a nightmare. Kay and I played house three and four times a week, the hours late now that I was working swingwatch. We made our tender kind of love and talked around the bad events of the past months, and as gentle and good as I was, I kept churning inside for an outside conclusion — Lee back, the Dahlia killer on a platter, one more Red Arrow shack with Madeleine or Ellis Loew and Fritzie Vogel nailed to a cross. What always came with it was a big, ugly replay of me hitting Cecil Durkin, followed by the question: how far would you have gone that night?

The beat was where it ate at me the most. I worked East 5th Street from Main to Stanford, skid row. Blood banks, liquor stores selling half pints and short dogs exclusively, fifty-cent-a-night flophouses and derelict missions. The unspoken rule down there was that foot beat hacks worked strong-arm. You broke up bottle gangs by whacking winos with your billy club; you hauled jigs out of the day labor joints when they insisted on getting hired. You rounded up drunks and ragpickers indiscriminately to meet the city quota, beating them down if they tried to run from the drunk wagon. It was attrition duty, and the only officers good at it were the transplanted Okie shitkickers hired in the manpower shortage during the war. I patrolled half-heartedly: little jabs with my stick, handing winos dimes and quarters to get them off the street and into the wine bars where I wouldn’t have to roust them, low quotas on my drunk sweeps. I got a rep as the Central swingwatch “sob sister”; twice Johnny Vogel saw me passing out chump change and hooted uproariously. Lieutenant Jastrow gave me a Class D fitness report my first month back in uniform — a clerical aide told me he cited my “Reluctance to employ sufficient force with recalcitrant misdemeanants.” Kay got a kick out of the line, but I saw a stack of bum paper building up so high that all Russ Millard’s juice wouldn’t be able to return me to the Bureau.

So I was back where I was before the fight and the bond issue, only further east and on foot. Rumors raged on my way up to Warrants; now speculation centered on my fall. One story had me shitcanned for beating up Lee, others had me infringing on East Valley Division’s process-serving territory, punking out on a bout with the 77th Street rookie who won the ’46 Golden Gloves, incurring Ellis Loew’s wrath by leaking Dahlia info to a radio station opposed to his upcoming DA candidacy. Every rumor portrayed me as a backstabber, a Bolshevik, a coward and a fool; when my second month’s fitness report ended with the line, “This officer’s passive patrol behavior has earned him the enmity of every enforcement-minded policeman on his watch,” I started thinking of handing out five-spots to the winos and beatings to every bluesuit who looked at me even slightly hinky.

Then she came back.

I never thought about her on the beat; when I studied the file, it was just detective drudge work, facts and theorizing on a common DOA. When my lovemaking with Kay got too involved in affection, she came to help, served her purpose and was banished as soon as we finished. It was when I was asleep and helpless that she lived.

It was always the same dream. I was at the warehouse with Fritz Vogel, beating Cecil Durkin to death. She watched, screaming that none of the drool cases killed her, promising to love me if I made Fritzie quit hitting Charlie Issler. I stopped, wanting the sex. Fritzie continued his carnage, and Betty wept for Charlie while I had her.

I always woke up grateful for daylight, especially when Kay was beside me.

On April 4, almost two and a half months after Lee’s disappearance, Kay got a letter on official LAPD stationery:

A check for $14.11 was included. It made me killing mad, and I attacked the master file so I wouldn’t attack my new enemy — the bureaucracy that owned me.

Twenty-three

Two days later the connection jumped up off the carbon and grabbed me by the balls.

It was my own FI report, filed on 1/17/47. Under “Marjorie Graham,” I had written: “M.G. stated E. Short used nickname variations of ‘Elizabeth’ according to the company she was with.”

Bingo.

I had heard Elizabeth Short called “Betty,” “Beth,” and once or twice “Betsy,” but only Charles Michael Issler, a pimp, referred to her as “Liz.” At the warehouse he had denied knowing her. I recalled that he didn’t impress me as a killer, but that I still found him hinky. When I’d thought about the warehouse before, it was Durkin and the stiff that came on strong; now I replayed it strictly for facts:

Fritzie had beat Issler half to death, ignoring the other three loonies.

He had stressed side issues, shouting: “Tell me what you know about the Dahlia’s missing days,” “Tell me what you know,” “Tell me what your girls told you.”

Issler had answered back, “I knew you at Ad Vice.”

I thought of Fritzie’s hands shaking earlier that night; I remembered him shouting at Lorna Martilkova: “You whored with the Dahlia, didn’t you, girlie? Tell me where you were during her lost days.” Then the finale hit: Fritzie and Johnny Vogel whispering on the ride out to the Valley.

“I proved I’m not no nancy boy. Homos couldn’t do what I did.”

“Be still, damn you!”

I ran out to the hall, fed the pay phone a nickel and dialed Russ Millard’s number at the Bureau.

“Central Homicide, Lieutenant Millard.”

“Russ, it’s Bucky.”

“Something wrong, bright penny? You sound shaky.”

“Russ, I think I’ve got something. I can’t tell you now, but I need two favors.”

“This is about Elizabeth?”

“Yes. Goddamnit, Russ—”

“Hush, and tell me.”

“I need you to get me the Ad Vice file for Charles Michael Issler. He’s got three pimping priors, so I know he’ll have one.”

“And?”

I dry swallowed. “I want you to check on Fritz Vogel’s and John Vogel’s whereabouts January tenth through fifteenth.”

“Are you telling me—”

“I’m telling you maybe. I’m telling you maybe real strong.”

There was a long silence, then: “Where are you?”

“The El Nido.”

“Stay there. I’ll call you back inside of half an hour.”

I hung up and waited, thinking of a sweet package of glory and revenge. Seventeen minutes later the phone rang; I pounced on it. “Russ, what—”

“The file’s missing. I checked the ‘I’s’ myself. They were all put back unevenly, so my guess is that it was snatched recently. On the other, Fritzie was on duty at the Bureau straight through those days, racking up overtime on old cases, and Johnny was on vacation leave, where I don’t know. Now, will you explain all this?”

I got an idea. “Not now. Meet me here tonight. Late. If I’m not here, wait for me.”

“Bucky—”

“Later, padre.”

I called in sick that afternoon; that night I committed two felony B&E’s.

My first victim was working swingwatch; I called Personnel Division and impersonated a city payroll clerk to get his home address and phone number. The catching officer kicked loose; at dusk I parked across the street and eyeballed the apartment house that John Vogel called home.

It was a stucco four flat on Mentone near the LA-Culver City border, a salmon-pink structure flanked by identical buildings painted light green and tan. There was a pay phone at the corner; I used it to dial Bad Breath Johnny’s number, an extra precaution to make sure the bastard wasn’t in. Twenty rings went unanswered. I walked calmly over, found a bottom floor door with “Vogel” on the mail slot, worked a doubled-over hairpin into the keyhole and let myself in.

Inside, I held my breath, half expecting a killer dog to leap at me. I checked the luminous dial on my watch, decided ten minutes was tops and squinted for a light to turn on.

My eyes caught a floor lamp. I moved to it and pulled the cord, lighting up a tidy living room. There was a tidy bargain basement sofa with matching chairs, an imitation fireplace, cheesecake glossies of Rita Hayworth, Betty Grable and Ann Sheridan Scotch taped to the walls, what looked like a genuine captured Jap flag draped over the coffee table. The phone was on the floor by the sofa, with an address book next to it; I allotted half my time right there.

I checked every page. There was no Betty Short or Charles Issler, and none of the names listed were repeats from the master file or the names in Betty’s “little black book.” Five minutes down, five to go.

A kitchen, dinette and bedroom adjoined the living room. I turned off the lamp, moved in darkness to the half-open bedroom doorway and patted the inside wall for a light switch. Finding one, I flipped it on.

An unmade bed, four walls festooned with Jap flags and a big, scuffed chest of drawers were revealed. I opened the top drawer, saw three German Lugers, spare clips and a scattering of loose shells — and laughed at the taste of Axis Johnny. Then I opened the middle one, and a tingling was all over me.

Black leather harnesses, chains, whips, studded dog collars, Tijuana condoms that gave you a bludgeon-headed extra six inches. Smut books with pictures of naked women getting whipped by other women while they sucked harness-clad guys with big dicks. Close-up photos that captured fat, needle marks, chipped nail polish and dope-glazed eyes. No Betty Short, no Lorna Martilkova, no Slave Girls from Hell Egyptian backdrop or tie-in to Duke Wellington, but a parlay — whips to the coroner’s “light lash marks” — that was enough to nail Johnny Vogel as Dahlia suspect number one.

I shut the drawers, flicked off the light, tingle walked into the living room and turned on the lamp, then reached for the address book. “Daddy & Mom’s” number was GRanite-9401; if I got a no answer, B&E number two was a ten-minute drive away.

I dialed; Fritz Vogel’s phone rang twenty-five times. I turned off the light and hauled ass.

Vogel Senior’s small wood frame house was totally dark when I pulled up across from it. I sat behind the wheel remembering the layout from my previous visit, recalling two bedrooms off a long hallway, the kitchen, a rear service porch and a closed door across the hall from the bathroom. If Fritzie had a private den, that had to be it.

