The Delta Star (14 page)

On the other hand, he was giving them the routine investigations and bothersome follow-ups, which freed him to indulge a whim concerning Missy Moonbeam and a Caltech connection. Now he was going to let it go. There wasn’t anything else to do with it. He’d just book the credit card as found property, release it to Lester Beemer’s sister or American Express, and that would be that. Almost.

Just one more little step to relieve megaboredom. Chalk it up to mid-life crisis. Half a step, really. He wanted to see if The Bad Czech knew anyone at the Pusan Gardens who might answer a few questions about the found credit card and Missy Moonbeam.

When he located The Bad Czech, the monster cop was standing in front of Rampart Station doing his impression of John Wayne. There was a blond television reporter, sweating in the sunshine, who was very sick and tired of this big ham ruining every take with speeches about how he was in the business of protecting and serving, and even saving the life of “assholes” like Earl Rimms.

On take two, The Bad Czech changed “asshole” to “scumbag” when someone told him what he’d said. On take three he softened it to “slimeball” on request. On take four he got it down to “puke,” but by then he was so nervous he blew the first part of his statement about protecting and serving.

Between takes six and seven she tried to help the big dummy relax by offering to let him go into the station and get a drink of water so his cotton mouth would stop popping into the hand mike. When he said he’d rather have a real drink, she smiled, and he took it as an encouraging sign and asked her if she’d meet him after work in some place called Leery’s Saloon.

She declined and they did takes nine and ten. The cameraman was on his last roll when The Bad Czech managed something resembling a quotable statement about saving the life of the “rotten mugger.”

The Bad Czech begged for one more take, saying that his mouth was as dry as Rose Bird’s giz, but she refused, and called it a wrap.

“If you change your mind about Leery’s, gimme a call!” The Bad Czech was yelling to the retreating blonde when Mario Villalobos pulled into the station parking lot.

A few minutes later The Bad Czech, ebullient from his television debut, was sitting in the detective car, heading for the Pusan Gardens on Olympic, telling Mario Villalobos about the marathon foot pursuit and the death of Gertie.

The Korean chef was overseeing the evening’s food service when the beat cop entered with the detective. He looked about as happy to see the cops as he was to see the Chinese Army thirty-odd years ago when they swarmed across the border and overran the Americans. At which time he scooted out of Seoul with one thing in mind: Hollywood. And a restaurant he dreamed of, called “Seoul Food.”

The Bad Czech spotted the part-time waitress, full-time B-girl, who was still doing waitress duty this early in the day. They walked her into the cocktail lounge where it was dark and private.

“Hey, Blossoms,” The Bad Czech said. “This here’s a detective and he’s got a few questions for ya. Don’t worry, he ain’t with the vice squad. He’s workin on a murder.”

“Do you know this girl?” Mario Villalobos asked the chunky B-girl.

Blossoms was thick through the shoulders and thighs. Her face was flat and unrefined, the face of a peasant. They could see from her nervous glance that she knew Missy Moonbeam.

“She got in jail?” Blossoms asked.

“She’s the dead one,” Mario Villalobos said. “Did she work here sometimes?”

“Some time,” Blossoms nodded, nervously fidgeting with her pencil and order pad.

“A … hostess?” Mario Villalobos asked.

“Like me,” the girl nodded.

“Did she work here Saturday night?” Mario Villalobos asked.

The girl thought for a moment, a decided effort. She wrinkled her brow and shuffled her feet nervously. “Before one day. Flyday,” she said. “She here all night.”

“Did she pick up some men?” Mario Villalobos asked.

“I good girl, no men,” Blossoms said, glancing toward the kitchen where the chef was peeking through the open door.

“I told ya he don’t work vice,” The Bad Czech said impatiently. “Jist tell him the truth, for chrissake, Blossoms.”

“Maybe few men,” Blossoms said.

“Korean men?” Mario Villalobos asked.

“Yes,” she nodded.

“Are you sure you didn’t see her Saturday night? That was the night she died. It’s real important.”

“She not here after Flyday,” Blossoms said.

“Did you ever see this?” Mario Villalobos asked, producing the credit card of Lester Beemer.

She held the card upside down and said, “Maybe.”

