I have also interwoven elements of other key Black Dahlia theories, in an effort to make this novel an all-encompassing view of a compelling but convoluted case. Nonetheless, numerous fascinating aspects have been played down and even eliminated, in an effort to keep this narrative down to a (somewhat) manageable length.
Three book-length works were of tremendous value to me in the writing of this novel.
The aforementioned Severed took the first serious book-length look at the murder of Elizabeth Short, boasting landmark research, including Gilmore’s discovery of the identity of a major player in the murder of the Dahlia, the man I refer to as Arnold Wilson (just one of his aliases). For anyone interested in this case, Severed is essential reading. Gilmore—his autobiography, Laid Bare (1997), contains more Dahlia material—is so key to the case that it became necessary for me to represent his role via a fictional character, Gil Johnson.
The previously mentioned Childhood Shadows by Mary Pacios is a compassionate, in-depth look at Short’s short, tragic life, from the point of view of a childhood friend. Pacios did extensive research and explores all of the previous major theories and then proposes her own. Pacios is the source for the theory that Orson Welles is a Black Dahlia suspect—a notion I frankly find absurd, though Pacios makes a good enough case for me to justify the inclusion of the great filmmaker as a character, here.
Also helpful was Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer (1995) by Janice Knowlton with true crime expert Michael Newton. The theory proposed in this work does not seem terribly compelling to me, based as it is on latter-day “remembering” of suppressed traumatic memories; however, the material on Elizabeth Short—separated from the story of Janice Knowlton’s homicidal father, her Black Dahlia suspect—is well researched and skillfully presented.
I am a big admirer of Jack Webb and his classic 1950s television series, Dragnet. Webb wrote an excellent (if typically laudatory) nonfiction work on the LAPD, The Badge (1958), with a section devoted to the Black Dahlia case. Reading Webb’s version of the Dahlia case as a young teen sparked my interest in Elizabeth Short.
Angel in Black is a sequel of sorts to a 1984 Nathan Heller short story, “The Strawberry Teardrop,” which dealt with the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run, and introduced the character Lloyd Watterson. That story was expanded into the Eliot Ness novel, Butcher’s Dozen (1988), which represented in-depth research that George Hagenauer and I did into the Torso murders on site in Cleveland; at Case Western Reserve Library, among the long-forgotten Ness papers, we discovered the taunting postcards sent to the Untouchable by the Butcher from a mental institution. Prior to our research, the closest thing to an in-depth examination of Eliot Ness’ role in the Butcher case was a single chapter of Oscar Fraley’s Four Against the Mob. Butcher’s Dozen was the first book-length work on Ness and the Cleveland Torso killings, and every nonfiction (and fictional) work since—as well as television treatments of the case—has used our research, uncredited, as a foundation.
Lloyd Watterson is a fictional character, but he has a real-life counterpart, identified as Dr. Frank Sweeney in Marilyn Bardsley’s excellent article, “The Kingsbury Run Murders,” available on the Internet at Dark Horse Multimedia’s Crime Library (Bard-sley, incidentally, does list Butcher’s Dozen as a source). Also, Bardsley’s Internet article, “The Black Dahlia,” is an excellent Gilmore-slanted overview of the Short murder.
Other Internet articles of interest include “The Undying Mystery of the Black Dahlia” by Lionel Van Deerlin (San Diego Online); and “An Original Black Dahlia Article” by Russell Miller, which is a part of the excellent Black Dahlia Web site (www.bethshort.com) maintained by Pamela Hazelton. Hazelton’s Web site is a thoughtful, fact-filled tribute to the murder victim.
With few exceptions, the characters in this novel appear with their real names, despite receiving varying degrees of fictionalization.
Bill Fowley is a fictional character, a composite of Will Fowler, Sid Hughes, Bevo Means, and numerous other reporters active on the case, and is not meant to represent any one of them, though superficially the character’s background resembles that of Fowler, whose excellent memoir “Reporters” (1991) was a helpful reference for this novel. Jim Richardson, however, was a real city editor, and my portrait of him is based on material in Fowler’s book and Richardson’s autobiography, For the Life of Me (1954).
While Bobby Savarino is a real person (portrayed in a fictionalized manner), his “wife” in this novel is a wholly fictional character. I do not know whether Savarino was married in real life but, if he was, it certainly wasn’t to the fictional ex-stripper, Patsy, who I invented.
The unflattering portrait of Finis Brown in this novel is drawn from material in several sources, primarily Pacios (where Brown’s supposed status as a bookie/corrupt cop is stated by several witnesses); but in fairness it must be stated that in various other sources, including Jack Webb’s The Badge, Brown is depicted as an honest and effective detective. For the purposes of this narrative, the positive opinions were ignored and the negative opinions coalesced into my fictionalized portrayal of Brown, which in no way should be viewed as a portrait of the real man.
“Mark Lansom” is based upon Mark Hansen, whose name was changed to avoid confusion with Detective Harry Hansen. Fred Rubinski is a fictionalized Barney Ruditsky, the real life P.I. whose restaurant, Sherry’s, was a Mickey Cohen hangout.
Dr. Wallace Dailey and Dr. Maria Winter are fictional characters with real-life counterparts, and this aspect of my novel reflects a fascinating theory developed by Larry Harnisch, whose in-progress Dahlia book, Stairway to Heaven, I eagerly await. Harnisch has an ongoing Web site at Geocities, where he shares his groundbreaking research.
The theory that the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run might have been responsible for the Black Dahlia slaying—a concept posited in my novel Butcher’s Dozen—has been further developed by Lawrence P. Scherb, who has published several articles and, several years ago, corresponded with me, generously sharing his thoughts and theories.
