The whore was leafing through her trick book with quivering lip and shaking hands. She couldn’t think. She started dropping things from her purse. There were phone numbers of good tricks to look for, bad tricks to avoid, high rollers and fat cats, good pimps who let you keep some money and bought you nice presents with part of the money they took from you, bad pimps who poured lighter fluid on your clothes and played with unlighted matches when you weren’t behaving. There were dozens of telephone numbers in that purse. Al Mackey amused himself by looking through them, hoping to find some movie star names, which most whores wrote in their trick books for prestige whether they banged the celebrities or not.
Then he saw a familiar number. “Look at this, Marty. It’s that number again.” Then to the whore, “Where did you get this?”
The whore looked at the scrap of paper. She screwed and unscrewed her brow. She put both hands on her Afro and tamped it down. She couldn’t think. “Lessee, lessee,” she said. “A trick? I don’t know! I’m still shakin! I don’t know my mother’s phone number, even!”
Martin Welborn looked at the studio telephone number and said, “How well did you know … Nigel St. Claire?”
“Never heard that name,” the whore said, and she seemed truthful enough. She was on one track only: momma’s phone number. She was too rattled to be telling lies.
“Whose number is this?” Martin Welborn asked.
The whore looked at it again. “I don’t know! Gud-damn! It ain’t even my writin, Officer. It’s probably some trick’s number, is all it is. Prob’ly some other girl give it to me. I can’t find momma’s number!”
She started crying and Martin Welborn said, “Calm down. I think we can get along without your mother’s number if you can remember who gave you this number. Do you think you can do that?”
“Am I gonna git to go home? I’m sorry that man’s dead. I’ll give you back his money. You kin give it to his wife. I never had nothin like this go wrong before!”
“You can go home. Just as soon as you remember who gave you that telephone number.”
The whore looked at the scrap of paper again. She fumbled with a cigarette, and Al Mackey struck a match and lit it. She took a puff, another, and said, “This here’s … I think this here’s Lulu’s writin … no … it ain’t Lulu.” She smoked for a few seconds and stared and then she said, “I know! It’s Jill’s handwritin! Yeah! Jill gimme this number. Sure!”
“Is it a trick’s number?” Al Mackey asked.
“It ain’t no trick. It’s a … a … it’s a movie studio. Whadda ya call them offices you go to to get in a movie? As an extra?”
“A casting office,” Martin Welborn said.
“Yeah! You got to ask for a certain company. And a certain guy. I forget his name now. Jill knows his name.”
“Are you trying to get in the movies?” Martin Welborn asked.
“Honey, everybody’s tryin to git in the movies,” the whore said, and that was true enough. “Jill said this dude in a big black car liked her looks and asked would she like to play in a movie. Course all the tricks say bullshit like that, but this one, this one give her twenny dollars. For nothin. Jist to call the number and make an appointment. Didn’t want his dick sucked. Nothin. Said he liked her looks, is all. He was legit, she figgered. Drove one a those ’spensive cars.”
“A Rolls?” Al Mackey asked. Nigel St. Claire drove a blue Rolls. It might pass for black.
“No,” she said. “Not a Rolls. The other one. Same thing almost.”
“A Bentley?” Martin Welborn asked.
“That’s it. Guy drove a big black Bentley. The kind with mink floormats, all that. Said she thought he was a pimp at first, ’cept he was a white guy. She gimme the number in case I wanted to try to get in the movie too. I forgot the name a the movie company though.”
“Did Jill call him?” Al Mackey asked.
“I dunno,” the whore said. “Kin I go home now?”
“Just as soon as you tell us where we can find Jill,” Martin Welborn said calmly.
“Gud-damn!” the whore cried. “You keep on sayin yes I kin go, no I can’t go!”
“This is almost the last question,” Martin Welborn said. “What’s Jill’s last name, what’s she look like, and where can we find her? Just to talk. She’s not in trouble.”
“Well, in the first place, no whore got a last name. She’s white. About my age, maybe younger. Long stringy blond hair. Does a lot a dope. Kind of a pretty girl though. Sometimes gives massages up to The Red Valentine on the Strip. But I don’t want nobody to know I told you. Promise?”
