Front Page Fatale: The First Ida Bly Thriller

by Daniel Fox

  Bob had been called in by the L.A.P.D. and the sheriff’s office local to the Bucks Lake area. He’d run his story about Magdalena and Wally Clemp over and over. He had run it again over beers with George Schuttman. It had all been nails on a chalkboard for him.

  Movie premieres faded into his background. He lost track of what he was doing at his typewriter, realized he had read the opening sentence back to himself about four times now without taking it in.

  He wasn’t superstitious. He didn’t believe in curses. And yet.

  The sweat started. The shakes chimed in. His chest got an invisible band around it that started to squeeze him tight. He bolted up. He needed to see Doc Nabozny, pronto, before he started screaming right in the middle of the newsroom.

  ***

  Ida had been having a grand old time with the cops. It soured her stomach – it was clear that the detective investigating the case, Pileggi, one of George Schuttman’s colleagues, didn’t give a rat’s ass that an old woman on Skid Row had been killed. Hell, the cops would probably have thought something was wrong only if murders on Skid Row stopped.

  But he kept calling her in anyway because he could see that it was annoying her, taking up her time, getting under her skin. She couldn’t possibly add anything new, but she got pulled over twice so she could be asked questions the detective already had answers to, and had been called to City Hall four times on top of that. She might be a newspaper star, but at least some of the cops hadn’t forgiven her for the morgue photo stunt.

  She was making her way back to the newsroom floor from pointless interview number four when she felt a hand grip her elbow and steer her into the women’s washroom.

  She staggered forward, skidding on the floor, then turned, ready to lash out, but it was Bob Tree, freaking out even harder than that time up in the hills by her car.

  He was pale and covered in a sheen of sweat. Visibly shaking. He stomped past her, kicking in stall doors, making sure they were alone. She made for the door. He sprinted around her, put his back to it.

  Someone pushed at it from the other side. Bob: “Maintenance! Go downstairs!”

  There was female laughter, two women chattering, thinking someone was in here getting lucky.

  Ida opened her mouth to yell for them, to scream for them to come back and help her, but Bob saw and lunged forward and clamped his hand over her mouth.

  “Shhh. Shhh. There’s no need for that. We got to stop meeting like this, huh?” He gave her a rictus grin.

  Risus sardonicus, she knew that one, the medical name for that kind of smile popping into her head right at that moment. She looked at him over his hand, eyes wide. She’d almost forgotten how bent he was, their paths hadn’t crossed all that much since the night on the Row.

  “I can’t... I can’t get away from it. It’s following me everywhere. It’s this dog, this dog and it’s like I’m dragging it along and no matter how much I shake my hand I can’t drop its leash. Violence.” He looked her in the eye. “But it’s not me. It’s not me. You can’t escape it because it’s people. And we’re everywhere. Hiroshima should have just been the start.”

  He let her go. She staggered back against the wall. He turned to the sink. “You ever have something you couldn’t escape?” He looked at her in the mirror. “How about that? How’d you get that scar?”

  She turned and bolted from the room.

  CHAPTER 35

  No trying to convince Clifford this time. Ida bee-lined straight for City Hall, the detectives’ offices. George wasn’t there, but she ran into him on her way back out.

  “I want to talk to you. Please.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I don’t think the Skid Row thing is over.” To her surprise, George nodded.

  “Okay, not here.”

  “Why not?”

  “You drive here? Okay. Meet me, I dunno, where would people not expect to see me?”

  “Some place that serves vegetables?”

  They both blinked, surprised by Ida’s sudden joke.

  George grinned, nodded. “You get that one for free. How about Griffith Park, entrance to the observatory?”

  “Sure. When?”

  “Now.”

  “Good. How come this is so easy? I thought you hated my guts.”

  “I do. Thing is, I think maybe the Skid Row thing ain’t over too.”

  Ida returned to her car, drove northwest to Griffith Park, maybe a little faster than she should have. Schuttman agreeing to this so easy, it was a shock, she had expected to damn near get down on her knees and beg him to help.

  She figured one of two things was going on with him. Possibility number one – he was setting her up for something as revenge for the morgue picture theft. She imagined it couldn’t be too bad if he was asking her to meet up in an open and public place. Something more like pulling her skirt up over her head in a school classroom rather than beating the living hell out of her, or worse.

  Possibility number two was that he had come across something on his own. Something that maybe told him Brian Lagercrantz wasn’t everything he was shook up to be.

  She parked, made her way up to the Observatory’s entrance. She stood in the shade of the building, the sun was making her drip sweat.

  Schuttman arrived less than five minutes later. He eyed a young couple leaning against the wall nearby. “Let’s walk around a little, huh?”

  Ida nodded and strolled along beside him. She looked back over her shoulder at the young man and woman making goo-goo eyes at each other. “Who are they?”

  “Probably nobody. It’s probably nothing. I’m just trying to work up a good case of paranoia.”

  “You think you’ll need it?”

  “I’m starting to.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  George shook his head. “Nice try, reporter-weasel. You first. And all of this is-”

  “Off-record. I know. Alright. Okay...”

