“I’m sorry,” Alfano said.
“Detective, I don’t want sympathy. I knew boys; I sure as hell wasn’t a virgin. I knew a lot—or so I thought. Late that night, after most everyone had left, or found a room somewhere upstairs, I saw light in that window over there. I was deciding to call a cab or find a couch for the night; I was pretty well lit up.”
She pointed across the terrace to a window that Alfano remembered was one of the high windows in Melnik’s porno studio.
“I’d had a lot of champagne by then. I wandered around a while trying to find the source of the light. That’s when I walked into the studio. Melnik was directing two women and a man on the bed. I remember there were two others, a cameraman and Maxime Durant. I was drunk, shocked, and confused. I actually thought I was sophisticated. I watched a while and drank more champagne. Then I found myself on the bed. Durant was hovering over me, my clothes were gone, and that potbellied son of a bitch was standing next to her. Durant said to have a sip of this; it would relax me. All I remember was Momma’s little girl was not in Denver anymore.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why the hell are you sorry? I got myself into that. I was stupid.”
“Why did you stay? Why didn’t you go back to Denver?”
“Money. To be honest, they were nice to me—afterwards. They paid me one hundred and twenty-five a week to be a gofer. A lot more than a counter girl at Woolworth’s. Melnik never asked to have sex with me again. Ever since I’ve been a gofer, assistant, take people around like you, show them a good time. I do what I want, no strings, no pressure, and certainly no tit for tat. I have a nice apartment.” She looked at Alfano. “It’s just all so fucking weird.”
“They raped you.”
“Yeah, I guess, technically. But all too outlandish, and here I still am two years later, and you are thinking I’m the girl who killed Melnik. That I got revenge on the son of a bitch. I know that’s what you are thinking.”
“Sure as hell, that’s what I’m thinking,” a voice said from behind them.
“Hi, Suarez, I wondered how long it would take you to get here,” Alfano said. “Gloria Downs, this is Detective Suarez of the Beverly Hills Police. I’d shake his hand, but the sandwich he’s holding tells me that I’m not having lunch today.”
CHAPTER 23
Downs, Suarez, and Alfano climbed the spiral stairway to Melnik’s office. The blood had dried into ghoulish patterns where the actual shooting took place. The furniture was unneatly rearranged; there were black powder patterns and residues on many surfaces and drawers, the champagne bottle was still in the silver ice bucket. The bourbon bottle, now decorated with black dust, sat on the desk. The glasses Alfano remembered were gone.
“Did you find anything downstairs worth noting?” Alfano asked.
“Another champagne glass, no prints on it. That’s not unusual,” Suarez said. “No bullet casings—though if I had to guess, the revolver you found at Hill’s apartment might be the same one used to kill him. I should know today.”
“This is where you found him,” Gloria said, looking at the mess on the floor.
“Why don’t you go back to the car. I’ll be right there,” Alfano said.
“Detective, I’ll be the one to dismiss her,” Suarez said. “I have a few questions.”
Gloria turned to Suarez. “I wasn’t here that night. I was home. I had a nice dinner with Detective Alfano and another policeman—Tuttle was his name, I think. Then I took a cab home to Sawtelle. That was about nine. I took a bath, had a nightcap, climbed into bed, and read. I was asleep by eleven.”
“She’s good, Alfano. Practiced and everything . . . almost makes her a suspect.”
“If you were to go from your apartment to here, what would be the quickest way?” Alfano asked Gloria.
“I don’t own a car, but I could have borrowed that Model T, I guess. You can check with my neighbor. Since it doesn’t have working headlights, I’d have to drive real slow. Santa Monica Boulevard to Beverly Hills, then left on Beverly Drive. So, it would take me at least forty minutes to get here. I also could have taken a cab. I like Yellow—I dated a Yellow cab driver for a few months. You might call them and confirm that I didn’t use them.”
Suarez said nothing.
