Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 (12 page)

“I don’t know why people even bother asking that question, Harry—an honest man and a liar will give you the same answer.”

“What about this, Nate, as a show of trust?” He nodded toward coroner’s room four. “I’m going to share one of those three ‘surprises’ with you.”

“Why?”

He raised a lecturing finger. “Because if you tell anyone, if it gets in the
Examiner
, I’ll know I
can’t
trust you . . . and I’ll still have two surprises left.” Yes, sir, the Hat was one crafty son of a bitch.

Grinning in spite of myself, I said, “Okay, Harry—surprise me.”

He glanced down the hall—both ways. Then, very quietly, he said, “That girl . . . whoever she is . . . she ingested fecal matter before she died.”

I winced. “What the hell?”

“To put it more coloquially—in words your friend Mr. Fowley could understand—she ate shit, Heller. Someone made her
eat shit before killing her. . . . That’s the kind of man we’re dealing with.”

“Holy Christ.”

“Why, Nate—you’ve turned pale on me. Hardcase like you?”

“It’s just . . . some sick fucker needs to be cured.”

Nodding, the Hat said, “Cyanide pellets would do nicely. Now—do you have anything you can give me, from the
Examiner
’s side?”

“Yeah, actually, I do,” I said, and I told him about Richardson using the SoundPhoto to wire the prints to Washington.

“If she’s on file with the FBI,” I told him, “Richardson will be calling you or your boss Donahoe with the girl’s name, in the morning . . . and using that to get leverage.”

“At this very moment, we have dozens of men going through hundreds of missing persons files,” the Hat said thoughtfully, “and they’re going to work straight through the night . . . maybe we’ll get lucky and come up with her name before Richardson does.”

“Maybe. And I hope you do. Because a case where a newspaperman like Jim Richardson controls the evidence is bound to become a travesty of justice.”

I failed to add that in a town with a police force as corrupt and incompetent as L.A.’s, a travesty of justice would be no big change of pace.

The Hat studied me—perhaps reading my mind—and then he said, “Come along, would you? Give your statement to Brownie.”

I followed him back to where Fowley and Brown were winding things up. Then, there in the hot, humid hallway of the basement morgue, I gave Fat Ass Brown my statement, as well.

The Hat thanked us, and dismissed us.

“What did he want?” Fowley asked me, as we made our way out, past forgotten bodies on wall-hugging gurneys.

“Credit,” I said.

7

In a perfect world I might have been able to confide in my wife. In this imperfect place I inhabited, I didn’t feel like discussing with my new bride the fact that I’d known the once-lovely victim of the “Werewolf Slayer,” much less share the news that the dead girl had (like my bride) been carrying a child of mine.

When in the early evening I returned to our honeymoon bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Peggy was napping on the double bed, in a black slip, legs bare, atop the floral spread, somehow having found a place to do so amid the array of boxes and sacks (Sak’s Fifth Avenue, Christian Dior, Van Cleef & Arpel’s) that were the spoils of her day of shopping.

Hanging my suitcoat in the bedroom closet, getting out of my tie, I gazed at the pretty young woman to whom I was so freshly married; she was in more or less the same position Elizabeth Short had been, in the vacant lot, except in one piece. I bent over and kissed her freckled nose—freckled under her makeup, anyway—and she smiled a little, groaned sexily, and turned over on her side.

Looking at her, I had a terrible pang—guilt, sorrow, shame, regret—a whole series of emotions all mixed together, emotions most people (including me) figured I was immune to. But I loved Peggy, loved her dearly and deeply, and I had today been
subjected to the sight of another woman—of whom I’d been at least a little fond, primarily because she reminded me so of Peg—butchered and dumped like two sides of beef in a vacant lot. Beneath the sentimental twinges, a slow rage was burning in my belly; I knew it would kindle, and finally ignite, and blot out those other emotions.

Even with everything I had at stake—my marriage, my business, my freedom—the thing I wanted most was to find the sick son of a bitch who had done this and drain him of just enough of his blood to drown him in.

