The Glitter Dome

by Joseph Wambaugh

  “Did he live there?” Martin Welborn asked.

  “I don’t think he did. Once he had to go to the bathroom and he opened the hall closet by mistake.”

  “Very good, Peggy,” Martin Welborn said. “What did you and Mister Silver talk about?”

  “About me playing a part in this movie they were making in Mexico. A small part, but Lloyd said they’d pay me a thousand a day for three days’ work. Said they’d drive me down and bring me back.”

  “Drive you down?” Al Mackey said. “It wasn’t far enough to fly?”

  “I got the impression it wasn’t far from the border.”

  “Was anyone else at the house in Trousdale?”

  “Just Lloyd. He was assistant producer or something.”

  “Was it a porn flick?” Al Mackey asked.

  “I guessed it probably was,” she said. “I didn’t ask. But I wondered why they wanted to shoot the movie in Mexico. Unless it was kiddy porn.” Then she added, “I ain’t in favor a kiddy porn, you understand. Makes me wanna barf. Some a those little girls and boys, eight, nine years old. I had some tricks once, had to see that stuff before I could make them come off. I almost grossed out. I never take a trick a second time if he makes me watch kiddy porn. They take those little kids and drug them out and make them do …”

  “Yes?”

  “Everything they make me do,” she said quietly. “Everything. And they’re babies.”

  “Yes,” Martin Welborn said. “But you were going to do the movie?”

  “I thought maybe it wasn’t real kiddy porn, you know? Maybe just a bunch a teenage actors. Maybe fourteen, fifteen years old. I don’t call that kiddy porn. You’re fourteen, you’re old enough to do what you want.”

  She looked fourteen, Martin Welborn thought. Although they knew from Flameout Farrell that she was telling the truth when she said she would legally be an adult on the first of the month. Her skin had the translucence of antique china. She was very frail and had the huge cautious eyes of an antelope. She was so delicate she probably wouldn’t be able to order a drink unchallenged until she was thirty years old. She was not pretty in any ordinary way. But she was most peculiarly exquisite.

  “You must have asked Mister Silver how you were selected, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. He said he didn’t know. Then Lloyd said one a my massage customers told him I was special. He didn’t say who the customer was. I didn’t ask. I musta massaged a thousand guys. He said several other girls and guys were being interviewed. In fact, Lloyd looked at his watch after we were there awhile and said he better take me back, pick up the next girl for Mister Silver to see.”

  “Then what happened?” Al Mackey asked.

  “Nothing. Lloyd took me back.”

  “To Sunset and La Brea?”

  “Yeah. I don’t want nobody to know where I live.”

  And then the detectives exchanged glances. It was time to turn the screw a bit. They had to keep in touch with Peggy Farrell, the only lead they had.

  “You know, Peggy, you are technically a juvenile until your eighteenth birthday.”

  “So?”

  “So we have to release you to a parent.”

  “You can’t call my dad!” she said.

  “We have to release you to a responsible adult.”

  “I don’t know no responsible adults!” Peggy Farrell cried, revealing the story of her life in six words.

  “I suppose we could release her to the woman she lives with, couldn’t we, partner?” Al Mackey said to Martin Welborn.

  “Perhaps.”

  “I don’t wanna embarrass Lorna!” Peggy Farrell said. “She’s the only person cares about me. The only person I care about.”

  “Well, we’re not permitted to release a juvenile except to a parent or an acceptable adult. I think we could drive you home and maybe leave you with Lorna. That, or your father.”

  “Will you have to tell Lorna about, you know, that guy in the pickup? I promised her I’d quit turning tricks.”

  “No, we’ll just tell her you were …”

  “Tell her I got caught with some grass in my purse!”

  “That’s what we’ll tell her,” Martin Welborn said. “What does she do for a living?”

  “She’s in the movie business.”

  Al Mackey gave Martin Welborn another glance and said, “In what capacity?”

