California Girl (9 page)

Lobdell thought Nick was wasting their time. They weren’t going to find the answers in this cottage. What, he said, she made dinner for two guys, then went to Tustin with them so they could saw off her head? Lobdell told Nick it’s always sex with pretty girls like Janelle. The guy wasn’t getting any. Or the guy was getting too much, couldn’t keep her happy. Or the guy just ripped off a piece for himself and the rest of it
was to cover his tracks. Head and everything. If you can figure out the guys in her life, you figure out everything, said Lobdell. And don’t forget the Wolfman. You get a nutcase in the works, anything can happen. But it was Nick’s case. Nick was going to swim hard or sink fast. Nick wished Lucky would shut the fuck up.

Nick watched the guys writing out the tag numbers and dates, taping them next to everything they were going to print: wine and water glasses, silverware, tabletop, doorknobs, light switches, you name it.

The hard work was comparing the lifts to the cards at headquarters. Thank God for good criminalists. They’d start with guys who had a record of similar crimes. You could go blind and crazy doing that, trying to see if a whorl was a match or a bust, trying to see if you had a good identifying bifurcation or just a blood bridge. Could take hours. Days even, if you had enough suspects. Not that they’d have a lot of prints of guys who did stuff like this.

There was talk of this big computer up in Sacramento getting all the prints together and comparing prints automatically someday. Just plug in your lift and a second later your bad guy came out. Nick figured he’d believe that when he saw it. Next they’ll say they can ID a guy from one drop of blood.

BACK AT HEADQUARTERS
he called the National Crime Information Center in Washington, D.C., and was passed along to Special Agent Alan Creasen. Creasen took down the particulars surrounding the murder of Janelle Vonn and coded them for entry into the new NCIC computer.

“Beheaded with a pruning saw?”

“Correct.”

“Post or ante?”

“Post, we think. The autopsy is later today.”

“I’ll need that information. And the rape analysis, too. Detective Becker, this might take a while. We’re only a year old. The computer here is hot, slow, and temperamental.”

Nick called the Gleason/Marx Agency of Hollywood. They were a
modeling agency and had found work for Janelle three times. Once in a magazine car stereo ad. Once in a newspaper shampoo ad. And once for the
Playboy
cover that had gotten her uncrowned as Miss Tustin. Janelle’s net on the
Playboy
shot was six hundred because she was one of several models used on that month’s cover in a spread called “California Girls.” Nick remembered seeing it then and thinking Janelle was the most beautiful. But she ended up paying a high price for such a low wage when they took her crown away because of it.

NICK FOUND
Lenny Vonn that afternoon. Same house out in Modjeska Canyon. Brother Casey and father Karl were there, too, the three of them sitting in the garage drinking beers while Lenny cleaned out the carb on his yellow and orange Panhead. Casey had a Hessians vest on. His hair was almost to his shoulders and matted. Full beard, dark sunglasses even in the cool shade of the garage.

The three of them stopped talking and watched Nick come up the driveway.

“Vonns,” he said.

“Beat it, pissface,” said Lenny. “Private property.”

Casey shifted the cooler he was sitting on so Nick could only see the back of his filthy vest and filthy hair. Under the influence of God knows what, thought Nick. Probably holding. Probably carrying, too.

Nick now pointedly regretted that Lucky had a meeting with Kevin’s principal this afternoon. Lucky couldn’t very well miss it with the boy having been suspended. But Nick knew he should have waited to come here. He hadn’t figured on a hive of Vonns, either, and that was stupid of him.

“’Lo,” said Karl. “We already talked to Andy about it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nick. “I thought she was a sweet girl.”

“Get out of here, you fascist pig,” said Lenny. “I’m not kidding.”

Nick sighed and looked at Karl. “Talk some sense into your stupid son, will you? I’m in charge of Janelle’s case. If anybody’s going to get this guy, it’s going to be me.”

“Like that makes you a—”

“Shuttup, son,” said Karl. “Let him talk.”

“Just a few questions,” said Nick.

