Because the Night (19 page)

“My shrink doesn't have a couch. He's too hip.”

“That's a strange thing to call a psychiatrist.”

“All right. Hip translates to brilliant, concerned, dedicated, and brutally honest.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“No. He's not my type. Look, this conversation is getting a little weird and a bit far afield. You
are
a cop, aren't you? That wasn't a dime-store badge you showed me, or anything like that, was it?”

Lloyd saw a large stack of newspapers lying on top of a coffee table an arm's length away. He pointed to them and said, “If you've got Tuesday's
Times,
look at the second page. ‘Shootout at Beverly Hills Nightclub.'”

Linda went to the table and leafed through the papers, then read the article standing up. When she turned around to face Lloyd, he had his badge and I.D. card extended. Linda took the leatherette holder and examined it, then smiled from ear to ear. “So you're Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins and one of those pictures is the unidentified homicide suspect you shot it out with. Very impressive. But what do Stan Rudolph and I have to do with it?”

Lloyd mulled the question over as Linda sat back down without relinquishing the I.D. holder. Deciding on an abridged version of the truth, he said, “An informant told me that Thomas Goff, my previously ‘unidentified homicide suspect,' sold Stanley Rudolph some art objects, aided by a still unidentified partner. I came across Rudolph's address book and noticed the names of several call girls I'd busted years ago. I also noticed your name, and concluded that since the only other women in the book were in the Life, you had to be also. I needed an outside lever to pry some information out of Rudolph, and since the other women probably still hate me for busting them, I decided on you.”

Linda handed the I.D. holder back. “Are you that fucking brash?”

Lloyd smiled. “Yes,” he said.

“Why don't you just question Stan baby yourself?”

“Because he'd probably want an attorney present. Because any admission of knowing Goff is an implicit admission of receiving stolen goods, accessory to first degree burglary and criminal conspiracy. What kind of man is Rudolph?”

“A pathetic little nerd who gets his rocks off taking nude pictures. A loud-mouthed buffoon. What specifically did this guy Goff do?”

“He's murdered at least three people.”

Linda went pale. “Jesus. And you want me to pry information about him out of Stan baby?”

“Yes. And about his partner, who I'm certain is left-handed. Does Rudolph ever talk about his art collection and how he accquired it?”

Linda tapped Lloyd's arm and said, “Yes. His art collection is his favorite topic of conversation. It's all tied in to his sex M.O. He's told me a dozen times that he buys his stuff from rip-off guys. That's as specific as he gets. He used to have nude photographs of me on his bedroom walls, but he took them down because he was expecting some more Colombian statues. I haven't tricked with him in six weeks or so, so maybe he and Goff got together recently.”

Lloyd thought of the rectangular patches on Rudolph's bedroom wall, imagining the nude Linda he could have seen had he pulled his B & E a few months before. “Linda, do you think you—”

Linda Wilhite silenced him with a breathtaking coconspirator's smile. “Yes. I'll call Stan baby and set up a date, hopefully for tonight. Call me around one
A.M.
, and don't worry, I'll be very cool.”

Lloyd's conspiratorial smile felt like a blush. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure. You were right, you know. I did enter therapy for a reason.”

“What was it?”

“I want to quit the Life.”

“Then I was right on two counts.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you you were no hooker.”

Lloyd got up and walked out of the apartment, letting his exit line linger.

With the Stanley Rudolph angle covered, Lloyd remembered an investigatory approach so rudimentary that he knew its very simplicity was the reason he had forgotten to explore it. Cursing himself for his oversight, he drove to a pay phone and called Dutch Peltz at the Hollywood Station, asking him to go across the street to the Hollywood Municipal Court and secure a subpoena for Jack Herzog's bank records. Dutch agreed to the errand, on the proviso that Lloyd fill him in at length on the case when he came by the station to pick up the paperwork. Lloyd agreed in return and drove to Herzog's apartment house in the Valley, thinking of Linda Wilhite all the way.

