True Confessions (8 page)

“That’s it,” Fuqua said, and waved the photographer out of his office. He took off his jacket, loosened his tie and switched on the desk fan. He stood in front of the fan for a moment, shaking his damp shirt away from his armpits.

“I wanted you two in the picture,” Fuqua said as he took his seat, “but Benny Carmody at the
Times
said that the
Express
had already run a shot of the three of us and he wanted something different.”

Tom Spellacy nodded. “I like you better without the glasses, Fred. You get a glare with the glasses.”

“It might mess up the shot, the glare,” Crotty said.

“I can get him back, you want,” Tom Spellacy said.

Fuqua stared from one to the other, then slowly reknotted his tie, straightening it from the reflection in his desk glass.

“I been to see the commission is the reason I got you up here,” Fuqua said. The Select Commission had been appointed by the Board of Supervisors to run the department until it picked the new chief. Without a chief, every division in the department was in effect a private army run by its division commander. “I told them this one was a major crime.”

“The major-crime approach,” Tom Spellacy said.

“Right,” Fuqua said. He either did not notice or had decided to overlook the sarcasm in Tom Spellacy’s remark. “Right,” he repeated. “And I told them that for major crimes we ought to have a major-crime section.”

“That’s a hell of an idea, Fred,” Tom Spellacy said. It was well known in the department that Fuqua was bucking for chief, but he could not believe that the commission would be stupid enough to pick him.

“And I told them that the officers in the major-crime section should have no other duties . . .”

“Except major crimes,” Crotty said.

“Right,” Fuqua said. “That’s how to be on top of things, Crotty. Which is why I want you to head up the Major Crime Section.”

Tom Spellacy looked at Crotty and then at Fuqua. “You mean, the commission said all right?”

“As you said, it’s a hell of an idea,” Fuqua said. There was a smirk on his face. “I’ll be in operational control and Crotty will run things day to day. You’ll be his deputy.”

“What about Chief Davis?” Morty Davis was the deputy chief for internal affairs, and since the indictment and resignation of the former chief, had overseen the affairs of Robbery-Homicide.

“What about him?” Fuqua said. “You got no cause to love Chief Davis.”

Crotty kicked Tom Spellacy in the foot. A warning to keep his mouth shut. No, he had no cause to love Morty Davis. Morty Davis had wanted to fire him when he got caught with the eleven hundred in his pocket. The funny thing was, he liked Morty Davis. He was smart. And honest. The first was rare in the department, the second rarer still.

“Well, then, we’ll be working together,” Fuqua said.

This dumb son of a bitch thinks I’m going to owe him, Tom Spellacy thought. The Major Crime Section. A way to get Fuqua ink, that was all it was. A way to make him chief. Not with my help.

Fuqua reached into his desk drawer and pulled out three tie-pins. He gave one each to Crotty and Tom Spellacy and put the third on his own tie. The tiepins bore the legend H-187—the designation for homicide in the state penal code.

“Every man in the section will get one of these,” Fuqua said. “It’ll be like a second badge. We wear our tiepins, the press will know we’re not in Traffic when we show up at the scene of a major crime.”

Tom Spellacy looked at Crotty to make sure he was hearing correctly.

“It’s a grand idea, Fred,” Crotty said. He kicked Tom Spellacy in the foot a second time.

“And this being the first major crime the Major Crime Section has investigated,” Fuqua said, “I asked the commission to put up a reward.”

“How much?” Tom Spellacy said.

“$10,000.”

“They said yes?”

“Of course.”

Tom Spellacy whistled tonelessly. Crotty took a cigar from his pocket and rolled it around his mouth.

“You don’t think much of that idea,” Fuqua said.

Crotty held a match to the end of his cigar and drew on it until it was lit. He made no attempt to answer.

“Not much,” Tom Spellacy said finally.

“That’s all you’ve got to say?” Fuqua said.

“What Tom means,” Crotty said, exhaling a stream of cigar smoke, “is that we’ve got creeps crawling out from under every rock in town as it is. You put up ten grand . . .” He shrugged and fished a snapshot from his pocket. It was a picture of a young Mexican. He handed the snap across the desk to Fuqua. “I got this in the mail yesterday.”

Fuqua examined the photograph. “So?”

“There was a piece of paper with it. ‘THIS IS YOUR MURDERER,’ someone’s written on the paper. I give it to SID, see if they can lift a print. I sent the picture over to Hollenbeck, let them run it through their mug file. Yesterday afternoon, SID comes up with a print. Armadelia Luna.”

Tom Spellacy started to laugh.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Fuqua said.

