The Glitter Dome (31 page)

She didn't seem particularly surprised to find two detectives with Peggy at her door. She said she'd been expecting it one of these days, and didn't seem to believe their story that Peggy had been picked up by some patrol officers because of a jaywalking offense and was discovered to have marijuana in her purse.

“I'll talk to the officers privately,” she said to Peggy Farrell. “Go to bed.”

And the girl immediately obeyed the mother she'd never had.

Martin Welborn had no doubt that Peggy Farrell would usually obey this imposing woman. But Lorna Dillon sometimes had to be on location and was gone for days at a time, and it must be then that Peggy Farrell got sick and tired of the neat little home and neat little garden and the peace and tranquility of the canyon and returned to the old haunts on the Strip, and the chance for not-so-easy money.

Lorna Dillon was not butch, but her voice was deep and her arms and legs were nearly twice the size of Al Mackey's. She wore tennis shorts and a T-shirt and was obviously a jock. Al Mackey later said she looked like a younger Magnani: all woman, but by no means weaker than
anybody
.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

“No thanks,” Martin Welborn said.

“What happened? She get caught hustling johns?”

Martin Welborn nodded. “I don't think it was all her fault.”

“It never is,” Lorna Dillon said. “She could live a decent life here.”

Martin Welborn said, “Ms. Dillon, could you tell us how much you know about this offer Peggy got to make the film?”

“Not much,” she shrugged. “Did she tell you about the men up in Trousdale?”

“Yes.”

“It's obviously kiddy porn, wouldn't you think?”

“But she's not a
kiddy
in that sense,” Al Mackey said.

“Oh, I don't know. How much kiddy porn have you seen, Sergeant?”

“None,” Al Mackey admitted.

“How about you, Sergeant Welborn?”

“None.”

“Well, I'm in the movie business, so I've seen lots of things in the past twenty-five years. They could take a kid like Peggy and make her look twelve, thirteen. But I suspect they'd spice up their little film with some
real
toddlers, ten years old and
younger
. Pedophiles have a saying: ‘Eight is too late.' ”

“What makes you think that this is what they were up to?”

“They went to some trouble to interview Peggy. They offered her three thousand dollars for three days. And they're going to Mexico? This makes it a big production as far as garbage goes. They could shoot their stuff a lot cheaper right here in Los Angeles with a cast of young adult porn actors if it was
legal
porn. They have to be going for the real toddler stuff. Or …”

“Or what?”

“Animals. The only thing that's illegal in porn is to use minors under eighteen, or animals. It could have been an animal show in Mexico. Dogs, donkeys, that sort of thing. Have you ever seen a young girl screwing a German shepherd? Or how about a six-year-old child, sedated, but still suffering enough pain to jerk her head back in agony when she's penetrated by a full-grown man?”

“No, I can't say that I've seen any of that,” Martin Welborn said.

“We don't work vice,” Al Mackey said. “Just nice clean homicides. Usually.”

“Homicide? Then what're you doing with Peggy? I thought you were vice cops.”

“We're working on the Nigel St. Claire murder case,” Martin Welborn said. “She had the telephone number of St. Claire's studio. Some other people did too. We're just grasping at straws.”

“Sapphire Productions.” Lorna Dillon nodded. “Sounds like one of those here-today, gone-forever little companies that move on and off the lots. I made her promise to forget that job.”

“Yes, she told us.”

“Did she tell you that she and I are …”

“Yes,” Martin Welborn said.

“Is there anything
else
you need to know?”

Al Mackey said, “Being in the business, would you be able to guess who they might be? The man Lloyd in the black Bentley? The man who called himself Mister Silver in Trousdale?”

“The filthy vermin who make those kinds of films? We're
not
in the same business at all. I'm afraid I wouldn't know, gentlemen. Is that all?”

When she stood up she was nearly as tall as the detectives and shook hands with a tennis grip. Al Mackey figured
she
could give a massage with those hands.

The detectives drove to Nigel St. Claire's studio and ended the day at Sapphire Productions. Which boasted no sapphire and no productions.

