Front Page Fatale: The First Ida Bly Thriller

by Daniel Fox

  That was it. The moment when he could have let it go. Mrs Clemp would go away without satisfaction, probably sad, probably thinking the great Bob Tree was a bit of a bum, but still, she’d go away and take her husband’s disappearance along with her. He just had to say good-bye.

  Instead: “Have you heard anything new Mrs Clemp?”

  “No, nothing new.”

  “Are you okay for money?”

  “Yes, I am okay. It’s tough, but Sergeant Shuttman, he sends me some every week. You know him, yes?”

  “Sure, we see each other around. And no extra money has come in? Maybe in an envelope without a return address? Maybe you just found it in the letterbox? I’m not going to tell anyone if it has, I promise.”

  “No. And I would happily trade it if it would help get Wally back. I... I miss him. It is lonely without him.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “You have lost someone?”

  Flashes of a field on an island. Dead friends torn apart, lying like meat on waving grasses. “Yes, I have.”

  There was still time for him to cut bait. To go. To keep this easy life he’d built. He’d earned this, goddammit.

  Instead: “If he had to hide out, can you think of anywhere he might run? Old property he owned?”

  “No.”

  “His family?”

  “No.”

  “Friends maybe have a cottage somewhere?”

  “No- Well, one friend had a place... What do you call them? When you go far away to hunt the animals?”

  “A lodge? A hunting lodge?”

  “Yes.”

  One last chance to bow out.

  Instead: “Do you think you could get me an address?”

  ***

  Ida was back to parking her car outside of Skid Row and walking her way in. She had had enough of taking chances for a while, thank you very much.

  She found Theresa’s building easy enough. Found the main entrance door unlocked. Went in. Went up. She knocked. No answer.

  She went back down, knocked on 101. A muttering came from the other side of the door, then a shuffling, then locks, then the door opened wafting out a thick smell of boiled cabbage. An older guy in a maroon bathrobe and tennis shoes stood there, annoyed, doing nothing about hiding the fact that he was running his eyes up and down her figure.

  “Yeah?”

  “You the superintendent?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know Theresa? From upstairs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Would you have any idea of when she might be getting back?”

  “No.”

  “Is she usually out this time of day? She have a schedule?”

  The man shrugged. “She don’t go out until night. Mostly.”

  “Well, she’s out now. I’ll try anoth-”

  “Don’t think so. Didn’t hear her go out.”

  “And what? You always hear her go out? Every time?”

  “Sure.”

  Ida didn’t think so. This guy, he didn’t seem to be the particularly attentive type. Not to his surroundings anyway. Although he did seem to have no trouble paying attention to her chest.

  The man nodded at the stairs. “Bet she’s just sleeping. Night owl type. Come on.” He grabbed his keys from a table next to the door, shuffled out. He held a hand out to the stairs, a real gentleman. “After you.”

  Ida was sure that after you actually translated to let me stare at your ass as you walk the stairs ahead of me. She held out a hand of her own. “I insist.”

  The super’s mouth twisted as he started up, Ida following.

  “I don’t want to bother her if she’s sleeping.”

  “Don’t worry, she’ll be happy to see ya. She don’t get much company.”

  The super knocked at Theresa’s door. No answer. “Hey honey, you got a visitor. That newspaper lady.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “Sure. You’re famous.” He knocked again. Listened. “Gimme a sec, make sure she’s not in the bath or something.”

  “You don’t think she’d want some privacy if she is?”

  The super waved a hand, like the thought was a bothersome fly. He stuck his key in the door.

  “Really, I’ll just come back later.”

  He unlocked the door, opened it. A faint smell hit them.

  “Aw hell, not again.”

  Ida wrinkled her nose. “What is that?”

  “That’s the smell of a vacancy opening up.”

  “Real nice.”

  The super shrugged. “I got a lot of old tenants. It happens.” He took in Theresa’s collection of trash. “Jesus, who’s going to help me clean all this shit out?”

