L.A. Confidential (11 page)

  Most people take _Hush-Hush_ and other scandal sheets with a grain of salt, but this was election time. An article alleged that D.A. McPherson, happily married for twenty-six years, cavorted with young Negro women. The D.A. ignored the article, which was accompanied by photographs of him and a Negro girl, taken at a nightclub in south central Los Angeles. Mrs. McPherson did not ignore the article--she filed for divorce. Ellis Loew did not mention the article in his campaign, and McPherson began to slip in the polls. Then, three days before the election, Sheriffs deputies raided the Lilac View Motel on the Sunset Strip, acting on the tip of an "unknown informant" who called in with word of an illegal assignation in room 9. The assignators proved to be D.A. McPherson and a young Negro prostitute, age 14. The deputies arrested McPherson on statutory rape charges and heard out the story of Marvell Wilkins, a minor with two soliciting arrests.

  She told them that McPherson picked her up on South Western Avenue, offered her twenty dollars for an hour of her time and drove her to the Lilac View. McPherson pleaded amnesia: he recalled having "several martinis" at a dinner meeting with supporters at the Pacific Dining Car restaurant, then getting into his car. He remembers nothing after that. The rest is history: reporters and photographers arrived at the Lilac View Motel shortly after the deputies, McPherson became front-page news and on Tuesday Ellis Loew was elected city district attorney by a landslide.

  Something seems fishy here. Scandal-rag journalism should not dictate the thrust of political campaigns, although we at the _Daily News_ (admitted McPherson supporters) would never abridge their right to print whatever filth they desire. We have tried to locate Marvell Wilkins, but the girl, released from custody, seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. Without pointing fmgers, we at the _Daily News_ ask District Attorney-elect Loew to initiate a grand jury investigation into this matter, if for no other reason than his desire to assume his new office with no dark clouds overhead.

PART TWO

    Nite Owl Massacre

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The whole squadroom to himself.

  A retirement party downstairs--he wasn't invited. The weekly crime report to be read, summarized, tacked to the bulletin board--nobody else ever did it, they knew he did it best. The papers ballyhooing the Dream-a-Dreamland opening--the other cops Moochie Mouse-squeaked him ad nauseam. Space Cooley playing the party; pervert Deuce Perkins roaming the halls. Midnight and nowhere near sleepy--Ed read, typed.

  4/9/53: a transvestite shoplifter hit four stores on Hollywood Boulevard, disabled two salesclerks with judo chops. 4/10/53: an usher at Grauman's Chinese stabbed to death by two male Caucasians--he told them to put out their cigarettes. Suspects still at large; Lieutenant Reddin said he was too inexperienced to handle a homicide--he didn't get the job. 4/11/53: a stack of crime sheets--several times over the past two weeks a carload of Negro youths were seen discharging shotguns into the air in the Griffith Park hills. No IDs, the kids driving a '48--'50 purple Mercury coupe. 4/11--4/13/53: five daytime burglaries, private homes north of the Boulevard, jewelry stolen. Nobody assigned yet; Ed made a note: bootjack the job, dust before the access points got pawed. Today was the fourteenth--he might have a chance.

  Ed finished up. The empty squadroom made him happy: nobody who hated him, a big space filled with desks and filing cabinets. Official forms on the walls--empty spaces you filled in when you notched an arrest and made somebody confess. Confessions could be ciphers, nothing past an admission of the crime. But if you twisted your man the right way--loved him and hated him to precisely the right degree--then he would tell you things--small details--that would create a reality to buttress your case and give you that much more inteffigence to bend the next suspect with. Art De Spain and his father taught how to find the spark point. They had boxloads of old steno transcripts: kiddie rapers, heisters, assorted riffraff who'd confessed to them. Art would rabbit-punch--but he used the threat more than the act. Preston Exley rarely hit--he considered it the criminal defeating the policeman and creating disorder. They read elliptical answers and made him guess the questions; they gave him a rundown of common criminal experiences--wedges to get the flow started. They showed him that men have levels of weakness that are acceptable because other men condone them and levels of weakness that produce a great shame, something to hide from all but a brilliant confessor. They honed his instinct for the jugular of weakness. It got so sharp that sometimes he couldn't look at himself in the mirror.

  The sessions ran late--two widowers, a young man without a woman. Art had a bug on multiple murders--he had his father rehash the Loren Atherton case repeatedly: horror snatches, witness testimony. Preston obliged with psychological theories, grudgingly--he wanted his glory case to stay sealed off, complete, in his mind. Art's old cases were scrutinized--and he reaped the efforts of three fine minds: confessions straight across, 95 percent convictions. But so far his drive to crack criminal knowledge hadn't been challenged--much less sated.

