by Jeff Rice
She turned out to be a small, truculent woman who was all business. “I’ll give you one minute. Not a second longer. And I’ll tell you what I told the deputies. Nothing more. He was tall–a couple of inches shorter than your friend here. He was pale, looked like he never saw sunlight. He had dark hair receding at the temples. And he had bad breath. Absolutely foul.”
Her description to the deputies, verbatim.
Then she added, “His breath was really something! I mean it was worse than anything I’ve encountered in… well, never mind how many years of nursing. Worse and different. Not like sick bodies. Not like gangrene. Not like death. It carried halfway down the corridor. Nauseating, and I’ve got a pretty strong stomach; you need one in this work.” She stood there, hands on her hips, a challenging look in her eye. “Anything else?”
“No, that about does it. Thanks very much.”
Outside I lit up a cheap, fat, blunt cigar and looked west toward the lights of the Strip. I told Harper I was stumped. He knew what I thought about the killings, so I asked him, “Do you think I’m nuts?”
“Sure,” he said. “Ever since I’ve known you. Isn’t everybody?” I asked him if he’d care to join me on a night ride with the friend I had from the Sheriff’s Office on patrol of the strip area but he declined, saying, “I’ve got a date with this girl named Marni. Works for the juvenile court services. Out here from Nebraska. Thought I’d do her a big favor and show her the ‘Sin City’ we all just read about.”
“That should be very enlightening,” I countered. It meant, of course, that he was planning to show her nothing more than his own apartment.
So, I dropped him off at my place and called the sheriff’s office and asked for Chuck Hunsaker, a sergeant I know who used to get me passes to the police pistol range. The switchboard girl called the dispatcher who called “Kraut” (my nickname for him) and then I hung up. He got me on the phone about five minutes later. Ten minutes after that he wheeled by my place and picked me up. We tooled around the Strip until 3:00 A.M. with nothing to break the monotony but a couple of “noisy party” complaints and some drag racers on Flamingo Road.
• • •
WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 1970
EARLY MORNING
“Kraut,” who’d been around in his forty-two years, couldn’t come up with any alternate theories, but also didn’t, I was relieved to discover, think my “vampire theory” was any worse than others he’d heard. He’d been in on strange cases before.
A couple of years back, he’d taken part in a shootout between two limp-wristed types at the Circle West Apartments off Paradise Road. One little chap, a dancer, had become enraged over the fact that his former lover, a hairdresser, had thrown him over (and out) for a showroom choreographer and taken possession of their three Siamese cats in the bargain. So one night he’d unloaded an Army .45 through his ex-boyfriend’s front door, killing the intended victim and scaring the cats half to death. Subsequently, he shot it out with deputies called on the scene yelling that unrequited love was one thing but the theft of his cats had been “just too much!” It wasn’t the strangest case I ever reported but part for Vegas. And in two days, the residents had forgotten all about it.
When he was ready to call it a night, I had him drop me at the Dunes where I headed for their Persian Room lounge. The big “V Les Girls” revue was just going off and in its place was a singer named Misti Walker, a genuine, long legged, sexy-as-hell saloon singer whose particular brand of vocalizing was just what the doctor ordered for this unrepentant journalist. She’d only been on the Vegas scene about a year and hadn’t yet become a nationwide hit, but at twenty-two, she was already a veteran of nearly ten years as a professional, working her way from dingy bars steadily toward stardom under the firm hand and eagle eye of her performer-manager-husband, Bobby John Henry.
I listened to her renditions of “What Now My Love?” and “But Not For Me” which seemed curiously apt under the present circumstances. I listened and I drank. And drank. And I talked with a succession of cocktail waitresses who were getting very uneasy about the series of killings. They seemed to feel it “in their bones” that the end was not in sight.
When one of their number is hurt, they rally to the cause. Flowers, sympathy. Even money. Because of the odd hours these girls work, and the fact that most of them go home alone, feeling was running high. They didn’t reject my theory, possibly feeling it was the result of the booze. They didn’t particularly care. They just wanted the guy “caught and hung up by his thumbs.”
