The Glitter Dome

by Joseph Wambaugh

  Perhaps if Paula hadn’t called the night before. It had exhausted him physically as well as spiritually. He was in no condition to accommodate the meeting with Danny Meadows.

  Perhaps if the radio call hadn’t been broadcast at that precise moment. Two minutes later they’d have been back at the station. The crime wasn’t even in his area. It would have been given to other detectives. Martin Welborn distinctly remembered what he had said when Al asked if he wanted to roll on the call since they were so close. He’d said, “I’m tired, Al. Do what you like.” The words were etched like a steel engraving. He remembered precisely. What if he hadn’t said the last part? Al Mackey would have shrugged and driven to the station, and Danny Meadows would never have become that unrelenting little specter rising to torment Martin Welborn in the night.

  Captain Woofer and Al Mackey were staring at him. Al Mackey looked alarmed.

  “I asked if you were feeling okay, Welborn,” Captain Woofer said. “You’re sweating, and you’re trembling like a goat shitting soup cans. Do you have the flu?”

  “He might be getting the flu,” Al Mackey said quickly. “I was saying this morning on the way to work that Marty looks like he’s getting the flu. Why don’t you take a walk, Marty? Get some air. If you’re not feeling well, you better go off sick.”

  Martin Welborn stared at them for a moment and then focused on Al Mackey’s gaunt face.

  “I said take a walk and get some air, Marty,” Al Mackey repeated.

  Martin Welborn nodded, got up, and walked out of the captain’s office. He looked around blankly for a moment, then left the squadroom.

  “Your partner’s a little shaky,” Captain Woofer said, relighting the briar for the third time.

  “The flu, I think,” Al Mackey said. “Also he’s gone through a marital separation.”

  “Haven’t we all?” Captain Woofer shrugged. “If I had a buck for every divorced cop, I could’ve retired ten years ago instead of ruining my health going for thirty.”

  “Maybe Marty’s been working too hard. Maybe …”

  “He should take a vacation.” Captain Woofer nodded. “After you two clear the Nigel St. Claire homicide.”

  “Maybe he should take the vacation now, Cap.”

  “After. He’s got troubles, you’ve got troubles, I’ve got troubles. It’s a troubled world.” The captain suddenly didn’t look so old. He smiled as he got the pipe cooking.

  And Al Mackey decided that Whipdick Woofer had the crafty reptile eyes of a real ball whacker. The detective sighed and said, “You’re the boss … Boss.”

  Martin Welborn returned to his chair at the table belonging to the homicide teams. He looked composed as he read last night’s reports, oblivious to the scowling faces of Schultz and Simon.

  Al Mackey approached the homicide table with outstretched conciliatory hands. Al Mackey was big on body language.

  “Listen, we didn’t ask for this,” he said, knowing what was on the minds of the huge detectives who were stuffing their notes and follow-up reports into the case envelope bearing the name of Nigel St. Claire.

  “Sure,” said Schultz. “We’re just the junior varsity is all we are. Well, good luck.”

  “Here it is, Mackey, all of it,” said Simon. “The follow-ups are up-to-date: Suspect unknown, investigation continued, arrest is imminent. That’s all we got. Good luck to the first team and fuck you very much.”

  “We didn’t ask for this,” Al Mackey said, with lots of squirming and shrugging. “You think we want this case?”

  The Weasel and the Ferret were jazzed up from winning all the loot, and they particularly enjoyed seeing Schultz and Simon suffer. The giant homicide detectives were possibly the only team of officers in the L.A.P.D. who still wore their hair in crewcuts. They had to drive all the way downtown to City Hall to find a barber who remembered how to cut them. Occasionally, when Schultz was feeling particularly militant, he’d ask for medium whitewalls and come off looking like a Wehrmacht tank commander. The Weasel said the two hunkers blotted out the. sun when they entered the squadroom. The Ferret said the mastodons registered 5.3 on the Cal Tech Richter when they walked down the stairs.

  Hearing the behemoths bitching and moaning to Al Mackey for taking over the Nigel St. Claire case, the Weasel said, “I don’t know why Mackey and Welborn should get that hot homicide. After all, Schultz and Simon solved three and a half homicides last month.”