“Detective Suarez, I did not like Mr. Melnik. I actually despised the asshole, but I didn’t kill him,” Gloria insisted. “He wasn’t worth the trouble. And you mentioned a revolver. I’m from Colorado; I know how to shoot pistols, shotguns, long guns. To pin this on me, you must put me and that gun together.”
“Cute and smart,” Alfano said. “She’s right, it would have been difficult.”
“When are you going home, Detective? I could use the peace and quiet,” Suarez said.
Alfano left Gloria to capably fend for herself and did a circuit around the house. He inspected every room, even the kitchen, which he paced off and determined to be twice as large as his whole apartment. He investigated Melnik’s playroom; it didn’t look any more innocent in the light of day. Upstairs was a collection of eight bedrooms, a lot for a confirmed bachelor. The office sat in the middle like a hub, with the bedrooms evenly spaced in both directions along the hallway. Other than the size and style, there was nothing remarkable about the house; it was not overly decorated, or, as Gloria said, butch. Melnik’s office looked to be the most inhabited room in the house.
Through the office window he could see Suarez and Gloria standing on the pool terrace. Alfano lifted the books and papers strewn across Melnik’s desktop and counters, looking for what, he didn’t know. Three of the stacks of papers were scripts; he recognized them from reading his assignments from J.J. There had to be a hundred split evenly between the three piles, each with a neatly typed cover. A few were covered with handwritten notes. The handwriting was impossible to read; it wasn’t English.
He turned in a slow half circle, taking in the details of the now familiar room. More books filled the shelves on one wall. Opposite, the door to the safe still hung open. Photographs in silver frames were displayed on almost every flat open surface or shelf; a dozen were spread across the top of the baby grand piano in the corner. He looked at all of them. Some were of a young boy; in others, the boy stood between two adults, a man and a woman. He recognized a young Hines Melnik in all of them. There were photographs as the family grew older and more children filled the frames. Then a teenage boy, again Hines, stood at a wooden railing, the beach, the ocean, and the side of a rustic building behind him. Next to him stood another boy, same age; they had their arms entwined over each other’s shoulders. The boys were maybe fourteen or fifteen. There was a familiarity about the other boy, but then again, the graininess and discoloration made identification difficult.
“Find anything?” Suarez said as he walked into the room. Gloria was behind him.
“No, it looks all too normal, nothing stands out, no confession, no sinister notes left by the killer. I got bupkis. Gloria, does this look familiar?”
She looked at the photo. “That’s Santa Monica pier. I recognize the side of the building; they sell hot dogs and drinks. It’s still there—that’s a young Melnik, maybe twenty-five years ago. I don’t know the other fellow.”
“We are chasing down some fingerprints we found. The glasses were wiped down. Nothing yet,” Suarez said to Alfano. “You think the killer also killed Kitty Hill?”
“Yeah, maybe. But the revolver confuses it all. Why carry the damn thing halfway across the country and use it for another murder? The only suspects I got at the front of the line are two actors. And besides, guns are everywhere for fifty bucks, even in California, I’m sure.”
“Two actors? Roberts and Durant?” Gloria asked.
“For the moment, not your concern, Gloria,” Alfano said. “Why don’t you head downstairs; I’ll be right there. If that’s okay, Detective.”
Suarez nodded, and the two men waited as Gloria went down the stairs and they heard her shoes tap across the marble foyer.
“Another disillusioned actress, but she’s okay. She didn’t do it, I’m certain. But my track record with guilty women this year isn’t good.”
“And why is that?”
“Not your concern and all long stories. Just my luck in choosing women who turn out to be suspects and worse.”
“I take it you are leaning toward Maxime Durant?” Suarez said.
“She is a good prospect. Did you notice that nothing seems to be trashed here? Even this room is still an organized mess. The front doors weren’t busted in—no windows broken. Someone might have climbed over the wall or the fencing in the rear, but I don’t think so. What gets me is that the front doors and gate were unlocked and open—not wide open, but open. And somebody cut the phone line from the gate. Anyone could have waltzed right in. I’m thinking that Melnik knew the killer, let them in, had a drink—then was killed and robbed.”
