The telephone rang. Tom Spellacy held the receiver to his ear and took a sip of the cold coffee. It tasted worse than it looked.
“So your daughter’s name is Mary Lou,” he said after a moment. “And the last time you saw Mary Lou was the middle of January.”
“The sixteenth,” the woman said.
“January sixteenth.” He took a pencil and wrote the date down.
“1943.”
“1943,” he repeated. “You didn’t say that before.”
“I was going to bring it up.”
“Right,” he said. “She went out to get a package of cigarettes.”
“She always smoked Philip Morris. I got to think it was Philip Morris she went out to get. The girl you found, she smoked Philip Morris, she could be my daughter.”
“That’s the last time you saw her, January sixteenth, 1943.”
“Right with Eversharp.”
“And you never reported her missing before.”
“She moved around a lot. 1939 was the last time I saw her before that. She was on her way to Seattle. Going to work for Boeing, she said. She was punching a keyhole press before that, I think. In Tulsa. Maybe it was Oklahoma City. She lost a couple of fingers in the keyhole press. That’s what she told me, at least.”
“This one we got,” Tom Spellacy said, “she’s got all her fingers.”
“I figured that,” the woman on the telephone said. “Actually, she had a face like a horse, Mary Lou, you want to know the truth, so I had a feeling she couldn’t be this Mystery Beauty that they’re calling her in the newspapers.”
“Yeah.”
“Say, listen,” the woman said after a moment, “I get downtown a lot.”
“That’s nice,” Tom Spellacy said.
“I take the bus,” the woman said. “I get off at Figueroa and Olympic, the weather’s nice, and I walk. It’s raining, I take the trolley on Sixth Street. I could stop in and see you sometime. Your name is?”
“Diamond,” Tom Spellacy said. “Tommy Diamond.”
“I’ll call you sometime, Tommy,” the woman said. “Maybe we can have a drink. Woman of fifty-two, I don’t look bad, I say so myself. You know how to play carnival?”
“I don’t know that one, no.”
“I sit on your face and you try to guess my weight,” the woman said. “That’s a swell one, isn’t it?”
Tom Spellacy hung up and swore to himself. Mystery Beauty. Beauty only because Crotty had told reporters she had nice tits and a nice bush. Mystery because there was still no ID. There was nothing to go on, not even a dental profile because her face was so smashed up. Unless you counted the clothes. There were a lot of clothes, actually, if you believed all the breathers calling in. Four pair of silk hose, corner of Pico and Vermont. A pair of red sandals, size seven, 3400 block of Slauson. A black high-heel patent-leather pump, six triple A, back of a coon whorehouse on West Adams. A red halter. A green wool knit skirt. A leather handbag with a Kotex in it. A plaid purse with a package of Trojans inside. Listen, I found a brassiere. Size 34, C-cup. Black lace. She was the type wore black lace, I bet. Nice ones, Jeez, I bet she had nice ones. Pointy, you know what I mean. And a pair of panties I found, too. With a blond pussy hair in it. The hair between her legs is blond, these are her pants, I bet.
Tom Spellacy swiveled in his metal chair and put his feet up on the desk. His office was a cubicle separated from the Robbery-Homicide bullpen by a flimsy wooden partition topped by a section of frosted glass; the whole divider was less than six feet high. Through the open door he could watch the detectives in the long, green bullpen. The ringing of telephones caused a constant din. He had assigned Masaryk and Bass to check up on the breathers. Bass made the calls and Masaryk typed up the reports. Never mind that Masaryk was a moron, a forty-watt bulb in a hundred-watt socket. He typed fast, which was why Fuqua plucked him out of Admin and made him a detective in Robbery-Homicide. He was a real asset when you got behind on your reports. Always willing to help out. Ninety words a minute and never a mistake. Then there was Bass. Thirty-five years in the department and no one could make him turn in his papers. Where am I going to go, he said. I got no family. 1911, he joined up. 1911. When it was the fucking Pony Express, Crotty said. And always the lessons from Ben Bass. You want to break up a card game, Ben Bass said, you knock on the door and ask for a guy named Slim. There’s always a guy named Slim in a card game. Or else you piss under the doorway and they’ll think it’s a drunk and open up. Piss under the door and ask for a guy named Slim. Thirty-five years in the department and that was what Ben Bass had picked up.