  “’Alright, okay’... what?”

  “I’m starting to have a doubt or two about Brian Lagercrantz. And it’s damned confusing because he’s so clearly a monster. I mean, if you were to dream up the guy that did those things to our Jane Doe, wouldn’t he be a spitting image for that man?”

  “Why the doubts?”

  “Did you hear about the old lady, got killed recently on the Row?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not surprised. Little old poor woman, kinda batty, gets offed on Skid Row, somebody probably just did it to take off with the last of her silverware, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s true. It’s not the kind of case that would make a lot of noise.”

  “Your buddy Detective Pileggi has the case. And oh, what a charmer he is, by the way. He never mentioned it to you?”

  “Nah. I think I remember reading about it on the bulletin board, that’s about it.”

  “Thing is, that little old lady was a source on the killing. She was one of the tips I stole from your desk.”

  George looked down at her. “That right?”

  “Yeah. She came to see me a little while ago and she told me that we had the wrong guy. She saw him. The real one. Or what she thought was the real one.”

  George stopped. “You telling me there was an eye witness to the killer’s identity? Why the fuck am I only hearing about this now?”

  “Because it was my tip. Mine.”

  “It was off my desk!”

  Ida opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. “I’m an asshole. I don’t know what else to say. My job, my place at the paper was getting pulled out of my hands. I needed something big and I needed it bad. And honestly, I thought she was loopy then. She made me this drawing.”

  Ida pulled the paper bag from her pocket. George took it, flipped the bag over, saw the picture of the boogeyman glaring back up at him. “Looks like something a kid thinks is under his bed.”

  “That’s why I didn’t pay it much mind. I thought she was lonely and more than a little goofy
in the head. But when she came to see me she reminded me that she had said our guy was tall, really tall. Brian Lagercrantz is six feet. I remember you standing over him in that hallway, it was surreal, like you two were drawn on different scales.”

  “This isn’t really anything. Between you and me, eye-witnesses are usually shit at remembering what they think they remember.”

  “Yeah. But soon after she comes to see me she ends up strangled and wrapped up in her own shower curtain.”

  He handed the paper bag back. “Talking to you ain’t worth getting killed over. Especially when she didn’t have anything else to say.”

  “I know she didn’t have much. And you know it. But what if he, the real guy, what if he couldn’t be sure?”

  “How’d he know she had come to see you? Was it at home? The paper? On the street?”

  “The paper. Which leads us to something else. But it’s your turn. Tell me why we’re meeting out here and not at your desk.”

  “I say it again, this is completely off the record. You try to quote any of this and I’ll call you a liar and straight up deny it.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah. Quit stalling.”

  “Lagercrantz is dead.”

  “The fuck?!”

  Heads turned. George took her by the elbow and got her walking again.

  “What do you mean-”

  He squeezed her elbow, gently. “Keep your voice down.”

  Ida lowered her voice, leaned in, glared up at him. “What do you mean he’s dead? How does the whole world not know about this?”

  “Because it’s a huge fucking embarrassment for just about everybody in the L.A. legal system. Big brass heads are all pressed together as we speak trying to figure out how to spin this.”

  “When? How?”

  “This morning. In the prison. I went to see him. He’d written a new confession. It weirded me out. It had too many details different from the first confession.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “You swear a lot for a woman.”

  “Fuck off. Can I see it?”

  “Hell no. Anyway, I arrange to go see him so I can ask him about it. I drive over to Lincoln Heights. It’s a short drive. But by the time I get there somebody had accidentally let him out into the general population... You know what that is?”

  “Yeah. And?”

  “And he got his guts sliced open.”

  Ida stopped, stared at the ground. Her mind was turning a mile a minute, it was hard to get a firm grip on any one thing. Finally she looked up at George. “Do you think he did it? Was he really our guy?”

  “I still did. I think I still did. The new confession bothered me, but I was telling myself I was just ramping things up in my mind, and I was believing it. He was nuts, and everybody was telling me that a guy that screwy was bound to change his story. That’s true, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah, I think I could believe that.”

  “But then bam! He’s offed just when I’m there to see him.”

  Ida paced. “I don’t know... I don’t know... Could it have been an accident? Him getting out of solitary?”

  “Maybe. I doubt it, a case this high-profile. But call it an outside chance.”

  “If it was me and I didn’t want him ever talking again I think I’d make it look like he offed himself. Strangled himself with his underwear. Cut his own throat with a knife made out of shoe leather. Something fun like that.”

  “Yeah. But that would take time to arrange. I was already on my way when it happened. Throwing him to the wolves would be faster.”

  “Faster still if you whisper in a wolf’s ear that they’ll get a nod at their next parole hearing if they do someone this one little favor.”

  George nodded.

  “Jesus.” Ida slumped down onto a bench. “This thing just keeps getting better. I wasn’t even thinking about something going on inside the P.D.”

  “What do you mean? Half of your articles are about how filthy we all are.”

  “Well, sure, alright, but I mean specific to the Skid Row killer.”

