James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (17 page)

Scotty loomed. They stood in the latent-prints room. Crutch was hand-checking print cards. He'd been at it two months.

“Run this by me again. You saw a girl at Woody's Smorgasburger. She drank a 7UP and left her prints on a glass, and you've been trying to ascertain her identity ever since.”

Crutch blushed. “Right. I've been on a job for Clyde, and I've been ducking over here whenever I get a chance.”

Scotty roared—kid, you slay me. He tucked a ten-spot in Crutch's pocket. He adjusted his tie and rubbed his crew cut.

“I'm forty-seven, you're twenty-three. I'm a policeman, you're not. Lose the tie and let your hair grow. You may get some.”

The ten-spot dangled there. Scotty said, “Call Laurel. Webster-64882. Tell her I said to be kind.”

Crutch re-blushed. Scotty winked and waltzed to the Robbery pen. Print cards jumped up and yelled
Study me!

Back to work.

Lay out the photo blowup. Grab the magnifying glass. Lay out the next print card and notch comparison points. He had the rent-a-car print memorized. He knew every loop and whorl. He'd been through six zillion print cards since June 21.

He studied, he tossed cards, he yawned, he stretched, he blinked. Eyestrain goo pooled on his eyeballs. He hit a fast stretch—a card a minute and—

Then:

A fresh card. Familiar loops and whorls. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 comparison points—a courtroom-valid tally.

Crutch studied the card and the blowup. He wiped his eyes, he squinted, he
looked
. 11, 12, 13, 14—a perfect match.

He turned the card over. He read the stats:

“Klein, Joan Rosen/WF/DOB 10/31/26, New York City. 5′4″, 120, brown eyes/dark brown & gray hair. Distinguishing marks: Knife scar on upper right arm.”

Her, she, that woman. She had a name: JOAN
.

She was forty-one. She was born on Halloween. Her rap sheet looked like a partial. Crutch saw arrests and no convictions. Commie beefs. Alien and Sedition Act violations, back to '44. Two armed robbery busts—'51, '53—no D.R. numbers for conviction.

Commie beefs. Heists. No attached mug shots. Crutch ran to the photo lab—

His new file room was cramped already. File boxes, file stacks, the big wall graph. He had two pads in one city. He slept in them both. He kept his mother's file at the Vivian Apartments. He kept his case file at the Elm Hotel. He kept hot-plate chow and shaving gear at both locations.

Crutch split to the Elm. The graph drew him first thing. He'd Scotch-taped masking paper up at eye level. He doodled on it. He drew lines and arrows and wrote daily progress and summary reports.

He got out his grease pen and found a fresh spot. He wrote “Joan” and circled it. He drew some arrows with black feathers and sharp little points, leading to:

“Farlan Brown leads going nowhere to (8/10/68) date. Brown meet at Golden Cavern (8/23/68). F.T. to wire suite.”

“Gretchen Farr/Celia Reyes: all records checks negative to (8/10/68) date.”

“ ‘Grapevine,' ‘Tommy' & ‘plant': what do they mean?”

“Tattoo ID, wall markings & powder on body parts: no make as of this (8/10/68) date.”

“Bootleg phone #: phone co. trace in progress.”

Crutch scanned the graph. Crutch drew arrows pointing to “Joan.” Crutch circled the name with big question marks.

He flopped on the bed. He studied the photo-lab pix. A single mug-shot strip. One full-face shot, two profiles. Joan Rosen Klein wearing a neck board.

The board numbers supplied a date: 7/12/63. He knew the booking-number prefix. It meant “detained for suspicion.” That probably meant a street roust or wrong-place-at-wrong-time grief. Joan was a Commie and a two-time robbery suspect—she'd attract heat.

She was thirty-six then. She looked the same now. She wore glasses. She smiled into flashbulb glare. That near-black hair with the gray streaks. That wide and harsh jawline. That composed set to her face.

Crutch shut his eyes, opened his eyes and studied the pictures again. He saw gray streaks that he'd missed the first bunch of times.

The bed was covered with library books. He'd checked them out post-Miami. They covered one topic: Cuba.

