The lezbo recoiled; I half expected her to go for a bottle and brain me with it. Eyes on the bar, she said, “The kid used to come in. Maybe two, three months ago. But I’ve never seen the Dahlia, and I think the kid liked boys. I mean, she just cadged drinks off the sisters, that was it.”
Sidelong, I saw a woman just starting to sit down at the bar change her mind, grab her purse and make for the door, as if spooked by my words with the barmaid. The baby spotlight caught her face; I caught a fleeting resemblance to Elizabeth Short.
I gathered up my pictures, counted to ten and pursued the woman, getting to my car just as I saw her unlock the door of a snow-white Packard coupe parked a couple of spaces up from me. When she pulled out, I counted to five, then followed.
The rolling surveillance led me over Ventura Boulevard to the Cahuenga Pass, then down into Hollywood. Late-night traffic was scarce, so I let the Packard stay several car lengths in front of me as it headed south on Highland, out of Hollywood, into the Hancock Park District. At 4th Street, the woman turned left; within seconds we were in the heart of Hancock Park–an area Wilshire Division cops called “Pheasant Under Glass Acres.”
The Packard turned the corner at Muirfield Road and stopped in front of a huge Tudor mansion fronted by a lawn the size of a football field. I continued on, my headlights picking up the car’s rear plate: CAL RQ 765. Checking my rearview mirror, I saw the woman locking the driver’s side door; even from a distance her trim sharkskin figure stood out.
I took 3rd Street out of Hancock Park. At Western I saw a pay phone, got out and called the DMV night line, requesting a vehicle make and criminal record check on white Packard coupe CAL RQ 765. The operator kept me waiting for close to five minutes, then returned with his read-out:
Madeleine Cathcart Sprague, white female, DOB 11/14/25, LA, 482 South Muirfield Road; no wants, no warrants, no criminal record.
Driving home, the shots of booze wore off. I started wondering if Madeleine Cathcart Sprague had anything at all to do with Betty/Beth and Lorna/Linda, or whether she was just a rich lezzie with a taste for low life. Steering with one hand, I took out my Betty Short mugs, superimposed the Sprague girl’s face over them and came away with a common, everyday resemblance. Then I saw myself peeling off her sharkskin suit and knew I didn’t care one way or the other.
CHAPTER TEN
I played the radio on the ride to University Station the next morning. The Dexter Gordon quartet was bebopping me into good spirits when “Billie’s Bounce” quit bouncing, replaced by a feverish voice: “We interrupt our regular broadcast to bring you a bulletin. A major suspect in the investigation into the slaying of Elizabeth Short, the raven-haired party girl known as the Black Dahlia, has been captured! Previously known to the authorities only as ‘Red,’ the man has now been identified as Robert ‘Red’ Manley, age twenty-five, a Huntington Park hardware salesman. Manley was captured this morning at the South Gate home of a friend and is now being held and questioned at the Hollenbeck police station in East Los Angeles. In an exclusive handout to KGFJ, Deputy DA Ellis Loew, ace legal beagle working on the case as civilian-police liaison, said: ‘Red Manley is a hot suspect. We’ve got him pegged as the man who drove Betty Short up from San Diego on January ninth, six days before her torture-ravaged body was found in a vacant lot in Leimert Park. This looks like the big break we’ve all been hoping and praying for. God has answered our prayers!”
Ellis Loew’s sentiments were replaced by a commercial for Preparation H, guaranteed to reduce the painful swelling of hemorrhoids or double your money back. I flipped the radio off and changed direction, heading for Hollenback Station.
The street in front of it was blocked off with sawhorse detour signs; patrolmen were holding reporters at bay. I parked in the alley behind the station and entered through the back door to the holding tank. Drunks jabbered in cells on the misdemeanor side of the catwalk; hardcase types glowered from the felony row. It was a jailhouse full house, but there were no jailers anywhere. Opening a connecting door into the station proper, I saw why.