The Big Nowhere (20 page)

Buzz turned and saw Hartshorn slumped in a chair, warming his hands on a whiskey glass. “What else you got?”

“Nothing. I never saw Reynolds after that time at the Knight in Armor. Who are you going to—”

“Nobody, Charlie. Nobody’s gonna know. I’ll just say I got word that Loftis is…”

“Oh God, is this the witchhunts again?”

Buzz exited to the sound of the sad bastard weeping.

Rain had hit while he was applying the strongarm—hard needle sheets of it, the kind of deluge that threatened to melt the foothills into the ocean and sieve out half the LA Basin. Buzz laid three to one that Hartshorn would keep his mouth shut; two to one that more cop work would drive him batshit; even money that dinner at the Nickodell and the evening at home writing up a report on the day’s dirt was the ticket. He could smell the queer’s sweat on himself, going stale with his own sweat; he felt a beaucoup case of the sucker punch blues coming on. Halfway to the office, he cracked the window for air and a rain bracer, changed directions and drove to his place.

Home was the Longview Apartments at Beverly and Mariposa, four rooms on the sixth floor, southern exposure, the pad furnished with leftovers from RKO movie sets. Buzz pulled into the garage, ditched his car and took the elevator up. And sitting by his door was Audrey Anders in a rain-spattered, sequin-spangled, gold lamé gown, a wet mink coat in her lap. She was using it as an ashtray; when she saw Buzz, she said, “Last year’s model. Mickey’ll get me a new one,” and stubbed her cigarette out on the collar.

Buzz helped Audrey to her feet, holding her hands just a beat too long. “Did I really get this lucky?”

“Don’t count your chickens. Lavonne Cohen took a trip with her mah-jongg club and Mickey thinks it’s open season on me. Tonight was supposed to be the Mocambo, the Grove and late drinks with the Gersteins. I pulled a snit and escaped.”

“I thought you and Mickey were in love.”

“Love has its flip side. Did you know you’re the only Turner Meeks in the Central White Pages?”

Buzz unlocked the door. Audrey walked in, dropped her mink on the floor and scoped the living room. The furnishings included leather couches and easy chairs from
London Holiday
and zebra head wall mounts from
Jungle Bwana
; the swinging doors leading to the bedroom were scavenged off the saloon set of
Rage on the Rio Grande
. The carpeting was lime green and purple striped—the bedspread one the Amazon huntress lollygagged on in
Song of the Pampas
. Audrey said, “Meeks, did you
pay
for this?”

“Gifts from a rich uncle. You want a drink?”

“I don’t drink.”

“Why not?”

“My father, sister and two brothers are drunks, so I thought I’d give it a pass.”

Buzz was thinking she looked good—but not as good as she did with no makeup and Mickey’s shirt hanging to her knees. “And you became a stripper?”

Audrey sat down, kicked off her shoes and warmed her feet on the mink. “Yes, and don’t ask me to do the tassel trick for you, because I won’t. Meeks, what
is
the matter with you? I thought you’d be glad to see me.”

He could still smell the queer. “I coldcocked a guy today. It was shitty.”

Audrey wriggled her toes, making the coat jump. “So? That’s what you do for a living.”

“The guys I usually do it to give me more of a fight.”

“So you’re telling me it’s all a game?”

He’d told Howard once that the only women worth having were the ones who had your number. “There’s gotta be somethin’ we’re better at than buttin’ heads and askin’ each other questions.”

The Va Va Voom Girl kicked the mink up in her lap. “Is the bedroom this outré?”

Buzz laughed. “
Casbah Nocturne
and
Paradise Is Pink
. That tell you anything?”

“That’s another question. Ask
me
something provocative.”

Buzz took off his jacket, unhooked his holster and threw it on a chair. “Okay. Does Mickey keep a tail on you?”

Audrey shook her head. “No. I made him stop it. It made me feel cheap.”

“Where’s your car?”

“Three blocks away.”

All green lights to make his best stupid move an epic. “You got it all figured out.”

Audrey said, “I didn’t think you’d say no.” She waved her mink coat. “And I brought a towel for the morning.”

