“Did he mention an old running partner with a burned or scarred face? He’d be mid to late twenties by now.”
“No. Marty was always close-mouthed. I was his only pal at Q, and I was surprised when he said he had an old partner. Marty wasn’t really the partner type.”
Danny shifted gears. “When Goines sent you letters, where were they postmarked and what did they say?”
Bordoni sighed like he was bored; Danny thought of giving him a peek at his old pal’s eyeballs. “Spill, Leo.”
“They were from all over the country, and they were just jive—jazz stuff, wish you were here, the horses, baseball.”
“Did Marty mention other musicians he was playing with?”
Bordoni laughed. “No, and I think he was ashamed to. He was gigging all these Podunk clubs, and all he said was ‘I’m the best trombone they’ve ever seen,’ meaning Marty knew he wasn’t much but these cats he was gigging with were really from hunger.”
“Did he mention anybody at all, other than this old partner you were going to team up with?”
“Nix. Like I told you, it was a two-minute conversation.”
The Miller High Life sign atop the Taft Building blipped off, jarring Danny. “Leo, was Marty Goines a homosexual?”
“Marty! Are you crazy! He wouldn’t even pork nancy boys up at Q!”
“Anybody up there ever make advances to him?”
“Marty would have died before he let some brunser bust his cherry!”
Danny hit the light switch, hauled Bordoni up by his cuff chain and twisted his head so that it was level with a long slash of wall blood. “That’s your friend. That’s why you were never here and you never met me. That’s heat you don’t want, so you just stay frosty and think of this thing as a nightmare.”
Bordoni bobbed his head; Danny let him go and unlocked the cuffs. Bordoni gathered his stuff up off the floor, taking extra care with his tool case. At the door, he said, “This is personal with you, right?”
Buddy Jastrow long gone, four shots a night not enough, his textbooks and classes not real. Danny said, “It’s all I’ve got.”
* * *
Alone again, Danny stared out the window, watching movie marquees blink off, turning the Boulevard into just another long, dark street. He added “possible burglary partner” to “tall, gray-haired,” “middle-aged,” “homosexual,” and “heroin-wise”; he put off Bordoni’s protestations that Marty wasn’t fruit as sincere but wrong—and wondered how long he could stick inside the room without going crazy, without risking the landlord or someone from the front house dropping by.
Looking for house lights that might be Him looking back was childish; eye prowling for sinister shapes was a kid’s game—the kind of game he played by himself as a schoolboy. Danny yawned, sat down in the chair and tried to sleep.
He got something near sleep, an exhaustion shortcut where he wasn’t quite out, couldn’t quite form thoughts and saw pictures that he wasn’t making himself. Street signs, trucks, a saxophone man running scales on his instrument, flower patterns, a dog at the end of a stick. The dog made him twitch; he tried to open his eyes, felt them gummed and eased back to wherever he was going. Autopsy instruments hot from an autoclave, Janice Modine, a ’39 Olds rocking on its suspension, a look inside, Tim pumping Roxy Beausoleil, an ether-soaked rag up to her nose so she’d giggle and pretend it was nice.
Danny jerked out of it, eyes opening to light through a part in the curtains. He swallowed dry phlegm, caught a reprise of his last image, got up and went to the kitchen for a drink of sink water. He was on a big gulping handful when the phone rang.
A second ring, stop, a third ring. Danny picked it up. “Karen?”
The girl was almost breathless. “City radio. See the maintenance man, Griffith Park, the hiking trail up from the observatory parking lot. Two dead men, LAPD rolling. Sweetie, did you know this was going to happen?”
Danny said, “Just pretend it didn’t happen,” slammed the phone down, grabbed his evidence kit and walked out of the upholstered slaughterhouse. He forced himself not to run to his car, eyes circuiting for onlookers, seeing none. Griffith Park was a mile away. He stripped off his rubber gloves, felt his hand tingle and gunned it there.
* * *
Two LAPD black-and-whites beat him.
Danny parked beside them at the foot of the hiking trail, the last stretch of asphalt before the stretch of mountain that formed the park’s northern perimeter. No other cars were in the lot; he could see four bluesuits up ahead where the trail cut into woods, a longtime haven for winos and lovebirds without the price of a room.
