Ten hours from the script. “Maybe tonight.”
“Then fuck him for all those bad flights.”
“Chester, just tell me slowly.”
Yorkin stood up, worked the kinks from his legs. “You know what’s a bitch about Pierce? He’d say all these things around me when I was on a flight, like I was harmless ’cause I couldn’t remember nothing he said.”
Ed got out his notebook. “Try to tell it in order.”
Yorkin rubbed his throat, coughed. “Okay, Pierce had this old string of girls that he let go, this was around when we were moving them picture books. Some guy, I don’t know his name, he talked some of the girls and their johns into posing for them pictures. He made books out of them and went to Pierce to get money to move the books wide, you know, he promised Pierce a cut. Pierce, he liked the idea, but he didn’t want to expose his girls or their johns. He bought a bunch of the books off the guy to move through Fleur-de-Lis, you know, just a close distribution he called it, like a test market, he figured he could keep track of the stuff that way.”
Old lines crossing: the close distribution wasn’t that close, Ad Vice retrieved throwaway copies–Vincennes to the case. “Keep going, Chester.”
“Well, the guy who made the stuff, somehow he weaseled some info on the Englekling brothers out of Pierce, how they had this printing press place and was always bent for money. He found himself a front man, and the front man, he approached the brothers. You know, a plan to make the shit bulk and move it.”
The front man: Duke Cathcart. Zigzag lines from Cohen to the brothers, the brothers to Patchett, back on a sideswipe: Mickey at McNeil Island–then Goldman and Van Gelder. _Line the heroin to the pornography_. “Chester, how do you know all this?”
Yorkin laughed. “I’d be on a mainline flight and Pierce, he’d be on safe old white horse up the nose. He’d just jaw at me like I some kind of dog you talk to.”
“So Patchett and the smut are dead, right? All he’s interested in is pushing the heroin.”
“Nix. That guy who brought Pierce the eighteen pounds years ago? Well, he’s got a hard-on for the smut. He’s got lists of all these rich perverts and all these contacts in South America. Him and Pierce, they sat on the original pictures for years, then they had some new books made up who-knows-where. They got the shit in a warehouse someplace, I don’t know where, just waiting to go. I think Pierce was waiting for some kind of heat to die down.”
No new lines crossed. A phrase sunk in: _profit motive_. Pornography by itself was chancy; twenty pounds of heroin _developed_ meant millions. Yorkin said, “One more ‘case you get antsy on my deal. Pierce has got him a booby-trapped safe by his house. He’s got money, dope, all kinds of stuff stashed there.”
Ed kept thinking MONEY.
Yorkin: “Hey, talk to me! You want the new drop address? 8819 Linden, Long Beach. Exley, talk to me!”
“Steak in your cell, Chester. You’ve earned it.”
o o o
Fresh lines–Ed pulled Fisk’s and Kleckner’s summaries, added the Yorkin/Malvasi revelations.
Heroin and pornography lined. “The Guy” who made the smut books as Sid Hudgens’ killer, his front man Duke Cathcart–killed by Dean Van Gelder, ordered killed or merely approached by Davey Goldman–who learned of the smut proposal via the bug in Mickey Cohen’s cell. Cohen omnipresent–his stolen heroin ended up with both the Engleklings and “The Man” who brought Patchett the eighteen pounds of “H” for development, “The Man” who also loved pornography and convinced Patchett to manufacture new books from the 1953 prototypes. An instinct: Cohen was Mr. Patsy going back eight years, in and out of jail, a focal point who never dealt his own hand into the welter of cases. A line to a conclusion: the Nite Owl killings were semiprofessional at least, an attempt to take over the heroin and pornography rackets of Pierce Patchett. Cathcart, attempting to push the smut on his own, was the focus of the kiffings. Did he misrepresent his importance to the wrong people, or did the shooters deliberately take out Van Gelder, knowing or not knowing he was a Cathcart impersonator? Lines to organized crime intrigue, semipro at least, with all mob lines dead or incapacitated: Franz Englekling and sons–dead, Davey Goldman a vegetable, Mickey Cohen befuddled by the action going on around him. A question line: who clipped Pete and Bar Englekling? The terror line: Loren Atherton, 1934. How could it be?