Buzz thought, RIP Turner Prescott Meeks, 1906–1950. He took a deep breath, sucked in his flab, pushed through the saloon doors and started peeling. Audrey came in and laughed at the bed—pink satin spread, pink canopy, pink embroidered gargoyles as foot posts. She got naked with a single flick of a clasp; Buzz felt his legs buckling as her breasts bobbed free. Audrey came to him and slipped off his tie, undid his shirt buttons, loosened his belt. He pried his shoes and socks off standing up; his shirt hit the floor via a bad case of the shivers. Audrey laughed and traced the goosebumps on his arms, then ran her hands over the parts of himself he couldn’t stand: his melon gut, his side rolls, the knife scars running up into his chest hair. When she started licking him there he knew she was okay on it; he picked her up to show her how strong he was—his legs almost blowing it—and put her down on the bed. He got out of his trousers and boxers under his own steam and lay down beside her—and in a half second she was all arms and legs around him, face to face and mouth open, pushing up against him like he was everything she’d ever wanted.

He kissed her—soft, hard, soft; he rubbed his nose into her neck and smelled Ivory Soap—not the perfume he’d played pretend with. He took her breasts in his hands and pinched the nipples, remembering everything every cop had told him about the headliner at the Burbank Burlesque. Audrey made different noises for each part of her he touched; he kissed and tongued between her legs and got one big noise. The big noise got bigger and bigger; her legs and arms went spastic. Her going so crazy got him almost there, and he went inside her so he could be part of it. Audrey’s hips pushing off the covers made him burst going in; he held on and she held him, and he gave her all his strength to smother their aftershocks. Half his weight, she was still able to push him up as she kept coming—and he grabbed her head and buried his head in her hair until he went limp and she quit fighting him.

Pink satin sheets and sweat bound them together. Buzz rolled over on his side, hooking a finger around Audrey’s wrist so they’d keep on touching while he got his breath. Eight years without a cigarette and he was panting like a track dog—and she was lying there all still and calm, a vein on the back of her arm tapping his finger the only thing that said she was still racing inside. His chest heaved; he tried to think of something to say; Audrey made finger tracks on his knife scars. She said, “This could get complicated.”

Buzz got his wind. “That mean you’re thinkin’ angles already?”

Audrey made like her nails were animals’ claws and pretended to scratch him. “I just like to know where I stand.”

The moment was slipping away from him—like it wasn’t worth the danger. Buzz grabbed Audrey’s hands. “So that means we’re lookin’ at a next time?”

“You didn’t have to ask. I’d have told you in a minute or so.”

“I like to know where I stand, too.”

Audrey laughed and pulled her hands away. “You stand guilty, Meeks. You got me thinking the other day. So whatever happens, it’s your fault.”

Buzz said, “Sweetie, don’t underestimate Mickey. He’s sugar and spice with women and kids, but he kills people.”

“He knows I’ll leave him sooner or later.”

“No, he doesn’t. He figures you’re an ex-stripper, a shiksa, you’re thirty-somethin’ and you’ve got no place to go. You give him a little bit of grief, maybe it gets his dick hard. But you stroll, that’s somethin’ else.”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. Buzz said, “Sweetie, where would you go?”

Audrey pulled a pillow down and hugged it, giving him both baby browns. “I’ve got some money saved. A bunch. I’m going to buy some grove property in the Valley and bankroll rentals on a shopping center. They’re the coming thing, Meeks. Another ten thousand and I can get in on the ground floor with thirty-five acres.”

Like his acreage: fourteen dollars per on the sure thing that should have made him rich. “Where’d you get the money?”

“I saved it.”

“From Mickey’s handouts?”

Audrey surprised him by chucking the pillow away and poking his chest. “Are you jealous,
sweetie
?”

Buzz grabbed her finger and gave it a little love bite. “Maybe just a tad.”

“Well, don’t be. Mickey’s all wrapped up in his union business and his drug thing with Jack Dragna, and I know how to play this game. Don’t you worry.”

“Sweetie, you better. Because it is surely for keeps.”

“Meeks, I wish you’d quit talking about Mickey. You’ll have me looking under the bed in a minute.”

Buzz thought of the .38 in the other room and the fruit lawyer with the bruised neck and tear-mottled cheeks. “I’m glad bein’ with you is dangerous. It feels good.”

Acting Supervisor Upshaw.

Task Force Boss.

Skipper.

