Neon Nights: Daymond Runyon meets James Ellroy in the Nevada Desert

by John Hudson

  After listening, Mike said, "I don't give a rip if you're on suspension. Ted Kemper is an idiot and a jerk. He thinks he can get a cushy job in D.C. if he busts some mob guys out here. All he’s done so far is spend lots of money and act like an idiot. Don’t worry about him. You helped put this thing together and if it wasn't for you we wouldn't even know about the parts being stolen, let alone having any idea who was stealing them. You got a right to be there when the arrest is made, and if your boss or Ted Kemper doesn't like it, they can take it up with me."

  An hour later, I met Mike outside the Sherriff’s Office. Dick Person nor Ted Kemper were anywhere to be seen. I recognized one of the local FBI agents, but he acted like he'd never seen me before, and I returned the favor. Mike pointed me out and announced loudly, "If you don't know him, this is Kelly O'Brien. He's an investigator for the State Patrol. He's the one who did all the work on this case, and as far as I'm concerned it's his collar. Does anyone have a problem with that?" Mike looked around, but no one said a word. "Good," he said. "Then let's go serve some warrants."

  Jake didn't know what hit him. Before he open his mouth he was in handcuffs, but it wasn't long before he was squealing like a pig and threatening us with either his lawyer or his "connections." He shut up when Mike showed him two sets of airplane instruments they found hidden in his basement. Jake, of course, claimed he'd never seen them before, but no one paid any attention to him.

  A couple of the agents turned out to be from the Internal Revenue Service. They were boxing up every scrap of paper they could find. Jake probably never paid much in the way of taxes, and once they sifted though his records, they'd make Jake's life a whole lot more complicated. He'd be lucky to have pocket change after they got through with him. From the look on his face he'd figured that out too. His bravado had disappeared and he inquired if anyone was interested in making a deal. Everybody ignored him. There would be plenty of time to discuss deals later.

  I wandered outside. Mike and his guys knew what they were doing and I was in the way. I sat on a lawn chair and looked over what had once been Jake's private domain. The girls were outside their trailers watching the show.

  Some of the girls would probably be deported if they couldn't produce American citizenship. The rest would find somewhere else to work, and a few of the older ones, like Rita Heller, might retire.

  I could see her standing in front of her trailer. Even at this distance, her red hair was quite noticeable.

  I started to get up and go talk to her when Mike burst out of the house, and told me he'd found a ledger which detailed every transaction that Jake and Johnny Del Rio had been involved with. Mike smiled and opened a box that held a twenty-two automatic that had its barrel threaded so a silencer could be attached. He said, "I bet the ballistic boys will have a field-day with this."

  Mike went back inside, and I looked around for Rita Heller, but she was no where to be seen. I walked over and knocked on the door of her trailer. It opened a crack and I asked, "Do you remember me?"

  No reply. I started to remind her of who I was, when the door opened. She stood with her hands on her hips blocking the door way. "What's going on?" she asked. I told her about Jake and the stolen airplane parts. She listened impassively and said, "It doesn't surprise me. Jake always was slipping around doing something. He got what he deserved."

  She certainly fit the description the vet gave me of the woman he saw on the road the night Johnny Del Rio was killed. Beside her hair, he said she was older but still a looker with good legs. He'd have to see her to give a positive ID, but I wanted to ask a few questions before that. I asked if I could come inside and get a drink of water.

  She reluctantly stepped out of the way and said, "All right--but I've got visitors coming and I don't want you here."

  She handed me a glass of water, and I said, "If Jake got what he deserved, did Johnny Del Rio get what he deserved too?"

  The color left her face and she said, "How should I know? I hardly knew him."

  "You knew him well enough to be with him the night he was killed."

  "I wasn't with him that night or any other night. Like I told you before, I stayed away from Johnny."

  It was time to play my trump card. I said, "Come on, Rita, you were seen walking away from where Johnny was murdered. I have a witness who saw you.”

  “Who says they saw me?”

  “A veterinarian saw you walking on the road that night. Just what were you doing walking around out in the desert in the middle of the night?"