  “She’s a script supervisor. Worked on millions a movies. They’re the people sit there when they’re shooting and tell the director which way someone should look. Like camera left, camera right. What color tie the actor had on when they shot the beginning of a scene yesterday. Feed the actors their lines, stuff like that. She took me to see them shooting on a sound stage once. It was terrific.”

  “And what studio does she work for?” Martin Welborn asked.

  “They work at all the studios, not for any particular one, those script people.”

  “What did she think of your movie offer?” Martin Welborn asked.

  “She got real mad. Asked me as many questions as you guys. Real mad. Said it was kiddy porn for sure. And I’m stupid. And pretty soon I was crying and … we made up.”

  “Did you promise her you wouldn’t do it?” Al Mackey asked.

  “That’s why I didn’t contact them again like I was supposed to,” Peggy Farrell said. “I figured I had the job if I wanted it. But I promised Lorna. She told me Sapphire Productions was probably some fly-by-night production company into kiddy porn on the side.”

  “Could you find the Trousdale house again?”

  “It was night. All those winding streets up there? All those white houses that look just the same? No way.”

  “And exactly how did you contact Lloyd?”

  “I called that number of the studio and asked for Sapphire Productions. Some guy answered and I told him Lloyd gave me the number and for Lloyd to call me back or meet me.”

  “Would you know Mister Silver if you saw him again?”

  “Maybe. He had bushy black hair and a big beard and glasses that might all have been phony.”

  Al Mackey removed a picture of Nigel St. Claire from the case envelope in his plastic briefcase. It was a corporate portrait taken just six months before his death. He wore a somber dark suit and tie and was seated on the corner of his desk with a bevy of gleaming Oscars behind him. He looked to Al Mackey like all the glamour in the world. When Al Mackey looked at that man he invariably thought of the Riviera, private jets, limousines, French maids who looked like Bardot used to look.

  And violent death. They had other pictures of Nigel St. Claire. Peggy Farrell studied the picture for a moment, started to shake her head, but picked it up again.

  “It is Mister Silver?” Al Mackey exclaimed.

  “No,” she said.

  “Damn.”

  “But I know this man.”

  And then there was anxious pacing outside the interrogation room while Peggy Farrell was given a bottle of soda pop, and five minutes alone to study the picture of Nigel St. Claire to try to remember which “massage” it was. Because where else would she meet a man who looked as important as this one? The Weasel and Ferret, even Schultz and Simon, had decided to hang around.

  Finally the door opened and Peggy Farrell timidly emerged, holding the empty pop bottle.

  “Well?” Al Mackey said.

  “I gave him a massage. It was an outcall. He tipped me thirty dollars.”

  “Where?” Al Mackey asked. “When?”

  “A couple months ago. The Magic Carpet Motel. They don’t ask no questions there. Don’t even make you register. I don’t think they could help you find him, if you’re looking.”

  “How do you remember him, Peggy?” Martin Welborn asked. “The thirty-dollar tip?”

  “No, not the money,” she said, looking at the picture. “He said such pretty things to me. He said I had the most beautiful skin he ever saw in his whole life. He said he slept with some a the most beautiful women in the world, but he neve
r saw skin like mine. He said I was something really special. …” The girl stopped and looked at the six policemen staring at her. “A course all tricks bullshit you and all, but …”

  “Well, we might as well split,” the Weasel said to the Ferret, as Schultz and Simon also decided to call it a day.

  “We’ll take you home to Lorna now,” Martin Welborn said.

  “You won’t tell her about the trick?”

  “No.”

  As they were heading for the door, the Ferret came back and said, “This guy in the black Bentley, he ever with a partner? A Vietnamese guy?”

  “No. He was alone when I was in the Bentley.”

  “He ever mention a Thai restaurant?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Thai. You know, Thailand? A restaurant near Melrose and Western?”

  “No.”

  “Shit!” the Ferret muttered.

  “He could speak Chinese though. He might go to those restaurants.”

  “How do you know?” Martin Welborn asked.

  “Cause he said a few words to the houseboy that brought us the drinks up in Trousdale that night.”

  “What houseboy?” Al Mackey cried. “You said only Lloyd and Mister Silver were there.”

