Ed pushed him aside, walked through the house. His mother’s tapestries made him think of Lynn. His old room made him think of Bud and Jack. The house felt filthy–bad money bought and paid for. He walked downstairs, saw his father in the doorway.
“Edmund?”
“I’m arresting you for the murder of Paul Dieterling. I’ll be by in a few days to take you in.”
The man did not budge an inch. “Paul Dieterling was a psychopathic killer who richly deserved the punishment I gave him.”
“He was innocent. And it’s Murder One either way.” Not one flicker of remorse. Unbudging, unyielding, unflinching, intractable rectitude. “Edmund, you’re quite disturbed at this moment.”
Ed walked past him. His goodbye: “Goddamn you for the bad things you made me.”
o o o
Downtown to the Dining Car: a bright place full of nice people. Gallaudet at the bar, sipping a martini. “Bad news on Dudley. You don’t want to hear this.”
“It can’t be any worse than some other things I’ve heard today.”
“Yeah? Well, Dudley’s scot-free. Lana Turner’s daughter just knifed Johnny Stompanato. D.O. fucking A. Fisk was staked out across the street and saw the meat wagon and the Beverly Hills P.D. take Johnny away. No Dudley witness, no Dudley evidence. Grand, lad.”
Ed grabbed the martini, killed it. “Fuck Dudley sideways. I’ve got a shitload of Patchett’s money for a bankroll, and I’ll burn down that Irish cocksucker if it’s the last fucking thing I ever do. Lad.”
Gallaudet laughed. “May I make an observation, Inspector?”
“Sure.”
“You sound more like Bud White every day.”
CALENDAR
APRIL 1958
EXTRACT: L.A. _Times_, April 12:
GRAND JURY REVIEWS NITE OWL
EVIDENCE; DECLARES CASE CLOSED
Almost five years to the day after the crime, the City and County of Los Angeles bid official farewell to the Southland’s “Crime of the Century,” the infamous Nite Owl murder case.
On April 16, 1953, three gunmen entered the Nite Owl Coffee Shop on Hollywood Boulevard and shotgunned three employees and three patrons to death. Robbery was the assumed motive, and suspicion soon fell on three Negro youths, who were arrested on suspicion of the crime. The three: Raymond Coates, Tyrone Jones and Leroy Fontaine, escaped from jail and were killed resisting arrest. The three allegedly confessed to District Attorney Ellis Loew prior to their escape, and the case was assumed to have been solved.
Four years and ten months later, a San Quentin inmate, Otis John Shortell, came forward with information that led many to believe that the three youths were innocent of the Nite Owl killings. Shortell said that he was in the presence of Coates, Jones and Fontaine while they were engaged in the gang rape of a young woman, at the exact time of the coffee shop slaughter. Shortell’s testimony, verified by lie detector tests, created a public clamor to reopen the case.
The clamor was fanned by the February 25 murders of Peter and Baxter Englekling. The brothers, convicted narcotics traffickers, were material witnesses to the 1953 Nite Owl investigation and asserted at that time that the killings originated from a web of intrigue involving pornography. The Englekling killings remain unsolved. In the words of Mann County Sheriff’s Lieutenant Eugene Hatcher, “No leads at all. But we’re still trying.”
The Nite Owl case was reopened, and an involved pornography link was revealed. On March 27, wealthy investor Pierce Morehouse Patchett was shot and killed at his Brentwood home, and two days later police shot and killed Abraham Teitlebaum, 49, and Lee Peter Vachss, 44, his assumed slayers. Later that day the infamous “Blue Denim Massacre” occurred. Among the criminal dead: Burt Arthur “Deuce” Perkins, a nightclub singer with underworld ties. Teitlebaum, Vachss and Perkins were assumed to be the Nite Owl killers. LAPD Captain Dudley Smith elaborated.
“The Nite Owl killings derived from a grandly realized scheme to distribute heinous and souldestroying pornographic filth. Teitlebaum, Vachss and Perkins were attempting to kill Nite Owl patron Delbert ‘Duke’ Cathcart, an independent smut merchant, and take over Pierce Patchett’s smut racket in the process. Alas, it was really one Dean Van Gelder, a criminal impersonating Cathcart, who was there in Cathcart’s place. The Nite Owl murder case will go down as a testimony to the cruel caprices of fate, and I am glad that it has finally been resolved.”