Silent Murders (26 page)

“Look, Mama,” said the boy, pointing at Johnnie and the gun.

“Hush up.” She tugged him along toward the trains, never turning her head.

“You think I didn’t know who took my dope? You stupid mick. Never underestimate Johnnie Salazar, eh? Someone saw your car at the doc’s house. I’m gonna see to it you don’t sell what’s mine.”

“Don’t be a sap, Salazar. Let the girl go. You shoot her in front of all these witnesses and you’ll swing.”

“I got nothing to lose. I’m a dead man anyway if I don’t get the dope and the money back where it belongs.” He cocked the gun. “Now where is it?”

For the first time that day, David’s eyes met mine. They sent a loud cue. I didn’t read it perfectly, but I knew enough to brace myself for what was to come.

“Have it your way, Johnnie. The suitcases are in locker 14.” David opened his hand flat and held it out so Salazar could see. A small brass key lay on his palm. “Here, catch.”

He lobbed the key gently toward Salazar’s right side, toward the right hand that held the gun. Instinctively, as people do when something is thrown to them, Salazar grabbed for the key with his nearest hand, letting go of Myrna and lunging toward the right. At the same moment, I shoved her to the left, out of his reach.

“Run!” I commanded.

With only one hand, and that one still clutching his gun, Salazar was doomed to miss the key. He reached far enough that it struck his hand but it clanked against the metal gun and fell to the floor, bouncing away. At that moment, I locked my elbows, clasped my hands together and, with all the force I could muster, swung them like a club into his injured arm.

His scream of pain and outrage echoed through the depot, and he dropped the gun. It skidded on the smooth floor away from the key toward a cluster of potted palms. The key, meanwhile, slid into the path of several passengers who were arguing about the best place for dinner. One of them inadvertently kicked it farther away.

For one second, Salazar was paralyzed with indecision, looking from the gun to the key and back to the gun. That was all it took.

Although he had a greater distance to cover, David leaped toward the gun at the same moment that Salazar made his decision to do the same. They collided on the floor and struggled frantically for the weapon, knocking over one of the potted palms, scattering dirt and fronds everywhere, and
finally
drawing the attention of several nearby passengers who stopped to watch as if it were an intriguing publicity stunt.

Where the hell were the police when you needed them?

Salazar managed to get his finger on the trigger, but his one hand was no match for David’s two. The struggle to point the barrel was brief. When the gun went off, it was pressed against Salazar’s chest. The muffled bang left Johnnie Salazar dead.

34

The gunshot and the screams from onlookers turned the heads of the plainclothesmen positioned near the entrance to the tracks. Springing into action, they came running with guns drawn, shouting, “Don’t move! Don’t move! Drop your weapons!” to a huddle of unarmed people frozen in horror.

I rushed to David, who was kneeling on the floor breathing hard. “Are you all right?”

He nodded wearily, then looked over at Myrna. She was crouched against the lockers, her hands clasped so hard her fingers were white, but she was unhurt.

“Good job, kid,” he said to me. “I knew I could count on you.”

Under the circumstances, the safest place seemed to be the floor, so David and I sat and waited for the cops to assemble. David held the gun out flat on his palm to the first to reach us. Only then did I notice Carl Delaney and Brickles. They had come inside along with the surge of blue uniforms. Carl hung back but his eyes moved from me to David, and I could hear his brain tapping like an adding machine calculating the odds of finding us together. On hands and knees, I made my way to the key to locker 14, nearly buried beneath the spilled dirt and broken palm branches.

One cop crouched over Salazar’s body to satisfy himself that he was dead. “What happened?” he asked David.

David hadn’t heard the question. He was staring intently at the entrance to Track 4. I followed his gaze and saw a man holding a large valise, taking in the mayhem in our corner. David shook his head. The man disappeared.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I butted in before David had a chance to reply. “David Carr is a hero. He saved my friend Myrna’s life as well as mine and shot this—this murderer here. That man”—and I motioned toward Salazar’s body with my toe—“killed Detectives Tuttle and Rios out in the desert last Thursday. He was wounded during the gunfight, as you can see—his arm has a bullet wound—but he escaped, and he took the dope with him. Here’s the key. He hid it in this locker until he could sell it.”

