by Zack Parsons
“The Communists are parasites to progress in all their incarnations,” said Whiteacre. “We go into their impoverished countries and give them jobs and running water, and they thank us by seizing our factories. It’s theft, is what it is.”
“Assault,” said Harlan. “Robbery by force. Corporations may be Creatures of Statute, but they enjoy all the rights of a person.”
“Yes,” agreed Paulus. “They’re psychopaths.”
I wasn’t buying what Paulus was saying. When a psychopath busts out of the loonie bin and starts chopping people up you always have the option of filling them with lead. Good luck finding a casket that could fit a corporation. “There’s nothing lunatic about self-interest,” said Whiteacred.“I promise you, if Ecuador and Guatemala nationalize, it will mean war. I’m sorry, Mr. Bishop, but we cannot let them win, or Mexico will follow; then they’ll be in the streets here, demanding we hand over the fruits of our labor. In San Pedro. Is that what you would have, Senator Paulus?”
DeWitt spoke up. “The, uh, that railroad business, Harlan. Is it keeping to schedule? When will your power plant be built?”
Ogilvy and another man began to speak, but Harlan cut his gaze in my direction. “More of this later,” he said. He gestured to Elias, who wheeled him away from the table. “I need to speak with our new arrival. Come along, Mr. Cord.”
“Don’t I get any breakfast?” I asked, earning a reproachful glare from Elias.
Harlan Bishop’s office was austere by comparison to the grand architecture of Chatholm Lodge. It was quite large but otherwise unembellished.
As we entered, we passed a scale model of Bishop’s big industrial project out in San Pedro. I lingered to study the four hyperbolic towers that dwarfed the surrounding architecture. Word was, it was going to be atomic, the first commercial reactor, right in LA’s backyard. It was belligerently huge, swallowing up most of San Pedro and Wilmington with its worker housing and utopian commercial developments.
“Big project?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Harlan. “Senator Paulus, the Communist sympathizer, has proved to be a bit difficult. Overly preoccupied with safety and pay grades, extending the government where it doesn’t belong, when jobs are what Los Angeles needs. The man fears atoms. Just another coward afraid of progress. I’ve asked my son to deal with him to prevent things from unraveling.”
His son. A lie he was so used to telling, he told it even to me.
Bishop’s desk was a simple piece and his displayed antiquities limited to a few trinkets. He parked his wheelchair behind it and, with a bit of help from Elias, got up on his feet and took hold of an ivory-handled walking cane.
“Leave us,” he said to his manservant.
The brooding giant departed. Harlan opened French doors onto a balcony and ambled out into the heavy morning air. The view was bounded by an imposing wall of ancient, black trees. Their leaves formed a canopy above us and the sun blinked through the leaves. The forest intruded on every sense.
“I don’t favor the fir trees,” he said. “I wanted Redwoods. For once I was told I couldn’t have something. They are very particular about where they grow.”
I joined him at the railing. The trees creaked like the timbers of a ship on a rolling sea. The sound of their leaves was an ocean over our heads.
“Tell me about this accident in Cranford.” Harlan Bishop put aside the cane and leaned on the railing.
“There was a woman killed. Her name was Holly Webber. Are you familiar with her?”
“No. Should I be?”
“That’s not for me to say, but you would have recognized her. She was Annabelle Groves.”
“That cannot be.” He stood up straight and grasped my lapel in his bony claw. “You think I’m a fool? You taunt me with this? You’re a sick fish. Demented. I had ... I hadn’t thought of her in years.”
“I can’t say I believe that.”
“Now listen here, Judge.” His hand quivered. “You cannot rub that name in my face and expect me to take it lightly.”
“This ain’t some prank. The girl was Annie Groves. Real as a brick.”
“How can this be?” he asked.
“I’m asking you that.”
“Of course.” He let go of me. “I apologize. Perfectly reasonable of you, considering the history between us.” He backed away. “No, I assure you that I do not know Holly Webber, nor how she came to die. There must be an explanation. Have you gone to the police?”
“I’m investigating it.”
“Yes, you must. I’ll pay you your usual fee, cover all your expenses. Get to the bottom of this, Mr. Cord. Keep me informed. You’ve always upheld the duties of your office with such respect and thoroughness. I trust you to do the same in this matter.”
I thanked him, and he walked me back through his office.
“I must admit, I rarely let my temper get the better of me these days, but the thought that Annie Groves has come and gone once more ...” He shook his head. “Well, I can hardly stand it.”
“Those responsible will pay their due,” I said.
He nodded and asked, “Is there anything else?”
Yes. There was a late-night telephone call placed to my house by Beau Reynolds. There was the sound of a power drill and claims he’d gone through to the other side. There was fear in the voice of a man who should not ever know fear, because he couldn’t die.
“That’s all for now,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”
I left Chatholm with none of my questions answered, but I was glad to have a paycheck attached to this. Paying the bills can be erratic when your only job is feeding bullets to misbehaving duplicates. It’s the sort of secret-inside-a-secret work you can’t exactly put on a job application. We were three months behind on the mortgage. Two months on the electric. Lynn wanted things but wouldn’t ask because she knew we were broke.
