THE BLACK DAHLIA by James Ellroy

The pink Art Deco monstrosity stood on a bluff overlooking a tin roof shantytown. I intimidated the desk clerk; he told me the “Loew party” was in suite 462. I found it on the ground floor rear, angry voices booming on the other side of the door.

Fritzie Vogel was yelling, “I still say we get ourselves a spic! The letter to the _Herald_ didn’t say stag movie, it just said Wellington saw the Dahlia and the other girlie in November! We can still–”

Ellis Loew shouted back: “We _can’t_ do that! Wellington admitted making the movie to Tierney! He’s the supervising officer, and we can’t go over his head!”

I opened the door and saw Loew, Vogel and Koenig huddled in chairs, all of them holding eight-star _Herald_’s obviously hot off the presses. The framing session fell silent; Koenig gawked; Loew and Vogel muttered, “Bleichert,” simultaneously.

I said, “Fuck the fucking Dahlia. Lee’s down here, Bobby De Witt’s here and it’s got to go bad. You–”

Loew said, “Fuck Blanchard, he’s suspended”; I beelined for him. Koenig and Vogel formed a wedge between us; trying to move through them was like bucking a brick wall. The DA backed off to the other side of the room, Koenig grabbed my arms, Vogel put his hands on my chest and pushed me outside. Loew evil-eyed me from the doorway, then Fritzie chucked my chin. “I’ve got a soft spot for light heavyweights. If you promise not to hit Billy, I’ll help you find your partner.”

I nodded, and Koenig let me go. Fritzie said, “We’ll take my car. You don’t look fit to drive.”

o o o

Fritzie drove; I eyeballed. He kept up a stream of chatter on the Short case and the lieutenancy it was going to get him; I watched beggars swarm turistas, hookers dispense front seat blow jobs and zoot suit youths prowl for drunks to roll. After four fruitless hours the streets became too car-choked to manuever in, and we got out and walked.

On foot, the squalor was worse. The kiddie beggars got right up in your face, jabbering, shoving crucifixes at you. Fritzie swatted and kicked them away, but their hunger-ridden faces got to me, so I changed a flyer into pesos and tossed handfuls of coins into the gutter whenever they converged. It spawned scratching, biting and gouging free-for-alls, but it was better than looking into sunken eyes and seeing nada.

An hour of prowling two abreast got us no Lee, no Lee’s ’40 Ford and no gringos resembling Bobby De Witt. Then a Rurale in black shirt and jackboots, lounging in a doorway, caught my eye. He said, “Policia?” and I stopped and flashed my badge in answer.

The cop dug in his pockets and pulled out a teletype photo strip. The picture was too blurred to identify, but the “Robert Richard De Witt” was plain as day. Fritzie patted the cop’s epaulets. “Where, Admiral?”

The Mex clicked his heels and barked, “Estación, vamanos!” He marched ahead of us, turning into an alley lined with VD clinics, pointing to a cinderblock hut fenced in with barbed wire. Fritzie handed him a dollar; the Mex saluted like Mussolini and about-faced away. I strode for the station, forcing myself not to run.

Rurales holding tommy guns flanked the doorway. I showed my badge; they heel clicked and let me in. Fritzie caught up with me inside; dollar bill in hand, he went straight for the front desk. The desk cop grabbed the buck and Fritzie said, “Fugitivo? Americano? De Witt?”

The deskman smiled and hit a switch beside his chair, barred doors in the side wall clicked open. Fritzie said, “Precisely what is it we want this scum to tell us?”

I said, “Lee’s down here, probably chasing smut leads on his own. De Witt came here directly from Quentin.”

“Without checking in with his PO?”

“Right.”

“And De Witt has a hard-on for Blanchard from the Boulevard-Citizens job?”

“Right.”

“Enough said.”

We walked down a corridor lined with cells. De Witt was alone in the last lock-up, sitting on the floor. The door buzzed open; Kay Lake’s defiler stood up. The years in stir had not been kind to him: the hatchet-faced tough of the ’39 newspaper pictures was now a well-used piece of work, bloated in the body, grizzled in the face, his pachuco haircut as outdated as his Salvation Army suit.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *