L.A. Confidential (26 page)

  Jack bolted: Hudgens' place, no lights on, Sid's Packard at the curb. The door--brass knucks for a knocker.

  Thirty seconds--nothing. Jack tried the door--no give-- shouldered the jamb. The door popped open.

  That smell.

  Slow motion: handkerchief out, gun out, elbow to the wall-- the switch, no prints. Switch down, lights on.

  Sid Hudgens hacked up on the floor--a rug soaked black, the floor a blood slick.

  Arms and legs severed, out at weird angles off his torso.

  Split open crotch to neck, bones showing white through red.

  Cabinets upended behind him--folders dumped on a clean patch of rug.

  Jack bit his arms to kill screams.

  No blood tracks, say the killer got out the back door. Hudgens naked, coated red-black. Limbs off his torso, strands of gore at the cut points, swirls like his inked-in fuck books--

  Jack bolted.

  Around the house, down the driveway. The back door: ajar, spilling light. Inside: a water-slick floor--no blood prints, tracks covered. He walked in, found grocery bags under the sink. Shaky steps to the living room. File cabinet dirt: folders, folders, folders--one, two, three, four, five bags--two trips to his car.

  A quiet L.A. street at 2:20 A.M., calm down mumbo jumbo.

  Fifty trillion people had motives. Nobody knew he'd seen the inked-in books. The mutilations would get written off--just psycho stuff.

  _He had to find his file_.

  Jack doused lights, sawed the front door with his handcuffs-- let them think it's a burglar. He took off, no destination, just driving.

o        o          o

  Just driving wore thin. He found a motel strip, a hot-sheet flop: Oscar's Sleepytime Lodge.

  He paid a week's rent, hauled his bags in, took a shower and put his stale clothes back on. A cockroach palace: bugs, grease on the wall above the bed. He smelled himseffi stale working on foul. He locked the door, prowled dirt.

  _Hush-Hush_ back issues, clippings, pilfered police documents. Files: Montgomery Clift as the smallest dick in Hollywood, Errol Flynn as a Nazi agent. A hot item: Flynn and some homo writer named Truman Capote. Commies, Commie sympathizers, celebrity spook fuckers ranging from Joan Crawford to former D.A. Bill McPherson. Hopheads galore: shit on Charlie Parker, Anita O'Day, Art Pepper, Tom Neal, Barbara Payton, Gail Russell. Intact _Hush-Hush_ articles: "Mafia Ties to the Vatican!!!," "Lavender Liturgy: Is 'Rock' Hudson Really 'Rockette'?," "Grasshopper Alert: Beware of Hollywood's Tea Bag Babies." Complete files, too tame to be Hudgens' secret stash--Commies, queers, lezbos, dopesters, satyrs, nymphos, misogynists, mobbought politicos.

  Nothing on Sergeant Jack Vincennes.

  Nothing on _Badge of Honor_--a big Hudgens fixation--he knew Sid had a file on Brett Chase.

  Strange.

  More strange: _Hush-Hush_ ran a smear on Max Peltz--there was nothing on him.

  Nothing on Pierce Patchett, Lynn Bracken, Lamar Hinton, Fleur-de-Lis.

  Jack measured his filth pile. Big--make the killer a file thief, if he got any files it wasn't many--his pile looked like it would jam the cabinets to bursting.

  ALIBI.

  Jack stuffed his files in the closet. "Do Not Disturb" on the door, back to his apartment.

  5:10 A.M.

  Under the knocker: "Jack--remember our date Thurs." "Jack sweetie--are you hibernating? XXXX--K." He walked in, grabbed the phone, dialed 888.

  "Police Emergency."

  A hepcat drawl. "Man, I want to report a murder. If I'm lyin', I'm flyin'."

  "Sir, is this legitimate?"

  "Yeah, if I'm--"

  "'What is your address, sir?"

  "My address is nowhere, but I was gonna burglarize this house, then I saw this body."

  "Sir--"

  "421 South Alexandria, got that?"

  "Sir, where are--"

  Jack hung up, stripped, lay down on the bed. Figure twenty minutes for the bluesmts, ten to ID Hudgens. They putz around, make it as a big case, call Homicide. The desk man thinks brass, shakes a boss case man out of bed. Thad Green, Russ Millard, Dudley S.--they'd all think Big V pronto--his phone would ring in a hot hour.

  Jack lay there--sweating up a clean set of sheets. Ring ring--at 6:58.

  Jack, yawning. "Yeah?"

  "Vincennes, it's Russ Millard."

  "Yeah, Cap. What time is it? What's--"

  "Never mind. Do you know where Sid Hudgens lives?"

  "Yeah, Chapman Park somewhere. Cap, what's--"

  "421 South Alexandria. _Now_, Vincennes."

o        o          o

  Shave, shower, clothes that stayed dry. Forty minutes to the scene--a fuckload of cop cars on Sid Hudgens' lawn. Morgue men hefting plastic bags: blood, body parts.

  Jack parked on the lawn. An attendant wheeled out a gurney: gore wrapped in sheets. Russ Millard by the door; two comers-- Don Kleckner, Duane Fisk--down the driveway. Patrolmen shooed away spectators; reporters crowded the sidewalk. Jack walked up to Millard. "Hudgens ?"--not too much shock, a pro.

  "Yes, your buddy. A bit chewed up, I'm afraid. A burglar called it in. He was about to tap the house, then he saw the body. Pry marks on the doorjamb, so I buy it. Don't look inside if you've eaten."

  Jack looked. Dried blood, white tape outlines: arms, legs, torso-the severing points marked. Millard said, "Somebody _hated_ him. You see those drawers over there? I think the killer snuffed him for his files. I had Kieckner call the _Hush-Hush_ publisher. He's going to open up the office and give us copies of the recent stuff Hudgens was working on."

  Old Russ wanted a comment. Jack crossed himself: his first time since the orphanage, where the fuck did it come from.

  "Vincennes, you were his friend. What do you think?"

  "I think he was scum! Everybody hated him! You've got all L.A. for suspects!"

  "Easy, now, _easy_. I know you've leaked information to Hudgens, I know you two did business. If we don't wrap this in a few days, I'm going to want a statement."

  Duane Fisk spieling Morty Bendish--make book on a _Mirror_ scoop. Jack said, "I'll kick loose. What am I going to do, impede the progress of an official investigation?"

  "Your sense of duty is admirable. Now, let's talk about Hudgens. Girls, boys, what did he like?"

  Jack lit a cigarette. "He liked dirt. He was a goddamned degenerate. Maybe he pulled his pud while he looked at his own goddamn shitrag, I don't know."

  Don Kleckner walked up, a copy of _Hush-Hush_ spread open: "TV Mogul Loves to Ogle--And Then Some!!! And Teen Queens Are His Scene!!!" "Captain, I bought this at that newsstand on the corner. And the publisher told me _Badge of Honor_ was a bee in Hudgens' bonnet."

  "This is good. Don, you start canvassing. Vincennes, come here."

  Over to the lawn. Millard said, "This keeps coming back to people you know."

  "I'm a cop and I'm Hollywood. I know lots of people, and I know Max Peltz likes young trim. So what? He's sixty years old and he's no killer."

  "We'll decide that this afternoon. You're block searching on the Nite Owl, right? Looking for Coates' car?"

  "Yeah."

  "Then go back to that now and report to the Bureau at 2:00. I'm going to ask some key people from _Badge of Honor_ to come in for some friendly questioning. You can help grease things."

  Billy Dieterling, Timmy Valburn--"People He Knew" closing in. "Sure, I'll be there."

  Morty Bendish ran up. "Jackie, does this mean I'll get _all_ your exclusives now?"

o        o          o

  Garage door break-ins, niggers hurling fruit--_real_ work back at the motel. He was heading into Darktown when it hit him.

  He cut east, parked by the Royal Flush. Claude Dineen's Buick up on blocks--he was probably dealing shit in the men's room.

  Jack walked in. Everything froze: the Big V meant grief. The barman poured a double Old Forester; Jack downed it--cutting off five years kosher. The juice warmed him. He kicked the men's room door in.

  Claude Dineen geezing up.

  Jack kicked him prone, yanked the spike from his arm. A frisk, no resistance--Claude was up on cloud ten. Bingo: tinfoil Benzedrine. He swallowed a roll dry, flushed the hypo down the toilet. He said, "I'm back."

o        o          o

  He hit the motel juiced, primed to figure angles. File go-round number two.

  Nothing new jumped out; one instinct buzzed him: Hudgens didn't keep his "secret" files at home. If the killer snuffed him for a particular file, he tried to torture the location out of him first. The killer didn't glom a lot of files--the cabinets wouldn't hold much more than what he stole. Sid's Big V file was still at large--if the killer found it he might keep it, might throw it away.

  Jump: Hudgens/Patchett connected, pornography/vice rackets the connection. Put the Cathcart/Nite Owl connection aside: Millard/Exley called it a bust--denials from Whalen and Mickey C., Cathcart never got his smut gig going. Millard's report: the Englekling brothers didn't know who took the pictures; Cathcart got ahold of some of the stag books, went crazy with a harebrained scheme. Put that aside and what he had was:

  Bobby Inge, Christine and Daryl Bergeron--gone. Lamar Hinton, the probable shooter at the Fleur-de-Lis drop-- undoubtedly gone. Timmy Valburn, a Fleur-de-Lis customer, rousted by him--a connection to Billy Dieterling, a _Badge of Honor_ cameraman, catch him at Millard's questioning party--_stay calm on that_. Say Timmy told Billy about the roust; Billy was there when he trashed Hinton's car, _keep calm_, the queers had shitloads to lose by admitting their connection to Fleur-deLis--which Russ Millard did not know existed.

