by Bill Bernico
“Cooper,” he said, “The official word is that this was a suicide and it will be treated as such until we have reason to think otherwise. If you have any crazy ideas keep ‘em to yourself. I have work to do.” Hollister turned away and continued with his search.
“Typical,” I said. “You still got your head up your ass after all this time.” I was growing impatient at the sergeant’s indifference. “I’d have thought you of all people would have wised up by now. You know I was framed and I know I was framed and still you insist on playing these stupid games. Who you protecting anyway?”
Sergeant Hollister didn’t answer. Instead he just scowled and headed for the door, glancing back over his shoulder as he was leaving. “Matt, let me give you some advice. Some things are better left alone. Trust me on this one. I know what I’m talking about. Stay out of it.”
Before the words had stopped echoing in the hallway, Dan was gone. I couldn’t see the curb from here, but I heard the car door slam and the tires squeal as Sergeant Hollister pulled away.
What was Harry doing here, I wondered. If Harry’s killer thought that Harry had left anything, they’d have torn this place apart looking for it. But then they really didn’t have time for a thorough search. I got here right after poor Harry got plugged. That explains the overturned desk drawer.
I stood there a moment to collect my thoughts and to look around the room one more time. “Well, it looks like I gotta get me a new blotter,” I said out loud, as if there was someone to hear me. I lifted the blotter and looked around for a place to toss it. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a small piece of paper stuck to the underside of the blotter. Partially stained with Harry’s own blood, I could still make out four numbers—6052 and MARCHE before the blood obliterated the rest.
It didn’t take an Einstein to figure out that it was claim ticket number 6052 something or other from Marcheske’s Dry Cleaners store. “Why on earth would Harry leave just a ticket?” I said, and pressed the ticket into the blotter one more time to soak up the excess moisture. I wrapped the ticket in my handkerchief.
“Well, now, let’s just see what we can claim with this ticket,” I said as I locked the office door and strolled down the hallway to the stairs.
I exited the office building and started for my car. I had my hand on the door handle, ready to twist it open when I paused and looked behind me. The Hotel St. Clair loomed five stories up behind me. I deposited the ticket into my front suit pocket and walked through the alley behind the office toward the hotel. The alley emptied out onto Howard Street. The Hotel St. Clair was just around the corner.
It was an unimpressive looking brown-brick building that had seen its better days. It was probably a luxurious place around the turn of the century, but neglect and decay had taken its toll and now the once majestic building had become a discount flophouse for the multitude of transients that seemed to be attracted to Los Angeles.
I pushed hard on the revolving door that led to the lobby and quickly stepped between the panes of glass as it rotated. Once inside I headed for the reception desk where Ben, the desk clerk, sat napping. I leaned on the desk and tapped the service bell twice. Ben quickly sat up and tried to focus on the figure at the counter.
“Oh, hello, Matt,” Ben said as he wrapped his spectacles around his ears and approached the desk. “What can I do for you?”
“Maybe nothing, Ben,” I said. “I was on my way out and just thought I’d check with you.”
“‘Bout what?” Ben said.
“Were you on duty here last night, Ben?”
“Yeah, came on around nine. I got the nine to nine shift this week. I’ll be done here in a few minutes.”
“Did you see or hear anything unusual around midnight last night?” I asked, leaning in toward Ben.
“What do you mean, Matt? What kind of unusual stuff are you talking about?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Anything. Maybe nothing. What were you doing around midnight?”
“Well,” he said, “Let’s see. Wasn’t much happening up here at the desk. Most folks are already checked in by now. I guess I was readin’ the paper.”
“Anything unusual happen around then?”
“No. Least nothin’ I can think of, ‘cept…” Ben paused and then continued, “Nah, it was nothin’.”
“What, Ben?” I pressed him to remember more.
