by James Ellroy
Tap, tap, tap----a pinky ring on a bottle of Schlitz. "Nothing you'd be interested in. I got things contained, so don't you worry. What are _you_ doing?"
"I'm on the Nite Owl reopening."
Johnny tap-tapped too hard--his bottle almost tipped. Kikey, working on pale. "You don't think Deuce Perkins . .
Stompanato: "Come on, Abe. Deuce for the Nite Owl, what a howl."
Bud said, "I gotta piss," walked to the bathroom. He closed the door, counted to ten, opened it a crack. The shitbirds spieling full blast--Abe wiping his face with a napkin. Let the pieces fit in.
Hink: Deuce for the Nite Owl.
Jack V. spotted Vachss, Stomp, Kikey and Perkins at a party--maybe a year pre--Nite Owl.
A Mobster Squad roust, a snitch off Joe Sifakis: _three-man_ trigger gangs clipping Cohen franchise hoods, maverick hoods. The Victory Motel buzzing hard.
Bud grabbed the piece, dropped it, grabbed it.
"Contain."
Dudley's favorite big word--"containment."
His motel pitch: "containing," "profit dispensation," "obstreperous Italian you've dealt with in the past"--Johnny Stomp an old snitch who hated him. Dud hot for his "full disclosure"; the Lamar Hinton roust--a shakedown for Nite Owl information, Dot Rothstein there, Kikey Teitlebaum's cousin--
Bud washed his face, walked back calm. Stomp said, "Have a good one?"
"Yeah, and you're right. I want Deuce for some old warrants, but I got a hunch on the Nite Owl."
Calm Johnny: "Oh, yeah?"
Calm Kikey: "Some new shvoogies, right? All I know's what I read in the papers."
Bud: "Maybe, but if it wasn't some new niggers, then that purple car by the Nite Owl was a plant. Take care, guys. If you see Deuce, tell him to call me at the Bureau."
Calm Johnny tap-tap-tapped.
Calm Kikey coughed, popped sweat.
Calm Bud, not so calm: out to the car, around the corner to a pay phone. The P.C. Bell police number, one long fucking wait.
"Uh, yes, who's requesting?"
"Sergeant White, LAPD. It's a trace job."
"For when, Sergeant?"
"_For now_. It's a homicide priority, private lines and pay phones at a restaurant. _It's now_."
"One second, please."
Transfer click-click-clicks--a new woman. "Sergeant, what exactly do you need?"
No Calm Bud. "Abe's Noshery at Pico and Veteran. All calls out on all phones for the next fifteen goddamn minutes. Lady, don't hump me on this."
"We can't initiate actual traces, Officer."
"Just who the calls are to, goddamn it."
"Well, if it _is_ a homicide priority. What is your number now?"
Bud read off the phone. "GRanite 48112."
Harumph. "Fifteen minutes then. And next time allow us more operating leeway."
Bud hung up--Dudley Dudley Dudley Dudley Dudley--hard time cut off by _brrrinnngg_. He grabbed the phone, fumbled it, cradled it. "Yeah?"
"Two calls. One to DUnkirk 32758--a Miss Dot Rothstein holds that number. The second to AXminster 46811, the residence of a Mr. Dudley L. Smith."
Bud dropped the receiver. The clerk babbled from someplace safe and calm that he'd never see again--no Lynn, no safety in a badge.
Captain Dudley Liam Smith for the Nite Owl.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Jack Vincennes confessed.
He confessed to knocking up a girl at the St. Anatole's Orphan Home, to killing Mr. and Mrs. Harold J. Scoggins. He confessed to tank-jobbing Bill McPherson with a hot little nigger girl, to planting dope on Charlie Parker, to shaking down hopheads for _Hush-Hush_ Magazine. He tried to jerk out of bed and raise his hands to form the Stations of the Cross. He babbled something like hub rachmones, Mickey, and bump bump bump bump the cute train. He confessed to beating up junkies, to running bag for Ellis Loew. He begged his wife to forgive him for fucking whores who looked like women in dirty picture books. He confessed that he loved dope and was unfit to love Jesus.
Karen Vincennes stood by weeping: she couldn't listen, she had to listen. Ed tried to shoo her out--she wouldn't let him. He called the Bureau from outside Arrowhead; Fisk gave him the word: Pierce Patchett shot and killed last night, his mansion torched, burned to the ground. Fireman had discovered Vincennes in the backyard--smoke inhalation, rips in his bulletproof vest. They got him to Central Receiving, a doctor took a blood sample. The results: Trashcan on a test flight, a heroin/antipsychotic drug compound. He'd live, he'd be fine--when the OD in his system flushed out.