“I'm between shows,” they were told by Ellis Goodman, who
was
Sapphire Productions. He didn't even have a secretary. He had a desk, a chair, a sofa, a coffee table. Lots of copies of
Daily Variety
and
The Hollywood Reporter
were lying around. He had a telephone with no extension, and that was
it
, except for a beat-up refrigerator he had bought for thirty bucks from a movie company next door which had just gone out of business.

He was nearly seventy years of age but had frenetic darting eyes which made him seem younger. His hair was dyed black but the roots were showing. If tiny actors didn't buy their wardrobes from production companies, Ellis Goodman did. There just weren't as many tiny actors these days, so his maroon blazer hung on him like a cloak. Alterations didn't come with the wardrobe. And he was “between shows.”

“Look, I don't really know this guy Lloyd!” he said. “Sure he gets people to call here, sure! But I don't really
know
him! What did he do, anyway?”

“Nothing illegal that we know of,” Martin Welborn said. “We'd just like to talk to him.”

He sat down behind the desk and said, “You wanna drink? I don't know whether cops drink on duty in real life or not? I don't know nothing outside a the movies. Been in the business forty-eight years.”

“We drink outside the movies,” Al Mackey said.

He hardly had the words out before Ellis Goodman ran to the trashed and paint-sprayed refrigerator that had obviously been used on a movie set for “atmosphere.” Inside the refrigerator was half a bottle of orange juice, two bottles of Perrier, one lemon, two cans of beer, and a box of animal crackers.

“What'll ya have? Beer?” Ellis Goodman asked hopefully, holding up the two cans.

While the detectives drank their beer, Ellis Goodman nervously said, “Whatever Lloyd did, I don't know
nothing
about it. I only know movies. I been a production manager, assistant producer, associate producer, producer, and executive producer on seventy-three movies in my time. Seventy-three! That Lloyd was bad news. I never shoulda let him talk me into helping him out. What'd he do?”

“How did you help him out?” Al Mackey asked.

“Letting him use my phone number. An answering service, I was! Dumb! Dumb! You do dumb things, you're between shows and need a few bucks.”

“Where did you meet him?” Martin Welborn asked.

“Lloyd?”

“Yeah, Lloyd,” Al Mackey said.

“Let's see, Lloyd. Oh yeah, I met him at that little joint just outside the main gate. Everybody eats there. I figured he worked on the lot.”

“Who introduced you?”

“Nobody. He asked me if he could share my table. I was alone. We talked.”

“About what?”

“Nothing. Baseball. Politics. And movies. That's when he laid his trip on me.”

“What trip is that?”

“He said he would love to pretend he was a movie producer and be able to have some friends call a big studio like this one and ask for a production company. I said, that's nice, and then he says he'd just like to be able to do this for a few weeks and would I be interested in playing let's-pretend-Lloyd's-a-producer for five hundred bucks?”

“And you said yes?”

“I said no. What the hell, I says. You wanna impress some friends, buy them flowers.”

“Then what?”

“Then he says somebody told him I was between shows and he'd give me a thousand bucks if I just took calls for him for three weeks. Maybe ten calls, no more. And tell the callers that Lloyd would meet them when and wherever they said.”

“And then you'd call Lloyd?” Al Mackey asked.

“No way,” Ellis Goodman said, with a tic starting to pull at his mouth. “No way. Whatever he done, I don't wanna know. And I don't wanna know
him
. He'd call me as late as seven o'clock in the evening cause that's when I leave. Movie people come in late but we stay late. We work long hours in The Business, I can tell you. It ain't all bouquets and blow jobs, like you probably think.”

“And you'd give him his messages,” Martin Welborn said.

“That's right. Some callers were boys, some were girls. You could tell they were all young people. And then I guess he could tell them he was a big-shot movie producer with Sapphire Productions and give them a number of a major studio, and like that. And that's all I know, fellas, and I gotta go home now.”

“Did you ever see him with anyone else?” Al Mackey asked, as Ellis Goodman opened the door for the detectives.

“Nope. I just saw him that time at the restaurant and once again when he had me meet him out on the street by the front gate when he gave me the thousand in cash.”

