Opening my eyes, I saw Russ, dressed in a clean suit. He handed me a newspaper and said, “Never underestimate Ellis Loew.”
It was a Newark tabloid job bearing the headline: “Fort Dix Soldier Culprit in Sinsational Los Angeles Murder!” Below the banner print were side-by-side photos of Frenchman Joe Dulange and Loew, posed theatrically behind his desk. The text read:
In a scoop to our sister publication the Los Angeles _Mirror_, Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Ellis Loew, Chief Legal Officer on the mystifying “Black Dahlia” murder case, announced a major breakthrough last night. “I have just been informed by two of my closest colleagues, Lieutenant Russell Millard and Officer Dwight Bleichert, that Fort Dix, New Jersey Corporal Joseph Dulange has confessed to the murder of Elizabeth Short, and that the confession has been validated by facts that only the killer would know. Corporal Dulange is a known degenerate, and I will be supplying the press with more facts on the confession as soon as my men return Dulange to Los Angeles for arraignment.”
The Elizabeth Short case has baffled authorities since the morning of January 15, when Miss Short’s nude, mutilated body, cut in half at the waist, was found in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. Deputy DA Loew would not reveal the details of Corporal Dulange’s confession, but he did say that Dulange was a known intimate of Miss Short. “Details will be forthcoming,” he said. “The important thing is that this fiend is in custody, where he will not kill again.”
I laughed. “What did you really tell Loew?”
“Nothing. When I talked to Captain Jack the first time, I told him Dulange was a strong possible. He bawled me out for not reporting before we left, and that was it. The second time I called I told him Dulange was starting to look like another crazy. He got very upset, and now I know why.”
I stood up and stretched. “Let’s just hope he really killed her.”
Russ shook his head. “SID said there’s no bloodstains in the hotel room, and no running water to drain the body. And Carroll had a ten-state bulletin out on Dulange’s whereabouts January tenth through the seventeenth–drunk tanks, hospitals, the works. We just got a kickback: Frenchy was in the jail ward of St. Patrick’s Hospital in Brooklyn January fourteenth to the seventeenth. Severe DTs. He was released that morning and picked up in Penn Station two hours later. The man is clean.”
I didn’t know who to be mad at. Loew and company wanted to clear the slate any way possible, Millard wanted justice, I was going home to headlines that made me look like a fool.
“What about Dulange? You want to brace him again?”
“And hear about more singing cockroaches? No. Carroll confronted him with the kickback. He said he made up the killing story to get publicity. He wants to reconcile with his first wife, and he thought the attention would get him some sympathy. I talked to him again, and it was nothing but DT stuff. There’s nothing more he can tell us.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“The savior indeed. Joe’s getting a quickie discharge and we’re getting a flight back to LA in forty-five minutes. So get dressed, partner.”
I put on my stale clothes, then Russ and I walked out to the sallypont to wait for the jeep that would take us to the airstrip. In the distance, I could see a tall uniformed figure approaching. I shivered against the cold; the tall man got closer. I saw that it was none other than Corporal Joseph Dulange.
Reaching the sallyport, he held out a morning tabloid and poked at his picture on the front page. “I got the whole hog, you’re small print where Krauts belong.”
I smelled Johnnie Red on his breath and sucker-punched him square in the chops. Dulange went down like a ton of bricks; my right hand throbbed. Russ Millard’s look reminded me of Jesus getting ready to rebuke the heathens. I said, “Don’t be so goddamn proper. Don’t be such a fucking saint.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Ellis Loew said, “I called this little meeting for several reasons, Bucky. One is to apologize for jumping the gun on Dulange. I was precipitious in talking to my newspaper people, and you got hurt. I apologize for that.” I looked at Loew, and at Fritz Vogel sitting beside him. The “little meeting” was in the living room of Fritzie’s house; the two days of Dulange headlines portrayed me as no worse than an overeager cop on a wild goose chase. “What do you want, Mr. Loew?”