Danny marked the time—6:14 A.M.—got his badge out and walked up. The cops wheeled around, hands to holsters, shakes and queasy looks. Danny pointed to his tin. “West Hollywood Sheriff’s. I’m working a dumped body case, and I heard what you got over the air at the station.”
Two cops nodded; two turned away, like a County detective was lower than dirt. Danny swallowed dry; West Hollywood Substation was a half hour away, but the dummies didn’t blink at the time glitch. They separated to give him a view; Danny got a mid-shot of hell.
Two dead men, nude, lying sideways on a little bed of dirt surrounded by low thornbushes. Rigor lock, coats of dust and leaf debris said they had been there at least twenty-four hours; the condition of the bodies said that they died at 2307 North Tamarind. Danny pulled a bush section back, knelt and zoomed his Man Camera in nightmare-close.
The men had been placed in a 69 position—head to groin, head to groin, genitals flopped toward each other’s mouths. Their hands had been placed on each other’s knees; the larger man was missing a right index finger. All four eyes were intact and wide open; the victims had been slashed like Marty Goines all over their backs—and their faces. Danny examined the pressed-together front sides; he could see blood and entrail residue.
He stood up. The patrolmen were smoking cigarettes, shuffling their feet, destroying the chance for a successful grid search. One by one they looked at him; the oldest of the four said, “Those guys like yours?”
Danny said, “Almost exactly,” thinking of the real camera in his evidence kit, snapshots for his file before the City bulls closed off their end of his case. “Who found them?”
The old-timer cop answered him. “Maintenance man saw a wino running down the hill screaming, so he went up and looked. He called us, came back up and got sick. We sent him home, and when the squad gets here they’ll send you home, too.”
The other cops laughed. Danny let it pass and jogged down the trail to get the camera. He was almost to his Chevy when a plainclothes car and Coroner’s wagon pulled into the lot and jammed up next to the black-and-whites.
A big, beef-faced man got out of the unmarked and looked right at him. Danny recognized him from newspaper pics: Detective Sergeant Gene Niles, squad whip at Hollywood Division, in up to his ears over Brenda Allen, no indictment, but a quashed lieutenancy and stalemated career—rumor having it that he took no cash, just trade goodies from Brenda’s girls. The man’s clothes said otherwise: smart navy blazer and razor-creased gray flannels, custom stuff no honest cop could afford.
Two Coroner’s men hauled out collapsible gurneys; Danny saw Niles smell cop on him and head over, looking more and more curious and pissed: strange meat on his turf, too young to be working the Homicide Bureau downtown.
He met him halfway, a new story brewing, plausible stuff to satisfy a savvy cop. Face to face, he said, “I’m with the Sheriff’s.”
Niles laughed. “You a little bit confused about your jurisdiction, Deputy?”
The “Deputy” was all scorn, like a synonym for “cancer.” Danny said, “I’m working a homicide just like the two you’ve got up the hill.”
Niles bored in with his eyes. “You sleep in those clothes, Deputy?”
Danny squeezed his hands into fists. “I was on a stakeout.”
“You ever hear of carrying a razor on all-nighters, Deputy?”
“You ever hear of professional courtesy, Niles?”
Sergeant Gene Niles looked at his watch. “A man who reads the papers. Let’s try this. How’d you get up here twenty-two minutes after we logged the squeal at the station?”
Danny knew brass balls was the only way to cover his lie. “I was down at the doughnut joint on Western, and there was a black-and-white with the radio on. How come it took you so long? You stop for a manicure?”
“A year ago I’d have reamed you for that.”
“A year ago you were going places. Do you want to hear about my homicide or do you want to sulk?”
Niles picked a piece of lint off his blazer. “The dispatcher said it looks like a queer job. I hate queer jobs, so if you’ve got another queer job, I don’t want to hear about it. Roll, Deputy. And get yourself some decent threads. Mickey Kike’s got a haberdashery, and I know he gives all his prat boys a discount.”
