The Last Embrace

by Denise Hamilton

  “Did Kitty go see Dr. Lafferty too?” Lily asked.

  “I don’t know. But you sure seem to think she did.”

  “Was she pregnant?”

  Pico’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, but he said nothing.

  “Is that why someone killed her? What did the autopsy show?”

  “We’re not releasing those results.”

  “Why not?”

  “No comment.”

  “Isn’t the family entitled to see the autopsy?” Lily probed, figuring that Mrs. Croggan would tell her what it said.

  Pico pressed his lips together. “When we conclude the investigation. Until then, it’s evidence.”

  Lily felt the truth wash over her, telling her what Pico wouldn’t. Kitty had been pregnant.

  “Kitty went to Dr. Lafferty to get an abortion, I know it. He’s as phony as a three-dollar bill.”

  Pico turned somber eyes on her. They were the gray-green of the sea before a storm, shadows moving in their depths. “Unfortunately, he’s all too real. One of these days, we’ll have enough evidence to put him away. But the studios protect him.”

  Lily leaned back. She wasn’t going to get a direct answer on the autopsy results, but she could infer plenty. It was time to move on to other questions.

  “Have you learned anything more about Florence Kwitney?”

  Pico shot her a sideways glance. She felt him hesitate.

  Then he said, “The head of detectives assigned it to another team, at least for now. Figures we’ve got our hands full.”

  “Indeed. Speaking of which, what happened with Freddy Taunton?”

  Pico rubbed his chin. Again, there was a moment’s lag. He shot her a look, then said, “Turns out he really did go fishing. Arrived at the San Pedro dock five minutes before the boat left, gave a false name, and tipped the captain fifty dollars to take him on. Boat just got back from Baja.”

  “Is he in custody? What did he say?”

  “He didn’t come back. Had an attack on board of what appeared to be appendicitis. They dropped him off in Ensenada yesterday, told a taxi to take him to the hospital. Medical staff say he never arrived.”

  “Of course not,” Lily groaned.

  Pico regarded her with amusement. “We’ve wired Scotland Yard to see if he’s got a record and alerted the Mexican police and our Border Patrol. Whether or not he’s our man, we’d like to talk to him.”

  “I can’t believe those girls bought his ‘landed gentry’ story and let him tie them up and take photos. Like lambs to the slaughter.”

  Pico gave her a sideways look. “Unlike you, who waltzed into his apartment after sweet-talking the manager. And after you found the dirty pictures, you called to tip us off. Don’t look at me like that. I’ve figured it out. Did you take them? Because Magruder already warned you—”

  “I had one photo,” Lily admitted. “But I dropped it trying to escape. They’re horrible photos, Detective Pico. Posed images of Kitty being tortured. I can’t believe anyone would buy such filth. And then the manager…he nearly caught me. He was drunk. He wanted to rape me; I barely made it out of there. He must have found the photos.”

  “Jesus,” said Pico. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’ll get a warrant, we’ll search his place.”

  Lily shook her head. “He will have sold them, or moved them somewhere safe.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Pico said grimly. “Meanwhile, if Taunton tries to slip back into the country, we’ll nab him.”

  “The border’s long and mostly unguarded.”

  Lily shivered. Pico glanced over.

  “You cold?” His voice softened. “I’ll turn on the heater.”

  “No, I’m…” She paused, touched by how responsive he was, how attuned to her. But that was only a cop thing. They were trained to be keenly observant. She knew because she was that way too. It was nothing personal.

  A blast of warm air hit her, caressing her, enveloping her. On the car radio, Les Brown & His Orchestra were playing “I’ve Got My Love to Keep Me Warm.”

  His eyes locked on hers. “Better?”

  She nodded.

  Slowly the tightness left her limbs. But suddenly she missed Joseph so much. Her body ached for him, the press of his flesh against hers.

  “What’s the matter, Miss Kessler?” Pico’s voice was gentle. “Does it give you the heebie-jeebies? First Kitty, then this Florence Kwitney?”

  “No. Well, maybe a little. But that’s not it.”

  He stayed silent, letting her work it out.

