Front Page Fatale: The First Ida Bly Thriller

by Daniel Fox

  Nothing popped as evidence. He tried under the mattress. Under the bed. Through the bureau drawers. Nothing.

  He left the footlocker at the end of the bed for last. He checked it for anti-tamper hoo-haw – maybe a hair spit-glued across the box’s seams, set to fall if someone took a peek. He didn’t find anything and opened the locker.

  George paused, looking down. It was the history of Bob Tree in a box. On top, a Marine uniform, olive green, sun-bleached, USMC stencilled over the breast pocket. Not just a uniform, the uniform – George flipped it over and saw the entire belly of the shirt had been stained permanently brown. Bob’s blood from his famous gut wounds, the Japanese bullet shrapnel that should have put an end to his story right then and there. Bob had probably had to ask to keep it, he imagined medical staff would have been inclined to throw it away otherwise.

  George held it up to his nose, sniffed it. It just smelled faintly of detergent and moth balls. He didn’t know what he had expected or wanted – the scent of screaming Japanese charging with swords?

  Underneath – a small framed picture of Bob with other smiling young men, his unit. All of them wiped out when they made the mistake of crossing the path of a camouflaged Japanese bunker. Younger Bobby Tree looked different then – the same face, but a different... George didn’t know what. A different air about him. The Bob Tree he knew now carried sadness in him at all times, distinct now only because George had this image of a younger, happier Bob Tree to compare it to.

  Under that – a knife.

  George pulled it out. A Marine KA-BAR. A fighting knife.

  He pulled the blade out from its sheath. It was clean. He ran his thumb along it, the blade was dull. It didn’t cut him even when he applied pressure.

  He spun around, feeling like someone was behind him. The room and doorway were clear. He was taking too long, this was supposed to be an in-and-out job.

  Still. He had to know. Bobby’s phone was on the night table beside the bed. George picked it up, checked his notebook, dialed Doc Bader.

  “Bader residence.”

  “Doc? It’s Sergeant Schuttman.”

  “Sergeant! How are you today?”

  “I’m doing alright. You know, working.”

  “This is an official call?”

  “’Fraid so.”

  “Well I hope I can be of some assistance then.”

  “Did you hear about Lagercrantz?”

  “I did. Your man... Assistant Chief Pointe, is it? He told me.” Bader sighed. “What a mess. They’re still trying to figure out how he managed to escape from Camarillo.”

  “You ever have anything to do with him?”

  “Perhaps. If I did it was only in passing. My work at the hospital has always been purely from the physical side.”

  “Oh yeah? What do you do there?”

  “I examine the brains of the deceased, looking for possible physical causes for their disturbances.”

  “You mean you crack open their heads and...”

  Bader laughed. “Yes Sergeant, that is what I mean. Once they’ve passed on from natural causes, of course.”

  George whistled. “I think I’d lose my lunch.”

  “Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “Ah, no. Actually, this is about the girl’s autopsy. You remember you said that the instrument or whatever that was used to remove her lungs, you said that it would have been real sharp.”

  “Extremely so, that is correct.”

  George ran his thumb over the dulled blade of the KA-BAR again. It wasn’t even in the neighbourhood of sharp at the moment, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been sharp back in June. “How about a KA-BAR?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It’s a knife used by U.S. Marines.”

  “Hmmm.” The Doc took a moment, thinking.

  George looked out the window, keeping an eye out for Bobby.

  “No,” said the Doc finally. “While I wouldn’t rule it out entirely, I imagine that such a blade would still be too crude. We are looking for something of an exceptional degree of sharpness.”

  “Alright, thanks Doc. I appreciate it.”

  “Any time, Sergeant. I am always available to you. Schönen Tag.”

  “Sorry?”

  “Good day.”

  “Ah. Bye.”

  George hung up. He went back to the locker. He held the knife in his hand for a moment longer, but went with the Doc’s hunch and replaced it in its spot under the framed picture. It wasn’t like he had a warrant anyway.

