L.A. Confidential Part 37

L.A. _Herald-Express_, March 20:

PARKER/LOEW IN HOT SEAT GOVERNOR KNIGHT: NITE OWL A "POWDER KEG"

L.A. _Mirror-News_, March 20:

THE WAGES OF DEATH-- EXCLUSIVE PICS OF EXLEY/SOTO LOVE NEST

L.A. _Examiner_, March 20:

POLICE SWITCHBOARDS FLOODED: CITIZENS VOICE NITE OWL OPINIONS

L.A. _Times_, March 20:

PARKER BACKS EXLEY AND HOLDS FIRM: "NO NITE OWL REOPENING"

L.A. _Daily News_, March 20:

JUSTICE MUST PREVAIL!

DEMAND POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY!

REOPEN THE NITE OWL CASE NOW!

PART FOUR

Destination: Morgue

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

The phone rang: odds on the press 20 to 1. Ed picked up anyway. "Yes?"

"Bill Parker, Ed."

"Sir, how are you? And thanks for that quote in the _Times_."

"I meant it, son. We're going to tough this thing out and let it pa.s.s. How's Inez taking it? The publicity, I mean."

"My father said she's staying at Ray Dieterling's place in Laguna. And we broke it off a few months ago. It just wasn't working."

"I'm sorry. Inez is a plucky girl, though. Compared to what she's been through, this thing should be cake."

Ed rubbed his eyes. "I'm not so sure it'll pa.s.s."

"I think it will. The Gaitsville Police won't cooperate on the Englekling homicides and that Negro at Quentin has nil value as a witness. His polygraph seems valid, but his attorney is a grandstanding shyster only interested in getting his client out of--"

"Sir, all that aside, I don't think the men I killed did the Nite Owl and--"

"Don't interrupt me and don't tell me you're so suicidally naive as to think reopening the case will do one whit of good. Now, I'm waiting for it to pa.s.s and the attorney general up in Sacramento is waiting for it to pa.s.s. Bad publicity, pet.i.tions for justice and the like _always_ peak out and pa.s.s."

"And if it doesn't?"

Parker sighed. "If the A.G. orders a state-run special investigation, I'll file an LAPD injunction against him and preempt him with an investigation of our own. I have Ellis Loew's full support on that strategy--but it will pa.s.s."

Ed said, "I'm not so sure I want it to."

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Mobster Squad duty: room 6, the Victory Motel. Bud, Mike Breuning, a Fris...o...b..y cuffed to the hot seat--Joe Sifakis, three loanshark falls, s.n.a.t.c.hed off a train at Union Station. Breuning worked the hose; Bud watched.

Fourteen hundred on the dresser--a police charity donation. A get-out-of-town pitch in high gear--dental work coming up. Bud checked his watch--4:20--Dudley was late. Sifakis screamed.

Bud walked into the bathroom. Four obscene walls: s.e.x ditties, some dated. '53 entries--he thought Nite Owl straight off. Scary: the Nite Owl big-time news, Dud wanted to talk to him bad. He turned on the sink--cover the screams. He tested _his_ Nite Owl string, found it watertight.

n.o.body knew he leaked his story to _Whisper_--if the high bra.s.s knew he would have heard--and Cathcart's stiff was still under the house. n.o.body knew he tipped the Gaitsville Sheriff's to the Englekling connection to the Nite Owl. Lucky breaks: the brothers dead, the spook up at Quentin--probably a legit alibi. He was clean on the evidence he suppressed in '53--if Dudley had an inkling he was holding stuff back it probably tied to his fix on the Kathy snuff. Dud was the Nite Owl supervisor, he'd want the brouhaha to pa.s.s--a reopening would make him look like a supporting player chump--second banana to hero chump Ed Exley. Parker was trying to keep a reopening kiboshed, call the odds against it 5 to 1, 5 to 1 that Exley would come out smelling-- Sifakis screamed--the door shook.

Bud doused his head in the sink. A scrawl by the mirror: Meg Greunwitz f.u.c.ks good--AX-74022. Girls' names on the walls; last week the L.A. Sheriff's bagged a dead hooker, add it to his list: Lynette Ellen Kendrick, age 21, DOD 3/17/58. Beaten, ring lacerations, three-hole rape--the county cops wouldn't give him the time of-- Sifakis started babbling. The bathroom got too hot to take.

Bud walked out. Sifakis, snitch-frenzied. ". . . and I know things, I _hear_ things. Like, dig, with the Mick out it's open season. Things was on this weird slowdown while he was inside, but these shooter teams took out these guys that was running his franchises, then these maverick guys, three triggers bang bang bang, they 86'd Mickey's men and these guys trying to crash his loanouts. Everybody used to respect Dud S. as a trucemaker, but now he don't do a d.a.m.n thing. You want a prostie roust? Huh? Huh? You want a good tip on a . - Breuning looked bored. Bud went out to the courtyard: crabgra.s.s, barbed-wire fenced. Fourteen empty rooms--LAPD bought the property cheap.

"Lad."

Dudley on the sidewalk. Bud lit a cigarette, walked over.

"Lad, I'm sorry I'm late."

"It don't matter, you said it was serious."

"Yes, it is all of that. How are you enjoying the Hollywood squad, lad? Is it to your liking?"

"I liked Homicide better."

