“Yes.”
“Who killed the six people at the Nite Owl Coffee Shop in April 1953?”
“I don’t know.”
“Does Pierce Patchett sell a variety of illegal items through a service known as Fleur-de-Lis?”
“I don’t know.”
A huge lie. Hink on her face: veins pulsing.
Exley: “Does Dr. Terry Lux perform plastic surgery on Patchett’s prostitutes in order to increase their resemblance to movie stars?”
Veins smoothing out. “Yes.”
“Is Patchett in fact a long-term procurer of expensive call girls?”
“Yes.”
“Did Patchett distribute expensive and artfully produced pornography during the spring of 1953?”
“I don’t know.”
White knuckles. Jack grabbed a notepad, wrote: “Patchett a chem whiz. L.B.’s lying & I think she’s on dope to counter pentothal. Get blood sample.”
“Miss Bracken, does–”
Jack passed the note. Exley scanned it, passed it to Pinker. Pinker fixed up a spike.
“Miss Bracken, does Patchett possess secret files stolen from Sid Hudgens?”
“I don’t kn–”
Pinker grabbed Lynn’s arm, fed the needle. Lynn jerked up; Exley grabbed her. Pinker pulled out the spike; Exley pinned Lynn to his desk. She thrashed and kicked–Fisk got behind her and cuffed her. Spitting now–she caught Exley in the face. Fisk wrestled her out to the hall.
Exley wiped his face–red, mottled. “I wasn’t sure myself. I thought she might have been confused.”
Jack handed him _Whisper_. “I knew how she should answer better than you. Captain, you should see this.”
Scary: that red face, those eyes. Exley read the piece, tore the rag in half. “White did this. You go up to San Bernardino and talk to Sue Lefferts’ mother. I’m going to break that whore.”
o o o
San Berdoo in an uproar: Exley breaking that whore as a slide show. “Hilda Lefferts” in the phone book, directions, the house: white shingles, a cinderblock add-on.
A granny type watering the lawn. Jack parked, taped up the rip job on _Whisper_. The old girl saw him and rabbited–a run for the door.
He ran over. She squealed, “Let my Susie rest in peace!”
Jack shoved _Whisper_ in her face. “An L.A. policeman talked to you, right? Big man about forty? You told him your daughter had a boyfriend who looked like Duke Cathcart right before the Nite Owl. He told her ‘get used to calling me “Duke.”‘ The policeman showed you mugshots and you couldn’t make the boyfriend. Is this true? You read this and tell me.”
She read, fast, squinting away sunlight. “But he said he was a policeman, not a private detective. Those were police-type pictures he showed me, and it wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t identify Susie’s beau. And I want to go on record as stating that Susie was a virgin when she died.”
“Ma’am, I’m sure she was–”
“And I want it to go on record that that policeman or whatever checked underneath the new wing on my house and found not a thing amiss. Young man, you’re a policeman, aren’t you?”
Jack shook his head–it felt sludgy. “Lady, what are you teffing me?”
“I’m telling you that Mr. Private Eye Policeman or whatever crawled around under my house two months or so ago, because I told him Susan Nancy’s beau did the same thing right after this ruckus they had with this other fellow right before that Nite Owl thing that you people keep tormenting me over, may Susie and the other victims rest in peace. All he found were rodents, not signs of foul play, so there.”
So there.
Granny pointed to a crawlspace flush with the ground–so there.
It fucking could not be. Bud White did not have the brains to let a card that strong sit.
Jack took a flashlight down under–Hilda Lefferts stood watching, so there. Dust, rot, mothball stink–light on dirt, rats, rat eyes glowing. Burlap, mothballs, gristle-caked bones, a skull with a hole between the eyes.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Ed watched Lynn Bracken through the two-way.
Kleckner was questioning her, a nice guy set-up for Mr. Bad Guy–himself. She’d been repentothaled; Ray Pinker was testing her blood. Three hours in a cell hadn’t broken her–she was still lying with style.
Ed turned the speaker up. Kleckner: “I’m not saying that I don’t believe you, I’m just saying my policeman’s experience has shown me that pimps usually hate women, so I don’t buy Patchett as such a philanthropist.”