by Bill Bernico
“Any phone charges?” I said.
“Ain’t no phones in the rooms,” he said. “They all use that one.” He pointed to a pay phone on the wall in the lobby.
“Did she have any visitors that you can remember?” I said.
“Look,” he said, “I barely remember her, let alone any visitors.”
“Anybody still checked in here that was here when Lola was here?” I said.
“Let me look,” the greasy man said, thumbing through the register pages. “Yeah. One guy. Name’s Popcorn.”
I raised my eyebrows and gave him my ‘what the hell?’ look.
“I don’t know his real name,” he said. “Everybody calls the guy Popcorn. Don’t ask me why, but that’s how he’s registered. If they got the money up front for the room, I don’t ask any questions.”
My eyebrows worked overtime and I said, “room number?”
The clerk slammed the book shut and rubbed his thumb against his first two fingers. I gave him the five spot and he told me I could find Popcorn in room 214. Without thanking him I took the stairs two at a time and scanned the doors in the hall. I found 214 at the end of the dark hall. My fist danced on the door in time to a number that was playing in my head.
I could hear someone moving around inside and some muffled voices. Then someone said, “Whaddya want?”
“Manager,” I said. “Open up.”
More scuffling was followed by more muffled voices before a face appeared at the door. The door opened a crack and a weatherworn face peered through it. The man had the look of someone who’d lived out of one too many trashcans. I pushed the door open farther and the man stepped back, looking around nervously. He was a black man in his late twenties. His hair was slicked back with enough grease to lube the chassis of my Olds. His brown eyes were surrounded by dingy yellow eyeballs that had too many red veins running through them. He looked scary.
He wore a pair of dark pants with a belt that was too long. The end of the belt dangled down from the last belt loop. His feet were bare and his shirt hung open in front. I must have gotten him out of bed.
“Where is she?” I said, hoping to flush the quail out of the bushes.
“Where’s who?” he answered.
I walked toward the closet door and heard the voice behind me. “You ain’t the manager,” Popcorn said. “Who the hell are you?”
I yanked the closet door open and pulled a girl out into the room. I spun around toward the man. “Well, well, Popcorn,” I said. “What do you know, I think I found a minor in your room.”
The girl couldn’t have been more than fifteen but was made up to look more like twenty-five. She stood about five-three and tipped the scales at a meaty hundred and ten pounds. Her hair looked like she’d slept wrong on it and it stuck up all over the place. She wore a gold ankle bracelet and nothing else.
I flipped open my wallet, holding my thumb over my P.I. license. Only my badge showed and it produced the effect I wanted. My eyebrows were getting the hang of it by now and I flexed them at Popcorn.
Popcorn held his light palms up toward me. “Look, man,” he said, trying hard to sound convincing, “I just got here myself and found her here in my room. I was just trying to get her to leave when you showed up.”
I grabbed one of his wrists and spun him around, pushing him up against the wall. I didn’t have to tell him to assume the position, he did it automatically, like he’d probably done dozens of times in the past.
As he leaned in holding up the wall, I motioned to the girl with my head. “Get dressed and get outta here—NOW!” I yelled. She was half-dressed and out the door before you could say ‘jail bait’. I spun Popcorn around toward me again and threw him down on the bed. He sat back up, scared and nervous.
“I can’t go back to the joint, see? Maybe we can make a deal,” he said. “I can give you a fence. I know this guy over on Wilshire...”
“Save it,” I said, producing the picture of Selma. “I want her.” I held the picture in front of him and he studied it. I could tell by the look on his face that he’d seen her before. He paused, licked his lips and looked around the room, not really sure what he should say.
“She checked into this flea bag the same time you did,” I said. “She may be using the name Lola Parker but her real name’s Selma Holquist. She’s sixteen and...”
“Look man,” he said, “I never laid a hand on her. She was only here a couple a days and left.”
“With who?” I said.
“I don’t know. I never saw the guy before,” he said trying to convince me. “But she must have been something special. I mean this guy picks her up outside the front door and I seen ‘em leave together.”