I took the driveway to the back of the house. The screen door to the service porch was open; I tiptoed past a washing machine to the barrier to the house proper. That door was solid wood, but feeling at the jamb I found it connected to the wall with a simple hook and eyelet. I shook the knob and felt plenty of give; if I could pop the little piece of metal, I was in.

I got down on my knees and patted the floor, stopping when my hand hit a skinny piece of metal. Pawing at it like a blind man, I realized I’d found an oil gauge dipstick. I smiled at my luck, stood up and popped the door open.

Thinking fifteen minutes tops, I moved through the kitchen, over to the hallway and down it, my hands in front of me to deflect unseen obstacles. A nightlight glowed inside the bathroom doorway — pointing me straight across to what I hoped was Fritzie’s hideaway. I tried the knob — and the door opened.

The little room was pitch dark. I banged along the walls, hitting picture frames, feeling iceberg spooky until my leg grazed a tall wobbly object. It was about to topple when I snapped that it was a gooseneck lamp, reached for the top part and flipped the switch.

Light.

The pictures were photographs of Fritzie in uniform, in plainclothes, standing at attention with the rest of his 1925 Academy class. There was a desk positioned against the back wall, facing a window covered with a velvet curtain, a swivel chair and a filing cabinet.

I slid the top compartment open and fingered through manila folders stamped “Intelligence Rpt — Bunco Division,” “Intelligence Rpt — Burglary Division,” “Intelligence Rpt — Robbery Division” — all with the names of individuals typed on side tabs. Wanting some kind of common denominator, I checked the first sheets of the next three folders I came to — finding only one carbon page in each of them.

But those single pieces of paper were enough.

They were financial accountings, lists of bank balances and other assets, tallies made on known criminals that the Department couldn’t legally touch. The routing designations at the top of each sheet spelled it out plain — it was the LAPD shooting the feds hot dope so that they could initiate tax evasion investigations. Handwritten notes — phone numbers, names and addresses — filled the margins, and I recognized Fritzie’s Parker penmanship hand.

My breath came in short cold bursts as I thought: shakedown. He’s either putting the screws to the hoods based on info in the rest of the files or selling them tip-offs on impending fed rousts.

Extortion, first degree.

Theft and harboring of official LAPD documents.

Impeding the progress of federal investigations.

But no Johnny Vogel, Charlie Issler or Betty Short.

I tore through another fourteen folders, finding the same scrawled-over financial reports in all of them. I memorized the side tab names, then moved to the bottom compartment. I saw “Known Offender Rpt — Administrative Vice Division” on the first file inside it — and knew I’d gotten the whole ball of wax.

Page one detailed the arrests, MO and confessing career of Charles Michael Issler, white male, born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1911; page two listed his “Known Associates.” A June 1946 “whore book” check by his probation officer yielded six girls’ names, followed by phone numbers and the arrest dates and dispositions of their hooking convictions. There were an additional four female names below the heading “? — No Prostitution Record.” The third name was “Liz Short — Transient?”

I turned to page three and read down the column headed “KAs, cont”; one name harpooned me. “Sally Stinson” was in Betty Short’s little black book, and none of the four questioning teams had been able to locate her. In brackets beside her name, some Ad Vice dick had penciled in, “Works out of Biltmore bar — conventioneer johns.” Doodles in Fritzie’s ink color surrounded the entry.

I forced myself to think like a detective, not a revenge-happy kid. The extortion stuff aside, it was certain that Charlie Issler knew Betty Short. Betty knew Sally Stinson, who hooked out of the Biltmore. Fritz Vogel didn’t want anybody to know it. He probably arranged the warehouse stunt to find out how much Sally and/or his other girls had told Issler about Betty and the men she was recently with.

“I proved I’m not no nancy boy. Homos couldn’t do what I did. I’m not cherry no more, so don’t say nancy boy.”

I put the folders back in order, closed the cabinet, hit the light and relatched the backdoor before walking out the front like I owned the place, wondering briefly if there was any connection between Sally Stinson and the missing “S’s” in the master file. Treading air to my car, I knew it couldn’t be — Fritzie didn’t know that the El Nido work room existed. Then another thought took over: if Issler had blabbed about “Liz” and her tricks I would have overheard. Fritzie was confident he could keep me quiet. It was an underestimation that I was going to bleed him for.

Russ Millard was waiting for me with two words: “Report, Officer.”

I told him the whole story in detail. When I finished, he saluted Elizabeth Short on the wall, said, “We’re making progress, dear,” and formally stuck out his hand.

We shook, sort of like father and son after the big game. “What next, padre?”

“Next you go back to duty like none of this happened. Harry and I will brace Issler at the nut farm, and I’ll assign some men to look for Sally Stinson on the QT.”

I swallowed. “And Fritzie?”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

“I want him nailed.”

“I know you do. But you keep one thing in mind. The men that he extorted are criminals who would never testify against him in court, and if he gets wind of this and destroys the carbons, we wouldn’t even be able to get him for an interdepartmental offense. All of this is going to require corroboration, so for now it’s just us. And you had better settle down and control your temper until it’s over.”

I said, “I want in on the collar.’

Russ nodded. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He tipped his hat to Elizabeth on the way out the door.

I went back to swingwatch and played sob sister; Russ put men out to look for Sally Stinson. A day later, he called me at home with one dose of bad news, one of good:

Charles Issler had found a lawyer to file him a writ of habeaus corpus; he had been released from the Mira Loma ding farm three weeks before. His LA apartment had been cleaned out; he couldn’t be found. That was a kick in the balls, but the confirmation on the Vogel extortion front made up for it.

Harry Sears checked Fritzie’s felony arrest records — from Bunco in 1934 up through his current position in Central Detectives. At one time or another Vogel had arrested every single man on the LAPD-FBI financial carbons. And the feds did not indict a single one of them.

I rotated off-duty the next day, and spent it with the master file, thinking corroboration. Russ called to say that he hadn’t got any leads on Issler, that it looked like he’d blown town. Harry was keeping Johnny Vogel under a loose surveillance on and off duty; a buddy working West Hollywood Sheriff’s Vice had kicked loose with some KA addresses — friends of Sally Stinson. Russ told me a half dozen times to take it easy and not jump the gun. He knew damn well I already had Fritzie in Folsom and Johnny in the Little Green Room.

I was scheduled to go back on duty Thursday, and got up early in order to spend a long morning with the master file. I was making coffee when the phone rang.

I picked it up. “Yes?”

“It’s Russ. We’ve got Sally Stinson. Meet me at 1546 North Havenhurst in half an hour.”

“Rolling.”

The address was a Spanish castle apartment house: whitewashed cement shaped into ornamental turrets, balconies topped by sun-weathered awnings. Walkways led up to the individual doors; Russ was standing by the one on the far right.

I left the car in a red zone and trotted over. A man in a disheveled suit and paper party hat strutted down the walkway, a slap-happy grin on his face. He slurred, “Next shift, huh? Twosies on onesies, ooh la la!”

Russ led me up the steps. I rapped on the door; a not-young blonde with mussed hair and smeared makeup threw it open, spat, “What did you forget this time?” then, “Oh, shit.”

Russ held out his badge. “LAPD. Are you Sally Stinson?”

“No, I’m Eleanor Roosevelt. Listen, I put out for the sheriff’s more ways than one lately, so I’m tapped in the cash department. You want the other?”

I started to elbow my way inside; Russ grabbed my arm. “Miss Stinson, it’s about Liz Short and Charlie Issler, and it’s here or the women’s jail.”

Sally Stinson clutched the front of her robe and pressed it to her bodice. She said, “Listen, I told the other guy,” then stopped and hugged herself. She looked like the floozy victim confronting the monster in old horror movies; I knew exactly who her monster was. “We’re not with him. We just want to talk to you about Betty Short.”

Sally appraised us. “And he ain’t gonna know?”

Russ flashed his father-confessor smile and lied. “No, this is strictly confidential.”

Sally stood aside. Russ and I entered an archetypal trick pad front room — cheap furniture, bare walls, suitcases lined up in one corner for a quick getaway. Sally bolted the door. I said, “Who’s this guy we’re talking about, Miss Stinson?”

Russ straightened the knot in his necktie; I clammed up. Sally jabbed a finger at the couch. “Let’s do this quicksville. Rehashing old grief is against my religion.”

I sat down; stuffing and the point of a spring popped out a few inches from my knee. Russ settled into a chair and got out his notebook; Sally took a perch on top of the suitcases, back to the wall and eyes on the door like a seasoned getaway artist. She started with the most often heard Short case intro line: “I don’t know who killed her.”

Russ said, “Fair enough, but let’s take it from the beginning. When did you meet Liz Short?”

Sally scratched a hickey on her cleavage. “Last summer. June, maybe.”

“Where?”

“At the bar at the Yorkshire House Grill downtown. I was half in the bag, waiting for my... waiting for Charlie I. Liz was putting the moves on this rich-looking old hairbag, coming on too strong. She scared him off. Then we started talking and Charlie showed up.”

I said, “Then what?”

“Then we all discovered we had a lot in common. Liz said she was broke, Charlie says ‘you wanta make a quick double-saw,’ Liz says ‘yeah,’ Charlie sends us over for a twosie at the textile salesman’s convention at the Mayflower.”

“And?”

