Which meant that the killer bit and gnawed and swiveled and gnashed his teeth to get a purchase on his victim’s entrails, sucking the flesh upward to leave inflamed borders as he ravaged— Danny bolted out of his cubicle and back to the records alcove adjoining the squadroom. One battered cabinet held the division’s Vice and sex offender files—West Hollywood crime reports, complaint reports, arrest reports and trouble call sheets dating back to the station’s opening in ‘37. Some of the folders were filled alphabetically under “Arrestee”; some under “Complainant”; some numerically by “Address of Occurrence.” Some held mugshots, some didn’t; gaps in the “Arrestee” folders indicated that the arrested parties had bribed deputies into stealing reports that might prove embarrassing to them—and West Hollywood was only a small fraction of County territory.

Danny spent an hour scanning “Arrestee” reports, looking for tall, gray-haired, middle-aged men with violence in their MOs, knowing it was a long shot to keep him busy until Musician’s Local 3126 opened at 10:30. The slipshod paperwork—rife with misspellings, smudged carbons and near illiterate recountings of sex crimes—had him to the point of screaming at LASD incompetence; turgid accounts of toilet liaisons and high school boys bribed into back seat blow jobs kept his stomach churning with a bile that tasted like fried coffee grounds and last night’s six shots of bonded. The time got him four possibles—men aged forty-three to fifty-five, 6’1” to 6’4”, with a total of twenty-one sodomy convictions among them—most of the beefs stemming from fruit tank punkings—jailhouse coitus interruptus that resulted in additional County charges being filed. At 10:20, he took the folders up to the dispatcher’s office and Karen Hiltscher, sweaty, his clothes wilted before the day had hardly started.

Karen was working the switchboard, plugging in calls, a headset attached to her Veronica Lake hairdo. The girl was nineteen, bottle blonde and busty—a civilian LASD employee flagged for the next woman’s opening at the Sheriff’s Academy. Danny pegged her as bad cop stuff: the Department’s mandatory eighteen-month jail tour would probably send her off the deep end and into the arms of the first male cop who promised to take her away from dyke matrons, Mex gang putas and white trash mothers in for child abuse. The heartthrob of the West Hollywood Substation wouldn’t last two weeks as a policewoman.

Danny straightened his tie and smoothed his shirtfront, his beefcake prelude to begging favors. “Karen? You busy, sweetheart?”

The girl noticed him and took off her headset. She looked pouty; Danny wondered if he should lube her with another dinner date. “Hi, Deputy Upshaw.”

Danny placed the sex offender files up against the switchboard. “What happened to ‘Hi, Danny’?”

Karen lit a cigarette a la Veronica Lake and coughed—she only smoked when she was trying to vamp the cops working day watch. “Sergeant Norris heard me call Eddie Edwards ‘Eddie’ and said I should call him Deputy Edwards, that I shouldn’t be so familiar until I get rank.”

“You tell Norris I said you can call me Danny.”

Karen made a face. “Daniel Thomas Upshaw is a nice name. I told my mother, and she said it was a really nice name, too.”

“What else did you tell her about me?”

“That you’re really sweet and handsome, but you’re playing hard to get. What’s in those files?”

“Sex offender reports.”

“For that homicide you’re working?”

Danny nodded. “Sweet, did Lex and Quentin call back on my Marty Goines queries?”

Karen made another face—half vixen, half coquette. “I would have told you. Why did you give me those reports?”

Danny leaned over the switchboard and winked. “I was thinking of dinner at Mike Lyman’s once I get some work cleared up. Feel like giving me a hand?”

Karen Hiltscher tried to return the wink, but her false eyelash stuck to the ridge below her eye, and she had to fumble her cigarette into a ashtray and pull it free. Danny looked away, disgusted; Karen pouted, “What do you want on those reports?”

Danny stared at the muster room wall so Karen couldn’t read his face. “Call Records at the Hall of Justice Jail and get the blood types for all four men. If you get anything other than O+ for them, drop it. On the O+’s, call County Parole for their last known addresses, rap sheets and parole disposition reports. Got it?”

Karen said, “Got it.”

Danny turned around and looked at his cut-rate Veronica Lake, her left eyelash plastered to her plucked left eyebrow. “You’re a doll. Lyman’s when I clear this job.”

Musician’s Local 3126 was on Vine Street just north of Melrose, a tan Quonset hut sandwiched between a doughnut stand and a liquor store. Hepcat types were lounging around the front door, scarfing crullers and coffee, half pints and short dogs of muscatel.

Danny parked and walked in, a group of wine guzzlers scattering to let him through. The hut’s interior was dank: folding chairs aligned in uneven rows, cigarette butts dotting a chipped linoleum floor, pictures from Downbeat and Metronome scotch-taped to the walls—half white guys, half Negroes, like the management was trying to establish jazzbo parity. The left wall held a built-in counter, file cabinets in back of it, a haggard white woman standing guard. Danny walked over, badge and Marty Goines mugshot strip out.

The woman ignored the badge and squinted at the strip. “This guy play trombone?”

“That’s right. Martin Mitchell Goines. You sent him down to Bido Lito’s around Christmas.”

The woman squinted harder. “He’s got trombone lips. What did he do you for?”

Danny lied discreetly. “Parole violation.”

The slattern tapped the strip with a long red nail. “The same old same old. What can I do you for?”

Danny pointed to the filing cabinets. “His employment record, as far back as it goes.”

The woman about-faced, opened and shut drawers, leafed through folders, yanked one and gave the top page a quick scrutiny. Laying it down on the counter, she said, “A nowhere horn. From Squaresville.”

Danny opened the folder and read through it, picking up two gaps right away: ‘38 to ‘40—Goines’ County jolt for marijuana possession: ‘44 to ‘48—his Quentin time for the same offense. Since ‘48 the entries had been sporadic: occasional two-week engagements at Gardena pokerino lounges and his fatal gig at Bido Lito’s. Prior to Goines’ first jail sentence he got only very occasional work—Hollywood roadhouse stints in ‘36 and ‘37. It was the early ‘40s when Marty Goines was a trombone-playing fool.

Under his self-proclaimed banner, “Mad Marty Goines & His Horn of Plenty,” he’d gigged briefly with Stan Kenton; in 1941, he pulled a tour with Wild Willie Monroe. There were a whole stack of pages detailing pickup band duty in ‘42, ‘43 and early ‘44— one-night stands with six- and eight-man combos playing dives in the San Fernando Valley. Only the bandleaders and/or club managers who did the hiring were listed on the employment sheets—there was no mention of other musicians.

Danny closed the folder; the woman said, “Bubkis, am I right?”

“You’re right. Look, do you think any of these guys around here might have known—I mean know—Marty Goines?”

“I can ask.”

“Do it. Would you mind?”

The woman rolled her eyes up to heaven, drew a dollar sign in the air and pointed to her cleavage. Danny felt his hands clenching the edge of the counter and smelled last night’s liquor oozing out of his skin. He was about to come on strong when he remembered he was on City ground and his CO’s shit list. He fished in his pockets for cash, came up with a five and slapped it down. “Do it now.”

The slattern snapped up the bill and disappeared behind the filing cabinets. Danny saw her out on the sidewalk a few seconds later, talking to the bottle gang, then moving to the doughnut and coffee crowd. She zeroed in on a tall Negro guy holding a bass case, grabbed his arm and led him inside. Danny smelled stale sweat, leaves and mouthwash on the man, like the knee-length overcoat he was wearing was his permanent address. The woman said, “This is Chester Brown. He knows Marty Goines.”