Detour to Murder jo-3

by Jeff Sherratt

  We headed north on the 605. While Rita drove, I gave her the lowdown and this time I didn’t hold back. I told her about Danny and Rollo, how they took me by surprise at gunpoint, tied me to a post, worked me over. How they demanded that I turn over Mrs. Hathaway’s papers. Papers I didn’t have. I told her how I’d hung on that post in the abandoned warehouse for hours on end until I almost lost my mind.

  Then I explained why I’d had to kill them. I left out the part about the rats.

  She took her eyes off the road for a moment and stared at me in horror, but she didn’t say a word about what I had just told her. Still, her knuckles were white as she gripped the wheel tighter.

  “Rita, I was scared, really scared. I didn’t… have a choice. They came back to kill me-”

  “You’ve been gone for almost forty hours. I’m taking you to the emergency room, right now!” she snapped in a firm voice reminiscent of my grade school principal.

  “No, just take me home… I’ve got to call Sol. He’s got… an envelope… I have to find out about Roberts.”

  She glanced at me again. “No! Look at you. Your face is a mess. You’ll get an infection… and you’re dehydrated and exhausted.”

  “Rita, if we go to the… hospital… they’ll file a police report… I’ll go to jail.”

  “Okay, then we’ll go to my place. I have some penicillin pills and a first aid kit. I’ll try to patch you up, but if you get a fever or anything I’m taking you to the emergency room at Downey Memorial,” she said. “Agreed?”

  I nodded as she spoke, my mind running in slow motion. Images came and went. Hazy thoughts flickered like an old movie. Christ, I needed food and sleep.

  “Do you know… there’s a bamboo shack… in Hawaiian Gardens?” I asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “One more thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t worry about Al Roberts. He’s doing better. He’s still at the hospital and they won’t allow the police to move him for at least a few more days.”

  “I’ve got to… call… Sol…”

  “We’ll call him when we get to my place.”

  As soon as we entered Rita’s apartment, I went to the phone and dialed Sol’s private home number. “Sol…” I said when he answered.

  “Gott in Himmel! Where are you?”

  “At Rita’s-”

  Rita snatched the phone away from me. “Sol, he’s not well. I know you want to see him as soon as possible. But it’ll have to wait until the morning. He’ll be staying here tonight.” She paused for a moment. “I know how important it is, but he’s been through a lot and he’s in no condition to talk to anyone.”

  While I sat on the sofa, Rita brought Sol up to speed on what had happened. She was brief and concise. “Goodbye, Sol,” she finally said and hung up.

  “I really need to see him, Rita…” My voice trailed off in exhaustion. It was becoming harder to speak, to stay focused, and even to breathe. I had a massive headache and my body felt like a two-hundred-pound pile of pain.

  She gave me a look. “It can wait until tomorrow morning.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As much as I wanted to talk to Sol, I couldn’t argue with Rita. I hadn’t slept in God knows how long and I was dead on my feet.

  Light filtered in through Rita’s lace-covered windows. I checked the alarm clock on the night table: 10:38. I’d slept almost eleven hours and my stomach growled in hunger. New clothes were folded neatly on a wingback chair in the corner of the room. My body was stiff and sore and it hurt to move, but I managed to sit up on the edge of the bed. I lightly touched my face, felt the bandages Rita had applied the night before, and winced.

  Muffled voices drifted in from the other side of the door. One of them belonged to Sol, another to Rita. I didn’t recognize the third voice. Gradually I got up, used the adjoining bathroom, took two more penicillin pills, and dressed as best I could.

  Rita, Sol, and a guy I didn’t know stood when I entered the living room.

  “Jimmy, you look like shit warmed over,” Sol said.

  “Good morning to you, too, Sol.”

  The man, in his mid-fifties, was big, broad in the shoulders, and hefty with a thick neck. Thirty years ago, he could’ve been a linebacker for the Rams. Now he was just a middle-aged guy with a paunch. He wore a rumpled brown suit with a white dress shirt, open at the collar and no tie. He had thinning blond hair and hooded, questioning eyes that shifted from me to Sol, then back to me again.