“And Liz was gooood. You want details, wait till I publish my memoirs. But I’ll tell you this. I’m pretty good at faking like I’m loving it, but Liz was great. She had this bee in her bonnet about keeping her stockings on, but she was like a virtuoso. Academy Award stuff.”

I thought of the stag film — and the strange gash on Betty’s left thigh. “Do you know if Liz ever appeared in any pornographic movies?”

Sally shook her head. “No, but if she did she’d be gooood.”

“You know a man named Walter “Duke” Wellington?”

“No.”

“Linda Martin?”

“Ixnay.”

Russ took over. “Did you turn any other tricks with Liz?”

Sally said, “Four or five, last summer. Hotel jobs. All conventioneers.”

“Remember any names? Organizations? Descriptions?”

Sally laughed and scratched her cleavage. “Mr. Policeman, my first commandment is keep your eyes shut and try to forget. I’m good at it.”

“Were any of the hotel jobs at the Biltmore?”

“No. The Mayflower, the Hacienda House. Maybe the Rexford.”

“Did any of the men react strangely to Liz? Get rough with her?”

Sally hooted. “Mostly they were just happy ’cause she faked it so good.”

Itchy to get at Vogel, I changed the subject. “Tell me about you and Charlie Issler. Did you know he confessed to the Dahlia killing?”

Sally said, “Not at first I didn’t. Then... well, anyway, I wasn’t surprised when I did hear. Charlie’s got this what you might wanta call compulsion to confess. Like if a prostie gets killed and it makes the papers, bye-bye Charlie and get out the iodine when he comes back, ’cause he always makes sure the rubber hose boys work him over.”

Russ said, “Why do you think he does it?”

“How’s a guilty conscience sound?”

I said, “How’s this sound? You tell us where you were January tenth through fifteenth, and you tell us about this guy we all don’t like.”

“Sounds like I’ve really got a choice.”

“You do. Talk to us here or to a butch matron downtown.”

Russ tugged at his tie — hard. “Do you remember where you were on those dates, Miss Stinson?”

Sally fished cigarettes and matches from her pockets and lit up. “Everybody who knew Liz remembers where they were then. You know, like when FDR died. You keep wishing you could go back, you know, and change it.”

I started to apologize for my tactics; Russ beat me to it. “My partner didn’t mean to get nasty, Miss Stinson. This is a grudge thing for him.”

It was the perfect come-on. Sally Stinson tossed her cigarette on the floor, ground it out with her bare feet, then patted the suitcases. “I’m adios as soon as you walk out the door. I’ll tell you, but I won’t tell no DAs, no Grand Juries, no other cops. I mean it. You walk out that door and it’s bye-bye Sally.”

Russ said, “It’s a deal.” Sally’s color rose; that and the anger in her eyes knocked a good ten years off her. “On Friday the tenth I got a call at this hotel where I was staying. A guy said he’s a friend of Charlie and he wants to buy me for this young guy he knows who’s cherry. Two-day session at the Biltmore, a C-note and a half. I say I ain’t seen Charlie in a while, how’d you get my number? The guy says ‘Never mind, meet me and the kid outside the Biltmore tomorrow at noon.’

“I’m broke, so I say okay, and I meet the two guys. Big fat peas in a pod packing hardware, I know it’s a father and son cop act. Money changes hands, sonny’s got halitosis but I’ve seen worse. He tells me daddy’s name and I get a little scared, but daddy amscrays and the kid’s so lame I know I can take care of him.”

Sally lit another cigarette. Russ passed me Personnel photos of the Vogel boys; I handed them to her. She said, “On the button,” burned their faces off with the tip of her Chesterfield, then got on with it.

“Vogel had a suite set up. Sonny and I tricked, and he tried to get me to play with these creepy sex gadgets he brought. I said, ‘Ixnay, ixnay, ixnay.’ He said he’ll give me an extra twenty if he can whip me soft for fun. I said, ‘When hell freezes.’ Then he—”

I broke off the story. “Did he talk about stag films? Lezzie stuff?”

Sally snorted. “He talked about baseball and his peter. He called it the Big Schnitzel, and you know what? It wasn’t.”

Russ said, “Go on, Miss Stinson.”

“Well, we screw all afternoon, and I listen to the kid prattle about the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Big Schnitzel until I am blue in the face. Then I say, ‘Let’s get dinner and some fresh air,’ and we go down to the lobby.

“And there’s Liz, sitting all by herself. She tells me she needs money, and since I can tell sonny likes her, I set up a trick within a trick. We go back up to the suite, and I take a breather while they go at it in the bedroom. Liz skips out about twelve-thirty, whispers ‘Little Schnitzel’ to me, and I never saw her again until I saw her picture all over the papers.”

I looked at Russ. He mouthed the word, “Dulange”; I nodded, picturing Betty Short on the loose until she met Frenchman Joe on the morning of the twelfth. The missing Dahlia days were coming together.

Russ said, “And you and John Vogel went back to your assignation then?”

Sally tossed the Personnel photos on the floor. “Yes.”

“Did he talk to you about Liz Short?”

“He said she loved the Big Schnitzel.”

“Did he say that they’d made plans to meet again?”

“No.”

“Did he mention his father and Liz in any context at all?”

“No.”

“What did he say about Liz?”

Sally hugged herself. “He said she liked to play his kind of games. I said, ‘What kind of games?’ Sonny said, ‘Master and Slave’ and ‘Cop and Whore.’”

I said, “Finish it up. Please.”

Sally eyed the door. “Two days after Liz got in all the papers, Fritz Vogel came by my hotel and told me sonny said he’d tricked with her. He told me he’d got my name from some police file, and he questioned me about my... procurors. I mentioned Charlie I, and Vogel remembered him from when he worked this hotshot Vice detail. Then he got spooked, ’cause he remembered Charlie had this confessing problem. He called some partner of his on my phone and told him to yank some Vice file of Charlie’s, then he made another call and went crazy, ’cause whoever he talked to told him Charlie was already in custody, that he’d already confessed to Liz.

“He beat me up then. He asked me all these questions, like whether Liz would mention tricking with a cop’s son to Charlie. I told him Charlie and Liz were just acquaintances, that he’d just sent her out a few times, months and months ago, but he kept hitting me anyway, and he told me he’d kill me if I told the police about his son and the Dahlia.”

I got up to go; Russ sat still. “Miss Stinson, you said that when John Vogel told you his father’s name you got scared. Why?”

Sally whispered, “A story I heard.” Suddenly she looked beyond used-up — ancient.

“What sort of story?”

Sally’s whisper cracked. “How he got kicked off that hotshot Vice job.”

I remembered Bill Koenig’s rendition — that Fritzie caught syphilis from hookers when he worked Ad Vice, and was canned to take the mercury cure. “He caught a bad dose. Right?”

Sally dredged up a clear voice: “I heard he got the syph and went crazy. He thought a colored girl gave it to him, so he shook down this house in Watts and made all the girls do him before he took the cure. He made them rub his thing in their eyes, and two of the girls went blind.”

My legs were weaker than they were the night at the warehouse. Russ said, “Thank you, Sally.”

I said, “Let’s go get Johnny.”

We took my car downtown. Johnny had been working a daywatch foot beat with overtime on swing, so at 11:00 A.M. I knew there was a good chance of snagging him alone.

I drove slowly, looking for his familiar blue serge figure. Russ had a syringe and Pentothal ampule he’d kept from the Red Manley interrogations out on the dashboard; even he knew this was a muscle job. We were cruising the alley in back of the Jesus Saves Mission when I spotted him — solo rousting a pair of piss bums scrounging in a trash can.

I got out of the car and yelled, “Hey, Johnny!” Vogel Junior shook a finger at the winos and sidled over, thumbs in his Sam Browne belt.

He said, “What you doin’ in civvies, Bleichert?” and I hooked him to the gut. He bent over double, and I grabbed his head and banged it into the roof of the car. Johnny slumped, his lights dimming. I held him; Russ rolled up his left sleeve and jacked the silly syrup into the vein at the crook of his elbow.

Now he was out cold. I took the .38 from his holster, tossed it on the front seat and stuffed Johnny into the back. I got in with him; Russ took the wheel. We peeled rubber down the alley, the piss bums waving their short dogs at us.

The ride to the El Nido took half an hour. Johnny giggled in his dope slumber, almost coming awake a couple of times; Russ drove silently. When we got to the hotel, Russ checked the lobby, found it empty and gave me the high sign from the door. I slung Johnny over my shoulder and hauled him up to room 204 — the hardest minute’s work of my life.

The trip upstairs half roused him; his eyes fluttered as I dumped him into a chair and cuffed his left wrist to a heating pipe. Russ said, “The Pentothal’s good for another few hours. No way he can lie.” I soaked a bath towel in the sink and swathed Johnny’s face with it. He coughed, and I pulled the towel away.

Johnny giggled. I said, “Elizabeth Short,” and pointed to the glossies on the wall. Johnny, rubber-faced, slurred, “What about her?” I gave him another dose of the towel, a cobweb-clearing bracer. Johnny sputtered; I let the wad of cold terrycloth drop into his lap. “How about Liz Short? You remember her?”

Johnny laughed; Russ motioned for me to sit beside him on the bed rail. “There’s a method to this. Let me ask the questions. You just hold on to your temper.”

I nodded. Johnny had the two of us in focus now, but his eyes were pinned and his features were slack and goofy. Russ said, “What’s your name, son?”

