This, of course, had a major problem: it all came from Elmer Fudd. Floyd had said over beers last night, sure, it would be the most humorous trial of all times, Elmer Fudd, the prosecution’s star witness. He had almost spit beer, laughing, saying, “Jesus Christ, Dickie, can’t you see it?”
I stared at the skyline of downtown Los Angeles as I crept south on the Hollywood Freeway, still a good fifteen minutes from the office in this traffic, maybe a half-hour. Thinking what a pretty city it could be on a clear morning as the sun blossomed behind the skyscrapers, quiet and peaceful from this view, beyond the sight, sound, and smell of its cancerous underbelly.
I thought about Gilbert and his buddy leaving the motel, driving around Lynwood, according to Fudd. They leave the motel and Stephen Dubois is never seen alive again. Then they’re looking around for something, or more likely, someone, and Susie Q ends up dead on the street, right across from the motel. How’s that for a start? Mostly circumstantial, I argued to myself, but not bad.
What would be the motive? Not that motive is necessary to convict someone of murder, but Jesus, it’d sure help in this case. Without it, the defense would have a field day poking holes in our case, given the relationship between Donna and Susie.
I stayed in my zone, recalling the details, trying to put it all in perspective with the newfound information, photographs that changed everything we thought we knew about the case. I pictured the crime scene: Susie on the sidewalk, strangled, her lifeless body leaving us few clues about her death. Tissue from beneath her fingernails, no doubt our best evidence if they were able to extract DNA. The other source of DNA, not likely relevant, given both her profession and the fact she was fully clothed; there was no evidence of this being a sexual assault murder. No, this was not the work of a predator or a disgruntled customer; these murders had an entirely different motive than the average dead hooker case.
And suddenly it all seemed a little clearer.
We had the statement of Gilbert Regalado: Gilbert saying Donna pimped the two victims through a club in Hollywood. He had worked for her as a driver, getting the hookers transported to and from various hotels and motels, supposedly an exclusive clientele. He also mentioned there had been a move toward extortion, some of these clients willing to pay to keep their dirty little secrets concealed. Who were these clients?
But what would the motive be? That continued to gnaw at me. Why would Donna want to kill the ones who were making her money? Why would she kill her childhood friend? What were we missing? What had they argued about out front that night, if we believe what Fudd had told us over what Donna had said.
Then I wondered, what if the girls, Susie and Stephanie, for whatever reason, had chosen to get out of the game. Decided they didn’t want to be pimped any more, or maybe they didn’t like the extortion part of it. Or the drug dealing part. Clearly, they had a disagreement about something, according to the testimony of Fudd.
Was that a mistake, to believe what Fudd had said? His story made sense, and the photos seemed to back up his statement. But it also stood in stark contrast to what Donna had told us about that night, about Fudd being out front, words exchanged between him and our victims. Who was telling the truth? Who was the more credible witness?
Jesus, that was a tough call.
There was something we were missing still, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The last piece or two of a puzzle that would likely reveal the whole picture to us and unravel the mystery.
“We need to do a search warrant,” I said to Floyd when he answered his cell phone. “We’ve got enough probable cause to hit Donna’s place, right?”
He sounded slow this morning, maybe tired, or a little hung over. “I’d imagine we could stretch what we have, come up with enough to convince the right judge.”
“You at the office yet?”
Floyd said, “Yeah, Dickie, I’m at the office. Where the hell are you, the driving range?”
“I’ll be there in about fifteen, twenty minutes,” I said, speaking rapidly, a list of things to do now clear in my mind. “If you could start an affidavit, I’ll write the search warrant when I get in. Whoever finishes first can line up a judge, then find us a few volunteers to assist with the searches.”
Floyd said he’d be on it as soon as he got another cup. Saying it’d been a madhouse in the office this morning, but I wouldn’t know, coming in as late as I do.
