“You ever get the idea that Woody likes this job a little too much?” he said, examining the photographs.
“Twelve thousand stiffs a year,” Crotty said. “Lose your sense of humor here and the coroner’s job could get to be a pain in the ass.”
“They say he likes to go shopping at the May Company weekends,” Tom Spellacy said. “He never buys anything. Just checks out lamps and tennis rackets and chairs and toys, stuff like that. He wants to find out what kind of marks they’d make, somebody gets the bright idea to kill you with one of them.”
“What else am I supposed to do?” Woodrow Wilson Wong said as he hurried into the room. He was smoking a large black cigar and the ashes had splattered over his white medical coat. “The supervisors don’t give me any money. This is a nickel-and-dime operation. ‘You teach those stiffs how to vote, we’ll give you more money.’ That’s how the supervisors look at it.”
Woody’s being a Chink wasn’t much of a help either, Tom Spellacy thought. That was another theory of the board of supervisors: only a Chinaman would want a job like this. The supervisors saw the coroner’s office as a skid row for doctors and out-of-work embalmers. A place for medical students to practice and pick up extra money. Twenty bucks an autopsy and bring your own microscope and knife sharpener. All appendages that drop off the deceased belong to the county. That was how Woody’s predecessor lost his job. He had used a skull as a paperweight, and the paperweight turned out to have a brother and the brother raised a stink. Give the job to Charlie Chan, the supervisors said. No more paperweights, the supervisors also said.
Woodrow Wong handed them each a copy of the autopsy report. A complete set of photographs was attached to both files. There was an autopsy slab in the center of Woody’s office that he used as a conference table. The ME’s idea of a joke, Tom Spellacy thought. He and Crotty sat on either side of the table and read. Woodrow Wong turned the pages along with them.
Name: unknown. Address: unknown. Female, adult, Caucasian, the autopsy report read, 2G-to-30 years old, 110 lbs., 64 inches (approx.). Blood type: O. Appendectomy scar, old fracture of right forearm. Wax fillings in third and fourth molars, rest of teeth smashed and broken.
“What kind of dentist puts in wax fillings?” Tom Spellacy said.
“It’s something you do when you can’t afford a dentist,” Woodrow Wong said. “You melt down some wax and pack it in where it hurts.”
Tom Spellacy looked across the autopsy table at Crotty. “The candle up her cunt. It must’ve been for her teeth.”
“And whoever did it found another use for it,” Crotty said.
Wood splinters in facial lacerations, indicating victim probably beaten with a blunt wooden instrument, possibly a two-by-four. Cause of death: knife wounds, hemorrhage and shock. Face slashed from ear to ear. Severing clean, one inch above the navel, probably accomplished with sharp surgical instrument or a butcher’s knife. Blade sharp on both sides. Depth of wounds in excess of five inches. Width of wounds between 1-and-11/2 inches. Thickness of wounds l/8-to-l/4 inch. Rope or wire wounds on wrists and ankles. Phosphorescent dye right thumbnail.
“She was selling her blood,” Tom Spellacy said. “That’s what the dye’s for. The blood banks put a spot on the thumbnail so you don’t come back too soon.”
“The drunks would come in five times a week if you let them,” Woodrow Wong said. “The law says eight weeks between visits.”
“They rub it off with battery acid, the drunks,” Tom Spellacy said. “It buys a lot of Sterno, a pint of blood.”
Crotty scratched a match along the autopsy table and held it to his cigar. “It’s a good bet she was broke,” he said. “She can’t afford a dentist and she’s selling her blood. She’s also got a rose on her pussy, so let’s assume she was peddling that, too.”
“We should get Vice on it,” Tom Spellacy said. “See if any of the girls knew her. Or if they know anyone likes to cut.”
They’d check Brenda, he thought suddenly. Brenda Samuels. She was working out of a hotel off Alvarado now. An escort service. Brenda’s Personal Services, Ltd. Making ends meet. Yes, they’d check Brenda. She always had her ear to the ground. Anything that was happening with the girls, Brenda would know about it. Fine. As long as I don’t have to see her. For a moment he wondered what Corinne would say if she knew he was the bagman Brenda had paid off.