He kept in touch with Jean-Philippe Mesplede. The Frogman was his friend now. They talked long-distance, L.A. to Miami. The Frogman liked him. The Frogman thought he was a punk kid in over his head and refused to take his case seriously. Fuck him on that—let him think it. The Frogman thought it was just a thieving-girlfriend caper. Crutch held back the wild-ass dimensions.

Wayne Tedrow Jr. wanted Donald Linscott Crutchfield dead, but Jean-Philippe Mesplede relented. The Frogman called Wayne Junior “unstable and politically suspect.” Wayne Junior sustained right-wing alliances and suppressed his left-wing tendencies. Froggy could not commit murder for such a compromised man.

So Crutch got to live and work his case and magnetize all his magical shit.

Their phone calls were all Cuba. A gorgeous island. A tourist mecca. A paradise raped by the Reds. Jack Kennedy betrayed the Bay of Pigs invasion. LBJ appeased Castro. The next prez would ditto his rat-fink policies. The Frogman raged to ravage Reds and reclaim the Caribbean cornucopia. White sands. Swank casinos “nationalized” and turned to Third World troughs. Brown women in pink bikinis.

Crutch skimmed library books and ripped out key photos. Dig it: Fulgencio Batista draped all over Jane Russell. Dig it: the roof pool at the Capri. Dig it: peons pulling fat cats in rickshaws.

He taped the pix to the wall. He ripped out a pic of Fidel Castro fomenting. The Frogman called Castro “The Beard.” His facial hair harbored nests of Red lice.

Crutch taped the Castro pic to the wall and tossed his pocketknife at it. He nailed The Beard four times out of six. The picture started to shred.

The phone rang. Crutch jugged the receiver and caught it. He said, “¿
Hola
? ¿
Qué tal
?” The caller went, “Huh?”

The knife fell off the wall. Fidel was now
mucho
tattered. The caller said, “It's Larry from P.C. Bell. Buzz Duber said I should call you. I got a trace on that bootleg number.”

Crutch grabbed his scratch pad. “Shoot.”

“It's a house on Carmina Perdido in Santa Barbara. The renter's name is Sam Flood. That's all I've got.”

It was plenty. “Sam Flood” was Sam Giancana's squarejohn name. Clyde told him that.
Sam G. called Gretchen/Celia at Bev's Switchboard
.

Larry blathered—Hey, fool, where's my bread? Crutch hung up and wrote “Bootleg #/Giancana” on his wall graph.

The words vibrated. Crutch drew little question marks around them. He got the urge to draw Joan. He taped her mug-shot strip to the graph paper and cut loose with paper and pen.

He got her hardness and her softness in alternating portraits. He never got the full her in one take. He gave her different hairdos. He de-swirled and re-swirled the lovely gray streaks every time.

(Las Vegas, 8/19/68)

T
he service was brief. The minister rushed. Storm clouds meant rain any second. The eulogy featured heaven–golf course metaphors.

Janice Hartnett Lukens Tedrow: 1921–1968.

Carlos Marcello and Dwight Holly attended. Farlan Brown was there. Dracula sent five grand in flowers. Half the caddy crews from the Dunes and the Sands showed up.

Wayne stood at the back. The dry air started seeping. The cemetery was segregated. A road bisected the white and Negro sections. White diggers worked the white side. Negro diggers worked the Negro side. The Tedrow-service diggers were off-duty blackjack dealers. They wore red vests, bow ties and eyeshades. The rain threat made them fidget.

The heaven–golf course shtick was protracted. Wayne looked across the road. A large service was beginning. Limousines, a hearse, a flatbed truck filled with roses. Scores of black people in black.

Wayne walked over. The people paid him no-nevermind. He saw a sign affixed to an easel. It stated the date and the name of the decedent: the Reverend Cedric D. Hazzard.

The hearse was parked nearby. Four men removed a casket. A minister walked up and opened the passenger door. A Negro woman got out. The minister fawned over her. She put him off with small smiles and gestures.

She wore a black crepe dress, a pillbox hat and no veil. She glanced at the road and saw Wayne. They shared a look for one second.

