L.A. Confidential Part 33

No answer.

"I let you be friends with my father. _Preston Exley is your friend because of me_. How many other men have you f.u.c.ked behind my back? How many other lies after what I did for you?"

Inez, a small voice. "You don't want to know."

"Yes I do, you f.u.c.king wh.o.r.e."

Inez pushed off the door. "Here's the only lie that counts, and it's all for you. Not even my sweetie pie Bud knows it, so I hope it makes you feel special."

Ed stood up. "Lies don't scare me."

Inez laughed. "_Everything_ scares you."

No answer.

Inez, calm. "The _negritos_ who hurt me couldn't have killed the people at the Nite Owl, because they were with me the whole night. They never left my sight. I lied because I didn't want you to feel bad that you'd killed four men for me. And you want to know what the _big_ lie is? You and your precious absolute justice."

Ed pushed out the door, hands on his ears to kill the roar. Dark, cold outside--he saw d.i.c.k Stens strapped down dead.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Bud checked out his new badge: "Sergeant" where "Policeman" used to be. He put his feet up on his desk, said goodbye to Homicide.

His cubicle was a mess--five year's worth of paper. Dudley said the Hollywood squad transfer was just temporary--his sergeantcy shocked the bra.s.s, Thad Green was juking him for his window-punching number: d.i.c.k Stens green room bound, left/right hooks into gla.s.s. A fair trade: he never became a crackerjack case man because the only cases that mattered were case closed and case/cases s.h.i.+tcanned. Transfer blues: leaving Bureau HQ meant no early crack at dead-body reports--a good way to keep tabs on the Kathy Janeway case and the hooker snuff string he knew tied to it.

Stuff to take with him: His new nameplate--"Sergeant Wendell White," a picture of Lynn: brunette, goodbye Veronica Lake.

A Mobster Squad photo: him and Dud at the Victory Motel. Mobster Squad goodies--bra.s.s knuckles, a ball-bearing sap--he might leave them behind.

Lock and key stuff: His FBI and forensics cla.s.s diplomas; d.i.c.k Stensland's legacy: six grand from his robbery take. d.i.c.k's last words--a note a guard pa.s.sed him.

Partner-- I regret the bad things I done. I especially regret the people I hurt when I was a policeman who just got in my way when I was feeling mean and the Christmas guys and the liquor store man and his son. It's too late to change it all. So all I can do is say I'm sorry, which don't mean anything worthwhile. I'll try to take my punishment like a man. I keep thinking it could be you instead of me who did what I did, that it was just the luck of the draw and I know maybe you've thought the same thing. I wish being sorry counted for more with guys like you and me. I payed the piper and called the tune and all that, but Exley kept the piper tune going when he didn't have to and if I got a last request it is that you get him for his share and don't be stupid and do something dumb like I would have did. Use your brains and that money I told you where to find and give it to him good, a good one in the keester from Sergeant d.i.c.k Stens. Good luck, partner. I can't hardly believe that when you read this I'll be dead.

d.i.c.k

Double-locked in the bottom drawer: His file on the Janeway/hooker snuffs, his private Nite Owl file--textbook pure, like he learned in school.

Two cases that proved he was a real detective; d.i.c.k's shot at Ed Exley. He pulled them out, read them over--college boy stuff all the way.

The Janeway string.

When things sizzled down with Lynn, he started looking for stuff to jazz him. Prowling for women didn't cut it--ditto his on-and-off thing with Inez. He flunked the sergeant's exam twice, paid his way through school with d.i.c.k's stash, worked the Mobster Squad part-time: meeting trains, planes, buses, taking would-be racketeers to the Victory Motel, beating the s.h.i.+t out of them and escorting them back to planes, trains, buses. Dud called it "containment"; he called it too much to take and still like looking at yourself in the mirror. Good cases never came his way at Homicide: Thad Green bootjacked them, a.s.signed different men. His cla.s.ses taught him interesting stuff about forensics, criminal psychology and procedure--he decided to apply what he'd learned to an old case that still simmered with him: the Kathy Janeway job.

He read Joe DiCenzo's case file: no leads, no suspects, written off as a random s.e.x kill. He read the autopsy reconstruction: Kathy beaten to death, face blows, a man with rings on both fists. B + secretor s.e.m.e.n in the mouth, r.e.c.t.u.m, v.a.g.i.n.a--three separate e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d took his time. He got a flash backed up by case histories: a s.e.x fiend like that doesn't kill just once, then go back to twiddling his thumbs.

He started paper-prowling--the kind of thing he used to hate.

