Augie Duarte, the handsome Mex who’d walked out the Gordean Agency door two nights ago, was supine on a stainless steel tray. He was blood-free; bite wounds extruding intestinal tubes covered his stomach; bite marks ran up his torso in a pattern free of overlaps. His cheeks were slashed down to the gums and jawbone and his penis had been cut off, inserted into the deepest of the cuts and hooked around so that the head extended out his mouth, teeth clamped on the foreskin, rigor mortis holding the obscenity intact. Danny blurted, “Oh God fuck no”; Layman said, “The rain drained the body and kept the cuts fresh. I found a tooth chip in one of them and made a wet cast of it. It’s unmistakably animal, and I had an attendant run it down to a forensic orthodontist at the Natural History Museum. It’s being examined now.”
Danny tore his eyes off the corpse; he walked out to the dock looking for Jack Shortell, gagging on the stench of formaldehyde, his lungs heaving for fresh air. A group of Mexicans with a bereaved-family look was standing by the loading ramp staring in; a pachuco type stared at him extra hard. Danny strained to see Shortell, then felt a hand on his shoulder.
It was Norton Layman. He said, “I just talked to the man at the Museum, and he identified my specimen. The killer wears wolverine teeth.”
Danny saw a blood W on cheap wallpaper. He saw W’s in black and white, W’s burned into Felix Gordean’s face, W’s all over the rosary-clutching wetbacks huddled together grieving. He saw W’s until Jack Shortell walked up the dock and grabbed his arm and he heard himself say, “Get Breuning. I don’t trust myself on it.”
Side 138
Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The Then he saw plain blood.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A stakeout for his own son.
Mal sat on the steps outside Division 32, Los Angeles Civil Court. He was flanked by lawyers smoking; keeping his back to them kept light conversation away while he scanned for Stefan, Celeste and her shyster. When he saw them, it would be a quick men’s room confab: don’t believe the bad things you hear about me; when my man gets ugly about your mother, try not to listen.
Ten of the hour; no Stefan, Celeste and lawyer. Mal heard an animated burst of talk behind him.
“You know Charlie Hartshorn?”
“Sure. A nice guy, if a bit of a bleeding heart. He worked the Sleepy Lagoon defense for free.”
“Well, he’s dead. Suicide. Hung himself at his house last night.
Beautiful house, right off Wilshire and Rimpau. It was on the radio. I went to a party at that house once.”
“Poor Charlie. What a goddamn shame.”
Mal turned around; the two men were gone. He remembered Meeks telling him Reynolds Loftis was connected to Hartshorn via a queer-bar roust, but he didn’t mention the man being associated with the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee at all. There was no mention of Hartshorn in any of the psychiatric or other grand jury files, and Meeks had also said that the lawyer had turned up–as a non-suspect–in Danny Upshaw’s homicide investigation.
The Hartshorn coincidence simmered; Mal wondered how Meeks would take his suicide–he said he’d gut-shot the man with his queerness. Looking streetside, he saw Celeste, Stefan and a young guy with a briefcase get out of a cab; his boy glanced up, lit up and took off running.
Mal met him halfway down the steps, scooped him up laughing and pinwheeled him upside down and over. Stefan squealed; Celeste and briefcase double-timed; Mal whipped his son over his shoulder, quick-marched inside and turned hard into the men’s room. Out of breath, he put Stefan down and said,
“Your dad’s a captain,” dug in his pockets and pulled out one of the insignia Buzz gave him. “You’re a captain, too. Remember that. Remember that if your mother’s lawyer starts talking me down.”
Stefan squeezed the silver bars; Mal saw that he had that bewildered fat-kid look he got when Celeste stuffed him with starchy Czech food. “How have you been? How’s your mother been treating you?”