“Can you read?” Mario Villalobos asked.

“No.”

“Why do you say ‘maybe’?”

“She have card like this one Flyday.”

“It looked just like this?”

“Look just like,” she said. “She say card no good sometimes. Sometimes good. We talk about … ways make money. I good girl. She not so good.”

“She talked about credit card scams?” The Bad Czech asked.

“What?”

“Did she say she used cards like this one?” Mario Villalobos asked. “To buy things? Cards belonging to other people?”

“Yes,” Blossoms said. “I tell her no. I good girl.”

“And this card?”

“Funny card, she say. Missy throw card on table and say no good.”

“I don’t understand,” Mario Villalobos said, looking at the credit card. “It hasn’t expired. It looks okay.”

“I hate mysteries,” The Bad Czech said. “They give me headaches. I like to know how things work and what’s real and what ain’t real and …”

“Did Missy leave the no-good card on the table Friday night?”

“I sink so,” she said. “Card no good, Missy say. Not anysing on card.”

“Not anything on the card?” Mario Villalobos said.

When they got back to the station Mario Villalobos left The Bad Czech, who was beside himself with excitement about being on the five o’clock and eleven o’clock news. The detective had an urgent telephone call waiting for him. The number looked familiar, but the caller had refused to give a name. While he was dialing it, he realized the number was the Wonderland Hotel.

Oliver Rigby answered: “Hello, Wonderland.”

“It’s Sergeant Villalobos,” the detective said. “Did you call?”

“Yeah,” Oliver Rigby whispered.

The detective could imagine him peering around the lobby and cupping his hand over the mouthpiece. “Why didn’t you leave your name?”

“It’s too urgent!” Oliver Rigby whispered. “Some guy came in here. He was askin about Missy! He looked like he was gonna have a heart attack and die in the lobby. He asked did she jump. He kept askin, did she jump? Or did somebody help her jump?”

“You get his name?”

“He wouldn’t give it,” Oliver Rigby said. “Then I told him you was workin on the case and he should call you. I wrote down your name and telephone number. Did he call?”

“No, yours is the only call I’ve got on my desk,” Mario Villalobos said.

“Did she jump? Did somebody help her jump? That’s what he kept sayin! I thought about grabbin him and callin the cops.”

“What’d he look like, Oliver?”

“Look like? Like a screamin fruit is what he looked like,” Oliver Rigby said. “He looked like a peroxided limpwrist from Santa Monica Boulevard is what he looked like. Do I get a reward if he’s the killer?”

After getting a more detailed description of Oliver Rigby’s visitor, Mario Villalobos sat smoking at the homicide table long after most of the others had gone home. The Bad Czech didn’t hate mysteries any more than Mario Villalobos did.

He was almost out the door when the call came. The lieutenant said, “For you, Mario.”

The male voice was falsetto, so he figured who it was. The voice said, “Sergeant, I’ve been told that you’re investigating the death of Missy Moonbeam.”

“That’s right,” Mario Villalobos said. “What can I do for you?”

“I gotta know something first. Did she jump? Or was she, like … murdered?”

“First, let me have your name and …”

“I have some important information for you, Sergeant,” the voice lisped, rising an octave. “Extra important!”

“Yeah, but I’d like to know who I’m talking to and ..

“Listen to me!” the telephone voice cried. “It’s more than Missy. It’s … first, ya gotta tell me, was she murdered?”

In that the caller was getting hysterical, the detective said, “I believe she was thrown from the roof.”

The caller was silent for a moment and Mario Villalobos could hear him beginning to hyperventilate. Then the voice disappeared from the phone.

“
Are you there?” Mario Villalobos asked. “Are you there?”

“I … can’t … I … can’t get my breath
,”
the voice said.

“Get a paper bag,” Mario Villalobos said. “Breathe into it. Try to relax. You’re okay.”

The telephone was put down for a few more minutes. Mario Villalobos smoked and looked at his watch. Then the voice came back and said, “I’m all right now.”

“Tell me your name.”

“I’m real scared,” the caller said. “I think I’m the next to die!”

“I can come and see you,” Mario Villalobos said. “Tell me where.”

“I’m … I’m too confused!” the caller said. “I’ll call ya at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Will ya be there?”

