It was late afternoon. Being free of Koenig felt like surviving cancer and the three interviews felt like an overdose of Betty/Beth Short and her low-rent last months on earth. I was tired and hungry, so I drove to the house for a sandwich and a nap—and walked straight into another installment of the Black Dahlia Show.
Kay and Lee were standing around the dining room table, examining crime scene photos shot at9th and Norton. There was Betty Short’s bashed head; Betty Short’s slashed breasts; Betty Short’s empty bottom half and Betty Short’s wide-open legs—all in glossy black and white. Kay was nervously smoking and shooting little glances at the pictures; Lee was eyeballing them, his face twitching in a half dozen directions, the Benzedrine man from outer space. Neither said a word to me; I just stood there playing straight man to the most celebrated stiff in LA history.
Finally Kay said, “Hi, Dwight,” and Lee stabbed a shaky finger at a close-up of the torso mutilations. “It’s not a random job, I know it. Vern Smith says some guy just picked her up on the street, took her someplace and tortured her, then dumped her in the lot. Horseshit. The guy who did this hated her for a reason and wanted the whole goddamn world to know. Jesus, two fucking days he cut her. Babe, you took pre-med classes, you think this guy had medical training? You know, like some kind of mad doctor type?”
Kay put out her cigarette and said, “Lee, Dwight’s here”; Lee wheeled around.
I said, “Partner—” and Lee tried to wink, smile and speak at the same time.
It came off as one awful grimace; when he got out, “Bucky, listen to Kay, I knew all the college I bought her would do me some good,” I had to look away.
Kay’s voice was soft, patient. “This kind of theorizing is just nonsense, but I’ll give you a theory if you’ll eat something to calm yourself down.”
“Theory on, teach.”
“Well, it’s just a guess, but maybe there were two killers, because the torture cuts are crude, while the bisection and the cut on the abdomen, which are obviously both postmortem, are neat and clean. Maybe there’s just one killer though, and after he killed the girl he calmed down, then bisected her and made the abdominal cut. And anybody could have removed the internal organs with the body in two parts. I think mad doctors are only in the movies. Sweetie, you have to calm down. You have to quit taking those pills and you have to eat. Listen to Dwight, he’ll tell you that.”
I looked at Lee. He said, “I’m too hopped-up to eat,” then stuck out his hand like I’d just walked in. “Hey, partner. You learn anything good about our girl today?”
I thought of telling him I learned she wasn’t worth a hundred full-time cops; I thought of spilling the dyke lead and Betty Short as a sad little floozy-liar to back the claim up. But Lee’s dope-juiced face made me say, “Nothing that’s worth you doing this to yourself. Nothing that’s worth seeing you useless when a bimbo you sent to Quentin is three days away from LA. Think of your little sister seeing you this way. Think of her—”
I stopped when tears started streaming from Lee’s outerspace eyes. Now he just stood there like the straight man to his own blood kin. Kay moved between us, a hand on each of our shoulders. I walked out before Lee began weeping for real.
University Station was another outpost of Black Dahlia mania.
A wager pool sign-up list was posted in the locker room. It was in the form of a crudely drawn crap table felt, featuring betting spaces labeled “Solved—pay 2 to 1,” “Random sex job—pay 4 to 1,” “Unsolved—even money,” “Boyfriend(s) pay 1 to 4,” and “Red’—no odds unless suspect captured.” The “House $ man” was listed as Sergeant Shiner, and so far the big action was on “boyfriend(s),” with a dozen officers signed up, all plopping down a sawbuck to win two-fifty.
The squadroom was more comic relief. Someone had hung the two halves of a cheap black dress from the doorway. Harry Sears, half gassed, was waltzing around the Negro cleaning Woman, introducing her as the real Black Dahlia, the best colored songbird since Billie Holliday. They were taking nips from Harry’s flask, the cleaning lady belting gospel numbers while officers trying to talk on the phone clamped hands to their free ears.
The straight business was frenzied, too. Men were working with DMV registrations and Huntington Park street directories, trying to put together a lead on the “Red” Betty Short left San Dago with; others were reading her love letters, and two officers were on the DMV police line getting info on the license numbers Lee had gotten last night while camped out at Junior Nash’s fuck pad. Millard and Loew were gone, so I dropped my questioning report and a note on the warrants I’d issued into a large tray marked FIELD DETECTIVE’S SUMMARIES. Then I took off before some ranking clown forced me to join the circus.
Being at loose ends made me think of Lee; thinking of Lee made me wish I was back at the squadroom, where at least there was a sense of humor about the dead girl. Then thinking of Lee made me mad, and I started thinking about Junior Nash, professional gunman more dangerous than fifty jealous boyfriend killers. Itchy, I went back to being a Warrants cop and prowled Leimert Park for him.
But there was no escape from the Black Dahlia.
Passing9th and Norton, I saw rubberneckers gawking around the vacant lot while ice cream and hotdog vendors dispensed chow; an old woman was peddling Betty Short portrait glossies in front of the bar at9th and Crenshaw, and I wondered if the charming Cleo Short had supplied the negatives for a substantial percentage cut. Pissed off, I pushed the buffoonery out of my mind and worked.
I spent five straight hours walking South Crenshaw and South Western, showing Nash’s mug shots and talking up his MO of statch rape on young Negro tail. All I got was “No” and the question “Why ain’t you after the guy who chopped up that nice Dahlia girl?” Toward mid-evening I surrendered myself to the notion that maybe Junior Nash really had blown LA. And still itchy, I rejoined the circus.
After a wolfed burger dinner, I called the night number at Administrative Vice and inquired about known lesbian gathering places. The clerk checked the Ad Vice intelligence files and came back with the names of three cocktail lounges, all on the same block of Ventura Boulevard out in the Valley: the Dutchess, the Swank Spot and La Verne’s Hideaway. I was about to hang up when he added that they were out of the LAPD’s jurisdiction in the unincorporated county territory patrolled by the sheriff’s department, and were probably operating under their sanction—for a price.
I didn’t think about jurisdictions on the ride out to the Valley. I thought about women with women. Not lez types, but soft girls with hard edges, like my string of fight giveaways. Going over the Cahuenga Pass, I tried to put pairs of them together. All I could come up with was their bodies and the smell of liniment and car upholstery—no faces. I used Betty/Beth and Linda/Lorna then, mug shots and high school ID combined with the bodies of the girls I remembered from my last pro fights. It got more and more graphic; then the 11000 block of Ventura Boulevard came into view and I got women-and-women for real.
The Swank Spot had a log cabin facade and double swinging doors like the saloons in western movies. The interior was narrow and poorly lit; it took long moments for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did I saw a score of women trying to stare me down.
Some of them were bull dykes in khaki shirts and GI issue trousers; some were soft girls in skirts and sweaters. One hefty dagger eyed me head to toe; the girl standing next to her, a svelte redhead, put her head on her shoulder and slinked an arm around her thick waist. Feeling myself start to sweat, I looked for the bar and someone with the air of top dog. I spotted a lounge area at the back of the room, bamboo chairs and a table covered with liquor bottles, all of it encircled by wall neon blinking purple, then yellow, then orange. I walked over, arm-draped couples separated to let me through, giving me just enough room to maneuver.