by Bill Bernico
I stopped in front of one of the booths and watched as people struggled to make their way past me. Behind the throngs of people pushing and shoving their way past the booths, I could see the silhouette of the Ferris wheel and the Tilt-A-Whirl and a few other rides designed to make the rider either throw up or walk around the rest of the day with a dizzy headache. The screams of the riders, mostly girls’ screams, filled the night air and blended perfectly with the sounds of the calliope music coming from the merry-go-round.
A carnival barker stood on his pedestal challenging passers-by to, “Step right up and see the ninety-pound killer rats from the sewers of Paris.” For only a quarter, spectators could climb the five stairs and walk up to the top of a cage and look down on the three-foot, dog-sized rodents. Most people walked away in awe of the giant rats. Some questioned the barker as to why these rats had no tails or why they had webbed feet. A few even demanded their quarter back when they confronted the barker with the fact that these weren’t giant killer rats from the sewers of Paris, but rather harmless capybara from the jungles of South America. No one ever got a refund—just a pat line about seeing the owner. It didn’t seem to be worth the bother for a quarter refund and that’s what the show’s owner was counting on.
I waited for an opening in the crowd and continued on my way toward the exit gate. That was where my rounds started and ended and I’d made a dozen rounds since I came on duty at noon. That was my job. One more round and it would be time to go home. My feet were swollen and achy and when this forty-five minute trek around the grounds was over, they’d be closing the show and moving on to another town to start the process all over again for another weekend of thrills and chills and cotton candy and killer rats.
With less than half a round to go, I stopped for a cup of soda. I gave the man in the concession wagon my dollar and he handed me a paper cup with three cents worth of ice and two cents worth of soda. With a markup like that, a guy could retire selling soda.
I’d almost finished my drink when something caught my eye behind the soda wagon. I stepped between the soda wagon and the cotton candy wagon to get a closer look. It was shiny black shoe, a low-heel pump. Filling the shoe was the foot of a girl, probably no more than eighteen or nineteen years old. She lay in that rag doll position that always meant the same thing. Her eyes were fixed wide open, staring off into the night sky. She wore a red plaid skirt that had been bunched up around her waist and no panties. Her once white button-down sweater was now muddy and bloodstained. It was also open in the front. What had once been a frilly lace bra appeared to have been torn open at the front from a pull by a strong hand. The girl’s face was bruised around her left eye and her jaw. There were also bruised around her throat. Her tongue was hanging halfway out of her mouth.
The area behind the concession wagons was littered with parked cars and trucks and trailers from the carnival show. The spaces in between created a kind of a maze. A person could get turned around in there and it could take a few minutes for someone to find their way out again. Beyond the trucks and trailer was a gravel road that led back to town.
I bent over and pressed two fingers into her neck and wasn’t surprised when I didn’t find a pulse. I left her there and made my way back between the wagons again to the soda vendor. He was busy serving soda to a family of four at the other window. I slapped my palm down hard several times on his countertop and got his attention. Startled, he looked up at me and stepped over to my window.
“Have you got a phone in there?” I said impatiently.
“Are you kiddin’ me, Mac,” the vendor replied. “We ain’t even got a toilet in here.”
“Where is the nearest phone?” I said. “It’s an emergency.”
The vendor thought for a moment, scratched his stubbled chin and said,” I guess the closest phone would be at the ticket wagon. It’s on the other side of the midway.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know where it is. Thanks.”
I knew from making the rounds that it would take me fifteen minutes to fight my way through this crowd to get back to the ticket wagon. Instead, I did the first thing that came to mind. I returned to the back of the wagon and pulled my .38 out from under my arm. I held it overhead and squeezed off three rounds in rapid succession. Screams and gasps and yelling filtered through the crowd as people began pushing and shoving and running the other way. As was usually the case, though, many people rushed toward the sounds and soon people were straining to see what was going on behind the soda wagon.