At Herzog's building, Lloyd went straight to the manager's apartment, flashed his badge, and asked him what bank the missing officer's rent checks were drawn on. Without hesitation, the frail old man said, “Security-Pacific, Encino branch,” then launched into a spiel on how other officers had been by the previous day and had sealed the nice Mr. Herzog's nice apartment.

After thanking the manager, Lloyd drove back over the Cahuenga Pass to the Hollywood Station. He found Dutch Peltz in his office, muttering, “Yes, yes,” into the telephone. Dutch looked up, drew a finger across his throat and whispered, “I.A.D.” Lloyd took a chair across from him and put his feet up on the desk. Dutch muttered, “Yes, Fred, I'll tell him,” and hung up. He turned to Lloyd and said, “Good news and bad news. Which would you prefer first?”

“Take your pick,” Lloyd said.

Dutch smiled and poked Lloyd's crossed ankles with a pencil. “The good news is that Judge Bitowf issued your subpoena with no questions asked. Wasn't that nice of him?”

Lloyd took in Dutch's grin and raised his feet as if to kick his precious quartz bookend off the desk. “Tell me what Fred Gaffaney had to say. Omit nothing.”

“More good news and bad news,” Dutch said. “The good news is that
I
am your official liaison to I.A.D. on all matters pertaining to the Goff-Herzog case. The bad news is that Gaffaney just reiterated in the strongest possible language that you are to go nowhere near the officers working the moonlight gigs or go near the firms themselves. Gaffaney is preparing an approach strategy, and he and his top men will be conducting interviews within a few days.
I
will be given Xeroxes of their reports,
you
can get copies from me. Gaffaney also stated that if you violate these orders, you will be suspended immediately and given a trial board. You like it?”

Lloyd reached over and patted the bookend. “No, I don't like it. But you do.”

Dutch flashed a shark grin. “I like anything that keeps you reasonably restrained and thereby a continued member of the Los Angeles Police Department. I would hate to see you get shitcanned and go on welfare. You'd be drinking T-bird and sleeping in the weeds within six months.”

Lloyd stood up and grabbed the subpoena off Dutch's desk. He laid the notebook containing the names from Stanley Rudolph's address book in its place and said, “I know why you're acting so sardonic, Dutchman. You had a martini with your lunch. You have one drink a year, and your low tolerance gets you plowed. I'm a detective. You can't fool me.”

Dutch laughed. “Fuck you. What's with this notebook and where do you think you're going? You were going to fill me in on the case, remember?”

Lloyd took a playful jab at the bookend. “Fuck you twice. I don't confide in alcoholics. Have one of your minions run those names through R. & I., will you?”

“I'll think about it. Hey Lloydy, how come you took my bad news so easy? I expected you to throw something.”

Lloyd tried to imitate Dutch's shark grin, but knew immediately that it came out a blush. “I think I'm in love,” he said.

Lloyd drove back to the Valley, highballing it northbound on the Ventura Freeway in order to hit the Encino branch of the Security-Pacific Bank before closing time, making it with two minutes to spare. He showed his I.D. and the subpoena to the manager, a middle-aged Japanese man who led him to the privacy of a safe deposit box examination room, returning five minutes later with a computer printout and a thick transaction file. Bowing, the manager closed the door, leaving Lloyd in impeccable silence.

That silence soon became inhabited by dates and figures that detailed an atypical cop life. Jack Herzog's savings and checking accounts went back five years. Lloyd started at the beginning of the transaction file and waded through paychecks deposited twice monthly, rent checks drawn monthly and savings stipends deposited every third L.A. City pay period. Jack Herzog was a frugal man. There were no large withdrawals indicating spending sprees; no checks for amounts exceeding his monthly rent payment of $350.00, and out of every third paycheck he deposited $300.00 in a 7½% growth savings account. When Herzog opened his dual accounts in 1979, his total balance was less than six hundred dollars. At the transaction file's last entry date four months before, he was worth $17,913.49.

Noting that the last entry was on 1/4/84, Lloyd turned to the computer sheet, hoping it contained facts updating Herzog's two accounts to the present.