  He stood in the doorway to the bedroom, gave the room the once-over. It looked the way he remembered it looking when he came in. He backed out, turned.

  There was a sword mounted on the wall under a tattered Japanese flag.

  It was one of those Japanese jobs, he forgot the fancy name. He pulled it of its scabbard about an inch and ran his thumb across it. It split his skin before it looked like he had even touched the metal.

  CHAPTER 37

  Back in Griffith Park, on the way back to their cars, George had mentioned the shoes he had been tracking down. He talked about how they were high-class, which made him think the victim wasn’t a Skid Row resident. That plus her good dental work and general nutritional health. He also mentioned that was the exact same time he saw the Clarion’s special edition with the morgue picture on the front, but Ida kept the conversation flowing on past that particular point.

  Galliers. Well hell. That was quite the item. George had hit maybe half a dozen shoe stores in Beverly Hills and the like, trying to track down someone that had sold them. He hadn’t come up with anything.

  Ida drove back to the Clarion. She sat at her desk, doing nothing, glad to see that Bob Tree wasn’t there. Her mind looped back around to the footwear.

  Schuttman wouldn’t be able to let her see the shoes, so she had no way of knowing if they really were Galliers or some kind of copy. Not that she was an expert on the subject, no way she’d be able to swing for a luxury product like that at her pay grade. She didn’t know which shoe stores Schuttman had hit in his investigation. She did know that he hadn’t had time to look into the knock-off angle.

  It was something to do. She was supposed to stay in the newsroom where there were plenty of witnesses, plus it would help keep George up to date on when Tree was there or out, but she couldn’t just sit there doing nothing.

  Besides, what were the chances she would run into Tree in Chinatown? She grabbed her jacket, fished out a copy of the living-version sketch of Skid Row Sally, and split.

  L.A.’s Chinatown – a hundred years earlier it had just been a single block-long alley. It got bumped to make space for Union Station in the early 1930s, causing the birth of the new and current Chinatown. The only planned Chinatown in the country that Ida knew of, she thought otherwise they probably just popped up in cities in a more organic fashion.

  Most of it was restaurants, nightclubs, some geared for the immigrants, others tuned more to give whites an easily digestible taste of the far east. It also had some of the most amazing copies of designer clothes if you knew the right alleyways to turn down into.

  Ida knew two such alleyways herself. A working-class woman couldn’t always afford the finer things, but she did just fine sporting world-class copies. Want to fit in with the upper crust? Fake it until you make it.

  So maybe Jane Doe or Skid Row Sally or whatever a body cared to call her really did have money for real-deal Gallier-designed footwear. But if that was the case, why hadn’t somebody called in and claimed her when the morgue photo and the living-version sketch had appeared on the front page? It struck Ida as off that some hob-knob family in Beverly Hills or wherever wouldn’t have had the photo and sketch brought to their attention by someone. That front page had hit the city, hell, the world, like a bombshell. No way a rich family missed it completely.

  But a young woman who wore knock-offs, her family or friends might have missed the pictures. It was an outside chance, but Ida had nothing else to run
with.

  She worked the first alley, showing the sketch around. No’s from those that could speak English, head shakes from those that couldn’t.

  She went to the second knock-off alley that she knew of. Skirted around white and Latino women. Four no’s from people suspicious that she was a cop there to cause trouble because of the bogus upper-crust handbags and dresses on display.

  A blink of recognition from the lady sitting in the fifth stall. Ida handed the sketch over. The lady put on round wire-rimmed glasses, peered at the picture. She jabbered back over her shoulder and a little girl, maybe seven or eight, put down her sewing and walked into the light.

  “Yes Miss? You want to buy a dress?”

  “Hiya doll. Is this your mother?”

  “Yes Miss. We have many nice dresses.”

  “You see that drawing there?”