No similar solveds or unsolveds anywhere in the LAPD and Sheriff's Department files--the search took him eight months. He worked his way through other police agencies--Stens' money for a stake. Zero for Orange County, San Bernardino County; four months in and a match with the San Diego PD: Jane Mildred Hamsher, 19, hooker, DOD 3/8/51, the same handwork and three-way rape: no clues, no suspects, case closed.

He read LAPD and SDPD M.O. files and got nowhere; he remembered Dudley warning him off the Janeway case--ragging him for going crazy on woman basher jobs. He went ahead anyway; paydirt on a tn-state teletype: Sharon Susan Palwick, 20, hooker, DOD 8/29/53, Bakersfield, California. The same specs: no suspects, no leads, case closed. Dud never mentioned the teletype--if he knew it existed.

He went to Diego and Bakerfield--read files, pestered detectives who worked the cases. They were bored with the jobs--and gave him the brush. He tried reconstructing the time and place element: who was in those cities on the dates of the killings. He checked old train, bus and airplane records, got no crossover names, put out standing tri-state teletypes requesting information on the killer's M.O., asking for call-ins should his killer ply that M.O. again. Nothing came in on the info request; three dead-body reports trickled in oven the years: Sally NMI DeWayne, 17, hooker, Needles, Arizona, 11/2/55; Chrissie Virginia Renfro, 21, hooker, San Francisco, 7/14/56; Mania NMI Waldo, 20, hooker, Seattle two months ago: 11/28/57. The call-ins logged in late, the same results: goose egg. Every angle, every schoolboy approach tapped--for nothing. Kathy Janeway and five other prost.i.tutes raped, beaten to death--open stuff only with him.

A 116-page dead-end file to take to the Hollywood squad--his own case, dead for now.

And his major case--pages and pages he kept checking oven. d.i.c.k Stens' case: nails in Ed Exley's coffin. He got goose b.u.mps just saying the words.

The Nite Owl case.

Starting in on the Janeway job brought it back: the Duke Cathcart/s.m.u.t connection, evidence withheld, insider stuff to f.u.c.k Exley. Timing was against him then: he didn't have the smarts to pursue it, the n.i.g.g.e.rs escaped, Exley gunned them down. The Nite Owl case was closed--the weird side bits around it forgotten. Years pa.s.sed; he went back to the Janeway snuff, discovered a string. And little Kathy made him think Nite Owl, Nite Owl, Nite Owl.

Brainwork.

Back in '53, Dwight Gilette and Cindy Benavides--Kathy Janeway K.A.'s--told him a guy who came on like Duke Cathcart was talking up muscling Cathcart's pimp business. What "pimp business"?--Duke had only two skags in his stable, but he had been talking up going into the s.m.u.t biz--at first it sounded like a pipe dream coming from a major-league pipe dreamer--but it got validated when the Englekling brothers came forward and told their story of Cathcart approaching them with a deal: they'd print the s.m.u.t, he'd distribute it, they'd approach Mickey Cohen for financing.

Cut to facts: _He_ was inside Duke's pad post--Nite Owl. It was tidied up and print-wiped; Duke's clothes had been gone through. The San Bernardino Yellow Pages were ruffled--the pages for printing shops especially. Pete and Bar Englekling owned a printshop in San Berdoo; Nite Owl victim Susan Nancy Lefferts was originally from San Berdoo.

Cut to the coroner's report: The examining pathologist based his identification of Cathcart's body on two things: dental plate _fragments_ cross-checked against Cathcart's prison dental records and the "D.C." monogrammed sports jacket the stiff was wearing. The plate fragments were standard California prison issue--any ex-con who'd done time in the state penal system could have plastic like that in his mouth.

Cut to his insider skinny: Kathy Janeway mentioned a "cute" scar on Duke's chest. There was no mention of that scar anywhere in Doc Layman's autopsy report--and Cathcart's chest was not obliterated by shotgun pellets. A final kicker: the Nite Owl stiff was measured at 5 '8"; Cathcart's prison measurement chart listed him at 5 '9".

Conclusion: A Cathcart impersonator was killed at the Nite Owl.

Cut to: s.m.u.t.

Cindy Benavides said Duke was getting ready to push it; Ad Vice was investigating s.m.u.t back then--he'd read through Squad 4's reports--all the men reported no leads, Russ Millard died, the f.u.c.k book gig fell by the wayside. The Englekling brothers told their story of Duke Cathcart's s.m.u.t approach, how they visited Mickey Cohen in prison, how he refused to bankroll the deal. They thought Cohen ordered the Nite Owl snuffs Out of bats.h.i.+t moral convictions--a ridiculous idea--but what if some kind of Nite Owl plot got started with the Mick? Exley submitted a report that said he and Bob Gallaudet talked up that theory, but the jigs escaped around then--and the Nite Owl got pinned on them.

Cut to: His theory.

