The Black Marble (7 page)

It was true that Clarence Cromwell had unlimited use of a $300,000 motor yacht. It was also true that Captain Hooker asked for Cromwell when he was kicked out of robbery-homicide because Hooker had heard about the magnificent boat. Hipless Hooker may have wondered why a well-heeled bail bondsman like No-Show Weems would be so generous with Clarence Cromwell, but he thought he shouldn't look a gift horse. He was absolutely right.

No-Show Weems was so called because even though he had thriving bail bond agencies all over Los Angeles County, every time the sweating fat man was asked how's business, he'd say: “Terrible. No show. No show. Nobody comes to court. Everybody jumps bail these days. No show. No show.”

No-Show Weems had made the disastrous mistake of posting bail for the Moroni brothers, two bank robbers from San Pedro who had shot a bank guard during their last robbery and were awaiting trial, their combined bail set at two hundred thousand dollars. The D.A. had argued against lowering the bail, but the superior court judge had never forgotten Boys Town's Father Flanagan and believed, even before he became senile, that there is no such thing as a bad boy. No-Show Weems knew for sure that the Moroni brothers were bad boys. In fact, he knew it even before Sal Moroni got arrested for throwing a Sicilian cook out the window of an Italian restaurant for overcooking his scallopini.

The old cook swore vengeance after leaving the hospital with a brand-new hip joint, and decided to give the Moroni brothers a dose of Sicilian revenge. She had never heard of it in her country, but since all the American movies did it, Lucretia Pantuzzi, age sixty-eight, began limping up to their door in the middle of the night and leaving reeking bundles of putrid perch and rock cod in the Moroni mailbox. Take that, goatface! A little calling card from Lucretia Pantuzzi!

When the senile judge lowered bail, No-Show bit the bullet and posted it because the Moroni brothers had as an uncle a successful tuna fisherman who signed an agreement to make restitution if the Moroni boys jumped. But two weeks later the old fisherman had fallen from the stern of his trawler and drowned along with six porpoises, trapped in his own tuna nets. A save-the-porpoise environmentalist group threw a bash and offered several hearty toasts and hoorahs for more live porpoises and drowned dagos. The old fisherman's estate went into receivership and a legal battle ensued which tied up his assets.

Meanwhile, the Moroni brothers were getting sick and tired of finding stinking fish in their mailbox. It got so the bank robbers even hated to reach in the box for their welfare checks. And the fact is, they were just plain bored anyway. So they robbed a savings and loan office and cruised south with the migratory gray whales. All the way to Cabo San Lucas, on the tip of the Baja peninsula, in the country of Mexico.

One day Sal and Tony Moroni were lollygagging in the Mexican sunshine, drinking tequila and watching two drunken whores frolic in the surf. They saw a white motor cruiser on the horizon. The chartered cruiser powered ever closer to the beach, anchored some distance back of the surf line and lowered a rubber dinghy into the water. The dinghy had a big outboard engine and the guy in the boat made good time skimming over the swells to the beach.

When he got closer, the brothers saw he was wearing a red knitted cap pulled down almost to his eyes, and a red scarf tied across the lower part of his face. The dumb shit. It was seventy-two degrees on the beach. Then he got even closer. His hands and arms were dark. He was a nigger. A stupid nigger coming from the cool ocean to a warm beach in a red knitted hat and scarf. He looked so goddamn silly the whores joined the Moroni brothers and they all laughed like hell. Then he cut his engine and drifted in through the gentle surf right up to the beach. Dumb nigger probably coming ashore to buy some tequila for his boss on the yacht. He wasn't even looking at the naked whores, but it didn't matter. He looked so silly with his face all wrapped up that they laughed like hell.

And wept when the Moroni brothers, blindfolded and chained together with two sets of handcuffs, were sailing away at gunpoint in the little rubber dinghy.