For the next half hour Nick held his pen in his right hand and his notebook in the left. Kept them both low so the meat of his right forearm never left the handle of his .45 ACP, snugged against his hip under the tweed sport coat. Hardly wrote a note. Hardly took his eyes off Casey’s back. Casey turned a second and just stared at him, eyes hidden behind the dark glasses.

Nick found out that Janelle had lived in the old Tustin house until she was fifteen, then moved in with “friends.” Nobody could come up with a full name for any one “friend,” but it might have been a family named Lawson or Langton off of Seventeenth Street. Karl was pretty sure Langton. Nick wondered if it was the Langtons from Tustin High School. Howard a coach and the daughters about Janelle’s age.

Nick found out that after he’d arrested Lenny and Casey, Janelle had started drinking more and taking more pills. When that
Tustin Times
story came out about the arrests, the names were all changed but some people still figured out who was who. Tustin was small enough for that. Janelle had to give statements and that was hard. She got really sad and withdrawn. When the charges against Lenny and Casey got knocked down to one assault for Casey and possession of illegal substances for Lenny, Janelle got almost suicidal. Then, David and the Drive-In Church congregation got her some doctors and gave her a place to live and some money and cleaned her up and got her back in school. Grades went up and one of the Chamber of Commerce guys saw her after class one day when he was picking up his daughter and thought Janelle should enter for Miss Tustin because she would be exceptionally beautiful if she was cleaned up and dressed right. And she’d come through a living hell with her mom and the rat poison and those brothers of hers. And if she was Miss Tustin, she’d get a good college scholarship and some cash and lots of opportunity, and the Vonns weren’t exactly rolling in it. He talked her into it and sponsored her.

Janelle liked being Miss Tustin. Thought it was kind of funny, but
harmless. Enjoyed people. Enjoyed the attention. No pills or booze. Made a run down to Baja with three truckloads of clothes from the Drive-In Church, gave them to people poorer than she ever was. Got her picture taken a lot. Tustin people thought she looked like the old SunBlesst girl, so they did up a poster of her with oranges, an old-fashioned kind of picture that made her look really pretty and made it seem like Tustin still had orange groves.

But all that only lasted two or three months. Then she got on the cover of
Playboy
. Wore almost as much clothing as she did for the SunBlesst girl poster, but the Tustin City Council demanded a new queen. She split Tustin for Laguna and started UCI same month. Didn’t talk to any of them after that. Didn’t want to see a Tustin face or hear a Tustin name. Felt like that part of her was dead. Said she wouldn’t go back to that town if you gave her a million dollars.

But she did, thought Nick. One last time.

It was mostly Karl and Lenny who talked. Casey just sat there on the cooler with his back to Nick. Getting more and more tense the more he heard, Nick could see. Shoulders moving in. Head hunching down a little. Hands in front of him. Moving now. Nick eased his hand under his coat and popped the holster snap. Casey caught the sound. Big dirty head turning Nick’s way.

“Just to keep things fun and fast, I’m going to need alibis from you, Lenny, and you, Casey. What were you two princes doing two nights ago? Tuesday.”

“We got drunk and watched TV,” said Lenny. “Right here. Right, bro?”

“Right.”

“What shows?” asked Nick.

“Fuckin’
Mod Squad,
” said Lenny.

“
It Takes a Thief,
” said Casey.

“Fuckin’
Twilight Zone,
” said Lenny.

“Then
Alfred Hitchcock
and we fell asleep,” said Casey. He didn’t turn but his hands were still moving in front of him. Like they were doing something small.

“Now get off my property,” said Lenny. “You got what you need.”

“You know Red and Ho?”

Casey turned. Blank stares. Like three empty glasses on a shelf.

“You should probably go, Nick,” said Karl. “They were here. I was, too. The kitchen faucet was dripping bad and I’m a fair plumber. The
Twilight Zone
was the one where the world ends and the guy’s in the library with all those books and he breaks his glasses.”

“That’s a good one,” said Nick.

“Yes, it is,” said Karl Vonn.

Nick heard something click and saw Casey’s shoulders move.

