I peeled into the alley behind Ciro’s. There’s Joi Lansing.
She’s dressed in a Girl Scout getup. She’s dumping red roses in a trash bin.
She blinked into my headlights. I doused them. She said, “Jack, Jesus Christ.”
I got out of the car. A flashlight flashed me. Joi said, “Jesus, Dick Contino.”
I didn’t know what to say. I hummed three bars from “Lady of Spain.”
Joi laughed. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but at least I know thatJack didn’t send you.”
I leaned on the trash bin. Joi flipped off her flashlight. A late moon lit the alley low and languorous.
“How do you know Jack didn’t send me?”
“Sergeant Joe Friday and you?”
I laughed. “You haven’t asked me what I’m doing here.”
Joi lit a cigarette and looked me over. “You’re wearing a tuxedo, and you look like you’ve been crawling in dirt. Your shirt’s unbuttoned, and it looks like you’ve shaved your chest. I couldn’t begin to guess, and as long as Jack didn’t send you, I don’t care.”
I laughed. I coughed away a cloud ofJoi’s smoke and tossed her a teaser.
“I heard you and Jack broke up. I think I read it in Hush-Hush.”
Ba-boom, bam, bingo:
Joi went bug-eyed and choked on a chestful of Chesterfield.
I let her cough up some composure. She came back strong.
“Over’s over. Jack didn’t want to get married and have kids, and I did. I wouldn’t be playing den mother to a bunch of Mexican brats in Boyle Heights if I didn’t. Jesus, I mean, look at this outfit.”
I tossed Teaser #2. “Politics had nothing to do with it?”
Joi dropped her cigarette and stepped on it. “I’m an actress, a chorus dancer, and an occasional singer. I’ve got about as much interest in politics as you do.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“Try me.”
Try this:
“You went to L. Trent Woodard last year. You told him you had inside information on an LAPD plot to put out propaganda on TV I’m betting Jack Webb was in on it, and I’m betting you had second thoughts and just dropped the whole thing, and I’m betting Woodard can’t put any more of the plot together.”
Joi said, “Jesus, Mr. Accordion.” She said it breathless and very Hush-Hushed.
I said, “I nailed it?”
Joi lit a cigarette and flicked ash off her Girl Scout sash. “I got ahold of some Dragnet scripts that Jack and Chief Parker wrote. They had Joe Friday running speeches on how the LAPD needed to round up all the bums in Los Angeles and deport them to Cuba permanently, and how they needed to establish debtors’ prisons and work farms to take all the deadbeats off the streets. I told Jack, ‘You and Bill Parker can’t possibly be serious about proposing this sick shit,’ and Jack said, ‘It isn’t sick, and we’ll shoot those scripts when the time is right.”
Puzzle pieces popped into place. I said, “Does Jack know you approached Woodard? Does he know that this sick shit convinced you to leave him?”
Joi shook her head. “No. He thinks the marriage issue queered things, and wait, it gets sicker.”
I sniffed Jack Webb’s red roses. Joi shut the trash bin and smothered the smell.
“I overheard Jack and Parker talking a few times. Their plan was to shoot the scripts and air them on Dragnet, to soften the public up. Then they’d get up a public petition to deport the bums and build the debtors’ prisons and work farms. Now, dig this. Jack and Freddy Otash own a big construction firm under the table, and Parker’s tight with that Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista. The plan was for the LAPD to sell the bums to Batista, so he could use them as slaves in his sugarcane fields, and Jack’s construction firm would get the contract to build the debtors’ prisons and work farms, and once they were built, the inmates would build the sets for all the movies Jack wanted to make. The only thing holding all this back was seed money. They needed a few quick million to get things going.”
More pieces popped into place. I said, “The LAPD’s tangling over money with the Sheriff’s right now. Parker wants to get his hands on that seed dough.”