’The Flower of Figueroa Street,” Crotty said. “Fourteen arrests. Shoplifting. Lewd conduct. Public drunkenness . . .”

“I nailed her once on grand theft auto,” Tom Spellacy said.

“She’s got a boyfriend,” Crotty said. “Rafael Saldivar.” He pointed at the photograph in Fuqua’s hand. “Guess who?”

Fuqua handed him back the snapshot.

“He was fucking around,” Crotty said. “Which is why she sent us the picture. Now she’s sorry she did it . . .”

“I don’t see the point,” Fuqua said.

“The point is, Fred, there must’ve been eight cops working on this yesterday, maybe sixty man-hours in all.”

“You put up a $10,000 reward,” Tom Spellacy said, “we’re going to be chasing even more of these than we’re doing now.”

“I don’t think it’s a way to get the Major Crime Section off to a terrific start,” Crotty said. “We need to crack this one quick.” He drew on the cigar for a moment. “You have to think beyond the Major Crime Section, Fred.”

“A tiepin,” Tom Spellacy said when they left Fuqua’s office.
“A fucking tiepin.” He held the H-187 pin between his thumb and forefinger and dropped it deliberately into the ashtray by the elevator.

“He wants to be chief,” Crotty said. He extracted the tiepin from the sand in the ashtray, shook it off and put it into his pocket.

“He’s a horse’s ass,” Tom Spellacy said. “The worse kind of horse’s ass. The kind that likes to see his name in the papers.”

“So who says a horse’s ass can’t be chief,” Crotty said. “That’s why he fucked Morty Davis. That’s why he dreamed up this Major Crime Section. He cracks this one, he thinks he’s got a chance.”

“
He
cracks it,” Tom Spellacy said sharply. “He’s got trouble cracking a can of beer. They’re making morons chief this year,
then
he’s got a chance.”

“He never stuck his mitts in the poorbox that I heard,” Crotty said. “And he scores good on the chief tests they give, too, Fred does. ‘You come to a four-way stop sign, who’s got the right of way,’ Fred’s always got the answer.”

“Which he probably picked up at the Roger J. Minihan School of Penology,” Tom Spellacy said.

“And he speaks nice, too,” Crotty said. “Roomful of niggers over on Central Avenue, they come out thinking he’s a mulatto or something, the coon mumbo jumbo he gives them. It’s Fred, we don’t screw it up for him, is what I think.”

“Then we ought to stop looking for the son of a bitch took this girl out then,” Tom Spellacy said. “Better him on the bricks than Fuqua chief is the way I look at it.”

Crotty checked his watch. “Woody said he’d have the autopsy report before lunch.”

“Then we better go look at it before that asshole sees it and starts reading it over KFIM.”

The County Medical Examiner’s Office was in the basement of the Hall of Justice. In the spring heat the corridors were thick with the smell of formaldehyde. They walked through a cavernous autopsy room painted a weak green and then past the refrigerated compartments where the day’s catch of corpses was kept. Wood-row Wilson Wong’s private office was in the far corner of the basement. His walls were covered with enlarged photographs of battered babies and bashed-in skulls and mutilated breasts and patterns of stab wounds. The pictures drove Fuqua’s stupidity from Tom Spel-lacy’s mind.

“You ever get the idea that Woody likes this job a little too much?” he said, examining the photographs.

“Twelve thousand stiffs a year,” Crotty said. “Lose your sense of humor here and the coroner’s job could get to be a pain in the ass.”

“They say he likes to go shopping at the May Company weekends,” Tom Spellacy said. “He never buys anything. Just checks out lamps and tennis rackets and chairs and toys, stuff like that. He wants to find out what kind of marks they’d make, somebody gets the bright idea to kill you with one of them.”

“What else am I supposed to do?” Woodrow Wilson Wong said as he hurried into the room. He was smoking a large black cigar and the ashes had splattered over his white medical coat. “The supervisors don’t give me any money. This is a nickel-and-dime operation. ‘You teach those stiffs how to vote, we’ll give you more money.’ That’s how the supervisors look at it.”

Woody’s being a Chink wasn’t much of a help either, Tom Spellacy thought. That was another theory of the board of supervisors: only a Chinaman would want a job like this. The supervisors saw the coroner’s office as a skid row for doctors and out-of-work embalmers. A place for medical students to practice and pick up extra money. Twenty bucks an autopsy and bring your own microscope and knife sharpener. All appendages that drop off the deceased belong to the county. That was how Woody’s predecessor lost his job. He had used a skull as a paperweight, and the paperweight turned out to have a brother and the brother raised a stink. Give the job to Charlie Chan, the supervisors said. No more paperweights, the supervisors also said.