  “Yes Miss. You have a good figure. You should buy something.”

  “Your mamma seems to recognize the young woman. Does she remember her?”

  An exchange in Chinese. “Yes Miss. She bought a dress. We make very nice dresses. You want one like the girl bought?”

  Ida’s heart picked up the pace – something new about the victim after all this time. “You know, I just might.”

  “You would look very pretty in blue.”

  “You think?”

  “Miss. What happened to your face?”

  Ida jerked back a bit. The mother, not understanding the words, nevertheless understood that her offspring had done something that might be stopping a sale. She gave the kid the sharp side of her tongue.

  The little girl looked up at Ida, shy now, no longer the tiny saleswoman. “Sorry Miss.”

  “Don’t worry about it. So, the young woman in the picture?”

  The little girl turned to her mother. The exchange took about a minute. Then: “Mother thinks she was here, but it was many months ago. Early in the year maybe. Or maybe late last year. She bought a black evening dress, very nice, we make nice dresses.”

  “Like, the kind of dress you would wear to a dance or...?”

  Another exchange. “More like to a very nice restaurant or maybe to go see opera. This woman in the picture, she is missing?”

  Ida took the picture back from the mother. “You don’t know who she is?”

  The little girl shook her head. Her mother said something. The girl translated. “If she is missing maybe you could ask her friend.”

  “Friend? What friend?”

  Translation: “Another girl, about the same age. Blonde, blue eyes, a good figure. Also very pretty. All-American girl.”

  “Friend? Did you get her name? Did she have alterations done? Did you maybe deliver the dress?”

  “We don’t deliver.” An exchange. “She did have alterations. She came back for the dress.”

  “Did you have to call her to tell her when it was ready?”

  “Yes.”

  Ida’s pulse picked up. “And do you still have her phone number?”

  “We keep all the numbers. You want to buy a dress?”

  Ida laughed. Blatant exploitation from an eight year-old hustler. Still, a dress for this kind of information was an easy choice. “Sure kid. You were saying something about blue?”

  CHAPTER 38

  George made it out of Bob Tree’s apartment just in time. He crossed the street, slid into his car, and there was Bob Tree pulling up in his own ride, parking in his designated spot at an angle.

  Tree looked bad – pale and clammy, hair messy where it peeked out around his hat. He hustled up to his apartment, just this side of an all-out run, slammed the door behind him.

  George sat in his car, watching Tree’s living room window. It was a floor above him, he couldn’t see much, but then there was Tree leaning out, scanning around. Maybe George hadn’t been as careful as he had thought, maybe he had left some sign of his presence.

  There was more pacing in there by Tree, and then good old Bobby was back out of his apartment and down into his car. He backed up, missing clipping the car parked behind his by a hair, then laid rubber and was down the street like a shot.

  George followed. He stayed three cars back, his body size would be a dead giveaway if Tree looked in his rear-view mirror. Tree made a left as the light was turning red, people on the cross street let him know how much they loved that with their horns. George was caught two cars back. He couldn’t make the turn. Tree drove on out of sight.

  George gripped his steering wheel hard enough to make it squeal. The red took forever and an hour. The two left-turners in front of him crept forward into the intersection, being babies about slipping through the cracks of the oncoming traffic.

  George laid on his horn. The driver directly in front of him flipped the bird out his window.

  George’s vision dimmed. He unbuckled his belt, put it in park, got out of his car.

  The driver in front saw the size of him and retracted the offered finger, rolling up his window. Lucky for him, there was a gap, and the first two cars made the left.

  George slammed back down into his car, got it rolling. He made his own gap by charging through the left, making oncoming traffic brake hard enough to leave rubber on the road. A lot of horns, a lot of colourful language.

  George kept moving, hunched low, eyes left, eyes right, left, right.

  He managed to snag a small miracle – there was Tree’s car, in the parking lot of a Veterans Affair building.