  Ed walked down to the parking lot, sleep coming on. "Quack, quack," behind him--hands turned him around.

  A man in a kid's mask--Danny Duck. A left-right knocked off his glasses; a kidney shot put him down. Kicks to the ribs drove him into a ball.

  Ed curled hard, caught kicks in the face. A flashbulb popped; two men walked away: one quacking, one laughing. Easy IDs: Dick Stensland's bray, Bud White's football limp. Ed spat blood, swore payback.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Russ Millard addressed Ad Vice squad 4--the topic pornography.

  "Picture-book smut, gentlemen. There's been a bunch of it found at collateral crime scenes lately: narcotics, bookmaking and prostitution collars. Normally this kind of stuff is made in Mexico, so it's not our jurisdiction. Normally it's an organized crime sideline, because the big mobs have the money to manufacture it and the connections to get it distributed. But Jack Dragna's been deported, Mickey Cohen's in prison and probably too puritanical anyway, and Mo Jahelka's foundering on his own. Stag pix aren't Jack Whalen's style--he's a bookie looking to get his hands on a Vegas casino. And the stuff that's surfaced is too high quality for the L.A. area print mills: Newton Street Vice rousted them, they're clean, they just don't have the facilities to make magazines of this quality. But the backdrops in the pictures indicate L.A. venue: you can see what looks like the Hollywood Hills out some windows, and the furnishings in a lot of the places look like your typical cheap Los Angeles apartments. So our job is to track this filth to its source and arrest whoever made it, posed for it and distributed it."

  Jack groaned: the Great Jerk-off Book Caper of 1953. The other guys looked hot to glom the smut, maybe fuel up their wives. Millard popped a Digitalis. "Newton Street dicks questioned everyone at the collateral rousts, and they all denied possessing the stuff. Nobody at the print mills knows where it was made. The mags have been shown around the Bureau and our station vice squads, and we've got zero IDs on the posers. So, gentlemen, look yourself."

  Henderson and Kifka had their hands out; Stathis looked ready to drool. Millard passed the smut over. "Vincennes, is there someplace you'd rather be?"

  "Yeah, Captain. Narcotics Division."

  "Oh? Anyplace else?"

  "Maybe working whores with squad two."

  "Make a major case, Sergeant. I'd love to sign you out of here."

  Oohs, ahhs, cackles, oo-la-las; three men shook their heads no. Jack grabbed the books.

  Seven mags, high-quality glossy paper, plain black covers. Sixteen pages apiece: photos in color, black and white. Two books ripped in half, explicit pictures: men and women, men and men, girls and girls. Insertion close-ups: straight, queer, dykes with dildoes. The Hollywood sign out windows; Murphy-bed fuck shots, cheap pads: stucco-swirled walls, the hot plate on a table that came with every bachelor flop in L.A. Par for the stag-book course--but the posers weren't glassy-eyed hopheads, they were good-looking, well-built young kids--nude, costumed: Elizabethan garb, Jap kimonos. Jack put the ripped mags back together for a bingo: Bobby Inge--a male prostitute he'd popped for reefer--blowing a guy in a whalebone corset.

  Millard said, "Anybody familiar, Vincennes?"

  An angle. "Nothing, Cap. But where did you get these torn-up jobs?"

  "They were found in a trash bin behind an apartment house in Beverly Hills. The manager, an old woman named Loretta Downey, found them and called the Beverly Hills P.D. They called us."

  "You got an address on the building?"

  Millard checked an evidence form. "9849 Charleville. Why?"

  "I just thought I'd take that part of the job. I've got good connections in Beverly Hills."

  "Well, they do call you 'Trashcan.' All right, follow up in Beverly Hills. Henderson, you and Kifka try to locate the arrestees in the crime reports and try to find out again where they got the stuff--I'll get you carbons in a minute. Tell them there'll be no additional charges filed if they talk. Stathis, take that filth by the costume supply companies and see if you can get a matchup to their inventory, then fmd out who rented the costumes the . . . performers were wearing. Let's try it this way first--if we have to go through mugshots for IDs we'll lose a goddamn week. Dismissed, gentlemen. Roll, Vincennes. And don't get sidetracked--this is Ad Vice, not Narco."

o        o          o

  Jack rolled: R&I, Bobby Inge's file, his angle flushed out: Beverly Hills, see the old biddy, see what he could find out and concoct a hot lead that told him what he already knew--Bobby Inge was guilty of conspiracy to distribute obscene material, a felony bounce. Bobby would snitch his co-stars and the guys who took the pix--one major class transfer requirement dicked.