  “It’s just so weird…” She struggled to put it into words. They were at a red light, the ruby glow casting warm shadows inside of the car. She glanced up. The detective’s face was patient, his eyes steady.

  “Take your time,” he said.

  Lily sniffed. “I mean, it’s strange to be back in L.A. after so long.” She shook her head. “And under these circumstances. I thought everything would be safe here. And it isn’t.”

  “I know how you feel. That’s why I became a cop. Does that make me hopelessly old-fashioned?”

  A replay of their conversation the other day. But from a different angle, without the gamesmanship and swagger. Had she been wrong about him?

  “Not at all,” she said.

  They drove through the darkling city.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked, sensing he was just marking time.

  “Where do you want to go?” His voice was more soft and melodious than she could have imagined.

  Lily felt something lurch inside of her. She braced herself against the seat.

  “You can take me ho—” She gave a rueful laugh. “The boardinghouse, please. Funny, I almost called it home. But it’s not home. Not by a long shot. Problem is, I don’t know where home is anymore, or if I’d even recognize it.” She paused. “Sorry, I’m not making much sense.”

  He was watching the road, a serious expression on his beautiful face.

  “Maybe home’s not a physical place,” he said at last, “but something we make in our heart and carry around with us.”

  His words conjured up two birds building a nest, weaving rushes, twigs, and fluff with great care. She caught her breath at the delicacy of its construction, felt its rough weave prick her cupped hands.

  “And if we’re lucky,” he went on, “one day we meet the right person to share that home with.”

  His eyes searched hers. The intensity she saw there made her glance away.

  “Yes.” She felt raw and vulnerable, afraid of her own voice. “Maybe that’s the way it is.”

  Twilight deepened as they drove, the buildings receding into shadow, the hills turning a luminous shade of purple. Pico pulled in front of the rooming house and they sat there, talking about Kitty, cocooned in their own world as one by one the lights went on in the houses around them, casting an amber glow. The heater blasted out warm air. She wanted to stay there forever, suspended in time and place.

  “Detective Pico?” Lily said at last.

  “Yes?”

  His voice sent her blood racing. She felt the thud of her pulse against her temple.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome, Miss Kessler.”

  She felt something gather in the air and thicken around them, grow clotted and expectant. The thought of it terrified her.

  “G’night,” she said, and slipped from the car.

  Behind her, she felt it rush out, a silent roar of disappointment.

  He waited for her to run up the stairs, and then he drove away.

  The spell broke as she walked into the rooming house. Then the nagging uncertainty descended again. What if Pico had swooped down, not to protect her from Lafferty, but to prevent her from learning something about Kitty?

  Lily walked into the kitchen, got a glass of water. Standing at the sink, looking out onto the backyard, she heard a faint scuffling on the back porch, claws against wood. She went to the screen door, saw Mrs. Potter’s cat under the l
ight, playing with a mouse. The little dun thing scurried away and the cat let it reach the top step before batting it back. Then it pounced once more, holding it down with one paw while the mouse quivered in fear and exhaustion.

  Lily flung open the screen door and ran out. “Shoo!” she said, waving her arms and stamping her foot.

  The cat shot her a baleful look and slunk away. The mouse huddled on the wooden boards, too stunned or injured to move.

  “Go on.” Lily nudged it with her shoe. “Now’s your chance.”

  Blood oozed from a slash on its back. Slowly, creakily, the mouse crept down the steps and disappeared.

  “You’re dreadfully cruel,” she scolded the cat, which she knew waited nearby.

  Something shifted on the porch behind her. She turned and saw Mrs. Potter’s bulk in a wicker chair, shrouded in shadow.

  “It’s the natural order,” the landlady’s voice drifted out, calm and disembodied. “And now you’ve gone and spoiled his fun.”

  “Hello, is anybody home?” came a voice from the front of the house.

  Grateful to escape, Lily ran inside and saw the Carnation milkman, snappy in his brown uniform, standing on the porch.

  “Is Mrs. Potter in?” he asked. “Got a bill here for twenty-two-fifty that’s three months old. Boss says we’ll have to stop service next week if she doesn’t settle up.”