What if Cohen told some prison punk about the Cathcart/Englekling plan--or his man Davey Goldman did? What if the punk got paroled, talked up cras.h.i.+ng Duke's stable while he was really just shoring up juice for his Duke impersonation? What if he killed Duke, stole some of his clothes and ended up at the Nite Owl by chance--because Duke frequented the place, or more likely--_as part of some kind of criminal rendezvous that went bad, the killers leaving, coming back with shotguns, blasting the Cathcart impersonator and five innocent bystanders to make it look like a robbery?_ Flaw in his theory so far: He'd checked McNeil parole records: only Negroes, Latins and white men too large or two small to be the Cathcart impersonator were released between the time of the Cohen-- Englekling brothers meeting and the Nite Owl. But--Cohen could have talked up the Cathcart s.m.u.t proposal, word could have leaked to the outside, the impersonation could have been four or five times f.u.c.king removed.

Theories on top of theories, theories that proved he had the brains to call himself a detective: Say the Nite Owl snuffs came out of s.m.u.t intrigue. That meant the n.i.g.g.e.rs were innocent, the real killers planted the shotguns in Ray Coates' car--which meant that the purple Merc seen outside the Nite Owl was a coincidence--the killers couldn't have known that three spooks were recently seen discharging shotguns in Griffith Park and would rank as natural first suspects. Somehow the killers found Coates' car before the LAPD--and planted the shotguns, print-wiped. It could have happened a half dozen ways.

1. Coates, in jail, could have told his lawyer where the car was stashed; the killers or their front man could have approached him for the information-or could have coerced him into making Coates talk.

2. The jigs could have spilled the location to one of their fellow inmates--maybe a planted inmate in with the killers.

3. His favorite, because it was simplest: the killers were smarter than the LAPD, did their own garage search, checked out garages behind deserted houses first--while the police went at it in grids.

Or the spooks told other inmates, who got relcased and got approached by the killers; or--unlikely--a cop finger man told them how the block search was breaking down. Impossible to check it all out: the Hall of Justice Jail destroyed its 1935--55 records to make way for more storage s.p.a.ce.

Or the jigs really were guilty.

Or it was some other bunch of boogies riding around, blasting the air in Griffith Park, killing six people at the Nite Owl. Their 1948--50 Ford/Chevy/Merc was never located because the purple paint job was homemade, never listed on a DMV form.

Brainwork from a guy who never thought he had much of a brain--and he didn't make a s.h.i.+ne gang for the snuffs, because-- The Englekling brothers sold their printshop mid-'54, then dropped off the face of the earth. Two years ago, he issued a "Whereabouts" bulletin: no results, no positive results on the cadaver bulletins he'd been tracking statewide: zilch on the brothers, no stiffs that might be the real Duke Cathcart. And-- six months ago, following up in San Berdoo, he got a hot lead.

He found a San Berdoo townie who'd seen Susan Nancy Lefferts with a man matching Duke Cathcart's description--two weeks before the Nite Owl killings. He showed him some Cathcart mugshots; the man said, "Close, but no cigar." The Nite Owl forensic had Susan Nancy "flailing" to touch the man sitting at the next table: Duke Cathcart, really the impersonator, supposedly unknown to her. Why were they sitting at _different tables?_ The kicker: he tried to interview Sue Lefferts' mother, a chance to run the boyfriend by her. She refused to talk to him.

Why?

Bud packed up: mementoes, ten pounds of paper. Stalemates for now--no new wh.o.r.e leads, the Nite Owl dead until he braced Mickey Cohen. Out to the elevator--adios, Homicide.

Ed Exley walked by staring.

He knows about Inez and me.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Stakeout: Hank's Ranch Market, 52nd and Central. A sign above the door: "Welfare Checks Cashed." January 3, relief day--check-cashers shooting c.r.a.ps on the sidewalk. Surveillance Squad 5 got a tip-some anonymous ginch said her boyfriend and his buddy were going to take the market off, she was p.i.s.sed at the boyfriend for porking her sister. Jack in the point car, watching the door, Sergeant John Petievich parked on 52--scowling like he wanted to kill something.

Lunch: Fritos, straight vodka. Jack yawned, stretched, cut odds: Aragon vs. Pimentel, what Ellis Loew wanted--he was supposed to meet him at a political soiree tonight. The vodka burned his stomach; he had to p.i.s.s wicked bad.

Horn toots--his signal. Petievich pointed to the sidewalk. Two white men entered the market.

Jack walked across the street. Petievich walked over. A frame on the doorway, a look in. The robbers at the checkstand, backs to the door--guns out, spare hands full of money.

No proprietor. No customers. A squint down the far aisle-- blood and brains on the wall. SILENCER. BACK DOOR MAN. Jack shot the heisters in the back.

