by James Ellroy
Standing up, Lloyd grabbed Linda and consummated their morning kiss. “Thank you. I’ll lose weight so it’ll fit better.”
“I wouldn’t put it past you. What’s the matter, Hopkins? You’re scowling.”
Lloyd broke the embrace. “Delayed reaction to joy. My already complicated life has just gotten much more complicated. I’m glad.”
“It’s mutual. What happens next?”
“I’m going to New York in a day or so. Thomas Goff comes from there. I’m going to cruise his old haunts and talk to people who knew him. It’s my only remaining out. When I get back I’ll call you.”
“You’d better. Why don’t you shower while I make some coffee and toast? I’ve got my yoga class in an hour, but at least we can have breakfast together.”
Lloyd showered, alternating hot and cold jets of water over his body, lost in the sound of the spray and the hum of music coming from the kitchen. After drying off and dressing, he walked into the kitchen and found Linda fiddling with the radio dial. “I hate to be a downer,” she said, “but I just heard some bad news. An L.A. policeman was murdered in Malibu. I didn’t get all the details, but—”
Lloyd grabbed the radio and flipped the tuner to an all-news station, catching static and the conclusion of a weather report. He sat down and looked at Linda, then put a finger to her lips and said, “They’ll repeat the story. Cop killings are hot news.”
The weatherman said, “Back to you, Bob,” and a stern-voiced announcer took over: “More details on that Malibu killing. L.A. County Sheriff’s detectives have just announced that the dead man found on the beach near Pacific Coast Highway and Temescal Canyon Road is a twenty-two-year L.A.P.D. veteran named Howard Christie, a lieutenant assigned to the Rampart Division. Christie’s decapitated body was found early this morning by local surfers, who called the Malibu Sheriff’s Substation to inform them of the grisly find. Captain Michael Seidman of the Malibu Station told reporters: ‘This is a homicide, but as yet we do not know the cause of death and have no suspects. We have, however, determined that Lieutenant Christie was killed in the parking lot immediately above the spot on the beach where his body was found. We are now appealing to anyone who was in the vicinity of Pacific Coast Highway and Temescal Canyon Road last night or early this morning, people who might have seen or heard something suspicious. Please come forward. We need your assistance.’ Further details on this story as it breaks. And now—”
Linda turned off the radio and stared at Lloyd. “Tell me, Hopkins.”
“It’s Goff,” Lloyd said, with a death’s-head grin. “I’m not going to New York. If you don’t hear from me in forty-eight hours, send up a flare.” He grabbed his sweater and ran out the door. Linda shuddered, imagining her new lover’s departure as a race into hell.
Pacific Coast Highway and Temescal Canyon Road was a pandemonium of police vehicles with cherry lights flashing, TV minicam crews, mobs of reporters, and a large crowd of rubbernecks that spilled over from the parking blacktop, forcing southbound P.C.H. traffic into the middle lane.
Lloyd pulled up to the dirt shoulder on the land side of the highway and killed his siren, then pinned his badge to his jacket front and dodged cars over to a diagonal stretch of pavement sealed with a length of rope hung with “Official Crime Scene” warnings. The area behind the cordon was filled with plainclothes officers and technicians with evidence kits, and a long bank of pay phones was crowded with uniformed sheriff’s deputies calling in information. At the rear of the scene a half dozen plainclothesmen squatted beside the wooden railing overlooking the cliffs and the ocean, spreading fingerprint powder on a cracked piece of timber.
“I’m surprised it took you this long.”
Recognizing the voice, Lloyd pivoted and saw Captain Fred Gaffaney push his way through a knot of patrol deputies and plant himself in his path. The two men stared at each other until Gaffaney fingered his cross-and-flag tie bar and said, “This is one sensitive piece of work, and I forbid you to interfere. It’s in the Sheriff’s jurisdiction, with I.A.D. handling any connections to collateral cases.”
Lloyd snorted, “Collateral cases? Captain, this is Thomas Goff all the way down the line!”
Gaffaney grabbed Lloyd’s arm. Lloyd buckled, but let himself be led over to the shadow of an empty pay phone.
“Internal Affairs is moving on the other officers whose files were stolen,” the Captain said. “They’re going to be interrogated and perhaps taken into protective custody, along with their families. Except for you. Let’s put the past aside, Sergeant. Tell me what you’ve got so far, and if possible, I’ll help you move on it.”