“We promise,” said Martin Welborn.
And now the whore, realizing she was indeed going home, started getting her shit together. “Listen, about that money the dead guy gimme? I earned it, right? I mean, he drove a big car. I bet his old lady don’t need it no worse’n I do, right? Business is business.”
“You earned it all right,” Martin Welborn said.
Just then Buckmore Phipps and Gibson Hand came to the car, griping as usual.
“Look, Mackey, it’s gettin dark,” Buckmore Phipps whined, which caused the Cambodian kid to nudge his grandfather and tell him in their mother tongue that the huge cop was afraid of the dark! And here they worked every night at the motel among pimps and prostitutes and cutthroats and never gave nightfall a thought!
“We’re almost finished,” said Al Mackey. “A couple more minutes.”
“Couple more minutes,” Gibson Hand moaned. “I got a date down in The Glitter Dome with a lady.”
“A lady at The Glitter Dome,” Al Mackey muttered.
“This one could fuck three tricks to death like that one in there,” Gibson Hand bragged. “Calls herself Amazin Grace.”
Which caused Al Mackey’s head to swivel. The Great Chain!
Martin Welborn stepped out of the detective car to mollify the two street monsters. “Just keep the crowd contained for another minute,” he urged. “She’ll get scared if any pimps or whores start roaming around back here. We might be getting a lead on a very important murder case.”
“Murder case,” Buckmore Phipps snorted. Sure. He figured the two detectives were just trying to line up a hot head job with the foxy little chippie.
Gibson Hand didn’t believe the likely story either.
“What’s the big murder case, Sarge?” he challenged.
“The one where the movie big shot got murdered,” Martin Welborn said. “Nigel St. Claire.”
“Nigel St. Claire!” Both street monsters exclaimed simultaneously.
“That’s the name!” Buckmore Phipps said.
“I had it on the tip a my motherfuckin tongue all the time!” Gibson Hand said.
“What do you know about Nigel St. Claire?” Martin Welborn asked quickly.
“Nothin,” Gibson Hand said. “It’s jist the name on a note we found on a marine last week. Don’t mean nothin. It’s jist we both knew we heard the name somewheres and we couldn’t remember.”
“What about Nigel St. Claire?” Al Mackey asked, jumping out of the detective car.
“Nothin. It’s nothin,” Buckmore Phipps said. “Damn, it’s gettin dark. I got a hotter date than Gibson’s got. Come on, Mackey!”
“Who had his name?” Martin Welborn demanded, and suddenly the street monsters realized the dicks meant business.
“Jist some nudie gy-rene,” Gibson Hand said.
“Jist some fruit-hustler from Camp Pendleton,” Buckmore Phipps added. “He had a phone number with it.”
“You can go now,” Martin Welborn said to the now happy hooker. Then he turned to the street monsters and said, “I hate to disappoint your dates, but let’s go back to the office and hear all about your nude marine.”
“She balls a guy into the grave and gits to go home,” Gibson Hand moaned. “I ain’t had so much as a hand job in a week and I gotta work overtime!”
While the disgruntled street monsters were telling Al Mackey and Martin Welborn all they
knew about the marine, the Weasel and the Ferret were about to have their first serious altercation during a two-year partnership.
“We are three fucking hours overtime!” the Weasel yelled as the sun was falling into the Pacific Ocean, which they couldn’t have seen if they were fifty floors in the air instead of two, given the natural overcast and unnatural smog in the Los Angeles twilight.
“I wanna stay a little longer,” the Ferret said. “That slope’s gonna go in that restaurant. I can feel it.”
“You can feel it. Feel it! What the fuck are you now, a Sunset Strip swami?”
“You got a feeling, you go for it. I don’t know how to explain it. The karma’s right.”
“The karma! The karma!” The Weasel stomped around the rooftop in his motorcycle boots, kicking at any lazy pigeons too dumb to get out of his way. “Why don’t you go out to Malibu and join one a those cults that pray to fat little Indian kids in leisure suits and white shoes. Karma!”
“You can go. I’m staying,” the Ferret said.
“Should I take a cab, maybe?”
“Take the Toyota.”
“How you getting back to the station?”
