by James Ellroy
Guenther was on vacation now. Grimm told Stoner to get acclimated at Unsolved and study the initial Cotton Club file. Stoner browsed old files to get the Unsolved gestalt. Something led him to Phyllis (Bunny) Krauch—DOD 7/12/71.
The case was semi-famous. A reporter ran it by him years back. The Bunny Krauch job caused havoc at Sheriffs Homicide.
Bunny West grew up rich in Pasadena. She married a man named Robert Krauch in the late ’50s and had four kids by him. Krauch was a reporter for the LA, Herald, His father was a big cheese with the paper.
Bunny Krauch was beautiful. She was kindhearted and pathologically cheerful. Robert Krauch was possessive and ill-tempered. Everybody liked Bunny. Nobody liked Robert.
The Krauches moved to Playa del Rey in the early ’60s. They bought a beautiful beachfront home. Robert developed a bad reputation. People considered him eccentric. He rode his bicycle around Playa del Rey and put out hostile vibes.
Marina del Rey was the new hip enclave. It was just a mile north of Playa. It featured boat slips and yachts and lots of groovy bars and restaurants.
Charlie Brown’s opened up in ’68. It was a freewheeling bar and steakhouse with a swinging clientele. The waitresses were all stone foxes. They wore lowcut tops and short dresses. The manager dug the L.A. Lakers. He sucked up to the players and got his girls dates with them. Charlie Brown’s became a big sports hangout.
Bunny Krauch got a waitress job there. She worked the late shift and quit around midnight. She started living a separate life a mile away from her family.
Charlie Brown’s swung hard. The waitresses were always dodging passes. Bunny Krauch got pawed and groped every night.
This Don guy was the King of the Gropers. He worked as a bug exterminator. He was unattractive and well into his ’50s. The waitresses loathed him. He became Bunny Krauch’s lover. Nobody could figure them out.
Don was 20 years older than Bunny. Don was disgusting. Don was a flagrant ass-pincher and a drunk.
The affair went on for three years. Don and Bunny met at a motel on Admiralty Way. They met at Charlie Brown’s and other restaurants in the Marina. They were not discreet. Bunny’s friends knew the score. Robert Krauch did not.
Robert got a vasectomy. Bunny said she wanted to stay on the pill. The pill regulated her period.
Robert did not get the picture.
Bunny died in her car. It was parked in a cul-de-sac near Charlie Brown’s. Somebody strangled her. They tied two Charlie Brown’s napkins around her neck and pulled. Somebody raped her and sodomized her. Her dress was pushed up and her blouse was ripped open. She left Charlie Brown’s at midnight and died soon after. She died in her Charlie Brown’s outfit.
A private patrol guard found her. Sheriff’s Homicide took over.
Don had an alibi. Robert Krauch said he was asleep at home when the murder occurred. A witness saw a man on a bike near the crime scene. Robert Krauch said it wasn’t him. Robert Krauch said he didn’t know his wife was cheating on him.
The patrol guard was a red-hot suspect. A woman said the man and his cousin raped and sodomized her two years ago. It was her word against theirs. The cops believed them. The matter went no further.
Detectives leaned on the guard. He denied the earlier sex beef and denied killing Bunny Krauch. He took a polygraph test and passed it.
A half-dozen detectives were assigned to the case. Dozens more volunteered. The case became the rage of Sheriff’s Homicide. It featured a beautiful victim and a rocking milieu. It was Laura updated to a promiscuous era. Bunny Krauch bewitched all the guys. They wanted to find her killer and fuck him over good. They wanted to meet all the Charlie Brown’s girls. They wanted to shake up the Marina.
They hit the area hard. They turned Charlie Brown’s upside down and hassled every creep who ever pawed Bunny Krauch. They interviewed the L.A. Lakers and Bunny’s waitress pals. They leaned on tit pinchers and registered sex offenders. They chased Bunny’s ghost.
Some drank too much. Some fell in love. Some got righteously laid. A few took the big plunge behind sex and murder and flushed their family lives down the shitter for women they just met.
Bunny Krauch put a hex on Sheriff’s Homicide. Stoner loved her for it. He was sorry some other women got hurt. He knew how to keep things straight. He knew how to keep his thing with women sealed up inside him.
He fell hard for Bunny. He wished the guys who took the big plunge knew how to love like he did.
He clicked with Charlie Guenther. They both liked to work fall-tilt.
They read the Cotton Club file individually and together. They talked to the surviving investigator and got their facts straight.
