Russ said, “It’s a deal.” Sally’s color rose; that and the anger in her eyes knocked a good ten years off her. “On Friday the tenth I got a call at this hotel where I was staying. A guy said he’s a friend of Charlie and he wants to buy me for this young guy he knows who’s cherry. Two-day session at the Biltmore, a C-note and a half. I say I ain’t seen Charlie in a while, how’d you get my number? The guy says ‘Never mind, meet me and the kid outside the Biltmore tomorrow at noon.’
“I’m broke, so I say okay, and I meet the two guys. Big fat peas in a pod packing hardware, I know it’s a father and son cop act. Money changes hands, sonny’s got halitosis but I’ve seen worse. He tells me daddy’s name and I get a little scared, but daddy amscrays and the kid’s so lame I know I can take care of him.”
Sally lit another cigarette. Russ passed me Personnel photos of the Vogel boys; I handed them to her. She said, “On the button,” burned their faces off with the tip of her Chesterfield, then got on with it.
“Vogel had a suite set up. Sonny and I tricked, and he tried to get me to play with these creepy sex gadgets he brought. I said, ‘Ixnay, ixnay, ixnay.’ He said he’ll give me an extra twenty if he can whip me soft for fun. I said, ‘When hell freezes.’ Then he–”
I broke off the story. “Did he talk about stag films? Lezzie stuff?”
Sally snorted. “He talked about baseball and his peter. He called it the Big Schnitzel, and you know what? It wasn’t.”
Russ said, “Go on, Miss Stinson.”
“Well, we screw all afternoon, and I listen to the kid prattle about the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Big Schnitzel until I am blue in the face. Then I say, ‘Let’s get dinner and some fresh air,’ and we go down to the lobby.
“And there’s Liz, sitting all by herself. She tells me she needs money, and since I can tell sonny likes her, I set up a trick within a trick. We go back up to the suite, and I take a breather while they go at it in the bedroom. Liz skips out about twelve-thirty, whispers ‘Little Schnitzel’ to me, and I never saw her again until I saw her picture all over the papers.”
I looked at Russ. He mouthed the word, “Dulange”; I nodded, picturing Betty Short on the loose until she met Frenchman Joe on the morning of the twelfth. The missing Dahlia days were coming together.
Russ said, “And you and John Vogel went back to your assignation then?”
Sally tossed the Personnel photos on the floor. “Yes.”
“Did he talk to you about Liz Short?”
“He said she loved the Big Schnitzel.”
“Did he say that they’d made plans to meet again?”
“No.”
“Did he mention his father and Liz in any context at all?”
“No.”
“What did he say about Liz?”
Sally hugged herself. “He said she liked to play his kind of games. I said, ‘What kind of games?’ Sonny said, ‘Master and Slave’ and ‘Cop and Whore.'”
I said, “Finish it up. Please.”
Sally eyed the door. “Two days after Liz got in all the papers, Fritz Vogel came by my hotel and told me sonny said he’d tricked with her. He told me he’d got my name from some police file, and he questioned me about my . . . procurors. I mentioned Charlie I, and Vogel remembered him from when he worked this hotshot Vice detail. Then he got spooked, ’cause he remembered Charlie had this confessing problem. He called some partner of his on my phone and told him to yank some Vice file of Charlie’s, then he made another call and went crazy, ’cause whoever he talked to told him Charlie was already in custody, that he’d already confessed to Liz.
“He beat me up then. He asked me all these questions, like whether Liz would mention tricking with a cop’s son to Charlie. I told him Charlie and Liz were just acquaintances, that he’d just sent her out a few times, months and months ago, but he kept hitting me anyway, and he told me he’d kill me if I told the police about his son and the Dahlia.”