Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The THE BIG NOWHERE

CHAPTER TWELVE

The phone wouldn’t quit ringing.

First it was Leotis Dineen, calling to tell him that Art Aragon knocked out Lupe Pimentel in the second round, raising his debt to twenty-one hundred even, with a vig payment due tomorrow. Next was the real estate man up in Ventura County. His glad tidings: the top offer for Buzz’s dry-rotted, shadeless, rock-laden, non-irrigable, poorly located and generally misanthropic farmland was fourteen dollars an acre, the offerer, the pastor of First Pentecostal Divine Eminence Church, who wanted to turn it into a cemetery for the sanctified pets of members of his congregation. Buzz said twenty per, minimum; ten minutes later the phone rang again. No salutation, just, “I didn’t tell Mickey, because you’re not worth going to the gas chamber for.” He suggested a romantic drink somewhere; Audrey Anders replied, “Fuck you.”

Skating on the stupidest stupid move of his life made him feel cocky, despite Dineen’s implied warning: my money or your kneecaps. Buzz thought of cash shakedowns–him against fences and hotel crawlers he’d leaned on as a cop, then nixed the notion–he’d gotten older and flabbier, while they’d probably gotten meaner and better armed. There was just himself against 50-50 Mal Considine, who held a mean stare but otherwise looked pretty withered. He picked up the phone and dialed his boss’s private number at the Bel-Air Hotel.

“Yes? Who is this?”

“Me. Howard, I want in on that grand jury turkey shoot. That job still open?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Danny was trying hard to stay under the speed limit, hauling into Hollywood–City jurisdiction–with the speedometer needle straddling forty. A few minutes ago a Lexington State administrator had called the station; a letter from Marty Goines, postmarked four days before, had just arrived at the hospital. It was addressed to a patient there and contained nothing but innocuous stuff about jazz–and the word that Goines had moved into an above-garage flop at 2307 North Tamarind. It was a scalding hot lead; if the address had been County ground, he’d have grabbed a black-and-white and rolled red lights and siren.

2307 was a half mile north of the Boulevard, in the middle of a long block of wood-framed Tudors. Danny parked curbside and saw that the cold afternoon had kept the locals indoors–no one was out taking the air. He grabbed his evidence kit, trotted up to the door of the front house and rang the bell.

Ten seconds, no answer. Danny walked back to the garage, saw a shacklike built-on atop it and took rickety steps up to the door. He tapped the pane three times–silence–got out his pocket knife and stuck it into the lock/door jamb juncture. A few seconds of prying, and snap! Danny scanned for witnesses, saw none, pushed the door open and closed it behind him.

The smell hit him first: metallic, acidic. Danny slow-motioned his evidence kit to the floor, drew his gun and fingered the wall for a light switch. His thumb flicked one on abruptly, before he’d clamped down his nerves to look. He saw a one-room dive turned slaughterhouse.

Blood on the walls. Huge, unmistakable streaks, exemplary textbook spit marks: the killer expelling big mouthfuls, spritzing the red out through his teeth, drawing little patterns on cheap floral wallpaper. Four whole walls of it–dips and curlicues and one design that looked like an elaborate letter W.

Side 56

Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The Blood matting a threadbare throw rug, blood in large caked pools on the linoleum floor, blood saturating a light-colored sofa oozing stuffing, blood splashed across a stack of newspapers next to a table holding a hot plate, saucepan and single can of soup. Much too much blood to come from one ravaged human being.

Danny hyperventilated; he saw two doorless doorways off the left wall.

He holstered his .45, jammed his hands in his pockets so as not to leave prints and checked the closest one out.

The bathroom.

White walls covered with vertical and horizontal blood lines, perfectly straight, intersecting at right angles, the killer getting the knack. A bathtub, the sides and bottom caked with a pinkish-brown matter that looked like blood mixed with soapsuds. A stack of men’s clothing–shirts, trousers, a herringbone sports coat–folded atop the toilet seat.

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