Leaving the door cracked, so I could see her a little from the living room, I fixed myself a rum and Coke from the bungalow’s wet bar, and plopped onto the couch and sat there trembling. Watching Peg’s slumbering form, I wondered if I dared confide in my new A-1 partner, Fred Rubinski. After turning it over in my mind a few dozen times, I decided
no
. Fred and I were good friends, and business partners. But he was not one of the two or three people I considered my closest friends, my best friends.

Funny thing was, one of my best friends was in Hollywood this very minute—Barney Ross, the former lightweight (and welterweight) champ. We went way back—I’d grown up on the West Side of Chicago with him, and we’d worked together as kids as “pullers,” hustling goods outside Maxwell Street shops; I was even
Shabbes goy
to his Orthodox folks. Starting in the mid-twenties, Barney had run a speakeasy on the ground floor of a building he owned at Van Buren and Plymouth; when I left the cops, and was just starting out as an independent investigator, Barney traded me office (and living) space in exchange for keeping an after-hours eye on his building. He was that kind of friend.

We had even got drunk and joined the Marines together, one ill-advised evening in 1942, two overage idiots with patriotic hard-ons; and we had fought side by side, notably in a muddy shell hole on Guadalcanal where we had somehow managed to get dozens of Japs killed and not ourselves.

And, yes, we had both been wounded on that foul island, but my scars were mostly the kind that didn’t show, which is to say I was honorably discharged on a Section Eight, Mental Instability
Due to Combat Trauma. On the other hand, Barney had left the military with all his marbles, as well as a morphine habit that turned a good-natured, sweet-hearted guy into a lowlife junkie. By pulling strings with my friend Frank Nitti, I managed to dry up Barney’s street sources—in Chicago anyway—which ultimately sent the former champ, however reluctantly, into rehabilitation.

According to the
Examiner
and other local rags, Barney had just been released from the U.S. Public Health Service addiction hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, and was making his first post-rehab stop in Los Angeles as a part of a public-relations attempt to win back his wholesome reputation with the public. I had a hunch it was in part for the benefit of his ex-wife Cathy, who lived out here, a beautiful former showgirl who had walked out on him when the monkey on his back started meaning more to Barney than she did.

So my best friend in the world—one of my two best friends in the world, anyway—was staying at the Roosevelt Hotel, maybe ten minutes away, and I couldn’t talk to him about this. I couldn’t talk to him about anything, because he hadn’t spoken to me since March of 1943, when I pulled the plug on his Chicago connections.

I knew only one person I could confide in, and that was my partner back in Chicago, Lou Sapperstein. Maybe Lou and I weren’t as tight as Barney and I once had been, but I knew I could count on Lou—and, anyway, I simply had to clue him in on this. Using the endtable phone, keeping my voice low, I called Lou at home; he didn’t say much as he listened to my sad tale, and when I finally stopped talking, an endless, crackling long-distance silence was all I heard.

“You still there, Lou?” I asked, almost whispering, the sleeping Peg in view through the cracked door.

After another long staticky pause—a pregnant pause, if you will—Lou’s baritone, a sort of tone-deaf Crosby, purred, “Are you sure you want to go this direction?”

“I’ve already gone. What choice do I have, Lou? These damn coincidences make me look dirty as hell.”

“Time of death on the girl?”

“With a corpse drained of blood, that’s no easy thing to pinpoint. The coroner estimates within twelve hours of the body’s discovery.”

“You got an alibi for last night?”

“Just Peggy—we spent a quiet evening here at the hotel. Even had a room service supper . . . went to bed early. She starts that picture at Paramount tomorrow and is trying to get herself on an early schedule.”

“Well, a wife’s alibi is better than nothing.”

“Tell it to Bruno Hauptmann. Anyway, who’s to say I didn’t get up in the middle of the night, leave Peg sleeping, and go play mad doctor on that poor kid?”

Lou’s sigh was world-weary enough for both of us. “Even if the cops clear you, you know, your name and reputation will be dragged through the slime.”

“Hell, that’s the least of my worries—I already got a shady reputation, which in our business isn’t all bad.”