Lloyd drummed his fingers on the side of the phone booth. “Marty Bergen has at the very least seen the stolen files. He’s missing, but some columns that he left for advance publication indicate conclusively that Herzog passed the files to him. I think we should issue an A.P.B. on Bergen, and get a court order to seize everything at the Big Orange Insider.”
Gaffaney whistled. “The media will crucify us for it.”
“Fuck the media. I’ve also got a hearsay line on Goff, through a hotshot psychiatrist who has a patient who knows him. But the cocksucker is hiding behind professional privilege and won’t kick loose with the name of his source.”
“Have you considered talking to Nathan Steiner?”
Lloyd nodded. “Yeah. I’m going to run by his office today. What have you got? The radio report said Christie was decapitated, which sounds like possible forty-one stuff.”
Gaffaney’s hands played over his tie bar. “I’ve got an excellent reconstruction from a team of very savvy sheriff’s dicks. The M.E.’s verdict won’t be in for hours, but this is the way they see it:
“One—yes, it’s a gunshot homicide. Christie was shot over by that broken piece of railing, and was blown down to the beach by the impact. I saw the body. It landed on some rocks up from the tide, so it stayed dry. I saw powder burns on his shirtfront, so the shots were obviously fired point-blank. Two—Christie was decapitated, but the biggest piece of his head the technicians have been able to find so far is a skull fragment about the size of a half dollar. You know why? He was almost certainly killed with his own gun. It wasn’t found on his body or anywhere around here. His badge was stolen, too. I talked to one of the top dogs at Rampart, and he told me that Christie packed a three-fifty-seven Python on and off duty, and that he kept it loaded with teflon-tipped dum-dum’s.” Gaffaney reached into his pants pocket and handed Lloyd a copper-jacketed slug. “Feel the weight of that monster, Hopkins. I took it off of Christie’s gunbelt while the medics weren’t looking. The expended rounds and Christie’s head are probably halfway to Catalina by now.”
Lloyd gouged the slug’s teflon head with his fingernail. “Shit. Those Sheriff’s dicks are probably right; this is a much heavier load than a forty-one. What else? Anything from Avonoco? Christie’s vehicle? Other vehicles? Witnesses? Blood tracks on the pavement?”
The Captain put a restraining hand on Lloyd’s chest. “Slow down, you’re making me nervous. There’s nothing on any of that yet, except a trail of blood leading from the railing across the parking lot and through the underpass to the other side of P.C.H. The trail got fainter as it went along, which indicates that the killer himself wasn’t wounded, he was just soaked with Christie’s blood. The techs are doing their comparison tests now; we’ll know for sure soon. What’s your next move?”
“Pump Nate Steiner for some legal advice. Hassle the shrink. You?”
Captain Fred Gaffaney grinned. “Interrogate the other security chiefs, go over their records, rattle skeletons. The feds are at Avonoco now. Christie’s security rating makes him a quasi-federal employee, so this is a collateral F.B.I, beef. Stay in touch, Hopkins. If you want transcripts of the I.A.D. interrogations, call Dutch Peltz.”
Lloyd walked back to his car, oblivious to the ghouls lining P.C.H., drinking beer and standing on their tiptoes to get a glimpse of the drama. He had his hand on the door when the
young man from the Big Orange Insider drove by and flipped him the finger.
Nathan Steiner was a Beverly Hills attorney who specialized in defending drug dealers. His forte was “obstructionist” tactics—filing writs and court orders, suits and countersuits, and motions requesting information on prospective jurors, potential witnesses, and courtroom functionaries; all strategies aimed at securing dismissals on the grounds of prejudiced testimony or “courtroom bias.” These strategies often worked, but more often “Nate the Great” won his cases by outlasting judges and prosecutors and by harassing them into foolish blunders with his paperwork onslaughts. It was well known that many judges granted his minor petitioning requests automatically, in the hope that it would keep his clients out of their courtrooms and thus save them the pain of a protracted Steiner performance; it was not well known that “Nate the Great” felt deep guilt over the scores of dope vultures cut loose from jail as the result of his machinations and that despite his loud advocacy of civil liberties, he atoned for that guilt by advising L.A.P.D. officers on ways to circumvent laws regarding probable cause and search and seizure.
