The Big Nowhere (36 page)

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Authors: James Ellroy

BOOK: The Big Nowhere
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The phone rang. Danny reached for the bedside extension, saw that he’d passed out on the floor and tripped over dead bottles and file folders getting to it. “Yeah? Jack?”

Jack Shortell said, “It’s me. You listening?”

Danny blinked away wicked sunlight, grabbed paper and a pencil. “Go.”

“First, Breuning’s tails were all fake. I called in an old favor at LAPD Homicide, checked the work sheets for the men Dudley uses regularly and found out they were all working regular assignments full-time. I looked around for Gene Niles to see if I could sweet-talk him and get some more dope on it, but that bastard is nowhere. LAPD canvassed the area where Duarte’s body was found—they caught the squeal and some rookie squadroom dick out of Central hopped on it. Nothing so far. Doc Layman’s grid-searching for trace elements there—he wants complete forensics on Duarte so he can put him in his next textbook. He thinks the rain will kibosh it, but he’s trying anyway, and on the autopsy it’s the same story as the first three: sedated, strangled, mutilated after death. I called the other men on your tailing list, and they’re going on little vacations until this blows over. Danny, did you know that guy Hartshorn you told me about killed himself?”

Danny said, “Yeah, and I don’t know if it plays with our case or not.”

“Well, I went by Wilshire Station and checked the report, and it looks clean—no forced entry, no struggle. Hartshorn’s daughter said Pops was despondent over your grand jury.”

Danny was getting nervous; the scene with De Haven was coming back: she knew, they knew, no more Red Ted. “Jack, have you got anything hot?”

Shortell said, “Maybe a scorcher. I was up all night on the wolverine thing, and I got a great lead on an old man named Thomas Cormier, that’s C-O-R-M-I-E-R. He’s an amateur naturalist, famous, I guess you’d call him. He lives on Bunker Hill, and he rents weasel genus things to the movies and animal shows. He has a batch of individually penned-up wolverines, the only known batch in LA. Now listen, because this is where it gets good.

“Last night I went by the West Hollywood Substation to talk to a pal of mine who just transferred over. I heard the girl at the switchboard ragging you to the watch sergeant, and I played nice and sweet-talked her. She told me she was dragging her heels on her set of dental queries because she thought you were just using her. She gave me a list that had notes on it—negative on the killer’s description, but positive on the animal teeth—Joredco Dental Lab on Beverly and Beaudry. They do animal dentures for taxidermists, and they’re the only lab in LA that works with actual animal teeth—that lead you had that said all taxidermists use plastic teeth was wrong. And Beverly and Beaudry is seven blocks from Thomas Cormier’s house—343 South Corondelet.”

Red hot and biting.

Danny said, “I’m rolling,” and hung up. He put muscling Felix Gordean aside, cleaned up and stashed his files, cleaned up his person and dressed as Daniel T. Upshaw, policeman, replete with badge, gun and official ID. Ted Krugman dead and buried, he drove to Bunker Hill.

*  *  *

343 South Corondelet was an eaved and gabled Victorian house sandwiched between vacant lots on the west edge of the Hill. Danny parked in front and heard animal yapping; he followed the sounds down the driveway and around to a terraced back yard with a picture postcard view of Angel’s Flight. Lean-tos with corrugated metal roofs were arranged in L-shapes, one to each level of grass; the structures were fronted by heavy wire mesh, and the longest L had what looked like a generator device built onto its rear side. The whole yard reeked of animals, animal piss and animal shit.

“The smell getting to you, Officer?”

Danny turned around. The mind reader was a grizzled old man wearing dungarees and hipboots, walking toward him waving a fat cigar that blended in perfectly with the shit stink and made it worse. He smiled, adding bad breath to the effluvia. “Are you from Animal Regulation or Department of Health?”

Danny felt the sun and the smell go to work on his skinful of booze, sandpapering him. “I’m a Sheriff’s Homicide detective. Are you Thomas Cormier?”

“I am indeed, and I’ve never killed anyone and I don’t associate with killers. I’ve got some killer mustelids, but they only kill the rodents I feed them. If that’s a crime. I’ll take the blame. I keep my mustelidae in captivity, so if they called a bum tune, I’ll pay the piper.”

The man looked too intelligent to be an outright loony. Danny said, “Mr. Cormier, I heard you’re an expert on wolverines.”

“That is the God’s truth. I have eleven in captivity right this instant, my baby refrigeration unit keeping them nice and cool, the way they like it.”