I decided to swing by the office for the envelope of cash Bishop always slipped under the door after a job. I could make my stop at the county morgue after. As I was turning off the highway, I noticed a black Cadillac that seemed to be shadowing my every move. I made some last-second turns to see if it would follow, and it did, pursuing me all the way to Melrose. Maybe Bishop had decided to put someone on me to make sure I was hard at work, or maybe there was someone else who wanted a piece of the action.
I decided to give it to them. I knew a dead-end alley off Vine. Practically put the Tudor up on two wheels turning into it. Knocked over a trash can and screeched to a stop. I popped the Stillman out of its compartment and aimed it across the seat and out the back window of the coup. Be a shame to have to replace the glass, but better than getting plugged myself.
The Cadillac appeared at the end of the alley, stopping but not turning in behind me. It sat idling ominously and blocked the only way out. The windows were colored black and hid the occupants from view. Maybe this hadn’t been my best plan. I thumbed the hammer back on my iron. Unless they had a bazooka in that car, I’d at least get a couple of them.
With a screech of its white-walled tires and the smoke of burned rubber, it sped out of view.
“Chickens,” I said, and I stowed the gun.
My office was a glorified phone booth on the basement level of an apartment building. It was across the hall from the superintendent’s apartment and right below a fat Polish couple who sounded like they were raising hippos. Nice folks, though. Gave me a delicious box of jelly doughnuts a couple of years ago around Lent, but I never returned the favor, so I never got another box.
A single recessed window provided me with a creeping rectangle of sunlight and a view of the sidewalk at foot level. On slow days—and they were almost all slow days by design—I’d sit around trying to imagine the people attached to the hooves clopping past the window.
There was one lamp and one filing cabinet and one bookshelf and one desk with one swivel chair for me and one raggedy old hotel chair for clients who never visited. The whole shamus routine was a bluff. A put-on
for Lynn and for my cop buddies. My real work was being the Judge. We didn’t used to have it this way, but at some point I guess Harlan Bishop decided that, since the Judges kept walking out on him, he’d better start paying them.
I picked up the envelope and counted the lettuce. There was dust on the radio set. This place was turning into a museum. No time to sit around and flip the dials. I was going to meet a special girl.
At the morgue I blew a kiss to the doll behind the desk and headed downstairs to where they kept the stiffs on ice. I was greeted by Angelo Pappas, the nicest coroner in the state of California. He was fatherly and stout, with laugh lines etched deeply in his face and big hands that seemed to belong to a giant. He hugged me and smooched me European style on both cheeks and asked how Lynn was doing.
“She’s well enough,” I said. “Keeping busy.”
“Still trying for a baby?”
Yeah, sure. Tearful phone calls with the doctor. Late-night talks wondering why we couldn’t conceive. Maybe it was the radiation from the war. She took it hard. It was me, of course, but I couldn’t spill the truth.
“Still trying,” I said.
Angelo unwittingly dug his knife deeper. “Family is the most important thing. I don’t know where I would be without my girls. You’ll make a good dad, and Lynn, such a beautiful mother.”
“I would love to have a coffee with you someday, talk all this over, but I’m afraid I’m here on business.”
“I was afraid you would say that.” Angelo glanced back at the door to the morgue. “If it was just you and me, I would give you whatever you want, but there is a problem. I was told to keep you out.”
“Who? Kapinski? To hell with him.”
“It’s impossible this time. That body, the Webber girl—”
“Yes. I’ll only take five minutes.”
“You misunderstand.” Angelo put one big paw on my shoulder. He spoke sotto voce. “She is gone.”
“What?”
“The morgue is a crime scene. Someone has taken her body.”
CHAPTER SIX
There were no clues or witnesses to put me onto the trail of whoever looted Holly Webber from one of Angelo’s drawers, but at least I knew someone was trying to cover their tracks. They’d managed to cut off one avenue of approach. I wasn’t going to sit idle while they cut off another.
Holly Webber wasn’t in the phone book. I’d already looked and knew that much. I had the registration tag on that little Cushman step-through to go on and the fact that she was a waitress. A fin in the right hands will buy you a lot of answers in this economy, and an old county clerk by the name of Fletcher was taking my money. He’d coughed up the address attached to the Cushman’s plate.
Holly Webber resided in South Los Angeles, in the old apartments. South LA was one of the only places not ruled by the housing regulations written to keep out undesirables. Covenants they called them, but a different sort than the kind I followed. No Negroes, no Chinese or Japs, and in some places, no Irish or Jews. In South LA the blacks were allowed to live side by side with the whites. Most of the whites chose to leave.
I drove past the Negroes working in the city. Porters and the like. It was strange seeing them by the dozens, dressed in everyday clothes, strolling along the streets, working on their cars, pushing babies, or licking ice cream cones.
My eye was trained by the beat to see the crooked elements. The young men in their bright suits lounging against the soaped windows of a faded Mercado, junk and reefer and folding knives in their pockets. Pretty mulatto girls in their slips and stockings. Three dollars for some fun.