Misti worked her way into “The Dark Side of the Street,” a haunting underground soul thing–and a very dangerous place for young women these days–and finished up in time with my fifth bourbon with a soulrock number called “Livin’ In Heat,” a genuine foot-stomping item that never fails to please the captains as well as the patrons. The cynical gentlemen in the tuxedos gave her a standing ovation. She deserved it. She had a voice that combined the best of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn.
I left the Persian Room around 4:15, saying good-night to Gino Altamura and his lieutenants and headed for the coffee shop waving at Misti and Bobby John who didn’t know me from Adam. I’ve never been an autograph hound and I’m shy around all showfolk.
Just to the right of the Savoy coffee shop is the Monte Carlo bar, a semicircle that leads from the casino toward the Tower shops. Depending on the hour and the day, it is filled with conventioneers, executives, early afternoon arrivals and hookers.
Sam was there, on an off night, sipping a whiskey sour and chatting with Pablo, the bartender. Sam is the quintessential Las Vegas hooker; several cuts above the best of them. Five-six, twenty-five, dollar smart and, deep inside, basically decent. Never been on dope. Been divorced only once. Has three years toward a degree in psychology and periodically attends UNLV. She is one of my favorite people and I flatter myself that she likes me too. No great love affair, just a mutual anti-loneliness league, mostly around Christmas when the days for both of us get long and the nights, cold. She has cooked my food, ironed my shirts, and warmed my bed and my heart more than a few times. Certain columnists’ opinions notwithstanding, if you are one of the trusted ones, hookers are not only good friends, but fine sources of highly accurate grapevine information. They don’t miss much.
Sam agreed to join me in the coffee shop and we dug into the excellent prime rib; she took it English cut and I got a hefty, medium-well end slice. She told me the “girls” were getting very uptight about the killings and had taken to going to and from work in pairs. And, being possessors of buckets of common sense, they were all staying away from thin, tall, pale types. Beyond that, she had no information.
We topped off our “breakfast” with some lead-heavy pineapple cheesecake and she offered a lift home. On our way I stopped by the newsstand and checked out the Daily News. The University of Nevada’s Reno Campus had had its second firebombing of the week. D.A. Paine vowed to “combat any drug use” at an upcoming rock festival in nearby Jean that had already been banned by the county commissioners. The death toll in the tornado that had hit Lubbock, Texas, had reached twenty. The Israelis hit Lebanon in “the fiercest fighting since the Six-Day War.” And Jake Herman was urging the U.S. to “get off the dime” and sell the fifty Phantom jets to Israel while there still was an Israel.
Glancing through the paper I noticed that, with his usual prescience, our entertainment editor, Wilbur Pigeon, had written an open letter to the “mystery killer” urging him to unburden himself to his “family clergyman” and the police before his activities put the skids on the upcoming tourist season.
Ah! Wilbur Pigeon. A small, mobile, chancre sore with the body of a bedbug and the brain of a gnat. He is but one of the many so-called writers to flock to Las Vegas hard pressed by bad debts and repeated failures in bigger, less-glamorous cities. They survive largely because they work for peanuts and the Vegas public has become inured to their pawky ramblings. Although they write chiefly for the tourists who almost ne
ver read their scribblings, the locals tolerate their insane mutterings as a form of compensation for those days when the comic page is composed of blank spaces stamped: “Delayed in Mail.”
Their numbers include a self-styled Walter Winchell type who has never written anything less than a rave review; a great bearded prophet; and one who hands out is pronouncements flavored with equal parts of ignorance and Irish Whiskey. These statesmen of the fourth estate and their locally televised counterparts are on hand for every freebie and party. They are some, like Gus Giuffre–a fine, decent human being, the kind Las Vegas could use by the gross–who also act as hosts at charities, telethons and public functions. Most, however, concentrate on being professional “personalities” which does make it possible for better men to get on with the actual work of running the community, when better men can be found.
