City of Dark Corners

by Jon Talton

  We sat in silence until he started to reach inside his coat.

  “Ah, ah, ah.” My finger was on the trigger.

  He froze. “May I smoke?”

  “Why not? But reach very slowly.”

  He carefully removed a cigar from his coat pocket and bit off the end.

  “If you spit that on my carpet, I’ll shoot you.”

  He let it fall in his palm, dropped it in the ashtray, then lit the cigar with a match, a long circular motion until the tip was red as a smelter. As if my dream had foreshadowed this moment, Greenbaum looked at me like a rottweiler assessing how easily he could rip out my throat.

  “What brings you to my humble lodgings, Mr. Greenbaum?”

  “Gus,” he instructed. “May I call you Gene?”

  I didn’t see why not.

  “You have me all wrong, Gene. Your pal Barry Goldwater has a very active imagination. In reality, I’m a businessman, serving a need with the latest technology. You and Barry may imagine that I’m taking over this town with a Chicago typewriter, but that’s silly. Phoenix has welcomed me with open arms. Goldwater and Rosenzweig have opened doors. I’m welcome at the chamber of commerce. This is a great place for my new service’s Southwest operations.” He tapped his finger and an inch of spent cigar embers dropped into the ashtray. “All my relationships are transactional, see? The power of money will outdo the power of a Tommy gun any day.”

  “You’re a pretty good lock picker.”

  He smiled. “An old trade I learned many years ago. I’m sure you can do it, too.”

  That much was true, even though we were on different sides of the law.

  “So why pick my lock?”

  After savoring his Cuban, he spoke. “I didn’t expect to find you at home. I supposed you were off with your girlfriend. See, I have a problem. I foolishly got involved with a girl who got herself killed. She went by Cynthia, but I learned her name was really Carrie Dell. I gave her a loan to help get her business started, and she paid me back in more ways than one. But something went wrong and she was murdered. A little birdie at police headquarters told me you were investigating that killing, even though you’re officially off the force. I assumed you might have some of her records that might be embarrassing to me.”

  I set the .45 beside me and lit a nail. “That might implicate you as her killer?”

  “Not at all. Killing is bad for business, especially the way the poor girl was sawed apart.”

  I had to admit the Dell homicide was more like a lust murder, like the University Park Strangler, than an organized crime hit.

  I said, “Maybe I can help if I know what you’re looking for?”

  He chuckled. “You’d like to help put me in the gallows for killing her. Nevertheless, Carrie might have written down my name and phone number. I’d prefer that not become public record.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because I’m enjoying becoming part of respectable Phoenix. I like this little city. It’s going places. The truth is I was going to find this information and pilfer it.”

  “Is that so, Big Cat?”

  He looked confused enough that I knew he was not Big Cat.

  I said, “My problem, Gus, is that somebody set off a smoke bomb below my office and used that distraction to steal the records I found from Carrie.” I lied about his phone number in the list from the answering service. “So whatever worries you was taken. My expectation is that whoever took it has already stuck it in an incinerator. I don’t think they’re going to give it to the newspapers, and what if they did? Carrie is still classified as a suspicious death, not a homicide.”

  “Or they’re going to try to blackmail me. Look, Gene, I’m a married man. A divorce lawyer could make sure my wife could take half of what I own. I don’t need that distraction. And I answer to people in Chicago who wouldn’t like it at all.”

  It was such a prosaic answer that I almost believed it. “A guy like you could arrange an ‘accident’ to eliminate your wife. Otherwise, I expect you know how to handle blackmail, Gus. But if you hear from someone in that racket trying to lean on you, let me know. I can help.”

  He set the cigar in the ashtray.

  “I expect you could.” He leaned forward. “Now, if you won’t plug me, I’d like to stand and leave and thank you for the conversation.”

  “Not quite yet,” I said. “You know how Carrie was murdered. Please don’t tell me about your buddies on the force feeding you information. I know all about Frenchy as your bagman. He went off the reservation and got quite a hammering for it.”