  She answered my question by pulling a small pistol out of her robe, and pointing it at me. "You think you're a real smart--don't you?" She motioned with the gun for me to move. "Sit in that chair over there and don't make any sudden moves or I'll shoot."

  The gun was an unexpected development. I held up my hands and said, "Whoa, take it easy. We can work this out."

  Rita shook her had and said, "Don't try and flim-flam me with that ‘we can work it out’ crap. Every time a cop said that to me I ended up in jail and you're not any different than the rest of them." She picked up a cigarette and when she lit it, the gun was, momentarily, pointed at the ceiling. I thought about charging her and grabbing the gun, but she quickly pointed it at me. "It's not going to be that way this time--Buster! This time I'm calling the shots."

  I didn't like the sound of that, but there wasn't much I could do except to remind her I was a cop and there would be a high price to pay if she harmed me.

  "Hey," I said. "You're not in that deep yet, but you'd better think about what you’re getting yourself into. You hurt a cop and they'll never stop looking for you. So why don't you give me the gun and let's end this before someone gets hurt."

  She shook her head. "No one's going to get hurt as long as you do what I say. I'm going to tie you up and wait until it's dark then I’ll slip away. They'll find you by tomorrow afternoon but by then I'll be far away and safe."

  I didn't like what she had in mind but I didn't want to argue with her either. The best thing I could do was play along. "That's fine with me I'm not going to give you any problems. I just don't want someone to get accidently hurt."

  "Don't worry. I don't want to hurt anyone. I didn't want to hurt Johnny, but he made me." She narrowed her eyes and said, "So don't you make me do something I don't want to do."

  She sat across from me and rocked back and forth in the chair. "I've got the worst luck. None of this would have happened if there had been a new movie playing in town Monday night!"

  I didn't want her to talk about the murder. The more she said the more danger I was in, but I couldn't tell her to shut up either.

  "You see," she said. "Monday's when I go to the movies, but I'd seen the movie that's playing, and I stayed home to finish knitting a sweater for my girlfriend's baby. Around midnight I got tired and I took a couple of beers and some smokes outside. I'm enjoying the night and when all of a sudden, a lot of noise comes from Jake's place. The back door flies open and some guy comes outside and yells at someone inside. Then Johnny and Jake came out. The guy halls off and hits Johnny and knocks him down. Johnny jumps up and he hit the guy in the gut. The guy doubles over, and when Johnny pulls his hand back I see a knife. The guy tries to get away but Johnny stabs him two more times in the back. The guy falls to the ground and doesn't move even when Johnny kicks him. Johnny yells something to Jake and Jake goes inside and comes back with a rug. They roll the guy up in the rug and Johnny walks away. I'm watching Jake cleaning up the blood with a sheet and I don't see the headlights coming around the corner of the building. When I do see them, I try to run behind the trailer so they wouldn't see me. I thought I'd made it...but I was wrong."

  Rita took out another cigarette and lit it. This time she laid down the gun and I thought again about rushing her but I was too far away. She picked up the gun and took a drag. "The next night I get this call from a bellhop I know at the Flamingo. He says some big shot from Los Angeles wants to have a party. He says it's worth a hundred if I
'll do it with this big shot and some other guy. I tell him to send them on out, but he says the guy doesn't want to come out here. The bellhop says if I'll come into town, it's worth another twenty. I tell him okay and grab a ride into town with a John. When I get there, the bellhop tells me to wait in the back seat of a new Cadillac convertible parked out front. I get in the car and the next thing I know Johnny Del Rio jumps in the front seat, and drives off. He's talking this line of bull about how he's going to take me to these guys, but I know I'm in real trouble when he turned off the black-top onto a dirt road. Then he stops in front of a gate. He turns around and grabs something from under the seat—it’s a baseball bat. He gives me this strange smile. He says he saw me last night and now he's going to introduce me to the guy in the rug. I told him I didn’t see anything. But I know, no matter what I say, he's going to kill me and he's looking forward to doing it. He starts to open the door--and that's when I stuck him.” Rita got a far-away sound to her voice. “It happened so fast, I didn't know if I'd hurt him. He falls back into the seat and I gave his head a shove. His neck was as limp as an old man's dick. I don't know if he's dead but I’m not going to stick around to find out. I push the passinger’s seat forward and jump out. I start running but I ran into a fence. It knocked me down and ripped my dress.”

