Russ Millard met him just outside the door and led him away from the general crowd of officers, in my direction. Eavesdropping on their whispered conversation, I picked up the gist of it: they both thought Manley was clean, but wanted to shoot him with Pentothal and give him a polygraph test to make sure. Looking back through the one-way, I saw Lee and another plainsclothesman handcuffing Red, easing him out of the interrogation room. Lee was giving the man the kid gloves treatment he usually reserved for children, talking softly to him, one hand on his shoulder. The crowd broke up when the three of them disappeared into the holding tank. Harry Sears went back into the cubicle and began cleaning up his mess; Millard turned to me. “Good report yesterday, Bleichert.”
I said, “Thanks,” knowing I was being sized up. We locked eyes. I asked, “What’s next?”
“You tell me.”
“First you send me back to Warrants, right?”
“Wrong, but keep going.”
“Okay, then we canvass around the Biltmore and try to reconstruct Betty Short’s movements from the tenth, when Red dropped her off, to the twelfth or thirteenth, when she got snatched. We blanket the area and collate the FIs and hope to hell the legit leads don’t get lost with all phonies this publicity is getting us.”
“Keep going.”
“We know Betty was movie-struck and promiscuous, and that she bragged about being in a movie last November, so my bet is that she wouldn’t turn down a roll on the casting couch. I think we should query producers and casting directors, see what we get.”
Millard smiled. “I called Buzz Meeks this morning. He’s an ex-cop, works as head of security at Hughes Aircraft. He’s the Department’s unofficial liaison to the studios, and he’ll be asking around. You’re doing well, Bucky. Run with the ball.”
I wavered–wanting to impress a senior officer; wanting to roust the rich lezzie myself. Millard’s pump job came on as condescending, bones of praise to keep a young cop from balking at his unwanted assignment. Madeleine Cathcart Sprague framed in my mind, I said, “All I know is that you should keep an eye on Loew and his boys. I didn’t put it in my report, but Betty Short sold it outright when she needed money bad enough, and Loew’s been trying to keep it kiboshed. I think he’ll sit on anything that makes her look like an outright tramp. The more sympathy the public has for the girl, the more juice he gets as prosecuting attorney if this mess ever gets to court.”
Millard laughed. “Bright penny, are you calling your own boss an evidence suppressor?”
I thought of myself as the same thing. “Yeah, and a shitbrained, grandstanding son of bitch.”
Millard said, “Touché,” and handed me a piece of paper. “Betty sightings–restaurants and bars in Wilshire Division. You can work it single or with Blanchard, I don’t care.”
“I’d rather canvass around the Biltmore.”
“I know you would, but I want foot beat men who know the area to work there, and I need smart pennies to eliminate the phonies from the tip list.”
“What are you going to be doing?”
Millard smiled sadly. “Keeping an eye on the evidence suppressor shit-brained son of a bitch and his minions to make sure they don’t try to coerce a confession out of that innocent man in the holding tank.”
o o o
I couldn’t find Lee anywhere around the station, so I checked out the tip list as a single-o. The canvassing territory was centered in the Wilshire District, restaurant bars and juke joints on Western, Normandie and 3rd Street. The people I talked to were mostly barflies, daytime juicers eager to suck up to authority or gab with someone other than the usual boon acquaintances they found in gin mills. Pressing for facts, I got sincere fantasy–virtually every person had Betty Short giving them a long spiel taken from the papers and radio when she was really down in Dago with Red Manley or somewhere getting tortured to death. The longer I listened the more they talked about themselves, interweaving their sad tales with the story of the Black Dahlia, who they actually believed to be a glamorous siren headed for Hollywood stardom. It was as if they would have traded their own lives for a juicy front-page death. I included questions on Linda Martin/Lorna Martilkova, Junior Nash and Madeleine Cathcart Sprague and her snow-white Packard, but all it got me was stuporous deadpans. I decided that my FI report would consist of two words: “All bullshit.”