The Black Dahlia

by James Ellroy

  Kay Lake stopped me by laughing. “Have you been reading my press clippings?”

  “No. You been reading mine?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t have a retort for that. “Why’d Lee quit fighting? Why’d he join the Department?”

  “Catching criminals gives him a sense of order. Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “I’m saving myself for Rita Hayworth. Do you flirt with a lot of cops, or am I a special case?”

  Shouts rose from the crowd. I glanced over and saw Blanchard’s sparring partner hit the canvas. Johnny Vogel climbed into the ring and popped out his mouthpiece; the punchy expelled a long jet of blood. When I turned to Kay she was pale, hunching into her Ike jacket. I said, “Tomorrow night’ll be worse. You should stay home.”

  Kay shuddered. “No. It’s a big moment for Lee.”

  “He told you to come?”

  “No. He would never do that.”

  “The sensitive type, huh?”

  Kay dug in her pockets for cigarettes and matches, then lit up. “Yes. Like you, but without the chip on the shoulder.”

  I felt myself go red. “You’re always there for each other? thick and thin and all that?”

  “We try.”

  “Then why aren’t you married? Shacking’s against the regs, and if the brass decided to get snotty they could nail Lee for it.”

  Kay blew rings at the floor, then looked up at me. “We can’t.”

  “Why not? You’ve been shacked for years. He quit fighting smokers for you. He lets you flirt with other men. Sounds like an ace deal to me.”

  More shouts echoed. Glancing sidelong, I saw Blanchard pounding a new punchy. I countered the shots, duking the stale gym air. After a few seconds I saw what I was doing and stopped. Kay flipped her cigarette in the direction of the ring and said, “I have to go now. Good luck, Dwight.”

  Only the old man called me that. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  Kay said, “Lee and I don’t sleep together,” then walked away before I could do anything but stare.

  I hung around the gym for another hour or so. Toward dusk, reporters and cameramen started arriving, making straight for center ring, Blanchard and his boring knockdowns of glass-chinned pugs. Kay Lake’s exit line stayed with me, along with flashes of her laughing and smiling and turning sad at the drop of a hat. When I heard a newshound yell, “Hey! There’s Bleichert!” I exited, running out to the parking lot and my twice-mortgaged Chevy. Pulling away, I realized I had no place to go and nothing I wanted to do except satisfy my curiosity about a woman who was coming on like gangbusters and a big load of grief.

  So I drove downtown to read her press clippings.

  The clerk at the Herald morgue, impressed with my badge, led me to a reading table. I told him I was interested in the Boulevard-Citizens bank robbery and the trial of the captured robber, and that I thought the date was sometime early in ‘39 for the heist, maybe fall of the same year for the legal proceedings. He left me sitting there and returned ten minutes later with two large, leather-bound scrapbooks. Newspaper pages were glued to heavy black cardboard sheets, arranged chronologically, and I flipped from February 1 to February 12 before I found what I wanted.

  On February 11, 1939, a four-man gang hijacked an armored car on a quiet Hollywood side street. Using a downed motorcycle as a diversion, the robbers overpowered the guard who left the car to investigate the accident. Putting a knife to his throat, they forced the other two guards still inside the car to let them in. Once inside, they chloroformed and trussed all three men and substituted six bags filled with phone book scraps and slugs for six bags filled with cash.

  One robber drove the armored car to downtown Hollywood; the other three changed into uniforms identical to the ones the guards wore. The three in uniform walked in the door of Boulevard-Citizens Savings & Loan on Yucca and Ivar, carrying the sacks of paper and slugs, and the manager opened the vault for them. One of the robbers sapped the manager, the other two grabbed sacks of real money and headed for the door. By this time, the driver had entered the bank, and had rounded up the tellers. He herded them into the vault and sapped them, then shut the door and locked it. All four robbers were back on the sidewalk when a Hollywood Division patrol car, alerted by a bank-to-station alarm, arrived. The officers ordered the heisters to halt; they opened fire; the cops fired back. Two robbers were killed and two escaped—with four bags filled with unmarked fifties and C-notes.

  When I saw no mention of Blanchard or Kay Lake, I skimmed a week of page one and two accounts of the LAPD investigation.