By the time I reached the office, my mind raced with another idea. I hurried to my desk from the back door of the office, passing rows of desks along the way. The squad room bustled with men and women in business attire talking to one another or staring at computer screens, some of them speaking into their phones. I shed a tweed coat with elbow patches, rolled up my sleeves, and loosened my gray patterned tie. Tossing a straw Dobbs with a two-inch brim onto my desk, I said to Floyd, “The club.”
Floyd, hunched over his laptop, working the keyboard with two fingers, looked up. “What?”
“We need to hit the strip club too.”
He turned to face me. “We love strip clubs, Dickie.”
“The one thing we’re pretty sure Madam Marquis didn’t lie about,” I said, “is that Donna has a partnership in that club. There has to be something there, if she’s running whores like Gilbert says. Ledgers, client lists, a black book, something.”
“Cabo,” Floyd said, giving it a subtle nod.
“Two locations for the warrant,” I said, “we hit them both at once. I’ll take Donna’s house, you can have the club. I know you’d prefer to be in a strip club, even if it is transformers doing the stripping.”
“You know me, Dickie, always willing to take one for the team.”
Floyd picked up a white mug with NYPD in blue letters, a gold shield on the side. It brought back memories of one of our most adventurous excursions, kicking doors in Brooklyn with the Cold Case Squad, some of the best cops I’d ever had the privilege to know. I nodded toward the mug, “You ready for a refill?”
Later that afternoon, Floyd called me over the police radio and said when I had a chance, find my damn cell phone and get ahold of him. They were almost wrapped up at the club and he had a few things to tell me. I asked Sandy Landers if she could keep an eye on things inside while I made a call, Sandy and her partner assisting with the search warrant at Donna Edwards’s home.
“Sure,” she said. Then she said to the new guy, “Rick, you want to finish up searching that room? I need to keep an eye on things around here.”
I hadn’t meant for her to quit what she was doing.
“Anything good?” I asked when Floyd answered his cell.
“I think so,” he said.
“Well, do tell.”
“I’ve got a detailed list of men,” he said, “clients of the call-girl operation, I’m sure. Different notes about preferences, which girl the client prefers, the outfits—one here says French Maid—hotels, cell phone numbers . . . Some of the people on this list are very interesting, to say the least.”
“Like who?”
“Probably shouldn’t say over the phone,” he said, “but there’s a lawyer’s name here, one you and I both know—”
“You’re shittin’ me.”
“—a cop we know . . . well, maybe; it’s a common name, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now. There’s a doctor—”
“A doctor?”
“—maybe a couple other VIPs. I’ll show you at the office.”
“We know for sure the list is Donna’s?”
“It was locked in her desk,” he said. “The madam didn’t even have a key to get in there. Lucky for us, Dwight here’s got a few tricks up his sleeves. You know how these surveillance guys are.”
“You guys buddies again?”
“I’ll meet you back at the office, Dickie, you’re starting to bore me.”
“Hang on a sec,” I said.
“What?”
“Don’t you want to hear what we got?”
In the early evening,
Floyd and I sat at our desks surrounded by paper bags and cardboard boxes containing evidence and items of intelligence collected from the two locations searched earlier in the day. Floyd pulled the black book from a box and wheeled his chair next to mine, pushing the evidence at my feet out of his path. He began flipping through the pages, reading the names as I labeled evidence tags with our case number, the date, time, and victim’s name.
Floyd said, “Right here, Dickie, Dr. Brandon Gladstone, three-ten area code. The pervert lives in Beverly Hills or Brentwood, most likely.”
“Let’s piggyback the warrant and get subscriber info on his number. Might as well get subscriber info on all the numbers in that book, while we’re at it. You never know, and we definitely have the probable cause now.”
“Here’s the cop,” he said, pointing out the entry. “Larry Walker.”
“Jesus, Floyd, you get cop from that? How do you know it isn’t the baseball player?”
“You think he pays for girls?”