Danny stood in the empty Hollywood Station muster room, waiting to address
his
three men on
his
homicide case—running the titles down in
the
single place where the Brenda Allen job caused the most grief. A cartoon tacked to the notice board spelled it out: Mickey Cohen wearing a Jew skullcap with a dollar sign affixed to the top, dangling two uniformed Sheriff’s deputies on puppet strings. A balloon elaborated his thoughts:
Boy, did I give it to the LAPD! It’s good I got the County cops to wipe my ass for me!
Danny saw little holes all over Mickey’s face; LA’s number-one hoodlum had been used as a dartboard.

There was a lectern and blackboard at the front of the room; Danny found chalk and wrote “Deputy D. Upshaw, LASD,” in boldface letters. He positioned himself behind the stand like Doc Layman with his forensics class and forced himself to think of his other assignment so he wouldn’t get antsy when it came time to lay down the law to
his
men, three detectives older and much more experienced than he. That job was coming on like a snooze and a snore, maybe a little shot of elixir to keep bad thoughts down and business on; it was why he was standing triumphant in a spot where the County police were loathed more than baby rapers. The deal was like pinching yourself to make sure the great things that were happening weren’t just a dream—and he pinched himself for the ten millionth time since Lieutenant Mal Considine made his offer.

Dudley Smith had called him at home yesterday afternoon, interrupting a long day of nursing watered-down highballs and working on his file. The Irishman told him to meet him and Considine at West Hollywood Station; the fix was in via Ellis Loew, with the temporary detachment order approved by both Chief Worton and Sheriff Biscailuz. He’d brushed his teeth, gargled and forced down a sandwich before he met them—anticipating one question and building a lie to field it. Since they’d already told him he would be planted around Variety International Pictures and they knew he’d incurred bossman Gerstein’s wrath there, he had to convince them that only the gate guard, the rewrite man and Gerstein saw him in his cop capacity. It was Considine’s
first
question—and a residue of bourbon calm helped him brazen it out. Smith bought it whole, Considine secondhand, when he ran his prerehearsed spiel on how he would completely alter his haircut and clothes to fit the role of Commie idealist. Smith gave him a stack of UAES paperwork to take home and study and made him scan a batch of psychiatric reports in their presence; then it was hard brass tacks.

His job was to approach UAES’s suspected weak link—a promiscuous woman named Claire De Haven—gain entrance to the union’s strategy meetings and find out what they were planning. Why haven’t they called a strike? Do the meetings involve the actual advocacy of armed revolt? Is there planned subversion of motion picture content? Did the UAES brain trust fall for Considine’s sub-rosa move—planting newspaper and radio pieces that said the grand jury investigation had gone down—and just how strongly is UAES connected to the Communist Party?

Career maker.

“You’ll be a lieutenant before you’re thirty.”

“There’s a woman you’ll have to get next to, lad. You might have to fuck the pants off of her.”

A bludgeon to smash his nightmares.

He felt cocky when he left the briefing, taking the nonpsychiatric reports under his arm, promising to report for a second confab this afternoon at City Hall. He went back to his apartment, called a dozen dental labs that Karen Hiltscher hadn’t tapped and got zilch, read a dozen homosexual homicide histories without drinking or thinking of the Chateau Marmont. He then started feeling
very
cocky, took his 2307 Tamarind blood scrapings to the USC chemistry building and bribed a forensics classmate into typing them, hoping he could combine the wall spray pictures with the victims’ names, reconstruct and get another fix on his man. The classmate didn’t even blink at the bloodwork and did his tests; Danny took home data and put it together with the photographs.

Three victims, three different blood types—the risk of showing illegally obtained evidence was worth it. The Marty Goines AB+ blood matched the sloppiest of the wall sprays; he was the first victim, and the killer had not yet perfected his interior decorating technique. George Wiltsie and Duane Lindenaur, types O – and B+, had their blood spat out
separately
, Wiltsie in designs less intricate, less polished. Conclusions reinforced and conclusions gained: Marty Goines was a spur-of-the-moment victim, and the killer went at him in a total rage. Although filled with suicidal bravado—as witnessed by his bringing victims two and three to Goines’ apartment—he had to have had an ace reason for choosing Mad Marty, which could be one of three:

He knew the man and wanted to kill him out of hatred—a well-defined personal motive;

He knew the man and found him a satisfactory victim based on convenience and/or blood lust;

He did not know Marty Goines previously, but was intimately acquainted with the darktown jazz strip, and trusted himself to find a victim there.