“I’ll take a cab. I’ll hitchhike. I’ll walk.”
“First place, you ain’t got money for a cab. Second place, nobody would pick up anybody as barfy-looking as you. Third place, you ain’t walked since Judas flimflammed Jesus fuckin Christ!”
“Get off my roof,” the Ferret said. “I don’t need you.”
“I ain’t leaving you alone on this roof,” the Weasel said.
“You gonna carry me away?” the Ferret said, and now things were getting very tense.
The ball was in the Weasel’s court. There was a semi-pregnant pause, and he said, “I think I know how you feel. That guy sticking your own piece in your face. This ain’t Nam. This is your town. It’s one thing to be dinged in war. It’s one thing to buy it on the freeway. But it’s something different when a guy in your own home town is up there against your belly. What I mean is, it’s a rotten mean lowlife thing to be murdered. Is that how you feel? Something like that?”
The Ferret turned his back to the Weasel and looked down at the Thai restaurant. There was a little man going in. He wore a seersucker suit with black-and-white patents. He was not the assassin. The Ferret kept his back to the Weasel and said, “I dream about him. This was … personal. In Nam I never wanted to ding somebody personally. I’m gonna tell you something cause I know you won’t tell. When I went home that night I … cried. It’s the first time in my life I ever realized what a sorrowful thing it is to be murdered.”
The Weasel was silent for a moment and then he said, “I got six bucks hideout money stashed in my boot. I’m gonna buy some beer. Shit, I ain’t got nothing to do tonight but watch Dallas anyways.”
The Ferret nodded and the Weasel left the rooftop. Another man who was exactly the right size got out of a Ford and walked into the light from the Thai restaurant. He turned toward the street. The binoculars pierced the gloom, and the Ferret could see him perfectly. He was not the assassin.
12
Jackin Jill
Even the Ferret was willing to come down from the roof after dark. His eyes hurt and he was exhausted. He felt like going home and falling in bed without his TV dinner. One thing about his ex-wife, she could cook. Tomato soup and cheese sandwiches for tonight’s gourmet treat?
“I don’t have enough energy to fart,” he said on their drive back to the station.
“I’m certainly glad to hear that,” the Weasel said.
“I think I’ll sleep in my clothes like a freaking fireman,” the Ferret said. “I bet I couldn’t make a move if you set fire to my beard.”
Nothing could arouse him tonight, he thought. Except that, in just over an hour, he was going to be darting down Hollywood Boulevard breaking windows and sounding an alarm: The Mafia’s coming!
Buckmore Phipps and Gibson Hand had just about wrapped up their story of Gladstone Cooley when the Weasel and the Ferret got back to the squadroom, surprised to see the street monsters and the homicide team in the office at this hour.
“All you gotta do is phone Camp Pendleton tomorra,” Gibson Hand said. “Pfc. Cooley. Huh! That’s what’s wrong with this fuckin country. Marines in black skivvies. Shit, gimme a hunnerd-pound gang kid with a twenny-two rifle, we’ll shoot the fuck outa a whole battalion a marines like that one. One scrawny spic with his Mexican Mauser. And me!”
“Wasn’t no grunts like that when I was in the Corps,” Buckmore Phipps said. “He’s just part a today’s youth. It’s the Democrats. Any more Democrats runnin this country and the Libyan navy might decide to capture New York.”
“We’ll talk to our young marine tomorrow,” Martin Welborn said. “And I want to thank you guys for helping out.”
“Whatcha got, big homicide?” the Weasel asked, while the Ferret yawned and made the last log entries of the day.
“Jist a gunfighter died with his boots on,” Gibson Hand said.
“Keep in mind that name and description of the whore they call Jill,” Martin Welborn said to the street monsters. “The phone number is turning up too often.” Then he turned to the Weasel and Ferret and said, “I was going to tell you tomorrow, the phone number surfaced again, the number your suspect dropped the night you busted Bozwell.”
“That number of the movie studio?”
“That one,” Al Mackey said. “Lots of street folks seem to be carrying that number these days.”
As the street monsters were starting out the door Al Mackey said, as an afterthought, “You might keep an eye out for a high-roller in a black Bentley.”