  Brainstorming, chain-smoking.

  Mutilations on Hudgens' body matched the inked-in poses in the fuck books he found outside Bobby Inge's pad. _No other caps had seen those specific books_--Millard viewed the stiff, tagged the chopped limbs as straight amputations.

  Hudgens warned him away from Fleur-de-Lis. Lynn Bracken was a Patchett whore--maybe she knew Sid.

  Wild card: Dudley Smith told him to tail Bud White. His reason: White running maverick on a hooker killing. Bracken was a hooker, Patchett ran hookers. But: _Dudley did not mention any tie-ins to the Nite Owl or pornography--Patchett/Bracken/ smut/Fleur-de-Lis et fucking al were probably Greek to him. The Englekling brothers/Cathcart wash aside, srnut/Patchett/Bracken/ Fleur-de-Lis/Hudgens in no way made its way into the incredible glut of interdivision posted Nite Owl paperwork_.

  Sky high: Benzedrine, cop logic. 11:20--time to kill before the Bureau. Two real leads--Pierce Patchett, Lynn Bracken.

  Bracken was closer.

o        o          o

  Jack drove to her apartment, settled in behind her car. Give her an hour, play it by ear if she left.

  Time Benzedrine-flew; Bracken's door stdyed shut. 12:33--a kid chucked a newspaper at it. If Morty Bendish speedballed his story and that kid pitched the _Mirror_--

  The door opened; Lynn Bracken picked the paper up, yawned back inside. The paperboy swooped by, carrier sacks in plain view: Los Angeles _Mirror-News_. Be in there, Morty.

  Bang!--Bracken slammed the door, ran to her car. She gunned it, swerved west on Los Feliz. Jack cut her two seconds slack, tailed her.

  Southwest: Los Feliz to Western to Sunset, Sunset straight out--ten miles over the speed limit. Odds on: a fear run to Patchett's place, she didn't want to use the phone.

  Jack looped south, shortcutted, made 1184 Gretna Green burning rubber. A huge Spanish manse, a huge front lawn-- Lynn Bracken hadn't showed yet.

  A skidding heart: he forgot what you paid to eat bennies. He parked, checked out the house: nobody out and about. Up to the door, a duck around the side--find some windows.

  All closed. A gardener working around back--no way to circuit without being seen. A car door slammed; Jack ran to a front window: closed, a part in the curtains he could squint through.

  The doorbell rang; Jack squinted in. Patchett walked to the door, opened it. Lynn Bracken shoved her newspaper at him-- zoom into a panic duet: mute lip movements, fear very large. Jack put an ear to the glass--all he heard was his own heart thumping. No need for sound: they didn't know Sid was dead, they're scared anyway, they didn't kill him.

  They walked into the next room--full curtains, no way to look or listen. Jack ran to his car.

o        o          o

  He made the Bureau ten minutes late. The Homicide pen was jam-packed _Badge of Honor_: Brett Chase, Miller Stanton, David Mertens the set man, Jerry Marsalas his nurse--one long bench crammed tight. Standing: Billy Dieterling, the camera crew, a half dozen briefcase men: attorneys for sure. The gang looked nervous; Duane Fisk and Don Kleckner paced with clipboards. No Mar Peltz, no Russ Millard.

  Billy D. shot him the fisheye; the rest of the gang waved. Jack waved back; Kieckner buttonholed him. "Ellis Loew wants to see you. Booth number six."

  Jack walked down. Loew was staring out a back wall mirror--a lie detector stall across the glass. Polygraph time: Millard questioning Peltz, Ray Pinker working the machine.

  Loew noticed him. "I'd rather Mar didn't have to go through that. Can you fix it?"

  Protecting a slush-fund contributor. "Ellis, I've got no truck with Millard. If Mar's lawyer advised him to do it, he'll have to do it."

  "Can Dudley fix it?"

  "Dud's got no truck with him either, Millard's the pious type. And before you ask me, I don't know who killed Sid, and I don't care. Has Max got an alibi?"

  "Yes, but one that he would rather not use."

  "How old is she?"

  "Quite young. Would--"

  "Yeah, Russ would file on him for it."

  "My God, all this for scum like Hudgens."

  Jack laughed. "Counselor, one of his little mudslings got you elected."

  "Yes, politics makes for strange bedfellows, but I doubt if he'll be grieved. You know, we've got nothing. I talked to those attorneys outside, and they all assured me their clients have valid alibis. They'll give statements and be eliminated, the rest of the _Badge of Honor_ people will be alibied and then we'll only have the rest of Hollywood to deal with."