  George sat down on the other end of the bench. Wiped his face.

  Ida looked at him. “Do you think this means someone in the force knew we had the wrong guy all along?”

  George looked down at his hands. “Yeah. Yeah I figure that’s gotta be it. If this is all true.”

  “You sound sad.”

  “Nah. I just always wanted to be one of the good guys, you know?”

  “Well shithead, you still got a shot at it.”

  “Even if the force is still as dirty as you’ve always said?”

  “You’ll shine all the brighter being surrounded by all those lumps of coal.”

  George rolled his eyes. “You sounded like you had something else.”

  “I do. Bob Tree. He just dragged me into the ladies’ room at the Clarion to have another freak-out mixed with a good old assault on my person.”

  George looked over at her. “You hurt?”

  “Not this time. But I definitely don’t want there to be a third time.”

  “’Third?’”

  “It’s getting to be a habit.”

  “What happened?”

  “He comes in, just this big sweaty bag of nerves, and starts jabbering on about violence and the human condition. I think maybe he could have seen me with Theresa in the lobby.”

  “Did you tell anyone?”

  “My boss. He didn’t listen. Who else is there? The cops? Would you care? Even if you did, would you do something about the Bob Tree?”

  George stayed quiet.

  Ida changed the subject. “You never did figure out who threw that brick through my window, did you?”

  “No.”

  “So you can’t know it was Lagercrantz for sure.”

  “Doesn’t mean it was Bobby.”

  “’Bobby’ he says. Jesus, listen to him. All you G.I. Joe wannabes sucking his dick-”

  “Come on, language.”

  “Shut it. He’s nuts, I’m living proof that he’s violent towards women. Theresa, the old lady in the shower curtain, she said the killer was taller than Lagercrantz. Bob Tree is taller. That night, Tree was alone with Lagercrantz in the apartment basement. Maybe, and I’m just saying maybe, he tells Lagercrantz details about Skid Row Sally. And Lagercrantz, being the intellectual that he is, maybe he thinks those are memories instead of something someone told him.”

  George rolled that over in his mind. He sat up straight. “You think Bobby could have coached Lagercrantz on what to say?”

  “And that’s why the details got messed up in the second confession. He didn’t have dear old Maddog Tree to keep him on point.”

  George shook his head. “The copy-girl-”

  “Darlene.”

  “Yeah. She was there too.”

  “She was also stuffed full of fear and trying to wrestle herself out of the freak’s cocoon. She might not have been able to hear. Or if she did, she just plain didn’t care to listen at the time.”

  George stood. He paced back and forth. Ida followed him with her eyes.

  Finally he stopped. “You think?”

  “I think maybe leaning towards yes.”

  “Bob Tree. He’s a goddamned war hero.”

  “The type of guy higher-ups would maybe want to cover up for once they learned that he had been a very naughty boy. After all the press he’s done, all the important hands he’s shaken, it would be a public relations disaster for just about every big-name politician from here to New York.”

  “So instead they ram a sick-o through as their prime suspect.”

  “And top him when that starts to unravel.”

  George stopped pacing. “And give the case to the detective they feature as being the least likely to figure any of it out.”

  Ida stood, looked George in the eye. “You gonna prove them wrong or what?”

  CHAPTER 36

  George’s part of what came next – get a bead on Bob Tree. They had become friendly in the
ir shared celebrity status after the night at Skid Row, swam in the same social circles. George had never risen to Bob’s level of socializing, the war hero never seemed star-struck, always made groups of people laugh, could smile easy as pie for any camera aimed his way.

  George’s brand new question was – were any of those big handsome toothy smiles real? Or was Tree just particularly good at slipping on the persona that was expected of him?

  Ida had wanted to come with him, of course she did, even when she was scared she wanted to be a pain in the ass. But he had put his foot down, no way did he want to have to protect her as well as himself if things turned sideways and Tree really was a maniac. He’d sent her packing back to the Clarion – if she felt safe there she was to stay there. George would call her every half hour to see if Tree was at the office or elsewhere. Their first communication – Tree had left the office, saying he was working on a story.

  He called in on his car radio, asked for Tree’s home address, got teased about being a squealing fan girl. Tree’s place turned out to be a courtyard apartment in Culver City. George looked around twice to make sure nobody was eyeballing him, he knew he was a hard figure to miss. He knocked on Tree’s door, knocked again, no answer. He looked around a third time, then popped a switchblade, worked the door’s lock carefully, trying to not leave any scratch marks on the surrounding wood.

  The door gave. He slipped in. The apartment inside was small, spartan, disappointing. If a big-time celebrity like Tree was living in a box like this, what hope did a cop ever have of living it up?

  He moved right through to the bedroom. He didn’t really figure on finding anything here – Bob Tree wasn’t no dummy, it wasn’t likely he was going to be keeping the dead girl’s dress in his underwear drawer.

  He tossed the place anyway. The closet looked like it was where Tree spent most of his money – the guy had four different suits, even owned his own tuxedo. No rentals for the war hero.