Johnny said, “You know me, loot,” the slur on its way out.

“Tell me anyway.”

“Vogel, John Charles.”

“When were you born?”

“May 6, 1922.”

“What’s sixteen plus fifty-six?”

Johnny thought for a moment, said, “Seventy-two,” then fixed on me. “Why’d you hit me, Bleichert? I never did you no dirt.”

Fat Boy seemed genuinely befuddled. I kept it zipped; Russ said, “What’s your father’s name, son?”

“You know him, loot. Oh... Friedrich Vogel. Fritzie for short.”

“Short like in Liz Short?”

“Uh sure... like Liz, Betty, Beth, Dahlia... lots of monickers.”

“Think about this January, Johnny. Your dad wanted you to lose your cherry, right?”

“Uh... yeah.”

“He bought you a woman for two days, right?”

“Not a woman. Not a real one. A hooer. A hoooooer.” The long syllable turned into a laugh; Johnny tried to clap his hands. One hand hit his chest; the other jerked at the end of its cuffed tether. He said, “This ain’t right. I’ll tell Daddy.”

Russ answered him calmly: “It’s only for a little while. You had the prostitute at the Biltmore, right?”

“Right. Daddy got a rate because he knew the house dick.”

“And you met Liz Short at the Biltmore, too. Right?”

Spastic movements hit Johnny’s face — eye tics, lip twitches, veins popping on his forehead. He reminded me of a knocked-down fighter trying to haul himself up off the canvas. “Uh... that’s right.”

“Who introduced you?”

“What’s her name... The hooer.”

“And what did you and Liz do then, Johnny? Tell me about it.”

“We... divvied on ten scoots for three hours and played games. I gave her the Big Schnitz. We played ‘Horse and Rider,’ and I liked Liz, so I just whipped her soft. She was nicer than the blondie hooer. She kept her stockings on, ’cause she said she had this birthmark nobody could look at. She liked the Schnitz, and she let me kiss her without the Listerine like the blondie made me gargle.”

I thought about Betty’s thigh gouge and held my breath. Russ said, “Johnny, did you kill Liz?”

Fat Boy jerked in his chair. “No! No no no no no no! No!”

“Ssssh. Easy, son, easy. When did Liz leave you?”

“I didn’t slice her!”

“We believe you, son. Now when did Liz leave you?”

“Late. Late Saturday. Maybe twelve, maybe one.”

“You mean early Sunday morning?”

“Yeah.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“No.”

“Did she mention any men’s names? Boyfriends? Men she was going to see?”

“Uh... some flyboy she was married to.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you see her again?”

“No.”

“Did your father know Liz at all?”

“No.”

“Did he force the house detective to change the name on the registration book after Liz’s body was found?”

“Uh... yes.”

“Do you know who killed Liz Short?”

“No! No!”

Johnny was starting to sweat. I was too — anxious for facts to nail him with now that it looked like he and the Dahlia were just a one-night stand. I said, “You told your father about Liz when she made the papers, is that right?”

“Uh... yes.”

“And he told you about a guy named Charlie Issler? A guy who used to pimp Liz Short?”

“Yes.”

“And he told you Issler was in custody as a confessor?”

“Uh... yes.”

“Now you tell me what he said he was going to do about that, shitbird. You tell me damn good and slow.”

Fat Boy’s cut-rate heart rose to the challenge. “Daddy tried to get Ellis Jewboy to cut Issler loose, but he wouldn’t. Daddy knew this morgue attendant who owed him, and he got this DOA cooze and talked Jewboy into this idea. Daddy wanted Uncle Bill for it, but Jewboy said no, take you. Daddy said you’d do it ’cause without Blanchard to tell you what to do you were jelly. Daddy said you were a sob sister, weak sister, buck tooth...”

Johnny started laughing hysterically, shaking his head, spraying sweat, rattling his cuffed wrist like a zoo animal with a new plaything. Russ stepped in front of me. “I’ll make him sign a statement. You take a half hour or so to calm down. I’ll feed him coffee, then when you get back we’ll figure out what’s next.”

I walked out to the fire escape, sat down and dangled my legs over the edge. I watched cars head up Wilcox to Hollywood and got it all down, the cost to myself, the whole enchilada. Then I played license plate blackjack, southbound versus northbound, out-of-state cars as wild cards. Southbound was me, the house; northbound was Lee and Kay. Southbound stood on a chickenshit seventeen; northbound got an ace and a queen for pure blackjack. Dedicating the enchilada to the three of us, I went back to the room.

Johnny Vogel was signing Russ’s statement, flushed and sweaty, with a bad case of the shakes. I read the confession over his shoulder: it laid out the Biltmore, Betty, and Fritzie’s beating of Sally Stinson succinctly, to the tune of four misdemeanors and two felonies.

Russ said, “I want to sit on this for now, and I want to talk to a legal officer.”

I said, “No, padre,” and turned to Johnny.

“You’re under arrest for suborning prostitution, withholding evidence, obstruction of justice and accesory to first-degree assault and battery.”

Johnny blurted, “Daddy” and looked at Russ. Russ looked at me — and held out the statement. I put it in my pocket and cuffed Junior’s wrists behind his back while he sobbed quietly.

The padre sighed. “It’s the shithouse until you retire.”

“I know.”

“You’ll never get back to the Bureau.”

“I’ve already got a taste for shit, padre. I don’t think it’ll be so bad.”

I led Johnny down to my car and drove him the four blocks to Hollywood Station. Reporters and camera jockeys were lounging on the front steps; they went nuts when they saw the plainclothesman with the uniformed cop in bracelets. Flashbulbs popped, newshounds recognized me and shouted my name, I yelled back, “No comment.” Inside, bluesuits goggle-eyed the sight. I shoved Johnny to the front desk and whispered in his ear: “Tell your daddy I know about his extortion deal with the fed reports, and about the syph and the whorehouse in Watts. Tell him I’m going to the papers with it tomorrow.”

Johnny went back to his quiet sobbing. A uniformed lieutenant came over and blurted, “What on God’s earth is this here?”

A flashbulb went off in my eyes; there was Bevo Means with his notepad at the ready. I said, “I’m Officer Dwight Bleichert and this is Officer John Charles Vogel.” Handing the statement to the lieutenant, I winked. “Book him.”

I dawdled over a big steak lunch, then drove downtown to Central Station and my regular tour of duty. Heading into the locker room, I heard the intercom bark: “Officer Bleichert, go to the watch commander’s office immediately.”

I reversed directions and knocked on Lieutenant Jastrow’s door. He called out, “It’s open.” I walked in and saluted like an idealistic rookie. Jastrow stood up, ignored the salute and adjusted his horn-rims like he was seeing me for the first time.

“You’re on two weeks vacation leave as of now, Bleichert. When you return to duty, report to Chief Green. He’ll assign you to another division.”

Wanting to milk the moment, I asked, “Why?”

“Fritz Vogel just blew his brains out. That’s why.”

My farewell salute was twice as crisp as my first one; Jastrow ignored it again. I walked across the hall thinking of the two blind whores, wondering if they’d find out or care. The muster room was crammed with blues waiting for roll call — a last obstacle before the parking lot and home. I took it slow, standing GI straight, meeting the eyes that sought mine, making them look down. The hisses of “Traitor” and “Bolshevik” all came when my back was turned. I was almost out the door when I heard applause and turned to see Russ Millard and Thad Green clapping good-bye.

Twenty-four

Exiled to the shithouse and proud of it; two weeks to kill before I began serving my sentence at some putrid LAPD outpost. The Vogel arrest-suicide whitewashed as interdepartmental offenses and a father’s shame over the ignominy. I closed out my glory days the only way that seemed decent — I chased the gone man.

I started at the LA end of his vanishing act.

I got nothing from repeated readings of Lee’s arrest scrapbook; I questioned the lezzies at La Verne’s Hideaway, asking whether Mr. Fire showed up to abuse them a second time — and got no’s and jeers. The padre sneaked me a carbon of the complete Blanchard felony arrest file — it told me nothing. Kay, content in our monogamy, told me I was worse than a fool for what I was doing — and I knew it scared her.

Dredging up the Issler/Stinson/Vogel connection had convinced me of one thing — that I was a detective. Thinking like one as far as Lee was concerned was another matter, but I forced myself to do it. The ruthlessness I had always seen — and secretly admired — in him came across even deeper, making me care for him even more unequivocally. As did the facts I always came back to:

Lee disappeared when the Dahlia, Benzedrine and Bobby De Witt’s imminent parole converged on him;

He was last seen in Tijuana at a time when De Witt was heading there and the Short case was centered on the U.S. — Mexico border;

De Witt and his dope partner Felix Chasco were murdered then, and even though two Mexican nationals were nailed for the job, it could have been a railroad — the Rurales wiping an unwanted homicide off their books;

Conclusion: Lee Blanchard could have murdered De Witt and Chasco, his motive a desire to protect himself from revenge attempts and Kay from lounge lizard Bobby’s possible abuse. Conclusion within that conclusion: I didn’t care.