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 8/20/68.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
headline and subhead:

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 8/20/68.
Milwaukee Sentinel
headline and subhead:

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 8/21/68.
Des Moines Register
subhead:

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 8/21/68.
Las Vegas Sun
article:

Janice Tedrow was laid to rest at Wisteria Cemetery Monday morning. The flags at every country club in Las Vegas were lowered to half-staff in honor of the woman who was the Thunder-bird ladies' club champion 9 times, the Sands ladies' club champion 6 times, the Riviera ladies' club champion 14 times and the winner of the Clark County Polio Drive Scramble every year from 1954 on.

“Janice Tedrow played near-scratch golf even as she suffered from terminal cancer,” her physician, Dr. Steve Mandel, said. “That's talent and willpower.” And when the mourning ranks at her funeral service swelled to the seams with local caddies, you know that they came because the woman was a true champion with the common touch.

Janice Lukens hailed from small-town Indiana. She married investor/real estate entrepreneur Wayne Tedrow in 1947 and soon made her way to the Queen City of the Desert, where she served on numerous charitable committees and played the meanest
woman's golf game the state of Nevada has ever seen. 1968 has been a tragic year for the Tedrow clan. Wayne Tedrow died of a heart attack in June, and now the 46-year-old Janice's untimely death.

“God works in mysterious ways,” the Reverend G. Davis Kaltenborn told this reporter after the funeral service. “That's why I chose golf as the central theme of my tribute. Life is an unpredictable trek toward an uncertain conclusion. I shared this insight with Mrs. Tedrow's stepson after the service, and he told me he understood that very well.”

R.I.P., Janice. The starter at the Dunes told me you got six birdies the very last time you played golf on this earth. I see lots of sub-par rounds up there in the clouds for you, as well.

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 8/21/68.
Las Vegas Sun
article

Sylvester “Pappy” Dawkins was 48 years old, a two-time convicted burglar and a reputed drug addict. The Reverend Cedric D. Hazzard was 52 years old and was the pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in North Las Vegas. A stalwart of the Negro community in the Queen City of the Desert, he was as respected as Pappy Dawkins was disdained.

Yet the two men were friends of sorts. They would often meet at Dawkins' unkempt little house in West Las Vegas and talk until the wee hours about all manner of things. Now, in its grief, Las Vegas Negroes are wondering what the topic of conversation was right before it all went so terribly wrong on the night of August 10.

“We don't really know what precipitated this horrible tragedy,” Lieutenant Byron Fritsch of the Las Vegas Police Department told reporters. “We only know that Pappy shot the Reverend Hazzard and then turned the gun on himself.”

Horrible tragedy indeed. For many members of the Reverend Hazzard's congregation have movingly described their late pastor's diligent efforts to bring the word of God to Pappy Dawkins and to help him restore his moral equilibrium. “Ced was just that kind of a guy,” Kenneth S. Wilson, a deacon at New Bethel Baptist Church, said. “Ask anyone who knew him.”

“My late husband was a brave and true man who led with his
heart,” the Reverend Hazzard's widow, Mary Beth, said. “He was committed to goodness and social justice.” Mrs. Hazzard, 44, is the lead steward for the Las Vegas Hotel Workers' Union, and has spearheaded many charitable drives in the local Negro community. She is doubly bereft now. In December of 1963, her son Reginald, then 19, vanished and was never seen again. Reginald was a former straight-A student at Seminole High School and had won science-fair awards in chemistry. The trials of Job have visited themselves upon Mrs. Hazzard, but she remains optimistic. “Yes, my son is long missing and my husband is dead,” she said. “I considered Cedric's mission to reform Pappy Dawkins to be rash and imprudent, however heartfelt, but he died in the act of dispensing compassion. I revere him for that. As for me, no, I will not succumb to defeat or despair. I have duties to discharge, and I will not be deterred.”

The Reverend Hazzard's funeral drew over 300 mourners. An estimated $10,000 in floral tributes was received at Wisteria Cemetery. Mrs. Hazzard and members of the New Bethel congregation distributed them to patients at local hospitals.