It started as an LAPD missing-persons case. Roy Radin’s assistant reported Radin missing. Radin was staying at a hotel-apartment complex in West Hollywood. He walked out the door on 5/13/83. He got into a limo with a female coke dealer named Laney Jacobs. Radin and Jacobs were pissed off at each other. Jacobs thought Radin got one of her minions to steal some dope and money from her. Radin and Jacobs were hooked up with a has been producer named Robert Evans. They were haggling over the Cotton Club film project. It was acrimonious bullshit.
Radin and Jacobs were meeting to hash out their disputes. They were supposed to dine at La Scala in Beverly Hills. Radin feared foul play. He told his pal Demond Wilson to tail Laney’s limo. Wilson was a has-been actor. He used to star in the Sanford and Son TV show.
Radin split with Laney. Wilson blew his tail. Radin dropped off the face of the earth.
The LAPD couldn’t find Laney Jacobs. Bob Evans didn’t know where Roy Radin was. The LAPD had Radin pegged as a fly-by-night cokehead. They figured he’d turn up sooner or later. They dropped their investigation.
Radin turned up dead five weeks later. A beekeeper found his body in Caswell Canyon up near Gorman. It was badly decomped. Twenty-two-caliber shell fragments were scattered all around it. Somebody stuck dynamite in Radin’s mouth postmortem. The explosion failed to obliterate his teeth. Forensic techs ID’d the body from dental charts.
Gorman was in L.A. County. Carlos Avila and Willy Ahn caught the case for Sheriff’s Homicide.
They studied the LAPD missing-persons file. They tagged Laney Jacobs as a major coke dealer. They learned that she was tight with a strongarm man named Bill Mentzer. They located Jacobs in Aspen, Colorado. They decided not to jerk her chain just yet. They couldn’t locate Mentzer.
Months passed. Willy Ahn got sick. He learned he had a potentially fatal brain tumor. He worked the Radin case anyway. Carlos Avila checked the LAPD computer and learned that Bill Mentzer was suspected of a recent contract hit.
The victim was named June Mincher. She was an ugly, 200-pound black woman. Most people thought she was a drag queen or a man. She was a prostitute, phone-sex entrepreneur and shakedown artist.
She was hassling a wealthy family. The grandson was one of her tricks. The family hired a private eye named Mike Pascal to teach her a lesson. Pascal farmed the job out to Bill Mentzer. Mentzer pistol-whipped June Mincher and a trick she was fucking at her pad. Mincher kept bugging the family. She was shot to death on 5/3/84. Mentzer was their number-one suspect. They had jackshit for proof.
Avila couldn’t find Mentzer. Months went by. Avila worked fresh murders and came back to the Radin case when his workload thinned out. Willy Ahn was now gravely ill.
An LAPD narc named Freddy McKnight shot his mouth off to a guy in the DA’s Office. McKnight said he had the inside scoop on the Roy Radin job. He was going to bust a big Sheriff’s case himself.
The DA’s man called Bob Grimm. Grimm called his top contact at LAPD and told him to squeeze McKnight. The squeeze worked. McKnight told Grimm and Avila his story.
McKnight had a snitch named Mark Fogel. He popped Fogel with a big load of Laney Jacobs’ coke. Fogel ran a limo service. Bill Mentzer and a guy named Bob Lowe drove for him part-time. Fogel said that Mentzer and Lowe were in on the Radin snuff. Fogel just clued McKnight to a big coke deal. M
entzer and Lowe were bringing two kilos in to the L.A. airport. It was Laney Jacobs’ dope. McKnight was set to bust Mentzer and Lowe right there at LAX.
Avila joined the arrest team. The bust went down smoothly. They took two kilos off Mentzer and Lowe. Mentzer and Lowe refused to discuss the Radin snuff. They bailed out of custody fast.
Mentzer and Lowe shared an apartment in the Valley. Avila got a warrant and searched it. He found a snapshot of Mentzer and two unknown men in the desert. It looked like the spot where Roy Radin’s body was found. Avila found some car registration papers. Laney Jacobs gave Bob Lowe a Cadillac the very day Roy Radin disappeared.
Avila revisited the Radin crime scene. The photo was shot right there. Avila ran the photo by his witnesses. Nobody knew the two men with Mentzer.
Willy Ahn died. Mentzer and Lowe beat the dope rap on a search-and-seizure glitch. Avila braced the DA. The DA read his Radin case summary and declined to file. He said the case was weak.
