by Arlette Lees
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2013 by Arlette Lees
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
ALSO BY BY ARLETTE LEES
Angel Doll: A Crime Novel
Cold Bullets and Hot Babes: Dark Crime Stories
Hollywood Heat: A Mystery Novel
DEDICATION
To the memory of my parents,
H. Garth Lees
Cinetechnician
Consolidated Film Industries
Margrit H. Lees
Costume Department
Paramount Studios
PART ONE
“Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.”
—Frank Lloyd Wright
CHAPTER ONE
CLUB VELVET
OCTOBER 1956
There was a drum roll from the salon, disorderly customers on the verge of mutiny, chanting: “Crystal, Crystal, Crystal!” But Crystal was sick and scared and couldn’t get off the dressing room couch.
Club Velvet was in a shabby stucco building on a semi-rural dead end east of the Los Angeles River. It was somewhere between the Housing Projects and the freight yard, not that easy to find unless you knew it was there. All the wrong people did.
“I want you on stage in two minutes,” said César, looming over her. He was dressed entirely in black, conchos flashing from his western hat. Tall and hard, the only thing that kept him from movie star good looks was a face as acne-scarred as a bad cement pour.
“I’m not well, César. Please, put Ariceli on, just for tonight.”
“You’re the one they pay to see,” he said, pulling her up by her long silver-blonde hair. A few strands tangled in his turquoise ring and she cried out as he ripped his hand free.
Crystal was just out of high school when César had offered her ‘easy money’ to strip at the club over the summer. She needed tuition for nursing school. What harm could it do? She was so popular César refused to let her go when fall came. She was statuesque and full-breasted, with a natural flare for graceful, sensuous movement. She was César’s big money-maker, but, Crystal wanted to be a nurse, not a stripper.
The last time she’d escaped, César had abducted her fourteen-year-old sister and held her captive until she returned. In retaliation, he’d handed Crystal off to a stranger for one terrifying night to cover his gambling debts. What Lisa had endured during her three days of captivity was something she refused to discuss. That was three years ago and Crystal had not had the courage to run away since.
César pulled Crystal’s costume from the rack and threw it in her face. It consisted of two sequined pasties, a handful of red ostrich feathers, and long velvet gloves.
“Put it on!”
“I’m going to be sick. I think I’m pregnant.” There, she’d finally said it.
The muscles clenched in his jaw.
“How could you be so stupid a second time?”
“I didn’t get this way by myself,” she said, summoning a spark of rebellion.
“I’ll set you up one last time, but it better not happen again.”
“I want to go home to my mother. I can’t go through this again.”
“You’ll do exactly as I say.”
The next day a bus took her to an abandoned building near Skid Row. Alone and scared, she walked the three flights to a room where plaster crumbled from the walls and wind blew through a broken window. A tray of surgical instruments stood beside a wooden table.
Crystal put two hundred dollars in the hand of the withered crone who’d fixed her up the last time, a woman who’d been a surgical nurse in a previous incarnation, or so she’d been told.
“Get undressed,” said the woman. “I don’t have all day.”
When Crystal lay naked and shivering on the table, the old hag pushed her knees apart and inserted an ice cold speculum.
“Stop moving!”
“It hurts,” said Crystal, her teeth chattering. The nurse twisted the instrument one way, then another, and removed it.
“Get dressed,” she said, dumping the instruments in her black bag.
“You haven’t done anything.”
“I can’t help you. There is no fetus.”
“What do you mean? I’ve had morning sickness for three months.”
“You’re not pregnant.”
A surge of wind shook the pane. Crystal sat up and wrapped her arms around her shivering body. “But.…”
“You need to see a physician dearie, a real doctor. Something’s not right in there.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I just do scrapes.”
”What about César’s money?”
“I charge for my time.”
The crone picked up her bag, clattered down the stairs, and left in a taxi.