Thus, when Lloyd barged through his office door unannounced, he was ready to listen. Taking a seat uninvited, Lloyd outlined a hypothetical case involving a doctor’s legal right not to divulge professionally secured information, stressing that all of the doctor’s records would have to be seized, because at this point the name of the patient was unkown.
Concluding his case, Lloyd sat back and waited for an answer. When Steiner grunted and said, “Give me three or four days to look at some statutes and think about it,” Lloyd got to his feet and smiled. Steiner asked him what the smile meant.
“It means that I’m an obstructionist, too,” Lloyd said.
After stopping at a taco stand and wolfing a burrito plate, Lloyd drove home and changed clothes, outfitting himself in soiled khaki pants and shirt, work boots, and a baseball cap advertising Miller High Life. Satisfied with his workingman’s garb and one-day stubble, he rummaged through his garage and came up with a set of burglar’s tools he had scavenged from a Central Division evidence locker ten years before: battery-powered hand drill with cadmium steel bits; assorted hook-edged chisels, and a skinny-head crowbar and mallet. Packing them inside a tool kit, he drove to Century City and the commission of a Class B felony.
The reconnoitering took three hours.
Parking on a residential side street a half mile from Century City proper, Lloyd walked to Olympic and Century Park East and found a uniformed custodian sweeping the astroturf lawn in front of his target building. He explained to the man that he was here to help with a private wiring job for a firm situated on the skyscraper’s twenty-sixth floor. Only one thing worried him. He needed an electrical hook-up with wall sockets big enough to accommodate his industrial-sized tools. Also, it would be nice to have a sink in which to scrape off rusted parts. The location didn’t matter; he had plenty of cord. Was there a custodian’s storeroom or something like that on the twenty-sixth floor?
The man had nodded with a befuddled look in his eyes, making Lloyd grateful for the fact that he seemed stupid. Finally he gave a last nod and said that yes, every floor had a custodial room, in the identical spot—the northest edge of the building. Would the custodian on that floor let him use it for his job? Lloyd asked.
The man’s eyes clouded again. He was silent for several moments, then replied that the best thing to do was wait until the custodians went home at four, then ask the guard in the lobby for the key to the storeroom. That way, everything would be cool. Lloyd thanked the man and walked into he building.
He checked the northeast corners of the third, fifth, and eighth floors, finding identical doors marked “Maintenance.” The doors themselves looked solid, but there was lots of wedge space at the lock. If no witnesses were around, it would be easy.
With two hours to kill before the custodial crew left work, Lloyd took service stairs down to ground level, then walked to a medical supply store on Pico and Beverly Drive and purchased a pair of surgical rubber gloves. Walking back slowly to Century City, all thoughts of the Goff/Herzog/Bergen/Christie labyrinth left his mind, replaced by an awareness of one of his earliest insights: crime was a thrill.
Stationed in the shade of a plastic tree on the astroturf lawn in front of his target, Lloyd saw a dozen men wearing maintenance uniforms exit the building at exactly 4:02. He waited for ten minutes, and when no others appeared, grabbed his toolbox and walked in, straight past the guard and over to the serivce stairs next to the elevators, donning his gloves the second he hit the privacy of the empty stairwell. Breathing deeply, he treaded slowly up twenty-six stories and pushed through a connecting doorway, finding himself directly across from Suite 2614.
The hallway was empty and silent. Lloyd got his bearings and assumed a casual gait as he walked past Dr. John Havilland’s door. When he got to the maintenance room, he scanned the hallway one time, then took the crowbar from his tool kit and wedged it into the juncture of door and jamb. He leaned forward with all his weight, and the door snapped open.
The storeroom was six feet deep and packed with brooms, mops and industrial chemicals. Lloyd stepped inside and flicked on the light switch, then closed the door and loaded his hand drill with a two-inch bit. Squatting, he pressed the start switch and jammed the bit into the door two feet above floor level. Pushing the drill forward and rotating it clockwise simultaneously, he bored a hole that was inconspicuously small yet provided a solid amount of air. Hitting the kill switch, he sat down and tried to get comfortable. Seven o’clock was the earliest safe break-in time; until then, all he could do was wait.
Swallowed up by darkness, Lloyd listened to the sounds of departing office workers, checking their departures against the luminous dial of his wristwatch. There was a deluge at five, others at five-thirty and six. After that it was uninterrupted silence.
At seven, Lloyd got up and stretched, then opened the storeroom door halfway, reaccustoming his eyes to light. When all his senses readjusted, he picked up his tool kit and walked down the hall to Suite 2604.
