Hollywood Nocturnes (19 page)

  "Yeah."

  "Ees history. You pay balance now?"

  "My office in two hours, homeboy."

  "Ees bonaroo, homes."

  I hung up and called Waxman's pad; Miller answered on the second ring. "Yes?"

  "Wax, it's Klein."

  His voice spelled it Out plain: he'd heard about the southside holocaust. "Yeah, 'Oh.' Listen, shit-bird, here's the drift. Turkel's dead, and I took out Angel Trejo. I'm at your office and I've been doing some reading. Be here in one hour with a cash settlement."

  Waxman's teeth chattered; I hung up and did some typing: Stan Klein's account of the whole Bendish/Waxman/Turkel/Ottens/Trejo scam--a massive criminal conspiracy to bilk the dog I loved. I included everything but mention of myself and left a nice blank space for Wax to sign his name. Then I waited.

  Fifty minutes later--a knock. I opened the door and let Wax in. His right hand was twitching and there was a bulge under his jacket. He said, "Hello, Klein," and twitched harder; I heard a truck rumble by and shot him point blank in the face.

  Wax keeled over dead, his right eyeball stuck to his law school diploma. I frisked him, relieved him of his piece and twenty large in cash. I found some papers in his desk, studied his signature and forged his name to his confession. I left him on the floor, walked outside and pulled over to the pay phone across the street.

  A taco wagon pulled to the curb; I dropped my quarter, dialed 911 and called in a gunshot tip--anonymous citizen, a quick hangup. Angel Fritz Trejo rang Wax's doorbell, waited, then let himself in. Seconds dragged; lights went on; two black & whites pulled up and four cops ran inside brandishing hardware. Multiple shots--and four cops walked out unharmed.

  *   *   *

          So in the end I made twenty grand and got the dog. The L.A. County Grand Jury bought the deposition, attributed my various dead to Ottens/Turkel/Trejo/Waxman _et al_--all dead themselves, thus unindictable. A superior court judge invalidated Basko's twenty-five mill and divided the swag between Gail Curtiz and Linda Claire Woodruff. Gail got the Bendish mansion--rumor has it that she's turning it into a crash-pad for radical lesbian feminists down on their luck. Linda Claire is going out with a famous rock star--androgynous, but more male than female. She admitted, elliptically, that she tried to "hustle" Gail Curtiz--validating her dyke submissiveness as good old American fortune hunting. Lizzie Trent got her teeth fixed, kicked me off probation and into her bed. I got a job selling cars in Glendale--and Basko comes to work with me every day. His steak and caviar diet have been replaced by Gravy Train--and he looks even groovier and healthier. Lizzie digs Basko and lets him sleep with us. We're talking about combining my twenty grand with her life savings and buying a house, which bodes marriage: my first, her fourth. Lizzie's a blast: she's smart, tender, funny and gives great skull. I love her almost as much as I love Basko.

TORCH NUMBER

          Before Pearl Harbor and the Jap scare, my living room window offered a great night view: Hollywood Boulevard lit with neon, dark hillsides, movie spots crisscrossing the sky announcing the latest opening at Grauman's and the Pantages. Now, three months after the day of infamy--blackouts in effect and squadrons of Jap Zeros half expected any moment--all I could see were building shapes and the cherry lamps of occasional prowl cars. The ten P.M. curfew kept night divorce work off my plate, and blowing my last assignment with Bill Malloy of the D.A.'s Bureau made a special deputy's curfew waiver out of the question. Work was down, bills were up, and my botched surveillance of Maggie Cordova had me thinking of Lorna all the time, wearing the grooves on her recording of "Prison of Love" down to sandpaper.

Prison of Love.

Sky above.

I feel your body like a velvet glove. . . .

          I mixed another rye and soda and started the record over. Through a part in the curtains, I eyeballed the Street; I thought of Lorna and Maggie Cordova until their stories melded.

  Lorna Kafesjian.