  I had nothing to lose anymore by asking her some questions. “I’ll bet the dress was red.”

  “Yeah, it was--how did you know?”

  “Lucky guess, then what happened?”

  ”I was terrified Johnny would be coming after me and I kept running but he never came after me. After about a mile, I stopped running and started walking back to town."

  Rita slammed her hand down on the table and I jumped. "Damn it! I wondered if someone at that farm saw me. That damn dog of theirs was raising a real racket. I knew that car saw me too, but I was in high heels and couldn't move quick enough to get off the road. When I got to the highway, I caught a ride out here with a truck driver. I had to give him a hand job for it."

  If I got out of this alive, she could tie up a lot of loose ends. I suspected the man Johnny killed was Jack Ryan and I asked her if she could describe him. Her description could have been anyone. I'd would have liked to show her his picture, but I didn't figure she'd let me go get one. I asked her if she heard Johnny mention his name.

  "No," she replied. "I heard a couple of days later one of Jake's girls say the "Dummy" got into a real knock-down drag-out fight with Jake and Johnny."

  "Who’s the Dummy?"

  "He's some guy who married one of Jake's foreign chippies during the war and then didn't want a divorce. He and Jake worked out some kind of deal for her to stay with him, but she didn't want to. One day she ran off and came up here looking for to work. Jake called her husband and he comes up here after her. The girls started calling him "the Dummy" after the second time he had to take her home. But that time he made make sure she wouldn't do it again. He and Jake beat the crap out of her and he took her home in the trunk of his car. After that, only he came around."

  A couple of things bothered me about her story. If she didn't think she was being set up by the bellhop, why would she have a weapon with her? I had to be careful how I asked, but I needed to know. "What did you stick Johnny with?"

  Rita reached over and picked up a ball of yarn. She pulled out a long, slender knitting needle and said, "It was just like this one except the end was sharpened." She smiled and stuck the needle back in a ball of yarn. "I learned the value of a sharpened knitting needle from my first madam. She said the cops will give you a hard time if the catch you with a gun or knife, but they never look at a knitting needle. To them it's harmless, and couldn't be used as a weapon. Up to now, the only time I ever used one was to jab a guy in the hand that was getting too grabby."

  It was a long way from stabbing some guy in the hand to killing a person. In the situation she described, fear could overcome any reluctance about committing murder, but fear couldn't give her knowledge of how to kill. Murders out of fear usually were messy with lots of wounds. Whoever killed Johnny knew exactly what they were doing. This killing was so clean and slick, I had to wonder if her claim of self defense wasn't a cover for a cold-blooded professional murder. Even a hard-case like Johnny wouldn't suspect a female hired-killer.

  My mouth got dry, and I felt a cold finger of fear run down my spine. If she was a pro, I was dead. She couldn't afford to let me go. It could be dangerous to challenge her story, but I had to find out who I was dealing with. "Come on." I said. "Who do you think you're kidding with this scared hooker knitting needle story? It doesn't wash. Whoever killed Johnny knew exactly what they were doing. Who are you covering up for?"

  She crushed out her cigarette, and smiled, "No one. I knew what I was doing. I learned it from a pimp I had during the war. He went to Ranger school before he went AWOL. He liked telling me how easy he could kill me and when he got drunk he'd show me how he'd do it. After awhile, I knew all he knew." Rita looked out the window and said in a matter-of-fact way, "The only thing that surprised me was how easy it was."

  Both of us jumped when Mike Rogers started pounding on the door and yelling, "Hey, Kelly...are you in there?" Rita stood up and pointed the gun at the door. "Come on, Kelly, zip it up" he shouted. "We got to get back to town."

  She pointed the gun at me and whispered, "Don't say a word or I'll shoot."

  If I didn't respond, Mike might go away and I'd lose my best chance to get out of here. I gambled she wouldn't shoot and yelled, "I'll be right with you, Mike."

  "Shut up!" she hissed.