It did. The same deposit/check withdrawal motif continued, this time detailed in hard-to-read computer type. Lloyd was about to shake his head at the sadness of close to nineteen grand belonging to a dead man when the final transaction came into focus, grabbing him by the throat.

On March 20, around the time of his disappearance, Jack Herzog closed out both his accounts and purchased an interbranch bank draft for his total balance of $18,641.07. There was a photocopy of the draft clipped to the computer sheet. It stated that the above amount was to be transferred to the West Hollywood branch of Security-Pacific, to the savings account of Martin D. Bergen. Lloyd let the facts sink in, then walked slowly out of the examination room and through the bank proper, bowing to the bank manager and running as soon as he hit the sidewalk.

By speeding through the Hollywood Hills, Lloyd was able to reach the
Big Orange Insider
office in just under half an hour. The same receptionist gave him the same startled look as he pushed through the connecting door to the editorial department, and seconds later the young man he had tangled with on his previous visit attempted to block his progress by standing in his path with his legs dug in like a linebacker. “I told you before you can't come back here,” he said.

Lloyd took a bead on his head, then caught himself. “Marty Bergen,” he said. “Official police business. Go get him.”

The young man wrapped his arms around his chest. “Marty is on vacation. Leave now.”

Lloyd took the bank subpoena from his pocket and rolled it up, then tickled the underside of the young man's chin with the end. When he jerked backward, Lloyd said, “This is a court order to search Bergen's desk. If you don't comply with it, I'll get an order to search the entire premises. Do you dig me, Daddy-o?”

Turning beet red, then pale, the youth flung an arm toward the back of the room. “The last desk against the wall. And let me see that court order.”

Lloyd handed the subpoena over and weaved through a crammed maze of desks, ignoring the stares of the people sitting at them. Bergen's desk was covered with a pile of papers. Lloyd leafed through them, pushing the stack aside with he saw that every page contained notes scrawled in an indecipherable shorthand. He was about to go through the drawers when a woman's voice interrupted him. “Officer, is Marty all right?”

Lloyd turned around. A tall black woman wearing an ink-stained printer's smock was standing beside the desk, holding a long roll of tabloid galley paper. “Is Marty
all right
?” she repeated.

“No,” Lloyd said. “I don't think so. Why do you ask? You sound concerned.”

The woman fretted the roll in her hands. “He's been gone since the last time you were here,” she said. “He hasn't been at his apartment and nobody from the
Orange
has seen him. And right before he took off he grabbed all his columns for the following week, except one. I'm the head typesetter, and I needed to set those issues. Marty really screwed the
Orange,
and that's not like him.”

“Has he taken off like this before?”

The women shook her head. “No! I mean sometimes he rents a motel room and goes on a toot, but he always leaves copies of his column for the time he expects to be gone. This time was
weird
because he took
back
his columns, and
they
were really
weird
to begin with.”

Lloyd motioned the woman to sit down. “Tell me about those columns,” he said. “Try to remember everything you can.”

“They
were just weird,
” the woman said slowly. “One was called ‘Moonlight Malfeasance.' It was about these bigshot L.A. cops who had these figurehead jobs bossing around all these low-life rent-a-cops.
Weird.
The other columns were off-shoots on that one, about the L.A.P.D. manipulating the media, because they got all the inside dirt from the moonlight cops.
Weird.
I mean the
Orange's
meat is it's anti-fuzz policy, but this stuff was
weird,
even for Marty Bergen, who was a lovable dude, but
weird
himself.”

Lloyd felt fragments of his case burst into a strange new light:
Marty Bergen had seen the missing L.A.P.D. Personnel files.
Swallowing to hold his voice steady, he said, “You told me that Bergen let you keep one of the columns. Have you still got it?”

The woman nodded and rolled out her galley sheet on the desk. “Marty gave real specific instructions on how to set it,” she said. “He said it had to have a heavy black border and that it had to run on May the third, because that was the birthday of this buddy of his.
Weird
.” She located the section and jabbed it with her finger. “There. Read it for yourself.”

The black-bordered piece was entitled “Night Train to the Big Nowhere.” Lloyd read it over three times, feeling his case move from its strange new light into a stranger darkness.