Have
his
men recanvass the area.

On Wiltsie/Lindenaur:

The killer bit and gnawed and swallowed and sprayed Wiltsie’s blood first, because he was the one who most attracted him. The relative refinement of the Lindenaur blood designs denoted the killer’s satisfaction and satiation; Wiltsie, a known male prostitute, was his primary sex fix.

Tonight, double-agency sanctioned, he’d brace talent agent/procurer Felix Gordean, connected circumstantially to Wiltsie’s squeeze Duane Lindenaur—and try for a handle on who the men were.

Danny checked the clock: 8:53; the other officers should be arriving at 9:00. He decided to stick behind the lectern, got out his notepad and went over the assignments he’d laid out. A moment later, he heard a discreet throat-clearing and looked up.

A stocky blond man, thirty-fivish, was walking toward him. Danny remembered something Dudley Smith said: a Homicide Bureau “protégé” of his would be on the “team” to grease things and make sure the other men “fell in line.” He pasted on a smile and stuck out his hand; the man gave him a hard shake. “Mike Breuning. You’re Danny Upshaw?”

“Yes. Is it Sergeant?”

“I’m a sergeant, but call me Mike. Dudley sends regards and regrets—the station boss here says Gene Niles has to work the case with us. He was the catching officer, and the Bureau can’t spare any other men. C’est la vie, I always say.”

Danny winced, remembering his lies to Niles. “Who’s the fourth man?”

“One of your guys, Jack Shortell, a squadroom sergeant from the San Dimas Substation. Look, Upshaw, I’m sorry about Niles. I know he hates the Sheriff’s and he thinks the City end of the job should be shitcanned, but Dudley said to tell you, ‘Remember, you’re the boss.’ Dudley likes you, by the way. He thinks you’re a comer.”

His
take on Smith was that he enjoyed hurting people. “That’s great. Tell the Lieutenant thanks for me.”

“Call him Dudley, and thank him yourself—you guys are partners on that Commie thing now. Look, here’s the others.”

Danny looked. Gene Niles was walking to the front of the room, giving a tall man with wire-frame glasses a wide berth, like all Sheriff’s personnel were disease carriers. He sat down in the first row of chairs and got out a notepad and pen—no amenities, no acknowledgment of rank. The tall man came up and gave Breuning and Danny quick shakes. He said, “I’m Jack Shortell.”

He was at least fifty years old. Danny pointed to his name on the blackboard. “A pleasure, Sergeant.”

“All mine, Deputy. Your first big job?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve worked half a dozen, so don’t be too proud to yelp if you get stuck.”

“I won’t be.”

Breuning and Shortell sat down a string of chairs over from Niles; Danny pointed to a table in front of the blackboard—three stacks of LAPD/LASD paper on the Goines/Wiltsie/Lindenaur snuffs. Nothing speculative from his personal file; nothing on the lead of Felix Gordean; nothing on Duane Lindenaur as a former extortionist. The men got out cigarettes and matches and fired up; Danny put the lectern between him and them and grabbed his first command.

“Most of what we’ve got is in there, gentlemen. Autopsy reports, log sheets, my summary reports as catching officer on the first victim. LAPD didn’t see fit to forensic the apartment where the victims were killed, so there’s some potential leads blown. Of the officers working the two separate jobs, I’ve been the only one to turn up hard leads. I wrote out a separate chronology on what I got, and included carbons in with your official stuff. I’ll run through the key points for you now.”

Danny paused and looked straight at Gene Niles, who’d been staring hot pokers at him since he tweaked LAPD for fumbling the forensic ball. Niles would not move his eyes; Danny braced his legs into the lectern for some more frost. “On the night of January one, I canvassed South Central Avenue, the vicinity where the car that was used to transport Martin Goines’ body was stolen from. Eyewitnesses placed Goines with a tall, gray-haired, middle-aged man, and we know from the autopsy reports that the killer has O+ blood—typed from his semen. Goines was killed by a heroin overjolt, Wiltsie and Lindenaur were poisoned by a secobarbital/strychnine compound. All three men were mutilated in the same manner—cuts from an implement known as a zoot stick, bites with the dentures the killer was wearing all over their abdominal areas. The dentures could not possibly be duplicates of human teeth. He could be wearing plastic teeth or duplicates of animal teeth or steel teeth—but not human ones.”

