“How old were these people?”
“Late twenties, early thirties. I didn’t get a good look, to be honest-I could never identify them, except maybe the woman. Anyway, when they didn’t get an answer to their knocking, they ran back to their car… Isn’t that strange? Ran back to their coupe and squealed off.”
“Did Beth say who they were?”
“No-she was terribly upset, and refused to talk about them.”
“When was this?” Fowley asked. “Can you give us even an approximate date?”
“Oh, I remember exactly. It was the day before she left-that would make it January seventh. You see, finally I just got fed up and asked her to leave-as you can see, our place is small, and I said to her it was just getting too crowded.”
“How did she take it?”
“Graciously, I must say. And, actually, to be fair-she did give me a gift before she left. Would you like to see it?”
“Sure.”
The slender housewife arose, leaving her mostly smoked Camel in the glass ashtray, and went to a closet near the front door. From a shelf above the hangers she plucked a hat-as she stretched for it, the denim pedal pushers were nicely tight across her firm fanny. She walked over and displayed the hat to us.
“It’s a Leo Joseph number,” she said. “I’d admired it, and Beth gave it to me, as a way of thanking me for letting her stay. You see, she used to work as a hat model in Chicago.”
Fowley perked again. “Chicago?”
Oh shit.
“Yes, she’d been there in the fall, I believe. So that’s one job, at least, that she held. Oh, and you’ll want the name of the man she left here with.”
Fowley might have been goosed, he sat up so straight. “What? Yes!”
“Do you have another cigarette, Mr. Fowley?” she asked, as she sat, crossing her legs. She was, in her quiet way, a real dish. Her husband had been a lucky man-except for the part where he died in the war.
Of the blur of men Beth had dated, while she stayed with them, only one had been a “repeat admirer,” as Mrs. French put it.
His name was Robert “Red” Manley, and he’d been to the Frenches’ home picking Beth up, several times; he worked at Western Airlines (he said) and had met Beth when she applied for that job she didn’t get. They had dated every night for about a week, in mid-December; then, when Mrs. French had informed Beth her stay at the little house on Camino Pradero was drawing to close, he had come around to pick her up in the late afternoon.
I asked, “And you remember the date?”
“It was a red-letter day around here, the day I got my living room back-January eighth. He picked her up at six p.m., loaded her two suitcases and a hatbox in his light-colored coupe.”
“What does this Red Manley look like?”
“Kind of cute-lanky, red-haired as you might guess… little jug-eared, maybe. Maybe twenty-five. Sharp dresser-he was wearing a brown pin-striped suit when he picked Beth up.”
Fowley asked, “What was she wearing when she left?”
“What she called her ‘traveling clothes’-a black collarless suit, nicely tailored, a white frilly blouse and white gloves… oh, and she had a black clutch purse and black suede shoes and, of course, seamed black stockings. Beige camel’s-hair coat over her arm… Is there anything else I can tell you?”
Mrs. Elvera French had told us plenty. Fowley asked if we could take her picture, and she consented, if we would wait for her to put on some makeup.
“Frankly,” I said, “you look like a million bucks without it.”
“Give me two minutes,” she said, with a tiny smile, “and I’ll give you an extra million.”
So I took her photo in the kitchen, at the table where she had so often shared coffee and sandwiches with her houseguest.
“We’d like to talk to your daughter,” Fowley said, as we were heading out, “if we could.”
“She’s working,” Mrs. French said, “but I’m sure she could spare a few minutes…”
The Aztec Theater was a second-run house on Fifth Street in San Diego; the Mission-style building, with its Mexi-Moderne touches, must have been the cat’s meow in 1924. The marquee boasted an Alan Ladd double bill: O.S.S. and Blue Dahlia, two pictures I’d managed to miss first time around.
Dorothy French-trimly shapely in her red bolero jacket, white blouse, and blue slacks with a red stripe down the side-was working the concession counter. She was a pert, pretty blonde in her early twenties, very much the image of her mother, perhaps even prettier, her eyes bigger and lighter blue, her lips more full and brightly red-lipsticked. Her hair was a well-organized tumble of curls set off by a little red usherette’s hat, more suitable for an organ grinder’s monkey than a doll like her.