Avila caught some fresh murders. He ran the Radin case by the DAs Office every so often. Nobody wanted to file. Two years and some months passed.
Stoner knew they could break it. They had to make the right people talk.
It was all there.
Radin vanished in a limo. Mentzer and Lowe drove limos part-time. Mentzer worked for Laney Jacobs. Laney hated Roy Radin. Mentzer was an amateur hit man.
Stoner wanted to move. Guenther wanted him to study another case first. The Tracy Lea Stewart job was Guenther’s bête noir. He knew the killers. He wanted to pop the main guy before he retired. He wanted to get Stoner hooked on Tracy.
Stoner read the file. He got hooked instantly.
Tracy Stewart was 18. She lived with her parents and kid brother in Carson. She was quiet and shy and easily frightened.
She disappeared 8/9/81. She met a boy named Bob at Redondo Beach that day. Bob was about 21. He was nice-looking. He asked Tracy out. Tracy told him to call her.
Bob called at 6:00 p.m. He suggested a drive and a few games of pool at a nice bowling alley. Tracy said sure. Bob said he’d be right over. Tracy told her mother she was going out on a date. Her mother told her to call home at least once.
Bob picked Tracy up. Tracy called her mother one hour later. She called from a bowling alley in Palos Verdes. She said she’d be home by midnight or 1:00 a.m.
She didn’t come home. Her parents waited up. They called the Carson Sheriff’s Station in the morning.
A deputy went by the bowling alley. He talked to some people on duty last night. They recalled Tracy and Bob. They didn’t know who Bob was.
The case was bounced to Sheriff’s Missing Persons. Sergeant Cissy Kienest talked to Tracy’s friends and dozens of beach habitues. Nobody knew Bob. Nobody saw Tracy or Bob the night of 8/9/81.
Tracy’s parents distributed flyers and ran newspaper ads. Tracy remained missing. The case lay dormant for four years.
A man named Robbie Beckett assaulted his girlfriend in 1985. He was arrested in Aspen, Colorado. He was sentenced to two years in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Sergeant Gary White handled the case for the Aspen PD.
White and Beckett had a cordial relationship. Robbie told White he wanted to buy some time off his sentence. He knew about a murder in L.A. The date was August ’81. The victim was a girl he picked up. Her first name or middle name was Lee. He forgot her last name.
White said he couldn’t promise any deals. Robbie laid out his story anyway.
His father was named Bob Beckett Sr. He used to live with him in Torrance—down by Redondo Beach and Palos Verdes. His father was an artist. He ran a rinky-dink art school and made extra cash as a strongarm enforcer. He collected money for some mob-connected guys in San Pedro. His father was 6′4″, 270. His father knew karate. His father was in the Society for Creative Anachronisms—this group where people acted out this weird medieval shit. His father hung out with a faggy guy named Paul Serio. Paul Serio was a big shot in that weird society. His father was 45 years old now. His father was a baaad son-of-a-bitch.
His father had a girlfriend named Sharon Hatch. She broke off their relationship in May ’81. Bob Beckett Sr. went crazy. He stalked Sharon and threatened her. He told Robbie to round up some bikers to gang-rape her.
Robbie loved and feared his dad. Robbie hated to see him hurt and angry. He rounded up some guys to rape Sharon. He called it off at the last moment. Robbie liked Sharon. He didn’t want to hurt her. He figured his dad would outgrow this whole vengeance thing.
Bob Beckett Sr. stayed hurt and angry. He dropped his Sharon fixation and developed a new one. He told Robbie to find him a young girl. He could rough up the girl and get back at Sharon that way.
Robbie stalled him. He figured his father would outgrow the young-girl fixation. Bob Beckett Sr. persisted. Robbie gave in.
He met that girl Lee at the beach. He got her number. He called her and asked her out. He took her to a bowling alley and shot some pool with her. They necked and drank some beer. He told her he had to stop someplace before he took her home.
The girl said okay. Robbie took her to his father’s apartment. The lights were off. Bob Beckett Sr. was waiting in the bedroom. Robbie left the girl in the living room and walked in. His father said, “Did you bring me something?” Robbie delivered the girl.
Bob Beckett Sr. pawed her and raped her. Robbie got blind drunk in the living room. Bob Beckett Sr. spent two or three hours alone with the girl.
He told her he’d drive her home. He told her to take a shower first. He locked her in the bathroom. He told Robbie they had to kill her.