A nurse swabbed Vincennes' face; Karen fretted Kleenex. Ed checked Fisk's memo: "Inez Soto called. No info on R.D. $ dealings. R.D. suspicious of queries?? ?--she was cryptic--D.W."
Ed crumpled it, tossed it. Vincennes went in barefoot--while he was shacked with Lynn. Somebody killed Patchett, left them both to burn.
Burned like Exley father and son--Bud White holding the torch.
He couldn't look at Karen.
"Captain, I've got something."
Fisk in the hallway. Ed walked over, led him away from the door. "What is it?"
"Nort Layman completed the autopsy. Patchett's cause of death was five .30-30 slugs fired from two different rifles. Ray Pinker ran ballistics tests and came up with a match to an old Riverside County bulletin. May of '55, unsolved with no leads, I checked. Two men gunned down outside a tavern. It looked like a gangland job."
All coming down to the heroin. "That's all you've got?"
"No. Bud White tore up a dope den in Chinatown and beat three Chinamen half to death. He came in asking questions, badged them and went crazy. One of them ID'd his personnel photo. Thad Green called l.A. on it, and I caught the squeal. Pickup order, sir? I know you want him and Chief Green said it's your call."
Ed almost laughed. "No, no pickup order."
"Sir?"
"I said no, so cut it off there. And you and Kleckner do this for me. Contact Miller Stanton, Max Pelts, Timmy Valburn and Billy Dieterling. Have them come to my office tonight at 8:00 for questioning. Tell them I'm the investigating officer, and if they want no publicity, then bring no lawyers. And get me Homicide's file on the old Loren Atherton case. Seal it, Sergeant. I don't want you to look at it."
"Sir..."
Ed turned away. Karen in the doorway, dry-eyed. "Do you think Jack did those things?"
"Yes."
"He musm't know that I know. Will you promise not to tell him?"
Ed nodded, looked in the room. The Big V begged for communion.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
A file room at the main DMV-- boxes stacked shoulder-high. A confirmation search--a riff on Johnny and Kikey's last hink. Riff in, out, back, around--he was so high he could think it through and prowl registration records at the same time.
Make Stomp, Teitlebaum and Lee Vachss for the Nite Owl triggers; make them the shooter gang bumping upstart mobsters and Cohen franchise holders. Deuce Perkins was part of the gang--the others didn't know he beat hookers to death--they'd consider it amateur shit, wouldn't tolerate it. Dudley was the leader--he couldn't be anything else. All his job offer stuff was a try at recruiting him; the Lamar Hinton roust was Dud frosting out loose ends on the Patchett side of things--make Patchett and Smith some kind of K.A.'s, make Hinton dead, Breuning and Carlisle part of the gang. "Contain," "Contained," "Containment," "Profit Dispensation." Call it Dudley trying to control the L.A. rackets--and pin the Nite Owl on a new bunch of jigs.
Bud tore through boxes: auto registrations, early April '53. Schoolboy thinkm he figured the car by the Nite Owl was a plant; the shotguns in Coates' car, the shells in Griffith Park, both plants--the killers followed the case, got lucky on the Merc, found some boogies to take the heat. Wrong--LAPD conspirators were in on the job. They read crime reports, got hipped to some joyriding spooks firing shotguns--lay the onus on them-- they figured the arresting officers would kill them, case closed.
So they got themselves a car that matched the crime report description. They made sure
it was spotted near the Nite Owl. They wouldn't steal a car--cops wouldn't risk a late night roust. They didn't buy a purple car--they bought a different colored one and painted it.
Bud kept working. No logic to the file mess: Mercs, Chevies, Caddies, L.A., Sacramento, Frisco, whoever registered the car would've used a phony name. One luck-out: the registers' race, DOB and physical stats listed on cards attached to the initial purchase carbons. Facts to eliminate against, like he learned in school: '48--'50 Mercs, Southern California purchasers, stats that matched to Dudley, Stomp, Vachss, Teitlebaum, Perkins, Carlisle and Breuning. Hours of digging, a pile inches thick--then a strange one that felt warm.
1948 primer-gray Merc coupe, purchased April 10, 1953. Register: Margaret Louise March, W.F., DOB 7/23/18, brown and brown, 5 '9", 215 lbs. Register's address: 1804 East Oxford, Los Angeles. Phone number: NOrmandie 32758.
Warm to scalding--Fat Dot Rothstein's specs. Oxford ran north-south--not east-west. The call to Dot from the Noshery-- DU-32758--the dumb dyke tacked her own number onto a different exchange.
And bought herself some purple paint.
Bud whooped, punched the air, kicked boxes. Two cases made in one day--if anyone believed him. All dressed up and no one to kill. Circumstantial Dudley evidence--no hard proof. Dudley too well placed to fall, nobody who cared like he did.