  Second-rate bistro chanteuse--first-rate lungs, third-rate club gigs because she insisted on performing her own tunes. I met her when she hired me to rebuff the persistent passes of a rich bull dagger who'd been voyeur perving on her out at Malibu Beach-- Lorna with her swimsuit stripped to the waist, chest exposed for a deep cleavage tan to offset the white gowns she always wore on stage. The dyke was sending Lor a hundred long-stemmed red roses a day, along with mash notes bearing her _nom de plume d'amour_: "Your Tongue of Fire." I kiboshed the pursuit quicksville, glomming the tongue's Vice jacket, shooting the dope to Louella Parsons--a socially connected, prominently married carpet muncher with a yen for nightclub canaries was prime meat for the four-star _Herald_. I told Louella: She desists, you don't publish; she persists, you do. The Tongue and I had a little chat; I strong-armed her nigger bodyguard when he got persistent. Lorna was grateful, wrote me the torch number to torch all torch numbers--and _I_ got persistent.

  The flame burned both ways for about four months--from January to May of '38 I was Mr. Ringside Swain as Lorna gigged the Katydid Klub, Bido Lito's, Malloy's Nest, and a host of dives on the edge of jigtown. Two A.M. closers, then back to her place; long mornings and afternoons in bed, my business neglected, clients left dangling while I lived the title of a Duke Ellington number: "I Got It Bad, and That Ain't Good." Lorna came out of the spell first; she saw that I was willing to trash my life to be with her. That scared her; she pushed me away; I played stage door Johnny until I got disgusted with myself and she blew town for fuck knows where, leaving me a legacy of soft contralto warbles on hot black wax.

  Lorna.

  Lorna to Maggie.

  Maggie happened this way:

  Two weeks ago Malloy co-opted me to the D.A.'s Bureau--the aftermath of the bank job was running helter-skelter, he needed a man good at rolling stakeouts, and a citizens committee had posted extra reward gelt. The B of A on North Broadway and Alpine got knocked off; two shitbirds--caucasians, one with _outré_ facial scars--snuffed three armed guards and got away clean. A score of eyeball witnesses gave descriptions of the robbers, then--blam!-- the next day a witness, a seventy-three-year-old Jap granny set for internment pickup, got plugged--double blam!--as she was walking her pooch to the corner market. LAPD Ballistics compared the slugs to the pills extracted from the stiffs at the bank scene: match-up, straight across.

  Malloy was called in. He developed a theory: One of the eyewitnesses was in on the robbery; the heisters glommed the addresses of the other witnesses and decided to bump them to camouflage their guy. Malloy threw a net around the three remaining witnesses; two square johns named Dan Doherty and Bob Roscomere--working stiffs with no known criminal associates--and Maggie Cordova--a nightclub singer who'd taken two falls for possession and sale of marijuana.

  Maggie C. loomed as the prime suspect: She toked big H and maryjane, was rumored to have financed her way through music school by pulling gang bangs, and played it hardcase during her two-year jolt at Tehachapi. Doherty and Roscomere were put out as bait, not warned of the danger they were in, carrying D.A.'s Bureau tails wherever they went. Malloy figured my still-simmering torch for Lorna K. gave me added insight into the ways of errant songbirds and sent me out to keep loose track of Maggie, hoping she'd draw unfriendly fire if she wasn't the finger woman or lead me to the heisters if she was.

  I found Maggie pronto--a call to a booking agent who owed me--and an hour later I was sipping rye and soda in the lounge of a Gardena pokerino parlor. The woman was a dumpy ash blonde in a spangly gown, long-sleeved, probably to hide her needle tracks. She looked vaguely familiar, like a stag film actress you were hard for in your youth. Her eyes were flat and droopy and her microphone gestures were spastic. She looked like a hophead who'd spent her best years on cloud nine and would never adjust to life on earth.

  I listened to Maggie butcher "I Can't Get Started," "The Way You Look Tonight," and "Blue Moon"; she bumped the mike stand with her crotch and nobody whistled. She sang "Serenade in Blue" off-key and a clown a couple of tables over threw a handful of martini olives at her. She flipped the audience the finger, got a round of applause, and belted the beginning of "Prison of Love."

