by James Ellroy
“Next you go back to duty like none of this happened. Harry and I will brace Issler at the nut farm, and I’ll assign some men to look for Sally Stinson on the QT.”
I swallowed. “And Fritzie?”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“I want him nailed.”
“I know you do. But you keep one thing in mind. The men that he extorted are criminals who would never testify against him in court, and if he gets wind of this and destroys the carbons, we wouldn’t even be able to get him for an interdepartmental offense. All of this is going to require corroboration, so for now it’s just us. And you had better settle down and control your temper until it’s over.”
I said, “I want in on the collar.’
Russ nodded. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He tipped his hat to Elizabeth on the way out the door.
I went back to swingwatch and played sob sister; Russ put men out to look for Sally Stinson. A day later, he called me at home with one dose of bad news, one of good:
Charles Issler had found a lawyer to file him a writ of habeaus corpus; he had been released from the Mira Loma ding farm three weeks before. His LA apartment had been cleaned out; he couldn’t be found. That was a kick in the balls, but the confirmation on the Vogel extortion front made up for it.
Harry Sears checked Fritzie’s felony arrest records—from Bunco in 1934 up through his current position in Central Detectives. At one time or another Vogel had arrested every single man on the LAPD-FBI financial carbons. And the feds did not indict a single one of them.
I rotated off-duty the next day, and spent it with the master file, thinking corroboration. Russ called to say that he hadn’t got any leads on Issler, that it looked like he’d blown town. Harry was keeping Johnny Vogel under a loose surveillance on and off duty; a buddy working West Hollywood Sheriff’s Vice had kicked loose with some KA addresses—friends of Sally Stinson. Russ told me a half dozen times to take it easy and not jump the gun. He knew damn well I already had Fritzie in Folsom and Johnny in the Little Green Room.
I was scheduled to go back on duty Thursday, and got up early in order to spend a long morning with the master file. I was making coffee when the phone rang.
I picked it up. “Yes?”
“It’s Russ. We’ve got Sally Stinson. Meet me at 1546 North Havenhurst in half an hour.”
“Rolling.”
The address was a Spanish castle apartment house: whitewashed cement shaped into ornamental turrets, balconies topped by sun-weathered awnings. Walkways led up to the individual doors; Russ was standing by the one on the far right.
I left the car in a red zone and trotted over. A man in a disheveled suit and paper party hat strutted down the walkway, a slap-happy grin on his face. He slurred, “Next shift, huh? Twosies on onesies, ooh la la!”
Russ led me up the steps. I rapped on the door; a not-young blonde with mussed hair and smeared makeup threw it open, spat, “What did you forget this time?,” then, “Oh, shit.”
Russ held out his badge. “LAPD. Are you Sally Stinson?”
“No, I’m Eleanor Roosevelt. Listen, I put out for the sheriff’s more ways than one lately, so I’m tapped in the cash department. You want the other?”
I started to elbow my way inside; Russ grabbed my arm. “Miss Stinson, it’s about Liz Short and Charlie Issler, and it’s here or the women’s jail.”
Sally Stinson clutched the front of her robe and pressed it to her bodice. She said, “Listen, I told the other guy,” then stopped and hugged herself. She looked like the floozy victim confronting the monster in old horror movies; I knew exactly who her monster was. “We’re not with him. We just want to talk to you about Betty Short.”
Sally appraised us. “And he ain’t gonna know?”
Russ flashed his father-confessor smile and lied. “No, this is strictly confidential.”
Sally stood aside. Russ and I entered an archetypal trick pad front room—cheap furniture, bare walls, suitcases lined up in one corner for a quick getaway. Sally bolted the door. I said, “Who’s this guy we’re talking about, Miss Stinson?”
Russ straightened the knot in his necktie; I clammed up. Sally jabbed a finger at the couch. “Let’s do this quicksville. Rehashing old grief is against my religion.”
I sat down; stuffing and the point of a spring popped out a few inches from my knee. Russ settled into a chair and got out his notebook; Sally took a perch on top of the suitcases, back to the wall and eyes on the door like a seasoned getaway artist. She started with the most often heard Short case intro line: “I don’t know who killed her.”
Russ said, “Fair enough, but let’s take it from the beginning. When did you meet Liz Short?”
