THE BLACK DAHLIA by James Ellroy

I grabbed Lee from behind in a full nelson and spun him around toward the door. His arms were clenched and his back was arched, but I was able to use his weight against him. We stumbled outside, then tripped together in a jumble of arms and legs and hit the pavement. I kept the hold clamped on with all my strength, then heard a siren approaching and snapped that Lee wasn’t resisting–he was just lying there, muttering “Partner” over and over.

The siren wailed louder, then died; I heard car doors slamming. I extricated myself from Lee and helped him, rag doll limp, to his feet. And Ellis Loew was right there.

Loew had murder in his eyes. It hit me that Lee’s explosion came from his weird chastity, a week of death and dope and its pornographic capper. Safe myself, I put an arm around my partner’s shoulders. “Mr. Loew, it was just that goddamn movie. Lee thought the dykes here could give us a lead on the Mex.”

Loew hissed, “Bleichert, shut up,” then turned his velvet rage on Lee: “Blanchard, I got you Warrants. You’re my man, and you made me look like a fool in front of the two most powerful men in the Department. This is no lesbian killing, those girls were on drugs and hated it. Now I covered for you with Horrall and Green, but I don’t know how much good that will do you in the long run. If you weren’t _Mr. Fire, Big Lee Blanchard_, you’d be suspended from duty already. You’ve gotten personally involved in the Short case, and that’s an unprofessionalism I will not tolerate. You’re back on Warrants duty as of tomorrow morning. Report to me at 0800, and bring in formal letters of apology to Chief Horrall and Chief Green. For the sake of your pension, I advise you to grovel.”

Lee, his body limp, said, “I want to go to TJ to look for the smut man.”

Loew shook his head. “Under the circumstances, I would call that request ridiculous. Vogel and Koenig are going to Tijuana, you’re back on Warrants, and Bleichert, you’re to remain on the Short case. Good day, Officers.”

Loew stormed over to his black-and-white; the patrolman driver hung a U-turn out into traffic. Lee said, “I have to talk to Kay.” I nodded, and a sheriff’s patrol car cruised by, the passenger cop blowing kisses to the lezzies in the doorway. Lee walked to his car murmuring, “Laurie. Laurie, oh babe.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I showed up at the Bureau at 8:00 the next morning, wanting to ease Lee through the ignominy of his return to Warrants and share the diet of crow Ellis Loew would undoubtedly be feeding him. Identical memo slips from Chief Green were on both of our desks: “Report to my office tomorrow, 1/22/47,6:00 P.M.” The handwritten words looked ominous.

Lee did not report in at 8:00; I sat at my desk for the next hour, picturing him fretting over Bobby De Witt’s release, a captive of his ghosts, his ghost chaser redemption gone now that he was off the Dahlia case. Across the partition in the DA’s office, I heard Loew barking and pleading on the phone to the city editors of the _Mirror_ and _Daily News_–Republican rags rumored to be sympathetic to his political aspirations. The gist of his talk was that he would help them cutthroat the _Times_ and _Herald_ with inside Dahlia info on the proviso that they soft-pedal their coverage of Betty Short’s roundheeled ways and portray her as a sweet but misguided young girl. From the hotshot’s self-satisfied farewells, I could tell that the newsmen went for it, buying Loew’s line that “The more sympathy we attract for the girl, the more juice we get when I prosecute the killer.”

When Lee didn’t show up by 10:00, I went into the muster room and read through the bulging E. Short case file, wanting to satisfy myself that Madeleine’s name wasn’t in it. Two hours and two hundred form pages later I was satisfied–her name was not listed among the hundreds of people questioned, nor was she fingered by tipsters. The only mention of lesbians was obvious nut case stuff–religious crackpots calling in poison phone clues, informing on rival sect members as “Nun dykes sacrificing the girl to Pope Pius XII” and “Lezbos performing communistic anti-Christ rituals.”

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