Kolchak: The Night Stalker: A Black and Evil Truth (5 page)

I left the Persian Room around 4:15, saying good-night to Gino Altamura and his lieutenants and headed for the coffee shop waving at Misti and Bobby John who didn’t know me from Adam. I’ve never been an autograph hound and I’m shy around all showfolk.

Just to the right of the Savoy coffee shop is the Monte Carlo bar, a semicircle that leads from the casino toward the Tower shops. Depending on the hour and the day, it is filled with conventioneers, executives, early afternoon arrivals and hookers.

Sam was there, on an off night, sipping a whiskey sour and chatting with Pablo, the bartender. Sam is the quintessential Las Vegas hooker; several cuts above the best of them. Five-six, twenty-five, dollar smart and, deep inside, basically decent. Never been on dope. Been divorced only once. Has three years toward a degree in psychology and periodically attends UNLV. She is one of my favorite people and I flatter myself that she likes me too. No great love affair, just a mutual anti-loneliness league, mostly around Christmas when the days for both of us get long and the nights, cold. She has cooked my food, ironed my shirts, and warmed my bed and my heart more than a few times. Certain columnists’ opinions notwithstanding, if you are one of the trusted ones, hookers are not only good friends, but fine sources of highly accurate grapevine information. They don’t miss much.

Sam agreed to join me in the coffee shop and we dug into the excellent prime rib; she took it English cut and I got a hefty, medium-well end slice. She told me the “girls” were getting very uptight about the killings and had taken to going to and from work in pairs. And, being possessors of buckets of common sense, they were all staying away from thin, tall, pale types. Beyond that, she had no information.

We topped off our “breakfast” with some lead-heavy pineapple cheesecake and she offered a lift home. On our way I stopped by the newsstand and checked out the Daily News. The University of Nevada’s Reno Campus had had its second firebombing of the week. D.A. Paine vowed to “combat any drug use” at an upcoming rock festival in nearby Jean that had already been banned by the county commissioners. The death toll in the tornado that had hit Lubbock, Texas, had reached twenty. The Israelis hit Lebanon in “the fiercest fighting since the Six-Day War.” And Jake Herman was urging the U.S. to “get off the dime” and sell the fifty Phantom jets to Israel while there still was an Israel.

Glancing through the paper I noticed that, with his usual prescience, our entertainment editor, Wilbur Pigeon, had written an open letter to the “mystery killer” urging him to unburden himself to his “family clergyman” and the police before his activities put the skids on the upcoming tourist season.

Ah! Wilbur Pigeon. A small, mobile, chancre sore with the body of a bedbug and the brain of a gnat. He is but one of the many so-called writers to flock to Las Vegas hard pressed by bad debts and repeated failures in bigger, less-glamorous cities. They survive largely because they work for peanuts and the Vegas public has become inured to their pawky ramblings. Although they write chiefly for the tourists who almost never read their scribblings, the locals tolerate their insane mutterings as a form of compensation for those days when the comic page is composed of blank spaces stamped: “Delayed in Mail.”

Their numbers include a self-styled Walter Winchell type who has never written anything less than a rave review; a great bearded prophet; and one who hands out is pronouncements flavored with equal parts of ignorance and Irish Whiskey. These statesmen of the fourth estate and their locally televised counterparts are on hand for every freebie and party. They are some, like Gus Giuffre–a fine, decent human being, the kind Las Vegas could use by the gross–who also act as hosts at charities, telethons and public functions. Most, however, concentrate on being professional “personalities” which does make it possible for better men to get on with the actual work of running the community, when better men can be found.

I groused about these and sundry other gripes as Sam drove me home where I called up a friend of mine, a graveyard shift switchboard operator at the Deauville, and asked her to call the paper when she got off and report that I had the flue. Meyer Moses could cover my beat.

That done, I sank into an uneasy sleep wherein I dreamed of an assembly line of pale, bloodless girls walking down an endless dark street and moaning softly for help. Somewhere, toward the edge of my inner vision, a shadowy figure pursued them with long, beckoning arms.

Goddamn booze!

