“Jury’s out on that front, Orson. I found you on my bed, covered in blood. But not your own blood.” Hector narrowed his eyes. He stooped down and grabbed Orson’s arm and turned it in the light. Needle-tracks. “They shot you up with something. Dammit.”
Orson shook his head. “They? Who is they?”
“The surrealists.”
“What?”
“You’ve been missing, all day. Betty is still missing. I’d say we should file a report with the police about that, except I think it might put you in more danger to do that.”
“What in God’s name are you talking about?”
Hector nodded at the soap dish. “Use that, Orson. Wash off, get all the blood off you. Don’t know what’s coming next, but we can’t have the cops or their like suddenly turning up here and finding you covered in blood, right?”
“Well, no. But, whose blood is this, Hector?”
“I’d rather not think about that now.”
Orson said, “What about Rita? I don’t remember anything except being here with Rita.”
“You left here,” Hector said. “I found Rita on my couch. She’s safe with a friend of mine. She’s on her way here, now. When she gets here, I think you two should find a good hotel with some top-flight security. Lock yourselves away until the next shoe drops.”
“Next shoe?”
“That’s right.” Hector nodded. “I’m afraid it might be a big one.”
“I can’t just wait,” Orson said. “Jesus, I’m covered in blood. What have these bastards done?”
Hector lit a cigarette. He handed it to Orson and then lit one for himself. “I don’t think we have long to wait to find that out. Do you remember anything? Anything at all?”
“No,” Orson said, scowling. “Images...bodies and severed torsos. Blood. But it could be the set I’m remembering. I told you, Hector, dreams...my waking hours...it’s all a blur this past week.”
“Well unblur it...or construct an airtight narrative that locks in every movement you’ve made for the past 48 hours,” Hector said. “If you can’t do that yourself, then allow me.”
***
Orson was dressed in a pair of Hector’s pants and a shirt. “Good thing we’re nearly the same size,” Orson said. Hector thought, Yeah, so long as you keep popping those pills.
The director was sitting on the couch with Rita, who was rubbing his back. Hector said, “You’re going to have lie for Orson, M. Are you prepared to do that?”
Rita nodded. “Of course. What’s my lie?”
“You two’ve been together all day and all night. Somewhere. Something like that. Somewhere where there could be no witnesses.”
“But people saw me at the commissary looking for Orson and this girl, Betty,” Rita said. “The studio guard waved you and me through the gate earlier this afternoon.”
Hector dismissed that. “The guard is old and wears glasses...he sees stars every day. He can be discredited. The studio hash-slingers are wage slaves. Their testimony won’t hold water either — not up against some shark lawyer.”
Rita nodded. Then she said, “And John and his wife?”
“John is like Sweden,” Hector said, “John is gloriously neutral. He’s playing both ends against the middle and covering his own ass. He’s no danger to us.”
Hector’s phone rang. Hector scooped it up. “Lassiter.”
A long pause. This voice: alto...female — it cut through Hector. “You need to get your friend out of there, now. The police are on their way.”
Hector could hardly get the word out. He rasped, “Rachel?”
“Get your friend out of there now. And you go somewhere safe, too. Take anything you value, Hector, but run, please. Now!”
Frantic, Hector said, “In two hours I’m going to be at the Pacific Dining Car. Call me there, won’t you?”
The line went dead.
Hector swallowed hard and said to Rita, “M, call a cab, now. You and Orson need to get out of here, pronto. I’ve got to pack and then I need to split, too.”
Orson looked shaken. “That was someone calling with a threat?”
“More like a warning.”
***
Hector was on his third margarita when the waiter carried the phone over and deposited it in front of him. He took a deep breath and said, “Rachel?”
A long pause, then, “Murder. That’s the frame they’ve set for your friend. You’ll start to see it unfold tomorrow.”
Hector winced. “Who’s dead? The girl, Betty?”