He took two steps forward, held one foot over the Hessians emblem on the back of Casey’s vest. Pushed hard. The cooler tipped up and Casey went over and rolled onto his back. He lay there for a moment, looking up the barrel of Nick’s gun. Sunglasses still on. Roller in one hand with the paper already in it, a bag of tobacco in the other. Yellow-brown flakes and strings spilled onto his stomach.

He aimed the roller at Nick, pulled a trigger.

“Someday,” he said.

“Never,” said Nick.

“Lunatic pig,” said Lenny.

THAT EVENING
Nick watched part of the autopsy. It was performed by Dr. Warren Gershon at the Meak Brothers Funeral Home in Santa Ana because the Coroner’s Department had no autopsy room. Certain county funeral homes allowed the autopsies to be performed on-site, no charge. But Nick knew they pressured the next of kin to have the embalming and funeral arrangements done there, too. Wives and husbands crazy with grief. Made some good money that way. Meak Brothers was located downwind of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant and Nick went from the smell of deep-fried thighs to formaldehyde as he walked in the embalming room door.

Nick watched the doctor and his assistants make the big Y incision with the scalpel. Cut the ribs with loppers and pull apart the cage. Tijuana
Brass playing quiet on a radio, a perky little number Nick would detest for the rest of his life. The crack of bones loud above the music.

Watched them cut out her organs. Cut out her heart. Examine and weigh and record.

Tutu and a guitar.

He noted Janelle Vonn’s head, partially wrapped in a white towel and placed faceup in a plastic cooler of dry ice. Skin blue-white. Vapor wafting over the top, then down to the floor like horror-movie fog.

They got scrapings from under three fingernails and the right thumbnail.

When Gershon was done with that Nick asked them to amputate the thumbs and three fingers that had had flesh and blood under the nails. Bag and label them separately. Freeze them for evidence.

“That’s very unusual,” said the doctor.

Nick left the room without excusing himself and drove to Angel’s Lawn cemetery to be near Clay. Shivered and heard the traffic blasting by on I-5 while he thought about his brother.

Then to Sharon’s place in Orange.

SHE LET
him in and they talked awhile in the near dark. His eyes burned as he felt the awful collapse of his will. His will to ignore. His will to put aside. His will to call it a job and leave it at the office. He just couldn’t make himself do it. Maybe homicide wasn’t his thing, he said.

It would pass, she said.

Nick said he’d be all right. Don’t worry. Said this is what homicide detail was about.

Sharon understood all of this. Her dad a cop and her ex a cop and she took Nick into her room and talked to him and held him and did the things that made him forget and feel better.

When he was finished, he left for Millie’s bar.

Two doubles and two bowls of pretzels later he was ready to go home.

“DAD’S HOME!
Dad’s home!”

“Be quiet, kids. QUIET!”

Nick could hear their voices on the other side of the door. Katy unlocked the deadbolt from inside and Nick fell into the deafening family he loved with such frustration.

“WILLIE SLUGGED ME IN THE STOMACH!” screamed Katherine.

“SHE BIT MY LEG!” Willie screamed back.

Steven racked his plastic Thompson submachine gun with spring-loaded noisemaker, then lowered the barrel into his family with a gleeful smile. Pure Clay, thought Nick.

Klat-a-klat-a-klat-a-klat-a-klat-a-klat!

Katy hugged Nick and smiled hugely. She was large and beautiful and Nick felt the crack in his heart get bigger. Sometimes pictured it going across his whole heart at once, breaking it in two. Did his own heart even count after what Janelle had gone through?

“My hero,” she said.

“MY HERO!”

“MY HERO!”

Klat-a-klat-a-klat-a-klat-a-klat!

“I love you guys,” Nick said quietly. He touched them one at a time. Katy on the arm and Willie on the head and Katherine on the cheek. Perfect precious parts. All in place.

Except for Steven, who saw his father’s hand coming toward him. Stevie let the old man eat some hot lead from the Thompson and ran yelling down the hall.

ANDY SAT IN
the
Journal
newsroom and looked out the darkened windows. Seven o’clock, Thursday, one day after seeing Janelle Vonn in the SunBlesst packinghouse. The lights of Costa Mesa twinkled in the cool breezy night outside.