  “What do you mean, three and a half?” asked the Ferret, always anxious to play Mr. Bones to the Weasel’s interlocutor.

  “The fourth one refused to die.”

  “Yeah, but if he had, who woulda told Schultz and Simon who killed him?”

  “That’s true. They ain’t never found a bad guy unless somebody pointed him out.”

  And so forth. But even though he was a daredevil who carried a long knife in his motorcycle boot, the Ferret was wise enough to keep his voice down when he was dumping on Schultz and Simon, who had once threatened to squeeze both narcs into little hair balls and hang them from his rearview mirror.

  The Weasel decided to console the big detectives with some hot information. Schultz and Simon had been distraught of late since losing a murder case wherein a boulevard cowboy named William Bonney Anderson, a.k.a. Billy the Kid, had blown away three good citizens of Hollywood, two for money, one for fun, and was found not guilty by reason of diminished capacity, after two psychiatrists (it was always the same shrinks the defense dug up in these cases) convinced the jury that Billy the Kid’s destiny was preordained the moment his mother laid on him the name of the notorious outlaw.

  The Weasel slipped Schultz and Simon the address and phone number of a former and present Hollywood mental case named Pat Garrett Williams, who, the Weasel was convinced, would consider himself officially deputized if given one of those “Have you hugged a vice cop today?” buttons that the gay community was recently flaunting. Then he could be shown a mug shot, given a throwaway gun, and programmed to relive the century-old killing of the Kid by blowing William Bonney Anderson right out from under his fucking Stetson the next time he went to the coffee shop on McCadden Place to pick up a drag queen.

  “It might work!” Schultz said.

  “Sounds feasible,” Simon said. “You two hairballs come up with a good idea once in a while.”

  Schultz even let the Weasel rub his crewcut for luck before hitting the bricks today, since the narcs hoped to culminate a big hash bust in the Hollywood hills. In fact, Schultz and Simon seemed so enthusiastic about owning their own certifiably psycho vigilante that they didn’t even look up when Al Mackey and Martin Welborn stuffed the story of Nigel St. Claire into its final resting place in a case envelope and set out toward square one.

  Square one was not necessarily the scene of the crime. Square one was where the body was found. If they were going to clear this one for Captain Woofer, the crime scene might have to be the goddamn French Riviera, Al Mackey said. It was going to take more than their nimble inventive ways to clear this killing. They might actually have to solve this one.

  When they got close to the parking lot of the bowling alley on Gower Street, Al Mackey looked around and said, “We’re going to have one hell of a time finding a skinny junkie with a fat Buddha this time, partner.”

  Martin Welborn seemed more or less back to normal after reading the crime and follow-up reports while Al Mackey drove through the morning smog. “What was a man like St. Claire doing at a bowling alley at that time of night?”

  “I say we start by assuming the body was dumped here,” Al Mackey said.

  “The pathologist was doubtful on that score. The posting indicates he was killed here.”

  It always amazed Al Mackey how quickly Marty could read and digest a police report, especially something as convoluted as a Schultz-Simon report, which drove district attorneys mad but seldom resulted in complaint to Captain Woofer. There was something about their combined bulk of 560 pounds which discouraged complaints from anyone. Even th
e doctors at the police physicals failed to send their “fat-man notices” to the department. Schultz and Simon were overweight the way grizzlies are overweight during hibernation: too heavy for their own good but everyone decided not to tell them about it.

  “Let’s start at his place of business,” Al Mackey said. “Might see some movie stars!”

  4

  The Baby Mogul

  It was nearly noon. The windy speech from Deputy Chief Francis had cost them time in addition to money. And then there were Captain Woofer’s theories as to what Nigel St. Claire was doing in a bowling alley parking lot when his car was found three miles away on the Sunset Strip. Al Mackey had taken semi-elaborate notes during the theorizing and the notes were now in his coat pocket. The notes said:

  1. Call Emmy about alimony payment. Ask for another ten days. Grovel if necessary.

  2. Call Emmy’s lawyer if Emmy says to fuck off.

  3. Tell Emmy’s lawyer that putting an ex-husband in jail for not paying spousal support never solved anything. Money, not vengeance, is the name of the game.

