I hung up, relieved that De Witt didn’t head straight for LA. Thinking of prowling for Lee, I took the elevator down to the parking lot and saw Russ Millard and Harry Sears walking toward the back stairs. Russ noticed me and hooked a finger; I trotted over.
I said, “What happened in TJ?”
Harry, breathing Sen-Sen, answered: “Goose egg on the stag movie. We checked for the pad and couldn’t find it, rousted some smut peddlers. Double goose egg. We checked some of the Short girl’s acquaintances in Dago–triple gooser. I–”
Millard put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Bucky, Blanchard’s down in Tijuana. A border patrolman we talked to saw him, recognized him from all the fight publicity. He was hobnobbing with a bad-looking bunch of Rurales.”
I thought of De Witt TJ bound and wondered why Lee would be talking to the Mex state police. “When?”
Sears said, “Last night. Loew and Vogel and Koenig are down there too, at the Divisidero Hotel. They’ve been talking to the TJ cops. Russ thinks they’re measuring spies for a frame on the Dahlia.”
Lee chased smut demons through my mind; I saw him bloody at my feet and shivered. Millard said, “Which is crap, because Meg Caulfield got the straight dope on the smut man out of the Martilkova girl. He’s a white guy named Walter “Duke” Wellington. We checked his Ad Vice jacket, and he’s got a half dozen pandering and pornography beefs. All well and good, except Captain Jack got a letter from Wellington, postmarked three days ago. He’s hiding out, gun-shy from all the Dahlia publicity, and he copped to making the film with Betty Short and Lorna. He was afraid of getting tagged for the snuff, so he sent in a detailed alibi for Betty’s missing days. Jack checked it out personally, and it’s ironclad. Wellington sent a copy of the letter to the _Herald_, and they’re publishing it tomorrow.”
I said, “So Lorna was lying to protect him?”
Sears nodded. “That looks like the picture. Wellington’s still on the lam from old pimping warrants, though, and Lorna clammed up when she got wise to Meg. And here’s the kicker: we called Loew to tell him the Mex man was horseshit, but a Rurale buddy of ours says that Vogel and Koenig are still rousting spies.”
The circus was turning into a farce. I said, “If the newspaper letter kiboshes their Mex job, they’ll be looking for patsies up here. We should hold our info back from them. Lee’s on suspension, but he made carbons from the case file, and he’s got them stored in a hotel room in Hollywood. We should hold on to it, use it to store our stuff.”
Millard and Sears nodded slowly; the real kicker kicked me. “County Parole said Bobby De Witt bought a ticket for TJ. If Lee’s down there too, it could be trouble.”
Millard shivered. “I don’t like the feel of it. De Witt’s a bad piece of work, and maybe he found out that Lee was headed down there. I’ll call the Border Patrol and have them put out a detain order on him.”
Suddenly I knew it all came down to me. “I’m going.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I crossed the border at dawn. Tijuana was just coming awake as I turned onto Revolución, its main drag. Child beggars were digging for breakfast in trash cans, taco venders were stirring pots of dog-meat stew, sailors and marines were being escorted out of whorehouses at the end of their five-spot all-nighters. The smarter ones stumbled over to Calle Colon and the penicillin pushers; the stupidos hotfooted toward East TJ, the Blue Fox and Chicago Club–no doubt eager to catch the early morning donkey show. Tourist cars were already lined up outside the cut-rate upholstery joints; Rurales driving prewar Chevys cruised like vultures, wearing black uniforms that looked almost like Nazi issue.
I cruised myself, looking for Lee and his ’40 Ford. I thought about stopping at the Border Patrol hut or Rurale substation to seek help, then remembered my partner was suspended from duty, illegally armed and probably stretched so thin that words from the wrong greaser would provoke him to God knows what. Recalling the Divisidero Hotel from my high school excursions south, I drove to the edge of town to seek American aid.