“Yeah, my thoughts, too. Not a big help, but at least something. Them? Two people?”
“No, just not sure it was a him or a her.”
“Got it.”
“And he still had on his watch, a nice watch,” Alfano said. “I saw one like it at a jeweler’s shop. A real robber would have taken it.”
“Yes.”
“And they knew about Kitty’s little hiding place in the floor. That makes it a smaller party, much smaller. Why did they keep the gun at all? The damn thing only weighs a pound and a half. With that short barrel, a strong woman could use it, if she knew how to shoot.”
“We are trying to find out when it was made and sold and where,” Suarez said. “That might give us a lead. You know as well as I do that there’s no list of serial numbers for guns.”
“Yes, maybe someday, but not now. Was the information sent on to my sergeant?”
“Yes. I put a copy of the ballistics on a United flight this morning. Your sergeant should have it tomorrow. He can check the grooves against what he has; if there’s a match, then we will know.”
“Yeah, that information and a dime will get you a cup of coffee.”
Gloria decided unilaterally to salvage their afternoon picnic lunch. Against Alfano’s protests—saying he needed to get back to the hotel—she drove west down Sunset Boulevard and turned north onto the Pacific Coast Highway, telling the still protesting detective that they were going to a small and uncrowded beach she knew. A mile beyond the Entering Malibu sign, Alfano gave in and changed into his swimsuit at a gas station. Another mile on, Gloria pulled to the side of the road near Malibu Road and parked. She pointed to the stretch of beach thirty feet down the bank. A sandy trail worn into the hillside gave them access. While Gloria set up the picnic, Alfano walked to the edge of the ocean and stood wiggling his toes in the wet sand as he smoked a cigarette. A hundred yards offshore, he saw something he’d never seen before.
“What’s that? What are those guys doing?” Alfano said, pointing to a group of men drifting on the surface of the sea.
“It’s called surfing. You’ve never seen it?” Gloria said.
“Seen it? I’ve never even heard of it.”
Gloria walked up to Alfano and pushed her shoulder into his back, then passed him a beer.
“Those guys are sitting on long, flat boards made of wood. They wait for one of the bigger swells to run to the beach. If there’s enough height and momentum, they stand up and ride the wave in. The surf’s not high today, so most of the time they just hang out and talk to each other. I’ve been here when the waves are ten or fifteen feet high and crashing up and down the beach. Hundreds of guys, and even some girls, ride the surf. It’s quite something.”
“It looks like a perfect way to waste your time and get sunburned.”
Gloria laughed. “Their tans are inches thick. A couple of actors I know are surfers—as they are called. It keeps them in shape for the camera. It’s like skiing but on water. I tried it once with a guy I was dating; it was fun. The bitch is that the boards are huge and weigh a ton. I couldn’t carry it down to the beach from the parking lot. Maybe that’s why there’s more guys than gals surfing.” She grabbed his hand and hauled him back to the blanket. “Lunch is served.”
A pod of pelicans, in a trailing formation, ghosted along the top of the waves and over the dozen or so surfers. The birds disappeared around the point of land to the north.
“It’s almost perfect here,” Alfano said. “Two people a long way from Denver and Chicago.”
“I’ve decided to be a pal and share my other sandwich with you, since you used yours to bribe those cops.”
“One was a bribe, the other was stolen,” Alfano answered.
“Either way, I found the whole process at Melnik’s interesting,” Gloria said.
“I assume you knew Kitty?” Alfano asked as he sat on the blanket.
“Yes, I did, for maybe the last year and a half. Melnik introduced us at one of his parties. Later he had me deliver scripts to her at her apartment. I liked her; she was smart, been around the block as they say. And wasn’t afraid to tell me about it. She gave me pointers like a big sister. She never talked about who she was before LA.”
“Did you know she was from Chicago?”