Within fifteen minutes of my shots I could see the swirling blue and red lights on top of the Los Angeles Police Department cruiser that was coming my way on the dirt road behind the wagons. The crowd parted, allowing the cruiser to get in close. Two deputies emerged with guns drawn and stern looks on their young faces. I held my shield and ID up as they approached. I didn’t need to point at the body of the girl; their eyes were already fixed on it.
“What happened here?” one of them said, checking my ID as the other knelt next to the body.
“I was hired for extra security,” I explained. “I was making my rounds when I spotted the girl’s foot between the wagons. I found here just like that.” I hiked a thumb over my shoulder in the general direction of the body without looking that way.
“Did you disturb anything?” the taller cop said.
“I only touched her neck, trying to find a pulse,” I explained. “With this size crowd, I knew it would take me too long to get to a phone, so I came back here and fired three rounds to get your attention.”
“Well, you got it,” the cop said.
A few minutes later another cruiser pulled up behind the first one and behind the second cruiser was an ambulance. Lieutenant Dean Hollister emerged from the second cruiser, along with another policeman I recognized, Sergeant Eric Anderson. Dean pushed his way past the crowd and the two officers on the scene stepped aside to let him through.
Dean caught my eye. “Clay, what are you doing here?” he said.
“I was hired to patrol the grounds and provide extra security when I found her lying there,” I said, gesturing toward the body. “It’s just one of those days.”
Hollister turned to the taller officer and asked, “Have you secured the scene?”
“Yes, sir,” the officer replied. “My partner called in for some more crowd control and the M.E. should be here any time now.”
“He’s here,” Hollister said, stepping aside as Andy Reynolds, L.A.’s medical examiner worked his way toward the girl’s body. He knelt next to her and went through the motions of looking for vital signs that he was sure weren’t there.
“She hasn’t been dead long,” Andy said. “My best guess would be less than an hour.” The crowd parted again and Andy’s two ambulance assistants pulled their gurney up to the body. They looked at Andy, who looked at Dean. Dean nodded and the girl’s body was loaded onto the gurney. The black night came alive in a kaleidoscope of blue and red lights. Other officers held the crowd back as the ambulance attendants pulled the gurney back through all the people and loaded it into the back of the ambulance.
The taller officer pulled a notebook from his breast pocket and flipped it open to a blank page. He looked at me. “Did you know her?” he said casually.
I shook my head and slipped my .38 back into its underarm holster. “Nope,” I said. “She was dead when I found her here.”
“And nobody saw nothin’,” he said, not really expecting an answer. “A girl gets killed in a crowd of three or four thousand people and nobody sees nothin’. What the hell’s this world coming to anyway?”
“Take it easy,” Hollister said to the officer. “Why don’t you and the others start asking around and see if anyone here saw anything. I’ll handle Mr. Cooper.”
“Yes, sir,” the officer said, walking away.
“He does have a point,” Dean said. “How can anyone get killed in the middle of all these witnesses without someone seeing something?”
I shrugged. “Pe
ople are just animals,” I said. “Some of them are housebroken and some of them aren’t. Are you about done with me here? I’ve got to finish my rounds.”
Hollister jotted my name down in his note pad, flipped it shut and returned it to his shirt pocket. “Yeah,” he said, “I know where to find you if I need you. But I wouldn’t worry about finishing your rounds, though. This show is closed until I get some answers.”
They took the body away and Hollister’s men got to do all the interesting work on this case. I felt like I had been cheated out of a meaty case. Solving this girl’s murder was something I could really have sunk my teeth into, but here I was stuck making the rounds at some backwoods, hayseed carnival and I hadn’t even caught a single pickpocket. I’d have to be content with taking their money and running like a thief.
Maybe I’ll go back and take another look at those killer rats from the sewers of Paris. They were no worse than the other animals roaming these parts.
