The little room was pitch dark. I banged along the walls, hitting picture frames, feeling iceberg spooky until my leg grazed a tall wobbly object. It was about to topple when I snapped that it was a gooseneck lamp, reached for the top part and flipped the switch.
Light.
The pictures were photographs of Fritzie in uniform, in plainclothes, standing at attention with the rest of his 1925 Academy class. There was a desk positioned against the back wall, facing a window covered with a velvet curtain, a swivel chair and a filing cabinet.
I slid the top compartment open and fingered through manila folders stamped “Intelligence Rpt–Bunco Division,” “Intelligence Rpt–Burglary Division,” “Intelligence Rpt– Robbery Division”–all with the names of individuals typed on side tabs. Wanting some kind of common denominator, I checked the first sheets of the next three folders I came to–finding only one carbon page in each of them.
But those single pieces of paper were enough.
They were financial accountings, lists of bank balances and other assets, tallies made on known criminals that the Department couldn’t legally touch. The routing designations at the top of each sheet spelled it out plain–it was the LAPD shooting the feds hot dope so that they could initiate tax evasion investigations. Handwritten notes–phone numbers, names and addresses–filled the margins, and I recognized Fritzie’s Parker penmanship hand.
My breath came in short cold bursts as I thought: shakedown. He’s either putting the screws to the hoods based on info in the rest of the files or selling them tip-offs on impending fed rousts.
Extortion, first degree.
Theft and harboring of official LAPD documents.
Impeding the progress of federal investigations.
But no Johnny Vogel, Charlie Issler or Betty Short.
I tore through another fourteen folders, finding the same scrawled-over financial reports in all of them. I memorized the side tab names, then moved to the bottom compartment. I saw “Known Offender Rpt–Administrative Vice Division” on the first file inside it–and knew I’d gotten the whole ball of wax.
Page one detailed the arrests, MO and confessing career of Charles Michael Issler, white male, born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1911; page two listed his “Known Associates.” A June 1946 “whore book” check by his probation officer yielded six girls’ names, followed by phone numbers and the arrest dates and dispositions of their hooking convictions. There were an additional four female names below the heading “?–No Prostitution Record.” The third name was “Liz Short–Transient?”
I turned to page three and read down the column headed “KAs, cont”; one name harpooned me. “Sally Stinson” was in Betty Short’s little black book, and none of the four questioning teams had been able to locate her. In brackets beside her name, some Ad Vice dick had penciled in, “Works out of Biltmore bar–conventioneer johns.” Doodles in Fritzie’s ink color surrounded the entry.
I forced myself to think like a detective, not a revenge-happy kid. The extortion stuff aside, it was certain that Charlie Issler knew Betty Short. Betty knew Sally Stinson, who hooked out of the Biltmore. Fritz Vogel didn’t want anybody to know it. He probably arranged the warehouse stunt to find out how much Sally and/or his other girls had told Issler about Betty and the men she was recently with.
“I proved I’m not no nancy boy. Homos couldn’t do what I did. _I’m not cherry no more_, so don’t say nancy boy.”
I put the folders back in order, closed the cabinet, hit the light and relatched the backdoor before walking out the front like I owned the place, wondering briefly if there was any connection between Sally Stinson and the missing “S’s” in the master file. Treading air to my car, I knew it couldn’t be– Fritzie didn’t know that the El Nido work room existed. Then another thought took over: if Issler had blabbed about “Liz” and her tricks I would have overheard. Fritzie was confident he could keep me quiet. It was an underestimation that I was going to bleed him for.
o o o
Russ Millard was waiting for me with two words: “Report, Officer.”
I told him the whole story in detail. When I finished, he saluted Elizabeth Short on the wall, said, “We’re making progress, dear,” and formally stuck out his hand.