The sessions ran late–two widowers, a young man without a woman. Art had a bug on multiple murders–he had his father rehash the Loren Atherton case repeatedly: horror snatches, witness testimony. Preston obliged with psychological theories, grudgingly–he wanted his glory case to stay sealed off, complete, in his mind. Art’s old cases were scrutinized–and he reaped the efforts of three fine minds: confessions straight across, 95 percent convictions. But so far his drive to crack criminal knowledge hadn’t been challenged–much less sated.
Ed walked down to the parking lot, sleep coming on. “Quack, quack,” behind him–hands turned him around.
A man in a kid’s mask–Danny Duck. A left-right knocked off his glasses; a kidney shot put him down. Kicks to the ribs drove him into a ball.
Ed curled hard, caught kicks in the face. A flashbulb popped; two men walked away: one quacking, one laughing. Easy IDs: Dick Stensland’s bray, Bud White’s football limp. Ed spat blood, swore payback.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Russ Millard addressed Ad Vice squad 4–the topic pornography.
“Picture-book smut, gentlemen. There’s been a bunch of it found at collateral crime scenes lately: narcotics, bookmaking and prostitution collars. Normally this kind of stuff is made in Mexico, so it’s not our jurisdiction. Normally it’s an organized crime sideline, because the big mobs have the money to manufacture it and the connections to get it distributed. But Jack Dragna’s been deported, Mickey Cohen’s in prison and probably too puritanical anyway, and Mo Jahelka’s foundering on his own. Stag pix aren’t Jack Whalen’s style–he’s a bookie looking to get his hands on a Vegas casino. And the stuff that’s surfaced is too high quality for the L.A. area print mills: Newton Street Vice rousted them, they’re clean, they just don’t have the facilities to make magazines of this quality. But the backdrops in the pictures indicate L.A. venue: you can see what looks like the Hollywood Hills out some windows, and the furnishings in a lot of the places look like your typical cheap Los Angeles apartments. So our job is to track this filth to its source and arrest whoever made it, posed for it and distributed it.”
Jack groaned: the Great Jerk-off Book Caper of 1953. The other guys looked hot to glom the smut, maybe fuel up their wives. Millard popped a Digitalis. “Newton Street dicks questioned everyone at the collateral rousts, and they all denied possessing the stuff. Nobody at the print mills knows where it was made. The mags have been shown around the Bureau and our station vice squads, and we’ve got zero IDs on the posers. So, gentlemen, look yourself.”
Henderson and Kifka had their hands out; Stathis looked ready to drool. Millard passed the smut over. “Vincennes, is there someplace you’d rather be?”
“Yeah, Captain. Narcotics Division.”
“Oh? Anyplace else?”
“Maybe working whores with squad two.”
“Make a major case, Sergeant. I’d love to sign you out of here.”
Oohs, ahhs, cackles, oo-la-las; three men shook their heads no. Jack grabbed the books.
Seven mags, high-quality glossy paper, plain black covers. Sixteen pages apiece: photos in color, black and white. Two books ripped in half, explicit pictures: men and women, men and men, girls and girls. Insertion close-ups: straight, queer, dykes with dildoes. The Hollywood sign out windows; Murphy-bed fuck shots, cheap pads: stucco-swirled walls, the hot plate on a table that came with every bachelor flop in L.A. Par for the stag-book course–but the posers weren’t glassy-eyed hopheads, they were good-looking, well-built young kids–nude, costumed: Elizabethan garb, Jap kimonos. Jack put the ripped mags back together for a bingo: Bobby Inge–a male prostitute he’d popped for reefer–blowing a guy in a whalebone corset.
Millard said, “Anybody familiar, Vincennes?”
An angle. “Nothing, Cap. But where did you get these torn-up jobs?”
“They were found in a trash bin behind an apartment house in Beverly Hills. The manager, an old woman named Loretta Downey, found them and called the Beverly Hills P.D. They called us.”
“You got an address on the building?”
Millard checked an evidence form. “9849 Charleville. Why?”
“I just thought I’d take that part of the job. I’ve got good connections in Beverly Hills.”
“Well, they do call you ‘Trashcan.’ All right, follow up in Beverly Hills. Henderson, you and Kifka try to locate the arrestees in the crime reports and try to find out again where they got the stuff–I’ll get you carbons in a minute. Tell them there’ll be no additional charges filed if they talk. Stathis, take that filth by the costume supply companies and see if you can get a matchup to their inventory, then fmd out who rented the costumes the . . . performers were wearing. Let’s try it this way first–if we have to go through mugshots for IDs we’ll lose a goddamn week. Dismissed, gentlemen. Roll, Vincennes. And don’t get sidetracked–this is Ad Vice, not Narco.”