“Sure. Yes, she’s dead. They tortured and killed her...all of them. They play their game with real people now. With real women.”
Hector said, “Game? What game?”
“Exquisite Corpse. They collaborate on women they find at bus stations...on prostitutes and orphans. Betty’s not the first...just one of the first that they’ll put on ‘display.’ I’m afraid there might be more. They like it.”
Hector’s jaw tightened. “And you helped?”
“No, I don’t...I mean now...” Another long pause. “It doesn’t matter anymore. But I saw it — saw what they did to Betty...not while they were doing it, but what was left. I’m trying to get loose from it all, I swear to you, but it’s too late as far as Elizabeth — or Betty — is concerned. You’ll hear in the morning. Everyone will hear. Some will even see.”
Hector said, “Orson...they drugged him...you say they mean to frame him.”
“Or come close to that. They’re really just trying to neutralize you. Tie your hands. You terrify them, Hector. You’re like a ‘rogue elephant’ they say. They think you’re actually capable of worse than they are. If only...”
“Did Orson really do anything to Betty, Rachel? Was Orson made to do anything to her?”
“No. But her blood...”
“I saw.”
“I’m going to have to go soon,” she said. “They’re watching...we’re all being forced to stay close...to watch one another.”
“I need to talk to you again, Rachel. I need to know things. I need to know what’s happening with you now. I need — I want to see you.”
“It doesn’t matter, Hector. And it’s too late. The things I did years ago...even sick as I was... Just please try to forget it all. I am still dead. That’s how you should think of me. In many ways it’s true, you know.”
Hector said, “You were ‘Rhonda Horton’ — Orson’s painting assistant, weren’t you? Those initials — deliberate on your part?”
“More like uninspired on my part,” Rachel said. “I’m no writer, like you. Not clever about inventing names.”
“I don’t know, ‘Alva Taurino’ is pretty clever,” Hector said. “Very unusual and distinctive. You took ‘Alva’ from Salvador Dali’s name, is that it?”
“No, it’s Spanish for ‘white.’ And Taurino—”
“Is a derivation of toro...for bull,” Hector said. “The White Bull. Just like the myth Mrs. Blair told us about back in Key West. God, how’d I miss it?”
“It was unconscious on my part...I only figured out what I’d done later.”
“How...surreal. I need to know more...I need to know about Key West and Mexico...about Spain and why—”
“They’re coming Hector, coming across the parking lot to the phone booth where I am now. They’ll be able to hear me in just a moment. I have to go.”
“Do they know who you really are, Rachel? What you’ve...done?”
“No. They don’t know any of that. The old crimes they’ve heard of...but they don’t know I’m responsible for them. They don’t know I was their inspiration for their own set of murders.”
“Call me here tomorrow, this time, Rachel. I’ll be waiting.”
“Please don’t bother, darling. There won’t be a chance for that, Hector. Not for me, and come morning, you’ll be preoccupied. I’m so sorry, for everything. This is likely the last time we’ll ever speak. Please take care to protect yourself.”
Another dead line. Hector went in
search of a hotel in which to spend the night, knowing he would never be able to sleep.
“(Art) is about as outrageous and murderous an act a person can do short of really doing one physically.”— Stephen Wright
JANE DOE: NUMBER ONE
37
The news reports were breathless — long on innuendo, hysteria and hyperbole, but short on useful facts.
Between the papers and radio, Hector had distilled it down to a few agreed upon, chilling particulars. The nude, bisected body of a young, dark-haired woman had been found in an empty, weedy lot on Norton Avenue, close to 39th Street, her body just a few inches off the sidewalk.
A mother walking her young child had found the body, at first mistaking it for a mannequin.
That image resonated for Hector.
And although she was unidentified — temporarily dubbed “Jane Doe, number one,” Los Angeles’ first unidentified homicide victim for 1947 — Hector was pretty sure he knew who she was.
Hector phoned his LAPD detective friend Russ Evans.