Except Exley.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
A stakeout on the house he grew up in. He couldn't go in and question his father; he couldn't ask for his help. He couldn't tell the man he confided secrets to a woman--and gave a brutal enemy the means to patricide. He brought the Atherton file with him--there was nothing in it he didn't already know, the man who made the smut and killed Sid Hudgens was intrinsic to the Atherton murders, maybe the killer himself--truths Preston Exley would dispute out of pride. He couldn't go in; he couldn't stop thinking. He counted memories instead.
His father bought the house for his mother; it was really just a sop to his pride--the Exleys flee the middle class grandly. They never had Christmas lights on the lawn--Preston Exley said it was lowlife. Thomas fell off balconies--and had the style not to cry. His father threw him a "back from the war" party--only the mayor, the City Council and LAPD men who could further his career were invited.
Art De Spain walked to his car, looking frail, one arm bandaged. Ed watched him drive off, his father's man, his Dutch uncle. Memory: Art said he wasn't cut out to be a detective.
The house loomed big and cold. Ed drove back to the hospital.
o o o
Trash was up, giving Fisk a statement. Ed watched from the doorway.
". . . and I was playing off Exley's script. I don't remember exactly what I said, but Patchett pulled out a gun and shot me. That shit piece Exley gave me jammed, and Patchett slammed me with a hypo. Then I heard shots and 'No, Abe, no, Lee, no.' And now you know as much as I do."
From the hall, loud: "Abe Teitlebaum, Johnny Stompanato and Lee Vachss. They did the Nite Owl. Throw in Deuce Perkins as part of the gang and get ready to shit when I tell you who else I got."
Ed smelled his sweat, his breath. White pushed him inside-- firm, not too rough. "Put our stuff aside for a minute. Did you hear what I said?"
The names registered: gang muscle, a not-bad line to HEROIN. 'White looked insane--disheveled, a zealot. Fisk said, "Sir, do you want me to . .
Ed moved his shoulders--White dropped his hands right on cue. "Two minutes, _Captain_."
Scared--_be a captain_. "Duane, go get yourself some coffee. White, get my interest before I ream you for the Chinamen."
Fisk walked out. Ed said, "Jack, you stay. White, you keep my interest."
White closed the door. Disheveled: soiled clothes, inksmudged hands. "Good I heard the radio on you, Trashcan. I didn't know you were here, I mighta tried to do it all myself."
Vincennes, on the bed looking queasy. "Do _what?_ Abe, Lee. You make Teitlebaum and Vachss for Patchett, spell it out."
Ed: "You look Crim 101, White. Make like you're writing an occurrence chronology."
White smiled--pure kamikaze. "I been tracking a string of hooker killings for years. It started with this girl Kathy Janeway. She got snuffed back in '53, right around the Nite Owl. She was Duke Cathcart's girlfriend."
Ed nodded. "I know that story. I.A. ran a personal on you when you passed the sergeant's exam."
"Oh, yeah? What you don't know is that a few years ago my case broke. I thought my killer was Spade Cooley--his band was in all the hooker snuff cities on the DODs. I was wrong. Cooley ratted off the real killer--Burt Arthur Perkins."
Vincennes spoke up. "I buy Deuce as a woman killer. He's wrong to the core."
White said, "You should know, 'cause Cooley said he was pals with Johnny Stompanato, and back around '52 you told me you rousted him hanging out with Johnny Stomp, Kikey T. and Lee Vachss. Cooley told me Johnny and Deuce were tight, so I went looking for Johnny."
Ed said, "All right, so you went to Stompanato."
White lit a cigarette. "Nix. Now I tell you that Dudley Smith has been using me for strongarm jobs on the Mobster Squad going back years. You know how he talks? 'Containment,' that's one of his favorite words. Contain crime, contain this, contain that. He's been beating around the bush about offering me outside work, and the other night he said I could be useful keeping the 'obstreperous Italian' that's afraid of me in line. Johnny Stomp's afraid of me--he used to snitch for me and I used to muscle him good. You know how Dud's this so-called gangland peacemaker? Well, the other night him, Carlisle and Breuning worked over this guy Lamar Hinton at the Victory, supposedly a Mobster Squad job. Bullshit--all Dudley asked him about was Nite Owl stuff--smut, Pierce Patchett."
Ed, bug-eyed: this can't be coming. "So you went to Stompanato looking for Perkins."
"Right. I go to Kike's deli, and Johnny's there with Kikey. I ask Johnny about Deuce, and Johnny's all hiked. Kikey's hinked worse and they both lie and say Deuce is just some bumfuck acquaintance. They deny that Deuce is tight with Lee Vachss, when I know goddamn otherwise. Johnny uses the word 'containment,' which is not a Johnny-type word. Hink all over these guys, and I drop that I'm on the Nite Owl reopening and they almost shit, Deuce for the Nite Owl, ho, ho. I leave, go to a pay phone and have P.C. Bell put a fifteen-minute trace on all calls out of the deli. Two calls--one to Dot Rothstein, Dudley's good pal and Kikey's cousin, one to Dudley's house."
