by James Ellroy
Lee was facing off booths full of daggers and femmes, shouting curses. I flailed with my eyes for Madeleine and the barmaid I’d rousted; not seeing them, I got ready to cold cock my best friend.
“You fucking quiff divers seen a little movie called Slave Girls From Hell? You buy your stag shit from a fat Mex about forty? You—”
I grabbed Lee from behind in a full nelson and spun him around toward the door. His arms were clenched and his back was arched, but I was able to use his weight against him. We stumbled outside, then tripped together in a jumble of arms and legs and hit the pavement. I kept the hold clamped on with all my strength, then heard a siren approaching and snapped that Lee wasn’t resisting—he was just lying there, muttering “Partner” over and over.
The siren wailed louder, then died; I heard car doors slamming. I extricated myself from Lee and helped him, rag doll limp, to his feet. And Ellis Loew was right there.
Loew had murder in his eyes. It hit me that Lee’s explosion came from his weird chastity, a week of death and dope and its pornographic capper. Safe myself, I put an arm around my partner’s shoulders. “Mr. Loew, it was just that goddamn movie. Lee thought the dykes here could give us a lead on the Mex.”
Loew hissed, “Bleichert, shut up,” then turned his velvet rage on Lee: “Blanchard, I got you Warrants. You’re my man, and you made me look like a fool in front of the two most powerful men in the Department. This is no lesbian killing, those girls were on drugs and hated it. Now I covered for you with Horrall and Green, but I don’t know how much good that will do you in the long run. If you weren’t Mr. Fire, Big Lee Blanchard, you’d be suspended from duty already. You’ve gotten personally involved in the Short case, and that’s an unprofessionalism I will not tolerate. You’re back on Warrants duty as of tomorrow morning. Report to me at 0800, and bring in formal letters of apology to Chief Horrall and Chief Green. For the sake of your pension,. I advise you to grovel.”
Lee, his body limp, said, “I want to go to TJ to look for the smut man.”
Loew shook his head. “Under the circumstances, I would call that request ridiculous. Vogel and Koenig are going to Tijuana, you’re back on Warrants, and Bleichert, you’re to remain on the Short case. Good day, Officers.”
Loew stormed over to his black-and-white; the patrolman driver hung a U-turn out into traffic. Lee said, “I have to talk to Kay.” I nodded, and a sheriff’s patrol car cruised by, the passenger cop blowing kisses to the lezzies in the doorway. Lee walked to his car murmuring, “Laurie. Laurie, oh babe.”
Thirteen
I showed up at the Bureau at 8:00 the next morning, wanting to ease Lee through the ignominy of his return to Warrants and share the diet of crow Ellis Loew would undoubtedly be feeding him. Identical memo slips from Chief Green were on both of our desks: “Report to my office tomorrow, 1/22/47, 6:00 P.M.” The handwritten words looked ominous.
Lee did not report in at 8:00; I sat at my desk for the next hour, picturing him fretting over Bobby De Witt’s release, a captive of his ghosts, his ghost chaser redemption gone now that he was off the Dahlia case. Across the partition in the DA’s office, I heard Loew barking and pleading on the phone to the city editors of the Mirror and Daily News—Republican rags rumored to be sympathetic to his political aspirations. The gist of his talk was that he would help them cutthroat the Tintes and Herald with inside Dahlia info on the proviso that they soft-pedal their coverage of Betty Short’s roundheeled ways and portray her as a sweet but misguided young girl. From the hotshot’s self-satisfied farewells, I could tell that the newsmen went for it, buying Loew’s line that “The more sympathy we attract for the girl, the more juice we get when I prosecute the killer.”
When Lee didn’t show up by 10:00,I went into the muster room and read through the bulging E. Short case file, wanting to satisfy myself that Madeleine’s name wasn’t in it. Two hours and two hundred form pages later I was satisfied—her name was not listed among the hundreds of people questioned, nor was she fingered by tipsters. The only mention of lesbians was obvious nut case stuff—religious crackpots calling in poison phone clues, informing on rival sect members as “Nun dykes sacrificing the girl to Pope Pius XII” and “Lezbos performing communistic anti-Christ rituals.”
By noon, Lee still hadn’t put in an appearance. I called the house, University squadroom and the El Nido Hotel, with no success. Wanting to look busy so that no one would put me to work, I prowled the bulletin boards reading summary reports.