  I sat there, transfixed. I closed my eyes and pretended it was Lorna. I forced myself not to wonder how this pathetic no-talent dopester got hold of a song written exclusively for me. Maggie sang her way through all five verses, the material almost transforming her voice into something good. I was ripping off Lorna's snow-white gown and plunging myself into her when the music stopped and the lights went on.

  And Maggie was ixnay, splitsville, off to Gone City. I tried her dressing room, the bar, the casino. I got her vehicle stats from the DMV and got nowhere with them. I slapped around a croupier with a junkie look, got Maggie's address, and found her dump cleaned out lock, stock, and barrel. I became a pistol-whipping, rabbit-punching, brass knuckle-wielding dervish then, tearing up the Gardena Strip. I got a half decent lead on a ginch Maggie used to whore with; the woman got me jacked on laudanum, picked my pocket, and left me in Gone City, ripe prey for a set of strong-arm bulls from the Gardena PD. When I came off cloud ten in a pukesmelling drunk tank, Bill Malloy was standing over me with glad tidings: I'd been charged with six counts of aggravated assault, one count of felonious battery, and two counts of breaking and entering. Maggie Cordova was nowhere to be found; the other eyewitnesses were in protective custody. Bill himself was off the bank job, on temporary assignment to the Alien Squad, set to rustle Japs, the big cattle drive that wouldn't end until Uncle Sam gave Hirohito the big one where it hurt the most. My services were no longer required by the D.A.'s office, and my night curfew waiver was revoked until somebody figured a way to chill out the nine felony charges accumulated against me...

  I heard a knock at the door, looked out the window and saw a prowl car at the curb, red lights blinking. I took my time turning on lamps, wondering if it was warrants and handcuffs or maybe somebody who wanted to talk dealsky. More knocks--a familiar cadence. Bill Malloy at midnight.

  I opened the door. Malloy was backstopped by a muscle cop who looked like a refugee from the wrong side of a Mississippi chain gang: big ears, blond flattop, pig eyes, and a too-small suitcoat framing the kind of body you expect to see on convicts who haul cotton bales all day. Bill said, "You want out of your grief, Hearns? I came to give you an out."

  I pointed to the man-monster. "Expecting trouble you can't handle?"

  "Policemen come in pairs. Easier to give trouble, easier to avoid it. Sergeant Jenks, Mr. Hearns."

  The big man nodded; an Adam's apple the size of a baseball bobbed up and down. Bill Malloy stepped inside and said, "If you want those charges dropped and your curfew waiver back, raise your right hand."

  I did it. Sergeant Jenks closed the door behind him and read from a little card he'd pulled from his pocket. "Do you, Spade Hearns, promise to uphold the laws of the United States Government pertaining to executive order number nine-oh-fivefive and obey all other federal and municipal statutes while temporarily serving as an internment agent?"

  I said "Yeah."

  Bill handed me a fresh curfew pass and an LAPD rap sheet with a mugshot strip attached. "Robert no middle name Murikami. He's a lamster Jap, he's a youth gang member, he did a deuce for B and E and when last seen he was passing out antiAmerican leaflets. We've got his known associates on this sheet, last known address, the magilla. We're swamped and taking in semipros like you to help. Usually we pay fifteen dollars a day, but you're in no position to demand a salary."

  I took the sheet and scanned the mugshots. Robert NMN Murikami was a stolid-looking youth--a samurai in a skivvy shirt and duck's ass haircut. I said, "If this kid's so wicked, why are you giving me the job?"

  Jenks bored into me with his little pig eyes; Bill smiled. "I trust you not to make the same mistake twice."

  I sighed. "What's the punch line?"

  "The punch line is that this punk is pals with Maggie Cordova--we got complete paper on him, including his bail reports. The Cordova cooze put up the jack for Tojo's last juvie beef. Get him, Hearns. All will be forgiven and maybe you'll get to roll in the gutter with another second-rate saloon girl."