Somewhere in the midst of this ghoulish girl parade Cairncross materialized and hung a garland of garlic around my neck, glaring at me with his good eye and intoning, “Go and sin no more.” Vincenzo appeared at Cairncross’ side and together they laughed insanely, then vanished in a puff of sulphurous smoke.

I made several high-minded resolutions, muttered half-heard but sincere-sounding prayers to all the recently deposed saints, thrashed and rolled clean off the bed.

I might just as well have stayed up.

CHAPTER 5

WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 1970

At 8:00 A.M. sharp, the phone jangled me awake and my little girl friend (she’s sixty if she’s a day) at the Deauville said, “It’s June over at the Deauville. Wake up, stupid.”

Such greetings, on top of a hangover are just the thing to start the day.

“Just thought I’d do you a favor and give you a little tip. I was just getting ready to get off and security put through a call to the sheriff’s office. He did it again!”

I was still groggy. “Who did what again?” I didn’t really want to know. I just wanted to get back to County Dracula who was chasing Sam through the Caesars Palace casino.

“Security,” June repeated, “just called the sheriff’s office. They found another body right out in the employees’ parking lot. Not five minutes ago. A showgirl I think. Are you awake?”

I was, then. Completely, even if my motor impulses were a bit shaky. “Have your people got an ID yet?” I asked her.

“How should I know? I’m not a cop. I’m a sweet, little old lady who minds her own business. You still want me to call you in sick?”

“Christ, no!” I couldn’t see any sense in letting Meyer beat me to it.

“Well,” she cautioned. “Better hustle then. If the sheriff’s people aren’t here yet, they will be in the next couple of minutes.”

“Thanks, sweetheart. I owe you one.”

“Never fear. I’ll collect in due time,” and she clicked off.

I jiggled the receiver button and called Stefan Temcek, a landsman of mine and the assistant chief photographer for the News.

“Get your ass out of bed and away from your succulent wife and meet me at the timekeeper’s office behind the Deauville Hotel on the double. Another killing. Bring your Speed Graphic, too. I want close shots of her neck. If you get there before me, start shooting. Don’t wait. You’re closer to the Deauville than I am anyway.”

I slammed the phone down without waiting for his complaint. Then I looked up Vincenzo’s home number. I interrupted his breakfast with the dope and begged for an “extra.”

“OK, Kolchak. If it’s for real, call me back at the office and I’ll get Cairncross. If he says OK, we’ll replate page one and try to beat the other paper to the streets.”

I made one more call, this time to a girl name Michelle, who is in the Deauville’s main show, “Paris Extraordinaire!” as a nude adagio dancer. She was sunning herself on her apartment balcony.

“This is Kolchak, dear heart. Brace yourself for a real jolt. One of our friends has bought the farm. It may be the ‘mystery killer.’” There was an instant’s pause and a sharp intake of breath. “Now,” I raced on. “A favor, please. Call up to or three of your friends in the line and ask them to meet you in the Deauville coffee shop. Tell them to get there in the next thirty to forty minutes and not to spare the horsepower. Don’t tell them why. Just get a booth and wait for me. And… Michelle, if one of them doesn’t answer, don’t panic. We don’t know for sure who got nailed. How about it? A tall order for old time’s sake?”

“Jesus!” she said. “That’s the fourth girl, isn’t it?” Another long pause. “OK. Can do. See you by 8:45?”

“Or as close as I can make it. If I’m late, just sit tight.”

I hustled into some chinos and a bush jacket, grabbed my Sony tape recorder (to catch what my shorthand might miss) and made it three steps at a time down the two flights to my car. I got it up to seventy-dive on Paradise, and ninety on Flamingo, running a red light on the Strip as I headed left past the Dunes and Aladdin, and pulled into the Deauville’s north entrance, jouncing over the speed bumps and onto the employees’ lot at the rear of the hotel. There was already one Sheriff’s car there and one came roaring in behind me as I killed the engine and bolted from the car.

There, in the third row from the timekeeper’s office, was a tall girl, in bell-bottoms and a knit pullover, sitting propped against a weather-beaten Austin Healey.

As I got closer I could see her eyes were closed. Her huge leather handbag was lying just to her left, with the strap still clutched in a closed fist.

