REOPENING
L.A. _Herald-Express_, March 17:
PARKER TO THE PRESS: NITE OWL
A DEAD ISSUE
L.A. _Daily News_, March 19:
CITIZENS DEMAND JUSTICE–PICKETS
STALK THE LAPD
L.A. _Herald-Express_, March 20:
PARKER/LOEW IN HOT SEAT
GOVERNOR KNIGHT: NITE OWL
A “POWDER KEG”
L.A. _Mirror-News_, March 20:
THE WAGES OF DEATH–
EXCLUSIVE PICS OF EXLEY/SOTO
LOVE NEST
L.A. _Examiner_, March 20:
POLICE SWITCHBOARDS
FLOODED: CITIZENS VOICE
NITE OWL OPINIONS
L.A. _Times_, March 20:
PARKER BACKS EXLEY AND HOLDS FIRM:
“NO NITE OWL REOPENING”
L.A. _Daily News_, March 20:
JUSTICE MUST PREVAIL!
DEMAND POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY!
REOPEN THE NITE OWL CASE NOW!
PART FOUR
Destination: Morgue
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The phone rang: odds on the press 20 to 1. Ed picked up anyway. “Yes?”
“Bill Parker, Ed.”
“Sir, how are you? And thanks for that quote in the _Times_.”
“I meant it, son. We’re going to tough this thing out and let it pass. How’s Inez taking it? The publicity, I mean.”
“My father said she’s staying at Ray Dieterling’s place in Laguna. And we broke it off a few months ago. It just wasn’t working.”
“I’m sorry. Inez is a plucky girl, though. Compared to what she’s been through, this thing should be cake.”
Ed rubbed his eyes. “I’m not so sure it’ll pass.”
“I think it will. The Gaitsville Police won’t cooperate on the Englekling homicides and that Negro at Quentin has nil value as a witness. His polygraph seems valid, but his attorney is a grandstanding shyster only interested in getting his client out of–”
“Sir, all that aside, I don’t think the men I killed did the Nite Owl and–”
“Don’t interrupt me and don’t tell me you’re so suicidally naive as to think reopening the case will do one whit of good. Now, I’m waiting for it to pass and the attorney general up in Sacramento is waiting for it to pass. Bad publicity, petitions for justice and the like _always_ peak out and pass.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
Parker sighed. “If the A.G. orders a state-run special investigation, I’ll file an LAPD injunction against him and preempt him with an investigation of our own. I have Ellis Loew’s full support on that strategy–but it will pass.”
Ed said, “I’m not so sure I want it to.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Mobster Squad duty: room 6, the Victory Motel. Bud, Mike Breuning, a Frisco boy cuffed to the hot seat–Joe Sifakis, three loanshark falls, snatched off a train at Union Station. Breuning worked the hose; Bud watched.
Fourteen hundred on the dresser–a police charity donation. A get-out-of-town pitch in high gear–dental work coming up. Bud checked his watch–4:20–Dudley was late. Sifakis screamed.
Bud walked into the bathroom. Four obscene walls: sex ditties, some dated. ’53 entries–he thought Nite Owl straight off. Scary: the Nite Owl big-time news, Dud wanted to talk to him bad. He turned on the sink–cover the screams. He tested _his_ Nite Owl string, found it watertight.
Nobody knew he leaked his story to _Whisper_–if the high brass knew he would have heard–and Cathcart’s stiff was still under the house. Nobody knew he tipped the Gaitsville Sheriff’s to the Englekling connection to the Nite Owl. Lucky breaks: the brothers dead, the spook up at Quentin–probably a legit alibi. He was clean on the evidence he suppressed in ’53–if Dudley had an inkling he was holding stuff back it probably tied to his fix on the Kathy snuff. Dud was the Nite Owl supervisor, he’d want the brouhaha to pass–a reopening would make him look like a supporting player chump–second banana to hero chump Ed Exley. Parker was trying to keep a reopening kiboshed, call the odds against it 5 to 1, 5 to 1 that Exley would come out smelling–
Sifakis screamed–the door shook.
Bud doused his head in the sink. A scrawl by the mirror: Meg Greunwitz fucks good–AX-74022. Girls’ names on the walls; last week the L.A. Sheriff’s bagged a dead hooker, add it to his list: Lynette Ellen Kendrick, age 21, DOD 3/17/58. Beaten, ring lacerations, three-hole rape–the county cops wouldn’t give him the time of–
Sifakis started babbling. The bathroom got too hot to take.
Bud walked out. Sifakis, snitch-frenzied. “. . . and I know things, I _hear_ things. Like, dig, with the Mick out it’s open season. Things was on this weird slowdown while he was inside, but these shooter teams took out these guys that was running his franchises, then these maverick guys, three triggers bang bang bang, they 86’d Mickey’s men and these guys trying to crash his loanouts. Everybody used to respect Dud S. as a trucemaker, but now he don’t do a damn thing. You want a prostie roust? Huh? Huh? You want a good tip on a . –