Danny headed back to his Chevy seeing red. He drove down the park road to Los Feliz and Vermont and a pay phone, called Doc Layman and told him two Marty Goines companion stiffs were en route, grab them for autopsy no matter what. A minute later Niles’ car and the Coroner’s wagon went by southbound, no lights or sirens, flunkies killing a fine winter morning. Danny gave them a five-minute lead, took shortcuts downtown and parked in the shade of a warehouse across the street from the City Morgue loading dock. Fourteen minutes passed before the caravan appeared; Niles made a big show of shepherding the sheet-covered gurneys to the ramp; Norton Layman came out to help. Danny heard him berating Niles for separating the bodies.
He settled into his car to wait for Layman’s findings; stretching out on the front seat, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, knowing Doc would be four hours or more on the examinations. Sleep wouldn’t come; a hot day started sizzling, warming up the car, making the upholstery sticky. Danny would begin to drop off, then start remembering his lies, what he could or couldn’t tell whom. He could brazen his lie to the patrolmen, acting sheepish over being at the doughnut stand at 6:00 A.M., implying he’d been with a woman; he had to coddle Karen Hiltscher into keeping his stint at 2307 Tamarind under wraps. He couldn’t let anyone see the contents of his evidence kit; he had to clue in LAPD to the letter that hipped him to Marty Goines’ pad, post-dating the occurrence, making it seem like nothing big, letting them discover the gore for themselves. Leo Bordoni was a wild card, but he was probably con-wise enough to stay quiet; he had to fabricate a story to account for his whereabouts yesterday—a phony summary report to Dietrich was his best bet. And the big fear and big questions: if LAPD canvassed Tamarind, would a local report the tan 1947 Chevrolet parked outside 2307 overnight? Should he take advantage of his private lead, rape the neighborhood for witnesses himself, then report the letter, hoping that the worst they could get him for was not calling the dope in? If LAPD decided to ease off on their two homicides—Niles as catching officer hating “queer jobs”—would they canvass at all? He had taken the call from Lexington State Hospital himself, via Karen Hiltscher’s switchboard. If it all got tricky, would she blab fast to save herself? Would LASD/LAPD rivalry reduce the mess to something that only he cared about?
Heat reflecting off the windshield and too many brain wires short-circuiting on angles lulled Danny to sleep. Cramps and glare woke him up sweaty and itchy; his foot hit the horn and black dreamlessness became sound waves bouncing off four bloody walls. He looked at his watch, saw 12:10 and at least four hours unconscious; the Doc might be done with his dead men. Danny got out of the car, stretched his cramps and walked across the street to the morgue.
Layman was standing near the ramp, eating lunch off an examination slab, a body sheet for a tablecloth. He saw Danny, swallowed a bite of sandwich and said, “You look bad.”
“That bad?”
“You look scared, too.”
Danny yawned; it made his gums ache. “I’ve seen the bodies, and I don’t think LAPD cares. That’s scary.”
Layman wiped his mouth with a sheet corner. “Here’s a few more scares for you, then. Times of death—twenty-six to thirty hours ago. Both men were anally raped—O+ secretor semen. The wounds on their backs were pure zoot stick, identical in size and fiber content to Martin Mitchell Goines. The missing-finger man died from a throat gash made by a sharp, serrated knife. No cause of death on the other man, but I’d be willing to bet barbiturate OD. On our missing-finger friend I found a vomit-coated, punctured capsule, right up under the tongue. I tested some powder in it and got a home compound—sodium secobarbital, one part, one part strychnine. The secobarbital would hit first, inducing unconsciousness, the strychnine would kill. I think missing finger got indigestion, puked up part of his Mickey Finn and fought to live—that that was when he lost his digit—fighting with the knife man. Once I test the blood on both men and pump their stomachs, I’ll know for sure. The missing finger man was bigger—a larger bloodstream, so the compound didn’t kill him like it did our other friend.”
Danny thought of 2307, vomit traces lost in the blood. “What about the stomach bites?”
Layman said, “Not human, but human. I found O+ saliva and human gastric juices on the wounds, and the bites were too frenzied and overlapping to make casts from. But—I got three individual tooth cuts—too large to ascribe to any known human dental abstract and too shredded at the bottom to identify on any single-tooth forensic index. I also took a glob of dental mortar paste out of one of the wounds. He wears dentures, Danny. Most likely on top of his own teeth. They might be steel, they might be some other synthetic material, they might be teeth fashioned from animal carcasses. And he’s rigged up a way to mutilate with them and swallow. They’re not human, and I know this doesn’t sound professional, but I don’t think this son of a bitch is either.”
