Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 (20 page)

“Did she mention his name? This director?”

“No. She just smiled and laughed and said I’d be amazed, like
as if it was gonna turn out to be Alfred Hitchcock or John Ford or something . . . which is all the movie directors I ever heard of, by the way. So I decided to see her again, when it was time to go back to San Diego, and service my accounts.”

The jokes were just too easy to bother making, with this guy.

“The Frenches don’t have a phone,” he was saying, “so I wired Beth I’d be down. Then when I got there, she said she was wearing her welcome out with the Frenches, and could I drive her back to L.A.?”

“This was on January eighth?”

“I guess. It was last Wednesday, I mean a week ago Wednesday. Was that the eighth?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it was the eighth. I couldn’t take her back that night, ’cause I still had some accounts to see, in San Diego, the next morning. So we went out, again. Funny thing, for all her worldliness and fancy clothes, she was a cheap date. Preferred drive-in joints to posh restaurants.”

“Is that where you took her, that night, a drive-in?”

“To a little burger joint called Sheldon’s, not far from the Frenches. I did take her to the U.S. Grant Hotel—that’s about as fancy as we ever got—’cause they had a hot band playing that night, and I wanted to hear it.”

“But you wound up staying at the Pacific Beach Motor Camp, right?”

“Right. And we did some club-hopping . . . She drank a little more than usual; she wasn’t really a drinker, got a little sick, a little moody. When we finally landed at the motel, and she got undressed, I noticed something that, you know in retrospect, might be important.”

“Yeah?”

“She had red scratch marks on her arms. Forearms. I asked her about them, and she said she had a jealous boy friend. Which is a disturbing thing to hear a girl undressing in a motel room say.”

“She mention a name?”

“No—just that he was Italian, and ‘cute,’ but ‘not a very nice guy at all.’ ”

“Were these recent scratches?”

“I thought they were, ’cause they were bleeding a little; but she claimed the guy did it, her boy friend, before she came down to San Diego. That she just had a nervous habit of picking at the wounds.”

“And you spent the night?”

“Yeah—but we didn’t sleep together! She was feeling punk, actually. I made a fire—it was a cozy little cabin; it would have been perfect for romance, but it didn’t go that way.”

“What way did it go?”

“She was shivering, like she had the flu or something, coughing. She was sitting in a chair by the fire, bundled up in blankets. I offered her the bed, said I’d sleep in the chair, but she said no.”

“So you took the bed.”

“Yeah, and in the morning when I woke up, she was next to me in bed, or on top of it, pillow propped behind her, wide awake. I asked her if she’d slept at all and she shook her head no. I looked at my watch and saw I was late for my first appointment, and took a powder out of there—advising her to catch a few winks before I got back at noon, which was checkout time.”

“And that’s when you got on the road?”

“My morning calls ran late—we didn’t hit the road till twelve-thirty, quarter to one. I made a few calls on the way back to L.A. She had no objection. In fact, she was real friendly on that drive—wanted to know if she could write me letters, offered to make it sound like business so my wife wouldn’t get wise. Still wanted to get to know me—said I was sweet.”

“How many stops did you make?”

“Three business calls. Once for gas, again for food. She said she was planning to hook up with her married sister, who lived in Berkeley and was coming down to L.A., and that she intended to head home to Boston after that.”

“What about her screen test?”

“She said nothing about that. Or how these travel plans would fit in with seeing me, again. You got to understand, with Beth Short, you never knew what was a plan, and what was a daydream . . . and I’m not sure she knew the difference herself.”

“How was she dressed, that day?”

“Like a page out of a fashion magazine—black tailored cardigan jacket with a skirt that matched, an expensive-looking white blouse with a lacy collar, black suede pumps . . . light-color coat over her arm. And those black stockings with the seams up the calf?”

“You were kinda taken with her, weren’t you, Red?”

“Hard not to be—that hubba-hubba figure, those clear blue eyes . . . her perfume, man, she got inside you. . . .”