Russ Millard had compiled a new update before leaving for San Diego and Tijuana last night. It stated that he and Harry Sears would be checking the R&I and Ad Vice files for convicted and suspected pornographers, and would be searching for the smut movie filming site down in TJ. Vogel and Koenig had been unable to locate Lorna Martilkova’s “Mexican man” in Gardena, and were also going to Tijuana to work on the stag film angle. The coroner’s inquest had been held yesterday; Elizabeth Short’s mother was present, and identified her remains. Marjorie Graham and Sheryl Saddon testified about Betty’s life in Hollywood, Red Manley as to how he drove Betty up from Dago and dropped her off in front of the Biltmore Hotel on January tenth. Intensive canvassing of the area around the Biltmore had thus far yielded no verified sightings, the records of convicted sex loonies and registered sex offenders were still being combed, the four drool case confessors were still being held at City Jail awaiting alibi checks, sanity hearings and further questioning. The circus was continuing, phone tips flooding in, resulting in third-, fourth- and fifth-hand questionings—officers talking to people who knew people who knew people who knew the exalted Dahlia. Needle in a haystack stuff straight down the line.
I was getting goldbrick looks from the men working at their desks, so I went back to my cubicle. Madeleine jumped into my head; I picked up the phone and called her.
She answered on the third ring: “Sprague residence.”
“It’s me. You want to get together?”
“When?”
“Now. I’ll pick you up in forty-five minutes.”
“Don’t come here, Daddy’s having a business soiree. Meet you at the Red Arrow?”
I sighed. “I’ve got an apartment, you know.”
“I only rut in motels. One of my rich girl idiosyncrasies. Room eleven at the Arrow in forty-five?”
I said, “I’ll be there,” and hung up. Ellis Loew tapped the partition. “Go to work, Bleichert. You’ve been skating all morning, and it’s getting on my nerves. And when you see your phantom partner, tell him his little no-show has cost him three days’ pay. Now check out a radio car and roll.”
I rolled straight to the Red Arrow Motel. Madeleine’s Packard was parked in the alley behind the bungalows; the door to room eleven was unlocked. I walked in, smelled her perfume and squinted into the darkness until I was rewarded with a giggle. Undressing, my eyes got accustomed to the lack of light; I saw Madeleine—a nude beacon on a tattered bedspread.
We joined so strongly that the bedsprings banged the floor. Madeleine kissed her way down to between my legs, made me hard, then did a quick turn onto her back. I went in her thinking of Betty and the snake shaft thing, then blotted it out by concentrating on the ripped wallpaper in front of my eyes. I wanted to go slow, but Madeleine gasped, “Don’t hold back, I’m ready.” I pushed hard, slamming the two of us together, my hands braced on the bed rail. Madeleine locked her legs around my back, grabbed the rail over her head and pushed, pulled and gyrated against me. We came seconds apart, moving in a stretching, slamming counterpoint; when my head hit the pillow, I bit at it to stanch my tremors.
Madeleine slid out from under me. “Sugar, are you all right?”
I was seeing the snake thing. Madeleine tickled me; I twisted around and looked at her to make it go away. “Smile at me. Look soft and sweet.”
Madeleine gave me a Pollyanna grin. Her smeared red lipstick reminded me of the Dahlia’s death smile; I shut my eyes and grabbed her hard. She stroked my back softly, murmurin
g, “Bucky, what is it?”
I stared at the curtains on the far wall. “We picked up Linda Martin yesterday. She had a print of a stag movie in her purse, her and Betty Short playing lez. They filmed it down in TJ, and there was all this spooky stuff in it. It spooked me, and it spooked my partner bad.”
Madeleine stopped her caresses. “Did Linda mention me?”
“No, and I checked through the case file. There’s no mention of that note-leaving number you pulled. But we’ve got a policewoman planted in the girl’s cell to pump her, and if she blabs, you’re sunk.”
“I’m not worried, sugar. Linda probably doesn’t even remember me.”
I slid over to where I could eyeball Madeleine up close. Her lipstick was a bloody disarray, and I daubed at it with the pillow. “Babe, I’m withholding evidence for you. It’s a fair trade for what I’m getting, but it still spooks me. So you be damn sure you come clean. I’ll ask you one time. Is there anything you haven’t told me about you and Betty and Linda?”