“Leave?” I said. “Leave where?”
“They just walked to the corner and headed up Western,” Popcorn said. “He walks her over to his big old Rolls and...”
“A silver Rolls?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “This guy walked around like he thought he was tough shit, you know?”
“Which way did they go?” I said.
“They drove up the boulevard,” he said, pointing. “West toward Vine.”
“What did this guy look like?” I said.
“Bald,” he said. “Bald as a cue ball.”
I pulled him up off the bed by his wrist. “Let’s go,” I said, pulling him toward the door.
“Hey man,” he said, “I told you all I know. What about our deal?”
“You’re full of shit, Popcorn,” I said. “Someone else told me it was a Packard and that the guy had a full head of hair.” I played my trump card. “You’re in for some trouble downtown. Come on.”
“No, wait,” he said. “What if I can get you this guy?” He waited anxiously for me to answer.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “You’re gonna get this guy and just hand him to me. What kind of fool do you take me for?”
“No, really,” he said. “I know everybody down on The Strip and all the regulars that hang out on The Boulevard. Just gimme a few days and I’ll hand him to you.”
I paused for effect and turned the eyebrows on once more. “Six hours,” I said. “You got just six hours to deliver or your ass is mine.”
He smiled the widest smile I’d seen in a long time. His bright teeth looked like Beethoven could have played a sonata on them. “Thanks, man,” he said. “I’ll deliver what I promised, but you gotta forget about that girl.”
I crumpled the front of his shirt in my fist and lifted. “Six hours,” I said. “You better have something for me.” I let go and he tumbled back, missing the bed and hitting the floor. “Oh, and one more thing. How’d you get a stupid name like ‘Popcorn’ anyway?”
I was out of the room and down the hall before he realized I wasn’t really interested in knowing the origins of his nickname. If this lowlife could give me anything I could use I might even tell him I’m not a real cop, but you don’t want to rush into these things.
It was five hours later and it looked like Popcorn had slipped through my fingers. I was just about ready to give up on him when I spotted him coming up the street toward the Rector. As he neared my Olds I threw open the door and stepped out. Confidence replaced the fear I’d seen in his face just hours earlier.
“Hey, man,” he said, “I was just coming to meet you.”
“Get in,” I said, pointing to my open door. He slid in and I went around to the driver’s side and took the wheel. “What have you got for me?”
Popcorn looked around nervously and slid down into the seat a little. “Not here,” he said.
I drove around the block and headed up Los Feliz. “Come on, give,” I said.
“Word on the street is that your little lady is in Pasadena,” he said, pulling a folded piece of glossy paper from his pocket and handing it to me.
It was a page torn from a magazine. I unfolded the paper and looked down at a picture of Selma Holquist, a.k.a. Lola Parker. He was wearing a pair of high leather boots and nothing else. The
car swerved as I shifted my glance back to the road. There was another man in the picture with her. His face wasn’t visible but the back of his bald head looked vaguely familiar.
“Where’d you get this?” I said.
“A guy I know owed me big time,” he said. “He’s got an inside track with the movie studios. This ain’t for publication. It’s from a private collection.”
“What studio was this taken at?” I said.
“Studio? he said. “Ain’t no studio gonna handle that kind of picture. This was taken at someone’s house.”
“Where’s the house?” I said.
“If I tell you, does that square it with us?” he said.
“Yup,” I said. “I never saw you before. Get it? Now where’s the house?”
“It’s at 644 Westbridge,” he said. “Just off Arroyo Boulevard. Last I heard she was still there.”
“If she’s not,” I started to say, reaching for my .38.
Popcorn leaned away from me and backed up against the door, holding his palms upward toward me. “She’s there. I swear.”
I pulled over and tossed my head in the direction of the curb. “Beat it,” I said. Popcorn was out and gone before I got the car into gear. I headed for Pasadena.
It was after nine o’clock when I pulled up to the curb three houses down from number 644. I got out and casually walked past the white frame house. There was only one light on and it was in a room on the long end of the house. That end was flanked by several bushes and a stockade fence. I slipped over the fence and carefully crept up to the window.