Two deputies were talking to another woman who was sobbing and shaking, while two security guards hulked in the background.

I switched on the tape machine as I noticed my friend Temcek’s white Porsche which was parked discreetly by the timekeeper’s office. He was talking to the timekeeper. I go to the dead girl just two steps ahead of the deputies who’d pulled in behind me and called for Temcek to come over.

“Already got all we can use. Want me to get this stuff souped?”

Just then I noticed Deke Clausen, the assistant chief of security heading toward us, buckling on his .357 Colt Python.

“Yeah,” I told Temcek. “Get moving and have the stuff ready for Vincenzo. Call him and tell him I’ve got the dope from the Sheriff’s Office here and am getting background from the girl’s friends (I hoped) in the coffee shop. If he wants me, tell him to have me paged. Tell him I’ll piece it together here, borrow a typewriter if necessary to rough out the notes, and then call it in by 10:00. Got it?”

“Right!” and he was off and running toward his little white bomb. He screeched on out of the lot making racing changes as he dodged the speed bumps.

I turned to the deputies who were going through her purse. I didn’t wait to see what they found. I went over to the other two who were talking to the woman.

“Sit tight, Kolchak,” said the big one. “We got a witness of sorts here. No names. We’d like to keep her alive. She’s pretty shook, so make it short.”

I asked Deke if I could talk to her in his office and he looked at the deputies. A small, round one detached himself from the group. I didn’t know him, but he was a sergeant and seemed to be running the show.

“You Kolchak?”
“Umhmm.”

“I room with the ‘Kraut’ and he says you’re OK. You got five minutes with her and I’ll hang around, if you don’t mind.”

“Suits me, “I answered. “Deke, is there a coffee pot going in there?” He nodded, so I turned to the deputy who now had his arm linked protectively through the woman’s. The others were busy putting a blanket over the now prone body of the deceased, and as yet, an unnamed victim.

The sergeant, whose name turned out to be Clabaugh, said, “I’ve got a copy of the official report and her initial statement. You can have a look when we get inside. Remember, keep it short.” Off we went.

The Deauville’s security office was reached by passing through the electrically controlled gate and down a freight yard some 300 feet long flanked on one side by the hotel’s laundry, carpenter shops and boiler rooms. The woman, in a state of near collapse, had to be helped along by both of us. She was trembling and her eyes kept darting about her. We passed the receiving office, took a sharp jog to the right through a dark concrete passageway, then a left and through the Louis Quinze Theatre’s scene dock and down a hallway past the stage manager’s office. The air smelled of stale makeup and the walls were hung with costumes and props used in the show: foil spears and plastic armor, rhinestones, lame and ostrich plumes.

The security office, an afterthought in the hotel’s blueprint, was a musty cubicle eight by fifteen feet in size, furnished with a government-surplus gray steel desk, three matching chairs and an old army camp bed. Lined up on shelves above Deke’s desk were Coleman camp lanterns for use during power failures. On the floor against one wall were several fire extinguishers and three oxygen tanks with masks. Behind the door were three folding wheelchairs. Our sobbing witness looked like she could use one of them. She desperately needed something to steady her nerves or she’d be no good to herself, or to us.

On a small steel table just past Deke’s desk was a two-unit hotplate with a silex of coffee. Next to it were Coffeemate and sugar. The desk was littered with theft and accident forms, copies of Argosy and Playboy, and last night’s Daily News. I set them to one side and put down my tape recorder, turning it on again and positioning the mike so it pointed to the chair next to the desk.

In this cheery atmosphere I was about to question the woman who was sniffling quietly as Clabaugh seated her on the chair. Then he slouched on the camp bed while I offered her coffee.

“Black,” she said, sniffling.

“Just take your time. My name is Kolchak and I’m with the Daily News. I’d like you to tell me your name, what you do here, and just what you told the deputies out there, ma’am.”

“Oh dear Jesus,” she moaned. “That poor girl…poor girl,” and she again started to sob.

I glanced at the clock on Deke’s desk. It was almost 8:40. I took her gently by the shoulders. “Just take it easy, lady. This will only take a minute. C’mon. Drink some of that coffee.”