Masaryk and Bass. The Lone Ranger and Tonto.
He picked up the telephone and dialed the Jury Commission. “Mrs. Morris,” he said.
“Mrs. Morris,” Corinne said when she answered the phone.
“I’ll be by tonight,” Tom Spellacy said.
“For a change,” Corinne said.
He lowered his voice and watched the door in case someone walked in. “We can play carnival.”
“I know how to play carnival.”
“You do?” The answer dampened his enthusiasm for her. She took bed for granted, knew more about it, in fact, than he could concoct in his wildest dreams.
“I sit on your—”
“Never mind,” he interrupted. “I’ve got a call on the other line. I’ll see you around seven.”
And she never felt guilty about it.
Masaryk stood in his open doorway. His hair was clipped to the skull and his face wore its perpetual look of surprise. Tell Masaryk that the sky was blue or the ocean deep and he would treat the information as he would have the Resurrection the first Easter.
“Fuqua called when you were on the phone. He wants to see you and Crotty.”
“Where’s Crotty?”
“Interrogation room 3.” Masaryk remained in the doorway. “Tom . . .”
Tom Spellacy waited.
“I think that’s a swell Mystery Clue. I mean, I couldn’t even tell my wife.” Masaryk put up his hand to shield his mouth and whispered, “And she’s Italian.”
Interrogation room 3 was down the corridor past the bunco bullpen. Tom Spellacy told Crotty that Fuqua wanted to see them and then looked through the two-way mirror at the man sitting at the table in the room. The man’s hands were shaking and he was weeping uncontrollably.
“Who?”
“Leland K. Standard, family man,” Crotty said. “Wife named Maureen and three little ones named Mary, Dorothy and Theresa. Little Theresa’s mental. One of them mongolian idiots there, I think they call them. His wife’s brother’s a Dominican priest. He has a cocker spaniel named Lester and he makes $4,500 a year as a draftsman for Pacific Telephone.”
“Alibi?”
“Tight as a popcorn fart,” Crotty said. “Drove the parish chorale up to Ventura County. The K of C singalong at Saint Boniface’s in Santa Paula there. Stayed the night in the parish hall. Got back in the morning.”
Tom Spellacy lost interest. “Let him go, Frank.”
“Fuck him,” Crotty said. “Let him sweat. He didn’t want to be here, he shouldn’t make a habit of flashing his weenie.” He waved a manila folder. “It’s in the file. ‘Shake hands with this, little girl,’ he says to one of them. ‘Liquid candy, little girl,’ he says to another. Dad and Mom there pressed charges, he’d be waving it around in Folsom, is where he’d be waving it. Know why they didn’t press charges? The Dominican brother-in-law is why. He goes to see Dad and Mom, promises them two box seats in heaven. He also tells them Leland K.’s lawyer’s going to put their little girl on the stand, let her tell the jury how big it looked, and wouldn’t that be a terrible thing. Big deal he’s married and got a family. It’s only a matter of time he does it again.”
Through the mirror Tom Spellacy watched Leland K. Standard slump forward on the table and cradle his head in his arms. It always surprised him how few suspects realized that the mirror was two-way and that they were always under surveillance even
when they were alone.
“One thing I should tell you is I checked out that chorale group there,” Crotty said. “Twelve girls and the guy driving the bus and we know who the guy driving the bus was. Our friend, the candy man. Fourteen and under the little girls are. He’s got something on his mind, I think, and it’s not the four-part harmony, I bet.”
“We got enough troubles, Frank, without a Dominican on our ass.”
“There’s nothing to worry about is what I’m trying to tell you,” Crotty said. “The wife and kids are out of town, visiting grandma and granddad at the farm, milking a cow, I think. What’s he going to do? Call the Dominican, swear to God his fly’s been zipped ever since he pissed in Little Nancy’s belly button? Don’t you believe it.”