Danny queased on cigar smoke and halitosis; he willed himself pro. “This is why I’m here, Mr. Cormier. Four men have been killed between New Year’s and now. They were mutilated by a man wearing denture plates with wolverine teeth attached. There’s a dental lab several blocks from here—the only one in LA that manufactures actual animal dentures. I think that’s a strange coincidence, and I thought maybe you could help me out with it.”

Thomas Cormier snuffed his cigar and pocketed the butt. “That is just about the strangest thing I have heard in my entire time on this planet, which dates back to 1887. What else have you got on your killer?”

Danny said, “He’s tall, middle-aged, gray-haired. He knows the jazz world, he can purchase heroin, he knows his way around male prostitutes.” He stopped, thinking of Reynolds Loftis, wondering if he’d get anything that wasn’t circumstantial on him. “And he’s a homosexual.”

Cormier laughed. “Sounds like a nice fellow, and sorry I can’t help you. I don’t know anybody like that, and if I did, I think I’d keep my back to the wall and my trusty rifle out when he came to call. And this fellow’s enamored of
Gulo luscus
?”

“If you mean wolverines, yes.”

“Lord. Well, I admire his taste in mustelids, if not the way he displays his appreciation.”

Danny sighed. “Mr. Cormier, do you know anything about the Joredco Dental Lab?”

“Sure, just down the street. I think they make animal choppers.”

A clean take. Danny saw takes from Claire De Haven’s movie, pictured HIM seeing it, getting aroused, wanting more. “I’d like to see your wolverines.”

Cormier said, “Thought you’d never ask,” and walked ahead of Danny to the refrigeration shed. The air went from warm to freezing; the yapping became snarling; dark shapes lashed out and banged the mesh fronts of their pens. Cormier said, “
Gulo luscus
. Carcajou—evil spirit—to the Indians. The most insatiable carnivore alive and pound for pound the meanest mammal. Like I said, I admire your killer’s taste.”

Danny found a good sun angle—light square on a middle pen; he squatted down and looked, his nose to the wire. Inside, a long creature paced, turning in circles, snapping at the walls. Its teeth glinted; its claws scraped the floor; it looked like a coiled muscle that would not stop coiling until it killed and slept in satiation—or died. Danny watched, feeling the beast’s power, feeling HIM feeling it; Cormier talked. “
Gulo luscus
is two things: smart and intractable. I’ve known them to develop a taste for deer, hide in trees and toss nice edible bark down to lure them over, then jump down and rip the deer’s jugular out clean to the windpipe. Once they get a whiff of blood, they will not stop persisting. I’ve heard of wolverines stalking cougars wounded in mating battles. They’ll jab them from behind, take nips out and run away, a little meat here and there until the cougar nearly bleeds to death. When the poor fellow’s almost dead,
Gulo
attacks frontally, claws the cougar’s eyes out of his head and eats them like gumballs.”

Danny winced, transposing the image: Marty Goines, HIM, the creature he was watching. “I need to look at your records. All the wolverines you’ve lent out to movies and animal shows.”

Cormier said, “Officer, you can’t lend
Gulos
out, much as I’d like to make the money. They’re my private passion, I love them and I keep them around because they shore up my reputation as a mustelidologist. You lend
Gulos
out, they’ll attack anything human or animal within biting range. I had one stolen out of its pen five or six years ago, and my only consolation was that the stealer sure as hell got himself mangled.”

Danny looked up. “Tell me about that. What happened?”

Cormier took out his cigar butt and fingered it. “In the summer of ’42 I worked nights at the Griffith Park Zoo, resident zoologist doing research on nocturnal mustelid habits. I had an earlier bunch of wolverines that were getting real fat. I knew somebody must have been feeding them, and I started finding extra mouse and hamster carcasses in the pens. Somebody was lifting the food latches and feeding my
Gulos
, and I figured it for a neighborhood kid who’d heard about my reputation and thought he’d see for himself. Truth be told, it didn’t bother me, and it kind of gave me a cozy feeling, here’s this fellow
Gulo
lover and all. Then, late in July, it stopped. I knew it stopped because there were no more extra carcasses in the cages and my
Gulos
went back to their normal weights. About a year and a half or so went by, and one night my
Gulo
Otto was stolen. I laughed like hell. I figured the feeder had to have a
Gulo
for himself and stole Otto. Otto was a pistol. If the stealer got away with keeping him, I’m sure Otto bit him real good. I called hospitals around here to see if they stitched a bite victim, but it was no go, no Otto.”

Bit him real good.

