The squadroom was more comic relief. Someone had hung the two halves of a cheap black dress from the doorway. Harry Sears, half gassed, was waltzing around the Negro cleaning Woman, introducing her as the real Black Dahlia, the best colored songbird since Billie Holliday. They were taking nips from Harry’s flask, the cleaning lady belting gospel numbers while officers trying to talk on the phone clamped hands to their free ears.
The straight business was frenzied, too. Men were working with DMV registrations and Huntington Park street directories, trying to put together a lead on the “Red” Betty Short left San Dago with; others were reading her love letters, and two officers were on the DMV police line getting info on the license numbers Lee had gotten last night while camped out at Junior Nash’s fuck pad. Millard and Loew were gone, so I dropped my questioning report and a note on the warrants I’d issued into a large tray marked FIELD DETECTIVE’S SUMMARIES. Then I took off before some ranking clown forced me to join the circus.
Being at loose ends made me think of Lee; thinking of Lee made me wish I was back at the squadroom, where at least there was a sense of humor about the dead girl. Then thinking of Lee made me mad, and I started thinking about Junior Nash, professional gunman more dangerous than fifty jealous boyfriend killers. Itchy, I went back to being a Warrants cop and prowled Leimert Park for him.
But there was no escape from the Black Dahlia.
Passing 39th and Norton, I saw rubberneckers gawking around the vacant lot while ice cream and hotdog vendors dispensed chow; an old woman was peddling Betty Short portrait glossies in front of the bar at 39th and Crenshaw, and I wondered if the charming Cleo Short had supplied the negatives for a substantial percentage cut. Pissed off, I pushed the buffoonery out of my mind and _worked_.
I spent five straight hours walking South Crenshaw and South Western, showing Nash’s mug shots and talking up his MO of statch rape on young Negro tail. All I got was “No” and the question “Why ain’t you after the guy who chopped up that nice Dahlia girl?” Toward mid-evening I surrendered myself to the notion that maybe Junior Nash really had blown LA. And still itchy, I rejoined the circus.
After a wolfed burger dinner, I called the night number at Administrative Vice and inquired about known lesbian gathering places. The clerk checked the Ad Vice intelligence files and came back with the names of three cocktail lounges, all on the same block of Ventura Boulevard out in the Valley: the Dutchess, the Swank Spot and La Verne’s Hideaway. I was about to hang up when he added that they were out of the LAPD’s jurisdiction in the unincorporated county territory patrolled by the sheriff’s department, and were probably operating under their sanction–for a price.
I didn’t think about jurisdictions on the ride out to the Valley. I thought about women with women. Not lez types, but soft girls with hard edges, like my string of fight giveaways. Going over the Cahuenga Pass, I tried to put pairs of them together. All I could come up with was their bodies and the smell of liniment and car upholstery–no faces. I used Betty/Beth and Linda/Lorna then, mug shots and high school ID combined with the bodies of the girls I remembered from my last pro fights. It got more and more graphic; then the 11000 block of Ventura Boulevard came into view and I got women-and-women for real.
The Swank Spot had a log cabin facade and double swinging doors like the saloons in western movies. The interior was narrow and poorly lit; it took long moments for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did I saw a score of women trying to stare me down.
Some of them were bull dykes in khaki shirts and GI issue trousers; some were soft girls in skirts and sweaters. One hefty dagger eyed me head to toe; the girl standing next to her, a svelte redhead, put her head on her shoulder and slinked an arm around her thick waist. Feeling myself start to sweat, I looked for the bar and someone with the air of top dog. I spotted a lounge area at the back of the room, bamboo chairs and a table covered with liquor bottles, all of it encircled by wall neon blinking purple, then yellow, then orange. I walked over, arm-draped couples separated to let me through, giving me just enough room to maneuver.