“I’ll be here waiting for your call,” Mario Villalobos said. “But can’t you tell me …”

“I can tell ya one thing, Sergeant,” the caller said. “This is probably the most important case ya ever worked on. I don’t know who killed Missy Moonbeam, but I know what he was!”

And then Mario Villalobos figured that his caller was as goofy as a waltzing mouse. As loopy as a laughing loon. As crazy as The Bad Czech. In a breathy voice full of melodrama, but also full of fear, the caller said, “Her killer was a Russian spy!” And then he hung up.

A few hours later, Mario Villalobos was watching the Angels getting themselves beaten by the New York Yankees. Mario Villalobos could sometimes get a complimentary ticket at Dodger Stadium because he moonlighted doing stadium security. But tonight the Dodgers were on the road, so he drove to Angel Stadium and paid.

He ate hot dogs and ice cream and drank beer and didn’t give much of a thought to Missy Moonbeam or Lester Beemer, because with that call it had gotten out of control. Even before having grown as tired as dust, Mario Villalobos had been a logical, methodical, if sometimes compulsive investigator. And Russian spies spelled fruitcake, and fruitcake investigations produced nothing but more fruitcake.

Maybe he should turn this one over to the shoulder holster kids. He thought about announcing it tomorrow: “Chip, Melody, I’ve got a case for you to work in your spare time. It involves a murder by a spy. The Russians are coming!”

He would have laughed except that Goose Gossage was just brought in to fire tracers at the Angel hitters, and that wasn’t funny.

***

As usual, the ventilating was started by The Bad Czech who sat at the bar very nervously. The television news team had promised him that his interview segment would be on the five o’clock news. It wasn’t.

Leery switched off the TV when The Bad Czech called the station and was told that extra coverage of the Middle East had preempted him.

“Sure,” The Bad Czech complained to the losers at Leery’s. “Mideast war. Arabs and Jews been killin each other since Christine Jorgensen had nuts. But how many times you seen an interview of a policeman that tried to save the life of a scum-suckin piece a slime like Earl Rimms? There ain’t that many cops around with kindness in their hearts. Goddamnit, I better be on the eleven o’clock news or I’ll firebomb that fuckin TV station!”

“Settle, Czech, settle,” Jane Wayne said, standing behind the monster cop, tugging on his eyebrows.

“Well, whaddaya expect?” The Bad Czech said, picking up his newspaper. “Nobody cares about real news anyways. Listen to this. It says here that the no-nuke demonstration attracted the usual locals. There was the National Association a Social Workers. There was the Lesbian and Gay Democratic Club. I wonder why they have to stick ‘Democratic’ in there? It goes without sayin. There was the revolutionary Communist Party. The ACLU. The Catholic Workers. The Radical Fairies to Heal the Earth. There was women dressed in nuns’ clothes with skeleton faces. There was paper helicopters piloted by Ronald Reagan dolls. And get this: about thirteen pages later there’s a tiny article about a family a six gettin slaughtered out near Riverside. Kin ya dig it? Mass murder is about as important as the classified ads. Nobody kin tell the Hillside Strangler from the Freeway Killer without a program. A no-nuke march gets the press. So who cares about a cop doin a humane act, for chrissake!”

“Settle, Czech, settle,” Jane Wayne said to the street monster, who was starting to froth like Ludwig. He was making everyone extremely nervous. The Bad Czech’s face was scratched and bruised from the foot pursuit and his demented eyes were pinwheeling tonight.

“The Bad Czech looks like he’s been chasing parked cars,” Dolly whispered.

“The Bad Czech looks like he’s been blocking punts,” Dilford whispered.

“How da ya like my new political poster, Czech?” Leery asked, trying to change the subject and console the rabid beat cop. Up on the wall was a homemade sign which said Jerry Brown uses Vaseline. Gore Vidal uses Polygrip. The only difference is age. vote straight republican.

“I better be on the eleven o’clock news, that’s all I gotta say.” The Bad Czech was too cranky to be diverted by politics.

“At eleven o’clock I’ll only be sixty-one minutes from my pension!” Rumpled Ronald announced. “It looks like I might make it! Except that my heart’s starting to skip beats. Wouldn’t that be one for the book? Heart attack at five minutes to twelve? Wouldn’t that be something?”

