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?”
Side 38
Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The
“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.”
o
o
o
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.