The presses downstairs were silent for now. The AP and UPI teletype machines were quiet while the night editor dozed in his office. The city desk guys were off in the cafeteria shooting the bull. Associate publisher Jonas Dessinger was long gone, execs on the fifth floor long gone, too.

Andy took another big gulp of cool coffee, wondered why he wasn’t hungry. Hadn’t really slept since late Tuesday night. Heard about the Boom Boom Bungalow stabbing and didn’t put that story to bed until three in the morning. Guy was an elementary schoolteacher from Bakersfield. Eleven stab wounds. Looked horrible, the way the skin swelled up to close the slits. No way the
Journal
would print stuff like that. Perp still at large. Then Wednesday and Janelle. Twenty-six straight hours. And still counting, because Andy’s source at the County had a hot tip for him but she wouldn’t give it to him over the phone.

He never could sleep with stuff like this going down. Teresa could
sleep through an atomic explosion, so long as she got herself relaxed first.

He’d scooped the
Los Angeles Times
today. Waxed ’em. Just like he’d waxed them on the Boom Boom stabbing. Great to beat the big boys. The
Times
reporter who did the main Janelle Vonn story had Janelle still living in Texas when she was eight. Said Karl had worked as an electrician when he was a plumber. And they went to press too soon to even know about Terry Neemal.

Clobbered the
Santa Ana Register,
too. They got Neemal but none of his mental hospital stuff or his criminal jacket. Nick had helped him with that because Neemal’s juvenile record was sealed. Not the first time Nick had come to the rescue.

But the clincher was Andy’s sidebar photograph. He’d snapped it through the window of the Tustin PD cruiser when his brother ran back into the packinghouse for his tape recorder. Neemal even bared his teeth for the shot. Growled, gave Andy the full Wolfman act. The front-page picture showed this hairy, weird-looking guy glaring at his handcuffs, one sleeve pulled back to show a wrist like something out of a horror flick. Hands dirty. Eyes crazed.

“W
OLFMAN
” Q
UESTIONED IN
B
EAUTY
Q
UEEN
D
ECAPITATION
Story and photos by Andy Becker

The
New York Times
had even picked it up.

A million phone calls to the
Journal
to say Andy’s article and pictures were great.

A hearty handshake of congratulations from
Journal
publisher Jonathan Dessinger.

An indifferent handshake of congratulations from
Journal
associate publisher Jonas Dessinger.

A telegram from newly elected Republican congressman Roger Stoltz, all the way from Washington.

Andy’s guess was that Terry Neemal was a severe nutcase who had the bad luck to be found near a murder scene. Nick had corroborated
that idea in his blunt, almost wordless way. But it was hard to completely dismiss a guy who as an eight-year-old set his brother on fire, walked out, locked the door, and had a bowl of Wheaties.

AT EIGHT-THIRTY
Andy locked up his desk. Got his briefcase, stopped by the supply cabinet for some more typing paper, and headed out.

Put the top down and took the Corvair down Coast Highway to Laguna, ocean rippling off to his right and a fat moon low over Catalina Island.

A Wolfman moon, he thought. Good title for a paperback crime novel except Neemal probably didn’t do it. But Neemal was still a great newspaper story. And the picture was press club award material, no doubt.
Story and photos by Andy Becker.
Turned the police band radio loud. Hoping for news on a Boom Boom Bungalow suspect but nothing doing.

The Sandpiper Nightclub was peaceful when he walked in. Band drinking at the bar before the first set. Some good-looking hippie girls with them. Beads and headbands and little oval sunglasses to hide their pupils. Canned Heat on the jukebox, that cool little number with the harmonica.

Verna sat at the other end of the bar, ignored him as he came over and sat down. He had to kind of squeeze onto the stool because Verna was big. She was a clerk in the county payroll office, did the Sheriff’s, Fire, Ag Department, and Sanitation. Strawberry hair and an unhappy face that Andy could see the prettiness trying to get into. He always thought if Verna dropped fifty, threw on some makeup, and tried smiling, she’d be a stone fox. Though he wasn’t sure how “stone” got to be an adjective.