My next step was to study the transcript of De Witt’s trial. At the Hall of Records, more facts sunk in:

Lee named the informants who gave him the dope on De Witt as the Boulevard-Citizens “brains,” then said that they left town to avoid reprisals from Lizard’s friends. My follow-up call to R&I was unsettling — the snitches had no records at all. De Witt asserted a police frame because of his prior dope arrests, and the prosecution based its case on the marked money from the robbery found at De Witt’s house and the fact that he had no alibi for the time of the heist. Of the four-man gang, two were killed at the scene of the crime, De Witt was captured and the fourth man remained at large. De Witt claimed not to know who he was — even though stooling might have gotten him a sentence reduction.

Conclusion: maybe it was an LAPD frame, maybe Lee was in on it, maybe he initiated it to curry favor with Benny Siegel, whose money was clouted by the real heisters, and who Lee was terrified of for good reason — he had stiffed the Bug Man on his fight contract. Lee then met Kay at De Witt’s trial, fell in love with her in his chaste-guilty way and learned to hate Bobby for real. Conclusion within that conclusion: Kay couldn’t have known. De Witt was scum who got what he deserved.

And the final conclusion: I had to hear the man confirm or deny himself.

Four days into my “vacation,” I took off for Mexico. In Tijuana, I passed out pesos and American dimes and showed snapshots of Lee, holding quarters back to barter for “información importante.” I acquired an entourage, no leads and the certainty that I would be trampled if I kept showing coin. From then on, I stuck to the traditional gringo cop-Mex cop one-dollar handout confidential exchange.

The TJ cops were black-shirted vultures who spoke only broken English — but they understood the international language very well. I stopped a score of individual “patrolmen” on the street, flashed my shield and pictures, pressed dollar bills into their hands and asked questions in the best English-Spanish I could muster. The singles quickly snapped up, I got headshakes, bilingual bullshit broadsides and a strange series of tales that rang true.

One had “el blanco explosivo” weeping at a stag film smoker held at the Chicago Club in late January; another featured a big blond guy beating the shit out of three jack rollers, then buying off the cops with double-saws peeled from a large roll. The capper was Lee donating 200 scoots to a leper ministry priest he met in a bar, buying drinks for the house, then driving to Ensenada. That bit of dope earned a five spot and a demand for an explanation. The cop said, “The priest my brother. He ordain himself. Vaya con Dios. Keep your money in your pocket.”

I took the coast road eighty miles south to Ensenada, wondering where Lee got that kind of money to throw around. The drive was pleasant — scrub-lined bluffs giving way to the ocean on my right, hills and valleys covered with dense foliage to the left of me. Car traffic was scarce, with a steady trickle of pedestrians walking north: whole families lugging suitcases, looking scared and happy at the same time, like they didn’t know what their dash across the border would bring them, but it had to be better than sucking Mexican dirt and tourist chump change.

Approaching Ensenada at twilight, the trickle became a migration march. A single line of people hugged the northbound roadside, belongings wrapped in blankets and slung over their shoulders. Every fifth or sixth marcher carried a torch or a lantern, and all the small children were strapped papoose-style onto their mothers’ backs. Coming over the last hill outside the city limits, I saw Ensenada, a smear of neon below me, torchlights punctuating the darkness until the overall fluorescence swallowed them.

I drove down into it, quickly sizing up the burg as a sea breeze version of TJ catering to a higher class of turista. The gringos were well behaved, there were no child beggars on the streets and no barkers in front of the profusion of juice joints. The wetback line originated out in the scrubland, and only cut through Ensenada to reach the coast road — and to pay tribute to the Rurales for letting them through.

It was the most blatant shakedown I had ever seen. Rurales in brownshirts, jodhpurs and jackboots were walking from peasant to peasant, taking money and attaching tags to their shoulders with staple guns; plainsclothes cops sold parcels of beef jerky and dried fruit, putting the coins they received into changemakers strapped next to their sidearms. Other Rurales were stationed one man to a block to check the tags; when I turned off the main drag onto an obvious red light street, I glimpsed two brownshirts rendering a man senseless with the butts of their weapons: sawed-off pump shotguns.

I decided that it would be wise to check in with the law before going out to question the Ensenada citizenry. Also, Lee had been spotted talking to a group of Rurales up near the border shortly after leaving LA, and it might be possible to shake the locals for a line on him.

I followed a caravan of ’30s-vintage prowl cars down the red light block and across to the street paralleling the beach — and there was the station. It was a converted church: barred windows, the word POLICÍA painted in black over religious scenes carved into the white adobe facade. A searchlight was stationed on the lawn; when I got out of the car, badge out, American grin on, it was shined right at me.

I walked into it, eyes shielded, face smarting from the heat blast. A man cackled, “Yanqui copper, J. Edgar, Texas Rangers.” His hand was out as I passed him. I pressed a dollar bill into it and entered the station.

The interior was even more churchlike: velvet wall hangings depicting Jesus and his adventures decorated the entrance hall; the benches filled with lounging brownshirts looked like pews. The front desk was a big block of dark wood, Jesus on the cross carved into it — most likely a retired altar. The fat Rurale standing sentry there licked his lips when he saw me coming — he reminded me of a child molester who would never retire.

I had my obligatory onesky out, but held back. “Los Angeles Police to see the chief.”

The brownshirt rubbed his thumbs and forefingers together, then pointed to my badge holder. I handed it over along with the dollar; he led me down a Jesus-frescoed hallway to a door marked CAPITÁN. I stood there while he went in and talked in rapid-fire Spanish; when he exited, I got a heel click and a belated salute.

“Officer Bleichert, come in please.”

The non-accented words surprised me; I walked in to answer them. A tall Mexican man in a gray suit was standing there with his hand out — for a shake, not a dollar bill.

We shook. The man sat down behind a big desk and tapped a plate reading CAPITÁN VASQUEZ. “How can I help you, Officer?”

I grabbed my badge holder off the desk and put a picture of Lee down in its place. “That man is a Los Angeles police officer. He’s been missing since late January, and when he was last seen he was heading here.”

Vasquez examined the snapshot. The corners of his mouth twitched; he immediately tried to cover up the response by turning if into a negative head shake. “No, I haven’t seen this man. I will put out a bulletin to my officers and have them inquire in the American community here.”

I answered the lie. “He’s a hard man to miss, Captain. Blond, six feet, built like a brick shithouse.”

“Ensenada attracts rough trade, Officer. That is why the police contingent here is so well armed and vigilant. will you be staying awhile?”

“At least overnight. Maybe your men missed him, and I can get some leads.”

Vasquez smiled. “I doubt that. Are you alone?”

“I have two partners waiting for me in Tijuana.”

“And what division are you assigned to?”

I lied big. “Metropolitan.”

“You are very young for such prestigious duty.”

I picked up the photo. “Nepotism, Captain. My dad’s a deputy chief and my brother’s with the consulate in Mexico City. Good night.”

“And good luck, Bleichert.”

I rented a room at a hotel within walking distance of the nightclub/red light strip. For two dollars I got a ground-floor flop with an ocean view, a bed with a pancake-thin mattress, a sink and a key to the community john outside. I dumped my grip on the dresser, and as a precaution on the way out, yanked two hairs from my head and spit-glued them across the door-doorjamb juncture. If the fascisti prowled the pad, I would know.

I walked to the heart of the neon smear.

The streets were filled with men in uniform: brownshirts, U.S. marines and sailors. There were no Mex nationals to be seen, and everyone was quite orderly — even the knots of jarheads weaving drunk. I decided that it was the walking Rurale arsenal that kept things pacified. Most of the brown-shirts were scrawny bantamweights, but they were packing firepower grande: sawed-offs, tommmys, 45 automatics, brass knucks dangling from their cartridge belts.

Fluorescent beacons pulsated at me: Flame Klub, Arturo’s Oven, Club Boxeo, Falcon’s Lair, Chico’s Klub Imperial. “Boxeo” meant “boxing” in Spanish — so I made that dump my first stop.

Expecting darkness, I walked into a garishly lit room crowded with sailors. Mexican girls danced half naked on top of a long bar, dollar bills tucked into their G-strings. Canned marimba music and catcalls made the joint a deafening pocket of noise; I stood on my tiptoes looking for someone with the air of proprietor. At the back I saw an alcove papered with fight publicity stills. It drew me like a magnet, and I threaded my way past a new shift of nudies slinking to the bar to get to it.

And there I was, in great light heavyweight company, sandwiched between Gus Lesnevich and Billy Conn; And there was Lee, right next to Joe Louis, who he could have fought if he’d dived for Benny Siegel.

Bleichert and Blanchard. Two white hopes gone wrong.

I stared at the pictures for a long time, until the raucousness around me dissipated and I wasn’t in some upholstered sewer, I was back in ’40 and ’41, winning fights and rutting with giveaway girls who looked like Betty Short. And Lee was scoring knockouts and living with Kay — and, strangely, we were a family again.

“First Blanchard, now you. Who’s next? Willie Pep?”

I was back in the sewer immediately, blurting, “When? When did you see him?”

Whirling around, I saw a hulking old man. His face was cracked leather and broken bones — a punching bag — but his voice was nothing like a stumblebum’s: “A couple of months ago. The heavy rains in February. We musta talked fights for ten hours straight.”

“Where is he now?”