A group of older men sat on the steps of a boxing gym, playing dice on cardboard. They lifted their heads and watched the Ford cruise by. There were bums and drunks, threadbare suits and wooden signs asking for work. Poor didn’t know a color. Not in America. If I drove south or east I’d find plenty of whites and Chicanos doing the same. Okies and Indians, shiftless poor looking for work in the land of opportunity. They’d set up their camps and make trouble on the streets until the sheriffs ran them off.
The building was a three-story brick hotel. The Armitage. The condition of the building said it was a hundred years old, but the architecture said fifty. Jazz music played out an open window.
I parked the car by the lobby entrance. I was out of place, but I was used to it from my days walking beats for the LAPD. The colored kids stayed out of my way. Probably figured me for a dad looking for his hophead of a kid, or maybe they thought I was vice squad. The place wasn’t a dump, but if you left it alone for a day or two, it might turn into one.
I climbed the stairs, my presence bringing a trio of colored teenagers to silence in a way that reminded me of the buffalo soldiers I’d met in Spark. They were near the top of the third floor, and I was fighting to keep my wheezing to myself, fighting not to cough. I nodded at them and held it in.
Apartment 318. The door was painted red. I knocked, but nobody was answering.
The hallway of the apartment building was ominously dark and still. A baby was crying a few doors down. The jazz music I’d heard from outside was muffled to a languid horn. I pushed back my hat and drew my Stillman from its shoulder holster. Sweat dripped into my eyes. I tried the door with my free hand. It was unlocked and pushed open with a creak of hinges. There were no signs of force around the lock or the door frame.
“Anybody here?” No point trying to sneak around.
I could smell her perfume lingering in the stillness. The door to the closet in the foyer was open, and the floor was piled with coat hangers. There was a single glove down there too, elbow length, the shed skin of a snake, the kind of thing a classy doll would wear to dinner. I put it in my pocket and continued cautiously.
The blinds were down over every window, and the apartment was gloomy. A lamp was overturned in the living room but still on. It cast the shadow of an end table like a black elephant on stilts.
The walls were papered with a floral pattern, something probably dating back to the building’s construction. There were five dark rectangles in the paper on the living room wall above the swaybacked couch. Five nails in those shadows perfect for hanging picture frames. Whoever had ransacked this place was grabbing everything.
There were two bedrooms, two mattresses, sheets, chairs, and lamps. And nothing. The style of furniture and rudimentary décor suggested women lived in both rooms, but so much had been removed from the apartment, there was no getting a feel for the personality of the occupants. The dressers were empty, the closets bare; even the refrigerator in the kitchen was nearly empty, just some old bottles and half-eaten Chinese.
Holly Webber was living with someone. A woman who knew well enough to clear our when Holly died. Maybe Holly’s roommate was snatched when the body thief from the morgue decided to clear out the apartment, as well.
I turned over chairs and felt the shelves for any idle carvings. Not even a piece of old gum. I searched the backs of cupboards and the tanks of toilets. Kicked the floorboards, looking for something loose. There was nothing. No hidden message. No trace of the identity of Holly Webber or her nameless roommate.
The apartment building had an office near the boiler room. It was hot and damp, the sort of place where diseases would grow. Cracks in the foundation. An old man in undershirt and suspenders buzzed me through the office door and told me to sit in a squeaky rolling chair that felt like it might tip over. I toyed with my rumpled hat.
“I’m wondering, who signs the checks for 318?” I asked.
“Pay cash,” he said around the stub of a cigar. “What’s it to you?”
“Friend of the family looking for a missing girl, name of Holly Webber. You seen her around?”
“I don’t know you from a Jap.” He gestured with the damp cigar. “The what-so-have-its of the renters are strictly confidential.”
“You’d be helping her family.”
“Helping you, more like. Some shamus with an ugly tie come in here chasing quarters, it
ain’t my business, but I don’t gotta say nothing. I earn my reputation on being discreet. Do you get my meaning?”
I clocked him. Sent the cigar splattering onto the wall and knocked him out of his chair. He was sputtering and grabbing his chin when I came around to his side of the table and picked him up by his suspenders. In my experience, violence works best when it’s sudden.
“Listen here, I ain’t looking to bust you for running girls or dope out of here, but you’d better relax that jaw. Or do I need to loosen it up some more?”
“Awright! Get offa me!”
I lifted him up a couple more inches and dropped him onto his back.
“And the tie ain’t ugly,” I added.
He barked a complaint and then pulled himself up by the desk and into his chair. He was gonna have one hell of a bruise from the punch.
“Talk,” I said.
“Yeah, I know her. Holly Webber, real hot piece. Looks like Rita Hayworth.”
“That’s her,” I said. “Who does she room with?”
“What? Nobody, so far as I know. Seen her come and go plenty, but only her. She’s good at sneaking out though. Sometimes I see her leaving when I was sure she already left, and I watch close.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet you do. She got a boyfriend?”
“I guess, maybe. Look, I don’t know. I got twenty-two units booked right now. I forget who’s hopping in bed with who.”
I balled up my fists, and he flinched.
“Honest! I don’t know. She goes out dancing a lot. Don’t know where. All I know about her is she works out in El Segundo. One of them restaurants that all have the same name. Tasty Burger or whatever. With that creepy hamburger man. “