“Did you see his car?”

“Yeah. He drove a black Bentley.”

“Did you know Nigel St. Claire?” Martin Welborn asked.

“Sure, everybody knew Nigel. If they been around The Business long as me.”

“Did you see him socially?”

“Naw, once in a while I'd run into him on the lot. I worked on lots a pictures a his over the years.”

“Did he know you were between shows?”

“
Everybody
knows I'm between shows,” Ellis Goodman sighed.

As Ellis Goodman was locking the door and the detectives walked to their car parked in front of Sapphire Productions, Martin Welborn turned and said, “Do you have any idea why Lloyd would pay one thousand dollars to play producer?”

“Of course I know!” Ellis Goodman said.

“Why?”

“Blow jobs! What else?
Blow jobs!
”

15

The Screaming Cowbirds

The rest of the week was slogging through it, the ultimate test of any detective being endurance. They learned that there were more than three hundred homes in Trousdale Estates and that half of the residents didn't know the names of the property owner next door, let alone who might be leasing or renting at any given time. And, being part of the show business “beaten track,” as the realtor called it, property often changed hands every time someone was “between shows.” It was a transient life on the beaten track and their real property was lost like their chips at Caesar's Palace.

The Bentley search was also petering out. The California Department of Motor Vehicles did not have the capability to supply computer runs by make of car. They'd checked virtually every leasing agency in metropolitan Los Angeles which might lease such an expensive car, with not a single lead to follow up. Just Plain Bill Bozwell, a.k.a. Lloyd the Producer, was possibly borrowing someone's car. Perhaps the car and house belonged together, Martin Welborn reasoned.

Schultz and Simon had renewed interest in the case and offered to handle the everyday cuttings, shootings and sluggings for Martin Welborn and Al Mackey, to free them for the Nigel St. Claire investigation.

The Ferret, bonzo over the fantasy of finding the Vietnamese partner of Just Plain Bill, had leaped into the case with both motorcycle boots, and drawn the Weasel with him. He could recite from memory every piece of information on Bill Bozwell from L.A.P.D. records, the F.B.I., C.I.I., and even what he had learned from the U.S. Army.

Bill Bozwell had been arrested nine times, twice in Los Angeles County and seven times in Orange County, where he was born and raised. All arrests came after his return from Vietnam in 1971. He was thirty-four years old, and had served a total of two years and ten months behind jail and prison walls. His specialty was armed robbery and extortion but he was also an occasional hash dealer and once he had been caught inside a two-million-dollar home in Newport Beach, stealing gold coins and jade sculpture. He had no known accomplices, and was regarded as a loner, both in prison and out.

During the last three arrests he listed his occupation as actor, but his name was unknown at any of the local guilds. His mug shots were downtown at Parker Center awaiting an examination by the L.A.P.D.'s foremost expert on pornography who was returning from vacation next Monday. He would determine if Bill Bozwell was an “actor” he had seen in the voluminous porn material the Department had confiscated in recent years.

In short, Just Plain Bill was a hoodlum, with a tendency toward violent crime when profitable. And even if they knew where to find him while he was out on bail, it was virtually certain that, if he agreed to talk to them about his life as Lloyd the producer, his reason for it would probably be that put forth by Ellis Goodman—blow jobs.

Martin Welborn said if there was a connection between Bill Bozwell and the Nigel St. Claire murder case, it might be in that house in Trousdale Estates, if they could only find it. Al Mackey said the hell with Just Plain Bill and the house in Trousdale Estates and the Nigel St. Claire murder case because tomorrow night was the party.

“What party?” Martin Welborn asked.

“Kee-rist, Marty.
The
party. Herman St. Claire invited us to a party.”

“Oh,
that
party,” Martin Welborn said.

“Yeah,
that
party! You mean you're not going?”

“I hadn't planned to.”

“You what? A real show-biz, honest-to-God, A-rated Hollywood party? The kind where all the girls look like those sultry animals on the Bain de Soleil television commercials? The kind where they look at your hundred-ninety-dollar Gucci loafers and say, ‘Glad you came casual, honey.'
That
kind a party!”