She sat there, dabbing at her nose and eyes with a Kleenex and I started going through Deke’s desk drawers looking for his bourbon. I found it, in the bottom right drawer next to several Peters .38 special ammunition and poured a generous dollop into her plastic mug.

“C’mon. It’ll do you a world of good.”

She sniffed, took the cup without looking at me and made a hesitant attempt at sipping. Then she looked me right in the eye, pulled herself erect and took three fast swallows almost draining the cup. She set it down on the table, grabbed a fresh sheet of Kleenex from her purse and blew her nose.

“I’m… I’m all right. Uh… where do I begin?”

Her name was Olive Bowman. She was forty-eight years old, a native of Salt Lake City, and a day-shift waitress in the bosses’ section of the Deauville coffee shop for the past seven years.

She had been called in early, arriving around 5:50 and parking in the sixth row of the employee’s lot. As she had walked towards the timekeeper’s office, the dim glow of the impending sunrise just backlighting the hotel, she had seen what she thought were a man and woman kissing by a sports car in the third row. Her route was taking her right past them and she saw that “they didn’t want to be disturbed.” As she started down an alternate row the man turned toward her.

It was too dark, still, for her to see his face clearly but she noticed he was very tall, and thin. As he turned, the girl with him slumped to a sitting position against the side of the car.

“My mind was on other things, but I think my first reaction was that she was drunk. I half expected the man to help her up…”

“And…”I prodded her.

“He just stared at me. Then he… he… sort of hissed, you know… like a cat spitting when it’s mad. He hissed at me and turned… uh, off to his left, uh… my right, and put both his hands on the top of the car next to him. He just sort of pushed himself up with his hands like some kind of athlete and jumped right over the roof… and then he started running like crazy across the lot.

“I looked down at the girl to see if she was alright. She hadn’t moved. Then I looked over the other car at the man who was halfway across the lot near that place where they keep the elephants they use in the main show. I shouted at him to stop but he just kept on running. He jumped into a car and took off around the… uh… south side of the hotel…”

“Did you see what kind of car?”
“It was white… uh… dirty white. I can’t be sure. The light, you know. I’m not much good at spotting cars. And my eyes aren’t what they used to be. I’m just not sure. I think maybe a Chevrolet.”

“Two or four-door?”
“Oh. It was a coupe… you know, a hardtop I think they call them, now.”

“New?”
“No. It was a few years old. Oh, I don’t know. It’s all so confusing. It wasn’t real old. Not a junk heap, you know. I didn’t get that good a look.”

She finished the coffee. “It didn’t have any fins on it if that helps.”

“What did you do then?”

“Well, I just stood there and watched him disappear. Then I looked back at the girl. I started trying to lift her up and she was all limp. I thought she had passed out and then I noticed some wet stuff on her neck. It was… oh, Jesus, it was b-blood. I got closer and saw she wasn’t breathing. And then… and then…”she started sobbing again, “and then I fainted.”

She had fainted very conveniently for the girl’s killer. She had been out just about a full hour before she recovered her senses and ran for the timekeeper who had seen nothing at all.

“That’s about it, Kolchak," Clabaugh broke in. “We have to get her down to the office and have her check some mug shots.”

“One more question, OK?”

I turned back to Olive Bowman. “Can you tell me anything at all about the man you saw?”

“I… I don’t know. It only lasted a few seconds. I mean, he didn’t say anything or… or touch me. He just hissed like I said… wait a minute… wait a minute! There was this smell, yet it was… like he had… bad breath… but worse. I thought it was coming from where the elephants, oh I don’t know… I guess it seems stupid to think of a thing like that. It was like… a grave I saw once that bad been dug up after about two weeks, up in Utah… a dead dog. And the stink… God!”

I snapped off the recorder and turned to Clabaugh. “You got the dead girl’s name?”
He picked up his clipboard. “Got it off her driver’s license. Mary Branden, twenty-four, give-eight, one hundred and twenty-six pounds, brown hair and eyes. And she’s got a sheriff’s card. Timekeeper told us she’s got a time card listing her as a showgirl here. Checked in at seven last night. Never checked out. Lived at the Westhaven Apartments on Pershing.”