Which made the Ferret’s droopy lids flicker a bit. “What black Bentley?” he asked the homicide detectives.
“Some guy in a Bentley gave the phone number to a little blond whore named Jill who gave it to another whore who screwed a guy to death in a motel tonight,” Al Mackey explained. “This is getting complicated. See, it’s the number Buckmore’s marine was carrying. It’s the same …”
“A black Bentley?” the Weasel said to the Ferret. “Tuna Can Tommy’s friend?”
“… number your gook was carrying,” Al Mackey continued.
“We know about a horseplayer drives a black Bentley,” the Ferret said, wide awake now. “Might be a coke dealer too, but that’s probably bullshit. Yet there ain’t that many black Bentleys screwing around the boulevard. They don’t like to drive them outa Beverly Hills without an armored escort.”
“Might be the same guy,” the Weasel said.
“Well, we’re goin home,” Buckmore Phipps announced. “You get a line on this gook, give us a chance to ride along. Gibson ain’t killed no one for two, three weeks now, since they kicked him out of surveillance.”
“We’ll let you know,” Al Mackey promised.
“I think that people that drive Bentleys are show-offs,” Buck-more Phipps observed to his partner as they exited.
“A course, Buckmore! That’s what life’s all about!” Gibson Hand said. “Lemme explain it all to ya …”
“You think the guy in the black Bentley might be connected with the slope that tried to waste me the other night?” the Ferret asked Martin Welborn.
“I don’t know,” Martin Welborn said. “All we know is everyone keeps popping up with that movie studio phone number. A whore named Jill who got it from the man in the Bentley. A marine male model from Camp Pendleton had the number and name of our victim. Your Vietnamese rob-and-cut man had the same number. And another guy who likes to skate was given a mysterious appointment where our victim died. Since we know about this many, there might be dozens more carrying that number around. Why that studio? What’s it got to do with our victim? I’d like to find Jill and the guy in the Bentley for starters.”
“Jill we can’t help you with,” said the Ferret. “But we might be able to find a guy named Lloyd, drives a black Bentley around the boulevard.”
“We just can’t stroll
into Flameout Farrell’s restaurant and ask the bookie to give us a client list,” the Weasel said.
The Ferret got up and started pacing back and forth in the squadroom. He looked at Al Mackey and Martin Welborn. He looked at the Weasel. Then he grinned darkly. “If this black Bentley leads to the dink, all I want is to be there when you take him down. You gotta promise.”
Al Mackey shrugged and said, “Gibson and Buckmore wanna be there, you two wanna be there. I’d say that gook has about as much chance of being taken alive as Custer’s bugler.”
“You promise?” the Ferret demanded. “Day or night?”
“We promise,” Martin Welborn said.
“Let’s go, Weasel!” the Ferret said. “I’m cooking!”
“Should we know where you’re going?” Al Mackey asked.
“Better you don’t,” the Ferret assured him. “When you come in tomorrow morning, we’re gonna have you a name to connect with a black Bentley. I only hope it’s the right Bentley.”
“Good night, fellas,” Al Mackey said. It was best not to ask too many questions of the Ferrets and Weasels of this world. There was less to deny when the headhunters put you on a polygraph.
“I don’t know about this,” the Weasel said as the Ferret careened down Hollywood Boulevard toward the little restaurant owned by the bookmaker Flameout Farrell.
“It’ll work, goddamnit,” the Ferret said. “Don’t be a pussy.”
“I don’t know.”
“Look, you saw how dumb Tuna Can Tommy was. You think a geek like that is gonna have a smart bookie? A smart bookie ain’t gonna work outa some greasy spoon on the boulevard in the first place, is he? The damn street’s crawling with heat!”
“Maybe we just oughtta go see Tuna Can Tommy. Maybe he could find out Lloyd’s last name and address for us. After all, we did make him a secret agent.”
“Puh-leeze,” the Ferret said. “I can see it now. Tommy in his Columbo raincoat and cowboy boots sneaking around a horse parlor? Bet he’d be naked under the coat. Show his stubby putz to every broad he passed on the way. Puh-leeze, Weasel. This’ll work, we do it my way.”
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