I groused about these and sundry other gripes as Sam drove me home where I called up a friend of mine, a graveyard shift switchboard operator at the Deauville, and asked her to call the paper when she got off and report that I had the flue. Meyer Moses could cover my beat.
That done, I sank into an uneasy sleep wherein I dreamed of an assembly line of pale, bloodless girls walking down an endless dark street and moaning softly for help. Somewhere, toward the edge of my inner vision, a shadowy figure pursued them with long, beckoning arms.
Goddamn booze!
Somewhere in the midst of this ghoulish girl parade Cairncross materialized and hung a garland of garlic around my neck, glaring at me with his good eye and intoning, “Go and sin no more.” Vincenzo appeared at Cairncross’ side and together they laughed insanely, then vanished in a puff of sulphurous smoke.
I made several high-minded resolutions, muttered half-heard but sincere-sounding prayers to all the recently deposed saints, thrashed and rolled clean off the bed.
I might just as well have stayed up.
CHAPTER 5
WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 1970
At 8:00 A.M. sharp, the phone jangled me awake and my little girl friend (she’s sixty if she’s a day) at the Deauville said, “It’s June over at the Deauville. Wake up, stupid.”
Such greetings, on top of a hangover are just the thing to start the day.
“Just thought I’d do you a favor and give you a little tip. I was just getting ready to get off and security put through a call to the sheriff’s office. He did it again!”
I was still groggy. “Who did what again?” I didn’t really want to know. I just wanted to get back to County Dracula who was chasing Sam through the Caesars Palace casino.
“Security,” June repeated, “just called the sheriff’s office. They found another body right out in the employees’ parking lot. Not five minutes ago. A showgirl I think. Are you awake?”
I was, then. Completely, even if my motor impulses were a bit shaky. “Have your people got an ID yet?” I asked her.
“How should I know? I’m not a cop. I’m a sweet, little old lady who minds her own business. You still want me to call you in sick?”
“Christ, no!” I couldn’t see any sense in letting Meyer beat me to it.
“Well,” she cautioned. “Better hustle then. If the sheriff’s people aren’t here yet, they will be in the next couple of minutes.”
“Thanks, sweetheart. I owe you one.”
“Never fear. I’ll collect in due time,” and she clicked off.
I jiggled the receiver button and called Stefan Temcek, a landsman of mine and the assistant chief photographer for the News.
“Get your ass out of bed and away from your succulent wife and meet me at the timekeeper’s office behind the Deauville Hotel on the double. Another killing. Bring your Speed Graphic, too. I want close shots of her neck. If you get there before me, start shooting. Don’t wait. You’re closer to the Deauville than I am anyway.”
I slammed the phone down without waiting for his complaint. Then I looked up Vincenzo’s home number. I interrupted his breakfast with the dope and begged for an “extra.”
“OK, Kolchak. If it’s for real, call me back at the office and I’ll get Cairncross. If he says OK, we’ll replate page one and try to beat the other paper to the streets.”
I made one more call, this time to a girl name Michelle, who is in the Deauville’s main show, “Paris Extraordinaire!” as a nude adagio dancer. She was sunning herself on her apartment balcony.
“This is Kolchak, dear heart. Brace yourself for a real jolt. One of our friends has bought the farm. It may be the ‘mystery killer.’” There was an instant’s pause and a sharp intake of breath. “Now,” I raced on. “A favor, please. Call up to or three of your friends in the line and ask them to meet you in the Deauville coffee shop. Tell them to get there in the next thirty to forty minutes and not to spare the horsepower. Don’t tell them why. Just get a booth and wait for me. And… Michelle, if one of them doesn’t answer, don’t panic. We don’t know for sure who got nailed. How about it? A tall order for old time’s sake?”
“Jesus!” she said. “That’s the fourth girl, isn’t it?” Another long pause. “OK. Can do. See you by 8:45?”
“Or as close as I can make it. If I’m late, just sit tight.”