“There was a guy in my high school named Larry Walker. Big goon with a full beard by tenth grade. It’s not an uncommon name. That’s the point I’m making.”
“Yeah,” Floyd said, “but you know the guy I’m talking about, right? That asshole who worked a radio car for about twenty minutes before he transferred to Headquarters. Now he’s a sergeant up at the Information Bureau, where all the suck-asses go.”
“House fairies,” I said. “Yeah, I do know who you’re talking about, and he is definitely a punk. But that doesn’t mean he chases drag queens.”
“The guy’s a freak,” Floyd said, “you ask me. So, what did you get out of her house that was so terrific?”
I pulled a small envelope from my shirt pocket, handed it to him, and watched his hazel eyes as he opened it and reached inside with two fingers.
He pulled a small key from the envelope and held it in front of him, looking at it and then glancing back to me. “That’s it, a key?”
“Not just a key, dumbass. A safe-deposit box key. Bank of America.”
Floyd tossed the key in the air and then caught it, his eyes tracking it back into his hand. He said, “Guess we add B of A to the piggyback, huh?”
33
FLOYD STUDIED THE first photo from a small stack in his hand, turned it sideways for a moment, then slid it to the rear. He looked at the next photo, glanced up with a malicious grin, and then flipped to the next.
The sick bastard.
“What?”
Floyd chuckled. “You’ve got to see these.”
“Le’ me see.”
“We may be onto something, Dickie. Why do you suppose . . .” he said, drawing it out as he stepped next to me, “Donna would have these photos? The old man here doing the nasty with your girl, Susie.”
I glanced at the photo. “Jesus.”
“No shit,” he said. “Looks like Gilbert told the truth about her extorting the clientele, or at least planning to.”
“Wonder how they got the pictures.”
We were both leaning on the hood of my gray Crown Vic behind the Bank of America in Downey. Floyd holding the dirty pictures recovered from a safe deposit box registered to a D. Edwards. Floyd hoarding them, showing me one at a time. “Oh . . . my . . . God!” He’d turn some sideways, tilting his head, “Ho-ly shit! Dickie, look what she’s doing here.”
“C’mon, let’s go. You can study them on the way to the office. We need to get this pervert ID’d.”
We turned out of the parking lot, the morning sun to our back now, the digital clock on my dash reading 10:33. Floyd, with his Ray-Bans on top of his head, flipped through the photographs, one after another, commenting on each one. Impressed with some, fascinated by others. He said, “Who do you think this guy is?” holding a photo of the same old man in a different pose.
I glanced over. This time the man sat on the edge of a bed in boxer shorts, black socks, and dress shoes. Sitting there with his pale, sunken chest revealing white hair and faded blue ink over his left nipple, a tattoo from the fifties.
“We get back to the office,” I said, “we’ll pull the DMV photos on all those names from the black book, see if we can figure it out.”
Dr. Brandon Gladstone appeared respectable in his collared shirt and V-necked sweater, smiling, every hair in place for his DMV photo taken three years prior. I compared it to the photos from the safe-deposit box, the one of the old man in his boxers and dress shoes, studying the two side by side. It may have been taken three years ago, but these two guys were one and the same. I convinced myself of it. Almost.
“Hey Frank,” I called out to a passing detective, “have a look at these.”
He leaned over my shoulder and peered at the photos on my desk. “Who’s that, your dad?”
Why had I asked Frank Lewandowski, I wondered.
“You’re such an asshole. Seriously, Frank, you think it’s the same guy, that one there,” I said, pointing to the DMV photo, “and this freak in the shorts?”
I felt the moisture of his breath on my neck as he snorted through a chuckle. “How the hell should I know? I ain’t got my glasses on, and I can’t see shit without ‘em. Can’t remember shit either, to be honest about it. Hell, I probably won’t be able to find my glasses now either, won’t remember where the hell I put ‘em. You want, I can try and find my glasses and come back, have a look.”
“It’s okay, Frank. I was about to head out anyway.”