There were Venetian blinds pulled almost all the way shut. Through a crack in the bottom I could see a young girl lying on a bed. She turned her head as she slept and I could make out her face. It was Selma. There was no one else in the room and I decided to have a look around the rest of the house. As I rounded the other end of the house I could hear a car pulling into the driveway.
The man walked to the front door and turned his key in the lock. I sneaked up behind him and stuck my .38 in his ribs. “Don’t move,” I said, feeling his pockets and underarm areas. I retrieved his Colt .25 revolver and stuffed it in my belt.
I spun him around and looked into his eyes. “Well, well,” I said. As I live and breathe. If it isn’t Chester Dawson. Running a few errands for MacMurphy?” I shoved him toward the door and it fell open. “Inside,” I said.
I had my gun pointed at his chest while my eyes never left his. His upper lip began to sweat while his left eyelid twitched nervously.
“In there,” I said, pointing to the bedroom with the light on. I followed him in and closed the door behind me. Selma woke up just then and looked at us. There was a large handkerchief tied around her mouth and both of her wrists and ankles had been tied to the bed frame. She was nude.
“Untie her,” I said, waving my gun in Dawson’s face. He did as he was told and Selma sat upright in the bed, not sure what to expect next.
“Come over here,” I said to her. I motioned for Dawson to step away from the bed. Selma nervously made her way over to where I stood. I carefully removed my jacket and slipped it over her shoulders.
“It’s all right, Selma,” I said, wrapping my arm around her. “Your mother’s worried about you. I’m going to take you to her.”
I turned to Dawson. “Where’s MacMurphy?”
Dawson looked at me and said nothing. I took my arm from around Selma and approached him. I stuck the barrel of my .38 in his right ear and pulled back the hammer. It made me nervous. I can imagine what effect it had on Dawson.
“Won’t do much to your right ear,” I said, but your left ear...” I laughed and pushed at him with the gun. “It’ll take a lab crew with tweezers a week to find it.”
“He’s coming here,” he said. “I was supposed to meet him here at nine-thirty.”
My eyes shifted for a second to my watch. It was nine-twenty. Dawson seized this opportunity to rush me. I hit him with the barrel of my revolver but he fell against me, knocking his Colt out of my belt. I kicked it aside and picked Dawson up.
I motioned toward the living room. “Move it,” I said. “We’re gonna welcome Mr. MacMurphy home.”
Selma and I followed him out of the bedroom and we all sat in the living room. The ticking of the clock seemed especially loud as we waited. A few minutes before nine-thirty a car rolled to a stop outside and a door slammed.
“Tell him everything’s okay,” I said, pointing at his head with my gun. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Selma and I retreated to the hallway just off the living room. I told her to wait in the bedroom and I pressed my body up against the wall around the corner.
The front door opened and Sean MacMurphy stepped in. He wore a blue pin-striped suit, crisp white shirt and solid red tie. In the lapel of his suit he sported a white carnation, just like the one I found under Phil Hart’s chair. Dawson stood up to greet him.
“Is she still in there?” MacMurphy said, tossing his head in the direction of the bedroom.
Dawson just nodded and walked toward the bedroom. As he walked by my position I stepped out from around the corner. Dawson tripped on the hallway rug and fell directly into me. My gun plopped out of my hand and Dawson snapped it up. He quickly stood and held it on me.
“You’re not so big now, are you, Cooper?” he said, smiling a broad smile at the prospect of getting the drop on me. He quickly stepped back toward MacMurphy.
Sean MacMurphy looked me over with a contemptuous sneer. He shook his head and turned back to Dawson.
“Give me the gun, Chester,” MacMurphy said.
Dawson handed his boss the gun and stood there gloating at his accomplishment. He took a few steps toward me before MacMurphy said, “Wait a minute, Chester. Who else knows about the girl?”
“No one, Mr. MacMurphy,” Dawson said. “This is the same peeper I told you about that stopped me back at the studio. He’s working on this by himself.