It was midafternoon and halfway through one of the features, and the half hour we spent talking to Dorothy was uninterrupted by any patron. Throughout our conversation, she leaned casually against the glass top of the display case of candy bars, and chewed (and occasionally snapped) her gum; nonetheless, she answered our questions solemnly, giving the tragic death of her friend the grave respect it deserved.
She had been expecting us: her mother had called ahead.
“I don’t know if I’ll have much to add to what my mother told you,” she said.
When the Aztec’s houselights had come on, at 3 A. M. on the morning of December 9, Dorothy had found the black-haired sleeping beauty in one of the theater’s threadbare seats. Confused when Dorothy awoke her, Beth Short had stuttered that the sign outside said the moviehouse was open all night.
“We’d just had a change of management,” Dorothy said, “and the sign hadn’t been painted over, yet. I apologized, and Beth said that was all right, and started coughing. I got her a paper cup of water and we began talking, and she told me how she’d come from Hollywood and was supposed to meet a friend, but they hadn’t connected up… and she was really in a jam, starting with, she was out of money.”
“Did she hit you up?” Fowley asked.
“No.” White teeth flashed as she chewed her gum. “She did say she’d been an usherette and a cashier, in moviehouses back east, and wondered if we needed any temporary help here at the Aztec. Funny thing is, later, after she’d been staying with us a few days, I tried to get the manager to hire Beth… and that’s a funny one in and of itself.”
“What is?”
“She came by for a job interview and ended up going out on a date.”
Fowley frowned. “With the theater manager?”
“Yes. They went out on a couple of dates, and Beth claimed he’d gotten fresh, and refused to hire her because he was in love with her and didn’t want other men looking at her!”
I asked, “Do you think that’s true?”
“It’s probably malarkey, but I’m not positive. Not that it would be hard imagining Beth making a boy friend jealous.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Beth was a beautiful girl.” Dorothy said this wistfully, as if longing to be that beautiful herself, seemingly unaware of her own comeliness. “When we’d ride the bus together, guys would just sit and stare at her. She had a sort of… glamour quality she radiated, partly the way she dressed, partly the way she was always all made up, and how she kind of… preened. Guys were always trying to date her.”
Fowley asked, “How close did you and Beth get?”
“We were friends. She would kind of swing between being very talkative, and gay, with her Hollywood stories, and melancholy, in a sort of-I don’t know, calculated way-when she was talking about her war-hero husband dying, especially. Like she was in a movie, acting. Other times, she’d be real quiet. There was a sadness about her, like deep down she was somebody with nobody to turn to.”
Dorothy had been impressed with Beth’s expensive, elegant wardrobe.
“She had these sweaters with such delicate embroidery work, tiny loops and circles around sequins and beads and pearls. She’d dress up for dates and twirl for me, saying, ‘What d
o you think?’ What I thought was, I could never wear clothes like that… but she sure could.”
Fowley said, “Your mother mentioned a screen test…”
“Yes. She was looking forward to that. Some big director.”
“But she never mentioned a name?”
“No. I don’t know if there was a name to mention. All of this Hollywood talk, I don’t know if there was really anything to it-she’d go on and on, like she was trying to believe it herself, like if she said it enough times, it would be true.”
I asked, “You don’t think she really worked in the movies-that it was just a pipe dream?”
Her brow furrowed. “You know, I’m not convinced she really cared about Hollywood. For all her movie talk, what really seemed to matter to her was finding the right man… That was her dream, far as I’m concerned. You know what she said to me once? ‘If I could only find some handsome Army officer, or sailor, or Marine, or airman, who would love me like I know I could love him… then tomorrow could be something wonderful.’ ”
Fowley smirked. “That sounds like acting, too.”
“No-it was how she really felt.” Chewing her gum, Dorothy gazed dreamily at nothing. “You could see it in her eyes. Those beautiful blue eyes.”