“I thought so, maybe guessed it. She had a picture on her wall. When I asked, she said it was in Chicago. She never came right out and said, though. One evening we split a nice bottle of Scotch a friend gave her. It was the real stuff, Cutty Sark, fancy-shmancy, I thought. She started talking about a city she once lived in, back East. Cold all the fucking time, she said, noisy, lots of gangs, killings. I guessed Chicago or Detroit, maybe Milwaukee. Some friends of hers died, maybe were murdered? It sounded that way. She said she took off right after that, came to California. She told me to never tell anyone about what she said—makes no difference now, I guess.”
Alfano sipped his beer. “She was a dancer and a singer in Chicago about ten years ago. Her stage name was Kitty Hall then; I guess she changed it to Hill when she got here. She had a good reputation, worked some of the swankier clubs. People said she was good, had a chance.”
Katherine Mooney, her given name, had an older brother named Ian, Alfano told Gloria. He filled in what he knew of Katherine’s history: As children, the siblings came to America from Ireland with their parents. The parents were believed to have died around 1918 from the Spanish flu. By then, the kids were pretty much on their own. Kitty was singing in a church choir and performing at clubs. Ian got caught up in an Irish gang on the Northside run by a guy called O’Banion. Then Kitty fell for a guy, Allen O’Neal, who worked with Ian. They got married; she was maybe twenty-three. Life was good, she probably thought. The boys were running booze from Canada. A lot of the places where Kitty worked bought O’Banion’s bootleg liquor. Then, as things usually go, they crossed the wrong man—Al Capone. One night, the guys were gunned down outside a bar in the Irish part of Chicago.
“I was told that Kitty saw it all, that she knew the killer, and knew she was next. She took off, came here, and started a new life. You know more about her second life than I do.”
“That’s a story that would make a movie, Detective. Maybe I’ll write it.”
“I’ll be your technical advisor.”
“Deal.” They clinked beer bottles. “Kitty was into some pretty nasty stuff, you know that,” Gloria said.
“I assumed—I saw the evidence in her apartment. Do you think somebody wanted her dead over that?”
“Who knows? There’s big money in stag films and porn—or so I’ve been told. And I was told that the gangs back East are involved. A lot of the money comes through their affiliates here. There are rumors of money for films, money for unions, money for the right job and the right production crew.” She smiled. “But to kill somebody, to shoot them down in cold blood?”
“I’ve seen people killed for their shoes, Gloria. It’s not a nice world out there, and in some places, it is downright shitty and barbaric. And in the gangs, it’s worse.”
“Like I was home in Little Italy.”
They sat in silence, looking out at the water where the surfers still drifted on their boards. Gloria looked thoughtful.
“Every big city has an Italian district. Here in LA, we’re a mongrel lot,” she said. “People are from everywhere, Europe, Mexico, China, and from across the country. They bring their music and food, clothes, and their good ideas and bad habits. Right now, oil runs this town—there are oil wells everywhere. You probably saw some. There’s a hill south of downtown that just prickles with oil rigs, ugly as sin. But it greases the wheels of the city; there’s graft, corruption—what’s not to like? You can find your poison anywhere in this town. There’s a rumor that they are going to build those derricks out there in the ocean, goddamn them.”
“The weather is nice,” Alfano said as he laid back.
“You’ve been lucky. Wait a few days when it’s a hundred and ten degrees and the dust blows in from the desert, and the hills, right up there, are on fire, and the smoke in the city is so thick you can’t breathe, then you will change your mind. But, hell, last Christmas it was seventy degrees.”
Durant had gone on about the fires, too, Alfano remembered. He didn’t mention that to Gloria. He said, “It was bitter cold in Chicago; I worked that day.”
“And in Denver, too, so I won’t complain too much. I guess you need to get back?”
“I pissed J.J. off today. I need to be at the studio at nine. Perhaps I can go home at the end of the week.”
“You should check with that friend of yours, Detective Tuttle. Maybe they could use a cop like you out here.”
Alfano looked out across the water. A soft swell had developed, and the men and their boards rose up and down; the pelicans made a return trip.
Chicago Boogie Woogie Page 15