“Blanchard! Evans! I’m waiting!”
We walked into the Deputy D.A.’s office and found him smiling, which meant that he was either practicing for the press or getting ready to kiss some ass. Davis nudged me as we took seats, then said, “Hey, Mr. Loew. What did the leper say to the prostitute?”
Loew’s smile stayed glued on; it was obviously a big favor he wanted. “I don’t know, Sergeant. What?”
“Keep the tip. Ain’t that a mother dog?”
Loew put out his hail-fellow-well-met chuckle. “Yes, it’s so simple that it has a certain charm. Now, the reason I–”
“What do you call an elephant that moonlights as a prostitute?”
Loew’s smile spread into nasty little facial ties. “I . . . don’t. know. What?”
“A two-ton pickup that lays for peanuts. Woooo! Mother dog!”
The Ted Mack Amateur Hour had gone far enough. I said, “Did you want something, Boss?”
Davis laughed uproariously, like my question was the real punch line; Loew wiped the smile remnants off his face with a handkerchief. “Yes, I do. Did you know that there was a kidnapping in L.A. four days ago? Monday afternoon on the USC campus?”
Davis kiboshed his stage chuckles; snatch jobs were meat and potatoes to him–the kind of cases he loved to work. I said, “You’ve got Fred Allen’s interest. Keep going.”
Loew twirled his Phi Beta Kappa key as he spoke. “The victim’s name is Jane Mackenzie Viertel. She’s nineteen, a USC frosh. Her father is Redmond Viertel, an oil man with a big string of wells down on Signal Hill. Three men in USC letter jackets grabbed her Monday, about two o’clock. It’s rush week, so all the witnesses thought it was some sort of fraternity stunt. The men called the girl’s father late that night and made their demand: a hundred thousand dollars in fifties. Viertel got the money together, then got frightened and called the FBI. The kidnappers called back and set up a trade for the following day in an irrigation field up near Ventura.
“Two agents from the Ventura office set up a trap, one hiding, one posing as Viertel. The kidnappers showed up, then it all went haywire.”
Davis said, “Wooooo,” and cracked his knuckles; Loew grimaced at the sound and continued. “One of the kidnappers found the agent who was hiding. They were both afraid of disturbing the transaction with gunfire, so they had a little hand-tohand combat. The kidnapper beat the agent up with a shovel, then hacked off six of his fingers with the blade. The other agent sensed something was wrong and started to act fidgety. He grabbed one of the men and put a gun to his head, and the other man did the same to the girl. A real Mexican standoff, until the fed grabbed the money bag and a windstorm played hell with all that cash. The man with the girl grabbed the bag and took off, and the fed took his captive in. You see what I mean by haywire?”
I said, “So two snatchers and the girl are still at large?”
“Yes. The third man is in custody in Ventura, and the other agent is very angry.”
Davis laced his fingers together and cracked a total of eight knuckles. “Wooooo. These boys got names, Mr. Loew? And what’s this got to do with me and Lee?”
Now Loew’s smile was genuine–that of a fiend who loves his work. Consulting some rap sheets on his desk, he said, “The man in custody is Harwell Jackson Treadwell, white male, age thirtyone. He’s from Gila Bend, Oklahoma; your neck of the woods, Evans. He’s got three strong-arm convictions running back to 1934 and has two outstanding warrants here in L.A.–robbery charges filed in ’44 and ’45. Treadwell also has two charming brothers, Miller and Leroy. Both are registered sex offenders and do not seem to care much about the gender of their conquests. In fact, Leroy rather likes those of the four-footed persuasion. He was arrested for aggravated assault on an animal and served thirty days for it in ’42.”
Davis picked at his teeth with his tie clip. “Any old port in a storm. Miller and Leroy got the girl and part of the money?”