As it was, she had a crush on Andy that he’d never acknowledged. He let her buy his company with occasional payroll gossip. She pretended to be distrustful of phone conversations but Andy knew she was just lonely. She liked coming down to Laguna to see the cool people, rub up against the druggies and artists. A contact high. Andy enjoyed
her company. Liked the way she disguised her fear with humor and hostility. Liked her insatiable lust for gossip, innuendo, insinuation. And her honesty.

“Orange juice and vodka,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

“You’re such a huge liar.”

“I know.”

Andy ordered drinks. Glanced down the bar at the hippies. Clove cigarettes and sudden laughter. Glassed eyes. Slurred vowels. Wondered if he and Teresa sounded that way when they got loaded at night.

“Andy, what was it like, seeing her with her head cut off?”

“My heart sped up. It made my legs feel cold and weak.”

“Really?”

“It amazed me that someone would do that to someone else.”

Verna thought about this, said nothing as the drinks arrived and the barman went.

“Nick sees murder every day in homicide,” she said. “And of course, Sharon every night in Orange.”

“The less you talk about that the better, Verna.”

“I’ve never told anyone but you.”

“Keep it that way.”

Andy disliked what Nick was doing and that it was known. Before, when he’d watched Nick and Katy together they made him believe that you could get married and stay in love. You could see them pass love back and forth. Like an invisible box, a big one, the size of a TV maybe, they’d always be handing it off or gathering it in. One of the few married couples he’d seen do that. Now they were just one more reason to skip the service. Maybe these dipshit hippies were right. Free love. Sure, why not? For Nick and Katy it was pretty pricey stuff.

And if a clerk in payroll knew, who didn’t?

“Was it all bloody?”

“Less blood than you would think,” said Andy.

“I heard the Wolfman’s beard had blood in it. Like he’d eaten part of her.”

“That’s asinine, Verna.”

She shrugged.

“So, what’s up?”

Verna rocked her glass. Nothing but ice and a red plastic straw. Andy waved the bartender for two more. Verna stared across at the liquor bottles. Kept staring at them until the drinks arrived and the barkeep was out of earshot.

“This is interesting,” she said. “I do all those department payrolls, right? I get to see what everybody gets paid. Big deal. But I also cut special payment checks, too. You know, for subs or consultants, or emergencies. Stuff like that. The Sheriff’s Department has an informant fund, for their snitches and spies and all. That money comes from us as ‘Discretionary, Informational’—one monthly sum based on the year’s budget. That’s the last we see of it. The department breaks it down division by division. And the divisions break it down for each detail. Homicide. Burg-Theft. Like that. Well, today I’m logging in the numbers on my ledger, making sure the amounts match the checks. Basic bookkeeping. And up comes Captain del Gado with a cardboard box full of Girl Scout cookies he’d sold to some of the people in payroll. He sets it on my desk, finds the order forms, and gets out the Thin Mints and Savannahs. Hands them to me, picks up the box, and goes. But guess what?”

“You ordered Shortbread.”

“No. There’s a new sheet of paper on my desk. Came off the bottom of the box is all I can figure. Static electricity maybe. Anyhow, it’s a typewritten disbursement log for narcotics detail. For informants and drug buys, all that. Third from the bottom, in the amount of two hundred dollars?”

“Janelle Vonn.”

“Right.”

“On the Sheriff’s payroll. I like this.”

Verna looked at him and nodded. Took a big drink. “I thought you would.”

“Two hundred dollars,” mused Andy.

“So…”

“So you…”

“So, I’ve been hearing about Janelle Vonn all day, right? I mean the whole county building is buzzing with the beheaded beauty queen, so I discreetly visit my good friend—”

“Pam, in Assistant Sheriff Louden’s office.”

“Right, and she tells me, in absolute strictest confidence, that Janelle Vonn has been on the payroll for
four years
.”

Andy clicked straight back to his conversation that morning with Craig, owner of Blue Beat records. Thought of the merry stoners he’d seen hanging around in the back of the store—Timothy Leary and Ronnie Joe Fowler and that Indian fakir with eyes like wet obsidian. The sweet smell of hashish. And Craig saying while he hung the black light behind the counter so the Cream poster would light up blue,
The thing about Janelle is she liked getting high, but she got it under control. Then she got into acid and really dug it. For her it was pure experience. Chick had a brain.