  4. Call Thelma (or Thelma’s lawyer) and tell her that it’s very hard paying spousal support to two women. Plead for understanding since Thelma always had more heart than that other bitch.

  5. Call Johnny and Petey when they get home from school and say that we’ll go to a Dodger game next weekend for sure. Tell them that they might mention to their mom that their ex-stepfather could take them more places if he wasn’t so broke all the time.

  6. When Emmy calls to scream about using her kids as an economic weapon, tell her that the crybaby baseball players and greedy team owners have forced the price of seats right through the roof. And has she tried buying hot dogs and peanuts at Dodger Stadium these days for two teenagers with appetites like timber wolves?

  Al Mackey momentarily put aside his alimony dilemma when he pulled up to the gate of the famous studio. While he flashed his badge and signed in with the gate guards, Martin Welborn studied the photographs in the case envelope. He instantly disagreed with the supposition of Schultz and Simon that Nigel St. Claire was shot first in the temple and then in the forehead.

  “Look at the caboose on that one, Marty,” Al Mackey said as they passed a harried extra in the mock-buckskin garb of an Indian squaw. She was scurrying toward a gigantic sound stage marked Stage 2, and Al Mackey was disappointed to see her turn left at the next street when he had to make a right turn to find the surprisingly modest three-story building that housed the Truly Successful moguls. Al Mackey had expected something like a Playboy Mansion-on-the-back-lot.

  “I think he was shot in the forehead first,” Martin Welborn said when Al Mackey stopped for a parade of extras dressed like Keystone cops.

  “Reinforcements,” Al Mackey observed, but Martin Welborn never glanced up.

  “Look at this, my lad,” Martin Welborn said. He could still find some electric current somewhere. It had been a long time since a police investigation had given Al Mackey a charge. It had been a long time since anything had given Al Mackey a charge.

  Martin Welborn held a morgue photo of Nigel St. Claire in front of Al Mackey’s sunken eyes. The corpse leered at him through broken dentures. The blood had not been scrubbed away, and filigreed his brow like scarlet lace. The eyes were open and staring. He died with a panic mask preserved.

  “I think he saw what was coming, Aloysius, my boy.”

  “I think I see what’s coming,” Al Mackey said, watching a six-foot redhead in French designer jeans and a green tube top sashay toward a door that said Casting. Maybe he could get a job as a studio cop when he retired? Maybe he should put in an application. Just then another auburn beauty moved like a cheetah in front of the car, smiled at the cadaverous detective, and strolled toward the same doorway. Maybe he should put in his application for studio cop today. Who cared what they paid!

  The inside of the building was a little less disappointing than the outside. At least there were movie posters all over the walls—some old, baroque and elaborate—some vivid, eye-catching and new. Posters from the famous films the studio had distributed for three generations. Some bore likenesses of dead movie stars Al Mackey had nearly forgotten. Some showed cinema stars of the present. But other than that, it wasn’t much different from corporate offices belonging to the huge parent conglomerate. This studio was merely one of the spider’s legs, though its most glamorous leg to be sure.

  Another studio guard directed them to the third floor (there wasn’t even an elevator. What’s this shit? Even police stations have elevators!) where they found the seat of power, the offices of the late Nigel St. Claire, bachelor and bon vivant, president of the film division. His name had been removed from the office directory in the glass case by the stairway. He would be off the stationery by the end of the week. His name had been painted out of the parking lot twenty-six hours after his gutted corpse had been posted by the morgue pathologist and released to a mortuary. (Parking, not pussy, is at a premium around these parts, they said.)

  Nigel St. Claire’s funeral had been top drawer. His eulogy was written by an Oscar-winning screenwriter. It was delivered by an Oscar-winning actress in a brilliant move to counter complaints that Nigel St. Claire’s studio seldom made women’s movies. The funeral entourage was choreographed by an Oscar-winning director.

  In addition to filmdom’s most famous funeral-goers, the choreographer was resourceful enough to employ three SAG “weepers,” two female, one male, the kind who could turn on the waterworks the second anyone yelled “action.”