“Well,” he said, “There was this big truck that went by the front of the hotel and it backfired. I remember ‘cause I was reading about that police shoot-out downtown yesterday and just when I got to the part about the cops shootin’ it out with that guy, the truck backfired.” Ben scratched his bald head. “It was eerie, ‘cause it reminded me of a shot. Strange, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, strange,” I said. “Could it have been a shot, Ben?”
“Coulda been,” he said. “I suppose anything’s possible. What are you gettin’ at?” The words were no sooner out of Ben’s mouth than he looked back down at the morning paper and spotted Harry Marcheske’s picture. “Oh, you’re talkin’ about poor ol’ Harry, aren’t you, Matt?”
I didn’t want to let Ben in on what I suspected. “Anything else out of the ordinary happen last night?” I said.
“Nope,” Ben said. “‘Cept right after that truck left here some idiot in a car squealed away down the street. Right in front of here. I remember ‘cause it sounded like a big car with one of them powerful engines. You know, the kind that sounds like an airplane winding up. Didn’t see it, but you know that sound, don’t ya?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks, Ben.” I patted the man on the shoulder. “You’ve been a big help.”
The pieces began falling together as I exited the hotel and headed back down the alley toward my car. I pulled my note pad from my lapel pocket and jotted down the things that Ben had told me.
Once behind the wheel of the Olds, I paused and withdrew the handkerchief from my pocket and unrolled it to see if I could read the address on the ticket I’d found. I was pretty sure I knew where Harry’s place was, but checked the ticket as an unconscious reflex. “812 Orange Avenue? That’s just about a block and a half from here.”
I stepped on the starter, yanked the shifter down into first and sped off down the block. I made a sharp right turn at the corner and shifted into second. I was barely out of second gear when I came to an abrupt halt in front of Marcheske’s shop.
I looked at the ticket once more and entered the shop. The bell over the door tinkled and a teen-aged boy emerged from behind the curtain and took his place behind the counter.
“Can I help you, mister?” The boy said with an air of authority.
“Yeah,” I said. “I came to pick up my dry cleaning. I don’t remember seeing you here before. Where’s the owner,” I said, knowing full well what had become of Harry.
“Oh, you mean Mr. Marcheske?” the boy said. “It was in the paper this morning. Didn’t you see it? It looks like he killed himself. Mrs. Marcheske asked me to look after the store today. I guess she’s in pretty bad shape herself, what with Mr. Marcheske being dead and all.”
“I guess I did read about that,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear about it. Anyway, I don’t have the ticket along but I remember the number. It was 6052. Think you can find that for me?” I said, not wanting to show the bloodstained ticket to the boy.
“Let’s see, 6052. Let me check in the back. Okay, here it is. One tan jacket, size 42. Is that it?” The kid spoke as though he owned the place, knowing there was no longer a boss to oversee his actions.
I nodded.
“That’ll be a dollar fifteen.” The kid unsnapped the safety pin holding the ticket in place and handed the jacket over the counter to me. “Will there be anything else today, mister?”
“No thanks, son,” I said. “This will do it. And here’s a dime for you. Don’t spend it all in one place.” I smiled at the kid, grabbed the jacket and turned to leave. The kid studied the dime in his palm and then looked back up at me as
I left.
I carried the jacket back to the car and began rifling through the pockets. Nothing in the inside pockets. Nothing in the two large front pockets. If there was something here, it had to be in the lapel pocket. Again I came up empty. “Well, if ol’ Harry was trying to tell me something with that ticket, he sure went to a lot of trouble for nothing.”
I pulled away from the curb and had gone about half a block when it struck me. I slammed on the brakes, jammed the shifter up into reverse and threw my right arm over the seat back, zigzagging back to my parking spot in front of the dry cleaners. I was again welcomed by the tingle-ling of the bell hanging overhead.
“You forget something, mister?” the kid said with a quizzical look on his face.
“Yeah, when I brought this in, I left something in one of the pockets,” I said, trying to complete the bluff. “Do you have a place where you keep stuff like that when you find it?”