But, thought Andy, to collect a paycheck she had to hang with the heads. Tell some tales. Deliver pay dirt, sooner or later. Try LSD and find out she really liked it.

Craig didn’t know if Janelle had had a regular job or not.

Nick didn’t, either, as of midnight Wednesday. He’d said all the pay stubs he’d found in her cottage were old.

Karl Vonn didn’t know. Neither did Janelle’s degenerate brothers.

Andy clicked back to another conversation. Five months ago, May. Ran into Janelle coming out of the White House bar with three locals he recognized. One was a big blond hippie guy who owned a local leather store. Cory somebody. One a hotshot movie director just back from making a surfing film in South Africa. And Jesse Black, the musician, scruffy and lost-looking as always.

Janelle had looked vibrant and self-conscious. Unforgettably lovely. A
nominee on Oscar night. None of that hippie stuff. A tailored black leather jacket with silver on it and red accents. Black satin pants, leather boots. Dark waves of hair faceted by streetlight. Red lips and dimples. Skin pale in the fog.

The three men acted bored while Janelle stepped away to talk to Andy.

Got my own pad here in town. I love Laguna. Everybody’s so friendly.

You look good, Janelle.

I’m so sorry what happened to Clay. Call me sometime. Here. I’ll write the number.

Now Andy wondered if Janelle could have afforded a place of her own in Laguna on a snitch’s salary. He made a note to ask Nick again if Janelle had had a job.

“What are you thinking about?” Verna asked.

He shrugged.

“Never
mind,
” she said.

What he was thinking about was the White House matchbook Janelle had written her phone number and address on. Tossed it in his change drawer. Never called because that night outside the White House his heart had fallen to the sidewalk and bounced to Mars and back. Even though he was twenty-six and she was just a year out of high school. Even though he was with Teresa and intended to honor that. Even though he understood that Janelle Vonn was more valuable untouched by him.

So he’d kept the matchbook. Looked at it a few times. Saw her cottage from the beach a couple of times. But never called.

“I’ll tell you what
I
was thinking about,” said Verna. “I was wondering why the cops were paying a fifteen-year-old girl to risk her life.”

“Me, too.”

THE BAND
started off with “Satisfaction,” ran off some Byrds and Dylan. Andy and Verna took a booth for themselves because there was hardly any crowd.

Teresa blew in around ten, glasses slightly askew and hair messed up by the breeze. Against the fashion of the moment, Teresa had recently cut her pretty auburn hair short. The night she did it she’d told Andy she wanted it businesslike but had left plenty of craven sex in it for him. Proven it, too.

One of her other reporters was with her, the guy who covered Newport Beach. Chas Birdwell. Andy disliked Chas’s smug face and the degree he’d earned at Stanford as a classmate of Teresa’s. She’d fired her former Newport Beach reporter, brought Chas down from San Francisco, and put him to work. Told jokes only they got. Knew all the same people. Stupid football games. Reunion every year, some rich kid’s summer mansion up in Tahoe. All that shit you didn’t get at Fullerton State, especially when you dropped out after two years.

As Teresa came across the empty dance floor toward him Andy had to smile. Something about her. Tall and slender. Cagey eyes in a pretty face, a wild laugh. Great brain. When she sat down and kissed his cheek he could smell the pot in her hair. And see the big black pupils in her gray eyes.

Chas offered Verna a dismissive little peace sign, Andy a nod, as he slid into the booth behind Teresa and sat down.

Five minutes later Jesse Black ambled in. Black had a guitar case in his hand, a worn peacoat. Then behind him, the leather store hippie in some cool black leather jacket like you’d figure. Cory. Black stayed by the stage. Cory headed straight for the bar. Cory must be six-five, thought Andy. Black stood with a forlorn expression, looking at the band.

“Uh-oh,” said Chas. “Guitar boy thinks it’s open mike night.”

“His name is Jesse Black and he’s a better songwriter than you are a reporter,” said Andy.

“Whoa,” said Chas. “I’ve been put in my place.”