They were blindfolded all the way, even after leaving the boat. They couldn't identify the boat, the skipper, or the nigger gunman. When they had to eat or use a toilet during the two-day voyage he would take off the handcuffs, but make them do it blindfolded. All they could say about him was that if they yelled or complained he'd put those two big magnums right in their ears and ask them if they saw the movie
Jaws.

The police were given an anonymous phone tip and found the fugitives, minus handcuffs, gags, and blindfolds, locked in the trunk of an abandoned junkyard car near the Los Angeles County Jail parking lot.

The A.C.L.U. said that if their story were true their civil liberties had been horribly violated. The Mexican consulate said that if their story were true it was an international act of piracy. The L.A.P.D. bank squad said it was all bullshit, made up by the Moroni brothers who had always been poor sports anyway.

Actually, nobody
really
believed the outrageous tale. In fact the Moroni brothers got kidded so much in the slammer about the Scarlet Pimpernel and the Crimson Pirate that they stopped telling the story about the big nigger in the red mask. After a while even Sal Moroni stopped believing it really happened, and Tony had to kick the shit out of him to get his head straight.

And a few months later, No-Show Weems bought himself a 53-foot yacht much like the one the Moronis had seen on the horizon that day, and Clarence Cromwell got to use it just as much as he wanted.

Natalie Zimmerman knew part of the story of the motor yacht, but not all of it. Captain Hooker knew all he cared to know.

“Natalie,” Hooker smiled unctuously. “Clarence here can tell you what a good policeman Valnikov was, all those years they worked together.”

“I worked robbery, the bank detail,” Clarence said, melodramatically closing his arm on the twin magnums. “Val was a heavyweight homicide dick, 'cept maybe for one or two other guys he was number one. He ain't always been a …”

“Drunk.” Natalie finished the statement. Then quickly: “Captain, I've never been put in a position to poor-mouth another officer like this and I don't like it a damn bit but …”

“Sometimes a fellow shouldn't work homicide that long,” Captain Hooker offered.

“Yeah, I knew a old homicide guy,” Clarence agreed. “Started floggin his … started masturbatin at a salesgirl in the May Company one day. Had to give the old sucker a psycho pension.”

“To continue, Natalie,” Hooker said hastily, “when Valnikov transferred in a month ago it was because of a … problem. He had some sort of scuffle with a doctor or something and …”

“A pathologist,” Clarence said.

“Yes, a pathologist. During an autopsy.”

“Wasn't nothin,” Clarence assured her. “Jist a misunderstandin of some kind. Homicide dicks always get pissed off at those canoemakers at the morgue. Can't never give you enough evidence to make a good murder case, seems like.”

“A misunderstanding,” she smirked. “The kind you have in a saloon, for instance?”

Damn, this odd broad was one of the world's champion sneerers and smirkers, Clarence Cromwell thought.

“He had a drinking tendency,” Hooker admitted. “And after this scuffle or whatever it was, his captain noted he'd been acting a little … well, distant for some time. Absent-minded. His reports are a little sloppy and incomplete. A little … oh, incoherent.”

“He was always sort of a quiet guy, though,” Clarence added.

“His captain thought a change of scenery would do him good. Clarence suggested I take him here at Hollywood and I agreed.”

Attaboy, Clarence, Natalie thought, smirking.

“He went through a painful divorce a few years ago. Sometimes it makes a man take a drink, and what with …”

“Captain, I've been through
two
painful divorces,” Natalie Zimmerman said, up again and pacing. “Look, sir, I'm thirty-nine years old. I've been a police officer eighteen years. I can't be expected to …”

“Yeah? You
that
old, Nat?” Clarence said.

“… and I can't be expected to wet-nurse alcoholics.”

“Wet-nurse. Hee hee,” Clarence giggled. Looking at her tits.

“Nobody said he's an alcoholic,” Hooker said. “We don't have alcoholics in the detective bureau!”
That
one made even Clarence Cromwell smirk.