Sally scratched a hickey on her cleavage. “Last summer. June, maybe.”
“Where?”
“At the bar at the Yorkshire House Grill downtown. I was half in the bag, waiting for my … waiting for Charlie I. Liz was putting the moves on this rich-looking old hairbag, coming on too strong. She scared him off. Then we started talking and Charlie showed up.”
I said, “Then what?”
“Then we all discovered we had a lot in common. Liz said she was broke, Charlie says ‘you wanta make a quick double-saw,’ Liz says ‘yeah,’ Charlie sends us over for a twosie at the textile salesman’s convention at the Mayflower.”
“And?”
“And Liz was gooood. You want details, wait till I publish my memoirs. But I’ll tell you this. I’m pretty good at faking like I’m loving it, but Liz was great. She had this bee in her bonnet about keeping her stockings on, but she was like a virtuoso. Academy Award stuff.”
I thought of the stag film—and the strange gash on Betty’s left thigh. “Do you know if Liz ever appeared in any pornographic movies?”
Sally shook her head. “No, but if she did she’d be gooood.”
“You know a man named Walter “Duke” Wellington?”
“No.”
“Linda Martin?”
“Ixnay.”
Russ took over. “Did you turn any other tricks with Liz?”
Sally said, “Four or five, last summer. Hotel jobs. All conventioneers.”
“Remember any names? Organizations? Descriptions?”
Sally laughed and scratched her cleavage. “Mr. Policeman, my first commandment is keep your eyes shut and try to forget. I’m good at it.”
“Were any of the hotel jobs at the Biltmore?”
“No. The Mayflower, the Hacienda House. Maybe the Rexford.”
“Did any of the men react strangely to Liz? Get rough with her?”
Sally hooted. “Mostly they were just happy ‘cause she faked it so good.”
Itchy to get at Vogel, I changed the subject. “Tell me about you and Charlie Issler. Did you know he confessed to the Dahlia killing?”
Sally said, “Not at first I didn’t. Then … well, anyway, I wasn’t surprised when I did hear. Charlie’s got this what you might wanta call compulsion to confess. Like if a prostie gets killed and it makes the papers, bye-bye Charlie and get out the iodine when he comes back, ‘cause he always makes sure the rubber hose boys work him over.”
Russ said, “Why do you think he does it?”
“How’s a guilty conscience sound?”
I said, “How’s this sound? You tell us where you were January tenth through fifteenth, and you tell us about this guy we all don’t like.”
“Sounds like I’ve really got a choice.”
“You do. Talk to us here or to a butch matron downtown.”
Russ tugged at his tie—hard. “Do you remember where you were on those dates, Miss Stinson?”
Sally fished cigarettes and matches from her pockets and lit up. “Everybody who knew Liz remembers where they were then. You know, like when FDR died. You keep wishing you could go back, you know, and change it.”
I started to apologize for my tactics; Russ beat me to it. “My partner didn’t mean to get nasty, Miss Stinson. This is a grudge thing for him.�
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It was the perfect come-on. Sally Stinson tossed her cigarette on the floor, ground it out with her bare feet, then patted the suitcases. “I’m adios as soon as you walk out the door. I’ll tell you, but I won’t tell no DAs, no Grand Juries, no other cops. I mean it. You walk out that door and it’s bye-bye Sally.”
Russ said, “It’s a deal.” Sally’s color rose; that and the anger in her eyes knocked a good ten years off her. “On Friday the tenth I got a call at this hotel where I was staying. A guy said he’s a friend of Charlie and he wants to buy me for this young guy he knows who’s cherry. Two-day session at the Biltmore, a C-note and a half. I say I ain’t seen Charlie in a while, how’d you get my number? The guy says ‘Never mind, meet me and the kid outside the Biltmore tomorrow at noon.’
“I’m broke, so I say okay, and I meet the two guys. Big fat peas in a pod packing hardware, I know it’s a father and son cop act. Money changes hands, sonny’s got halitosis but I’ve seen worse. He tells me daddy’s name and I get a little scared, but daddy amscrays and the kid’s so lame I know I can take care of him.”