Vincennes said, "Holy fucking shit." Ed jerked a hand to his gun--wrong--White was a cop. "Give me corroboration."
White flicked his smoke out the window. "Crim 101. The niggers didn't do it, so Dud and his gang planted a car by the Nite Owl. I went to the DMV and checked April '53 registrations, Caucasians this time. Dot Rothstein bought a '48 Merc, primer gray, on April 10. A phony name, a phony address, but the stupid bitch used the real digits on her own phone number."
Vincennes looked shell-shocked. Ed reeled in a line so he wouldn't scream DUDLEY. "Right before the Nite Owl I was working late at Hollywood Station. Spade Cooley was playing a retirement party downstairs, and I saw Burt Perkins roaming the halls. Try this theory: Mal Lunceford, ex--LAPD patrolman. Call him the forgotten Nite Owl victim, and remember he worked Hollywood Division for most of his time on the Department. Now, did one of the shooters have a grudge against Lunceford? Was Perkins removing records of it that night at the station? Did the conspirators know that Lunceford was a Nite Owl regular and plan their Cathcart or Cathcart-impersonator hit so that they could clip him too?"
White answered. "Dudley put me on the Lunceford background check, probably because he thought I'd fuck it up. I checked for old Lunceford F.I.'s and couldn't find a goddamn one. I buy that theory."
DUDLEY past screaming--Ed held it down. Vincennes: "Fisk told me about Patchett, how he got the Cohen-Dragna summit heroin, how him and this unnamed bad guy who's obviously Dudley were getting ready to push it. Now, I know for a fact that Dud bodyguarded that deal, and there was this rumor floating around years ago--that Dud
led this posse that killed this guy Buzz Meeks who heisted the summit. Fisk said that Patchett got most of the white horse that got clouted, some from the Englekling brothers and their father, some from this bad guy who's obviously Dudley. Okay, so what I'm thinking is-could Lunceford have been in on the posse? Was that when Dudley got the dope?"
White shook his head--new stuff for him. "You fill me in on that, because I got a lead that ties in. Dud was talking up his containment shit, and he said something about keeping the niggers sedated, which sounds like heroin to me."
Ed said, "Call that done for now. Jack, run with the Goldman-- Van Gelder angle. Put it together with our new leads."
Trash stood up, steadied himself on the bed rail. "Okay, let's say Davey G. was in with Dudley, Stompanato, Kikey, Vachss and Dot. How any of them could trust a psycho like Deuce I don't know, but fuck it. Anyway, they're all conspiring against Mickey C. White, you don't know this, but Goldman had a bug in Mickey's cell at McNeil. I'm betting Dudley and his friends were in with Davey from the beginning, but fuck it, however it happened, Davey heard the Englekling brothers approach Mickey with Duke Cathcart's smut deal."
Ed raised a hand. "Chester Yorkin said that the man who brought Patchett the bulk of the heroin--let's assume it's Dudley--had a hard-on for smut and quote 'contacts in South America and pervert mailing lists.' I always wondered about the profit on pornography, and now Dudley's connection makes it seem more feasible."
Vincennes said, "Let me keep going. Dud worked with the OSS in Paraguay after the war and he ran Ad Vice back in '39 or so, so I know he's got those contacts, but sit on that. Right now we've got Goldman going to Smith and Stompanato with the word on the smut plan. Everybody, especially Dud, likes the idea, and they decide to crash the racket. On his own, a double cross, I don't know, Davey sends Dean Van Gelder, his prison visitor, to talk to Cathcart. Van Gelder decides to crash Duke's prostie racket and the smut gig on his own. He'd been seen by Davey face-to-face, but the outside prison men had never seen him. He figured he looked like Cathcart, so he could impersonate Cathcart and cut his own deal. By the time the impersonation was found out he'd be too far in good with the outside men for Davey to care what he'd done. So Van Gelder moved to San Berdoo to be close to the Englekling brothers. He fell in with Sue Lefferts and snuffed Duke. He knew the names of at least one of the outside men, called them at a pay phone from the Lefferts' house and asked for a meet. He went in tough and suggested a public place, he figured Sue could sit nearby and he'd be safe. One of the outside guys put Lunceford together with the Nite Owl and said let's meet there. Dud or one of his guys approached Patchett right _before_ the Nite Owl and told him to get his loose ends tidied. Patchett didn't know exactly what was gonna happen, but he had Chris Bergeron and her kid and Bobby Inge blow town just as I was starting in on the smut gig for Ad Vice."