  The dead heisters were identified as Chick Geyer and Max Ottens, San Francisco muscle with no known LA associates. Eyeball witnesses at the bank could not identify the two escapers from mug shots or provide adequate descriptions of them—their guard hats were pulled low and both wore lacquered sunglasses. There were no witnesses at the hijack scene, and the chloroformed guards had been overpowered before they got good looks at their attackers.

  The heist went from page two and three to the scandal columns. Bevo Means featured it for three days running, milking the angle that the Bugsy Siegel mob was chasing the escaped heisters because one of the armored car’s stops was the Bug Man’s haberdashery front. Siegel had sworn to find them, even though it was the bank’s money that the two got away with—not his.

  Means’ columns got further and further afield, and I turned pages until I hit the February 28 headline: “Tip From Ex-Boxer Cop Cracks Bloody Bank Robbery.”

  The account was loaded with praise for Mr. Fire, but was short on facts. Officer Leland C. Blanchard, 25, a Los Angeles policeman attached to Central Division and a former “popular fixture” at the Hollywood Legion Stadium, questioned his “fight game acquaintances” and “informants” and got tips that Robert “Bobby” De Witt was the brains behind the Boulevard-Citizens job. Blanchard relayed the tip to Hollywood Division detectives, and they raided De Witt’s Venice Beach house. They found stashes of marijuana, guard uniforms and money bags from Boulevard-Citizens Savings & Loan. De Witt protested his innocence, and was arrested and charged with two counts of Armed Robbery One, five counts of Aggravated Assault, one count of Grand Theft Auto, and one count of Harboring Felonious Drugs. He was held without bail—and there was still no mention of Kay Lake.

  Tiring of cops and robbers, I kept flipping pages. De Witt, a San Berdoo native with three pimping priors, kept yelping that the Siegel mob or the police had framed him: the mob because he sometimes ran cooze in Siegel territory, the cops because they needed a patsy for the Boulevard-Citizen job. He had no alibi for the day of the heist, and said he didn’t know Chick Geyer, Max Ottens or the still-at-large fourth man. He went to trial, and the jury didn’t believe him. He was convicted on all counts, and drew a ten-to-life jolt at San Quentin.

  Kay finally appeared in a June 21 human interest piece titled “Gang Girl Falls In Love—With Cop! Going Straight? To Altar?” Beside the story there were photographs of her and Lee Blanchard, along with a mug shot of Bobby De Witt, a hatchet-faced guy sporting a greasy pompadour. The piece started with a recounting of the Boulevard-Citizens job and Blanchard’s part in solving it, then segued to sugar:

  … and at the time of the robbery, De Witt was providing shelter for an impressionable young girl. Katherine Lake, 19, came west from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1936, not seeking Hollywood stardom, but seeking a college education. What she got was a degree in the college of criminal hard knocks.

  “I fell in with Bobby because I had no place to go,” “Kay” Lake told Herald Express reporter Aggie Underwood. “It was still the Depression, and jobs were scarce. I used to take walks near this awful boardinghouse where I had a cot, and that was how I met Bobby. He gave me my own room at his house, and he said he’d enroll me at Valley J.C. if I kept the house clean. He didn’t do that, and I got more than I bargained for.”

  Kay thought Bobby De Witt was a musician, but he was really a dope peddler and procuror. “At f
irst he was nice to me,” Kay said. “Then he made me drink laudanum and stay home all day to answer the telephone. After that it got worse.”

  Kay Lake declined to state how it “got worse,” and she was not surprised when police arrested De Witt for his part in the bloody February 11 robbery. She found lodging at a career girl’s residence in Culver City, and when called by the prosecution to testify at De Witt’s trial, she did—even though she was terrified of her former “benefactor.”

  “It was my duty,” she said. “And of course at the trial I met Lee.”

  Lee Blanchard and Kay Lake fell in love. “As soon as I saw her I knew she was the girl for me,” Officer Blanchard told crime scribe Bevo Means. “She has that waiflike beauty I’m a sucker for. She’s had a rough life, but now I’m going to set it straight.”

  Lee Blanchard is no stranger to tragedy himself. When he was 14, his 9-year-old sister disappeared, never to be seen again. “I think that’s why I quit fighting and became a policeman,” he said. “Catching criminals gives me a sense of order.”

  So out of tragedy, a love story has begun. But where will it end? Kay Lake says: “The important things now are my education and Lee. Happy days are here again.”