This was coming from a girl with eyes as blue as a summer sky.
Dorothy smiled-the first time since we’d begun talking about her late friend-and it was a bittersweet smile, at that.
“Funny, isn’t it?” she said, snapping her gum. “Funny coincidence, I mean.”
“What is?” I asked.
“You coming to talk to me when The Blue Dahlia is playing.”
“Why’s that?”
She blinked, batting long lashes. “Don’t you know? Maybe you haven’t heard… I guess maybe Mother didn’t know, or didn’t think it was important enough to mention.”
“What?” Fowley asked.
“Beth had this nickname, some guys in Long Beach gave it to her, she said, ’cause of her black hair and lacy black dresses, and ’cause she was… this is so silly… in ‘full bloom.’ And, anyway, The Blue Dahlia was playing at the moviehouse around the corner from the drugstore where these guys and Beth hung out, so it was a takeoff on that.”
“What was?” I asked.
She batted her eyelashes again. “Her nickname-‘The Black Dahlia.’ ”
Fowley looked at me and I looked at him. Then Fowley jotted that down in his notepad. I had a strong suspicion the days of “The Werewolf Slayer” tagline had just ended.
“The only other thing I can think of,” Dorothy said, “is her memory books.”
“Memory books,” I said. “Scrapbooks, you mean? Or diaries…?”
The usherette shrugged and her blonde curls bounced. “I dunno for sure-I never saw them. Beth just said, one day, she was sorry she’d left them behind, her memory books, wishing she could show us pictures of her late husband, and maybe paste in a few new pics of Mom and me.”
Fowley pressed. “Left them behind where, did she say?”
“In her trunk.”
“Did she say who she left it with-a friend, maybe?”
“It was in storage.”
“She say where in storage?”
“Los Angeles-the American Express office.”
If a trunk had been sitting awhile, unclaimed, it might be in a nonpayment warehouse by now. That should be easily tracked. I wondered if Beth Short’s “memory books” had any entries about a private detective she’d met in Chicago.
“What can you tell us about Robert ‘Red’ Manley?” Fowley asked.
“Not much,” she said, shaking her head, chewing her gum dejectedly. “I really wish I had something more to tell you. Oh, I do know the name of the motel where Red took Beth, after he helped her move out of our place.”
My mouth dropped open, and two words managed to tumble out: “The motel?”
“Yes, where he and Beth stayed, the night before he drove her to Los Angeles.” Lashes batted; gum snapped. “Would that help?”
10
Maybe Red Manley was new at cheating on his wife. Or maybe he needed a receipt, to make a claim against an expense account. Or maybe he was just a goddamn idiot.
Whatever the reason, Robert Manley had broken the first rule of philandering: on the evening of January eighth, at the Pacific Beach Motor Camp, he had signed his own name on the motel register; and so, incredibly enough, had his companion for the night, Elizabeth Short. Manley’s address was listed-8010 Mountain View Avenue, Huntington Park-as was his automobile license number.
Elizabeth Short had given only “Chicago” as her address. The lack of anything further-say, the St. Clair Hotel, or the A-1 Detective Agency-was small consolation.
“Chicago again,” Fowley said, as we looked at the register at the motel check-in counter. He grinned at me wolfishly. “Sure this ‘Dahlia’ dame ain’t some old girl friend of yours?”
“You never know,” I said, and grinned back at him, back of my neck prickling.
Huntington Park was five miles south of downtown Los Angeles, in the midst of an industrial district, and while Mountain View Avenue may not have lived up to the scenic promise of its name, the quiet residential street was a sizable step up from the tract housing of Bayview Terrace. At dusk, bathed in the dying sunlight Hollywood moviemakers called “magic hour,” the little Manley home seemed California idyllic: a modest green-tile-roofed pale yellow stucco in the Spanish-Colonial style with a well-tended lawn, a cobblestone walk bordered by brightly flowering bushes, and thorny shrubs that hugged the house like prickly bodyguards.