  The day was breezy, cool; Jack took Olympic straight west. He kept the radio going; a newscast featured Ellis Loew: budget cuts at the D.A.'s Office. Ellis droned on; Jack flipped the dial--a kibosh on thoughts of Bill McPherson. He caught a happy Broadway tune, thought about him anyway.

  _Hush-Hush_ was his idea: McPherson liked colored poon, Sid Hudgens loved writing up jig-fuckers. Ellis Loew knew about it, approved of it, considered it another favor on deposit. McPherson's wife filed for divorce; Loew was satisfied--he took a lead in the polls. Dudley Smith wanted more--and set up the tank job.

  An easy parlay:

  Dot Rothstein knew a colored girl doing a stretch at Juvenile Hall: soliciting beefs, Dot and the girl kept a thing sizzling whenever she did time. Dot got the little twist sprung; Dudley and his ace goon Mike Breuning fixed up a room at the Lilac View Motel: the most notorious fuck pad on the Sunset Strip, county ground where the city D.A. would be just another john caught with his pants down. McPherson attended a Dining Car soiree; Dudley had Marvell Wilkins--fourteen, dark, witchy-- waiting outside. Breuning alerted the West Hollywood Sheriff's and the press; the Big V dropped chloral hydrates in McPherson's last martini. Mr. D.A. left the restaurant woozy, swerved his Cadillac a mile or so, pulled over at Wilshire and Alvarado and passed out. Breuning cruised up behind him with the bait: Marvell in a cocktail gown. He took the wheel of McPherson's Caddy, hustled Bad Bill and the girl to their tryst spot--the rest was political history.

  Ellis Loew wasn't told--he figured he just got lucky. Dot sent Marvell down to Tijuana, all expenses paid--skim off the Woman's Jail budget. McPherson lost his wife and his job; his statch rape charge was dismissed--Marvell couldn't be located. Something snapped inside the Bigggg V--

  The snap: one shitty favor over the line. The reason: Dot Rothstein in the ambulance October '47--she knew, Dudley probably knew. If they knew, the game had to be played so the rest of the world wouldn't know--so Karen wouldn't.

  He'd been her hero a solid year; somehow the bit got real. He stopped sending the Scoggins kids money, closing out his debt at forty grand--he needed cash to court Karen, being with her gave him some distance on the Malibu Rendezvous. Joan Morrow Loew stayed bitchy; Welton and the old lady grudgingly accepted him--and Karen loved him so hard it almost hurt. Working Ad Vice hurt--the job was a snore, he hot-dogged on dope every time he got a shot. Sid Hudgens didn't call so much--he wasn't a Narco dick now. After the McPherson gig he was glad--he didn't know if he could pull another shakedown.

  Karen had her own lies going--they helped his hero bit play true. Trust fund, beach pad paid for by Daddy, grad school. Dilettante stuff: he was thirty-eight, she was twenty-three, in time she'd figure it out. She wanted to marry him; he resisted; Ellis Loew as an in-law meant bagman duty until he dropped dead. He knew why his hero role worked: Karen was the audience he'd always wanted to impress. He knew what she could take, what she couldn't; her love had shaped his performance so that all he had to do was act natural--and keep certain secrets hidden.

  Traffic snagged; Jack turned north on Doheny, west on Charleville. 9849--a two-story Tudor--stood a block off Wilshire. Jack double-parked, checked mailboxes.

  Six slots: Loretta Downey, five other names--three Mr. & Mrs., one man, one woman. Jack wrote them down, walked to Wilshire, found a pay phone. Calls to R&I and the DMV police information line; two waits. No criminal records on the tenants; one standout vehicle sheet: Christine Bergeron, the mailbox "Miss," four reckless-driving convictions, no license revocation. Jack got extra stats off the clerk: the woman was thirty-seven years old, her occupation was listed as actress/car hop, as of 7/52 she was working at Stan's Drive-in in Hollywood.

  Instincts: carhops don't live in Beverly Hills; maybe Christine Bergeron hopped some bones to stretch the rent. Jack walked back to 9849, knocked on the door marked "Manager."

  An old biddy opened up. "Yes, young man?"

  Jack flashed his badge. "L.A. Police, ma'am. It's about those books you found."