Even if he hadn’t gotten inside her.

“When you got to L.A.,” I asked, “where did you drop her off?”

“Well, first I took her to the Greyhound Bus Depot, on Seventh Street. Kind of a rough neighborhood, so I went in with her, helped her put her suitcases and hatbox in a locker, there.”

Fowley glanced up from his notepad. Those suitcases should still be there, tucked away in a bus-station locker—what a prize they would make to an industrious reporter.

“Then I took her to the Biltmore Hotel, over on Olive Street. . . .”

Where she had called me, from the lobby, with her unsettling news of a not-so-blessed event.

“. . . and I parked around the corner, on Fifth, walked her into the lobby. She said she was supposed to meet her sister there, and had me check at the desk for her, but the sister hadn’t checked in and didn’t seem to have a reservation, either. Anyway, it was getting late . . . almost six-thirty . . . so I just said goodbye and she smiled—sort of thanking me—and touched my arm, squeezed it a little. It was real . . . affectionate. Her eyes were so beautiful, bright and shining and so clear and blue, looking right at me, looking right through me . . . and I gave her a little kiss on the cheek and took off.”

“And that’s the last time you saw her?”

“Well, going out the door, I glanced back at her, just to wave one more time, and she was getting change at the cigar stand. I saw her heading to the telephone.”

Was I the only call she’d made?

I asked, “Can you think of anything else pertinent, Red?”

“No. I have to tell ya, fellas, I’m beat. Beat to hell. I feel like I could sleep forever.”

If he was lying, that would be arranged by the state of California.

I glanced at Fowley, who had closed his notepad. “Why don’t you go find Mr. Palmer and ask to use the phone?”

Fowley’s eyebrows rose. “Time to call Harry the Hat and Fat Ass? Share the wealth?”

“I think so.”

Fowley grinned like a greedy child, and damn near scampered out of the kitchen.

“Got another cigarette?” Manley asked.

“No. My associate’s got the pack—he’ll be back and fix you up, in a minute.”

“You think I’m a jerk, don’t you?”

“Yeah. But most men are.”

“You, too?”

“Sometimes.”

He laughed. “Funny what a guy’ll do for a little head.”

“What did you say?”

“. . . Nothing.”

I sat up. “You said you didn’t have sexual relations with Beth Short.”

“I didn’t.”

“But she sucked you off, didn’t she, Red?”

He wouldn’t look at me, now. “I didn’t say that.”

“Yes, you did. Oh yes, you did.”

From the dining room, Fowley called to me. “Heller!”

I went to the archway between rooms. “What is it?”

“The Hat and Fat Ass are on their way. . . . Go out to the car and grab your camera . . . Somebody’s here to see our boy.”

Fowley had barely said that when Harriet Manley—blonde hair tucked up under a flowered kerchief, shapely frame tied into a dark topcoat, pretty features delicately made up—rushed in, brushing by him, dashing desperately toward the kitchen.

When I returned with the Speed Graphic, Red and Harriet
were in each other’s arms. She was looking up at him, her red-lipstick-glistening lips quivering, her blue eyes moist, touching his face with red-painted fingertips, her expression a mixture of tenderness and hurt. They held hands, they embraced, they kissed, and I caught it all on film.

“He’s gonna get away with it,” Fowley said, shaking his head.

He meant Manley, getting back into the good graces of his lovely wife; but I wondered if the same might apply to whoever had killed the Black Dahlia.

11

The next morning was a big one for the
Examiner
, with its exclusive coverage of the arrest of Robert “Red” Manley. This made up, some, for getting beat to the punch by the
Herald-Express
on the Black Dahlia nickname, which their reporter Bevo Means had unearthed in time for yesterday’s afternoon edition, thanks to a Long Beach druggist.