Madeleine ran her fingers down my rib cage, exploring the welt scars I’d gotten in the Blanchard fight. “Sugar, Betty and I made love once, that one time we met last summer. I just did it to see what it would be like to be with a girl who looked so much like me.”
I felt like I was sinking; like the bed was dropping out from under me. Madeleine looked like she was at the end of a long tunnel, captured by some kind of weird camera trick. She said, “Bucky, that’s all of it, I swear that’s all of it,” her voice wobbling from deep nowhere. I got up and dressed, and it was only when I strapped on my .38 and cuffs that I felt like I’d quit treading quicksand.
Madeleine pleaded, “Stay, sugar, stay” I went out the door before I could succumb. In my cruiser, I flipped on the two-way, looking for good sane cop noise to distract me. The dispatcher barked, “Code four all units at Crenshaw and Stocker. Clear robbery scene, two dead, suspect dead, unit 4-A-82 reports suspect is Raymond Douglas Nash, white male, object fugitive warrant number—”
I yanked the radio cord and hit the ignition, gas and siren in what felt like a single swipe. Pulling out, I heard Lee pacifying me with “Don’t tell me you don’t know the dead girl is a better piece of pie than Junior Nash” speedballing downtown, I saw myself kowtowing to my partner’s ghosts even though I knew the Okie killer was a real live killer bogeyman. Jamming into the Hall parking lot, I saw Lee cajoling, wheedling, pushing, pulling and twisting at me to get his way; running up to the Bureau, I saw red.
I came out of the stairway yelling, “Blanchard!” Dick Cavanaugh, walking out of the bullpen, pointed to the bathroom. I kicked in the door; Lee was washing his hands in the sink.
He held them up to show me, blood oozing from cuts on the knuckles. “I beat up a wall. Penance for Nash.”
It wasn’t enough. I let the crimson loose all the way, smashing my best friend until my own hands were ruined and he was senseless at my feet.
Fourteen
Losing the first Bleichert-Blanchard fight got me local celebrity, Warrants and close to nine grand in cash; winning the rematch got me a sprained left wrist, two dislocated knuckles and a day in bed, woozy from an allergic reaction to the codeine pills Captain Jack gave me when he got word of the punch-out and saw me in my cubicle trying to tape up my fist. The only thing good that came of my “victory” was a twenty-four-hour respite from Elizabeth Short; the worst was yet to come—bracing Lee and Kay to see if I could salvage the three of us, without giving up my balls.
I drove to the house Wednesday afternoon, Dahlia kiss-off day and the one-week anniversary of the celebrity stiff’s first appearance. The confab with Thad Green was scheduled for 6:00 that evening, and if there was any way to work a patch job with Lee before then, it had to be tried.
The front door was standing open; the coffee table held a copy of the Herald, folded open to pages two and three. The detritus of my messy life was smeared all over it—the Dahlia, hatchet-faced Bobby De Witt homeward bound, Junior Nash shot by an off-duty sheriff’s dick after he knocked off a Jap greengrocer, killing the proprietor and his fourteen-year-old son.
“We’re famous, Dwight.”
Kay was standing in the hallway. I laughed; my bad knuckles throbbed. “Notorious, maybe. Where’s Lee?”
“I don’t know. He left yesterday afternoon.”
“You know he’s in trouble, don’t you?”
“I know you beat him up.”
I walked over. Kay’s breath reeked of cigarettes, her face was mottled from crying. I held her; she held me back and said, “I don’t blame you for it.”
I nuzzled her hair. “De Witt’s probably in LA by now. If Lee isn’t back by tonight, I’ll come and stay with you.”
Kay pulled away. “Don’t come unless you want to sleep with me.”
I said, “Kay, I can’t.”
“Why? Because of that neighbor girl you’re seeing?”
I remembered my lie to Lee. “Yes … no, not that. It’s just that …”
“It’s just what, Dwight?”
I grabbed Kay so she wouldn’t be able to look in my eyes and know that half of what I was saying made me a child, half made me a liar. “It’s just that you and Lee are my family, and Lee’s my partner, and until we get this trouble he’s in settled and see if we’re still partners then you and me together is just no damn good. The girl I’ve been seeing is nothing. She doesn’t really mean a thing to me.”
Kay said, “You’re just frightened of anything that doesn’t involve fighting and cops and guns and all that,” and tightened her grip. I let myself be held, knowing she’d nailed me clean. Then I broke it off and drove downtown to “All That.”