“I ain’t seen him since that one time, and maybe he don’t want to see you. I tried to talk about that fight you guys had, but Big Lee won’t have any. Says ‘We ain’t partners no more’ and starts tellin’ me the featherweights are the best division pound for pound. I tell him, nix — it’s the middles. Zale, Graziano, La Motta, Cerdan, who you kiddin’?”

“Is he still in town?”

“I don’t think so. I own this place, and he ain’t been back here. You lookin’ to settle a grudge? A rematch maybe?”

“I’m looking to get him out of a shitload of trouble he’s in.”

The old pug measured my words, then said, “I’m a sucker for dancemasters like you, so I’ll give you the only piece of skinny I’ve got. I heard Blanchard caused a ruckus over at the Club Satan, had to bribe his way out big with Captain Vasquez. You walk over five blocks to the beach, there’s the Satan. You talk to Ernie the cook. He saw it. You tell him I said to be kosher with you, and take a deep breath when you walk in, ’cause there ain’t nothin’ like that place where you’re comin’ from.”

The Club Satan was a slate-roofed adobe hut sporting an ingenious neon sign: a little red devil poking the air with a trident-headed hard-on. It had its very own brownshirt doorman, a little Mex who scrutinized incoming patrons while fondling the trigger housing of a tripod BAR. His epaulet flaps were stuffed with yankee singles; I added one to the collection as I walked in, bracing myself.

From the sewer to the shitstorm.

The bar was a urinal trough. Marines and sailors masturbated into it while they gash dived the nudie girls squatting on top. Blow jobs were being dispensed underneath tables facing the front of the room and a large bandstand. A guy in a Satan costume was dicking a fat woman on a mattress. A burro with red velvet devil horns pinned to his ears stood by, eating hay out of a bowl on the floor. To the right of the stage, a tuxedo-clad gringo was crooning into a microphone: “I’ve got a rich girl, her name’s Roseanne, she uses a tortilla for a diaphragm! Hey! Hey! I’ve got a girl, her name is Sue, she’s a one-way ticket to the big fungoo! Hey! Hey! I’ve got a girl her name’s Corrine, she knows how to make my banana cream! Hey! Hey!..”

The “music” was drowned out by chants from the tables — “Donkey! Donkey!” I stood there getting sideswiped by revelers, then garlicky breath smothered me. “Joo want the bar, handsome? Breakfast of champions, one dollar. Joo want me? Roun’ the world, two dollar.”

I got up the guts to look at her. She was old, fat, her lips crusted with chancre sores. I pulled bills from my pocket and shoved them at her, not caring what denomination they were. The whore genuflected before her nightclub Jesus; I shouted, “Ernie. I have to see him now. The guy at Club Boxeo sent me over.”

Mamacita exclaimed, “Vamanos!” and ran interference for me, pushing through a line of jarheads waiting for dinner seats at the bar. She led me to a curtained passageway beside the stage and down it to the kitchen. A spicy aroma perked my tastebuds — until I saw the rear end of a dog carcass hanging out of a stewpot. The woman spoke in Spanish to the chef — a strange-looking guy who came off as a Mex-Chink halfbreed. He nodded along, then walked over.

I had the snapshot of Lee out. “I heard this man gave you some trouble a while back.”

The guy gave the photo a cursory eyeball. “Who wants to know?”

I flashed my badge, giving the breed a glimpse of hardware. He said, “He your friend?”

“My best friend.”

The breed tucked his hands under his apron; I knew one of them was holding a knife. “Your friend drink fourteen shots of my best Mescal, house record. That I like. He make lots of toasts to dead women. That I don’t mind. But he try to fuck with my donkey show, and that I don’t take.”

“What happened?”

“Four of my guys he take, fifth he don’t. Rurales take him home to sleep it off.”

“That’s it?”

The breed pulled out a stiletto, popped the button and scratched his neck with the dull side of the blade. “Finito.”

I walked out the backdoor into an alley, scared for Lee. Two men in shiny suits were lounging by a streetlight; when they saw me they picked up the tempo of their foot shuffling and studied the ground like dirt was suddenly fascinating. I took off running; gravel scraping behind me said the two were in hot pursuit.

The alley ended at a connecting road to the red light block, with another, barely navigable dirt fork angling off in the direction of the beach. I took it at a full sprint, my shoulders brushing chicken wire fencing, penned-up dogs trying to get at me from the opposite sides. Their barks destroyed the rest of the street noise; I had no idea if the two were still on my tail. I saw the ocean-front boulevard looming in front of me, got my bearings, figured the hotel to be a block to the right and slowed to a walk.

I was half a block off — in my favor.

The dump was about a hundred yards away. Catching my breath, I strolled there, Mr. Square American slumming. The courtyard was empty; I reached for my room key. Then light from the second floor fluttered across the door — now minus my spit hair warning trap.

I drew my .38 and kicked the door in. A white man sitting in the chair by the bed already had his hands up and a peace offering on his lips: “Whoa, boy. I’m a friend. I’m not heeled, and if you don’t believe me then I’ll stand a frisk right now.”

I pointed my gun at the wall. The man got up and placed his palms on it, hands over head, legs spread. I patted him down, 38 at his spine, finding a billfold, keys and a greasy comb. Digging the muzzle in, I examined the billfold. It was stuffed with American cash; there was a California private investigator’s license in a laminated holder. It gave the man’s name as Milton Dolphine, his business address as 986 Copa De Oro in San Diego.

I tossed the billfold on the bed and eased the pressure on my gun; Dolphine squirmed. “That money’s jackshit compared to what Blanchard was holding. You go partners with me and it’s easy street.”

I kicked his legs out from under him. Dolphine hit the floor and sucked dust off the carpet. “You tell me all of it, and you watch what you say about my partner, or it’s a B&E roust and the Ensenada jail.”

Dolphine pushed himself up onto his knees. He gasped, “Bleichert, how the fuck did you figure I knew to come here? It occur to you that maybe I was nearby when you did your gringo cop routine with Vasquez?”

I sized the man up. He was past forty, fat and balding, but probably tough — like an ex-athlete whose hardness reverted to smarts when his body went. I said, “Somebody else is tailing me. Who is it?”

Dolphine spat cobwebs. “The Rurales. Vasquez has got a vested interest in you not finding out about Blanchard.”

“Do they know I’m staying here?”

“No. I told Cap I’d start the tail. His other boys must have picked you up. You lose them?”

I nodded and flicked Dolphine’s necktie with my gun. “How come you’re so cooperative?”

Dolphine put a light hand on the muzzle and eased it away from him. “I got my own vested interest, and I am damn good at playing both ends against the middle. I also talk a sight better sitting down. You think that’s possible?”

I grabbed the chair and placed it in front of him. Dolphine got to his feet, brushed off his suit and plopped himself into it. I reholstered my piece. “Slow and from the beginning.”

Dolphine breathed on his nails and buffed them on his shirt. I took the only other chair in the flop and sat down facing the slats so that I’d have something to grab. “Talk, goddamnit.”

Dolphine obliged. “About a month ago, this Mexican woman walked into my office in Dago. Chubby, wearing ten tons of makeup, but dressed to the nines. She offered me five hundred to locate Blanchard, and she told me she thought he was somewhere down around TJ or Ensenada. She said he was an LA cop, some kind of lamster. Knowing the LA cops love that green stuff, I started thinking money pronto.

“I asked my TJ snitches about him, showed around this newspaper picture the woman gave me. I heard that Blanchard was in TJ around late January, getting in fights, boozing, spending lots of dough. Then a pal on the Border Patrol tells me he’s hiding out in Ensenada, paying protection to the Rurales — who are actually letting him booze and brawl in their town — something Vasquez just about never tolerates.

“Okay, so I came down here and started tailing Blanchard, who’s playing the rich gringo to the hilt. I see him beat up these two spics who insult this señorita, with Rurale troopers standing by doing nothing. That means the protection tip is straight dope, and I start thinking money, money, money.”

Dolphine traced a dollar sign in the air; I grabbed the chair slats so hard that I could feel the wood start to give. “Here’s where it gets interesting. This one pissed-off Rurale who’s not on the Blanchard payroll tells me that he heard Blanchard hired a couple of Rurale plainclothesmen to kill two enemies of his in Tijuana in late January. I drive back to TJ, pay out some bribe money to the TJ cops and learn that two guys named Robert De Witt and Felix Chasco were bumped off in TJ on January twenty-third. De Witt’s name sounded familiar, so I called a friend working San Diego PD. He checked around and called me back. Now get this, if you didn’t already know. Blanchard sent De Witt up to Big Q in ’39, and De Witt vowed to get even. I figure that De Witt got early parole, and Blanchard had him snuffed to protect his own ass. I called my partner in Dago, and left a message with him for the Mexican woman. Blanchard is in Ensenada, protected by the Rurales, who probably snuffed De Witt and Chasco for him.”

I let go of the slats, my hands numb. “What was the woman’s name?”

Dolphine shrugged. “She called herself Delores Garcia, but it was obviously a phony. After I heard about the De Witt-Chasco angle, I pegged her as one of Chasco’s bimbos. He was supposed to be a gigolo with plenty of rich Mex gash on the line, and I figured the dame wanted revenge for the snuff. I figured she already knew somehow that Blanchard was responsible for the killings, and she just needed me to finger him.”

I said, “You know the Black Dahlia thing up in LA?”

“The Pope a guinea?”