Woodrow Wong handed them each a copy of the autopsy report. A complete set of photographs was attached to both files. There was an autopsy slab in the center of Woody’s office that he used as a conference table. The ME’s idea of a joke, Tom Spellacy thought. He and Crotty sat on either side of the table and read. Woodrow Wong turned the pages along with them.

Name: unknown. Address: unknown. Female, adult, Caucasian, the autopsy report read, 2G-to-30 years old, 110 lbs., 64 inches (approx.). Blood type: O. Appendectomy scar, old fracture of right forearm. Wax fillings in third and fourth molars, rest of teeth smashed and broken.

“What kind of dentist puts in wax fillings?” Tom Spellacy said.

“It’s something you do when you can’t afford a dentist,” Woodrow Wong said. “You melt down some wax and pack it in where it hurts.”

Tom Spellacy looked across the autopsy table at Crotty. “The candle up her cunt. It must’ve been for her teeth.”

“And whoever did it found another use for it,” Crotty said.

Wood splinters in facial lacerations, indicating victim probably beaten with a blunt wooden instrument, possibly a two-by-four. Cause of death: knife wounds, hemorrhage and shock. Face slashed from ear to ear. Severing clean, one inch above the navel, probably accomplished with sharp surgical instrument or a butcher’s knife. Blade sharp on both sides. Depth of wounds in excess of five inches. Width of wounds between 1-and-1
¹
/
₂
inches. Thickness of wounds l/8-to-l/4 inch. Rope or wire wounds on wrists and ankles. Phosphorescent dye right thumbnail.

“She was selling her blood,” Tom Spellacy said. “That’s what the dye’s for. The blood banks put a spot on the thumbnail so you don’t come back too soon.”

“The drunks would come in five times a week if you let them,” Woodrow Wong said. “The law says eight weeks between visits.”

“They rub it off with battery acid, the drunks,” Tom Spellacy said. “It buys a lot of Sterno, a pint of blood.”

Crotty scratched a match along the autopsy table and held it to his cigar. “It’s a good bet she was broke,” he said. “She can’t afford a dentist and she’s selling her blood. She’s also got a rose on her pussy, so let’s assume she was peddling that, too.”

“We should get Vice on it,” Tom Spellacy said. “See if any of the girls knew her. Or if they know anyone likes to cut.”

They’d check Brenda, he thought suddenly. Brenda Samuels. She was working out of a hotel off Alvarado now. An escort service. Brenda’s Personal Services, Ltd. Making ends meet. Yes, they’d check Brenda. She always had her ear to the ground. Anything that was happening with the girls, Brenda would know about it. Fine. As long as I don’t have to see her. For a moment he wondered what Corinne would say if she knew he was the bagman Brenda had paid off.

The smell of formaldehyde filled his nostrils and he gagged.

“Howard Terkel says we should look for a ‘well of loneliness type,’” Crotty said. “A female pervert.” He puffed on his cigar to keep it lit. “Jerry Troy had one of them once when he was in the department. Remember Jerry?”

“Jerry Bang Bang,” Tom Spellacy said. “He was a shooter.”

“Fucking card is what he was,” Crotty said. “Competitive fucker on a case, though. Always wanted the collar by himself.” He spat a piece of cigar wrapping from his mouth. “Finish first and third in a five-man jackoff contest, you give him the chance.”

A little like Des, Tom Spellacy thought. “I know the type.”

“Anyway, he collars this les, Jerry,” Crotty said. “She sliced up her girl friend there, then tried to flush her down the toilet.

There she is telling Jerry how she couldn’t fit the head down the crapper and she begins to cry. Really bawl. There, there,’ Jerry says. With that brogue you could cut. There, there, it’s the sort of thing that could happen to any one of us.’ “ Crotty exploded into laughter. “Isn’t that a grand story, though? God, I love a good story, Tom. I roar every time I remember that one.”

“He shot somebody at the ball game, didn’t he?” Tom Spellacy said.

“It was a joke was all it was,” Crotty said. “He had the DTs, Jerry. He got drunk one night, the Stars were playing Seattle at Gilmore, and he tried to shoot that big Polack pitched for Seattle, used to pitch for the White Sox, Hriniak, I think his name was. He loved the Stars, Jerry, and they weren’t doing anything against this guy, and Jerry says, Til fix that Polack fuck,’ and takes out his Special. Except he was so pissed he couldn’t hold it and it dropped and went off. It was Nuns’ Night and he shot a Sister of Mercy in the toe. Fucking shame they let him go, Jerry.”