The smell of formaldehyde filled his nostrils and he gagged.
“Howard Terkel says we should look for a ‘well of loneliness type,’” Crotty said. “A female pervert.” He puffed on his cigar to keep it lit. “Jerry Troy had one of them once when he was in the department. Remember Jerry?”
“Jerry Bang Bang,” Tom Spellacy said. “He was a shooter.”
“Fucking card is what he was,” Crotty said. “Competitive fucker on a case, though. Always wanted the collar by himself.” He spat a piece of cigar wrapping from his mouth. “Finish first and third in a five-man jackoff contest, you give him the chance.”
A little like Des, Tom Spellacy thought. “I know the type.”
“Anyway, he collars this les, Jerry,” Crotty said. “She sliced up her girl friend there, then tried to flush her down the toilet.
There she is telling Jerry how she couldn’t fit the head down the crapper and she begins to cry. Really bawl. There, there,’ Jerry says. With that brogue you could cut. There, there, it’s the sort of thing that could happen to any one of us.’ “ Crotty exploded into laughter. “Isn’t that a grand story, though? God, I love a good story, Tom. I roar every time I remember that one.”
“He shot somebody at the ball game, didn’t he?” Tom Spellacy said.
“It was a joke was all it was,” Crotty said. “He had the DTs, Jerry. He got drunk one night, the Stars were playing Seattle at Gilmore, and he tried to shoot that big Polack pitched for Seattle, used to pitch for the White Sox, Hriniak, I think his name was. He loved the Stars, Jerry, and they weren’t doing anything against this guy, and Jerry says, Til fix that Polack fuck,’ and takes out his Special. Except he was so pissed he couldn’t hold it and it dropped and went off. It was Nuns’ Night and he shot a Sister of Mercy in the toe. Fucking shame they let him go, Jerry.”
No semen in vagina or mouth. Large number of bristles around all wounds. Bristles probably from a coconut-fiber brush used to clean wounds. Undigested food in stomach.
“Egg rolls,” Woodrow Wong said.
“Go fuck somebody sideways,” Crotty said.
“I analyzed the food,” Woodrow Wong said. “Egg rolls.”
“Maybe Woody’s got something, Frank.” Tom Spellacy straightened the pages of the autopsy report and placed it in the folder on top of the photographs of the victim’s bifurcated body. “The undigested food means she ate not long before she was killed. But she’s got burns on her wrists and ankles. Rope burns or wire burns.”
“She was tied up,” Crotty said. He worked each sentence over carefully. “She was a captive. She had to eat.” He tapped his fingers on the autopsy table. “She had to be fed. Nobody cooks Chinese except a Chink and let’s say for the moment it wasn’t a Chink, the bad person.” He looked back and forth between Tom Spellacy and Woodrow Wong. “Takeout food. The son of a bitch was stuffing her with takeout egg rolls.”
Woodrow Wilson Wong laughed.
“I guess we don’t eat Chinese today,” Tom Spellacy said.
2
The corridor outside Robbery-Homicide was crowded with parents and pederasts, lesbians and whores, cab drivers and bus drivers, bartenders and waitresses, pimps and policemen and children with stray articles of clothing, all claiming some knowledge of the unidentified woman from the corner of 39th and Norton. Crotty ignored the din.
“We check out every Chink restaurant between Oxnard and San Diego.”
“The cutlery shops,” Tom Spellacy said. “Surgical-equipment houses. Butcher suppliers.”
“Barber wholesalers,” Crotty said. “He could’ve used a razor.”
“B
lood banks.”
“Religious-supply houses. I guess that’s where you get votive candles.”
“You think it would make it any easier, Frank, there was a $10,000 reward?”
Crotty laughed. “Lunch later.”
In his office in-box, Tom Spellacy found a report from SID on the eyeglasses found under the victim’s body. Negative. There was nothing yet on sex offenders and nothing from the body shops, no cars reported with suspicious bloodstains. He told Bass to check the knife outlets and Masaryk the Chinese restaurants.
“We’re looking for egg rolls,” Masaryk said.
“Takeout egg rolls.”
“Takeout egg rolls,” Masaryk repeated. “On the night of the incident.”