“Lee was working on the case right before he came down here, and in late January there was a Tijuana angle on it. Did you hear of him asking questions about the Dahlia?”

Dolphine said, “Nada. You want the rest of it?”

“Rapidamente.”

“Okay. I went back to Dago, and my partner told me that the Mex dame got the message I left. I took off for Reno and a little vacation, and I blew the money she paid me at the crap table. I started thinking of Blanchard and all that money he had, wondering what the Mex dame had in mind for him. It really got to be a bug up my ass, and I went back to Dago, worked some missing persons jobs and came back to Ensenada about two weeks later. And you know whatt? There was no fucking Blanchard.

“Only a fool would’ve asked Vasquez or the troopers about him, so I hung around town picking up skinny. I saw this punk wearing Blanchard’s old letterman’s jacket, and this other punk with that Legion Stadium sweatshirt of his. I get word that two guys got hanged in Juarez for the De Witt-Chasco job, and I think, Rurale railroad all the way. I stay in town sucking up to Vasquez, snitching hopheads to him to stay on his good side. Finally I piece the Blanchard thing together. So if he was your buddy, get ready.”

At “was,” my hands broke off the chair slat I was grabbing. Dolphine said, “Whoa, boy.”

I gasped, “Finish it.”

The PI spoke slowly and calmly, like he was addressing a hand grenade. “He’s dead. Chopped up with an axe. Some punks found him. They broke into the house he was staying in, and one of them blabbed to the troopers, so they wouldn’t get tagged for it. Vasquez bought them off with pesos and some of Blanchard’s belongings, and the Rurales buried the body outside town. I heard rumors that none of the money was found, and I stuck around because I figured Blanchard was rogue and sooner or later some American cop would come looking for him. When you showed up at the station with that horseshit about working Metropolitan, I knew it was you.”

I tried to say no, but my lips wouldn’t move; Dolphine speedballed the rest of his pitch: “Maybe the Rurales did it, maybe it was the woman or friends of hers. Maybe one of them got the money and maybe they didn’t, and we can. You knew Blanchard, you could get a grip on who—”

I leaped up and roundhoused Dolphine with the chair slat; he caught the blow on the neck, hit the floor and sucked carpet again. I aimed my gun at the back of his head; the shitbird private eye whimpered, then double-speeded a mercy plea: “Look, I didn’t know it was so personal with you. I didn’t kill him, and I’ll back off if you want to get whoever did it. Please, Bleichert, goddamn it.”

I whimpered myself. “How do I know it’s true?”

“There’s a sand pit by the beach. The Rurales dump stiffs there. A kid told me he saw a bunch of troopers burying a big white man right around the time that Blanchard got it. Goddamn you, it’s true!” I eased down the .38’s hammer. “Then show me.”

The burial ground was ten miles south of Ensenada, just off the coast road on a bluff overlooking the ocean. A big, burning cross marked the spot. Dolphine pulled up next to it and killed the engine. “It’s not what you think. The locals keep the damn thing lit up because they don’t know who’s buried there, and lots of them have got missing loved ones. It’s a ritual with them. They burn the crosses, and the Rurales tolerate it, like it’s some kind of panacea to keep the great unwashed gun-shy. Speaking of which, you want to put that thing away?”

My service revolver was pointed at Dolphine’s midsection; I wondered how long I’d been holding the bead. “No. Have you got tools?”

Dolphine swallowed. “Gardening stuff. Listen—”

“No. You take me to the spot the kid told you about, and we dig.”

Dolphine got out of the car, walked around and popped open the trunk. I followed, watching him remove a large earth spade. Flame glow illuminated the PI’s old Dodge coupe; I noticed a pile of fence pickets and rags next to the spare tire. Tucking the .38 into my waistband, I fashioned two torches out of them, wrapping the rags around the ends of the posts, then igniting them in the cross. Handing one to Dolphine, I said, “Walk ahead of me.”

We strode into the sand pit, outlaws holding fireballs on a stick. The softness made the going slow; torchlight let me pick out grave offerings — little bouquets and religious statues placed atop dunes here and there. Dolphine kept muttering how gringos got dumped on the far side; I felt bones cracking beneath my feet. We reached an especially high drift, and Dolphine waved his torch at a tattered American flag spread out on the sand. “Here. The punk said by el bannero.”

I kicked the flag away; a swarm of insects buzzed up. Dolphine screeched, “Cocksuckers,” and swatted them with his torch.

A putrid smell rose from a big crater at our feet. “Dig,” I said.

Dolphine went at it; I thought of ghosts — Betty Short and Laurie Blanchard — waiting for the shovel to hit bones. The first time it did I recited a psalm the old man had force-fed me; the second time, it was the “Our Fathers” that Danny Boylan used to chant before our sparring sessions. When Dolphine said, “Sailor. I can see his jumper,” I didn’t know if I wanted Lee alive and in grief or dead and nowhere — so I pushed Dolphine aside and shoveled myself.

My first blow sheared off the sailor’s skull, my second tore into the front of his tunic, pulling the torso free from the rest of the skeleton. The legs were in crumbled pieces; I shoveled past them into plain sand glinting with mica. Then it was maggot nests and entrails and a blood-mattted crinoline dress and sand and odd bones and nothing — and then it was sunburned pink skin and blond eyebrows covered with stitch scars that looked familiar. Then Lee was smiling like the Dahlia, with worms creeping out of his mouth and the holes where his eyes used to be.

I dropped the shovel and ran. Dolphine shouted, “The money!” behind me; I tore for the burning cross thinking that I put those scars on Lee, I did it to him. Reaching the car, I got in, gunned it in reverse, plowed the crucifix into the sand, then gnashed through the gears one-two-three going forward. I heard, “My car! The money!” as I fishtailed onto the coast road northbound, reaching for the siren switch, slamming the dashboard when it hit me that civilian vehicles didn’t have them.

I made it to Ensenada, highballing at double the speed limit. I ditched the Dodge on the street by the hotel, then ran for my car — slowing when I saw three men approaching me in a flanking movement, their hands inside their jackets.

My Chevy ten yards away; the middle man coming into focus as Captain Vasquez, the other two fanning out to close me in from the sides. The only shelter a phone booth near the first door on the left U of the courtyard. Bucky Bleichert about to be DOA in a Mexican sand pit, his best friend along for the ride. I decided to let Vasquez get right up next to me and blow his brains out point-blank. Then a white woman walked out the left-hand door, and I saw my ticket home.

I ran over and grabbed her by the throat. She started to scream. I stifled the sound by moving my left hand to her mouth. The woman flailed with her arms, then clenched herself rigid. I pulled my .38 and pointed it at her head.

The Rurales advanced cautiously, hand cannons pressed to their sides. I shoved the woman into the phone booth, whispering, “Scream and you’re dead. Scream and you’re dead.” Inside, I pinned her to the wall with my knees and removed my hand; the screams she put out were silent. I aimed my gun at her mouth to keep them that way, grabbed the receiver, fed the slot a nickel and dialed “O.” Vasquez was standing in front of the booth now, livid, reeking of cheap American cologne. The operator came on the line with “Que?” I blurted, “Habla inglés?”

“Yes, sir.”

I held the receiver chin to shoulder and fumbled all the coins in my pocket into the slot; I kept my .38 glued to the woman’s face. When a shitload of pesos were swallowed up, I said, “Ferderal Bureau of Investigation, San Diego field office. It’s an emergency.”

The operator muttered, “Yes, sir.” I heard the call going through. The woman’s teeth chattered against my gun barrel. Vasquez tried bribery: “Blanchard was very rich, my friend. We could find his money. You could live very well here. You—”

“FBI, Special Agent Rice.”

I stared daggers at Vasquez. “This is Officer Dwight Bleichert, Los Angeles Police Department. I’m in Ensenada, and I screwed up with some Rurales. They’re getting ready to kill me for nothing, and I thought you could talk Captain Vasquez here out of it.”

“What the—”

“Sir, I’m a legit LA policemen and you had better do this fast.”

“You jerking my chain, son?”

“Goddamn it, you want proof? I worked Central Homicide with Russ Millard and Harry Sears. I worked DA’s Warrants, I worked—”

“Put the spic fellow on, son.”

I handed the receiver to Vasquez. He took it and leveled his automatic at me; I kept my .38 on the woman. Seconds ticked; the standoff held as the Rurale boss listened to the fed, getting paler and paler. Finally he dropped the phone and lowered his piece. “Go home, puta. Get out of my city and get out of my country.”

I holstered my gun and squeezed out of the booth; the woman shrieked. Vasquez stood back and waved his men away. I got in my car and peeled out of Ensenada on fear overdrive. It was only when I was back in America that I started obeying speed laws — and that was when it got bad with Lee.

Dawn was pushing up over the Hollywood Hills when I knocked on Kay’s door. I stood on the porch shivering, storm clouds and streaks of sunlight looming as strange things I didn’t want to see. I heard “Dwight?” inside, followed by the sound of bolts being unlatched. Then the other remaining partner in the Blanchard/Bleichert/Lake triad was there, saying, “And all that.”

It was an epitaph I didn’t want to hear.

I walked inside, stunned at how strange and pretty the living room was. Kay said, “Lee’s dead?”