  *   *   *

          I settled in to read the junior kamikaze's rap sheet. There wasn't much: the names and addresses of a half dozen Jap cohorts-- tough boys probably doing the Manzanar shuffle by now--carbons of the kid's arrest reports, and letters to the judge who presided over the B&E trial that netted Murikami his two-spot at Preston. If you read between the lines, you could see a metamorphosis: Little Tojo started out as a pad prowler out for cash and a few sniffs of ladies' undergarments and ended up a juvie gang honcho: zoot suits, chains and knives, boogie-woogie rituals with his fellow members of the "Rising Sons." At the bottom of the rap sheet there was a house key attached to the page with Scotch tape, an address printed beside it: 1746¼, North Avenue 46, Lincoln Heights. I pocketed the key and drove there, thinking of a Maggie-to-Lorna reunion parlay--cool silk sheets and a sleek tanned body soundtracked by the torch song supreme.

  *   *   *

          The address turned out to be a subdivided house on a terraced hillside overlooking the Lucky Lager Brewery. The drive over was eerie: Streetlights and traffic signals were the only illumination and Lorna was all but there with me in the car, murmuring what she'd give me if I took down slant Bobby. I parked at the curb and climbed up the front steps, counting numbers embossed on doorways: 1744, 1744V2, 1746, 1746Y2. 1746¼ materialized; I fumbled the key toward the lock. Then I saw a narrow strip of light through the adjoining window--the unmistakable glint of a pen flash probing. I pulled my gun, _eased_ the key in the hole, watched the light flutter back toward the rear of the pad, and opened the door slower than slow.

  No movement inside, no light coming toward me. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," echoed from a back room; a switch dropped and big light took over. And there was my target: a tall, skinny man bending over a chest of drawers, a penflash clamped in his teeth.

  I let him start rifling, then tiptoed over. When he had both hands braced on the dresser and his legs spread, I gave him the Big Fungoo.

  I hooked his left leg back; Prowler collapsed on the dresser, penflash cracking teeth as his head hit the wall. I swung him around, shot him a pistol butt blow to the gut, caught a flailing right hand, jammed the fingers into the top drawer space, slammed the drawer shut, and held it there with my knee until I heard fingers cracking. Prowler screamed; I found a pair of jockey shorts on the counter, shoved them in his mouth, and kept applying pressure with my knee. More bone crack; amputation coming up. I eased off and let the man collapse on his knees.

  The shitbird was stone cold out. I kicked him in the face to keep him that way, turned on the wall light, and prowled myself.

  It was just a crummy bedroom, but the interior decorating was _très outré_: Jap nationalist posters on the walls--racy shit that showed Jap Zeros buzz-bombing a girl's dormitory, buxom white gash in peignoirs running in terror. The one table held a stack of Maggie Cordova phonograph records--Maggie scantily attired on the jackets, stretch marks, flab, and chipped nail polish on display. I examined them up close--no record company was listed. They were obvious vanity jobs--fat Maggie preserving her own sad warbles.

  Shitbird was stirring; I kicked him in the noggin again and trashed the place upside down. I got:

  A stash of women's undies, no doubt Bad Bob's B&E booty; a stash of _his_ clothes; assorted switchblades, dildoes, french ticklers, tracts explaining that a Jew-Communist conspiracy was out to destroy the world of true peace the German and Japanese brotherhood had sought to establish through peaceful means and--under the mattress--seventeen bankbooks: various banks, the accounts fat with cash, lots of juicy recent deposits.

  It was time to make Shitbird sing. I gave him a waistband frisk, pulling out a .45 auto, handcuffs, and--mother dog!--an L.A. sheriff's badge and I.D. holder. Shitbird's real monicker was Deputy Walter T. Koenig, currently on loan to the County Alien Squad.

  That got me thinking. I found the kitchen, grabbed a quart of beer from the icebox, came back and gave Deputy Bird an eyeopener--Lucky Lager on the _cabeza_. Koenig sputtered and spat out his gag; I squatted beside him and leveled my gun at his nose. "No dealsky, no tickee, no washee. Tell me about Murikami and the bankbooks or I'll kill you."

  Koenig spat blood; his foggy eyes honed in on my roscoe. He licked beer off his lips; I could tell his foggy brain was trying to unfog an angle. I cocked my .38 for emphasis. "Talk, Shitbird."