“KILL–”
The wig in disarray on the bedspread.
My hands on the girl’s neck.
I let go and stood up slowly, palms out, no harm meant. The girl’s vocal cords stretched, but she couldn’t come up with a sound. She rubbed her throat where my hands had been, the imprint still bright red. I backed off to the far wall, unable to talk.
Mexican standoff.
The girl massaged her throat; something like ice came into her eyes. She got off the bed and put on her clothes facing me, the ice getting colder and deeper. It was a look I knew I couldn’t match, so I got out my ID buzzer and held up LAPD badge 1611 for her to see. She smiled; I tried to imitate her; she walked up to me and spat on the piece of tin. The door slammed, the pictures on the wall fluttered, my voice came back in racking fits, “I’ll get him for you, he won’t hurt you anymore, I’ll make it up to you, oh Betty Jesus fuck I will.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The airplane flew east, slicing through cloud banks and bright blue sky. My pockets were stuffed with cash from my all but liquidated bank account, Lieutenant Getchell had bought my line about a grievously ill high school pal in Boston and had granted me a week’s accumulated sick leave. A stack of notes from the Boston PD’s background check was on my lap–laboriously copied from the El Nido file. I already had an interrogation itinerary printed out, aided by the metropolitan Boston street atlas I’d purchased at the LA airport. When the plane landed, it would be Medford/Cambridge/Stoneham and Elizabeth Short’s past– the part that didn’t get smeared across page one.
I’d hit the master file yesterday afternoon, as soon as I quit shaking and was able to put how close I’d gotten to havoc out my brain–at least the front part of it. One quick skimming told me that the LA end of the investigation was dead, a second and third told me it was deader, a fourth convinced me that if I stayed in town I’d go batshit over Madeleine and Kay. I had to run, and if my vow to Elizabeth Short was to mean anything, it had to be in her direction. And if it was a wild-goose chase, then at least it was a trip to clean territory–where my badge and live women wouldn’t get me into trouble.
The revulsion on the hooker’s face wouldn’t leave me; I could still smell her cheap perfume and imagined her spitting indictments, the same words Kay had used earlier that day, only worse–because she knew what I was: a whore with a badge. Thinking about her was like scraping the bottom of my life on my knees–the only comfort in it the fact that I couldn’t go any lower–that I’d chew the muzzle of my .38 first.
The plane landed at 7:35; I was the first in line to disembark, notebook and satchel in hand. There was a car rental place in the terminal; I rented a Chevy coupe and headed into the Boston metropolis, anxious to take advantage of the hour or so of daylight left.
My itinerary included the addresses of Elizabeth’s mother, two of her sisters, her high school, a Harvard Square hash house where she slung plates in ’42 and the movie theater where she worked as a candy girl in ’39 and ’40. I decided on a loop through Boston to Cambridge, then Medford–Betty’s real stomping ground.
Boston, quaint and old, hit me like a blur. I followed street signs to the Charles River Bridge and crossed over into Cambridge: ritzy Georgian pads and streets packed with college kids. More signs led me to Harvard Square; there was stop one– Otto’s Hofbrau, a gingerbread structure spilling the aroma of cabbage and beer.
I parked in a meter space and walked in. The Hansel and Gretel motif extended to the whole place–carved wood booths, beer steins lining the walls, waitresses in dirndl skirts. I looked around for the boss, my eyes settling on a smock-clad older man standing by the cash register.
I walked over, and something kept me from badging him. “Excuse me. I’m a reporter, and I’m writing a story on Elizabeth Short. I understand that she worked here back in ’42, and I thought you could tell me a little about her then.”