  “First off, I took care of the Buick Rita told me about. The one at the gas station.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The object in the glove box has been disposed of, and the car has been moved, South Central L.A. It’ll disappear a piece at a time within the next few days-Midnight Auto Supply.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  I knew what Sol meant. The gun in the Buick’s glove box had my fingerprints all over it and could be used by the cops to tie me into the two bodies at the warehouse. The thugs’ car in my possession could also be difficult to explain. Thieves, however, would strip the car and it would never be seen again. But there was still the question of the knife that I’d left at the scene. I’d deal with that later if it came up.

  “Now, Jimmy, meet Melvin Dunn,” Sol said.

  “Call me Mel.” The man offered his hand.

  I shook it, wondering what this was all about. I wanted to get Sol alone, wanted to talk about my kidnappers and the stuff in the envelope.

  “Excuse me, gentleman, but Jimmy must be starved,” Rita said. “I’m going to fix him breakfast. Would anyone else care for some?”

  Sol and Mel politely declined Rita’s offer of food, but both said they’d love some coffee. We moved into the kitchen and Sol’s eyes lit up when he sipped his Joe. “Whoa! Good stuff, Rita.” She must’ve slipped a little something extra into his.

  We continued the discussion while Rita hovered between the stove and the table.

  “Jimmy,” Sol said, “Mel has agreed to come forward. But for now this conversation must remain off the record. I gave my word.”

  Having no idea what this was all about, I dished out my standard line. “Mel, I’m a lawyer and everything you say is privileged under the attorney work-product doctrine.”

  He took a deep breath. “I was a lawyer once. I understand.”

  I turned to Sol, “Does this have anything to do with, you know… the envelope?”

  “Yeah, Jimmy. It does. And we can speak freely. Mel’s on our side. Now let me explain. While you were tied up-”

  “Sol!” Rita snapped.

  “Oops… I mean, while you were unfortunately detained, I had a couple of my guys run down leads we picked up from photographs in the envelope.”

  “You haven’t even told me about the envelope yet.”

  “Interesting stuff, candid photos taken back in the forties, and documents explaining the shots. One picture shows Byron’s men, guys from the DA’s office strong-arming a public official. With a little basic detective work we were able to track down Mel. He was one of the men in the picture.”

  Mel added, “I went to work for the DA right out of law school. I thought Byron was a god, committed to reform, and all that sentimental claptrap.” He picked up a spoon and slowly stirred his coffee. He didn’t drink it, just moved his spoon in measured circles. “I guess I was a patsy…”

  “Go on,” Sol urged.

  “It wasn’t long before Rinehart tapped me to join an internal covert group, officially known as the Gangster Squad. Unofficially they called us Byron’s Bulldogs. We worked for Byron, but took our orders from Rinehart. Did anything he told us to do: black bag jobs, shakedowns, extortion, that sort of thing. My loyalty to the boss and my size, I guess, were why they wanted me.” He looked up. “I have a little flower shop out on Rosecrans now.”

  Sol reached in his jacket pocket, pulled out a photo, and slid it across the
table. I picked it up. “The photo shows Rinehart, Mel, and a few others going nose to nose with a member of the State Board of Equalization, a guy named Bonelli,” Sol said. “The State Board approves liquor licenses. They caught up with Bonelli late one night outside of Sherry’s Restaurant, Mickey Cohen’s old hangout. And guess what? Bonelli’s pockets were stuffed with blank license forms. Isn’t that right, Mel?”

  “Yeah, he had a dozen or more on him.”

  “One of Cliff Clinton’s private investigators took the picture.” Sol chuckled. “They used big old flash cameras back then and the bright light made the strong-arm guys look like a bunch of startled deer.”

  “Bonelli was selling licenses. No questions asked,” Mel said. “Kind of a self-help program. He was helping himself to Cohen’s dough at the State’s expense.”

  “You guys caught him?” I asked.