“Shady is one thing, Nate. But immoral? Evil? Not so good . . . even in our business.”

I sipped my rum and Coke. Shook my head. “I’m not arguing, Lou. You’ve just confirmed what I been thinking.”

“Which is?”

“Which is, I have to try to crack this thing, before somebody lays it on my doorstep.”

“That’s a lousy idea, Nate. . . . How can I help?”

“First of all, we never had this conversation. I don’t want you to face aiding and abetting after the fact.”

“Be quiet. How can I help?”

“First things first. Keep an eye on our esteemed Chicago press—this thing is going to get major play out here . . . I need to know how much space it gets back home.”

“That’s easily enough done.”

“Pretty soon the cops and reporters will have the girl identified. Maybe in Chicago, all that’ll rate is a few column inches, inside. But if Beth Short’s picture is splashed on the front page—like it will be out here in sunny Southern California—then she’s going to get recognized.”

“Was Elizabeth Short that distinctive looking?”

Gazing at the sleeping Peggy, I said, “Think of Deanna Durbin, Lou, but sexy—jet-black hair, pale pale skin, dark dark lipstick, lovely lovely smile, figure like Lana Turner.”

“Yeah,” Lou said dryly, “kid like that just mighta got noticed.”

I cautioned Lou to keep a close eye on the
Herald-American
, because the Hearst papers were the most likely to play it up big. I explained that a handful of people—at the Morrison Hotel, the St. Clair, Lindy’s, Henrici’s—could possibly link the Short woman and me.

“And eventually,” I told him, “even these dumb L.A. coppers will figure out Beth Short spent time in Chicago, and they’ll send somebody to start poking around.”

“Christ, Nate . . .”

“If that girl’s name and picture do start showing up in the Chicago papers, cut her mug out and show it around the Morrison, and see if she gets made.”

“I get you—just staying ahead of the game.”

“Just staying ahead of the game.” I had another sip of rum and Coke. “Now, in the meantime, Beth Short told me she was going to see a doctor in Gary, a gynecologist most likely . . . She said she had ‘female trouble.’ Lou, I want you to track that doctor down.”

“Should I use her name?”

“No! Beth may not have used her real name, anyway. Just give ’em her description—it would have been late October of last year. See, I been thinking, and it may be wishful thinking at that . . . but if she saw a doctor in Gary, ’cause she was
already
pregnant—”

Even over the wire, I could hear Lou snap his fingers. “Then she wasn’t pregnant by you!”

“That’s right. Maybe she was looking to get an abortion, thanks to one of these war heroes she had such a yen for—so you’ll need to be sure to check up on the less savory quacks in the Gary area.”

“No shortage of rabbit pullers in that neck of the woods . . . but, Nate, if you didn’t knock her up, why would she call you from the Biltmore, looking for abortion money?”

“Maybe she was just trying to shake me down. To her, I must’ve looked like a well-off mark—big-shot private eye, opening an L.A. branch. Maybe she wanted to buy some more fancy black threads, or maybe she had some other medical problem she was raising dough for.”

“Y’know, she might have had an ongoing ailment; maybe she was seeing that doc in Gary ’cause of a venereal disease.”

“Yeah? Then why didn’t I catch it?”

“Why didn’t you?”

“See, Lou, that’s just it—I don’t have any memory of actually having intercourse with the girl. Of course, that was when I was drinking heavily, and—”

“You get around, Nate, but I would assume you usually remember having sex.”

“Usually.”

“If the Short girl wasn’t really pregnant by you, that would give you less of a motive. Or anyway, we could play it that way.”

“Yeah, and it would also indicate I wasn’t necessarily the only person she was trying to shake down.”

“Right! Which means somebody else has a murder motive.”

“Maybe several somebody elses, Lou. Hansen and Richardson and the rest of these chowderheads, they all see this as a sex crime—me, I keep seeing a woman’s mouth slashed the way a gangster does an informer . . . or a blackmailer. And one of the few things we know for sure in this case is that Beth Short was capable of blackmail.”