“Good,” MacMurphy said, squeezing the trigger twice.
Chester’s smile quickly turned to agony as the slugs tore into his chest. His eyes widened and his breath left him in three short spurts.
MacMurphy quickly pulled his own .38 out from under his arm and aimed it at me. With a single motion of his left hand, he flipped the cylinder open on my .38 and emptied the shells the floor. He closed the cylinder again and tossed the gun to me. My natural reaction was to catch it and aim it at him. It happened so quickly that I didn’t realize until a second later what a useless motion that was.
“Too bad, Cooper,” he said. “You broke in here, shot poor Chester and I defended myself by shooting you. Nice and neat, wouldn’t you say? Easier than plugging that other nosy shamus.”
“Phil Hart didn’t have a mean bone in his body,” I said. “Never fails. The good die young and scum like you go on forever.”
“Flattery,” he said. “There’s a new ploy. With Hart it was threats. He said he was gonna break my neck. I told him I thought he was wrong and punctuated my sentence with a single shot. Nice and neat.”
“And why did Virginia Bishop have to die?” I said.
“The bitch, if you must know, was soft, he said. “She didn’t have the stomach for it. As a matter of fact, she was coming to tell you everything when she met her demise.”
“Mind telling me why she had to pose as Mrs. Holquist in the first place?” I said.
“My little Lola slipped through my fingers at first,” he said. “I needed to find her and telling Missing Persons wasn’t an option,” he said. “When I found her on my own, Virginia became expendable. She knew too much.”
“That was your handy work?” I said.
MacMurphy just smiled a wry smile and lifted the gun higher.
“You forgot about the girl,” I said, trying to buy time. “What are you going to do, shoot her, too? You can’t cover your tracks that well.”
“No one will find a trace of her,” he said. “She’s served her purpose and there are ple
nty more where she came from.” He backed up, his gun still on me. From a cabinet near the kitchen he produced three metal film cans. “She’ll keep working for me even after she’s gone,” he said, laughing.
I stepped closer to him, still holding my useless gun. MacMurphy quickly raised his gun and backed me up toward the bedroom. “Let’s go and get our little friend, shall we?”
Still holding the three film cans, MacMurphy followed me into the bedroom. Selma was standing near the bed, both of her hands behind her.
“There’s my budding starlet,” he said, smiling slyly. “Come here, Lola.”
Selma didn’t move. MacMurphy took a few steps toward her and then looked at me. I stepped aside.
“Come on, Lola,” he said. “We’re going to take a ride, just you and me.”
MacMurphy turned and pointed his automatic at me. I could see hate in his eyes. I knew I was going to die some day, but I always thought it would be in a bed with a few nurses around giving me a sponge bath.
“You son-of-a-bitch,” Selma screamed, leveling Chester Dawson’s .25 at MacMurphy. There was no hesitation at all on her part. No explanations. No laying out the story before hand. Just a single shot. It hit MacMurphy squarely in the film can, sending all three spools unreeling onto the floor. MacMurphy whirled around to face Selma, a.k.a. Lola. As his eyes met hers, she emptied the remaining four bullets into him. Three of them entered MacMurphy’s chest and the last one hit him as he fell, entering his head just below his left eye. He crumbled in a pile at her feet.
Selma just kept clicking onto empty cylinders, crying hysterically. I took the gun from her and wrapped her in my arms. “It’s all over,” I said. I picked up the three films and tucked them under my arm. “No one will ever see these, I promise.”
Selma stopped crying long enough to ask, “Where are you taking me? Where am I going?”
“Back to Wisconsin where you belong,” I said. “You’re going home.”
04 - Welcome, Matt
The body wasn’t even cold when I walked in and found it there, slumped over my desk. The hall light shone through the frosted glass door, filtering through the lettering as it cast an eerie shadow over the corpse. The shadows spelled out “Matt Cooper—Investigations” across the body. The room was dark except for the gooseneck desk lamp. It was knocked over on the desk, its bulb pointing upward, illuminating the ceiling.