Sally lit another cigarette. Russ passed me Personnel photos of the Vogel boys; I handed them to her. She said, “On the button,” burned their faces off with the tip of her Chesterfield, then got on with it.
“Vogel had a suite set up. Sonny and I tricked, and he tried to get me to play with these creepy sex gadgets he brought. I said, ‘Ixnay, ixnay, ixnay.’ He said he’ll give me an extra twenty if he can whip me soft for fun. I said, ‘When hell freezes.’ Then he—”
I broke off the story. “Did he talk about stag films? Lezzie stuff?”
Sally snorted. “He talked about baseball and his peter. He called it the Big Schnitzel, and you know what? It wasn’t.”
Russ said, “Go on, Miss Stinson.”
“Well, we screw all afternoon, and I listen to the kid prattle about the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Big Schnitzel until I am blue in the face. Then I say, ‘Let’s get dinner and some fresh air,’ and we go down to the lobby.
“And there’s Liz, sitting all by herself. She tells me she needs money, and since I can tell sonny likes her, I set up a trick within a trick. We go back up to the suite, and I take a breather while they go at it in the bedroom. Liz skips out about twelve-thirty, whispers ‘Little Schnitzel’ to me, and I never saw her again until I saw her picture all over the papers.”
I looked at Russ. He mouthed the word, “Dulange”; I nodded, picturing Betty Short on the loose until she met Frenchman Joe on the morning of the twelfth. The missing Dahlia days were coming together.
Russ said, “And you and John Vogel went back to your assignation then?”
Sally tossed the Personnel photos on the floor. “Yes.”
“Did he talk to you about Liz Short?”
“He said she loved the Big Schnitzel.”
“Did he say that they’d made plans to meet again?”
“No.”
“Did he mention his father and Liz in any context at all?”
“No.”
“What did he say about Liz?”
Sally hugged herself. “He said she liked to play his kind of games. I said, ‘What kind of games?’ Sonny said, ‘Master and Slave’ and ‘Cop and Whore.’”
I said, “Finish it up. Please.”
Sally eyed the door. “Two days after Liz got in all the papers, Fritz Vogel came by my hotel and told me sonny said he’d tricked with her. He told me he’d got my name from some police file, and he questioned me about my … procurors. I mentioned Charlie I, and Vogel remembered him from when he worked this hotshot Vice detail. Then he got spooked, ‘cause he remembered Charlie had this confessing problem. He called some partner of his on my phone and told him to yank some Vice file of Charlie’s, then he made another call and went crazy, ‘cause whoever he talked to told him Charlie was already in custody, that he’d already confessed to Liz.
“He beat me up then. He asked me all these questions, like whether Liz would mention tricking with a cop’s son to Charlie. I told him Charlie and Liz were just acquaintances, that he’d just sent her out a few times, months and months ago, but he kept hitting me anyway, and he told me he’d kill me if I told the police about his son and the Dahlia.”
I got up to go; Russ sat still. “Miss Stinson, you said that when John Vogel told you his father’s name you got scared. Why?”
Sally whispered, “A story I heard.” Suddenly she looked beyond used-up—ancient.
“What sort of story?”
Sally’s whisper cracked. “How he got kicked off that hotshot Vice job.”
I remembered Bill Koenig’s rendition—that Fritzie caught syphilis from hookers when he worked Ad Vice, and was canned to take the mercury cure. “He caught a bad dose. Right?”
Sally dredged up a clear voice: “I heard he got the syph and went crazy. He thought a colored girl gave it to him, so he shook down this house in Watts and made all the girls do him before he took the cure. He made them rub his thing in their eyes, and two of the girls went blind.”
My legs were weaker than they were the night at the warehouse. Russ said, “Thank you, Sally.”
I said, “Let’s go get Johnny.”
We took my car downtown. Johnny had been working a daywatch foot beat with overtime on swing, so at 11:00 A.M. I knew there was a good chance of snagging him alone.
I drove slowly, looking for his familiar blue serge figure. Russ had a syringe and Pentothal ampule he’d kept from the Red Manley interrogations out on the dashboard; even he knew this was a muscle job. We were cruising the alley in back of the Jesus Saves Mission when I spotted him—solo rousting a pair of piss bums scrounging in a trash can.