“Incident?”
“Until we have a conviction, Tom, we have to call it an incident.”
“You go to night school, Masaryk?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The Roger J. Minihan School?”
“Yes, sir. It was highly recommended by Captain Fuqua.”
“I thought so.”
“How many egg rolls are we looking for, Lieutenant?”
Tom Spellacy closed the door of his cubicle and spread the photographs of the victim over his desk. The dark patch between her legs made him think of Corinne. He shook the thought away. In one series of pictures, Woody had tried to piece the body back together again. Looking at her that way, it was hard to think of her as the woman the newspapers called Mystery Beauty. He tried not to think of all the parents, brothers and sisters of the missing Mystery Beauties he had seen since the morning of the murder. Mary Jane sang in the choir. Lucy was the class valedictorian. Edna never looked at another man in her life. They all belong in the convent is what I think, Crotty had said.
The telephone rang. The woman said her name was Mabel Leigh Horton. Mabel. Leigh. Leigh like in Vivien. L-e-i-g-h. From Guin, Alabama, Mabel Leigh Horton said. That’s G-u-i-n, capital A-l-a-b-a-m-a. Now residing in Culver City.
“What can I do for you, Mabel?” Tom Spellacy said.
“Mabel Leigh” Mabel Leigh Horton said.
“Sorry.”
“First you hard-boil an egg,” she said.
“Hard-boil an egg,” he said.
“Then you put it in the young lady’s right hand.”
“Then I put it in the right hand,” he said. “Got it.”
“Then you close the casket,” Mabel Leigh Horton said.
“Close the casket,” Tom Spellacy said. “Right.” He waited. “Then what?”
“Why in seven days the murderer will confess,” Mabel Leigh Horton said. “It’s something we do in Guin.”
“Right.”
“What do you think of that?”
“I think you and my wife would get along good,” Tom Spellacy said.
He checked the teletype in the bullpen, and when he got back to his cubicle, Howard Terkel was standing over his desk, rifling through the photographs of the victim.
“You think there’s a werewolf angle on this one, Tom?”
Tom Spellacy gathered the pictures in a pile, put them in an envelope and locked them in a desk drawer.
“It’s been a while since they had a werewolf, the zoo tells me, Howard.”
“You think it was a fiend, then.”
“Eliminate the Cardinal, a fiend’s a good bet.”
“You’ve definitely eliminated the Cardinal as a suspect, then?”
“It was only a figure of speech, Howard.”
“Your brother carries a lot of weight with His Eminence, they tell me,” Howard Terkel said. “You might mention to him it would be a wonderful story if His Eminence was to say the funeral mass. Let me know what he says, your brother, and I can arrange it so His Eminence gets an exclusive on what it all means, the death of this cunt.”
“We don’t have an ID yet, Howard,” Tom Spellacy said. “So we don’t even know she’s a Catholic cunt or not.”
“We can work that out later,” Howard Terkel said.
Tom Spellacy stood up. “It’ll be a factor, Howard. A definite factor.”
Crotty’s office was on the other side of the bullpen. As watch commander, his wall partition ran all the way to the ceiling. There was a middle-aged couple sitting in the office. They looked worn and tear-stained. The man had not shaved and there was a hole in the woman’s hair net. The man was holding a dog-eared graduation photograph of a young girl in a white cap and gown.
“Mr. and Mrs. Constantine,” Crotty said.
“Konstanty,” the man said.
“Let’s eat Mexican,” Crotty said.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Tom Spellacy said.
“Casa del Sol,” Crotty said.
The father handed the photograph to Tom Spellacy. “She wore braces until she was seventeen.”
“She loved Bing Crosby,” the mother said.
“And a retainer after that,” the father said.
“Gee, I wish the press would stop predicting trouble between Bing and Dixie,” the mother said.
“Only at night, the retainer, never on dates,” the father said. “Ten o’clock she had to be home on date nights, and then she’d pop the retainer in.”
“We want Bing and Dixie to stay together,” the mother said. She started to cry. “That’s what my baby wanted, too.”
“Your baby ever been tattooed?” Crotty said.