  “I’ll see if I can get her,” Lily said.

  She found the landlady standing behind the kitchen door.

  “Please tell him I’m not in,” she whispered.

  “Howdy, Mrs. Potter,” the milkman called. “Are you there?”

  The landlady retreated to the sink. She grabbed a towel and ran it along the tile counter. A high flush rose in her cheeks, a granite coldness filled her eyes.

  “Why doesn’t he just go away?” she said.

  “I know you’re in there, Mrs. Potter,” the milkman sang out.

  “Tell him now,” Mrs. Potter said, whirling on Lily.

  Lily went back and explained that the landlady was indisposed but she’d deliver the message. She shut the door, wondering how many other tradespeople Mrs. Potter owed.

  Lily had dropped her purse when she came in and it gaped open, exposing her wallet. As if drawn by a magnet, Mrs. Potter glided over, eyes riveted by the bills.

  “You carry quite a bit of money around,” she said.

  “Not usually,” Lily answered. “But this trip…I wasn’t sure…”

  “It’s dangerous to carry so much money,” Mrs. Potter said. “You shouldn’t let anyone know you have it.”

  Lily agreed. Mrs. Potter paced the parlor, as if agitated. “Money causes a lot of trouble,” she said, apropos of nothing. “There are a lot of murders committed for money.”

  “You think Kitty was murdered over money?” Lily asked.

  Mrs. Potter nodded slowly. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”

  “But I thought she didn’t have any.”

  “Other things have value too.” Mrs. Potter regarded Lily with cold, clinical eyes. “Information, for example. There are people who pay well for that.”

  “Or kill for it?” Lily asked.

  “Killing isn’t what upsets people. It’s getting caught.” Seeing Lily’s face, the landlady tried to explain.

  “I interviewed a lot of murderers when I was a matron at the county jail. It gave me insight into their minds.”

  “You worked at the jail?” Lily said, surprised. “And you quit to run a boardinghouse?”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Potter’s eyes flickered. She sat down beside Lily.

  “You don’t think I could commit murder, do you?” Mrs. Potter placed a hand on Lily’s shoulder and it took all her willpower not to flinch. It came to her now that Mrs. Potter saw the world quite differently than she did. Than most people. For the briefest moment, Lily walked in the shadows of Mrs. Potter’s world, traversed a dead landscape of ash.

  “Well, I’m going to find some food, I’m starving,” Lily said, standing up with a show of great casualness.

  “Would you like me to scramble you some eggs, hon? I can go out to the garden and snip some herbs?”

  Lily thought of the more sinister plants that dwelled in Los Angeles gardens. Pretty flowering shrubs like oleander and castor bean, with its bristling red-green leaves. She imagined a folded omelet, nicely browned with butter and topped with these diced plants, fishy chicken embryos tucked inside, tiny beaks and wings crunching between her teeth. She thought of the knob on her bedroom door in the middle of the night, the measured tread. The blood sport with the cat. Two strangled girls.

  “That’s okay,” she said, trying not to shudder. “I’m craving chicken potpie. They have them at the lunch counter up the street.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Detective Stephen Pico walked into Vernichello’s in West L.A. and looked around. Damn, but it smelled good. The tables were filling up, platters of food sailing out from the kitchen, a waiter presenting a bottle of something called limoncello to men with vulpine faces who sat at a corner table, a wall mural of an Italian hill town soaring up behind them.

  The mâitre d’ came up and Pico identified himself and asked to speak to Jack Dragna. The man disappeared into the back. Pico hoped he’d get further with Dragna than he had at Mickey Cohen’s haberdashery.

  Cohen had set up his clothing shop along an unincorporated stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard, just over the county line. Not that he didn’t have friends at LAPD, but everyone knew he and Sheriff Biscailuz had grown up together on the East Side and were practically brothers. Mickey could be assured of peace and quiet, the LAPD left to cool its heels just across the border. Like Pico had been the other day, stonewalled by a small, ferrety guy named Shorty Lagonzola.