  Famous mourners had come from all over the world. Nigel St. Claire was greatly loved and had been at the fore of all the humanitarian causes in the film community. He had personally organized and promoted the highly publicized Beverly Hills Banquet to Protest World Hunger, at $2,000 a plate. The black caviar was delivered to the party in a wheelbarrow by two ermine-clad starlets. The Soviet consul sent a laudatory telegram saying that such a caviar purchase went a long way toward patching things up after all those hard hats smashed the cases of vodka during the Afghan incident.

  Nigel St. Claire was likewise the prime mover of the Fund to Preserve Artistic Freedom, not to mention the numerous Save the Dolphins parties. Once he held two parties simultaneously at his three-acre Bel-Air estate, during which Jacques Cousteau specials and famous films that promoted First Amendment guarantees were shown together. It was lots of fun tooting coke and watching Jacques Cousteau pointing toward something on camera left, causing the audience to turn to the next screen where he seemed to be looking at Linda Lovelace with her nasal drip, beating her tonsils on an eight-inch salami in the most famous and commercially successful of the Preserve Artistic Freedom movies championed by Nigel St. Claire.

  So his credentials were impeccable. They talked of his accomplishments in hushed tones from Malibu Colony to St. Moritz, when they downed Quaaludes and Perrier by candlelight. It was beyond comprehension that anyone would want to kill such a decent human being. Was he not a man of compassion? He was the first publicly to espouse amnesty for the other Truly Successful studio boss who had been charged by a disgruntled soreh ead with embezzling studio funds. All the district attorney’s office could prove was that he’d stolen less than $100,000. Yet he had been fired from his job! People in The Business were shocked. Furious. Ads were taken in the trade papers to vent their anger. It was absolutely outrageous that the law was persecuting a guy like this for a lousy hundred G’s! This is a man who could get into The Bistro without a reservation.

  Hollywood threw parties in the former mogul’s honor. He intensified his sessions with his therapist, who promised the judge that the patient would be cured of his annoying habit within a few months. Pretty soon all Six Famous Restaurants were giving him tables without a reservation. French and Italian maître d’s started fighting over him, calling each other frogs and wops. Everyone wanted him. They didn’t give a shit if he stole the goddamn silverware! He was more famous than Clint Eastwood. He was more belove
d than the Thief of Baghdad.

  He was promoted to president of worldwide productions in a bigger studio than the one that fired him. It was a Hollywood fable come true. The stuff movies are made of. The film colony got misty in his presence. He was kissed by men and women with compassion in their eyes.

  In a sense, Nigel St. Claire made it all happen the day the errant mogul was rudely jerked out of his Rolls-Royce on Sunset Boulevard by none other than Buckmore Phipps, the street monster, who heard from a girlfriend at the D.A.’s office that a felony warrant had been issued for this famous personage, and the cop that arrested him might get on television. After bail was arranged that very night, it was Nigel St. Claire who put together a quick coming-out party for the fallen colleague and started the crusade to save him from doing time in the slammer.

  Nigel St. Claire had personally given the chairman of the board the solution for keeping pinkies out of the cookie jar. It was a workable plan, the chairman agreed, although he privately admitted to Nigel he’d love to set fire to the little bastard and let him drown in deep water. Which is what would happen, since both the chairman and Nigel St. Claire knew that, along with no integrity, he lacked brains, talent, loyalty, industry, and in fact had better clean up his act or his senile grandfather (the chairman’s father) would disinherit the little shmuck and he could go on welfare like a nigger.

  It was a thorny problem, everyone knew, what with the L.A. Times running malicious articles practically every Sunday about how studios that grossed hundreds of millions in film rentals had never shown a nickel’s profit. (So what if the studio accountants ordered red ink in ten-gallon drums?) And now the chairman’s putz of a son had to get himself nailed like some wetback stealing hubcaps!

  And wasn’t it Nigel St. Claire, the Henry Kissinger of The Business, who devised that workable plan for the chairman? There was only one thing to do with the thieving little fuck: place him so high up in the studio he couldn’t use those sticky mitts. He’d have to go through too many other pirates and freebooters to do much embezzling, and a lot of those old dudes were too tough to let him slash away at their boodle. It was a brilliant plan, actually.