  And with Big Lee Blanchard on Kay’s case, it looks like they’re here to stay.

  I closed the scrapbook. Except for the kid sister, none of it surprised me. But all of it made me think of big wrong moves: Blanchard blowing the juice from his glory case by refusing to fight smokers; a little girl obviously snuffed and dumped somewhere like garbage; Kay Lake shacking on both sides of the law. Opening the book again, I stared at the Kay of seven years before. Even at nineteen she looked way too smart to speak the words Bevo Means put in her mouth. And seeing her portrayed as naive made me angry.

  I gave the scrapbooks back to the clerk and walked out of the Hearst building wondering what I’d been looking for, knowing it was more than just evidence to prove Kay’s come-on was legit. Driving around aimlessly, killing time so I’d be exhausted and able to sleep through to the afternoon, it hit me: with the old man taken care of and Warrants dead, Kay Lake and Lee Blanchard were the only interesting prospects in my future, and I needed to know them past wisecracks, insinuations and the fight.

  I stopped at a steak joint on Los Feliz and wolfed a king-size porterhouse, spinach and hash browns, then cruised Hollywood Boulevard and the Strip. None of the movie marquees looked inviting, and the clubs on Sunset looked too rich for a flash-in-the-pan celebrity. At Doheny the long stretch of neon ended, and I headed up into the hills. Mulholland was rife with motorcycle bulls in speed traps, and I resisted the urge to leadfoot to the beach.

  Finally I got tired of driving like a law-abiding citizen and pulled over to the embankment. Movie searchlights out of Westwood Village strafed the sky just above me; I watched them swivel and pick out low cloud formations. Following the lights was hypnotic, and I let the act numb me. Cars racing by on Mulholland hardly dented my numbness, and when the lights went off I checked my watch and saw that it was past midnight.

  Stretching, I looked down at the few house lights still glowing and thought of Kay Lake. Reading between the lines of the newspaper piece, I saw her servicing Bobby De Witt and his friends, maybe selling it for him, a heister’s hausfrau jacked on laudanum. It read true, but ugly, like I was betraying the sparks between us. Kay’s exit line started coming on as true, and I wondered how Blanchard could live with her without possessing her completely.

  The house lights went off one by one, and I was alone. A cold wind blew down from the hills; I shivered and got the answer.

  You come off a winning fight. Sweat-drenched, tasting blood, high as the stars, still wanting to go. The handbooks who made money on you bring you a girl. A pro, a semipro, an amateur tasting her own blood. You do it in the dressing room, or in a backseat too cramped for your legs, and sometimes you kick the side windows out. When you walk outside after it, people mob you and swarm to touch you, and you go high as the stars again. It becomes another part of the game, the eleventh round of a ten-round fight. And when you go back to an ordinary life, it’s just a weakness, a loss. As long as he’d been away from the game, Blanchard had to know it, had to want to keep his love for Kay separate from that.

  I got in the car and headed home, wondering if I would ever tell Kay that I didn’t have a woman because sex tasted like blood and resin and suture scrub to me.

  Four

  We left our dressing rooms simultaneously, at the sound of a warning bell. Pushing out the door, I was an adrenaline live wire. I had chewed a big steak two hours before, swallowing the juice and spitting out the meat, and I could smell animal blood in my sweat. Dancing on my toes, I moved toward my corner through the most incredible fight mob I had ever seen.

  The gym was packed to more than capacity, the spectators crammed together in narrow wooden chairs and bleachers. Every human being seemed to be shouting, and people in aisle seats plucked at my robe and urged me to kill. The side rings had been removed; the center ring was bathed in a perfect square of hot yellow light. Grabbing the bottom rope, I hoisted myself into it.

  The referee, an old foot beat hack from Central nightwatch, was talking to Jimmy Lennon, on one-night leave from his announcer’s gig at the Olympic; at ringside I saw Stan Kenton huddled with Misty June Christy, Mickey Cohen, Mayor Bowron, Ray Milland and a shitload of high brass in civvies. Kenton waved at me; I yelled “Artistry in rhythm!” at him. He laughed, and I bared my buck choppers at the crowd, who roared their approval. The roars grew to a crescendo; I turned around and saw that Blanchard had entered the ring.