Russ said, “Gotta keep it short, Hec. Things are shaking — we’re all being mobilized over this murder this morning.”
“Got an I.D. on the victim, Russ?”
“Nah, but the papers are working with us,” Russ said, “and hand in glove. We’ve got her fingerprints. The Examiner has agreed to let us use their wire photo gizmo to send the prints to Washington for identification. It’s all pretty technical, and nobody knows if this will even work, but if it does, we could have her name by lunch tomorrow.”
“Wow, that’s great news,” Hector said.
It was also potentially terrible news for Orson.
“Tell me a little about this — about the state of her body,” Hector said.
Russ said, “Haven’t the time, and you and a thousand others want info on this, Hec.”
“It’s not like that,” Hector said. “I’m not hoping to ‘use’ this. I told you the other day that something big might be up.”
“And this is it? Hector, if you had foreknowledge of this murder....”
“Not this, specifically Russ,” he said. “But something maybe like it, from before. Just tell me about the state of the body...how it was arranged...what it looked like, generally.”
“Hector...”
“Two minutes’ description, Russ, that’s all I ask.”
The detective sighed. “I hope you haven’t eaten.”
The mere description of Betty’s body made Hector nauseous — left him shaking. It sounded more terrible than anything he’d seen in the Keys or in the photos of the murder victims in Spain in 1937.
Betty — for Hector was sure that’s who the victim was — had been cut in half at the waist.
That had apparently been done by someone with at least a modicum of surgical ability. That was the other thing — the girl’s body was a strange mix of seemingly surgically executed mutilations and forms of torture counterpoised with raw, unfettered brutality.
Betty had endured a mastectomy and a hysterectomy. Deep hollows had been cut into her thigh and upper torso — mutilations echoing the “compartments” Salvador Dali etched into the bodies of the dissected women in much of his art.
In addition to being cut in half, Betty’s mouth had also been sliced ear to ear — cut into a “terrible smile.”
“It’s almost like there might have been more than one bastard going at her,” Russ said. “That’s a terrible thought, but it’s the one I have. Almost like a surgeon and a boxer went at her in tandem.”
“Maybe there was more than one killer,” Hector said. He stopped short of saying what he truly thought — that there might be as many as a dozen who’d directly participated in Betty’s torture and murder. Hector shook his head — to think that he had scoffed at Agatha Christie and her “solution” for a killing in one of her mysteries. Dame Agatha had had nearly every ticket-holder on her damned train plunge a knife into the corpse. Hector had howled when he read it.
Hector said, “So what killed her exactly? She choke on her own blood from the mouth wound, or....?”
“Blunt force trauma to the head and face killed her, they think,” Russ said. “Probably, she died of a brain hemorrhage. God, I hope so, anyway. I’d hate to think she was alive when he started cutting her in half.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Hector said.
“What ‘big thing’ do you have, Hec? Does it touch on this?”
“No, I’m so sorry to have wasted your time, Russ. You’re right, this is beyond anything. Sorry again.”
“No using anything I told you, right, Hec? I don’t want to go to some bookstore or open up Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and find some short story...”
“Never,” Hector said. “I’m too dark and real for that rag. Now you go and nail the son of a bitch who did that to that poor girl.”
***
Hector’s next call was to Aggie Underwood, the reporter for the Herald Express.
Aggie said, “Listen you good-looking son of a bitch, I can’t talk now, I’m on deadline with this murder.”
“Right,” Hector said. “File your story, then meet me at the Pacific Dining Car. My treat.”
“When?”
“Whenever you get here,” Hector said. “I’m holding down the bar. Hiding out, sort of. But I may know something you can use.”
“See you in two hours. Try and stay sober, Hec. So we can get drunk together, I mean. I really need it.”
“Bring some of your crime scene photos, would you?”
“You a ghoul?”
“I call with reason. And I’ve heard descriptions from the cops. I need a first-hand look.”