The clock in Thad Green’s waiting room hit 6:00, and there was no Lee; at 6:01 Green’s secretary opened his door and ushered me in. The Chief of Detectives looked up from his desk. “Where’s Blanchard? He’s the one I really wanted to see.”
I said, “I don’t know, sir,” and stood at parade rest; Green pointed me to a chair. I sat down, and the COD fixed me with a hard stare. “You’ve got fifty words or less to explain your partner’s behavior Monday night. Go.”
I said, “Sir, Lee’s little sister was murdered when he was a kid, and the Dahlia case is what you might call an obsession with him. Bobby De Witt, the man he sent up on the Boulevard-Citizens job, got out yesterday, and a week ago we killed those four hoods. The stag film was the capper. It set Lee off, and he pulled that stunt at the dyke bar because he thought he could get a lead on the guy who made the film.”
Green quit nodding along. “You sound like a shyster trying to justify his client’s actions. In my police department, a man checks his emotional baggage when he pins on his badge, or he checks out. But just to let you know that I’m not entirely unsympathetic, I’ll tell you this, I’m suspending Blanchard for a trial board, but not for his Monday night tantrums. I’m suspending him for a memo he submitted stating that Junior Nash blew our jurisdiction. I think it was a phony. What do you think, Officer?”
I felt my legs fluttering. “I believed it, sir.”
“Then you’re not as intelligent as your Academy scores led me to believe. When you see Blanchard, tell him to turn in his gun and badge. You stay on the Short investigation, and kindly refrain from fisticuffs on city property. Good night, Officer.”
I stood up, saluted and about-faced out of the office, maintaining my military gait until I was down the hall in the muster room. Grabbing a desk phone, I called the house, University squadroom and the El Nido Hotel—all with zero results. Then a dark thought crossed my mind, and I dialed the number of the County Parole office.
A man answered: “Los Angeles County Parole, may I help you?”
“This is Officer Bleichert, LAPD. I need the disposition on a recent parolee.”
“Shoot, Officer.”
“Robert ‘Bobby’ De Witt. Came out of Quentin yesterday.”
“That’s easy. He hasn’t reported to his PO yet. We called the bus depot at Santa Rosa
, and found out that De Witt didn’t buy a ticket for LA, he bought one for San Diego, with a transfer to Tijuana. We haven’t issued an absconder warrant yet. De Witt’s PO figured he might have gone down to TJ to get laid. He’s giving him until tomorrow morning to show up.”
I hung up, relieved that De Witt didn’t head straight for LA. Thinking of prowling for Lee, I took the elevator down to the parking lot and saw Russ Millard and Harry Sears walking toward the back stairs. Russ noticed me and hooked a finger; I trotted over.
I said, “What happened in TJ?”
Harry, breathing Sen-Sen, answered: “Goose egg on the stag movie. We checked for the pad and couldn’t find it, rousted some smut peddlers. Double goose egg. We checked some of the Short girl’s acquaintances in Dago—triple gooser. I—”
Millard put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Bucky, Blanchard’s down in Tijuana. A border patrolman we talked to saw him, recognized him from all the fight publicity. He was hobnobbing with a bad-looking bunch of Rurales.”
I thought of De Witt TJ bound and wondered why Lee would be talking to the Mex state police. “When?”
Sears said, “Last night. Loew and Vogel and Koenig are down there too, at the Divisidero Hotel. They’ve been talking to the TJ cops. Russ thinks they’re measuring spics for a frame on the Dahlia.”
Lee chased smut demons through my mind; I saw him bloody at my feet and shivered. Millard said, “Which is crap, because Meg Caulfield got the straight dope on the smut man out of the Martilkova girl. He’s a white guy named Walter “Duke” Wellington. We checked his Ad Vice jacket, and he’s got a half dozen pandering and pornography beefs. All well and good, except Captain Jack got a letter from Wellington, postmarked three days ago. He’s hiding out, gun-shy from all the Dahlia publicity, and he copped to making the film with Betty Short and Lorna. He was afraid of getting tagged for the snuff, so he sent in a detailed alibi for Betty’s missing days. Jack checked it out personally, and it’s ironclad. Wellington sent a copy of the letter to the Herald, and they’re publishing it tomorrow.”
