For the second time, Horn whistled to himself. It was a daring stunt. Not crazy, but almost. He felt a grudging respect for the man who’d battered him the other night.
He watched both trucks come to a halt. The scene was finished, and since this had been Falco’s only job of the day, he was probably getting ready to leave. There was always the possibility of a retake, Horn knew, but Dexter Diggs was known as a director who seldom needed retakes.
Horn drove carefully down the hillside and then out the main gate of the ranch and onto the rural road that led back to L.A. About a half-mile down the road was a gas station. Just beyond the pumps, he pulled over. He walked back to the station, fished a grape soda out of the ice chest and paid for it, then took it to the car, where he adjusted his rear-view mirror and waited.
It took his man about twenty minutes. Horn saw him coming and, averting his face, had the engine started up as the other car passed, but he waited a while before pulling out onto the road. There was little traffic, so at first he trailed behind by a hundred yards or so. Then, as traffic picked up, Horn moved up closer. Falco was driving a dusty, cream-colored De Soto coupe. He drove it fast and expertly, and Horn had to be careful to keep the proper distance. They went south through the Valley and took Laurel Canyon up into the hills, where Horn could look back the way he had come and see much of the San Fernando Valley laid out like a giant game board, with a few prominent pieces jutting up in the foreground and great stretches of the board unoccupied in the distance. They crossed Mulholland Drive at the summit and headed down the twisting road toward the city.
A couple of miles past the crest, Horn saw his quarry turn off onto a narrow street to the right past a sign marked Dead End. He slowed, then eased forward just in time to see the car disappearing up a driveway. He drove slowly up the side road until he could see the De Soto parked in front of a large stone house with a dark shingled roof. Two other cars were parked there. A well-tended, medium-size lawn sloped down to an iron fence that encircled the property. Horn noted the address.
He drove back to the main road and parked on the dirt shoulder just above the intersection, facing downhill. He was fairly sure this wasn’t the home of a low-paid studio employee. Did it belong to the young man who called himself Tommy Dell? He decided to wait and see what Falco did next.
Horn rolled down all the windows to coax some fresh air into the car. To make himself less visible, he slid over to the passenger side, pulled his hat low, and leaned against the door. He was hungry. In his glove compartment he found a half-finished bag of peanuts. They tasted good but made him thirsty, and he quickly finished the rest of the now-lukewarm drink.
The afternoon wore on, and the car smelled of hot upholstery. As the sun dipped behind the side of the canyon to his right, the air in the car cooled somewhat.
Patience had never been one of Horn’s strengths, but two years at Cold Creek had taught him the value of waiting, of knowing the difference between trying to shape events and letting events take shape on their own. It was a kind of grudging, acquired patience that now was helping him deal with his current condition, a time of little money and no pride.
But sitting in his car, thinking of Scotty murdered and Clea in the company of a dangerous man, frustration began to take over. He felt powerless, miles away from Clea, and he denounced himself for knowing no better way to find her. Sierra Lane would have done this job days ago, he thought drowsily. Would have kicked some asses, brought the girl back to her folks, waved goodbye, and giddyupped right on over the hill. Real life is just a little more complicated, ain’t it, cowboy?
Hours later the canyon darkened, and the headlights of passing cars played up and down the road. Horn’s mind was beginning to drift, on the verge of dozing, when through half-open eyes he saw a car pull out of the side road in front of him. It was Falco. Instead of heading down toward the city, the car spun left, throwing gravel, and accelerated up toward Mulholland. Traffic was busy, and as Horn started the engine, three more cars passed him behind the De Soto. He turned around and followed.