  “That was Cyrus Cleveland, my man on the South Side. I agreed something had to be done. But Frenchy pinning a murder on a Negro didn’t sit well with Cyrus, so I let him set Navarre straight. What’s your point?”

  I said, “Who murdered Carrie Dell?”

  He shrugged. “A psycho. This was deeply personal. The year I was born, 1893, Chicago held a world’s fair to celebrate Columbus reaching the New World. A very big deal, the White City. Only trouble was a guy named Dr. Holmes who built a hotel catering to single women. And he murdered them there. I’m told it had soundproof rooms and mazes. He confessed to murdering twenty-seven, but it might have been two hundred. He dissected some. Maybe Carrie ran into a Dr. Holmes, and if that’s true you have more victims. Or…”

  I studied his face but it was grim, unreadable.

  “Or?” I prompted.

  “There is no ‘or,’ Hammons. Just a figure of speech. Carrie ran into a maniac. Phoenix is turning into a real city.”

  After he was gone, I locked the door and propped a chair against it. A long hour passed before I fell asleep, the pistol under my pillow. I dreamed of taxicabs.

  Twenty-Six

  Friday, June 28th, 1929. Juliet took in a double-feature at the Fox and walked west on Washington in a crowd as the other theaters let out. I followed half a block behind. It looked to be another fruitless night, and McGrath would shut down my attempt at baiting the killer.

  Then a taxi pulled up and paced her.

  I heard the driver lean out and call. “May I take you somewhere, pretty lady?”

  She came two steps closer to the curb. I thought: Do not get in that cab!

  It might have been innocent, but I realized here was one thing that had evaded our attention: a driver and vehicle that could go anywhere without raising suspicion.

  Suddenly, he opened the door and started to wrestle her inside. She yelled and kicked him.

  Then I was there with my Detective Special out. Don was soon at my side and we braced him against the taxi with difficulty. Although he had a meek face and average build, he was strong as hell. It took both of us to get him in cuffs, with a nipper for good measure. He argued, then begged to be let go. But the game was up.

  In the back seat were ropes, barbed wire, a sock, and a rag soaked in chloroform. A penknife was in his front pocket.

  We sweated him for twelve hours until finally, under my continued questioning, catching him stumble through lie after lie, as he told and retold his activities on the dates of the murders, he broke. It happened when I lied to him and said his wife refused to support his alibi that he was home the nights of the murders. And when I told the truth: We found a soundproof room added to his garage. Then he spilled.

  By that time, other detectives had executed a search warrant at his home, finding the knickers and stuffed animals taken from the first two victims, as well as a bloody baseball bat. His typewriter matched the taunting note sent to the police chief. His wife expressed surprise, then outrage that we suspected her husband of such heinous crimes. But I suspected she knew all along.

  He wasn’t a taxi driver—that cab had been stolen specifically to snatch Juliet, who he had been watching. He was a clerk at a building and loan. Each of the female victims had opened passbook savings accounts with him. T
his was the link we didn’t find.

  Emil Gorman, forty-five, was a model employee at the building and loan, shy, kept to himself. He didn’t have so much as a parking ticket. His neighbors on East Pierce Street were similarly surprised that Gorman was suspected of being the strangler.

  With one exception: an elderly woman with a habit of watching the street saw him leave late at night on the date of Grace Chambers’s disappearance. She remembered because it was also her daughter’s birthday. He didn’t return until early the next day.

  His arrest and confession were national news. The Hearst Examiner’s headline: FIEND OF PHOENIX CAUGHT!

  Although Gorman confessed to all the murders, I always wondered if there were more. Maybe he got his taste for it on prostitutes nobody would miss. University Park seemed only sinister coincidence. The first girl lived there, and it was fertile hunting ground. Then he liked the name bestowed on him by the press.

  It was the case that made me famous, at least for a time.

  Twenty-Seven

  Now, four years later, I didn’t feel famous or accomplished. In the morning light, my apartment still smelled of Greenbaum’s cigar. I pulled the chair away from the door, lit a nail, and made coffee.