CHAPTER TWO
DARK RENDEZVOUS
DECEMBER 31, 1956
Up and coming young architect Gavin Chase was lost. When you live in an upscale Hollywood neighborhood, chances are you’ll never have reason to cross the Los Angeles River into the barrios of Boyle Heights. Tonight was an exception he’d come to regret.
Not quite midnight, and firecrackers were exploding in rusty barrels adjacent to the freight yards. A pipe bomb blew down a fence. A shotgun blasted skyward, raining buckshot down on Gavin’s car—a world gone nuts and not a cop in sight. He felt a familiar stitch of pain in his right side and kept going. The wind was up, electrical wires whipping like snakes between utility poles.
In October, Gavin had met a drop-dead gorgeous stripper. An hour later they were in a motel room on Western Blvd. She broke through his moral defenses faster than a burglar picks a lock. He expected her to ask for money. I mean, she seemed like that kind of girl. Instead, they began sharing their deepest, most intimate troubles. He hadn’t intended to get in this deep, but they met again and again. What his wife Amanda didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. Now, he’d grown tired of pushing his luck. Tonight he’d take Crystal and her sister to a safe house and get back to his real life.
A group of teenagers in a lowrider tossed an empty beer can against the windshield of his station wagon, then peeled into the night. He passed street corner bodegas, store front churches, second-hand shops, and a Rescue Mission with a gold neon cross burning a hole in the darkness.
Gavin swooped beneath a graffitied overpass. When he came out the other end, the street lights were gone from his rearview mirror. Weeds grew in the cracks of sidewalks, and everything except bars and liquor stores were closed for the night. A derelict pushed a shopping cart against the wind and a bony redhead with scarecrow hair drank from a wine bottle and stumbled into a lot strewn with broken glass and discarded tires. Lovely, just lovely, he thought.
He pulled to the side of the road, snapped on the roof light, and unfolded his map. He glanced nervously at his watch. By now he should be driving back across the river. Amanda would be in her glittery new party dress, pacing and tapping her toe.
He folded the map, pulled back into the street, and passed a noisy cantina on his left. It was painted gaudy coral with turquoise trim, like a ride at the Beach Boardwalk. Out front a knot of men smoked fat joints, their eyes hidden by smoke and shadows beneath cocked fedoras, gold watch chains dangling from the vests of their zoot suits. Suspicious glances cut in his direction, their wariness met with equal unease.
A mile further, and a deserted gas station appeared on his right. This should be it. He pulled beside two battered 1920 gas pumps and let the engine idle. A rusty motor oil sign flapped against the wall of the dark auto repair bay. Wind rocked the car and dead leaves blew across the hood. He’d been stood up…again. He was through. He couldn’t do this anymore.
A man appeared at his window. Where the hell had he come from? He wore a black hat and tapped on the glass with a big ring. The sudden tension caused the pain in his side to ratchet up a notch.
The stranger had a pencil-thin mustache reminiscent of a silent film Casanova, his black eyes set close to the bridge of an aquiline nose, thin lips drawn back in what might have passed for a smile in a friendlier setting.
“I have a message from.…” The wind blew away the words.
“What?” he said, rolling down the window. A gun appeared in a leather-gloved hand. “Is this a joke?” Gavin broke into a sweat. He wanted to unbutton his coat and loosen his tie. He tried to punch the gas pedal, but his foot froze. “Here, you want my wallet?”
The man didn’t answer, his black eyes swallowing the light.
Gavin’s mind was spinning, sweat prickling like flea bites on his scalp. He didn’t want to give up the money, but he had to get the gun out of his face. He’d have to think of a story to tell Amanda when he came home with an empty wallet. He’d never lied to her…until recently.
The wallet was half out of his pocket when a bullet whispered into Gavin’s left temple. There was no time to contemplate his fate, or have a redo, or speak Amanda’s name one last time. He couldn’t have been deader if the Saturday night special had been a bazooka. Across the street a man walking his dog paused a moment, then continued down the dark sidewalk.