I hustled into some chinos and a bush jacket, grabbed my Sony tape recorder (to catch what my shorthand might miss) and made it three steps at a time down the two flights to my car. I got it up to seventy-dive on Paradise, and ninety on Flamingo, running a red light on the Strip as I headed left past the Dunes and Aladdin, and pulled into the Deauville’s north entrance, jouncing over the speed bumps and onto the employees’ lot at the rear of the hotel. There was already one Sheriff’s car there and one came roaring in behind me as I killed the engine and bolted from the car.
There, in the third row from the timekeeper’s office, was a tall girl, in bell-bottoms and a knit pullover, sitting propped against a weather-beaten Austin Healey.
As I got closer I could see her eyes were closed. Her huge leather handbag was lying just to her left, with the strap still clutched in a closed fist.
Two deputies were talking to another woman who was sobbing and shaking, while two security guards hulked in the background.
I switched on the tape machine as I noticed my friend Temcek’s white Porsche which was parked discreetly by the timekeeper’s office. He was talking to the timekeeper. I go to the dead girl just two steps ahead of the deputies who’d pulled in behind me and called for Temcek to come over.
“Already got all we can use. Want me to get this stuff souped?”
Just then I noticed Deke Clausen, the assistant chief of security heading toward us, buckling on his .357 Colt Python.
“Yeah,” I told Temcek. “Get moving and have the stuff ready for Vincenzo. Call him and tell him I’ve got the dope from the Sheriff’s Office here and am getting background from the girl’s friends (I hoped) in the coffee shop. If he wants me, tell him to have me paged. Tell him I’ll piece it together here, borrow a typewriter if necessary to rough out the notes, and then call it in by 10:00. Got it?”
“Right!” and he was off and running toward his little white bomb. He screeched on out of the lot making racing changes as he dodged the speed bumps.
I turned to the deputies who were going through her purse. I didn’t wait to see what they found. I went over to the other two who were talking to the woman.
“Sit tight, Kolchak,” said the big one. “We got a witness of sorts here. No names. We’d like to keep her alive. She’s pretty shook, so make it short.”
I asked Deke if I could talk to her in his office and he looked at the deputies. A small, round one detached himself from the group. I didn’t know him, but he was a sergeant and seemed to be running the show.
“You Kolchak?”
“Umhmm.”
“I room with the ‘Kraut’ and he says you’re OK. You got five minutes with her and I’ll hang around, if you don’t mind.”
“Suits me, “I answered. “Deke, is there a coffee pot going in there?” He nodded,
so I turned to the deputy who now had his arm linked protectively through the woman’s. The others were busy putting a blanket over the now prone body of the deceased, and as yet, an unnamed victim.
The sergeant, whose name turned out to be Clabaugh, said, “I’ve got a copy of the official report and her initial statement. You can have a look when we get inside. Remember, keep it short.” Off we went.
The Deauville’s security office was reached by passing through the electrically controlled gate and down a freight yard some 300 feet long flanked on one side by the hotel’s laundry, carpenter shops and boiler rooms. The woman, in a state of near collapse, had to be helped along by both of us. She was trembling and her eyes kept darting about her. We passed the receiving office, took a sharp jog to the right through a dark concrete passageway, then a left and through the Louis Quinze Theatre’s scene dock and down a hallway past the stage manager’s office. The air smelled of stale makeup and the walls were hung with costumes and props used in the show: foil spears and plastic armor, rhinestones, lame and ostrich plumes.
The security office, an afterthought in the hotel’s blueprint, was a musty cubicle eight by fifteen feet in size, furnished with a government-surplus gray steel desk, three matching chairs and an old army camp bed. Lined up on shelves above Deke’s desk were Coleman camp lanterns for use during power failures. On the floor against one wall were several fire extinguishers and three oxygen tanks with masks. Behind the door were three folding wheelchairs. Our sobbing witness looked like she could use one of them. She desperately needed something to steady her nerves or she’d be no good to herself, or to us.