“Don’t order food then — stick with a liquid diet,” Aggie said. “I know that’s my plan.”
She hung up without saying goodbye. Hector’s next call was placed to Agent Tilly.
Edmond said, “You weren’t kidding about ’em being in full flight, Lassiter. A few have already escaped the net. But we’ve nailed a number of the smaller fish. We’ll at least get ’em deposed and maybe even get a few of them before the committee.”
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer crew. You pick up Mercedes Marshall and family?”
“Still among the missing, but we closed down the borders on them — except to the south. I mean, if they want to go to Mexico, we can’t really seal that border. And from there they can go anywhere.”
“What about the painters?”
“They’ve made some runs of their own, Hector. Most are trying to get to Paris. One or two are en-route suddenly to Spain. You name it. John Huston’s name came up as an art collector, but he’s suddenly in Mexico, too. Scouting locations for some film he’s doing with Bogart. Or that’s the story, anyway — can’t use him for information on these bastards.”
Hector said, “You hear about a murder in Los Angeles, Agent?”
“It’s the news everywhere...’cause it’s so grisly, I guess.”
“Those people you’re trying to serve to get their testimony? Well, they’re tied into this killing,” Hector said. “Again, this is off-the-record, and you didn’t hear it from me. But there’s a connection. You should call an LAPD detective named Russ Edwards. You two should kibitz.”
“Detective Edwards is a friend of yours, Hector?”
“Overstating it more than a little, but he’s okay. And he shouldn’t know I effected the introduction. But trust me, this thing in Los Angeles is tied to those killings I told you about in Key West — in Mexico and Spain.”
“What the hell are you up to, Hector? How do you know all this stuff?”
“Just comes of traveling in the wrong circles, I reckon.”
“Had a counter-charge I’ve got to follow-up on,” Edmond said.
“Oh? A HUAC kind of thing?”
“Yeah, on Orson Welles, if you can believe that.”
“Commie stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“I know him pretty well,” Hector said. “Orson isn’t. Oh
, he’s left as can be, but Orson’s a limousine liberal. Not worth your effort. You’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
“We’ll see. Save me some trouble, Hector?”
“Sure, if I can. What?”
“Shoot me your buddy’s number at the LAPD.”
***
A small, redheaded woman zeroed in on Hector as he sat at the bar. He saw her coming in the mirror — Agnes Underwood.
“Buy me that drink, Hector.”
He waved at the bartender. Hector said, “Whatever the lady wants.”
Aggie handed Hector a manila envelope. “Turn this so I don’t have to see those photos again. I had to stand up on the car roof to really get much of a look at that kid and I wish I hadn’t. Then, seeing the photos up close, at the paper...I don’t know how I’ll sleep. I didn’t know people could do such things to one another.”
A harrowing admission to come from a veteran Los Angeles crime reporter.
Hector twisted around in his seat and opened the file. He was aware of Aggie watching him closely...waiting to see how it would hit him. Hector had braced himself for what he would see. He had already turned his mind loose to imagine it as bad as it could be. Hector almost scared himself at how close he’d come in his mind’s eye to the actual images.
Aggie slugged back her drink and said, “You’re a tough guy, okay. Frankly, I’d have forgiven you for throwing up all over the bar.”
Hector said, “Her arms were bent above her head, just like they appear in this photograph?”
“Sure, nobody’s touched her. She’s like the murderer left her. She was washed clean. Some think that may mean it was a cop or cops — knowing enough to destroy evidence.”
“What’s the theory on the arms above her head, Ag?”
“That she died that way. With her arms tied over her head. Also, her lower torso is tilted upward a bit — like maybe she died in a seated position...maybe in a bathtub.”
“How long do they estimate she was dead when she was found?”
“At least ten hours.”
“So that puts her time of death sometime in the afternoon of January fourteen,” Hector said.
Toros & Torsos (The Hector Lassiter Series) Page 25