Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 (15 page)

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Short. She did have such a scar.”

“Oh dear . . . oh dear . . .”

She was weeping.

“Mrs. Short, I know there’s nothing I can say except that I’m sorry, and I apologize for the deception.”

Suddenly Richardson was behind me—I hadn’t noticed him move from Fowley’s side: it was startling, like a jump cut in a movie.

Clamping his hand over the mouthpiece, Richardson leaned in and whispered harshly into my ear, machine-gunning the words, “Commiserate with the woman—cry along with her—tell her the
Examiner
feels for her, tell her we’ll pay for the funeral, we’ll bring her and her daughters out here, all expenses paid. . . .”

“You tell her.” I yanked the phone free from him. “Mrs. Short, once again, my sincere apologies—the city editor of the
Examiner
would like to speak with you.”

And I handed him the phone, got out of the chair, and gestured for him to sit.

He sat, not missing a beat as he smoothly spoke. “Mrs. Short, this is James Richardson of the Los Angeles
Examiner
—if you will stay on the line, we want to help you in your time of grief . . . please stay on the line. . . . Thank you.” Richardson covered the receiver. “Heller, you and Fowley get your asses down to San Diego, toot sweet.” To Fowley, who was already getting up, notepad in hand, Richardson said, “Leave your notes with a rewrite man—just take the address. . . . That a good enough lead for the first string, Bill?”

“Not bad,” Fowley said, and I followed him out of the editorial chamber as Richardson, in a voice that would have melted butter, soothed and consoled and manipulated Elizabeth Short’s mother.

As we walked through the bustling city room, Fowley said, “If Richardson can convince that dame to let him fly her out here, we can keep her away from the cops long enough to wring Christ knows how many leads out of her. The boss is something, isn’t he?”

“One of a kind,” I said.

Then I excused myself and went into the bathroom and puked up my breakfast.

The outskirts of Los Angeles blended into the bleakness of derrick-flung oil fields, which quickly gave way to vegetable farms and citrus groves. Soon Highway 101 slipped down to the ocean, whose shimmering blue beauty contrasted nicely with the brush-dotted hills of a barren coastline occasionally broken by farming and resort communities.

The morning was sunny yet cool, and the surf-level ride to San Diego—with Fowley behind the wheel of the blue ’47 Ford—was pleasant enough, considering the company.

“Some way to spend your honeymoon, huh, Heller?” Fowley said, hat pushed back, cigarette dangling, windows down, wind rushing by.

“Peg knew I was going to do a little work out here,” I said.

“Beautiful girl, you lucky bastard. Seems like a nice gal, too. Understanding, is she? About the screwy nature of what you do for a living, I mean?”

“She understands,” I said.

She’d even forgiven me, in the middle of the night, when I cuddled in next to her. And I’d forgiven her. We’d even made love again, passionately, desperately, bawling like babies when we climaxed, as might be expected from a pair of newlyweds trying to make up for the wife wanting to abort their child and a husband who’d threatened to kill her.

I’d seen Peggy off early this morning, with some flowers I’d bought at the hotel gift shop, wishing her well on day one of her first Hollywood shoot. No makeup on, turbaned, in a boyish cotton T-shirt and gray slacks, she looked goddamn gorgeous.

“Let’s not hurt each other anymore,” she suggested.

“It’s a deal.”

I gave her a big kiss and walked her to the studio-provided limo.

“So, tell me, Nate,” Fowley was saying, working his voice above the wind and the staticky sound of Frank Sinatra singing, “The Girl That I Marry”—great guy to be giving marital advice.

“Tell you what, Bill?”

“What does your partner Rubinski think about the A-1 Detective Agency falling into the biggest crime since Papa Hitler’s rubber broke?”

I grunted. “Fred thinks we better be in on the
solving
of this crime, if we want the right kind of publicity.”

“We’ll solve it. Hell, you don’t think the cops are gonna beat us to it?”

“No, not the way the
Examiner
is withholding evidence, and doling it out to the cops like a kid’s allowance.”

“Ah, you’re overstating.”

“In future I’ll strive for the subtlety expected of
Examiner
staffers. Anyway, Harry the Hat knows what he’s doing, at least.”

“Yeah, the Hat’s smart enough to know to look over our shoulders, you mean. But he’s the exception.” Fowley lighted up a fresh cigarette off the dashboard lighter. “Half the LAPD is in Mickey Cohen’s pocket, the other half’s in Jack Dragna’s. Besides which, these LAPD detectives are the biggest bunch of boobs this side of the Mississippi.”

