“This guy Ch-chester I used to see at M-m-muscle Beach.”
“Chester who?”
“I don’t know.”
Hinton: bunching, flexing–Jack figured hot seconds and he’d snap. “What else does Patchett push?”
“L-lots of b-boys and girls.”
“What about through Fleur-de-Lis?”
“W-whatever you d-desire.”
“Not the sales pitch, what specifically?”
Pissed more than scared. “Boys, girls, liquor, dope, picture books, bondage stuff!”
“Easy, now. Who else makes the deliveries?”
“Me and Chester. He works days. I don’t like–”
“Where’s Chester live?”
“I don’t know!”
“_Easy, now_. Lots of nice people with lots of money use Fleur-de-Lis, right?”
“R-right.”
The records in the truck. “Spade Cooley? Is he a customer?”
“N-no, I just get free albums ’cause I party with this guy Burt Perkins.”
“You fucking would know him. The names of some customers. Go.”
Hinton dug into the pole. Jack flashed: the monster turning, six .38s not enough. “Are you working tonight?”
“Y-yes.”
“The address.”
“No . . . please.”
Jack frisked: wallet, change, butch wax, a key on a fob. He held the key up; Hinton bobbed his head barn bam–blood on the pole.
“The address and I’m gone.”
Barn barn–blood on the monster’s forehead. “5261B Cheramoya.”
Jack dropped the pocket trash. “You don’t show up tonight. You call your parole officer and tell him you helped me, you tell him you want to be picked up on a violation, you have him put you up someplace. You’re clean on this, and if I get to Patchett I’ll make like one of the smut people snitched. _And if you clean that place out you are Chino-fucking-bound_.”
“B-but you _t-told_ me.”
Jack ran to his car, gunned it. Hinton tore at the pole barehanded.
o o o
Pierce Patchett, fifty-something, “some kind of legit businessman.”
Jack found a pay phone, called R&I, the DMV. A make: Pierce Morehouse Patchett, DOB 6/30/02, Grosse Pointe, Michigan. No criminal record, 1184 Gretna Green, Brentwood. Three minor traffic violations since 1931.
Not much. Sid Hudgens next–fuck his smut hink. A busy signal, a buzz to Morty Bendish at the _Mirror_.
“City Room, Bendish.”
“Morty, it’s Jack Vincennes.”
“The Big V! Jack, when are you going back to the Narco Squad? I need some good dope stories.”
Morty wanted shtick. “As soon as I get squeaky-clean Russ Millard off my case and make a case for him. And _you_ can help.”
“Keep talking, I’m all ears.”
“Pierce Patchett. Ring a bell?”
Bendish whistled. “What’s this about?”
“I can’t tell you yet. But if it breaks his way, you’ve got the exclusive.”
“You’d feed me before you feed Sid?”
“Yeah. Now I’m all ears.”
Another whistle. “There’s not much, but what there is is choice. Patchett’s a big handsome guy, maybe fifty, but he looks thirty-eight. He goes back maybe twenty-five years in L.A. He’s some kind of judo or jujitsu expert, he’s either a chemist by trade or he was a chemistry major in college. He’s worth a boatload of greenbacks, and I know he lends money to businessman types at thirty percent interest and a cut of their biz, I know he’s bankrolled a lot of movies under the table. Interesting, huh? Now try this on: he’s rumored to be some kind of periodic heroin sniffer, rumored to dry out at Terry Lux’s clinic. All in all, he’s what you might wanta call a powerful behind-the-scenes strange-o.”
Terry Lux–plastic surgeon to the stars. Sanitarium boss: booze, dope cures, abortions, detoxification heroin available–the cops looked the other way, Terry treated L.A. politicos free. “Morry, that’s all you’ve got?”
“Ain’t that enough? Look, what I don’t have, Sid might. Call him, but remember I got the exclusive.”
Jack hung up, called Sid Hudgens. Sid answered: “_Hush-Hush_. Off the record and on the QT.”
“It’s Vincennes.”
“Jackie! You got some good Nite Owl scoop for the Sidster?”
“No, but I’ll keep an ear down.”
“Narco skinny maybe? I want to put out an all-hophead issue–shvartze jazz musicians and movie stars, maybe tie it in to the Commies, this Rosenberg thing has got the public running hot with a thermometer up their ass. You like it?”
“It’s cute. Sid, have you heard of a man named Pierce Patchett?”
Silence–seconds ticking off long. Sid, too Sid-like. “Jackie, all I know on the man is that he is very wealthy and what I like to call ‘Twilight.’ He ain’t queer, he ain’t Red, he don’t know anybody I can use in my quest for prime sinuendo. Where’d you hear about him?”