“Well now, let me think,” the kid said staring off into space. “We have a cigar box on the shelf in the back with little envelopes with numbers on them. Harry, I mean Mr. Marcheske used to keep people’s stuff in there.” The kid seemed eager to help. “Want me to check for ya?”
“Would you? It would be a big help.” I paced in front of the counter awaiting the return of the boy. A minute later he emerged with a small envelope with the number 6052 written on it.
“This looks like it could be it.” The boy held the envelope toward me. “Is that what you’re looking for?”
I held the envelope up, pretending to inspect the number, as if I knew what was in it already. “Yes, that’s it,” I said. “Thanks again, kid. You’ve been a big help.”
“Don’t mention it, mister,” he said. “And by the way, if you need anything else, my name’s Eddie, Eddie Bartels.”
“Well, thanks, Eddie,” I said. “I’ll let ya know.”
Back in the car, I inserted my finger under the flap and gently lifted. The envelope gave way and opened to reveal a single key. It didn’t look like an ordinary key, though. The head of the key was fatter and was colored red. There were some numbers etched in the head of the key. I held the key up and turned it toward the light. “What on Earth could 672 mean?” I thought, dropping the key into my front left pocket and once again pulling away from the curb.
I drove north on La Brea, thinking about the key. I’d seen similar keys before at the bus station. They were the kinds of keys that locked those public lockers for a nickel. “Could it be that simple?” I wondered as I approached Sunset Boulevard and turned right. I had to check the bus station, obvious or not.
The bus station was just a short trip and I pulled into the parking lot and stepped on the parking brake. In one sweeping motion, I was out of the car, the door slamming shut behind me as I strode toward the bus terminal.
As I approached the front door to the bus station, I noticed a woman on her way out. I held the door open for a lady who was carrying two suitcases and trying to retain control of a four-year-old boy. The boy held onto a sticky red sucker. As the mother and child passed through the doorway, the sucker managed to find its way to the front of my jacket. The little hand kept moving with the boy, but the sucker held fast to my jacket. The boy’s mother was too wrapped up in juggling her packages and offspring to notice the missing sucker and simply assumed that her son was crying again just for the hell of it.
Disgusted, I grasped the sucker stick between my index finger and thumb and tugged at it with a slow, steady pull. The stick let go, leaving the candy hanging there by itself.
“Hey lady, your kid…” I didn’t finish my sentence. The lady was already across the street and getting into a big yellow cab. “Oh hell, what’s the use?”
I found the snack table, grabbed a napkin and took hold of the red mess clinging to my jacket pocket. This time it all came off and I quickly threw the wad into the trash barrel. “Jeez, now I gotta get this damned thing dry cleaned,” I said to no one in particular. It might be a good time to grill young Eddie Bartels one more time, so I figured it wouldn’t be a totally wasted trip.
There was one whole wall consisting of a public locker section at the terminal. I pulled the key out of my pocket again and examined the number. “All right now,” I said. “Six-seventy-two. Let’s see. One forty-four, one forty-five, one forty-six. That can’t be all there is.”
I tapped the key on the glass at the snack counter. A man with a white folding paper cap and a white apron emerged from the back room holding a spatula. “Can I help you, sir?” he said, trying to sound authoritative.
“Yeah,” I said. “Where are the rest of the lockers?” My eyebrows turned upward involuntarily. “All I found were the ones up to one forty-six.”
“Sorry, mister,” the man said, “But that’s all we got. Can I get you a burger or maybe a hot dog, long as I’m at it?”
“No. Thanks anyway,” I said. As the man turned toward the kitchen again, I quickly added, “Say, is there another bus station close by?”
Without stepping any closer, the man turned and shouted back, “Nope. Next closest one is downtown, ‘bout half an hour’s ride. Tickets ain’t any cheaper there. Might as well buy it here.”
“I don’t need a ticket, but thanks for the information.” I pushed the double glass doors aside and exited to the street.
“It may be a wild goose chase,” I thought, “But I gotta check out the downtown depot. If this ain’t a bus locker key, I don’t know what it could fit.”