  I had my strong suspicions about Carrie/Cynthia’s game, but the smoke bomb ensured that my evidence, in the form of letters and diary, was gone. All I had left were two boxes of expensive women’s clothing, size small, and her hardcover journal. I had no interest in reading the juvenile fiction of a nineteen-year-old, whatever her pretensions. But I picked it up anyway—the cover read “My Stories,” and prepared to make a go of it.

  But it wasn’t a journal. After the first page, also labeled “My Stories,” it opened to reveal a hidden compartment. A black spiral notebook, five inches by three, stared out at me.

  I lifted it out and proceeded to read.

  * * *

  I spent the next week discreetly interviewing the clients of Summer Tours.

  A state senator, Superior Court judge, bank president, city commissioner and other big wigs.

  Whether in their offices, over lunch at the Arizona Club, or in more hidden nooks such as the Original Mexican Café on East Adams Street, each confessed to consorting with the college girls provided by Carrie. All were “summer bachelors” because they had the means to send their wives to cooler climes. They happily paid the steep fees for companionship they could have only dreamed of in the past. None seemed capable of killing.

  I sewed it up with another trip to Tempe, where Pamela, the auburn-haired smoke-ring blower, admitted she had been one of the dozen girls who stayed for the hot months and made money. She fiercely denied being a roundheels and offered up the justifications of the young and attractive. As I’ve said, I’m not a moralist. I could not have cared less if murder were not involved. Pamela finally came to realize that she might have been cut up beside the railroad tracks, too.

  The problem after all this gab was that I felt no closer to finding Carrie’s killer.

  Twenty-Eight

  Victoria’s latest letter was the one I most anticipated: An invitation to Los Angeles. I grabbed it and told the Central Methodist choir director I would be missing some rehearsals.

  That night, I boarded the westbound Sunset Limited and let the porter show me to my Pullman berth as the lights of Phoenix, then the orchards and farms, slipped away. Afterward, I went to the dining car for a delicious meal served on fine Southern Pacific china as we sped through empty desert.

  Later, I went to the lounge-observation car at the end of the train, lit a smoke, and let the bartender fix me a martini. This was definitely a sign that Prohibition was on the way out. As I sipped my drink, I studied the photographs Victoria had sent me from Los Angeles. Her photographs. The majestic Los Angeles Coliseum from the 1932 Olympics. Griffith Park with a sweeping view of the city, where she wrote that an observatory was being planned. Downtown with dense, multistory commercial buildings, movie palaces, and crowds. A massive Union Station under construction. The towering new City Hall. Santa Monica Pier and the Pacific Ocean. Tony Beverly Hills. The HOLLYWOODLAND sign.

  She also had an assortment of crime photos taken on scenes with the LAPD.

  Phoenix had nothing like this, and I was pleased with the artistry of her photographs. Yet I wondered if she could ever be happy in little Phoenix again. Or happy being with me, a small-town shamus with uncertain prospects.

  Should I have proposed to her a long time ago? Would that have made a difference? I never wanted to stand in her way. I hoped to be a part of her future, wherever it was, but the tone of her letters from California was slightly more distant with each one. As for me, I never found how to assemble the truest and best words I knew, to explain how I felt about her. Now I suspected this trip would be goodbye.

  I ordered another drink and mulled over the case as the car rocked. A speedometer on the wall said we were racing along at eighty-five miles per hour. My pop had taught me that the farther back from the locomotive, the rougher the ride. Still, the quality of this car was such that most passengers wouldn’t notice. Suspect after suspect had been eliminated. Although I had learned much about Carrie Dell and her enterprise, I didn’t know the ultimate answer: Who killed her.

  After finishing my cocktail, I wandered the train, read in my seat before the porter made my bed, and we rolled into Yuma for a short stop. Soon after leaving, the conductor found me.

  “Detective Gene Hammons?”

  I showed him my badge. “That’s me.”

  He handed me a telegram from Phoenix.

  I opened it. And I finally knew.

  Detraining at Indio and catching the next train back to Phoenix seemed the prudent thing to do. I thought about wiring the news to Captain McGrath. But how would I make the many explanations—about pilfering evidence from the murder scene, secretly matching prints with confidential police personnel files at the top of the list? And I badly wanted to see Victoria.