  Mr. Fire bowed in my direction; I saluted him with a barrage of short punches. Duane Fisk steered me to my stool; I took off my robe and leaned against the turnbuckle with my arms draped over the top rope. Blanchard moved into a similar position; we locked eyes. Jimmy Lennon waved the ref to a neutral corner, and the ring mike slinked down from a pole attached to the ceiling lights. Lennon grabbed it and shouted above the roar: “Ladies and gentlemen, policemen and supporters of LA’s finest, it is time for the Fire and Ice tango! “

  The crowd went batshit, howling and stomping. Lennon waited until they quieted down to a buzz, then crooned: “Tonight we have ten rounds of boxing in the heavyweight division. In the white corner, wearing white trunks, a Los Angeles policeman with a professional record of forty-three wins, four losses and two draws. Weighing two hundred and three and one half pounds, ladies and gentlemen, Big Lee Blanchard!”

  Blanchard slipped off his robe, kissed his gloves and bowed in all four directions. Lennon let the spectators go nuts for a few moments, then made his amplified voice rise above it all: “And in the black corner, weighing one ninety-one, a Los Angeles policeman, undefeated with thirty-six straight pro wins—Tricky Bucky Bleichert!”

  I soaked up my last hurrah, memorizing the faces at ringside, pretending I wasn’t going to dive. The noise in the gym leveled off; I walked to the center of the ring. Blanchard approached; the ref mumbled words that I didn’t hear; Mr. Fire and I touched gloves. I got scared shitless and moved back to my corner; Fisk slipped my mouthpiece in. Then the bell rang, and it was all over and just starting.

  Blanchard charged. I met him in the middle of the ring, popping double jabs as he went into a crouch and stood in front of me weaving his head. The jabs missed, and I kept moving left, making no move to counter, hoping to sucker him into a right hand lead.

  His first punch was a looping left hook to the body. I saw it coming and stepped inside, connecting with a short left cross to the head. Blanchard’s hook grazed my back; it was one of the most powerful missed punches I’d ever taken. His right hand was low, and I brought in a short uppercut. It landed cleanly, and while Blanchard covered up I banged a one-two to his rib cage. Backpedaling before he could clinch or go to the body himself, I caught a left hand on the neck. It shook me, and I got up on my toes and started circling.

  Blanchard stalked me. I stayed out of reach, pepp
ering his always moving head with jabs, connecting more than half the time, reminding myself to hit low, so I wouldn’t open up his scarred eyebrows. Moving from a crouch, Blanchard winged body hooks; I stepped back and countered them with on-target combinations. After a minute or so I had his feints and my jabs synchronized, and when his head snapped I dug in short right hooks to the ribs.

  I danced, circled and threw punches in flurries. Blanchard stalked and looked for openings to land the big one. The round was winding down, and I realized that ceiling light glare and crowd smoke had distorted my ring bearings—I couldn’t see the ropes. On reflex, I looked over my shoulder. Turning back, I caught the big one flush on the side of the head.

  I staggered into the white corner turnbuckle; Blanchard was all over me. My head rang and my ears buzzed like Jap Zeros were dive-bombing inside them. I put up my hands to protect my face; Blanchard slammed pulverizing left-right hooks at my arms to bring them down. My head started clearing, and I leaped out and grabbed Mr. Fire in a bear hug clinch, holding him with all my juice, getting stronger each second as I stagger-pushed the two of us across the ring. Finally the ref intervened and yelled “Break!” I still held on, and he had to pry us apart.

  I backpedaled, the dizziness and ear buzzing gone. Blanchard came at me flat-footed, wide open. I feinted with my left, and Big Lee stepped straight into a perfect overhand right. He hit the canvas flat on his ass.

  I don’t know who was more shocked. Blanchard sat there slack-jawed, taking the ref’s count; I moved to a neutral corner. Blanchard was on his feet at seven, and this time I charged. Mr. Fire was dug in, feet planted wide apart, ready to kill or die. We were almost within swinging distance when the ref stepped between us and shouted, “The bell! The bell!”

  I walked back to my corner. Duane Fisk removed my mouthpiece and doused me with a wet towel; I looked out at the fans, on their feet applauding. Every face I saw told me what I now knew: that I could cancel Blanchard’s ticket plain and simple. And for a split second I thought that every voice was screaming for me not to throw the fight.