“The Czech’s about as cranky as the bus driver we busted today,” Dilford said to Cecil Higgins. “He beat the crap outa this sixty-three-year-old blind man who started bitching at the driver for missing his bus stop. Driver didn’t have an excuse except he was tired of unsatisfied customers.”

“L. A. wasn’t always like this,” Cecil Higgins felt obliged to tell the younger cops.

“The world wasn’t always like this,” Rumpled Ronald said, taking his pulse. “I just wanna get outa this world alive!”

Things suddenly became subdued at The House of Misery. A group of ten civilians came roaring in and took over the dance floor. There were six young men and four young women, members of an insurance adjustors’ softball league. They had some weeks earlier found Leery’s Saloon after a game at Dodger Stadium and now came in from time to time after softball games.

They had been drinking beer and eating Cracker Jacks and were all wearing their team shirts and baseball hats. They put ten quarters in the jukebox and started some play-punk dancing to the Circle Jerks. They were genuinely having such good clean fun that the cops, who usually evinced only about as much paranoia and xenophobia as the Kremlin, were plunged into utter depression and started drinking with a vengeance.

Rumpled Ronald even forgot to count the minutes, so despondent was he after watching the young people. “Can you remember when you could have fun like that?” he asked Cecil Higgins, who just stared into the bottom of his glass.

“I can’t remember back that far,” Cecil Higgins said.

“It’s really something to see… regular people having fun,” Dilford said wistfully, as one pretty young woman jumped up on a chair and started dancing soft rock while the others whistled and cheered.

Even The Bad Czech was captured by the sight of the young people dancing and singing and offering to buy beer for the clutch of jaded strangers who had moved to one end of the barroom and were watching them with eyes full of suspicion.

Jane Wayne said, “It seems like a lifetime ago that I could feel like that. They don’t know how … it really is.”

“How what is?” Dolly asked.

“All of it,” Jane Wayne said. “They don’t know about … paws in petunias and other things.”

“I used to be like that girl,” Dolly said to Dilford, never taking her eyes from the carefree blonde dancing on the chair in her team shirt with her baseball hat turned around backward. “I sometimes think I’d like to try to be like that again. I date civilians but it just never works out when they learn about me. They get intimidated by a girl that carries a gun. Emasculated, I guess. They know we see things. That we’re … different.”

“I stopped being a girl more than a year ago,” Jane Wayne said, still watching the pretty girl dancing.

“Me too,” Dolly said. “I’m a cop now. And that’s all.”

They turned away from the pretty girl and went back to their drinks, nostalgia dissolved. They hardly noticed when the young softball players finished their beers and waved cheerful goodbyes to Leery and breezed out the door singing, “We are the champions.”

“They just don’t know, “Jane Wayne said. “Another Scotch, Leery. A double.”

“They’re children,” Dolly said. “Another bourbon, Leery. A double.”

They didn’t envy the young people. The moment had passed. Jane Wayne turned a cynical smile to Dolly’s cynical smile and they gave each other a nod of understanding. And drank. They were both twenty-three years old.

With the civilians gone, the cops spread out to their usual places at the long bar and resumed what they did best at this time of night: bitching.

“I hear some detective from West L. A. smoked it,” Cecil Higgins announced, and that quieted even The Bad Czech.

“Another victim of U. C. A.,” Dilford said, which is how he referred to the Ultimate Cop Affliction.

“Right in the mouth as usual,” Cecil Higgins sighed.

“Change the subject,” Dolly said. “It’s one thing to have to wear that thirty-eight-caliber crucifix, without worrying about eating it.”

“Whatcha gonna do with that pension, Ronald?” Leery asked, halfheartedly wiping a beer mug which he’d halfheartedly washed.

“Do with it? I ain’t doing nothing with it. You think I can afford to retire and live on forty percent a my salary?”

“Well why all the worry about living till midnight?” Leery wanted to know.

“Jesus Christ, Leery!” Rumpled Ronald said. “Because I got it then. No matter what. If I ended up in prison some day, it don’t matter. It’s mine. They’d have to send my monthly pension checks to San Quentin.”