2
Fuqua stood framed by the window in his office as the photographer moved a chair to get into better position. His suit jacket was buttoned, all three buttons, and stays held the collar points on his white shirt firmly in place. The fan had been shut off so as not to rustle the papers on his desk. The heat was stifling. Fuqua told the photographer to include the picture of his wife and two children in the shot. Tom Spellacy looked at the photograph. Both little boys wore braces. On the wall behind Fuqua’s desk there was a framed certificate attesting to his successful completion of the Police Management Course at the Roger J. Minihan School of Penology and another certificate noting that he had passed the marksman’s course on the department range. Tom Spellacy could feel the half-moons of sweat spreading down the side of his shirt. The photographer asked for one more picture. Fuqua put on his glasses and stared at the report in his hand. Crotty jumped when the flashbulb exploded.
“That’s it,” Fuqua said, and waved the photographer out of his office. He took off his jacket, loosened his tie and switched on the desk fan. He stood in front of the fan for a moment, shaking his damp shirt away from his armpits.
“I wanted you two in the picture,” Fuqua said as he took his seat, “but Benny Carmody at the Times said that the Express had already run a shot of the three of us and he wanted something different.”
Tom Spellacy nodded. “I like you better without the glasses, Fred. You get a glare with the glasses.”
“It might mess up the shot, the glare,” Crotty said.
“I can get him back, you want,” Tom Spellacy said.
Fuqua stared from one to the other, then slowly reknotted his tie, straightening it from the reflection in his desk glass.
“I been to see the commission is the reason I got you up here,” Fuqua said. The Select Commission had been appointed by the Board of Supervisors to run the department until it picked the new chief. Without a chief, every division in the department was in effect a private army run by its division commander. “I told them this one was a major crime.”
“The major-crime approach,” Tom Spellacy said.
“Right,” Fuqua said. He either did not notice or had decided to overlook the sarcasm in Tom Spellacy’s remark. “Right,” he repeated. “And I told them that for major crimes we ought to have a major-crime section.”
“That’s a hell of an idea, Fred,” Tom Spellacy said. It was well known in the department that Fuqua was bucking for chief, but he could not believe that the commission would be stupid enough to pick him.
“And I told them that the officers in the major-crime section should have no other duties . . .”
“Except major crimes,” Crotty said.
“Right,” Fuqua said. “That’s how to be on top of things, Crotty. Which is why I want you to head up the Major Crime Section.”
Tom Spellacy looked at Crotty and then at Fuqua. “You mean, the commission said all right?”
“As you said, it’s a hell of an idea,” Fuqua said. There was a smirk on his face. “I’ll be in operational control and Crotty will run things day to day. You’ll be his deputy.”
“What about Chief Davis?” Morty Davis was the deputy chief for internal affairs, and since the indictment and resignation of the former chief, had overseen the affairs of Robbery-Homicide.
“What about him?” Fuqua said. “You got no cause to love Chief Davis.”
Crotty kicked Tom Spellacy in the foot. A warning to keep his mouth shut. No, he had no cause to love Morty Davis. Morty Davis had wanted to fire him when he got caught with the eleven hundred in his pocket. The funny thing was, he liked Morty Davis. He was smart. And honest. The first was rare in the department, the second rarer still.
“Well, then, we’ll be working together,” Fuqua said.
This dumb son of a bitch thinks I’m going to owe him, Tom Spellacy thought. The Major Crime Section. A way to get Fuqua ink, that was all it was. A way to make him chief. Not with my help.
Fuqua reached into his desk drawer and pulled out three tie-pins. He gave one each to Crotty and Tom Spellacy and put the third on his own tie. The tiepins bore the legend H-187—the designation for homicide in the state penal code.
“Every man in the section will get one of these,” Fuqua said. “It’ll be like a second badge. We wear our tiepins, the press will know we’re not in Traffic when we show up at the scene of a major crime.”
Tom Spellacy looked at Crotty to make sure he was hearing correctly.
“It’s a grand idea, Fred,” Crotty said. He kicked Tom Spellacy in the foot a second time.
“And this being the first major crime the Major Crime Section has investigated,” Fuqua said, “I asked the commission to put up a reward.”
“How much?” Tom Spellacy said.
“$10,000.”
“They said yes?”
“Of course.”
Tom Spellacy whistled tonelessly. Crotty took a cigar from his pocket and rolled it around his mouth.