I turned the key over to a redheaded cop who went straight to the bank of lockers to search for number 14. Finding it on the bottom, he opened the door and, as everyone watched, pulled out two large suitcases. They were top-drawer, made of dark leather with brass corners and catches. Even from where I stood I could see the bold initial
H.

Just as I thought—Heilmann’s suitcases. I knew Tuttle and Rios had taken the dope they found in the upstairs bedroom, but I was never sure how they got it out of his house. I asked myself what I would do in the same situation, and I answered myself that I would look for something large to carry the dope. Something found in every house. A suitcase. The detectives had made a similar deduction, found Heilmann’s luggage in a closet somewhere, and loaded up. They must have ruminated for a few days before deciding that their likeliest customer was the local mob. Big mistake.

If local crime bosses didn’t like high-flying film directors muscling in on their business, they liked cops even less. They must have sent Johnnie Salazar and some of his gang to meet Tuttle and Rios in the desert, ostensibly to buy the dope from them. Someone started shooting, and Salazar walked away with the goods. I still wasn’t sure how David had gotten involved, although I suspected it had been my doing. I was the one who had given him the information about the detectives and the dope. I was the only one outside the mob who knew the connection.

“Who was that man on Track 4?” I hissed.

“You don’t miss much, do you, kid?” He shifted his weight and I thought for a moment he wasn’t going to answer. “A friend.”

“From Portland?”

He nodded. I didn’t have to ask anything else. David was going to sell the contents of the Heilmann suitcases to someone from Portland, probably someone from his old gang.

The chief of police arrived and took charge, dismissing most of the officers and shooing away onlookers. A doctor who chanced to be passing through the station pronounced Salazar dead. “You ladies all right?” he asked. Myrna and I nodded. “You’re a couple of lucky girls. You should go home and have a stiff drink … medicinal, of course,” he added with a nervous glance at the chief.

“As soon as you answer a few questions,” said the chief, “I’ll have one of the men escort you home. Now, tell me what happened.”

I repeated what I’d said to the cops who came first on the scene. Enough time had elapsed since then that I had figured out a plausible story and managed to convey in a few sentences how my friend Myrna and I had come to the station with David to meet a friend.

“Salazar arrived at about the same time we did, to pick up his suitcases and leave town—at least, I presume he was planning to leave town. Unfortunately, he spotted the plainclothes cops hanging around. He panicked and grabbed Myrna, intending to use her as a hostage.” The chief looked at Myrna, who nodded her agreement. She knew nothing different. “I distracted him and David knocked the gun out of his hand. They both dived for the gun and struggled for it, and it went off.”

“And how did you come to know Salazar was the one who shot Tuttle and Rios in the desert?” the chief asked.

I pointed to Myrna. “Myrna overheard him talking. She was working at his studio and heard him boasting about it.” I spoke louder, so Myrna could hear me. “He threatened you, didn’t he, Myrna?”

Salazar had certainly threatened to ruin Myrna’s career, which is what she thought I was referring to. Still shaken, she could only nod her agreement. I’d coach her a little more later, in case we were questioned further. It was a sure thing Salazar wasn’t going to contradict anything we said.

David confirmed my account, as did several bystanders who had witnessed part of the fight. Names and addresses were jotted down in case the police needed to follow up, and two men arrived with a stretcher to carry off the late Mr. Salazar. The chief said we could leave.

I was congratulating myself on a masterful performance when I caught sight of someone standing just within listening range, someone I was beginning to know rather too well. Then our eyes met, and I knew there was one cop who wasn’t convinced.

David drove us home. Questions burned inside me, questions I couldn’t ask with Myrna beside us in the front seat. David was not similarly constrained.

“So how did you find out about the ambush?” he asked as we pulled out of the depot parking lot. He displayed an extraordinary degree of sangfroid for someone who had just knocked off someone else.

“Some cops were in our yard shooing away a pack of reporters, and a police car came by with a couple of plainclothesmen to tell them to get to the depot right away. An informer had tipped them off that the man who killed the two detectives would be there at two o’clock. I remembered you were going to be at the depot to meet someone at two, and it was nearly two, so I grabbed a cab.”