“Look, Captain,” she said. “I've been a good police officer. I worked my tail off to get my bachelor's degree and …”

“Her tail,” Clarence said. “Hee hee.” Looking at it admiringly.

“I don't think it's fair!” Natalie said, sneering at Clarence Cromwell, who was obviously behind all this.

The captain started getting gaseous and wished Clarence would just handle the whole matter so he could go shopping and buy himself a yachtsman cap. “Anyway, we …
I
think this aimless kind of behavior might diminish if he's not alone so much. He needs a partner. And not a partner who he'll let take charge. Because that's what he has a tendency to be—passive. He needs a
female
partner.”

“Ah hah!” Natalie Zimmerman cried, smirking up at the frizzy lock on her forehead.

Now she understood. And with
that
, Natalie Zimmerman couldn't argue. She had been a cop too long to fight with
that
logic.

Natalie Zimmerman had been through it all, through all the humiliating chauvinism in a macho job where women couldn't advance past sergeant until recent years when they magnanimously promoted
one
woman to the rank of lieutenant. Where they used to start the women in the Lincoln Heights Jail until the sheriff's office took over that miserable job. Where Natalie Kelso had begun her police career at the age of twenty-one, still naïve enough to think she would be doing real police work like a real cop.

The Lincoln Heights Jail. Knee-deep in fingerprint ink, vomit, tears, blood. Memories. You've never smelled a stink until you smell the feet in those detention tanks.

“All right, Officer, bring in your next prisoner. Petty theft, huh? What is she, a drunken thief or a thieving drunk? Search her? Can't I just pat her down on the dry spots?” Mean Minnie from Main Street. She just loved to tease a rookie jailor by plucking shitballs from her jockey shorts—jockey shorts!—and flicking them in the rookie's hair when her back was turned.

“Oh, ma'am! Officer! You put me in the cell without money or cigarettes.”

“Be glad you don't have any, lady. They'd kill you in that tank just to get them.”

“Oh, ma'am! Officer! I found a body crab when I came in here, and it just died.”

“Congratulations. You're lucky.”

“But a thousand more just came to its funeral!”

“Oh, ma'am! Officer! There's twenty people sleeping in my bed.”

“How's that possible?”

“My bed's on the floor.”

“But the fifth floor's
full
tonight! There
are
no more beds! Christ! What can
I
do! Take you home with me! Christ!”

A rookie jailor. Still green enough to shake hands with a pregnant Indian drunk from East Fifth Street. The woman had just blown her nose on that hand.
Never
shake hands. Never touch any of them unless you have to.
And don't let them ever touch you.

Now the women were out on patrol with the men. Wearing men's uniforms, of course. A nasty gesture by the brass to humiliate them since the courts forced the brass to give the women parity. Now they were doing patrol work—the amazons, that is, who were as big and strong as men, as though size and strength were meaningful. But in the investigative divisions they still had them working mostly on juvenile cases, dealing with children and rape victims, doing paper work like glorified file clerks. No, she couldn't argue with Hipless Hooker's logic. If Valnikov were ever going to become an assertive cop, he'd sure as hell do it with a
female
partner. Every one of those
other
chauvinist bastards sure had, even a loanee from patrol she had trained three months ago. She was almost old enough to be the little asshole's mother.

“It ain't gonna be so bad workin with Valnikov,” Clarence said, trying hard to come up with something positive for Natalie. Some talent Valnikov could offer. “Looky here,” Clarence said. “He's smart. He talks Russian!”

“Wonderful,” Natalie said, smirking up at her buckskin Friz. “If we get on the trail of some Communist spies, maybe I can use him.”

Five minutes later, Valnikov was sitting in the chair next to Clarence Cromwell. The door was closed and Valnikov was so confused he thought Captain Hooker was telling him he was going to work juvenile with Natalie Zimmerman.

“But I like burglary, Cap,” Valnikov said, trying to focus his watery blue eyes on Captain Hooker.