Danny thought of sedation—a wolverine Mickey Finned and stolen—HIM with his own evil mascot—
the story might just play
. He looked back in the pen; the wolverine noticed something and lashed the wire, making screechy blood W noises. Cormier laughed and said, “Juno,
you’re
a pistol.” Danny put his face up to the mesh, tasting the animal’s breath. He said, “Thanks, Mr. Cormier,” pulled himself away and drove to the Joredco Dental Lab.

*  *  *

He was almost expecting a neon sign facade, an animal mouth open wide, the address numbers done up as teeth. He was wrong: the lab was just a tan stucco building, a subtly lettered sign above the door its only advertisement.

Danny parked in front and walked into a tiny receiving area: a secretary behind a desk, a switchboard and calendar art on the walls—1950 repeated a dozen times over, handsome wild animals representing January for local taxidermist’s shops. The girl smiled at him and said, “Yes?”

Danny showed his badge. “Sheriff’s. I’d like to speak to the man in charge.”

“Regarding?”

“Regarding animal teeth.”

The girl tapped an intercom switch and said, “Policeman to see you, Mr. Carmichael.” Danny looked at pictures of moose, bears, wolves and buffalos; he noticed a sleek mountain cat and thought of a wolverine stalking it, killing it off with sheer ugly persistence.

A connecting door swung open; a man in a bloody white smock came in. Danny said, “Mr. Carmichael?”

“Yes, mister?”

“It’s Deputy Upshaw.”

“And this regards, Deputy?”

“It regards wolverine teeth.”

No reaction except impatience—the man obviously anxious to get back to work. “Then I can’t help you. Joredco is the only lab in Los Angeles that fashions animal dentures, and we’ve never done them for a wolverine.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because taxidermists do not stuff wolverines—they are not an item that people want mounted in their home or lodge. I’ve worked here for thirteen years and I’ve never filled an order for wolverine teeth.”

Danny thought it over. “Could someone who learned the rudiments of animal-denture making here do it himself?”

“Yes, but it would be bloody and very slapdash without the proper tools.”

“Good. Because I’m looking for a man who likes blood.”

Carmichael wiped his hands on his smock. “Deputy, what is this in regard to?”

“Quadruple homicide. How far back do your employment records go?”

The “quadruple homicide” got to Carmichael—he looked shaken under his brusqueness. “My God. Our records go back to ’40, but Joredco employs mostly women. You don’t think—”

Danny was thinking Reynolds Loftis wouldn’t sully his hands in a place like this. “I think maybe. Tell me about the men you’ve had working here.”

“There haven’t been many. Frankly, women work for a lower wage. Our current staff has been here for years, and when we get rush orders, we hire bums out of day labor and kids from Lincoln and Belmont High School to do the scut work. During the war, we hired lots of temporaries that way.”

The Joredco connection felt—strangely—like it was clicking in, with Loftis clicking out. “Mr. Carmichael, do you have a medical plan for your regular employees?”

“Yes.”

“May I see your records?”

Carmichael turned to the receptionist. “Sally, let Deputy whatever here see the files.”

Danny let the remark slide; Carmichael went back through the connecting door. Sally pointed to a filing cabinet. “Nasty prick, if you’ll pardon my French. Medicals are in the bottom drawer, men in with the women. You don’t think a real killer worked here, do you?”

Danny laughed. “No, but maybe a real live monster did.”

*  *  *

It took him an hour to go through the medical charts.

Since November ’39, sixteen men had been hired on as dental techs. Three were Japanese, hired immediately after the Jap internment ended in ’44; four were Caucasian and now in their thirties; three were white and now middle-aged; six were Mexican. All sixteen men had, at one time or another, given blood to the annual Red Cross Drive. Five of the sixteen possessed O+ blood, the most common human blood type. Three of the men were Mexican, two were Japanese—but Joredco still felt right.

Danny went back to the shop and spent another hour chatting up the techs, talking to them while they pried teeth out of gum sections removed from the heads of elk, deer and Catalina Island boar. He asked questions about tall, gray-haired men who acted strange; jazz; heroin; guys with wolverine fixations. He breathed blood and animal tooth infection and stressed strange behavior among the temporary workers who came and went; he threw out teasers on a handsome Hollywood actor who just might have made the scene. The techs deadpanned him, no’d him and worked around him; his only lead was elimination stuff: most of the temps were Mex, wetbacks going to Belmont and Lincoln High sans green cards, veterans of the Vernon slaughterhouses, where the work was twice as gory and the money was even worse than the coolie wages Mr. Carmichael paid. Danny left thinking Reynolds Loftis would faint the second he hit the Joredco line; thinking the actor might be circumstantial linkage only. But Joredco/Cormier still felt right; the blood and decay smelled like something HE would love.

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