  Ida pushed past him and went inside.

  “Hey doll, I don’t think you want to do that. It might not be pleasant to look at, you know?”

  Ida ignored him. She couldn’t take the thought of the old lady lying there, maybe her skirt up too high, maybe exposed.

  Like the girl in the lot.

  The least she could do is cover her.

  She moved through the living room, trying to keep her hips from touching the mounds of garbage. She checked the bedroom, looked behind the bed, looked in the closet. Nothing. She wondered why the smell wasn’t stronger. She had always expected the smell to be overwhelming.

  She found out why in the bathroom. Theresa was in the bathtub, wrapped up entirely in her shower curtain, like a cocoon. The curtain was sealed with packing tape.

  She could see Theresa’s face through the material. Her mouth was open. It looked like a scream.

  ***

  George caught up with D.A. Simpson in the parking lot. “Can I speak with you a minute sir?”

  “You absolutely positively can, Sergeant. What’s on your mind?”

  George held up the new confession. “I read through this. Why’d he write a new one?”

  “I believe he told the warden that he was remembering more.”

  “There are problems here.”

  “Problems?”

  “Discrepancies sir. It’s off from the first confession.”

  They reached the D.A.’s car. Simpson tossed his briefcase into his backseat.

  “I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a change or two. Brian Lagercrantz’s mind is currently orbiting an area somewhere between here and Jupiter. At some point I expect him to blurt out that Bugs Bunny urged him on. The main thing is that he knew about the word carved in the victim’s back, yes?”

  “That’s important, yes sir-”

  “And he had kidnapped and molested the new girl.”

  “I’m not denying-”

  “And he violently assaulted the Bly woman.” Simpson pointed at the pages in George’s hand. “Do you really think there’s something in there that counters all of that?”

  “It’s just... okay. In the first confession, he talks about removing Jane Doe’s lungs. Here, he doesn’t mention it at all, but talks about taking her heart.”

  “In the first confession he was quite explicit and showed a surprisingly detailed depth of knowledge about surgically removing her lungs.”

  “That’s just it. In the second one here he talks about ripping her heart out. All that surgical stuff got tossed out the window, right along with the correct body part.”

  “Maybe he forgot.”

  “Maybe he- Sir, I don’t think knowledge that precise can fade in and out. And... and... and... where’d he learn anything surgical at all? We never got any indication of that level of schooling from what we know of his background. His handwritten confession was full of spelling errors, grammar errors-”

  “Sergeant-”

  “Could I just suggest sir that we go back in and have him describe another surgical procedure? Anything. Removing tonsils, something dead easy, and if he can’t-”

  “Sergeant, enough.” Simpson reached up, put a hand on George's shoulder. “This is natural. Huge cases like this, doubts will always bubble to the surface. If you don’t doub
t that you got the right man, then you wonder if you crossed all the T’s and dotted all the I’s so his defence can’t weasel their way out of the conviction on a technicality. And if it’s not that, you have the thought whirling around in your head that maybe you could have gotten to him sooner if you hadn’t missed Clue X or Interview Y at an earlier stage. You did a good job. Hell, you saved a woman in the middle of her getting murdered.”

  He turned, got into his car. “Maybe take a break Sergeant. God knows you earned it. And there are miles still to go before this case is closed out. Good day.”

  “Sir.”

  Simpson drove off. George looked back up at the jail, tapping the new confession against his leg. Why did he all of a sudden feel like he had back when the case had been going nowhere?

  ***

  The name Magdalena had given him rang bells. Bob couldn’t drag it up from memory so he gave George Schuttman a call, two celebs hob-knobbing, and oh by the way, do you remember the name Nick Finkleman from somewhere?

  George thought he did too, he rifled through his old Wally Clemp files once he got back to his apartment and called Bob back – sure, he was the security guard that got beaten up during the Southern California First Bank job.