  “I don’t count a houseboy,” Peggy Farrell said.

  “How do you know it was Chinese he talked?” the Ferret demanded.

  “I don’t know. Mighta been Japanese. Whatever.”

  “What did he look like?” the Ferret yelled.

  “I don’t know! Stringy Oriental guy, is all. I remember one thing. He smiled when he brought me a martini and he had a mean smile.”

  And then Peggy Farrell really got scared because the bearded cop with the bandaged hand was jumping around and running toward another table and tearing open drawers and muttering.

  And Martin Welborn was saying, “Ferret! Easy, boy. Easy, lad.”

  Then the narc came running back with his ponytail flying and shoved a police mug shot in front of Peggy Farrell and said: “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Is this Lloyd?”

  “Easy, Ferret,” Martin Welborn said with more authority in his voice. “Let us handle this, son.”

  And the Ferret sat down but drilled holes through Peggy Farrell, who was so astonished she started shaking again. She looked at the mug shot. Police mug shots were scary-looking. The seconds passed. Six detectives were so still the hum of the wall clock sounded like a car engine.

  Peggy Farrell held her hand over the hairline. “Do you have any more pictures of him?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” the Ferret cried.

  “I mean, can I draw on this one?”

  “Draw on it? Sure!” the Ferret exclaimed, and the Weasel put his hand on his partner’s shoulder to keep him in orbit. Draw on it! Fold it! Spindle it! Eat it!

  Peggy Farrell picked up a felt marker from the table and drew a crude moustache and glasses and hat on Just Plain Bill Bozwell. When she was finished she looked at the picture again, nodded, and said, “It’s really scary when you see someone you know in one a these police pictures.”

  Lorna Dillon had a two-bedroom bungalow in Benedict Canyon, bought years before the real estate boom. She had a garden, two oak trees, an avocado tree, an orange tree and two olive trees. Her home, her garden, her life, were in perfect order. Except for the past six months, after she met Peggy Farrell while having lunch in a sidewalk cafe on the Strip.

  She didn’t seem particularly surprised to find two detectives with Peggy at her door. She said she’d been expecting it one of these days, and didn’t seem to believe their story that Peggy had been picked up by some patrol officers because of a jaywalking offense and was discovered to have marijuana in her purse.

  “I’ll talk to the officers privately,” she said to Peggy Farrell. “Go to bed.”

  And the girl immediately obeyed the mother she’d never had.

  Martin Welborn had no doubt that Peggy Farrell would usually obey this imposing woman. But Lorna Dillon sometimes had to be on location and was gone for days at a time, and it must be then that Peggy Farrell got sick and tired of the neat little home and neat little garden and the peace and tranquility of the canyon and returned to the old haunts on the Strip, and the chance for not-so-easy money.

  Lorna Dillon was not butch, but her voice was deep and her arms and legs were nearly twice the size of Al Mackey’s. She wore tennis shorts and a T-shirt and was obviously a jock. Al Mackey later said she looked like a younger Magnani: all woman, but by no means weaker than anybody.

  “Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

  “No thanks,” Martin Welborn said.

  “What happened? She get caught hustling johns?”

  Martin Welborn nodded. “I don’t think it was all her fault.”

  “It never is,” Lorna Dillon said. “She could live a decent life here.”

  Martin Welborn said, “Ms. Dillon, could you tell us how much you know about this offer Peggy got to make the film?”

  “Not much,” she shrugged. “Did she tell you about the men up in Trousdale?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s obviously kiddy porn, wouldn’t you think?”

  “But she’s not a kiddy in that sense,” Al Mackey said.

  “Oh, I don’t know. How much kiddy porn have you seen, Sergeant?”

  “None,” Al Mackey admitted.

  “How about you, Sergeant Welborn?”

  “None.”

  “Well, I’m in the movie business, so I’ve seen lots of things in the past twenty-five years. They could take a kid like Peggy and make her look twelve, thirteen. But I suspect they’d spice up their little film with some real toddlers, ten years old and younger. Pedophiles have a saying: ‘Eight is too late.’ ”

  “What makes you think that this is what they were up to?”