59 - Fresh-Faced Kid
It was one of those full-moon nights when the air was still and the world seemed at peace. The rain had stopped shortly after eleven. The July night was hot and muggy and I wished I’d had the air conditioning in my car repaired when my mechanic suggested it several weeks earlier. Now my shirt was sticking to my back like an uncomfortable, clinging rag.
Gloria and I were just coming off a surveillance job that we’d been hired to do. It seems that Mrs. Monty Fuller was not totally convinced that her husband had not been totally faithful to her these past five months, and that prompted her to call Cooper Investigations. She wanted us to help put her mind at ease, one way or the other. Gloria had taken the initial call and had agreed to handle the case for Mrs. Fuller. We figured we could rap this case up after one or two more nights of watching Monty Fuller after hours.
It was after midnight when I tooled my car down the main street leading out of town. Ahead I could see the lights of the mini mart shining onto the wet street. Gloria straightened up in her seat and grabbed my knee.
“Pull in, would you, Elliott?” she said. “I feel lucky tonight. I want to get a lottery ticket.” Gloria unbuckled her seat belt even as the car pulled into the parking spot in front of the mart. She followed me in and took her place at the counter.
I sidled over to where a display of cakes and donuts had caught my attention. I mentally weighed the differences in price and net weight before selecting a packaged cinnamon roll. At the dairy case, I grabbed a small chocolate milk and brought my booty to the counter where Gloria was picking out four instant scratch lottery tickets and one for the multi-million dollar drawing later tonight. I set my late night snack on the counter.
“What do you want?” I said, nodding at the cinnamon roll and chocolate milk.
Gloria looked up at me. She’d stopped scratching her ticket long enough to say, “Nothing. I’ll just have a bite of yours.” She lowered her head again and intently resumed the ticket scratching.
That was one of my pet peeves. I liked to have my cinnamon roll and chocolate milk all to myself. I wouldn’t have minded buying Gloria her own snack, but I didn’t like sharing.
The fresh-faced kid behind the counter couldn’t have been more than seventeen. His eyes and lips and rosy cheeks still had noticeable traces of baby fat. He may have been seventeen but his face could have passed for that of a kid ten years younger. On the counter behind him lay an algebra book open to the halfway point. Beside it were some papers with figures scribbled on it.
“Will that be all, sir?” he said, pointing to my snacks and Gloria’s tickets.
“Yup, that’s everything,” I said, already beginning to open the cinnamon roll package.
“That will be seven thirty-nine,” the kid said, punching buttons on the register.
I gave the kid a ten and continued opening my snack. The kid counted out my change and handed it back to me. “Thank you, sir, and have a good night.” His voice was almost squeaky and his cheeks blushed a bright red. A smile crept onto his face as he nodded at us.
I noticed another woman standing behind me and nudged Gloria’s elbow. Gloria looked up and noticed two other patrons starting to fall in line behind that woman. She scooped up her tickets and walked over to the condiment counter near the hot dog machine. She continued scratching tickets as I took the first bite out of my roll and followed it with a swallow of chocolate milk.
We could hear the transactions taking place at the checkout counter as each customer presented their purchases and waited for their change. In each instance the young clerk extended the same courtesy and almost shy demeanor that he had shown us.
Gloria finished her ticket scratching and produced a two-dollar winner. “Hey, I won,” she said, holding up the ticket.
I examined the ticket. “Not bad, kiddo. It only cost you four bucks to win two. A few more like that and you can retire.”
Gloria didn’t see the humor in my sarcasm. She just shook her head and proceeded to the counter. Smiling broadly, she handed her winning ticket to the clerk.
“Would you like two more tickets or the two dollars?” the clerk asked shyly.
Gloria looked back at me and saw that look I always gave her when I disapproved of her wasting money on things like lottery tickets. Sure, it was her money, but after all, someone had to be the voice of reason here.
“I’ll take the two dollars,” she said reluctantly.
The clerk handed two one-dollar bills over the counter to Gloria, who promptly deposited them in her purse.
“Thank you very much, ma’am,” the fresh-faced clerk said, smiling. “Come again.”