  The Southern California – the biggest bank job known to date, just shy of three million up and disappeared, never found, leads dried up.

  It was a nice drive north up into remote hill country. Bucks Lake the destination. He stopped at a roadside burger shack, stopped again near the end of his drive at a gas station to fuel up and ask for further directions. He passed a motel, circled back and got himself a room – no way was he going to drive all eight or so hours back to the city today.

  He sat in the room, stared at the woodland scene in the painting. He had nothing to do but get angry at himself for pursuing this; finding something might mean screwing up his tidy little life.

  He got up and went out, locking the door behind him.

  It took another hour to find the final turnoff road that led to the spot. It was unmarked and bushes had started to crowd in the rutted dirt road, it was pure chance that he spotted it on his second drive-by. The foliage scraped at his car as he slowly made his way up the road.

  Magdalena hadn’t really known much about this place. She did find the address in Clemp’s address book, but that and the name of the owner, Nick Finkleman, was all that she knew. She didn’t know if it was used often, and had never met Finkleman, so she didn’t know if he’d be particularly cheerful about a newshound rolling up his driveway without an invitation.

  Bob honked his horn to let whoever might be there know that he was making an approach. He rounded a bend in the lane and the lodge, which was really just a small wooden cabin, came into view. It was one story, looked to be bare bones, maybe one bedroom and a kitchen inside. An outhouse sat out back, its door hanging loose on its hinges. No interior lights on in the late afternoon light. Nobody came out to greet him.

  He parked. Got out. Put his hands to his mouth. “Hello?”

  Nothing. Near quiet. Some bugs, some birds, a little bit of a breeze through the trees that surrounded the cabin and its scrub-grass yard.

  He went across the yard to the front door. Something made a metallic clink sound under his foot, but he didn’t see the cause when he looked down. He knocked, there was no answer, not that he had been expecting one. The place was dusty and had more than its fair share of cobwebs – it had clearly been deserted for some time.

  He tried looking through the front window but yellowed curtains blocked the view. He tried the door, found it locked.

  He headed back for his car. He had a tire iron in the trunk, he could maybe use it to force his way in through the door. He wasn’t sure why he was bothering though, this long-shot was long enough to get him to the moon and back.

  He looked down as he walked and saw something glint a dirty metal colour – maybe the thing that had made the noise when he had stepped on it. He bent down, pulled it out of the dirt. It was the casing for a .45 round.

  He sniffed it – the gunpowder scent was almost gone. It had been down in the earth for quite a while. He put his hands on his knees to push himself up and froze – someone was moving in the woods, behind the first line of trees.

  He squinted but couldn’t see anything. The sun was getting low and the trees were throwing some pretty deep shadows. He heard another sound, frenetic, like thrashing.

  A coyote emerged from between the trees, long ears at the ready, moving in low easy loping strides. It stopped, spotting Bob. Its head lowered and it crept forward.

  Bob stood up, waved his arms at it. “Get!”

  The coyote took off running.

  Bob watched it go, then turned in the direction the beast had emerged from. He started forward. Moved into the darkness between the trees. Red-gold light did its best to penetrate around the tree trunks, to make it through the scrub brush.

  There was a mound here, in the ground. The earth had been clawed and overturned – this is where the coyote had been thrashing around. From the look of it, other hungry woodland critters had also visited this little hump of dirt.

  Bob could only think of one kind of creature that buried its dead.

  He moved closer until he could look down into the holes dug out by the local wildlife. A man’s face, its nose eaten off, its lips torn like bread, its exposed eye-socket empty, looked up at him.

  In a flash, Bob felt his heart trip, then his mind tripped right along with it and bugger him if he wasn’t back on the island smelling clouds of cordite and the insides of his friends. He put his hands to the sides of his head and ordered the past out, to leave him alone.

  Panting, sweating, he turned. And found more mounds.