I got out of the car and yelled, “Hey, Johnny!” Vogel Junior shook a finger at the winos and sidled over, thumbs in his Sam Browne belt.
He said, “What you doin’ in civvies, Bleichert?” and I hooked him to the gut. He bent over double, and I grabbed his head and banged it into the roof of the car. Johnny slumped, his lights dimming. I held him; Russ rolled up his left sleeve and jacked the silly syrup into the vein at the crook of his elbow.
Now he was out cold. I took the .38 from his holster, tossed it on the front seat and stuffed Johnny into the back. I got in with him; Russ took the wheel. We peeled rubber down the alley, the piss bums waving their short dogs at us.
The ride to the El Nido took half an hour. Johnny giggled in his dope slumber, almost coming awake a couple of times; Russ drove silently. When we got to the hotel, Russ checked the lobby, found it empty and gave me the high sign from the door. I slung Johnny over my shoulder and hauled him up to room 204—the hardest minute’s work of my life.
The trip upstairs half roused him; his eyes fluttered as I dumped him into a chair and cuffed his left wrist to a heating pipe. Russ said, “The Pentothal’s good for another few hours. No way he can lie.” I soaked a bath towel in the sink and swathed Johnny’s face with it. He coughed, and I pulled the towel away.
Johnny giggled. I said, “Elizabeth Short,” and pointed to the glossies on the wall. Johnny, rubber-faced, slurred, “What about her?” I gave him another dose of the towel, a cobweb-clearing bracer. Johnny sputtered; I let the wad of cold terrycloth drop into his lap. “How about Liz Short? You remember her?”
Johnny laughed; Russ motioned for me to sit beside him on the bed rail. “There’s a method to this. Let me ask the questions. You just hold on to your temper.”
I nodded. Johnny had the two of us in focus now, but his eyes were pinned and his features were slack and goofy. Russ said, “What’s your name, son?”
Johnny said, “You know me, loot,” the slur on its way out.
“Tell me anyway.”
“Vogel, John Charles.”
“When were you born?”
“May 6, 1922.”
“What’s sixteen plus fifty-six?”
Johnny thought for a moment, said, “Seventy-two,” then fixed on me. “Why’d you hit me, Bleichert?
I never did you no dirt.”
Fat Boy seemed genuinely befuddled. I kept it zipped; Russ said, “What’s your father’s name, son?”
“You know him, loot. Oh … Friedrich Vogel. Fritzie for short.”
“Short like in Liz Short?”
“Uh sure … like Liz, Betty, Beth, Dahlia… lots of monickers.”
“Think about this January, Johnny. Your dad wanted you to lose your cherry, right?”
“Uh … yeah.”
“He bought you a woman for two days, right?”
“Not a woman. Not a real one. A hooer. A hoooooer.” The long syllable turned into a laugh; Johnny tried to clap his hands. One hand hit his chest; the other jerked at the end of its cuffed tether. He said, “This ain’t right. I’ll tell Daddy.”
Russ answered him calmly: “It’s only for a little while. You had the prostitute at the Biltmore, right?”
“Right. Daddy got a rate because he knew the house dick.”
“And you met Liz Short at the Biltmore, too. Right?”
Spastic movements hit Johnny’s face—eye tics, lip twitches, veins popping on his forehead. He reminded me of a knocked-down fighter trying to haul himself up off the canvas. “Uh … that’s right.”
“Who introduced you?”
“What’s her name… The hooer.”
“And what did you and Liz do then, Johnny? Tell me about it.”
“We … divvied on ten scoots for three hours and played games. I gave her the Big Schnitz. We played ‘Horse and Rider,’ and I liked Liz, so I just whipped her soft. She was nicer than the blondie hooer. She kept her stockings on, ‘cause she said she had this birthmark nobody could look at. She liked the Schnitz, and she let me kiss her without the Listerine like the blondie made me gargle.”
I thought about Betty’s thigh gouge and held my breath. Russ said, “Johnny, did you kill Liz?”
Fat Boy jerked in his chair. “No! No no no no no no! No!”
“Ssssh. Easy, son, easy. When did Liz leave you?”
“I didn’t slice her!”
“We believe you, son. Now when did Liz leave you?”
“Late. Late Saturday. Maybe twelve, maybe one.”