No semen in vagina or mouth. Large number of bristles around all wounds. Bristles probably from a coconut-fiber brush used to clean wounds. Undigested food in stomach.

“Egg rolls,” Woodrow Wong said.

“Go fuck somebody sideways,” Crotty said.

“I analyzed the food,” Woodrow Wong said. “Egg rolls.”

“Maybe Woody’s got something, Frank.” Tom Spellacy straightened the pages of the autopsy report and placed it in the folder on top of the photographs of the victim’s bifurcated body. “The undigested food means she ate not long before she was killed. But she’s got burns on her wrists and ankles. Rope burns or wire burns.”

“She was tied up,” Crotty said. He worked each sentence over carefully. “She was a captive. She had to eat.” He tapped his fingers on the autopsy table. “She had to be fed. Nobody cooks Chinese except a Chink and let’s say for the moment it wasn’t a Chink, the bad person.” He looked back and forth between Tom Spellacy and Woodrow Wong. “Takeout food. The son of a bitch was stuffing her with takeout egg rolls.”

Woodrow Wilson Wong laughed.

“I guess we don’t eat Chinese today,” Tom Spellacy said.

The corridor outside Robbery-Homicide was crowded with parents and pederasts, lesbians and whores, cab drivers and bus drivers, bartenders and waitresses, pimps and policemen and children with stray articles of clothing, all claiming some knowledge of the unidentified woman from the corner of 39th and Norton. Crotty ignored the din.

“We check out every Chink restaurant between Oxnard and San Diego.”

“The cutlery shops,” Tom Spellacy said. “Surgical-equipment houses. Butcher suppliers.”

“Barber wholesalers,” Crotty said. “He could’ve used a razor.”

“Blood banks.”

“Religious-supply houses. I guess that’s where you get votive candles.”

“You think it would make it any easier, Frank, there was a $10,000 reward?”

Crotty laughed. “Lunch later.”

In his office in-box, Tom Spellacy found a report from SID on the eyeglasses found under the victim’s body. Negative. There was nothing yet on sex offenders and nothing from the body shops, no cars reported with suspicious bloodstains. He told Bass to check the knife outlets and Masaryk the Chinese restaurants.

“We’re looking for egg rolls,” Masaryk said.

“Takeout egg rolls.”

“Takeout egg rolls,” Masaryk repeated. “On the night of the incident.”

“Incident?”

“Until we have a conviction, Tom, we have to call it an incident.”

“You go to night school, Masaryk?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The Roger J. Minihan School?”

“Yes, sir. It was highly recommended by Captain Fuqua.”

“I thought so.”

“How many egg rolls are we looking for, Lieutenant?”

Tom Spellacy closed the door of his cubicle and spread the photographs of the victim over his desk. The dark patch between her legs made him think of Corinne. He shook the thought away. In one series of pictures, Woody had tried to piece the body back together again. Looking at her that way, it was hard to think of her as the woman the newspapers called Mystery Beauty. He tried not to think of all the parents, brothers and sisters of the missing Mystery Beauties he had seen since the morning of the murder. Mary Jane sang in the choir. Lucy was the class valedictorian. Edna never looked at another man in her life. They all belong in the convent is what I think, Crotty had said.

The telephone rang. The woman said her name was Mabel Leigh Horton. Mabel. Leigh. Leigh like in Vivien.
L-e-i-g-h
. From Guin, Alabama, Mabel Leigh Horton said. That’s
G-u-i-n,
capital
A-l-a-b-a-m-a
. Now residing in Culver City.

“What can I do for you, Mabel?” Tom Spellacy said.

“Mabel
Leigh”
Mabel Leigh Horton said.

“Sorry.”

“First you hard-boil an
egg,”
she said.

“Hard-boil an egg,” he said.

“Then you put it in the young lady’s right hand.”

“Then I put it in the right hand,” he said. “Got it.”

“Then you close the casket,” Mabel Leigh Horton said.

“Close the casket,” Tom Spellacy said. “Right.” He waited. “Then what?”

“Why in seven days the murderer will confess,” Mabel Leigh Horton said. “It’s something we do in Guin.”

“Right.”

“What do you think of that?”

“I think you and my wife would get along good,” Tom Spellacy said.

He checked the teletype in the bullpen, and when he got back to his cubicle, Howard Terkel was standing over his desk, rifling through the photographs of the victim.

“You think there’s a werewolf angle on this one, Tom?”