  SEPTEMBER

  CHAPTER 34

  Los Angeles Police Department Interrogation Transcription

  Date: September 8, 1947

  Time: 19:22

  Present: Detective Charles Pileggi, Ida Bly

  (Note: Det. Pileggi enters)

  Question (Pileggi). Thanks for coming in again.

  Answer (Bly). I was missing you.

  Q. We’ll make this quick.

  A. You said that last time. And the time before. And, oh yeah, the time before that.

  Q. Just want to get the woman some justice, is all.

  A. Who wouldn’t?

  Q. Let’s start it from the top. How did you first come to be acquainted with Theresa Fetherling?

  A. Am I a suspect? I’m beginning to think I’m a suspect.

  Q. You’re absolutely not a person of interest.

  A. That hurts my feelings.

  Q. Oh, it just mean-

  A. It means “suspect”. I know. Jesus Pileggi, loosen up. By the way, my answers aren’t going to change any from the last three times we did this dance. You know they aren’t.

  Q. Still, it’s procedure-

  A. Yeah? Is it? I’ve been asking around. Calling a witness in again over and over kinda isn’t procedure, though, is it? Is this revenge for the morgue photo?

  Q. It’s not-

  A. Because I apologized for that. Over and over again.

  Q. We want to make sure you haven’t forgotten any details. (ten seconds silence). Miss Bly? When did you first meet-

  A. Why am I really here?

  ***

  Murders rolled in. Of course they did. This was Los Angeles. It didn’t help a bunch that Bugsy Siegel got topped back in June and now Mickey Cohen was butting heads with Jack Dragna over the territory.

  Plus, George had been talking more with Mags again, and Wally Clemp was back on his mind. He should be putting more time into that.

  He was also putting in time collecting more evidence for the Skid Row thing. Still no I.D. on the dead girl, the item Simpson wanted to check off the most on his list. Simpson held a press conference. The D.A.’s office was ready to get the trial rolling, starting in the second week of November.

  George was busy.

  But George c
ouldn’t stop thinking about the Lagercrantz confession.

  He called up the warden of Lincoln Heights. “I’m going to come by, I need to talk to him. Can you call his counsel, set it up?”

  “I suppose that will be fine.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  A quick drive to Lincoln Heights. George surrendered his gun at the front desk and was met by the warden at the second gate. The warden hesitated, grimacing, wringing his hands, so George led the way to the conference rooms. He knew the way well enough by now.

  “His lawyer is on the way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Out of curiosity, why the sudden rush to see him?”

  “I want to know why he changed details in the last confession.”

  “Oh, well that’s easy. He’s a lunatic. Some days he can’t eat without assistance. His mind resembles a heaping helping of scrambled eggs.”

  George grunted. “True enough. Still, I want to hear him say it. That it means nothing.”

  Three guards ran by, pulling on riot gear. The warden called out after them, “What’s going on?”

  “Gen pop sir!” They sprinted out of sight around the corner.

  The warden hurried after his men, George following at a slower pace.

  George knew it. He felt it before he saw anything. The gates into the General Population section had been left open as more guards hurried in, herding prisoners back into their cells.

  There was a mess in the middle of the ground floor. Blood on the walls. Blood draining into the small sewer grate. Brian Lagercrantz lying on the floor after his first and last trip to Lincoln Height’s gen pop section, his belly shanked open, spilling intestines in loops, already gathering flies.

  ***

  They’d found twelve half-assed graves out by the hunting cabin. All of their pockets were empty – no easy I.D.s. It had taken three weeks before a dental identification came through, some jailhouse work done on one Paulie “Threads” Gulczynski, a known heist guy. The cops had then run K.A.s and lo and behold they made the identifications on the rest easy as pie. Eleven gang members and one security guard, Nick Finkleman, who, wouldn’t you know it, had worked at the Southern California First Bank, the bank that had taken the biggest hit in recorded history, all laid together. Coroner Green had it figured that the security guard had eaten it at a later date, then been buried with the others.