Outside the Palmer home, we had staged some photos for Harry the Hat, showing the cops making the capture; those—and my shots of Red trying to make up with his lovely, hurting bride—made the competing papers’ coverage look sick. At the scene, Fowley had suggested to the Hat that he and Sergeant Brown take Manley over to the Hollenbeck Station, instead of downtown, since a swarm of reporters who’d been monitoring police calls would no doubt be waiting. And that’s what the Hat arranged—lie detector, relay teams from Homicide, and even the police psychiatrist were soon waiting at the neighborhood station. But we weren’t invited to the party.

“You boys have done a nice job,” the Hat said, a tiny kiss of a smile puckering, his eyes gazing sleepily in the shadow of his pearl-gray fedora’s brim. He had one hand on my shoulder, and the other on Fowley’s. “But I think you have all the coverage you need to make the morning edition.”

“Bull fucking shit, Harry,” Fowley said, “I’m going over to Hollenbeck!”

That had been the point, after all, of leaving the rest of the press stranded downtown.

The Hat lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You can come sit in the press room, if you like . . . and I’ll give you a report or two, as things progress—but that’s all you get.”

Fowley sighed and nodded. That was better than nothing.

The Hat slipped an arm around my shoulder and walked me inside the Palmer garage, where Manley’s tan Studebaker was still parked. He apparently wanted a quiet moment.

“Is there anything you’ve picked up on,” the Hat asked, nodding toward Fowley, out in the drive frowning at us like a kid who didn’t get invited to play ball, “that may have eluded that esteemed member of the fourth estate you’ve been tagging along with?”

I tried to think of a bone I could toss Hansen—and promptly told him he needed to talk to Mrs. Elvera French and her daughter Dorothy down San Diego way. Manley would soon spill those names, anyway, so it didn’t hurt anything.

The Hat jotted that information down, nodding, saying, “You were a good boy, Nate—you didn’t give up that piece of information I gave you.”

He meant that nasty piece of business—that Elizabeth Short had eaten, or been fed, human feces before her murder—which was one of the three pieces of key evidence he was keeping up his sleeve.

“I may be dumb, Harry, but not dumb enough to cross you.”

“Good.”

“So how about another? You could give me one more, you know, and still have one left.”

He puckered up another smile. “Think it would help you in your investigation?”

“Who knows? Sure couldn’t hurt.”

I didn’t expect this request to work, but the Hat surprised me.

“All right, Nate . . . here’s another evil morsel for you. A piece of skin was carved out of Elizabeth Short’s outer left thigh . . . it had a tattoo of a rose on it.”

“I guess I knew that already,” I said, scratching my head, “or should have. I noticed at the crime scene some flesh had been cut away from her thigh. And I suppose you learned she had a rose tattoo there, from her Santa Barbara arrest record.”

“Well, yes and no. Actually, we found the missing piece of flesh with the tattoo on it.”

“Found it? Where in hell?”

“That’s the second piece of undisclosed evidence I’m going to share with you, Nate, and you alone.”

“Where you found it?”

“Yes, where we found it. That is, where the coroner found it.”

“Where, goddamn it?”

“Stuck up that poor girl’s ass.”

I was thinking about that when the Hat tipped his hat, said, “You go on home, Nate—there’ll be no pictures over at Hollenbeck. . . . By the way, thanks for calling your friend Ness for me.”

“Oh—have you talked to him?”

“Yes, you’ll probably be hearing from him, soon. He’s coming out by train tomorrow, to consult with us on the case.”

“Your idea or his?”

“Sort of mutual. . . . Good night, Nate.”

So I had gone home—that is, to the bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel—and my wife, already in bed and half-asleep, had the same news for me: not the rose tattoo stuck up Beth Short, no—that Eliot had called and wanted me to pick him up at Union Station tomorrow evening at 7
P
.
M
. He’d left no further message.

Peggy told me her long and busy first day as a Hollywood bit player had been wonderful—she did not seem to have any residual animosity from our argument, yesterday—then rolled over in bed and began to softly snore. And, for the first time, on this bizarre honeymoon of ours, a day (and night) passed without our making love. The next morning, she was up and off to the studio before I woke, courtesy of a car Paramount sent around.