  “Oh, we knew about it all along. He was scattering licenses like confetti, selling them to anyone who met his price. Byron wanted his share.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You mean the Gangster Squad actually extorted money from Bonelli, pressured him to cough up a portion and give it to Byron?”

  “That’s the way it worked.”

  “So Byron was dirty after all.”

  “Byron was like Robin Hood, but not quite. He took from the rich and gave it… to himself. Bonelli wasn’t the only one; there were others, many others.”

  Rita brought food to the table: scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and juice. In spite of the mind-blowing revelations about Byron, I couldn’t keep my mind off the dish she set before me.

  “Hope you guys don’t mind, but I’m starving,” I said, digging in.

  While I ate, Mel continued to outline how Byron had used his office as a makeshift collection agency. “We didn’t just roust corrupt public officials and politicians. We also went after racketeers, bookmakers, the illegal wire services, and anyone or anything else where Byron could smell a buck.”

  “How could you keep an operation like that under wraps?” Sol asked. “It still isn’t public knowledge.”

  “Who was going to blow the whistle? The crooks? The greedy politicians? Everyone, it seemed, was on the pad one way or the other. Nope, no one could squeal. If they did they’d go to jail, too.”

  “Clifford Clinton knew.”

  “He didn’t know much. Not the real stuff that went down. He’d heard rumors, tried to get evidence. A few photos and his suspicions, that’s about all he had-no proof of anything.”

  “He was honest and tenacious, I’ll say that for him,” Sol said. “If he’d lived longer, he would’ve brought down the whole damn County Government.”

  “Yeah, he tried his best and he rattled a few cages, sure, but Byron had the Times on his side. Clinton couldn’t make enough noise to overcome the newspaper’s editorials. The Times had backed Byron in the election. Labeled him as a reformer and they were sticking to their guns. There’s an old saying: never start an argument with an outfit that buys ink by the barrel.”

  “How could you justify such blatant criminal activity? You were a member of the bar, for chrissakes,” I said, pushing my plate back.

  “Well, here’s the simple answer. Byron only went after the bad guys. And-”

  “You were an officer of the court. You’re rationalizing, Mel.”

  “Okay… so I took the extra bonus money and kept my mouth shut.”

  “You must have realized at some point how wrong it was,” Rita said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “Why are you telling us about this now? After all these years?”

  “After a while my conscience kicked in. The whole mess started to grate on me. I couldn’t sleep, constantly fought with my wife. I became a basket case, started drinking. Hell, I lost my family over it. Finally I had enough. I quit, tore up my bar card, and got an honest job. I never told a soul about the Gangster Squad’s real purpose until now. Byron’s still out there, but I’m not afraid anymore.”

  What could I say? Drinking, fighting with his wife, quitting his job-except for the names, places, and a few other details, his story was mine.

  “Was violence part of the equation?” Sol asked.

  “It got a little rough at times.”

  “How about murder?”

  “We were dealing with a tough crowd. Some of our clients were directly involved with the mob.”

  “Just for argument’s sake, Mel,” Sol said. “Suppose someone… a woman, perhaps, back in 1945 had documents or something, real strong evidence, proof that Byron was as crooked as the day is long. And suppose the woman tried to blackmail him. Maybe threaten to rat him out to the State Attorney General, or the Feds. Do you think it’s possible, just possible, that Byron would’ve had her eliminated?”

  Sol was talking about Vera. Practically asking Mel straight out if Byron had murdered her at the motel back then. Or if, perhaps, he had the Bulldogs do it for him.

  Mel lowered his head and said nothing. We kept silent, watching him. The moment of truth had arrived. Would he actually cop to a murder, a capital crime that had no statute of limitations? A few seconds later he ran his hand through his hair and looked at each of us one at a time. His eyes reflected the sadness in his soul.

  “Mel,” Sol said softly. “You can talk to us. We’re not here to make judgments about you or your past. We’re only interested in Byron.”