3
“Dos cervezas” Crotty said to the waiter. “The oysters good?”
“Si, senor.”
“I had a dozen in here the other night and only one of them worked.”
The restaurant was crowded. Once La Casa del Sol had been a Mexican bar with live mariachi music. The narcotics squad had kept it under close surveillance but no arrests were ever made. Now it was populated by policemen and politicians and assistant water commissioners and deputy tax inspectors all kneeing their secretaries under the tables. Crotty and Tom Spellacy sat against the wall under a bullfight poster. Crotty tucked a napkin under his chin and drank half a glass of Carta Blanca.
“This used to be a swell place when I was in Narcotics,” he said. “I was making a buy in here one time from this pretty little chiquita, and she says to me, ‘Why don’t we take a fuck before we do it?’ And I says to her, I didn’t want to lose the collar and I had to think fast, I says, ‘I’d love to, querida, but I got a bad dose of the clap.’ And she says to me, ‘That’s okay, muchacho, so do I.’ “ He laughed until he began to choke and people at the adjoining tables turned to stare. “Isn’t that a bastard of a story, Tom?”
Crotty’s laughter was interrupted by a hand that gripped his shoulder like a vise.
“Monsignor McGrath,” Crotty said.
“I missed you at the seven last Sunday, Frank.”
“I went to the ten at Immaculate, Monsignor.”
“Is that so, Frank?”
“A big investigation, Monsignor. It went late.”
“And you slept in?”
“I’ll be at the seven next Sunday, Monsignor.”
“That’s grand, Frank. I heard you speaking Mexican. You speak it, do you?”
“I do, Monsignor.”
“Then I wonder if you’d ask the waiter to send over some buns. I don’t speak the lingo and I’m over there with Supervisor McDonough and we’d like a few buns.”
“Muchacho, un poco de pan para el padre.”
Monsignor McGrath clapped Crotty on the shoulder and went back to his table with Sonny McDonough.
“Of all the fucking nerve,” Crotty said.
“You should’ve told him you were investigating Father Dicky Donohue’s drunk-driving charge, is the reason you missed mass,” Tom Spellacy said.
“I bet he’s hitting up Sonny there for a new car,” Crotty said. “You should’ve seen him last year, his fiftieth birthday party in the parish hall. A trip to Hawaii he got. A set of matched luggage. A year’s free haircuts. A bagful of golf sticks. A season’s pass to Santa Anita. And he was mad. He h
ad his heart set on an Olds-mobile. A Hydra-matic. I thought he was going to excommunicate Jack Walker, the car dealer.”
Sonny McDonough broke a piece of bread. He was wearing a dark suit and a black tie with a pearl stickpin.
“You know Sonny’s on the Select Commission picking the new chief?” Crotty said.
Tom Spellacy nodded. The selection of the new chief was a subject he did not wish to consider. The last chief had gone before the grand jury and shortly after that he was indicted and then John Dempsey, the chief of detectives and Fuqua’s predecessor, had blown out his brains and the whole period brought back memories of Wilshire Vice.
“Who do you think it’s going to be, it’s not Fuqua?” Crotty said.
String Frank along. He wondered sometimes why he had never been indicted. He could make an educated guess that Des being his brother had something to do with it. The Cardinal carried a lot of weight downtown.
“Kenny Meyer, I suppose,” Tom Spellacy said. The deputy chief for administration. Gray and colorless.
“You seen him lately?” Crotty said. “He looks two hundred, Kenny, and he can’t be more than forty-nine. It’s the wife. Two tits she’s lost already, and a kidney’s coming out next week. The liver’s not too sharp either, is what I hear. It ages a guy, looking for spare parts like that. They don’t have Father Time in mind, I think, the commissioners.”
“Harvey Zim, then,” Tom Spellacy said. He really didn’t care which of the front runners or dark horses replaced the former chief.
“J-E-W,” Crotty said. “Nothing wrong with being a Jew, you like wearing a beanie, but hot fudge sundaes in the gas chamber, that’s a better bet than putting your money on a Hebe.”
So much for Harvey Zim, chief inspector, uniform police. Anyway, he thought, the last chief had beaten the rap. The indictment didn’t stick.
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