My “backup” research assistant, Lynn Myers, provided photo-copied articles and book excerpts as well as several movies and videos. A 1975 TV-movie, Who Killed the Black Dahlia? starring Efrem Zimbalist as Harry Hansen and Lucie Arnaz as Elizabeth Short, was too fictionalized to aid my work. More valuable was Medford Girl, a 1993 documentary by Kyle J. Wood, who has donated profits to erecting a monument in Elizabeth Short’s name in Medford, Massachusetts. Also viewed were “The Black Dahlia Murder,” an episode of E! Channel’s Hollywood’s Mysteries and Scandals, and Case Reopened: The Black Dahlia, a Learning Channel documentary.
I have written extensively about Eliot Ness and sources used in developing my ongoing portrait of the real-life Untouchable can be found at the back of the various Ness novels, including Butcher’s Dozen (recently published in a hardcover edition by Five Star Mystery). To refresh my memory about the Kingsbury Run case, however, I turned to Great Unsolved Mysteries (1978) by James Purvis and the following Ness-related nonfiction works: Eliot Ness: The Real Story (1997), Paul W. Heimel; Four Against the Mob (1961), Oscar Fraley; and Torso (1989), Steven Nickel.
One of the great pleasures of researching this novel was revisiting many of Orson Welles’ films, including Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil, and Macbeth. I also read a number of Welles biographies: Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles (1996), David Thomson; This Is Orson Welles (1992), Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich; Citizen Welles (1989), Frank Brady; Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius (1985), Charles Higham; and Orson Welles: A Biography (1985), Barbara Leaming, whose If This Was Happiness: a Biography of Rita Hayworth (1989) was also helpful.
Several biographies and autobiographies aided in my research, including The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law (1994), Rickie Solinger; Blondes, Brunettes and Bullets (1957), Nils T. Granlund with Sid Feder and Ralph Hancock; Headline Happy (1950), Florabel Muir; No Man Stands Alone (1957), Barney Ross and Martin Abramson; and Thicker’n Th
ieves (1951), Charles Stoker. The portrait of Mickey Cohen drew upon Hoodlums: Los Angeles (1959), Ted Prager and Larry Craft; Mickey Cohen: In My Own Words (1975), Mickey Cohen and John Peer Nugent; Mickey Cohen: Mobster (1973), Ed Reid; and Why I Quit Syndicated Crime (1951), Jim Vaus and D. C. Haskin.
Numerous true crime books include a chapter on the Dahlia. Among such works consulted were The California Crime Book (1971), Robert Colby; Fallen Angels (1986), Marvin J. Wolf and Katherine Mader; Hollywood’s Unsolved Mysteries (1970), John Austin; The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (1999), Roger Wilkes (editor); Open Files (1983), Jay Robert Nash; They Had a Way with Women (1967), Leonard Gribble; and True Crime: Unsolved Crimes (1993), editors of Time-Life Books. To Protect and Serve (1994) by Joe Domanick provided excellent historical background on the LAPD. The Super Sleuths (1976) by Bruce Henderson and Sam Summerlin provided material on Harry Hansen.
A number of books on L.A. and Hollywood were also useful, including City of Nets (1986), Otto Friedrich; Cruel City (1991), Marianne Ruuth; Death in Paradise (1998), Tony Blanche and Brad Schreiber; Great American Hotels (1991), James Tackach; Hollywood Babylon II (1984), Kenneth Anger; Hollywood Goes on Location (1988), Leon Smith; Landmarks of Los Angeles (1994), Patrick McGrew and Robert Julian; My L.A. (1947), Matt Weinstock; Out with the Stars (1985), Jim Heimann; Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles (1987), Elizabeth Ward and Alain Silver; and Sins of the City: the Real Los Angeles Noir (1999), Jim Heimann. The WPA Guides for California and Illinois were extremely helpful, as were Chicago Confidential (1950) and U.S.A. Confidential (1952), both by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer.
I would again like to thank my editor, Joseph Pittman, for his belief in Nate Heller and his creator, and his patience when a death in the family made me miss a deadline; and of course Dominick Abel, my friend and agent, who also was gracious and supportive at a rough time.
Angel in Black is a novel about relationships, in particular, marriage. I am grateful for the love and support of my wife, Barbara Collins—Nate Heller never had it so good.
MAX ALLAN COLLINS has earned an unprecedented nine Private Eye Writers of America Shamus nominations for his Nathan Heller historical thrillers, winning twice (True Detective, 1983, and Stolen Away, 1991).
A Mystery Writers of America Edgar nominee in both fiction and nonfiction categories, Collins has been hailed as “the Renaissance man of mystery fiction.” His credits include four suspense-novel series, film criticism, short fiction, songwriting, trading-card sets, and movie/TV tie-in novels, including such international bestsellers as In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, and Saving Private Ryan.
He scripted the internationally syndicated comic strip Dick Tracy from 1977 to 1993, is cocreator of the comic-book features Ms. Tree, Wild Dog, and Mike Danger, and has written the Batman comic book and newspaper strip, the mini-series Johnny Dynamite, and a graphic novel, Road to Perdition.
Working as an independent filmmaker in his native Iowa, he wrote and directed the suspense film Mommy, starring Patty McCormack, premiering on Lifetime in 1996; he performed the same duties for a 1997 sequel, Mommy’s Day. The recipient of a record five Iowa Motion Picture Awards for screenwriting, he also wrote The Expert, a 1995 HBO World Premiere film. Subsequently he wrote and directed an award-winning documentary, Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane, and in 2000 wrote and directed his third independent feature, Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market.
Collins lives in Muscatine, Iowa, with his wife, writer Barbara Collins, and their teenage son, Nathan.
Table of Contents
Cover
Copyright
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
I Owe Them One
Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 Page 36