Ed nodded. “I know that story. I.A. ran a personal on you when you passed the sergeant’s exam.”
“Oh, yeah? What you don’t know is that a few years ago my case broke. I thought my killer was Spade Cooley–his band was in all the hooker snuff cities on the DODs. I was wrong. Cooley ratted off the real killer–Burt Arthur Perkins.”
Vincennes spoke up. “I buy Deuce as a woman killer. He’s wrong to the core.”
White said, “You should know, ’cause Cooley said he was pals with Johnny Stompanato, and back around ’52 you told me you rousted him hanging out with Johnny Stomp, Kikey T. and Lee Vachss. Cooley told me Johnny and Deuce were tight, so I went looking for Johnny.”
Ed said, “All right, so you went to Stompanato.”
White lit a cigarette. “Nix. Now I tell you that Dudley Smith has been using me for strongarm jobs on the Mobster Squad going back years. You know how he talks? ‘Containment,’ that’s one of his favorite words. Contain crime, contain this, contain that. He’s been beating around the bush about offering me outside work, and the other night he said I could be useful keeping the ‘obstreperous Italian’ that’s afraid of me in line. Johnny Stomp’s afraid of me–he used to snitch for me and I used to muscle him good. You know how Dud’s this so-called gangland peacemaker? Well, the other night him, Carlisle and Breuning worked over this guy Lamar Hinton at the Victory, supposedly a Mobster Squad job. Bullshit–all Dudley asked him about was Nite Owl stuff–smut, Pierce Patchett.”
Ed, bug-eyed: this can’t be coming. “So you went to Stompanato looking for Perkins.”
“Right. I go to Kike’s deli, and Johnny’s there with Kikey. I ask Johnny about Deuce, and Johnny’s all hiked. Kikey’s hinked worse and they both lie and say Deuce is just some bumfuck acquaintance. They deny that Deuce is tight with Lee Vachss, when I know goddamn otherwise. Johnny uses the word ‘containment,’ which is not a Johnny-type word. Hink all over these guys, and I drop that I’m on the Nite Owl reopening and they almost shit, Deuce for the Nite Owl, ho, ho. I leave, go to a pay phone and have P.C. Bell put a fifteen-minute trace on all calls out of the deli. Two calls–one to Dot Rothstein, Dudley’s good pal and Kikey’s cousin, one to Dudley’s house.”
Vincennes said, “Holy fucking shit.” Ed jerked a hand to his gun–wrong–White was a cop. “Give me corroboration.”
White flicked his smoke out the window. “Crim 101. The niggers didn’t do it, so Dud and his gang planted a car by the Nite Owl. I went to the DMV and checked April ’53 registrations, Caucasians this time. Dot Rothstein bought a ’48 Merc, primer gray, on April 10. A phony name, a phony address, but the stupid bitch used the real digits on her own phone number.”
Vincennes looked shell-shocked. Ed reeled in a line so he wouldn’t scream DUDLEY. “Right before the Nite Owl I was working late at Hollywood Station. Spade Cooley was playing a retirement party downstairs, and I saw Burt Perkins roaming the halls. Try this theory: Mal Lunceford, ex–LAPD patrolman. Call him the forgotten Nite Owl victim, and remember he worked Hollywood Division for most of his time on the Department. Now, did one of the shooters have a grudge against Lunceford? Was Perkins removing records of it that night at the station? Did the conspirators know that Lunceford was a Nite Owl regular and plan their Cathcart or Cathcart-impersonator hit so that they could clip him too?”
White answered. “Dudley put me on the Lunceford background check, probably because he thought I’d fuck it up. I checked for old Lunceford F.I.’s and couldn’t find a goddamn one. I buy that theory.”
DUDLEY past screaming–Ed held it down. Vincennes: “Fisk told me about Patchett, how he got the Cohen-Dragna summit heroin, how him and this unnamed bad guy who’s obviously Dudley were getting ready to push it. Now, I know for a fact that Dud bodyguarded that deal, and there was this rumor floating around years ago–that Dud led this posse that killed this guy Buzz Meeks who heisted the summit. Fisk said that Patchett got most of the white horse that got clouted, some from the Englekling brothers and their father, some from this bad guy who’s obviously Dudley. Okay, so what I’m thinking is-could Lunceford have been in on the posse? Was that when Dudley got the dope?”