  Mel glanced around the kitchen and focused on a ceramic red rooster hanging on Rita’s wall next to a copper pot. “Are you talking about a certain murder that happened out in the valley in ’45?”

  “Yes.”

  He kept staring at the rooster. “About the dead woman they’d found at a sleazy motel, the woman with a telephone cord twisted around her neck?”

  “Yes, Mel, I am. And if you know anything, now is the time to come clean.”

  “Yeah, I know all about it.”

  CHAPTER 41

  “Tell us, Mel,” I said. “Do you know if Byron murdered Vera, the woman with the cord around her neck?”

  “I couldn’t swear he killed her. But if he did, he didn’t send us to do the job,” Mel replied. “Yet something wasn’t kosher. Right after the murder happened, Byron got real antsy. Wanted to get the case over with fast. When the cops picked up Roberts, Byron pounced on it. Took over the prosecution himself. The DA had nothing solid on the guy so he made up some cock-and-bull story. He railroaded the poor bastard right into a jail cell.” Mel hung his head. “Hell, I knew Roberts was innocent. I let it go.”

  “Goddammit, that’s my client you’re talking about!” I snapped. “You should have done something.”

  Mel said nothing, just looked at me.

  “Go on, Mel. Then what happened?” Sol asked.

  “Then the shrew who owned the motel started making waves. Threatening to sue everyone over the lousy fingerprint powder in the room, loss of income, cockamamie bullshit like that. She wrote letters to anyone who’d read them. Byron didn’t need the publicity. So he sent us out there to talk to her. You know, get her to dummy up. Imagine that, sending the Gangster Squad to hassle a lady like her. A private citizen, no less. I told Rinehart that Byron was making a big mistake.”

  “Did you and your gang actually go see her?” Rita asked.

  “Yeah, afraid so. We went to her office in broad daylight and it got out of hand right from the get-go. We didn’t want to bang her around, nothing like that, just frighten her a little. But the lady went nuts. Started screaming, waving her hands, making a racket. People stood outside gawking. They thought we were robbing her. Someone called the cops. We heard the sirens coming and got the hell out of there.”

  “Bless her heart,” I said in a quiet voice.

  “That was the end of it?” Sol asked.

  “No, not by a long shot. Next thing you know, we get a call from the LAPD chief of detectives, Joe Reed. Byron had him under control, but Reed warned us that the motel lady was adamant about pressing charges. So Byron hired a private attorn
ey to settle the matter. At first she only wanted fifteen hundred for her loss of income. What the hell, petty cash. The lawyer paid her off. Then she wanted more.”

  “More?” Sol asked. “How could she pull that off?”

  “She had one of those newfangled wire recorders in her office, hidden under the counter. When we came through the door, she flipped it on. Secretly recorded the whole damn thing, all our threats, everything. I heard later that she’d blackmailed Byron. The recording would’ve killed his shot at the governor’s office. He set up a blind irrevocable trust at some bank to pay her a monthly stipend. Once the trust was set up, she turned over her copies of the recording.”

  Sol and I looked at each other. We realized that Mel was talking about the funds deposited in Mrs. Hathaway’s bank account every month for the past twenty-nine years, the money her niece Gayle Goodrow had told me about.

  “Byron jumped our asses over the affair,” Mel added.

  “So the money Mrs. Hathaway received at the end of the month had nothing to do with Vera’s murder,” Rita said.

  Mel shook his head. “Just in a roundabout way.”

  “But that doesn’t mean Byron didn’t kill Vera back then and Mrs. Hathaway last week,” I said.

  “Doesn’t mean he did,” Sol added.

  Rita shrugged. “Then we’re back were we started.”

  “Not quite,” I said. “The trust fund payments stopped last week, two days after Mrs. Hathaway was murdered. There was nothing in the papers about her death. Notices weren’t sent out. How did the people managing the trust fund know that she had died?”

  “Byron must’ve told them,” Rita said. “If he killed her, then obviously he’d know she was dead.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “We’re just speculating. We have no proof that Byron is the one who told the trust company about her death.”