  Soon the mâitre d’ returned and led Pico into an office where a thickset man with hair combed straight back was eating dinner on a folding table, a napkin tucked into his shirt, his eyes riveted to the television. Dragna grunted and waved an arm to indicate for the detective to sit down. He had a droopy face like a basset hound, sallow skin, a large nose, and rough, thick-fingered hands, as if he wrenched giant turnips out of the ground for a living. So this was the mastermind behind half of L.A.’s prostitution and gambling rings.

  “Mr. Dragna, I—”

  Dragna held up a finger. “Quiet, please,” he said with a reproachful look, then turned back to the black-and-white screen.

  Pico considered turning it off, but was drawn in despite himself. The show was slapstick, funny. He wished he could afford a television. It was a helluva way to spend time. With a surge of music, the program broke for a commercial. Dragna gave a strange and melancholy sigh and turned his attention to the detective.

  “You’re not one of the usual faces they send,” the gangster said. He opened a beer and called out something in Italian.

  A thin young woman with black hair popped her head through the door, wiping her hands on an apron. She had the biggest shiner that Pico had seen outside the ring, blooming all yellow and purple.

  Dragna snapped his fingers and said to bring Pico a beer and the woman returned a moment later with a bottle and a glass, which she placed on the TV tray. Dragna said something in Italian and the woman flinched, then reached into her apron pocket for a bottle opener. She opened Pico’s beer, then left.

  “I gotta be the only wop in town who don’t drink red wine,” Dragna said. “Gives me headache.”

  Pico was still staring at the door. “What happened to her eye?”

  “My wife, she’s very clumsy. Walked into the cupboard door. Again.”

  Pico allowed himself a moment to feel sorry for Mrs. Dragna. Then he said, “I’m here about the Kitty Hayden murder.”

  Dragna’s face tightened, reminding Pico of an intelligent, aging bird of prey. On the TV, a man was extolling Chevrolet cars.

  “What makes the LAPD think I know any more than what I read in the paper?”

  “C’mon, Mr. Dragna, the whole city knows
you and Mickey Cohen are at war. Kitty Hayden partied with two of Cohen’s men in Palm Springs last week. They’ve disappeared and she’s dead.”

  Dragna turned back to the screen, where the commercial was winding down.

  “We are gonna be quiet and watch Lucille Ball now. I’ll tell you whatever you want when it’s over.”

  “Mr. Dragna—”

  “She’s got a thing for Latin men,” Dragna said. “She married that greaser Desi, but he’s running around on her.”

  The commercial ended. Dragna put down his beer and rubbed his hands together. “Here we go.”

  The program resumed. It was a variety show. Miss Ball and some other actresses Pico didn’t recognize were arguing while making pies. Next thing he knew, Miss Ball got a pie in the kisser. She opened her mouth in outrage, but her expression changed as she began to taste the delicious pie.

  “Mangia, mangia,” Dragna urged the screen. “You’ll be sexy with a few more curves, Lucy. Your ass is flat as a board. Nothing to hold on to.”

  Then Desi Arnaz made a surprise cameo. Dragna scowled.

  “Look at that Cuban faggot,” Dragna jeered. “He doesn’t deserve a woman like you, Lucy. He doesn’t appreciate you. Drinking his rum daiquiris and playing them congas and disrespecting you. Maybe he oughta have an accident. Would you like that, Lucy?”

  The skit ended with everyone sitting down happily to pie and coffee. The orchestra music surged and the credits rolled.

  “I give that prick Desi six months,” Dragna told Pico. “She serves him with divorce papers, that’s when I make my move. She’ll need a shoulder to cry on.”

  Pico couldn’t believe the gangster was mooning over Lucille Ball. And what? Threatening to kill Desi Arnaz in front of a detective? It had to be an act.

  Pico cleared his throat. “What about your wife?”

  “Annulment,” Dragna said. “The Pope is a fellow Italian and will do the right thing, once he is presented with all the facts and a donation.”

  Pico hadn’t cracked the Baltimore Catechism in years, but he didn’t think it worked that way.

  “Ever hear that redheads are the most passionate?” Dragna mused.

  “It’s a dye job,” Pico said. “Now can we please get back to Kitty Hayden?”