Chapter Fourteen
Ellis Loew performed the ceremony in his office, Mal and Dudley Smith official witnesses. Buzz Meeks stood by the conference table, right hand raised; Loew recited the oath: “Do you, Turner Meeks, hereby swear to loyally and conscientiously perform the duties of Special Investigator, Grand Jury Division of the District Attorney’s Office for the City of Los Angeles, upholding the laws of this municipality, protecting the rights and property of its citizens, so help you God?”
Buzz Meeks said, “Sure.” Loew handed him an ID holder replete with license photostat and DA’s Bureau shield. Mal wondered how much Howard Hughes was paying the bastard, guessing at least three grand.
Dudley joined Meeks and Loew in a back-slapping circle; Mal credited an old rumor still holding: Meeks thought he was behind the shooting that got him his pension, Jack D. blowing it, then forgetting his grudge when the okie was no longer LAPD. Let him think it—anything to keep his new colleague as far away as two cops working the same job could be.
And Dudley. And maybe Loew now, too.
Mal watched the three share a toast, Glenlivet in crystal glasses. He took his notepad down to the far end of the table, Meeks and Dudley trading one-liners, Ellis shooting him a scowl that said, “Let’s work.” Loew’s half nod acknowledged that their bad blood was just temporary. Mal thought: he should owe me, now I owe him. He picked up his pen to doodle, his knuckles throbbed, he knew Loew was right.
* * *
After the thing with Celeste, he’d driven around directionless until his hand started swelling, the pain brutal, blunting all his frantic plans to make it up to his son. He hauled to Central Receiving, flashed his badge and got special treatment: an injection of something that sent him higher than ten kites, teeth fragments pulled out of his fingers, cleansing and suturing and bandaging. He called the house and talked to Stefan, rambling about why he did it, how Celeste had hurt him worse, how she wanted to separate the two of them forever. The boy had seemed shocked, dumbfounded, stuttering details about Celeste’s bloodied face—but he’d ended the conversation calling him “Dad” and saying, “I love you.”
And that little injection of hope made him think like a policeman. He called Ellis Loew, tol
d him what happened, that lawyers and a custody battle were coming, don’t let Celeste file charges and gain an advantage. Loew took the reins, driving to the house and shepherding Celeste to Hollywood Presbyterian, where her lawyer was waiting. The man took photographs of her bruised and bloody face; Loew convinced him not to let Celeste file criminal charges on a ranking DA’s Bureau investigator, threatening reprisals if he did, promising not to intercede in the custody case if he agreed. The attorney did agree; Celeste’s broken nose was set and two dental surgeons worked on her nearly destroyed gums and bridgework. Loew, enraged, called the pay phone where he was waiting and said, “You’re on your own with the kid. Never ask me for another favor.”
He drove back to the house then, finding Stefan asleep, breathing Celeste’s old country sedative—schnapps and hot milk. He kissed the boy’s cheek, moved a suitcase full of clothes and Lesnick’s files to a motel on Olympic and Normandie, made arrangements for a woman cop he knew to check on Stefan once a day, slept off the painkiller on a strange bed and woke up thinking of Franz Kempflerr.
He couldn’t stop thinking about him, and he couldn’t put together any rationalizations that said Celeste was a liar. He did put together a series of phone calls that got him a lawyer: Jake Kellerman, a pragmatist who said continuances were the smart money, postpone the custody trial until Captain Considine was a grand jury hero. Kellerman advised him to stay away from Celeste and Stefan, said he’d call him for a strategy meeting soon—and left him with a Demerol hangover, aching knuckles and the certainty he should take the day off and stay away from his boss.
He still couldn’t shake Kempflerr.
Going over Lesnick’s files was just a distraction. He was getting a case on Claire De Haven, every notation on her tweaked him; he knew direct questioning was out for now, that finding an operative should be his main priority. Still, putting together the woman’s past was enticing, and when he hit a piece of information he’d overlooked—Mondo Lopez bragging to the shrink about a dress he’d shoplifted for Claire’s thirty-third birthday in May of ’43, making her exactly his age—he took the woman and the Nazi down to the main public library for research.