Bidwell answered in a breathless geezer’s voice: “I didn’t kill her, mister. I just wanted a ticket to the honor farm. Three hots and a cot’s all I wanted. Please, mister.”
The geez didn’t look strong enough to _lift_ a knife, let alone tie a woman down and carry the two halves of her stiff out to a car. I moved to Cecil Durkin.
“Tell me about it, Cecil.”
The hepcat mocked me. “Tell you about it? You get that line from _Dick Tracy_ or _Gangbusters_?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Fritzie watching, measuring me. “One more time, shitbird. Tell me about you and Betty Short.”
Durkin giggled. “I fucked Betty Short and I fucked your mama! I’m your daddy!”
I one-two’d him in the solar plexus, hard little shots. Durkin’s legs buckled, but he kept his feet on the chair. He gasped for breath, got a lungful and went back to bravado: “You think you clever, don’t you? You the bad guy, your buddy the nice guy. You gonna hit me, he gonna rescue me. Don’t you clowns know that bit went out with vaudeville?”
I massaged my right hand, still bone bruised from Lee Blanchard and Joe Dulange. “I’m the nice guy, Cecil. Keep that in mind.”
It was a good line. Durkin fumbled for a comeback; I turned my attention to Charles Michael Issler.
He looked down and said, “I didn’t kill Liz. I don’t know why I do these things, and I apologize. So please don’t let that man hurt me.”
His manner was quietly sincere, but something about him put me off. I said, “Convince me.”
“I . . . I can’t. I just didn’t.”
I thought of Issler as a pimp, Betty as a part-time prostie, and wondered if there was a possible connection between them–then remembered that the hookers in the little black book questionings said she always worked freelance. I said, “Did you know Betty Short?”
“No.”
“Did you know of her?”
“No.”
“Why’d you confess to her murder?”
“She . . . she looked so sweet and pretty and I felt so bad when I saw her picture in the paper. I . . . I always confess to the pretty ones.”
“Your rap sheet says you only cop to hooker snuffs. Why?”
“Well, I . . .”
“You hit your girls, Charlie? You get them gone on hop? You make them service your pals–”
I stopped, thinking of Kay and Bobby De Witt. Issler bobbed his head up and down, slowly at first, then harder and harder. Soon he was sobbing, “I do such bad things, nasty, nasty things. Nasty, nasty, nasty.”
Fritzie walked over and stood beside me, brass knuckles coiled in both fists. He said, “This kid gloves routine is getting us nowhere,” and kicked Issler’s chair out from under him. The confessor-pimp screamed and flopped like an impaled fish; bones snapped as the cuffs caught the brunt of his weight. Fritzie said, “Watch, boyo.”
Shouting, “Jack Roller!” “Nigger!” “Baby fucker!” he kicked the other three chairs to the floor. Now there were confessors dangling four abreast, shrieking, grabbing at one another with their legs, an octopus in county jail denim. The screams sounded like one voice–until Fritzie zeroed in on Charles Michael Issler.
He roundhoused the knuckle dusters into his midsection, left-right, left-right, left-right. Issler screamed and gurgled; Fritzie yelled, “Tell me about the Dahlia’s missing days you syphilitic whoremonger!”
My legs felt like they were about to go. Issler screeched, “I . . . don’t . . . know . . . anything.” Fritzie shot him an uppercut to the crotch.
“_Tell me what you know!_”
“I knew you at Ad Vice!”
Fritzie winged rabbit punches. “Tell me what you know! Tell me what your girls told you, you syphilitic whoremonger!”
Issler retched; Fritzie moved in close and worked his body. I heard ribs cracking, then stared off to my left, to a burglar alarm lever on the wall by the connecting doorway. I stared and stared and stared; Fritizie ran into my field of vision and wheeled over the sheet-covered table I’d noticed before.
The loonies flopped on their hooks, moaning low. Fritzie got right up next to me, cackled in my face, then whipped off the sheet.