He had already lost sight of the De Soto’s taillights, and because of oncoming cars and the narrow, twisting road, there was no way he could pass. Over the crest and back down toward the Valley he went, squinting into the road ahead. He saw an opening and passed one car, then a second, ignoring their outraged horn-blowing. Far down the hill was a pair of disappearing taillights, and he knew it must be the De Soto. Leaning into a hard left turn, he accelerated—but felt the wheel jerk in his hands as a loud noise rocked the car, and he fought to keep the wheel from pulling him off the road and down a dark ravine. He jammed on the brakes, and the car limped onto the shoulder as other cars raced by.
He got out and walked around, teeth clenched, knowing what he’d find. It’s almost bald, the pump jockey had told him about the right rear tire the other day. Now it was a mess, tire and inner tube blown out. He yelled out a curse and kicked the tire. He heard a derisive honk of the horn and loud laughter from a passing jalopy loaded with youngsters.
Once again, as on Central Avenue, he had found his man and lost him. But this time he had an address. Someone’s address.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“You could have told me over the phone,” Horn said to Douglas Greenleaf as they sat at a lunch counter in a cafe on Highland Avenue, not far from Hollywood High School. The waitresses wore pink aprons and pink caps, and they expertly balanced burgers and hot dogs and french fries on trays as they threaded their way among the tables. The place resounded with the cries of high schoolers on their lunch hour.
“This is too important for the phone.” The young man bit into his ham sandwich and gestured for the ketchup, which he poured liberally over his potato salad. “You should never pass sensitive information over the phone.”
“Is that what they tell you in that correspondence course?”
Douglas nodded, wiping his mouth with the paper napkin. “I’m on the last round.”
“And then you’ll be a private detective.”
“No, but I’ll have the book work out of the way. Then I’ll get a job with a real investigator, and work my way up from there.”
“Sure. Samuel Greenleaf Spade.” Probably the smartest of Mad Crow’s nephews, Douglas was in his mid-twenties. Asthma had kept him out of the war, but Horn noted that he was wearing his favorite Eisenhower jacket with the 5th Army patch on the shoulder. When Horn had first known him before the war, he was a kid just off the reservation, come to join his relatives in the big city. Now he was older but still a kid, thin and hungry, full of questions, wanting to make his mark. He was already a whiz at gathering information. Horn enjoyed his company.
“So give me the sensitive dope.”
“Okay,” Douglas said, lowering his voice. “That guy you chased the other night, the address where he wound up? The house belongs to Vincent Bonsigniore.”
“Yeah?”
“You know the name?”
“I think so,” Horn said slowly. “Just don’t know from where.”
“You’ve seen it in the paper. They usually call him the mobster. He runs rackets in L.A. for the New York syndicate.”
“That’s right, now I remember. He has some kind of nickname.”
“Vinnie B,” Douglas said dramatically, talking out of the side of his mouth as he motioned the waitress over to refill his lemonade glass. He loved the movies, and it sometimes spilled over into his behavior. You’ve seen too many Jimmy Cagney movies, Horn once said to him, and Douglas took it as a compliment.
“What do you know about him?”
“He came out here about twenty years ago,” Douglas said before taking a long swig of the lemonade. “My contact with the police—”
“Your brother-in-law Sam,” Horn prompted.
“Well, yeah. He says Vinnie makes money off of whorehouses and protection, b
ut his real thing is gambling. He was one of the owners of the Rex, the old gambling ship that used to float off Long Beach, outside the three-mile limit. He runs off-track betting on the races at Santa Anita. And he’s starting up small gambling houses here and there around the county, in the unincorporated areas or in towns where he can buy his way in. And a lot of the money gets sent back east. Sam says the L.A. cops—the honest ones, anyway—have had their eye on him for a long time, but he keeps a low profile, and a lot of his business is legitimate. He owns one of the two or three biggest liquor distributorships in town.
“They raid his places now and then, but they arrest the little guys, and they’ve never been able to stick him with anything. He likes to sit back and let flashy types like Mickey Cohen get all the attention. You know that bomb that went off in Mickey’s apartment a while back? Sam says it was probably Vinnie’s boys that did it, but nobody can prove it.”