  In as calm a voice as I could muster, I said, "Rita, listen to me. Before you do something we'll both regret think about this. If you use that gun, you might kill me but I'll guarantee Mike and his boys will kill you. If you don't want that to happen, give me the gun now." I stuck out my hand but all I got was a blank look.

  Mike pounded on the door again, "Come on Kelly we got to go!"

  I yelled back, "Don't go anywhere, Mike. I'll be right out." Rita's hand started to shake. I looked her in the eyes and said, "Either give me the gun or I'm going to tell him you're holding a gun on me."

  Rita narrowed her eyes and aimed the gun at my head. "You do that and you'll never leave this trailer alive!"

  "Neither will you! So either give me that god-damned gun now or shoot!" She was tough, but I was banking on her being smart too. She slowly lowered the gun and I quickly took it away from her before she changed her mind.

  As soon as I got outside, Mike slapped me on the back and asked, "What was that—a little quickie to get the day off right?"

  "No, I was doing some investigating."

  Mike nudged me in the ribs and said, "Yeah--right and we both know what you were investigating!"

  An agent outside of Jake's place said there was something inside Mike should see. He excused himself and I went over and sat in his car. I had to make up my mind what I was going to do with Rita. The easy thing would be to run her in and let the District Attorney figure it out, but he couldn't make a case without solid evidence and there wasn't any. Everything I knew came from her confession, but she'd confessed only because she had a gun on me. If she had any brains, she'd never repeat her confession again, and without her confession, I had nothing that would stand up in court.

  The only thing I could prove was on the night of the murder she was seen walking four miles away from the crime scene and that was certainly no crime. Even if the bellhop might place her in Johnny's car that night, she could say Johnny took her to meet some guys to do the horizontal tango. Johnny probably didn't tell the bellhop what he was really up to so her story would match his. Without a witness to her confession I didn't have squat.

  Something else I had to consider was if I arrested her, and even if the charges were dismissed, some of Johnny's friends and associates would probably grab her, and beat her until she told them what they wanted to hear. Then they'd kill her. In their Biblical eye-for-an-eye version of justice her
death would even things for Johnny's. But in a Biblical sense, Johnny should have been turned into a pillar of salt years ago.

  I wanted to believe her, but I couldn't shake the idea that she might be a professional‑killer more dangerous than the man she killed. If she was a pro, I couldn't let her go, even if it meant giving her over to the mob.

  I reached in my pocket for a stick of gum and my hand touched her gun. I pulled out an old twenty-five caliber Star pocket pistol, a cheap, dangerous, little Spanish gun that had a nasty habit of going off when you least expected. From the way Rita waved this one around, I was lucky I didn't get shot accidently. To make sure it wouldn't fire unexpectedly, I ejected the clip from the gun and worked the gun's action, to clear the chamber. The gun was empty. There were no rounds in the clip or in the chamber. Rita couldn't have shot me if she'd wanted to. That cinched it for me. No pro killer would be dumb enough to take on a cop with an empty gun. I shoved the clip back in the gun and put it in my pocket.

  I knocked on Rita's door and she opened it. She had a coat in her hand and a dumb-looking hat on her head. She threw her head back, took a drag off a cigarette, and said, "Let's get this over with."

  I laid the gun on the floor and said, "You're free to go, but I wouldn't hang around here too long. If a dumb cop can figure out who killed Johnny Del Rio, some wise-guy will too."

  Her mouth fell open and she dropped her coat on the floor.

  Mike honked his horn and yelled for me. I smiled at Rita and said, "See not all cops are alike."

  Mike had Jake in the back seat of his car. I asked Jake, "Why did Johnny kill Jack Ryan?"

  He feed me a bunch of crap about not knowing anyone called Jack Ryan and I let the subject drop. Jake wasn't going anywhere. Mike Rogers would ask him again when he felt more like talking.

  There wasn't much conversation on the ride back to Las Vegas. Each one of us was absorbed in our thoughts. I'd solved the Johnny Del Rio murder, and I'd like to be able to tell the Attorney General all about it. But what could I say? That I couldn't tell him who killed Johnny but take my word for it, it was self defense so I let the killer go. I'm sure he'd love to hear that.