The gunman pocketed the weapon and took the wallet from the dead man’s hand. He smiled. It was stuffed with cash, as if the poor sucker had paid for his own hit.
CHAPTER THREE
THE ALIBI ROOM
Detective Rusty Hallinan sat nursing his third beer in a dark smoky corner of The Alibi Room on Santa Monica Blvd. He was tall and solid, and although he was sliding into his middle years, he carried his extra weight with a modicum of grace. He had a good Irish cop face, dark auburn hair, and uncommonly bright blue eyes. He was in no mood to join the festivities, and equally unenthusiastic about going home to an empty house.
Dorothy had left him a week ago. A makeup artist at MGM in Culver City, she often started her day early and worked late into the night. When shooting began on the set of The Devil Wore Spurs with newcomer Monty West, she started slipping in at dawn.
Monty was a Hollywood phenomenon. He’d been raised on a ranch and started out as a stuntman, but his good looks and charismatic personality had catapulted him into starring rolls almost overnight. When Hallinan asked Dorothy if there was anything she needed to tell him, she responded by packing a suitcase and moving in with West, fifteen years her junior.
Eleven years of matrimony, and he’d been someone the guys at the station looked up to. He didn’t cheat. He was generous with money and took Dorothy to dinner at nice restaurants. He didn’t know where things had gone off the rails or what he could have done to prevent it. He blamed it on the miscarriage she’d had soon after they married. She’d been angry at him ever since.
As midnight approached the noise level was brain-numbing. Voices competed with the cha-chunk of packs tumbling into the tray of the cigarette machine, dice cups slapping against the bar, and a bubbling Wurlitzer cranking out songs no one could hear.
A slender beauty with a butt as tight as a sailor’s knot walked toward him through a veil of smoke. She wore a long gown of sapphire satin and earrings the size of pie plates.
“Hi, sugar.” Her voice had the texture of rough velvet, smoky and deep. He was tempted to look behind him to see who she was talking to, when she leaned over his table, her cigarette trailing a ribbon of silver smoke.
The candle in the ruby ball on the table illuminated elegant cheekbones and sculpted features. She was ethnically ambiguous, with a light caramel complexion and almond-shaped hazel eyes. She looked like she could cross the color line from either side without raising an eyebrow.
“You don’t know who I am, do you, darling?” Hallinan took a closer look. Knuckles like walnuts. Prominent Adam’s apple.
“Holy shit, Tyrone!” said Hallinan. “What are you doing masquerading around town like that?”
Masquerading in 1950s L.A., was a crime. Ordinance 5022, passed in 1898, made it illegal to dress in the attire of a sex other than one’s own. It was punishable by a five hundred dollar fine and six months in jail. The law was designed to target gays, cross-dressers, transvestites, and male hookers. Ty was a high achiever in most categories. S/he was also the best damn informant Hallinan had ever worked with. As far as he was concerned, s/he could dress up like a goddamn Christmas tree.
A year ago Ty Covington was a respected drama teacher at Hollywood High. There were those who might have suspected he wasn’t as straight as the road to Vegas, but he was well-liked and good at what he did. Then without explanation he was fired. After that he changed…a lot.
Ty looked at Hallinan as if s/he’d read his mind.
“I had a visit from Cinderella’s fairy godmother,” s/he said, pressing a false eyelash in place. “And it’s Tyrisse from now on darling, not to be mistaken for Tyrone, who went to live with his maiden aunt in Pasadena.”
Hallinan smiled, lit a Chesterfield, and leaned back in his chair, his face melting deeper in shadow. “You said you were going to bring me Lobo Calderone. What happened?”
“The guy’s a ghost. He drifts from one fleabag hotel to another. I hear he’s pimping out a fourteen-year-old from Kansas who thought she got off the bus in Emerald City. Goes by the name, Cupcake.”
“You serve him up on a silver platter, I’ll make it worth your while.” Hallinan blew a stream of smoke to the side. “You still in the apartment on Cheremoya?”