I sat down in his favorite chair for the first time. “The Rurales or some Mexican woman or her friends killed him. Oh, babe, I—”

Using Lee’s endearment jarred me. I looked at Kay, standing by the door, backlighted by the weird sunstreaks. “He hired the Rurales to kill De Witt, but that doesn’t mean shit. We’ve got to get Russ Millard and some decent Mexican cops on it...”

I stopped, noticing the phone on the coffee table. I started dialing the padre’s home number. Kay’s hand halted me. “No. I want to talk to you first.”

I moved from the chair to the couch; Kay sat beside me. She said, “You’ll hurt Lee if you go crazy with this.”

That was when I knew she’d been expecting it; that was when I knew she knew more than I did. “You can’t hurt something dead.”

“Oh, yes you can, babe.”

“Don’t call me that! That’s his!”

Kay moved closer and touched my cheek. “You can hurt him and you can hurt us.”

I pulled away from the caress. “You tell me why, babe.”

Kay cinched the belt on her robe and fixed me with a cold look. “I didn’t meet Lee at Bobby’s trial,” she said. “I met him before. We became friends, and I lied about where I was staying so Lee wouldn’t know about Bobby. Then he found out on his own, and I told him how bad it was, and he told me about a business opportunity he had coming up. He wouldn’t tell me the details, and then Bobby was arrested for bank robbery and everything was chaos.

“Lee planned the robbery and got three men to help him. He’d bought his way out of his contract with Ben Siegel, and it cost him every cent he’d made as a boxer. Two of the men were killed during the robbery, one escaped to Canada, and Lee was the fourth. Lee framed Bobby because he hated him for what he did to me. Bobby didn’t know we were seeing each other, and we made it look like we met at the trial. Bobby knew it was a frame, but he didn’t suspect Lee, just the LAPD in general.

“Lee wanted to give me a home, and he did. He was very cautious with his part of the robbery money, and he always talked up his boxing savings and his gambling so the brass wouldn’t think he was living above his means. He hurt his career by living with a woman, even though we weren’t together that way. It was like a happy fairy tale until last fall, right after you and Lee became partners.”

I moved toward Kay, awed by Lee as the most audacious rogue cop in history. “I knew he had it in him.”

Kay drew away from me. “Let me finish before you get sentimental. When Lee heard about Bobby getting an early parole date, he went to Ben Siegel to try to get him killed. He was afraid of Bobby talking about me, upsetting our fairy tale with all the ugly things he knew about yours truly. Siegel wouldn’t do it, and I told Lee it didn’t matter, that there were three of us now and the truth couldn’t hurt us. Then, right before New Year’s, the third man from the robbery showed up. He knew that Bobby De Witt was getting out on parole, and he made a blackmail demand: Lee was to pay him ten thousand dollars, or he would tell Bobby that Lee masterminded the robbery and framed him.

“The man said Lee’s deadline was Bobby’s release date. Lee put him off, then went to Ben Siegel to try to borrow the money. Siegel wouldn’t do it, and Lee begged him to have the man killed. He wouldn’t do that either. Lee learned that the man hung out with some Negroes who sold marijuana, and he—”

I saw it coming, huge and black like the headlines it got me, Kay’s words the new fine print: “That man’s name was Baxter Fitch. Siegel wouldn’t help Lee, so he got you. The men were armed, so I guess you were legally justified, and I guess you were damn lucky that no one looked into it. It’s the one thing I can’t forgive him for, the one thing I hate myself for tolerating. Still feeling sentimental, triggerman?”

I couldn’t answer; Kay did it for me. “I didn’t think so. I’ll finish up, and you tell me if you still want revenge.

“The Short thing happened then, and Lee latched on to it for his little sister and who knows what else. He was terrified that Fitch had already talked to Bobby, that Bobby knew about the frame. He wanted to kill him or have him killed, and I begged and pleaded with him to just let it be, no one would believe Bobby, so just don’t hurt anybody else. If it wasn’t for that fucking dead girl I might have convinced him. But the case went down to Mexico, and so did Bobby and Lee and you. I knew that the fairy tale was over. And it is.”

Limp all over, I started to stand up; Kay grabbed my belt with both hands and brought me back down. “No! You don’t pull the patented Bucky Bleichert retreat this time! Bobby took pictures of me with animals, and Lee stopped it. He pimped me to his friends and hit me with a razor strap, and Lee stopped it. He wanted to love me, not fuck me, and he wanted us to be together, and if you weren’t so intimidated by him you would have known it. We can’t drag his name down. We have to give it all up and forgive him and get on with just us and—”

I retreated then, before Kay destroyed the rest of the triad.

Triggerman.

Stooge.

Bumfuck detective too blind to clear the case he was a homicide accessory to.

The weak point in a fairy tale triangle.

Best friend to a cop-bank robber, now the keeper of his secrets.

“Give it all up.”

I stuck to my apartment for the next week, killing off the remainder of my “vacation.” I hit the heavy bag and skipped rope and listened to music; I sat on the back steps and took finger sights at blue jays perching on my landlady’s clothesline. I convicted Lee of four homicides connected to the Boulevard-Citizens bank job and granted him a pardon based on homicide number five — himself. I thought of Betty Short and Kay until they blurred together; I reconstructed the partnership as a mutual seduction and figured out that I lusted for the Dahlia because I had her number, that I loved Kay because she had mine.

And I examined the past six months. It was all there:

The money Lee had been spending in Mexico was probably a separate stash of robbery swag.

On New Year’s Eve I heard him weeping; Baxter Fitch had made his blackmail demand a few days before.

That fall, Lee had sought out Benny Siegel — in private — every time we went to the fights at the Olympic; he was trying to talk him into killing Bobby De Witt.

Right before the shoot-out, Lee had spoken on the phone to a snitch — allegedly about Junior Nash. The “snitch” had fingered Fitch and the Negros, and Lee came back to the car looking spooked. Ten minutes later four men were dead.

On the night I met Madeleine Sprague, Kay shouted at Lee: “After all that might happen” — a portentous line, probably her predicting disaster with Bobby De Witt. During our time working the Dahlia case, she had been jittery, morose, concerned for Lee’s well-being, yet weirdly accepting of his lunatic behavior. I thought she was upset over Lee’s obsession with Betty Short’s murder; she was really running toward and from the fairy tale’s finale.

It was all there.

“Give it all up.”

When my refrigerator was empty, I took the patented Bucky Bleichert retreat down to the market to stock up. Walking in, I saw a box boy reading the local section of the morning Herald. Johnny Vogel’s picture was at the bottom of the page; I looked over the kid’s shoulder and saw that he’d been dismissed from the LAPD on a graft whitewash. A column over, Ellis Loew’s name caught my eye — Bevo Means was quoting him that “The Elizabeth Short investigation is no longer my raison d’etre — I have more pertinent fish to fry.” I forgot all about food, and drove to West Hollywood.

It was recess. Kay was in the middle of the schoolyard, supervising kids flopping around in a sandbox. I watched her awhile from the car, then walked over.

The kids noticed me first. I flashed my teeth at them until they started laughing. Kay turned around then. I said, “It’s the patented Bucky Bleichert advance.”

Kay said, “Dwight”; the kids looked at us like they knew it was a big moment. Kay caught on a second later. “Did you come here to tell me something?”

I laughed; the kids chortled at another shot of my choppers. “Yeah. I decided to give it all up. Will you marry me?”

Kay, expressionless, said, “And we’ll bury the rest of it? The f-ing dead girl too?”

“Yes. Her too.”

Kay stepped into my arms. “Then yes.”

We embraced. The children called out, “Miss Lake’s got a boyfriend, Miss Lake’s got a boyfriend!”

We were married three days later, May 2, 1947. It was a rush job, the vows given by the LAPD Protestant chaplain, the service held in the backyard of Lee Blanchard’s house. Kay wore a pink dress to satirize her lack of virginity; I wore my blue dress uniform. Russ Millard was best man, and Harry Sears came along as a guest. He started out with a stutter, and for the first time I saw that it was precisely his fourth drink that quashed it. I got the old man out of the rest home on a pass, and he didn’t know who the hell I was, but seemed to have a good time anyway — swigging from Harry’s flask, goosing Kay, hopping around to the music from the radio. There was a table laid out with sandwiches and punch, hard and soft. The six of us ate and drank, and total strangers walking down to the Strip heard the music and laughter and crashed the party. By dusk the yard was filled with people I didn’t know, and Harry made a run to the Hollywood Ranch Market for more food and booze. I unloaded my service revolver and let the unknown civilians play with it, and Kay danced polkas with the chaplain. When darkness hit, I didn’t want it to end, so I borrowed strings of Christmas lights from the neighbors and strung them over the backdoor and the clothesline and Lee’s favorite Yucca tree. We danced and drank and ate under a fake constellation, the stars red and blue and yellow. Around 2:00 A.M., the clubs on the Strip let out, revelers from the Irocadero and Mocambo made the scene, and Errol Flynn hung around for a while, his tux coat doffed for my jacket, replete with badge and pistol medals. If it weren’t for the thunderstorm that struck, it might have gone on forever — and I wanted it to. But the crowd broke up amidst frantic kisses and hugs, and Russ drove the old man back to the rest bin. Kay Lake Bleichert and I retired to the bedroom to make love, and I left the radio on to help distract me from Betty Short. It wasn’t necessary — she never crossed my mind.