“What about Falco?”
“His name has come up a few times. He’s got a record, mostly strong-arm stuff, but not in California. Only been in town four or five years. They think he works for Vinnie occasionally. Since they both came out here from New York, it would make sense.”
“What about the guy who runs the Dixie Belle?”
“The Creole,” Douglas said dramatically. “I like that. Real name Alphonse Doucette. He has a record too. Why doesn’t that surprise me? All these characters you hang out with nowadays—”
“My new friends,” Horn said. “Ever since I did time, this is the kind of company I like best. They’re a lot more real than all you law-abiding folks.”
“Yeah. Anyway, this Doucette. . . he had a couple of convictions back in Louisiana, both of them involving a straight razor he carried in his shoe and the rivals for the affections of one young lady or another. Funny when you think about it, ‘cause he shouldn’t have gotten a liquor license in L.A. County. But it seems he has a friend or two in the police department.”
“I think I met one of them the other night. Did you ask Sam about Tommy Dell?”
“Yeah. Nothing. But if it’s not his real name anyway—”
“I know,” Horn said. “But I had to try. He’s the one I really want. I don’t know if any of this gets me any closer to him.”
Seeing Douglas’ disappointed look, Horn squeezed his arm. “Thanks, though. This is a big help.” He put some money on the table. “My treat.”
“I could tell you a little more about Vinnie in New York,” Douglas said. “The life of a young thug.”
“Not unless it helps me find Tommy,” Horn sighed as he rose to leave. “And I doubt if it will.”
“Probably right.” Douglas followed him out onto the street. “He’s had a kind of charmed life, though. Even when he was busting heads for the big guys, he only got arrested a few times, and never for killing anybody. Public drunkenness, sex with a minor, stuff like that.”
Horn was beginning to pull his car keys out of his pocket, but he stopped. “Say that again. Sex with a minor?”
“Yeah. Sex with a young girl, they called it. Really young, actually. Something like twelve. They eventually dropped the charges, Sam says, when the girl’s mother decided she wasn’t going to testify. They think she might have been bought off or threatened or something like that. What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” He grabbed the young man’s hand and shook it. “Thanks, Douglas. I owe you.”
* * *
Horn turned the radio up as he drove toward home, humming along to Charlie Barnett’s Cherokee. He was excited. He still felt as far away from Clea as ever, and he still didn’t know how Tommy Dell figured in this, or in fact if she was even with him. But something had slid into place today. He now wondered if Vincent Bonsigniore—Vinnie B, the gangster who had once molested a child in New York—might be one of the older men in the stack of photos Scotty had given him. If so, it took no great leap of the imagination to conclude that Bonsigniore could have ordered Scotty’s murder when it began to appear that the events in the hunting lodge might be made public. Even with their faces shrouded in hoods, the men who had assembled at the lodge must have feared what would happen if the photos found their way outside that small circle.
Now Horn had the photos. Could they know it, and could they even now be making plans for him? For that matter, how had they known Scotty had the photos?
His free hand beat lightly on the roof of the car in time with the music, but his thoughts were elsewhere. How could anyone have known Scotty had them? They almost would have had to see him search his father’s office. Or at least have known that he was there. And how could they have known? Maybe by speaking to someone who saw him there.
He pulled over to the curb and turned off the radio. The cleaning woman. The one who tried to enter the office while Horn and Scotty sat at the desk with the photos spread over the desktop.
He turned the car around and headed for downtown. It was midafternoon when he parked near the Braly Building and walked into the lobby. The guard at the desk looked up.
“Sir?”
“Hello,” Horn said, putting on an earnest and frazzled look. “I was in here the other day to pick up a delivery for the mayor’s office. I had to go up to the 10th floor, and when I left, I didn’t take along part of the delivery, some architect’s drawings. My boss—he’s in the city attorney’s office—called over here, but they told him the drawings weren’t around. Said because they just looked like rolled-up paper, they might have gone out in the trash last night. I was told to talk to the cleaning woman who worked up there. Do you know her?”
The guard looked at him without much interest. “I didn’t see you,” he said.
“I walked right past you,” Horn said with a grin. “Bunch of people in the lobby, but I knew where I was supposed to go, so I went right up. Look,” he went on, “this is really important. I’m not going to say I could lose my job over this, but. . . .” He finished with a helpless gesture. “Can you help me out?”
“That’s probably Greta,” the guard said. “I can’t pronounce her last name, and you’re lucky if you can understand half of what she says.”
“Greta. That’s a big help. Know where I can find her?”
The guard looked over at the lobby clock. “In about two hours, you’ll find her waltzing right through that door.”
Horn walked over to Pershing Square and sat on one of the benches facing the Biltmore Hotel, trying to decide what to do when he saw the cleaning woman, how to approach her, what to say. The square carried its usual complement of office workers, panhandlers, preachers, lecturers, and loonies. Under a palm stood two white-robed disciples of Sister Aimee’s Church of the Foursquare Gospel handing out leaflets in front of a wide banner that read: You Can Smell the Roses; Can You Smell the Brimstone?
The ornate facade of the Biltmore loomed over the west side of the square. It was there, they said, that an aspiring actress named Elizabeth Short had been glimpsed alive for the last time before she walked off into the night. The next time she appeared, it was as a sad, mutilated thing, some butcher having dealt her the ultimate indignity by carefully severing her body, leaving the bled-dry halves on display in a vacant lot.
His mind strayed to Clea, and he shook his head fiercely, not wanting to go down that trail. She’s not dead, he thought, just lost. I will find her and put things right. Not for another man’s money, but for her sake. And mine.
At the end of an hour he walked over to a cafe that fronted the north side of the square, ordered coffee and a cinnamon bun, and nursed both until it was time to head back to the office building. He moved the Ford, parking it between the main entrance and the nearest bus stop, and waited.
Just before five o’clock he saw her coming. He hadn’t been sure he’d recognize her after the brief glimpse he’d had that night, but he knew her—the gray hair under a kerchief, shap
eless dress, and sturdy shoes. She carried a large bundle wrapped in brown paper.
He got out and approached her. “Greta?” he said, lightly taking her by the elbow. “Hi. May I talk to you? The guard in the lobby told me you were working tonight.”
She looked fearful, pulled back from him a little. He plunged ahead. “You don’t know me. I made a pickup here yesterday, and I think I may have left part of it behind. They tell me it may have gone out in the trash.” He laughed at the idiocy of it all. “I’d sure appreciate it if I could just explain—” He was guiding her toward the car, opening the door. She seemed genuinely alarmed now and tried to shake him off. “It won’t take a minute,” he said, increasing the pressure on her arm until she was forced to sit down. “It’s all right,” he said loudly as he closed the door, his eyes scanning the passers-by to see if they had noticed anything. “Just take a minute.”
He walked around quickly and got in. She sat quietly, staring ahead, her bundle huge in her lap. He read her quickly as a woman of little education and not much English. He decided to lean on her.
“Do you recognize me, Greta?” he asked.
She looked at him briefly and uneasily and shook her head. He couldn’t tell if she was lying or not, and it didn’t really matter.
“I was in Mr. Bullard’s office the other night. With his son, Scott. You walked in on us, wanted to clean the place. He asked you to come back later. Remember?”
She said nothing.
“Don’t lie to me, Greta. I’ll know if you lie. So will the police.”
“Police?” It was her first word, heavily accented. She might be German, he thought. If so, she’s not had an easy time the last few years, no matter where she was.
“Police,” he repeated. “I need to ask you a few questions. When I’m finished, I’ll let you go to work and never bother you again. But if you lie to me, I’m going straight to the police, and you can deal with them.” What bullshit, he thought. But with her it might work.
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