“You don’t think much of that idea,” Fuqua said.
Crotty held a match to the end of his cigar and drew on it until it was lit. He made no attempt to answer.
“Not much,” Tom Spellacy said finally.
“That’s all you’ve got to say?” Fuqua said.
“What Tom means,” Crotty said, exhaling a stream of cigar smoke, “is that we’ve got creeps crawling out from under every rock in town as it is. You put up ten grand . . .” He shrugged and fished a snapshot from his pocket. It was a picture of a young Mexican. He handed the snap across the desk to Fuqua. “I got this in the mail yesterday.”
Fuqua examined the photograph. “So?”
“There was a piece of paper with it. ‘THIS IS YOUR MURDERER,’ someone’s written on the paper. I give it to SID, see if they can lift a print. I sent the picture over to Hollenbeck, let them run it through their mug file. Yesterday afternoon, SID comes up with a print. Armadelia Luna.”
Tom Spellacy started to laugh.
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Fuqua said.
’The Flower of Figueroa Street,” Crotty said. “Fourteen arrests. Shoplifting. Lewd conduct. Public drunkenness . . .”
“I nailed her once on grand theft auto,” Tom Spellacy said.
“She’s got a boyfriend,” Crotty said. “Rafael Saldivar.” He pointed at the photograph in Fuqua’s hand. “Guess who?”
Fuqua handed him back the snapshot.
“He was fucking around,” Crotty said. “Which is why she sent us the picture. Now she’s sorry she did it . . .”
“I don’t see the point,” Fuqua said.
“The point is, Fred, there must’ve been eight cops working on this yesterday, maybe sixty man-hours in all.”
“You put up a $10,000 reward,” Tom Spellacy said, “we’re going to be chasing even more of these than we’re doing now.”
“I don’t think it’s a way to get the Major Crime Section off to a terrific start,” Crotty said. “We need to crack this one quick.” He drew on the cigar for a moment. “You have to think beyond the Major Crime Section, Fred.”
Four
“A tiepin,” Tom Spellacy said when they left Fuqua’s office. “A fucking tiepin.” He held the H-187 pin between h
is thumb and forefinger and dropped it deliberately into the ashtray by the elevator.
“He wants to be chief,” Crotty said. He extracted the tiepin from the sand in the ashtray, shook it off and put it into his pocket.
“He’s a horse’s ass,” Tom Spellacy said. “The worse kind of horse’s ass. The kind that likes to see his name in the papers.”
“So who says a horse’s ass can’t be chief,” Crotty said. “That’s why he fucked Morty Davis. That’s why he dreamed up this Major Crime Section. He cracks this one, he thinks he’s got a chance.”
“He cracks it,” Tom Spellacy said sharply. “He’s got trouble cracking a can of beer. They’re making morons chief this year, then he’s got a chance.”
“He never stuck his mitts in the poorbox that I heard,” Crotty said. “And he scores good on the chief tests they give, too, Fred does. ‘You come to a four-way stop sign, who’s got the right of way,’ Fred’s always got the answer.”
“Which he probably picked up at the Roger J. Minihan School of Penology,” Tom Spellacy said.
“And he speaks nice, too,” Crotty said. “Roomful of niggers over on Central Avenue, they come out thinking he’s a mulatto or something, the coon mumbo jumbo he gives them. It’s Fred, we don’t screw it up for him, is what I think.”
“Then we ought to stop looking for the son of a bitch took this girl out then,” Tom Spellacy said. “Better him on the bricks than Fuqua chief is the way I look at it.”
Crotty checked his watch. “Woody said he’d have the autopsy report before lunch.”
“Then we better go look at it before that asshole sees it and starts reading it over KFIM.”
The County Medical Examiner’s Office was in the basement of the Hall of Justice. In the spring heat the corridors were thick with the smell of formaldehyde. They walked through a cavernous autopsy room painted a weak green and then past the refrigerated compartments where the day’s catch of corpses was kept. Wood-row Wilson Wong’s private office was in the far corner of the basement. His walls were covered with enlarged photographs of battered babies and bashed-in skulls and mutilated breasts and patterns of stab wounds. The pictures drove Fuqua’s stupidity from Tom Spel-lacy’s mind.
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