Fowley rang the bell, and-almost supernaturally fast-the door opened and a lovely young woman was standing there, raising a “shush” finger, the fingernail painted the same candy-apple red as the lipstick glistening on her full red lips. She was a honey-blonde with a heart-shaped face, big blue eyes, upturned nose, peaches-and-cream complexion and a trim, shapely figure wrapped up in a red-striped white seersucker sundress that left her smooth shoulders bare.
“Please be quiet,” she said, her voice hushed. “My baby’s sleeping.” I glanced at Fowley and he glanced at me-we each knew what the other was thinking: what kind of lunatic runs around on a dish like this?
“Sorry, ma’am,” Fowley said, almost whispering. He held up a badge-an honorary deputy’s badge the L.A. County Sheriff issued to certain reporters, which those reporters often used to imply they were law enforcement officers. “Are you Mrs. Robert Manley?”
After barely glancing at the badge, the big blue eyes blinked at us. She must have been about twenty-two, a kid herself-her pretty face still had a pleasing baby-fat plumpness.
“Yes, I am,” she said, alarm swimming in those big blue eyes.
I said, “Is your husband home, Mrs. Manley?”
“No, he isn’t. He’s in San Francisco on business-he’s a traveling salesman. In hardware.”
There was a joke in there somewhere, and it wouldn’t have taken much looking to find it, but I didn’t bother.
“Could we ask you a few questions, ma’am?” Fowley asked. “Would it be possible for us to step inside?”
Her eyebrows tightened and a vertical line formed between them, a single crease in an otherwise perfectly smooth face. “This is about that girl Robert picked up, isn’t it?”
Again, Fowley and I glanced at each other.
Nodding, I said, “Her name was Elizabeth Short.”
“I know,” Mrs. Manley said wearily. “I read the papers… Why don’t we sit in the kitchen? I have some coffee made. Just please be quiet-Robert, Jr., is sleeping, and believe me, you don’t want to wake him.”
She led the way through the sparsely but nicely appointed bungalow, venetian blinds throwing slashes of shadow across gleaming hardwood floors. A playpen scattered with stuffed toys sat amid a wine-colored angora mohair living room suite, and vaguely Spanish, mahogany-veneer furnishings-everything looked new, suggesting a young couple buying on the installment plan.
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The kitchen was a compact, streamlined affair of white and two tones of blue; a scattering of the latest appliances lined the countertops, as did baby bottles. Another baby bottle warmed in a pan on the gas range, and a red telephone on the wall was like a splash of blood against the white tile. We sat at a white-trimmed blue plastic-and-chrome dinette set and sipped the coffee she provided.
“My name is Fowley,” the reporter said, his notepad out, “and this is Mr. Heller.”
“I’m Harriet Manley,” she said, sipping her coffee, her eyes wide and rather glazed-and, I noticed, slightly bloodshot. She had a lovely speaking voice, a warm alto, but-right now at least-her inflections were negligible, emotionless. “Bob is due home tonight. He and his boss, Mr. Palmer, are on their way back right now, from San Francisco… Did I say that already? I’m sorry.”
“Mrs. Manley,” Fowley asked, “what do you know about your husband and Elizabeth Short?”
“Bob phoned me from San Francisco this morning,” she said, in that same near-monotone. “He saw the story in the papers up there, and said he recognized the girl’s picture. Of course, I’d read about the, uh… read about it myself-it’s all over the front page.”
Fowley gave me a look that indicated he would take the notes, and I should ask the questions.
So I asked one: “What did Bob say about this girl?”
She was staring into her coffee. “He had given her a ride back from San Diego-just as a favor, he said. Nothing between them.”
“I see. And what did you say to this?”
“I’m… I’m ashamed to tell you.”
“Please.”
“… I asked him if he’d done it.”
“Done it?”
“If he’d killed that girl.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said, ‘Of course not, honey. Whatever made you think I did?’ ”
I searched for sarcasm in her tone but couldn’t find any. “And what did you say to that?”
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