The door banged open. Bud White stepped in, threw Fontaine against the wall.
Ed froze.
White pulled out his .38, broke the cylinder, dropped shells on the floor. Fontaine shook head to toe; Ed kept freezing. White snapped the cylinder shut, stuck the gun in Fontaine’s mouth. “One in six. Where’s the girl?”
Fontaine chewed steel; White squeezed the trigger twice: clicks, empty chambers. Fontaine slid down the wall; White pulled the gun back, held him up by his hair. “_Where’s the girl?_”
Ed kept freezing. White pulled the trigger–another little click. Fontaine, bug-eyed. “S-ss-sylvester F-fitch, one-o-nine and Avalon, gray corner house please don’ hurt me no-”
White ran out.
Fontaine passed out.
Riot sounds in the corridor–Ed tried to stand up, couldn’t get his legs.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A four-car cordon: two black-and-whites, two unmarkeds. Sirens to a half mile out; a coast up to the gray corner house.
Dudley Smith drove the lead prowler; Bud rode shotgun reloading his piece. A four-car flank: black-and-whites in the alley, Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle parked streetside–rifles on the gray house door. Bud said, “Boss, he’s mine.”
Dudley winked. “Grand, lad.”
Bud went in the back way–through the alley, a fence vault. On the rear porch: a screen door, inside hook and eye. He slipped the catch with his penknife, walked in on tiptoes.
Darkness, dim shapes: a washing machine, a blind-covered door–strips of light through the cracks.
Bud tried the door–unlocked—cased it open. A hallway: light bouncing from two side rooms. A rug to walk on; music to give him more cover. He tiptoed up to the first room, wheeled in.
A nude woman spread-eagled on a mattress–bound with neckties, a necktie in her mouth. Bud hit the next room loud.
A fat mulatto at a table–naked, wolfmg Kellogg’s Rice Krispies. He put down his spoon, raised his hands. “Nossir, don’t want no trouble.”
Bud shot him in the face, pulled a spare piece–bang bang from the coon’s line of fire. The man hit the floor dead spread–a prime entry wound oozing blood. Bud put the spare in his hand; the front door crashed in. He dumped Rice Krispies on the stiff, called an ambulance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jack watched Karen sleep, putting their fight behind him.
Newspaper pix caused it: the Big V and Cal Denton rousting three colored punks–suspects in L.A.’s “Crime of the Century.” Denton dragged Fontaine by his conk; Big V had neck holds on the other two. Karen said they reminded her of the Scottsboro Boys; Jack told her he saved their goddamned lives, but now that he knew they gang-raped a Mexican girl he wished he’d let Denton kill them outright. The argument deteriorated from there.
Karen slept curled away from him–covered tight like she thought he might hit her. Jack watched her while he dressed; his last two days hit him.
He was off the Nite Owl, back to Ad Vice. Ed Exley’s interrogations tentatively cleared the spooks–pending questioning of the woman they’d been abusing. Bud White played some Russian roulette–the three clammed up. So far, there was no way to know if they had time to leave the woman, drive to the Nite Owl, return to Darktown and gang-rape. Maybe Coates or Fontaine left Jones in charge of the girl and pulled the snuffs with other partners. No luck finding the shotguns; Coates’ purple Merc was still missing. No restaurant loot found at their hotel; the debris in the incinerator too far gone for blood-on-fabric analysis. The perfume on the jigs’ hands skunked a late paraffin test. Huge pressure at the Bureau: solve the fucking case fast.
The coroner was trying to ID the patron victims, working from dental abstracts and their physical stats cross-checked against missing persons bulletins, call-ins. Made: the cook/dishwasher, waitress, cash register girl; nothing yet on the three customers, the autopsies showed no sexual abuse on the women. Maybe Coates/Jones/Fontaine weren’t the triggers; Dudley Smith on the job–his men bracing armed robbers, nuthouse parolees, every known L.A. geek with a gun jacket. The news vendor who spotted the purple Merc across from the Nite Owl was requestioned; now he said it could have been a Ford or a Chevy. Ford and Chevy registrations being checked; now the park ranger who ID’d the spooks said he wasn’t sure. Ed Exley told Green and Parker the purple car might have been placed by the Nite Owl to put the onus on the jigs; Dudley pooh-poohed the theory–he said it was probably just a coincidence. A sure-thing case unraveling into a shitload of possibilities.