“Where the hell’s your partner?” he asked, looking around the squad room. “I never see that asshole anymore unless we’re somewhere there’s girls and booze.” He glanced at his watch. “Which reminds me, I’ve got places to be.”
I returned to my study of the two men, convinced they were the same even with no help from Lewandowski. It was nearly nine and few detectives remained in the squad room this late in the evening. Those who did sat behind desks and computers, likely unaware of the time, maybe catching up on reports or running with new leads on a case. Some just preferred to not go home.
My desk phone rang, distracting me from the photos for a moment. I stared at it, wondering who would be calling me at this hour. Maybe my partner, or my wife, neither of whom would be happy to discover I was still at the office. I ignored the phone and stood through aching knees and a sore back, and thought a cup of coffee was what I needed.
Returning to my desk with a fresh cup, I decided to call it a night, make it a coffee to go order. I slid my chair under the desk, grabbed my briefcase and walked out the back door, into the parking lot under a dark and cloudy sky.
Twenty minutes later I found myself fighting traffic on the Hollywood Freeway, wondering if it was Valerie who had tried to call. Probably not, I decided; she would have tried my cell or at least paged me. My partner would have called the office, called the cell, paged me six or twenty times, and if he hadn’t reached me by then, he would have come up with a new plan over a six-pack of beer. It had probably been a victim’s loved one, I reasoned, wanting to ask what the hell I do with all my time since I haven’t bothered to solve their darling’s murder.
That settled, I switched off the cell and tuned the AM radio to catch the late innings of a Dodgers home game. To say Vin Scully called the game would be to say Leonardo painted a picture. No, Vinny’s words went beyond mere play-calling; he transformed radio waves into vivid imagery of uniformed men wearing caps and gloves and chewing seeds or tobacco on a glimmering diamond of manicured grass and its contrasting red clay, playing America’s game under the brilliant lights of a place he fondly called Chavez Ravine.
What I hated most about the coroner’s office, I thought, while tearing off a disposable paper gown, matching blue slippers, plastic goggles, and latex gloves, were the inadvertent contacts, the disgusting parts and particles of death and decomposition that seemed to jump out like the bogeyman and assail you from all directions. During examinations, technicians would carelessly wash the bodies, spraying water from a short hose, trying to direct the fluids and t
issue toward the stainless-steel sink at the end of a table. But somehow they seemed to, more often than not, splatter foreign matter in the direction of those of us who stood nearby. If that wasn’t bad enough, there were the hallways filled with bodies, fresh corpses all over the place that you would inevitably bump into or the dead guy would reach out and grab you if you weren’t careful. Or so it seemed.
What I have never figured out though, as I recalled now on my way out, passing through Receiving, is why the hell they bothered to decorate for Halloween. I thought about the paper skeletons and strings of ghosts that, in the fall, hung across the wall behind the receptionist, a remarkably well-adjusted woman who answered phones and checked in visitors, both temporary and permanent ones. It was as if they thought that maybe, with a few cutouts and cobwebs, they could make the place more ghoulish.
I dropped the officer-involved shooting notebook in my brief case as I slid into my car, glad to put another autopsy behind me. The image of an Asian gunman now memorialized on the stainless-steel slab, no longer a part of—or problem to—society. The would-be bank robber shot to death by Hawthorne officers, another case of cop-assisted suicide, the way this asshole selfishly chose to end his life. The officers would be burdened with his decision for the rest of theirs.
Floyd looked up from his desk as I walked past him and dropped my soft-sided briefcase on the floor between us.
He said, “You look like shit.”
“Back atchya, asshole.”
“You have a rough night?”
I plopped in my chair and loosened my tie. “You might say that.”
Floyd grinned, maybe happy to see me suffer. “You didn’t go out last night, did you? Did you go out without me, dickhead?”
I turned, powered up my laptop, and made a point of ignoring him.
“You did, didn’t you? Well you two-timing little bitch. What’d you do?”
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