"Grand, and I'll see to it that you return sometime soon. And have you been relis.h.i.+ng the spectacle of friend Exley ridiculed by the fourth estate?"

Smoke made him cough. "Yeah, sure. Too bad the case won't get reopened and really make him squirm. Not that I'd want to see you stand heat for it, though."

Dudley laughed. "I see the conflicts inherent in your perspective. And I feel a certain ambivalence myself, especially since a little birdie in Sacramento has informed me that the attorney general will soon press to reopen the case. Ellis Loew has an injunction prepared should things get dicey, so I think it is safe to a.s.sume that the Nite Owl is regrettably our hot potato once again. Political infighting, lad. The pinko Democrats have taken the tack of jigaboos wrongly accused, intend to press the issue during the primary elections, and the Republican A.G. has sidestepped and counterpunched. Lad, do you possess any Nite Owl information that you haven't presented to me?"

Ready, prepared. "No."

"Ah, grand. That aside then, I have an a.s.signment for you here at the Victory tonight. A very large and muscular man requires a bracing, and frankly Mike and d.i.c.k lack the presence to appropriately impress him. It's a small world, lad--I think this chap knew our friend Duke Cathcart back in '53. Maybe he can give you some information on your Kathy Janeway fixation. Does fair Kathy's fate still concern you, lad?"

Bud swallowed--dry.

"Lad, forget that I asked. Fixations like that are like prost.i.tutes--they can reform, but their old ways still linger. Tonight at 10:00, lad. And be of good cheer. I have some extracurricular work for you soon, work that should rekindle your old fearsome habits."

Bud blinked.

Dudley smiled, walked to room 6.

Prost.i.tute equals Lynn. Janeway jibe equals just how much?

Joe Sifakis screamed--through four walls, out to the edge of the courtyard.

CHAPTER FIFTY

Gallaudet slipped him the news: the Attorney General's Office was set to press for a reopening: statefinanced, state-run. Ellis Loew was set to usurp their investigation-- the LAPD, Nite Owl redux. Time to call it all in.

Ed in a coffee shop on La Brea. Jack Vincennes due, paperwork on the table: Nite Owl, notes on the Hudgens case.

Check mark: was the man at San Quentin telling the truth? Most likely yes--whatever his motives.

Check mark: did the Englekling killings tie in to the Nite Owl? No way to tell until the Mann Sheriff's shared their information.

Check mark: the purple car by the Nite Owl. A hunch: it was an innocent vehicle, the real killers followed the publicity, located Ray Coates' car before the LAPD, planted the shotguns. This meant--astoundingly--that they planted the spent sh.e.l.ls found in Griffith Park. Hall of Justice Jail records '35 to '55 had been destroyed--if the killers gleaned the information as part of a jail connection, finding that connection would most likely prove impossible. Have Kleckner and Fisk thoroughly investigate every logical possibility pertaining to the purple car/planted shotguns.

Check mark: victim Malcolm Lunceford, ex--LAPD officer/wino security guard. Did he tie in to some kind of criminal conspiracy that resulted in the Nite Owl ma.s.sacre? Answer: unlikely--he was a certified, long-term Nite Owl habitue, late nights always.

Ed sipped coffee, thought POWER. Abused: IAD was autonomous inside and outside the Department; he'd had Fisk and Kleckner working toward a possible reopening--LAPD's or his own. Vincennes admitted his tail on Bud White and lied about White knowing his sporadic girlfriend--Lynn Bracken--during the spring of '53. Lynn Bracken was placed under loose surveillance; Fisk just submitted a report.

The woman was rumored to be an ex-prost.i.tute; she co-owned a dress shop in Santa Monica. Her partner: Pierce Morehouse Patchett, age fifty-six. Kleckner secured a fmancial report: Patchett emerged as a wealthy investor known to pimp call girls to business a.s.sociates. The financial kicker: Patchett owned an apartment building in Hollywood. A weird shootout took place there--in the middle of the Nite Owl time frame. He caught the squeal himseffi no suspects apprehended, sadom.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t gear in a shot-riddled downstairs unit. The manager claimed not to know the building's owner--he was paid by mail, suspected a dummy corporation issued him his paycheck. He knew the first name of the apartment's tenant--"Lamar," a "big blond guy." The manager blamed Lamar for the shootout; a Hollywood Division follow-up report stated that Lamar had not been seen since the incident. Incident closed.

Trashcan was late. Move to the Hudgens notes.

G.o.d-awful butchery, no hard suspects, Hudgens roundly hated. A lackl.u.s.ter investigation--heat fell briefly on Max Peltz and the _Badge of Honor_ crew--_Hush-Hush_ published an article "exposing" Peltz and his l.u.s.t for teenage girls. Peltz pa.s.sed a polygraph test; the rest of the "crew" proffered alibis. Between the lines--Parker considered the victim sc.u.m, short-shrifted the case.

Still no Trash. Ed skimmed the alibi sheet.

Max Peltz engaged in statutory rape--heavily implied, no charges filed. Script girl Penny Fulweider home with her husband; Billy Dieterling alibied--Timmy Valburn. Set designer David Mertens--a sickly man suffering from epilepsy and other ailments--alibied by Jerry Marsalas, his live-in male nurse. Star Brett Chase at a party; co-star Miller Stanton likewise. A bust--but Hudgens' death had to play central to Vincennes' spring '53.