“Any cop goes to San Quentin, it don’t matter he’s gettin a pension or not,” Cecil Higgins said, looking at The Bad Czech. “You’d be the richest con in the joint but your asshole’d still be big enough to accommodate four monkeys on mopeds and the Soap Box Derby.”

“I don’t care,” Rumpled Ronald said, scratching his rumpled belly, rubbing his rumpled face, which was starting to get numb from the booze. “I just wanna own myself. If my old lady kicks me out, I won’t have to get an old wino dog and some newspapers for blankets and settle down on skid row. At least I won’t have to do that.”

“My ex-wife threw me right out in the street,” Dilford cried out suddenly, and the others noticed that he was pretty bombed and feeling extra sorry for himself.

“And after you did the manly thing,” Dolly said sarcastically. “Got her replumbed instead of facing the knife yourself.”

“
I
got a vasectomy. You know I did!” Dilford said boozily.

“Sure, after you were single again,” Dolly said, more sarcastically. “So you wouldn’t knock up some groupie.”

“Go ahead, stick up for a woman you don’t even know,” Dilford said. “Never mind sticking up for your partner. She threw me right in the street, my ex-wife did. Right in the street!”

“Was that the time you was gone on a three-day binge with that typist from the police commission?” Cecil Higgins wanted to know. “They say you banged that little homewrecker right on Leery’s pool table, Dilford.”

“I’d still like to know what happened to my cue ball,” Leery said, considering the possibility.

“And after you got that pansy nurse at the hospital to bandage your head and give you a room and pose as a doctor, and tell your wife you’d been in a traffic accident and had amnesia. You went to lots a trouble for your wife, Dilford,” Rumpled Ronald said sympathetically, starting to get numb in the fingers.

“I even had to wreck in the side a my pickup truck to make it look good,” Dilford whined. “That truck’s had three face-lifts! And still she kicked me out! The heartless bitch. They’re all heartless bitches!”

“My first wife was always kickin me out,” Cecil Higgins said. “She had a habit a throwin my clothes out in the driveway. I wore out more clothes by runnin over them than I ever did wearin them. Least she wasn’t ugly like the one I’m married to now. And this one’s into pain. Mine.”

It was ten-thirty when Hans and Ludwig came in, without a single groupie from Chinatown. Hans was morosely drunk. Ludwig was apparently sober, but did not get up on the bar.

“Ludwig understands that Gertie’s dead,” Hans said, in his lachrymose singsong voice.

“Bullshit,” The Bad Czech said, as they watched Ludwig lumber over to the three-coffin dance floor and lie down.

“See that?” Hans said. “He didn’t even get up on the pool table. When he saw Gertie laying dead he understood perfectly. I can’t cheer him up.”

“That’s crazy,” The Bad Czech said. “Dogs ain’t got brains like that.”

“He wouldn’t have a single beer tonight,” Hans said. “I tell you he knows. He saw Gertie all busted up and covered with blood and he knows his pal’s gone for good.”

“I don’t doubt nothin no more,” Cecil Higgins said. “You tell me Ludwig knows, I believe it. You tell me Ludwig wants a stress pension, I believe it. I don’t know what’s real and what ain’t real no more.”

“It makes me sad to see Ludwig sleeping on the floor,” Jane Wayne said. “Make him get on the pool table, Hans.”

“Might as well,” Leery shrugged. “Many jizz stains as there are now, a few more ain’t gonna hurt nothing. Maybe I oughtta just pour a bowl full a beer for Ludwig,” Leery mused. He thought it over and said, “Naw, if he is able to think about Gertie, it wouldn’t be good for his head.”

“What a relief!” Cecil Higgins cried. “For a second I thought you was gonna give away a free drink, Leery! I thought for a second I really had lost my mind!”

The eleven o’clock news came and went. The Bad Czech couldn’t believe it. They had not used his interview segment.

When Mario Villalobos showed up at 11:30 for a nightcap, a terrified drunk who had roamed into the bar three minutes earlier was running out onto Sunset Boulevard, hysterical.

“Don’t go in that place, mister!” he warned Mario Villalobos. “There’s a giant madman throwing beer glasses at the television set! And a woman in a black fur coat looks like she’s dead on the pool table!”