o o o
Danny took Chester Brown’s old news and rolled with it to a pay phone. First he called City/County R&I, learned that Martin Mitchell Goines had no detainments on suspicion of B&E and that no blond youths were listed as accomplices on his two marijuana rousts; no blond youths with distinguishing burn marks were arrested for burglary or narcotics violations anywhere in the San Fernando Valley circa 1942–1945. The call was a fishing expedition that went nowhere.
A buzz to the West Hollywood Station switchboard got him a pouty conversation with Karen Hiltscher, who said that the four long shots from the sex offender files proved to be just that–a toss of their jail records revealed that none of the men had O+ blood. Administrators had called in from both San Quentin and Lexington State Hospital; they said that Marty Goines was an institutional loner, and his counselor at Lex stated that he was assigned a Fed case worker in LA–but hadn’t reported to him yet, and left no word about where he would be staying when he got to Los Angeles. Even though the lead was probably a big nothing, Danny told Karen to check the station’s burglary file for B&E men with jazz musician backgrounds and for mention of a burned-face burglar boy–a jazz aficionado. Rankling, the girl agreed; Danny hung up thinking he should raise the dreaded dinner ante from Mike Lyman’s to the Coconut Grove to keep her happy.
At just after 1:00 P.M. there was nothing he could do but pound familiar pavement one more time. Danny drove to darktown and widened his canvassing area, talking Goines and the gray-haired man to locals on the side streets adjoining Central Avenue, getting four solid hours of nothing; at dusk he drove back to West Hollywood, parked on Sunset and Doheny and walked the Strip, west to east, east to west, residential streets north into the hills, south to Santa Monica Boulevard, wondering the whole time why the killer picked Allegro Street as his place to dump the body. He wondered if the killer lived nearby, desecrated Goines’ corpse for that much more time and chose Allegro so he could gloat over the police and their efforts to nail him–the abandoned car a partial ruse to convince them he lived elsewhere. That theory played with led to others–subjective thinking–a Hans Maslick fundamental. Danny thought of the killer with his real car parked nearby for a quick getaway; the killer walking the Strip New Year’s morning, sheltered by swarms of revelers, depleted from his awful back-to-back explosions. And that was when it got scary.
In a famous essay, Maslick described a technique he had developed while undergoing analysis with Sigmund Freud. It was called Man Camera, and involved screening details from the perpetrator’s viewpoint. Actual camera angles and tricks were employed; the investigator’s eyes became a lens capable of zooming in and out, freezing close-ups, selecting background motifs to interpret crime-scene evidence in an aesthetic light. Danny was crossing Sunset and Horn when the idea struck him– transpose 3:45 New Year’s morning to now, himself as a sex slasher, walking home or to his car or to an all-night market to get calm again. But he didn’t see the other people strolling the Strip or lining up to get in the Mocambo or sitting at the counter at Jack’s Drive Inn. He went straight for Marty Goines’ eyes and guts and groin, an ultra close-up in Technicolor, his preautopsy prep magnified ten million times. A car swerved in front of him then; he twitched with heebie-jeebies, saw a kaleidoscope of Coleman the alto man, his look-alike from the movie with Karen, Tim. When he pointed his Man Camera at the passersby he was supposed to be viewing, they were all gargoyles, all wrong.
It took long moments for him to calm down, to get it right. He hadn’t eaten since yesterday; he’d postponed his bourbon ration in order to tread the Strip clear-headed. Hitting late-night clubs and restaurants with questions on a tall, gray-haired man New Year’s would be straightforward police work to keep him chilled.
He did it.
And got more nothing.
Two hours’ worth.
The same accounts at Cyrano’s, Dave’s Blue Room, Ciro’s, the Mocambo, La Rue, Coffee Bob’s, Sherry’s, Bruno’s Hideaway and the Movieland Diner: every single place was packed until dawn New Year’s. No one remembered a solitary, tall, gray-haired man.