I made the trip downtown and found a parking place right in front of the building. “Somebody’s looking out for me, anyway,” I thought as I proudly placed the car between the two white lines. “Let’s see if it’s this easy inside.”
Once inside, I headed for the information desk at the end of the corridor. I stopped midway and thought how stupid I’d look asking where the lockers were, since there was an entire wall filled with lockers just to my left. A quick glance told me that I was in the vicinity of locker number 787. “Well, at least these numbers go that high,” I thought as I stepped backwards along the wall, my eyes glued on the small number plates on each door.
“Six eighty, six seventy-four, here we are, six seventy-two.” I held the key up to the door and pressed the shaft to the keyhole. It wouldn’t budge. Turning the key upside down, I tried it again. Still no luck. “Well, what the… If this isn’t a bus locker key, what the hell does it fit?” I said almost aloud. “Now what?”
Looking down at the shiny, sticky spot on my jacket, I thought, I’d better get over to Marcheske’s shop and get this mess taken care of while it’s fresh. I turned to leave and slipped out of the jacket and draped it over my arm, sticky side up.
As I headed for the front door, my eyes were temporarily blinded by a bright flash. Blinking and rubbing my eyes, my focus soon readjusted and I found myself face to face with a kid. Couldn’t have been more than twenty or twenty-one.
“Mr. Cooper,” he said, “Care to make a statement for the press?” The boy stood there, his camera hanging around his neck on a leather strap. The boy produced a pad and pencil from his jacket pocket and waited for a response.
“Who the hell are you?” I said.
The boy shifted his load and proudly pointed to the tag in his hatband that said PRESS. “Stanley Duncan, Los Angeles Tribune,” he said it as though it were supposed to mean something.
I gave him a quizzical look and said nothing.
“Stanley Duncan,” the boy repeated. “I did the piece on corruption in the meat business.” He looked once again to me for recognition.
“Oh yeah,” I said, snapping my fingers and pointing at the boy. “You wrote about butchers with their thumbs on the scales. Sure I remember seeing your byline.”
The boy seemed insulted by the way I seemed to make fun of his accomplishments but pressed the issue once again. “Can you give me a statement on the death of Mr. Marcheske? After all, he was found in your office, wasn’t he?”
“Listen, Stan. I can c
all you Stan, can’t I?” I said, putting one arm around the boy’s shoulder and not really expecting an answer. “When I have something solid I’ll let you in on it. Until then, if you flash this thing in my face again,” I said, poking at the camera, “You’ll wish you’d gone into some other line of work.”
“But…” Stanley started to say.
“Uh, uh, uh,” I said, holding my index finger to the boy’s lips, “I said, when I have something, you’ll be the first to know. Now do you want me to go over that again?” I was now holding the camera by its strap and pulling up on it until it strained against Stanley’s neck. Stanley quickly nodded acknowledgment and I released the camera and walked away. I made it to the front door of the bus station and looked back at Stanley before I exited. The boy was rubbing his neck and sweating.
Once back in the car, I carefully placed the jacket over the seat back and sped off to the dry-cleaning shop. I was getting to know this route pretty good by now and it took almost no time at all to find my way to the front of Marcheske’s shop again.
With that same familiar tingle-ling sound as I entered the shop, I found myself once again in the company of the hired kid, Eddie Bartels.
“Hi, Eddie,” I said. “I didn’t expect to see you so soon again, but I ran into some little brat with a sucker. Can you get this out?” I said, holding up the jacket and pointing to the sticky mess.
“S-s-s-ure thing,” he said nervously. “Can you come back for it tomorrow?”
“No problem,” I said. “Three o’clock all right?”
“Th-th-that’ll give me enough time. Three o’clock’ll be fine.” Eddie grabbed the jacket from me, inserted a hanger under the shoulders and placed it on the rack. He tore the next available ticket in half and laid my stub on the counter.
I noticed a bruise on Eddie’s forearm and a cut above his right eye. “What does the other guy look like?” I said, half joking.