“That tenancy ended abruptly, like my position at the high school. Now, I’m at The Empire on Vermont. If you want to come up I’ll introduce you to my new self.”
“I have enough complications in my life without living on the down low.”
The door opened and Buzz Storch from vice blew in off the street. He wore a dark nylon jacket and a knit cap pulled low on his forehead. He walked to the end of the bar and waited for Red Dooley to finish tossing coins in the cash drawer. At five-five, Storch barely made the department’s minimum height requirement, although he overcompensated by taking on the muscle and temperament of a junkyard dog.
“I’m goin’ out the back,” said Ty.
“Stay right where you are,” said Hallinan.
S/he eased into the chair across from him, her back to the bar. Hallinan noticed swelling along her jaw and a five-fingered bruise on her throat.
“Storch do that?”
“Three nights ago me and my sister-girls were sitting in Willie’s Donut Shop…you know, the all-night place on Main. A couple guys from vice busted in and tossed two of the ladies in a squad car for congregating. Storch dragged me into the alley and worked me over. He’d started to take off his belt, when the cook from the cafeteria next door looked out, and Storch walked off.”
“What were you doing that got everything going?”
“We were fuckin’ eating donuts and drinking coffee!”
“Okay, okay, I get it.”
In the current political and judicial climate, it was open season on homosexuals, transvestites, or anyone considered a flamboyant sissy. The incidents of harassment and brutality went undocumented by police and unreported by the press.
“Is he still there?” said Ty. Hallinan nodded. “He won’t leave until he gets what he’s come for.”
Red handed Storch an envelope that he shoved inside his jacket.
“He’s coming over,” said Hallinan, butting out his cigarette. “I’ll handle it.”
“How’s it hangin’?” said Storch. He had a bulldog face with a serious under bite.
”I’m busy, Storch. What do you want?”
“Don’t tell me this ‘thing’ is your informant.”
“Get lost.”
“I’m just making conversation.”
“Okay, let’s converse about the envelope inside your jacket. Y
ou hitting Red up for your third wife’s alimony payments?”
Hallinan and Dooley had history that went back to St. Francis Academy. After graduation Dooley followed his old man into the bar business, and Hallinan followed his onto The Force.
“You’re an asshole, you know that, Hallinan?” He thumped the back of Ty’s chair with his knee and straight-armed out the door.
“He’ll be waiting for me in the parking lot,” said Ty. “There’s shit about this guy you couldn’t even guess.”
“You mean he’s not the violent moron I think he is?” That got a shaky smile. “Come on, I’ll follow you out.”
Storch’s Studebaker was gone when they walked through the pink and purple neon to the lot. Ty got into her car and he tailed her to the hotel. Storch was sitting in his car up the block. When Hallinan headed in his direction he took off.
Hallinan’s new Buick hummed west on the boulevard, neon reflections rippling over the chrome. He pulled to the curb in front of the Pantages, and limped across the sidewalk, his bum knee a souvenir from a Jap grenade on the island of Luzon. The poster in the display case read:
WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS
A Foolish Girl…A Dangerous Boy…A Fatal Moment.
He bought a ticket and went inside. Half an hour into the movie his box of popcorn tumbled to the floor. The man behind him kicked the back of his seat and told him to stop snoring.
Hallinan parked at the curb in front of his house on Sandalwood Street at two A.M. It was a quiet, older neighborhood where roots of mature trees capsized the sidewalks and no one locked their cars. His house was a brown-shingled two-story with a clothesline, orange tree, and garden plot out back, and a soon-to-be-banned incinerator beside a one-car garage with alley access.
When he stepped onto the front porch the silence made him pause. His Chihuahua, Beelzebub (‘Beezer’ for short), should have been squealing and dancing, his nose pressed to the windowpane. He went inside and snapped on the light. The only sound was the hum of the fridge and a clank from the basement furnace. Where the hell was Beezer?