“You may have heard, we have our fair share of bent cops in Chicago.”

“Ah, yes, but not idiot bent cops!” Fowley raised an authoritative finger. “There are more unsolved murders in Los Angeles per capita than any other major American city.”

“With guys like Finis Brown in the department, I’m not surprised.”

Fowley grinned over at me. “Ever hear of Thad Brown?”

“Isn’t he Chief of Detectives?”

“That’s right—Fat Ass is his brother.”

“No! Thad Brown’s supposed to be a good, honest cop!”

“That’s right, Nate. And his brother is a Mickey Cohen bag man. You figure it. Funny thing is, the uniformed officers in L.A. are pretty fair cops; it’s just the detectives that couldn’t find their ass with two hands.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, take your motorcycle cop for instance. Those cycle jockeys got a rigorous exam to take, tougher than hell. And the department encourages the uniformed boys to take university extension courses, and major in criminal science, really improve their efficiency in police work. That’s the rank-and-file . . . but to become a big-shot detective? There’s no definitive exam—you just get appointed.”

“Based on what?”

Fowley shrugged, both hands on the wheel. “Based on your ability to fit in with the Old Boy network of detectives, the ones that have ongoing deals with bailbondsmen and criminal attorneys. It’s the same dicks who are in Cohen’s pocket—him or Dragna.”

Cohen and Dragna again. Funny Fowley bringing them up. When I’d called my L.A. partner Fred Rubinski at home, last night—to give him the censored version of our agency’s involvement with the
Examiner
and the “Werewolf Slaying”—Fred had mentioned the same two notorious names.

“You may be on to something,” Fred had told me, “where the wound to that girl’s face is concerned. These cops and reporters aren’t from Chicago, like us—they don’t know how to read the signs.”

“Getting slashed ear-to-ear means you’re talking too much. How hard is that to read?”

“Well read this, Nate: that vacant lot where this girl was found is only a couple blocks from where Jack Dragna lives.”

“What? No shit?”

“None. He’s a well-known Leimert Park resident.”

Jack Dragna was the so-called “Capone of California.” Born Anthony Rozzotti, Dragna had been a typical Prohibition-era mob boss, operating bootlegging, gambling, and prostitution out of L.A.’s Italian ghetto; Nitti had done business with him in the early ’40s, when Willie Bioff and George Browne infiltrated the movie unions.

I gathered that Dragna—whom I’d never met—had resented the intrusion of Ben Siegel, a few years before, into the Los Angeles scene. East Coast mob bosses Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano had simply foisted Siegel upon Dragna, unapologetically muscling in on the California Godfather’s territory; and in recent months—after Ben began focusing his attention on the Flamingo hotel/casino in Las Vegas—Siegel’s L.A. rackets interests had been turned over to his former bodyguard, the diminutive, dapper, if somewhat goonish Mickey Cohen.

“Are Cohen and Dragna business partners,” I asked Fred, “or business rivals?”

“Yes,” Rubinski said. “Rumor has it Dragna is working against Mickey, but it’s all
sub rosa
stuff. You know Mickey a little, don’t you?”

“A little is right—I remember him from Chicago. And Ben Siegel reintroduced us a few months ago, on Tony Cornero’s gambling ship.”

“Ah, the late lamented
Lux
,” Fred said. “Well, you know Mick is a regular at Sherry’s. He’s an affable little guy, for a roughneck. He’d be good for you to get to know better.”

“I don’t mind Mickey Cohen frequenting your restaurant, Fred, but I’m not sure we want him for an A-1 client. We’re already trying to collect bad debts for Ben Siegel, and I’ve got enough p.r. problems over my so-called Capone/Nitti associations.”

“Cohen’s not that kind of gangster. He’s just a bookie.”

“Yeah, and hasn’t he been bumping off his rival bookies?”

“That’s none of my business, Nate. As long as they don’t go shooting up Sherry’s, what do I care?”

“What does it mean to you, Fred, a woman murdered, wearing the slashed mouth of an informer, being dumped on Dragna’s doorstep?”

“Could be Cohen warning Dragna—or maybe Dragna warning Cohen. Plays either way.”

“Maybe I do need to talk to Mickey Cohen.”

“Nate, I can make that happen.”

“Fred, I’ll let you know.”

Fowley and I had just passed Doheny Park, with its bougainvillea-terraced sea cliffs, when the reporter suddenly began sharing his insights on Elizabeth Short.