Danny took his eyes off Niles and scoped all three of his men. Breuning was smoking nervously; Shortell was taking notes; Big Gene was burning cigarette holes in the desktop. Danny looked at him exclusively and dropped his first lie. “So we’ve got a tall, gray-haired, middle-aged white man with O+ blood who can cop horse and barbs, knows some chemistry and can hotwire cars. When he slammed the horse into Goines, he stuffed a towel into his mouth, which means that he knew the bastard’s heart arteries would pop and he’d vomit blood. So maybe he’s got medical knowledge. I’m betting he knows how to make dentures, and yesterday I got a tip from a snitch of mine: Goines was putting together a burglary gang. When you read my summary reports you’ll see that I questioned a vagrant named Chester Brown, a jazz musician. He knew Marty Goines back in the early ’40s and stated that he was a burglar then. Brown mentioned a youth with a burned face who was Goines’ KA, but I don’t think he fits in the picture. So add ‘burglar possible’ to our scenario, and I’ll tell you what we’re going to do.

“Sergeant Shortell, you’ll be making phone queries on the dental work lead. I’ve got a very long list of dental labs, and I want you to call them and get to whoever keeps employment records. You’ve got solid elimination stuff to go with: blood type, physical description, the dates of the killings. Also ask about dental workers who aroused
any
kind of suspicion at their workplace, and if your instincts tell you someone is suspicious but you’ve got no blood type, call for jail records or Selective Service records or hospital records—or call any place else you can think of where you can get the information.”

Shortell had nodded along, writing it down; Danny gave him a nod and zeroed in on Niles and Breuning. “Sergeant Breuning and Sergeant Niles, you are to check every City, County and individual municipality Vice and sex crime file for biting aberrations and eliminate potential suspects against our man’s blood type and description. I want the files of every registered sex offender in the LA area gone through. I want a more thorough background check on Wiltsie and Lindenaur, and Wiltsie’s male prostitution jacket pulled for KAs with our guy’s stats. I want you to cross-check the sex information against the burglary files of middle-aged white men city- and countywide, and look for arrest reports on youth burglars with burn marks going back to ’43. For every possible you get, I want a set of mugshots.

“There’s an approach that I’ve let lie because of jurisdictional problems, and that’s where the mugs come in. I want every known heroin and goofball pusher to see those pictures—hard muscle shakedowns, especially in jigtown. I want you to shake down
your
snitches for information, call every Vice Squad commander in every division, City and County, and tell them to have their officers check with their snitches for fruit bar scuttlebutt. Who’s tall, gray, middle-aged and has a biting fetish? And I want you to call County and State Parole for dope on violent loony bin parolees. I want Griffith Park, South Central and the area where Goines’ body was dumped thoroughly recanvassed.”

Breuning groaned; Niles spoke for the first time. “You want a lot, Upshaw. You know that?”

Danny leaned over the lectern. “It’s an important case, and you’ll share credit for the collar.”

Niles snorted. “It’s homo horseshit, we’ll never get him, and if we did, so what? Do you care how many queers he cuts? I don’t.”

Danny flinched at “homo” and “queers”; holding a stare on Niles made his eyes flicker, and he realized that he hadn’t used the word “homosexual” in his profile of the killer. “I’m a policeman, so I care. And the job is good for our careers.”

“For
your
career, sonny. You’ve got some deal with some Jew DA downtown.”

“Niles, shitcan it!”

Danny looked around to see who shouted, felt his throat vibrating and saw that he’d gripped the lectern with blue-white fingers. Niles evil-eyed him; Danny couldn’t match the stare. He thought of the rest of his pitch and delivered it, a trace of a flutter in his voice. “Our last approach is pretty obscure. All three men were slashed by zoot sticks, which Doc Layman says Riot Squad cops used to use. There are no zoot stick homicides on record, and most zoot stick assaults were by Caucasians on Mexicans and not reported. Again, check with your informants on this and make your eliminations against blood type and description.”