  In the rear of the train again, the observation car was nearly empty. The conductor let me open the rear door and step out onto the open observation deck. Beneath and behind me, the Sunset Limited sped west, the steel rails polished by a full moon. The train swayed. If anything, we were going faster than eighty-five now. Everything I saw was fleeing behind us, gone, in my past, as we rushed to reach Los Angeles by morning.

  Although it was cold, I sat down, zipped my jacket, and let the solitude arrange my thoughts.

  The telegram in my pocket was from Don. He had finally matched the prints found on my business card that had been placed in Carrie’s purse. They corresponded to the latents taken from the razor that killed Zoogie Boogie, secreted as insurance in Navarre’s safe-deposit box, as well as those dusted by the Prescott Police from the murder weapon that slit Ezra Dell’s throat. The killer was the same man.

  But I wasn’t alone for long. I felt a strong hand on my shoulder.

  “May I join you?”

  For the tiniest moment I was afraid for the first time since the Western Front in 1918. But I tightened my gut. After we flashed past a freight train waiting on a siding, I found my voice.

  “Please do.”

  He sat in the adjacent chair and lit a cigarette. “It was my dearest hope that you wouldn’t follow this case so far. Or that I could throw you off, draw the voodoo symbol to point at Navarre as prime suspect.”

  “But you know me better than that.”

  “Alas, I do.”

  “And your dearest hope doesn’t jibe with you putting my card in Carrie Dell’s purse. If Don hadn’t found it, I would be in Florence right now waiting for the drop.”

  “Oh, I knew he’d rescue you. The discovery was meant to put you on the trail, and you would find the things that might incriminate me. Which you did and were kind enough to leave on the top of your desk so I could dispose of them.”

  “Why
not investigate it yourself?”

  “Oh, too risky. The girls knew me, and it wouldn’t do for me to go poking around at the college.”

  “Her father and Zoogie Boogie?”

  “I had to get what they knew. If they knew my name.”

  “And Jack Hunter in prison?”

  “I was lucky enough to intercept that note he sent you at headquarters. I don’t know what he wanted to tell you. But why take the chance? I sent word to a stoolie at Florence who owed me.”

  “You murdered four people. It’s hard to believe.”

  “It’s easier to get sucked in and keep killing than I ever realized. First, I had to kill my Baby Girl. That was the hardest. Afterward, covering my tracks was paramount and the killing was easier. Old man Dell, Zoogie, they saw me, knew my face and name. At the least, I’d lose my job and family. At the worst, I’d swing.”

  “Big Cat.”

  “That’s what she called me.”

  “But why kill her and do it that way?”

  When he silently smoked, I made a try.

  “I think you were her protector and then her lover. Older man, young woman, however confident you are, you can’t believe how lucky you were to have this goddess in your bed. With the powerful people involved with Summer Tours, you had blackmail material to make you a very wealthy man. But she had the power, and you didn’t like it. She bent men to her will. You felt emasculated and yet you couldn’t stop wanting her. She was the itch you couldn’t scratch. It was a fun summer, but then she was ready to move on. And you couldn’t have that. She made threats. You sure as hell couldn’t have those. The breaking point was when she told you she was pregnant.”

  “Keep going.”

  “Then you killed her with the blackjack. Maybe you didn’t even mean to do it. Maybe she hit you first and you hit back, hard. Then your blood was up. You couldn’t leave it at that, drop her body in an abandoned mine in the desert. More than your blood was up. Real evil took over. You’d seen so many ways people kill each other. And it got to you, taught you. You dismembered her, dressed her in the fine clothes she favored, displayed her just inside the city limits. After you calmed down, you hoped it would either be written off as a train suicide or brushed under the rug because the city didn’t want another sensational crime. Another lust murder, like the University Park Strangler. As the final backup, you put my card in her purse and set it against the tree, in case the cops didn’t pursue the killing as a homicide, which they didn’t. That way I’d blaze the trail so you could do some cleaning up.”