I joined her at the door and we walked back to my car. Through the window we could see the kid turning his attention to the book open on the counter behind him.
“He seems like a nice kid, doesn’t he?” Gloria said, turning toward me.
“Huh?” I said, not really following her train of thought.
“The young clerk back there,” Gloria said. “You don’t see many kids like him any more. Polite, good looking, well mannered, no tattoos or scraggly hair. You know, wholesome.”
“Yeah,” I said, “The kind of kid that you hope your daughter brings home. I noticed he was doing his math back behind the counter.”
“Algebra,” Gloria said.
“Math, algebra, calculus, arithmetic,” I said. “It’s all the same to me. I never cared for it. I was better at sports than lessons.”
I pulled out of the driveway and headed south on Highland Avenue. Gloria’s eyes drifted off into the night sky. “Seems like a dangerous job for such a young kid, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I said in that sarcastic voice I used to patronize Gloria when I thought she’d said something dumb. “He could get a fatal paper cut from the cash register paper roll. Or he might drop a gallon of milk on his toe. Oooh, or worse yet, he might overdose on sugar candy.” I snickered as I drove on.
“No, I mean being in the place all by himself so late at night,” Gloria said. “Someone could come in and hold the place up and shoot him. It’s happened before, you know. Statistics show that being a clerk in a mini-mart during the graveyard shift is one of the most dangerous jobs out there, especially in a city like Hollywood. The town is full of nut cases.”
The sarcasm left my voice as I thought about the possibilities that awaited a lone clerk in a mini mart late at night. “You know, I was thinking the same thing when we pulled out of there,” I said. “You remember Don? He managed that gas station in Burbank? One of his part-time clerks was shot dead at three in the morning by a couple of creeps looking for an easy score. I think I remember reading where the guys got away with something like sixteen dollars and four cartons of cigarettes. You’d think a kid’s life would be worth more than sixteen dollars and some smokes.”
“That’s all they got?” Gloria said. “Why did they have to shoot the kid? Couldn’t they just have taken the money and left? What a couple of animals. I think I’d be sick if I ever heard something like tha
t happened to this kid.”
“I suppose,” I said. “Ever think of something like that happening to Joey some night?”
“Oh, gees,” Gloria said, “I don’t even want to think about it.”
Joey Conrad was an eighteen-year-old bartender in one of our favorite bars, The Dusty Guitar on Wilshire. He had worked for Frank and Ellie Turner for the past six months, trying to save enough money to help with his fall tuition into U.C.L.A. This was the same bar we were headed to now to relax after a full day of surveillance.
“Well,” I said, “We can’t be at that bar all the time. There will be more times when Joey will have to close the place up for Frank and Ellie.” Gloria got that worried look she sometimes got when she thought too much. I pulled the car into the parking lot of the bar Gloria and I owned on the outskirts of town. Gloria and I walked into the bar and sat at our usual stools at the end of the bar.
Joey was behind the bar, wiping a beer mug when Gloria and I entered. There was just one other customer sitting at the opposite end of the bar nursing a beer. It was one of the regulars, Gus Swanson. It was slow for a Wednesday night. “Why don’t you go on home, Joey?” Frank said, walking around behind the bar. “We can handle it for the next half hour.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Joey said, removing his white bar apron. “See you Friday night, chief.” Joey passed by Gloria on his way to the door. “See you later Miss Campbell.”
A surge of maternal instinct washed over Gloria and she threw her arms around Joey and hugged him tight. A few seconds later she released him and stood back to get a better look at the kid that Frank had hired six months earlier. Gloria pulled Joey back toward her again and kissed his cheek. “Good night, Joey.”
She released him and he quickly stepped back, looking toward me for an explanation. Then he turned to me and said, “Goodnight, Elliott.”
“Goodnight, Joey,” I said. I shrugged and tilted my head. Joey sheepishly backed out of the door without further remarks.