Petievich screamed; back door footsteps; Jack fired blind, chased. Bottles broke over his head: blind shots, silencer rounds--no noise, m.u.f.fled thwaps. Down the far aisle, two dead winos, a door closing. Petievich fired, blew the door off--a man sprinted across the alley. Jack emptied his piece; the man vaulted a fence. Shouts from the sidewalk; c.r.a.pshooters cheering. Jack reloaded, jumped the fence, hit a backyard. A Doberman jumped at him, snarling, snapping teeth in his face--Jack shot him point-blank. The dog belched blood; Jack heard shots, saw the fence explode.

Two bluesuits. .h.i.t the yard running. Jack dropped his gun; they fired anyway--wide--blowing out fence pickets. Jack put his hands up. "Police officer! Police officer! Policeman!"

They came up slow, frisked him--peach-fuzz rookies. The taller kid found his ID. "Hey, Vincennes. You used to be some kind of hotshot, didn't you?"

Jack cold-c.o.c.ked him--a knee to the nuts. The kid went dqwn; the other kid gawked.

Jack went looking for a place to drink.

He found a juke joint, ordered a line of shots. Two drinks killed his shakes; two more made him a toastmaster.

To the men I just killed: sorry, I'm really better at shooting unarmed civilians. I'm being squeezed into retirement, so I thought I'd 86 a couple of real bad guys before I capped my twenty.

To my wife: you thought you married a hero, but you grew up and learned you were wrong. Now you want to go to law school and be a lawyer like Daddy and Ellis. No sweat on the money: Daddy bought the house, Daddy upgrades your marriage, Daddy will pay for tuition. When you read the paper and see that your husband drilled two evil robbers, you'll think they're the first notches on his gun. Wrong--in '47 dope crusader Jack blasted two innocent people, the big secret he almost wants to spill just to get some life kicking back into his marriage.

Jack downed three more shots. He went where he always went when with a certain amount of s.h.i.+t in his system--back to '53 and s.m.u.t.

He felt safe on the blackmail: his depositions for insurance, the Hudgens snuff buried--_Hush-Hush_ resurrected it, got nowhere. Patchett and Bracken never approached him--they had the carbon of Sid's Big V file, kept their end of the bargain. He heard Lynn and Bud White were still an item; call the brainy wh.o.r.e and Patchett memories--bad news from that bad b.l.o.o.d.y spring. What drove him was the s.m.u.t.

He kept it in a safe-deposit box. He knew it was there, knew it excited him--knew that loving it would trash his marriage. He threw himself into the marriage, building walls to keep them safe from that spring. A string of sober days helped; the marriage helped. Nothing he did changed things--Karen just learned who he was.

She saw him muscle Deuce Perkins; he said "n.i.g.g.e.r" in front of her parents. She figured out his press exploits were lies. She saw him drunk, p.i.s.sed off. He hated her friends; his one friend--Miller Stanton--dropped out of sight when he blew _Badge of Honor_. He got bored with Karen, ran to the s.m.u.t, went crazy with it.

He tried to ID the posers again--still no go. He went to Tijuana, bought other f.u.c.k books--no go. He went looking for Christine Bergeron, couldn't find her, put out teletypes that got him bupkis. No way to have the real thing--he decided to fake it.

He bought hookers, shook down call girls. He fixed them up to look like the girls in his books. He had them three and four at a pop, chains of bodies on quilts. He costumed them, ch.o.r.eographed them. He aped the pictures, took his own pictures, recaptured; sometimes he thought of the blood pix and got scared: perfect matches to murder mutilations.

Real women never thrilled him like the pictures did; fear kept him from going to Fleur-de-Lis--straight to the source. He couldn't figure out Karen's fear--why she didn't leave him.

A last drink--bad thoughts adieu.

Jack cleaned up, walked back to his car. No hubcaps, broken wiper blades. Crime scene tape around Hank's Ranch Market; two black-and-whites in the lot. No reprimand note on his winds.h.i.+eld--the vandals probably stole it.

He hit the bash at full swing: Ellis Loew, a suite packed with Republican bigshots. Women in c.o.c.ktail gowns; men in dark suits. The Big V: chinos, a sport s.h.i.+rt sprayed with dog blood.

Jack flagged a waiter, grabbed a martini off his tray. Framed pictures on the wall caught his eye.

Political progress: _Harvard Law Review_, the '53 election, a howler shot: Loew telling the press the Nite Owl killers confessed before they escaped. Jack laughed, sprayed gin, almost choked on his olive. Behind him: "You used to dress a bit more nicely."

Jack turned around. "I used to be some kind of hotshot."

"Do you have an excuse for your appearance?"

"Yeah, I killed two men today."

"I see. Anything else?"