  George parked on the street. He hesitated for a second – what was his next play? Bob could be in there doing one of a hundred things – just meeting up for a coffee or maybe something a little stronger with old war buddies. Maybe setting up some kind of charity gig. Did vets collect some kind of pension check? Maybe he was in there doing that.

  On the other hand, Bobby had left his apartment looking like the Devil was biting at his ass. He couldn’t see a guy looking that wild just settling in for a chat, hey how are the kids, you’re putting on a little weight there fella.

  If George went in now though, he’d be rumbled. Bobby would know that at least one cop was onto him. He might split town. He might be extra cautious, not doing anything that would make him slip up. He might get anxious enough to take it out on another girl.

  George sat in his car. Stake-out time. He gripped his steering wheel with both hands and shook it a little bit. He hated staying still like this.

  He thought about all those people in that building going about their lives while a guy who had taken a girl apart was walking around with them, sharing their air, maybe making jokes. They were thinking about what to have for dinner. They were thinking about how to get into the secretary’s pants. They weren’t thinking about danger. George realized he swam in different waters than regular people. He’d always known it of course, but now it really hit home. The thought made him queasy.

  He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t stay still. He got out of his car, crossed the street. Went inside.

  He waited for a second to let his eyes adjust from the sun. This was a smaller V.A. building. George knew there were other V.A. spots in the city, basically villages set up around hospitals to care for retired or hurt vets. This seemed more like a medical center, vets and their families seated in chairs around a lobby, waiting to be called by staff. Doctors and nurses hustled in and out, carrying clipboards and medical files.

  “Excuse me sir, that area is for patients and staff.”

  George held up his badge, walked down the hall. Lots of offices, most of the doors closed, murmured conversations inside the rooms. He passed a couple of open doors that had typical doctor stuff – standing scales, eye charts, benches for patients to lie down on while the doctor stuck his thumb up their wazoos.

  Some of the offices on the left though looked set up for businessmen, or maybe professors, lots of books on the shelves. It took George a second to clue in to the idea that maybe these were for shrinks. Bobby had brought him that file on the make-believe killer from some kind of headshrinke
r, but he had never fully explained why he had seen one in the first place.

  Maybe Bobby hadn’t just been talking to a psychologist or psychiatrist or whatever they were about the Skid Row boogeyman. Maybe he was a patient.

  A door opened up down the hall and there was Bob Tree, coming out, nodding back at the person inside. George ducked into another office, closed the door, listened as Bob’s footsteps went by and out.

  George came back out. Checked the nameplate on the door Bobby had come out of – Stefen Nabozny. A connection clicked – the name on that paper written on the killer.

  George entered without knocking, closed the door behind him. A big heavy desk, two chairs facing each other on the other side, lots of books on shelves.

  Nabozny was standing this side of his desk, rearranging the chairs. He frowned up at George. “Excuse me sir, I have an appointment-”

  George showed his detective’s badge. “Yeah, I’m it.”

  “I will call security.”

  “I will duly beat hell out of said security. Look at me, you think I can’t do it? So you go ahead and call them in or you give me a couple of minutes of your time and then you can get on with your next mental case or whatever it is you do here.”

  Nabozny considered the phone on his desk, then reconsidered, sat down in the chair behind the desk. “Fine. Make it quick.”

  “How quick it is will be up to you.” George sat in one of the facing chairs. It squeaked underneath his weight. “Robert Tree.”

  “What about him?”

  “You know him.”

  “Of course. He’s famous. Say, have you ever heard of Clark Gable? He’s all the rage.”

  “I thought you wanted to make this quick. Giving me shit makes me want to take my time.”

  “What about Bob Tree?”

  “Did he come to you for that thing on the Skid Row killer? The write-up?”

  “You read that?”

  George nodded. “I’m the cop he brought it to.”

  Nabozny sat forward, interested now, losing his snooty sarcasm. “Did it help catch that Lagercrantz fellow?”

  “Not really.”