The lock was a single unit steel wraparound, with the key slot inset in the doorknob. Lloyd tried his burglar’s picks first, starting with the shortest and working up, getting inside the keyhole but jamming short of the activator button. This left the options of drilling or jimmying. Lloyd gauged the odds of individual suites in a security building having individual alarms and decided that the odds were in his favor. He got out his skinny-head crowbar and pried the door open.
Darkness and silence greeted him.
Lloyd shut the door quietly, brushing slivers of cracked wood off the doorjamb and onto the outer office carpet. He fumbled for the wall switch, found it, and lit up the waiting room. Linda Wilhite beamed down from the walls. Lloyd blew her a kiss, then tried the door to Havilland’s private office. It was unlocked. He flicked off the waiting room light and took a penlight from his pocket, letting its tiny beam serve as his directional finder. Whispering, “Let’s go real slow, let’s be real cool,” he walked inside.
Playing his light over the walls, Lloyd caught flashes of highly varnished oak, framed diplomas, and the Edward Hopper painting he had seen on his initial visit. Arcing his light at waist level, he circuited the entire room, picking up bookcases filled with leather-bound medical texts, straight-backed chairs facing each other, and Havilland’s ornate oak desk. No filing cabinets.
Thinking, safe, Lloyd felt along with walls, stopping to read the diplomas before reaching behind them. Harvard Medical School; St. Vincent’s and Castleford Hospitals. East Coast money all the way, but nothing except wood paneling in back of them.
Lloyd slid back the Hopper painting and hit pay dirt, then slammed the wall when he saw that the safe was an Armbruster “Ultimate,” triple lead-lined and impregnable. It was the shrink’s desk or nothing.
Lloyd moved to the desk, holding the penlight with his teeth and getting out his burglar’s picks. He grabbed the t
op drawer to hold it steady for the insertion, then nearly fell backward when it slid open in his hand.
The drawer was stuffed with pens, blank paper, and paper clips and a bottom layer of manila folders. Lloyd pulled them out and scanned the index tabs stuck to their upper right hand corners. Typed last names, first names, and middle initials. Patients.
There were five folders, all of them filled with loose pages. Seeing that the first three bore women’s names, Lloyd put them aside and read through the fourth, learning that William A. Waterston HI had difficulty relating to women because of his relationship with his domineering grandmother, and that he and Havilland had been exploring the problem twice a week for six years, at the rate of one hundred and ten dollars per hour. Lloyd scrutinized the photograph that accompanied the psychiatric rundown. Waterston did not sound or look like the type of man who would know Thomas Goff; he looked like an aristocratic nerd who needed to get laid.
Lloyd checked the index tab on the last file, seeing that a string of aliases forced the typist to move from the tab onto the front of the folder: Oldfield, Richard; a.k.a. Richard Brown; a.k.a. Richard Green; a.k.a. Richard Goff.
The last alias went through Lloyd like a convulsion. He opened the folder. A color snapshot was attached to the first page; a head and shoulders shot of a man who resembled Thomas Goff to a degree that fell just short of twinhood. Lloyd read through the entire fourteen pages of the file, shuddering when the facts of the resemblance were made clear.
Richard Oldfield was Thomas Goff’s illegitimate half-brother, the result of a union between Goff’s mother and a wealthy upstate New York textile manufacturer. He had entered therapy with Dr. John Havilland four years before, his love/hate relationship with his half-brother his “salient neurosis.” Thomas Goff was a brilliant criminal; Richard Oldfield a stockbroker-remittance man living largely on stipends shamed and coerced out of his father by Goff’s alcoholic mother, who had raised the two boys together. After wading through long paragraphs of psychiatric ruminations, Lloyd felt the blood theme emerge: Richard Oldfield’s desire to emulate Thomas Goff had driven him to undertake a sporadic criminal career, burglarizing homes known to contain art objects, acting on information from stock exchange acquaintances. Hence the Stanley Rudolph connection, obscured by Havilland’s cowardly manipulations: he wanted to surrender the Goff connection to police scrutiny, without divulging the name of his patient. Richard Oldfield’s occasional usage of his half brother’s name was what Havilland termed “cross-purpose identification—the desire to assume a person’s identity and act out both loved and hated aspects of their personalities, thereby restoring order to their own psyches, resolving the love-hatred ambivalance into an acceptable norm.”