Robbie didn’t want to kill her. Bob Beckett Sr. grabbed a homemade sap and insisted. Robbie gave in.
Bob Beckett Sr. unlocked the bathroom and told the girl to get dressed. She did it. Robbie and Bob Beckett Sr. walked her down to their van. It was 2:00 or 2:30 a.m.
Robbie swung the sap. It caught on a tree branch. The blow stunned the girl and ripped her face. Robbie couldn’t dredge up the guts to hit her again.
Bob Beckett Sr. hit her and threw her in the back of the van. He got in and pinned her down with his knees. He strangled her bare-handed and wrapped a plastic garbage bag over her head.
They drove the body south on the 405 freeway. They took some weird roads out to the boonies. They dumped the girl in some bushes near a fence.
They drove home and sweated out exposure. The papers ran some missing-girl stories. Bob Beckett Sr. told Robbie to gut the van. Robbie replaced the paneling and bought a new set of tires. No cops came around. Robbie figured coyotes ate the body.
Robbie lived scared for a while. He moved out of his father’s apartment and moved in with his mother. Bob Beckett Sr. gave the van to Robbie’s brother David. Time dragged by. Bob Beckett Sr. married a woman named Cathy. Cathy had two daughters. Bob Beckett Sr. started molesting her 12-year-old.
Robbie told a few friends what happened. They thought he was bullshitting. Robbie was a boozer and a brawler and a sometime fruit hustler. His friends didn’t feature him as a murder-victim procurer.
Bob Beckett Sr. moved to Aspen. He got a job with his old karate buddy Paul Hamway. Robbie moved to Aspen and settled in near his father.
Gary White bought most of the story. Robbie threw in a little teaser. He said his father did a contract hit in Florida. He knew the details—but refused to divulge them.
Gary White called Sheriff’s Homicide. He ran Robbie’s story by Charlie Guenther.
Guenther consulted the Missing Persons Unit. Cissy Kienest said “Lee” might be Tracy Lea Stewart. Guenther sent a Tracy Stewart photo to Aspen. Gary White placed it in with a dozen shots of other young women. He showed them to Robbie Beckett. Robbie pointed to Tracy.
White called Charlie Guenther and told him he hit paydirt. Guenther and Cissy Kienest flew to Aspen.
Bob Beckett Sr. visited Robbie in prison. Robbie told him he snitched him off for the dead girl. Bob Beckett Sr. convinced him to retract his story. He laid on threats and recriminations
and stressed plain old father-son loyalty. Robbie kowtowed to his dad like he always did.
Charlie Guenther and Cissy Kienest tried to interview Robbie. Robbie pissed backwards. He said the story he told White was bullshit. He wouldn’t issue a formal statement confirming it. He wouldn’t testify against his father.
Robbie wouldn’t budge. They couldn’t arrest him or Bob Beckett Sr. without a sworn statement and some kind of formal arrangement with the L.A. DA’s Office.
White laid a side trip on Guenther. Daddy Beckett’s stepdaughter just accused him of fondling her. She told a social services counselor. It wasn’t a criminal matter yet.
Guenther decided to fuck with Bob Beckett Sr. He found him and goosed him with his stepdaughter’s story. Beckett flexed his muscles and stayed frosty. Guenther wanted to rumble. Bob Beckett Sr. probably sensed it.
That was 18 months ago.
Stoner read the Stewart file a half-dozen times. The case was as workable as the Cotton Club job. They knew who killed Tracy. They knew who killed Roy Radin. They couldn’t do a fucking thing about it right now.
Charlie got him hooked on Tracy Stewart. Bob Grimm got him hooked on The Cotton Club. He had a brilliant partner. Two cases constituted a manageable few.
They had to make some people talk.
They knew ex-wives were good talkers. They knew Bill Mentzer had an ex-wife named Deedee Mentzer Santangelo. Her father was a heavyweight Teamster. They contacted him. They told him they were checking out Deedee’s lowlife ex.
The old man hated Mentzer. He called Deedee and told her to cooperate. Stoner and Guenther met with her. She examined the photo that Carlos Avila found. She ID’d the two men standing with Mentzer.
One man was named Alex Marti. He was from Argentina. He was a scary, violent guy. Deedee saw him provoke a couple of fights. She was afraid of him.
The other man was an ex-cop named Bill Rider. He used to be tight with Larry Flynt, the porno king. He was married to Flynt’s sister. He used to be Flynt’s security boss. Rider was back in Ohio now. He was engaged in litigation against Flynt.