“You thought I had killed the detectives?”

The truth of it was, I hadn’t been certain. That was part of what I was itching to ask. I had to know what David’s role was in this affair. But with Myrna next to me, I chose my words carefully. “Noooo, but it looked like you were going to get caught up in it anyway.”

I translated his grunt to mean that he understood I couldn’t talk freely. We drove west in silence for a couple minutes before he spoke again. “I don’t remember telling you I was going to the depot at two.”

I gave a resigned sigh. No one was going to slip anything past David. “Yeah, well, you did. I heard you talking to someone named Ruby at the studio about a boating party. You begged off because you had to meet a friend at two.”

“How—? You weren’t—”

“I was the girl in the blue and white sailor suit.”

He looked at me with disbelief. “Hey, watch the road, buster,” I reminded him. “I’ve met my danger quota for today.”

He pulled up to the curb in front of our house on Fernwood, and Myrna and I got out. “Dinner?” he asked. I remembered our engagement and my intention to break it off in some dramatic fashion. It seemed so petty now. I wanted—I needed—to talk to him alone, but there was no way I could handle being out in public tonight. I could not fathom how he could think of food at a time like this. What I needed was a hot bath and a glass of relaxant.

“Not in the mood,” I replied.

He nodded. “Tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow.” I’d have to wait to hear his story. I wondered whether it would be fact or fiction.

35

Turned out Johnnie Salazar was the Hollywood Killer. Newspapers across the nation blared headlines like
SMALL-TIME HOODLUM CRASHED HEILMANN ORGY, RETURNED FOR REVENGE AFTER BEING TOSSED OUT
, and
WAITRESS WITNESSED MURDER, HUNTED DOWN.
Stories explained that Salazar feared other late party guests had witnessed his actions and so had had to murder Lorna McCall in her home. Then he had gained access to Paramount by pretending to be a director and poisoned Paul Corrigan and Faye Gordon. Meanwhile, two detectives were preparing to bust up Salazar’s dope ring, one of California’s most notorious, and they surprised him as he was taking delivery of a shipment from Mexico. The ensuing gunfight left two of Los Angeles’s finest detectives dead, not to mention three worthless gangsters. Much was made of the heroism of Tuttle and Rios, and their funerals received extensive coverage.

The police were pleased to have wrapped it all up. Their detectives had been avenged. Case closed.

The big studio bosses—the Warners, Zukor, Mayer—were giddy with relief. They knew the puzzle parts didn’t fit together that well but preferred not to challenge an explanation that so neatly deflected criticism from the film industry without linking Heilmann or any other movie people to dope, sex, or liquor. They took every opportunity to point out piously that Hollywood was as much a victim of gangland mayhem as any other city in America.

It was really very tidy. Too bad none of it was true.

I didn’t remember the money until the following day. I broached the topic over dinner with David in my usual subtle way.

“What the hell happened to the money?”

“What money?”

We had just been seated in a dark corner at one of Musso & Frank’s red leather and mahogany booths.

“Don’t go innocent on me. The money that wasn’t with Heilmann’s suitcases. The money Johnnie Salazar was going to pay Tuttle and Rios for the dope.”

“Oh, that money. When the dust settles, I’ll find some worthy charity…”

“Right, you and Andrew Carnegie.”

“I won’t be building libraries, but the public will certainly benefit. I plan to invest the proceeds in sound films and color process.”

A waiter came to take drink orders. I asked for a highball; David ordered whiskey.

“I’m sorry, sir, we don’t serve alcohol.”

I swallowed my surprise and ordered ginger ale.

“Make it two,” said David.

“A law-abiding proprietor,” I said. “Who could have imagined?”

“Most likely they have it for regulars. They don’t know us here. And anyway, we’re inside the city limits.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

“Los Angeles cops don’t have jurisdiction beyond the city limits. Why did you think that far end of Sunset Strip had so many cabarets and nightclubs?”

Trust a bootlegger to know the ins and outs. “This is the first time since I arrived in Hollywood that I haven’t been served. I thought liquor was available everywhere. Mexico is so close, I hear people drive across the border and come home with cases of the stuff in the trunk.”