  “They went to some trouble to interview Peggy. They offered her three thousand dollars for three days. And they’re going to Mexico? This makes it a big production as far as garbage goes. They could shoot their stuff a lot cheaper right here in Los Angeles with a cast of young adult porn actors if it was legal porn. They have to be going for the real toddler stuff. Or …”

  “Or what?”

  “Animals. The only thing that’s illegal in porn is to use minors under eighteen, or animals. It could have been an animal show in Mexico. Dogs, donkeys, that sort of thing. Have you ever seen a young girl screwing a German shepherd? Or how about a six-year-old child, sedated, but still suffering enough pain to jerk her head back in agony when she’s penetrated by a full-grown man?”

  “No, I can’t say that I’ve seen any of that,” Martin Welborn said.

  “We don’t work vice,” Al Mackey said. “Just nice clean homicides. Usually.”

  “Homicide? Then what’re you doing with Peggy? I thought you were vice cops.”

  “We’re working on the Nigel St. Claire murder case,” Martin Welborn said. “She had the telephone number of St. Claire’s studio. Some other people did too. We’re just grasping at straws.”

  “Sapphire Productions.” Lorna Dillon nodded. “Sounds like one of those here-today, gone-forever little companies that move on and off the lots. I made her promise to forget that job.”

  “Yes, she told us.”

  “Did she tell you that she and I are …”

  “Yes,” Martin Welborn said.

  “Is there anything else you need to know?”

  Al Mackey said, “Being in the business, would you be able to guess who they might be? The man Lloyd in the black Bentley? The man who called himself Mister Silver in Trousdale?”

  “The filthy vermin who make those kinds of films? We’re not in the same business at all. I’m afraid I wouldn’t know, gentlemen. Is that all?”

  When she stood up she was nearly as tall as the detectives and shook hands with a tennis grip. Al Mackey figured she could give a massage with those hands.

  The detectives drove to Nigel St.
Claire’s studio and ended the day at Sapphire Productions. Which boasted no sapphire and no productions.

  “I’m between shows,” they were told by Ellis Goodman, who was Sapphire Productions. He didn’t even have a secretary. He had a desk, a chair, a sofa, a coffee table. Lots of copies of Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter were lying around. He had a telephone with no extension, and that was it, except for a beat-up refrigerator he had bought for thirty bucks from a movie company next door which had just gone out of business.

  He was nearly seventy years of age but had frenetic darting eyes which made him seem younger. His hair was dyed black but the roots were showing. If tiny actors didn’t buy their wardrobes from production companies, Ellis Goodman did. There just weren’t as many tiny actors these days, so his maroon blazer hung on him like a cloak. Alterations didn’t come with the wardrobe. And he was “between shows.”

  “Look, I don’t really know this guy Lloyd!” he said. “Sure he gets people to call here, sure! But I don’t really know him! What did he do, anyway?”

  “Nothing illegal that we know of,” Martin Welborn said. “We’d just like to talk to him.”

  He sat down behind the desk and said, “You wanna drink? I don’t know whether cops drink on duty in real life or not? I don’t know nothing outside a the movies. Been in the business forty-eight years.”

  “We drink outside the movies,” Al Mackey said.

  He hardly had the words out before Ellis Goodman ran to the trashed and paint-sprayed refrigerator that had obviously been used on a movie set for “atmosphere.” Inside the refrigerator was half a bottle of orange juice, two bottles of Perrier, one lemon, two cans of beer, and a box of animal crackers.

  “What’ll ya have? Beer?” Ellis Goodman asked hopefully, holding up the two cans.

  While the detectives drank their beer, Ellis Goodman nervously said, “Whatever Lloyd did, I don’t know nothing about it. I only know movies. I been a production manager, assistant producer, associate producer, producer, and executive producer on seventy-three movies in my time. Seventy-three! That Lloyd was bad news. I never shoulda let him talk me into helping him out. What’d he do?”

  “How did you help him out?” Al Mackey asked.