“We got the perfect Hollywood story here,” Fowley was saying, as Perry Como sang “Prisoner of Love” on the radio. “Small-town girl, beauty contest winner, comes looking for fame . . . gets it the hard way.”

“I’m not so sure being a movie star was her goal,” I said.

“Are you kidding? You heard her mom—this was a typical movie-struck kid, the time-honored see-her-name-in-lights, stars-in-her-eyes routine.”

“Stars and stripes in her eyes, you mean.”

“Huh?”

“Elizabeth Short had a thing for men in uniform,” I said. “You heard her mom say that, too.”

Fowley shrugged. “Yeah, well lots of would-be actresses were Victory Girls, during the war. You were in the service, right, Heller? Marines?”

“Yeah.”

“I was in the Coast Guard. Hey, it wasn’t the Marines, but we sank two German submarines on two convoys. And even that sorry Coast Guard uniform of mine—why, it was like a license to steal. I got more nookie than a Mormon on his honeymoon.”

“Is there a slide show that goes with this?”

“You know what I’m talking about; and these little Victory Girls—like Elizabeth Short—all they had to do was see a uniform, maybe a medal or two, or hear a sad tale about shippin’ out tomorrow, and they’d be on their backs, making the ‘V’ for victory—”

“That’s my point, Bill. I think this girl spent more time laying soldiers and sailors than trying to break into the movies. Everybody told her she was pretty enough to be a movie star—but maybe what she really wanted was a husband.”

“House, picket fence, passel of kiddies . . . maybe. We can run with that, if the Hollywood angle gets old.” He shook his head, grinned goofily. “Reminds me of this Mocambo deal.”

“Mocambo deal?”

“Yeah, the robbery at the swanky nightclub. It’s what we were playing up, before the Werewolf Slayer came dancing into our boring lives.”

“I didn’t follow that story. Fill me in.” What else did we have to do? We were gliding by the white stucco and red roofs of the Spanish Village–style city of San Clemente.

The heist had gone down a week ago, Monday, January 6. The notion of the glittering Mocambo—a prime haunt of almost every Hollywood star—being victim to an armed robbery summoned images of men with guns rushing in from (and back out into) the night, terrorizing beautiful women in furs and handsome men in tuxedos, lush surroundings echoing with harsh commands.

In reality, the job had taken place in the morning, at 10:30, a “daring daylight robbery” by three armed thieves wearing slouch felt hats and raincoats. The trio had come in the back way, rounded up four employees (three of them women) into a small office, and calmly emptied the safe of $15,000 in cash and another ten grand worth of jewelry. The cash represented the
nightclub’s weekend receipts, the jewels were part of a display for a Beverly Hills jewelry store. One of the thieves stood six foot four and his face was badly acne scarred, although that description fit none of the four men the cops had recently arrested.

“The ringleader is a guy named Bobby Savarino,” Fowley said. “Three other guys got nailed, too—apparently they’re part of a pretty active heist string—the cops are looking at them for some bank robberies, too, including one where a teller got shot.”

“How did these L.A. cops you’re so dismissive of manage to make the arrest?”

“Well, Savarino and his partner, I forget his name, were brought in on some unrelated petty theft charge, and got put into a show-up, where the Mocambo witnesses made ’em.”

“This is fascinating, Bill, don’t get me wrong—but why do Victory Girls screwing soldier boys remind you of this Mocambo heist?”

Fowley grinned, sitting up, leaning over the wheel. “It’s this guy, Savarino—he’s half genius, complete idiot. When he was arrested, looking for sympathy, he tells the judge he’s a war hero—not just any kind of war hero, but a Congressional Medal of Honor winner.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! He has documents with him, too—his ‘Separation-Qualification Record,’ which states he’s the most decorated enlisted man in the ETO.”

“Has Audie Murphy been informed?”

Fowley snorted a laugh. “Get this—the documents say our armed robber was not only presented with the Congressional Medal by Harry-Ass Truman himself, he also got the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, oh hell, I forget what all.”

“And he was a phony?”

“Fourteen karat. Yours truly made a simple phone call to the War Department in D.C. They never heard of the bum.”

I laughed. “Well, I hope he got some mileage out of it before you came along and spoiled his fun.”

“I should say he did. He’s got a curvy little redheaded wife,
who bought the story, and when I interviewed him, he started laughing and admitted he had his share of girl friends, too, who liked gettin’ close to a bona fide war hero . . . which kinda rubbed me the wrong way.”