CHAPTER XVIII
Boom! Boom!
--
Some guy was standing alone down toward the other end of the veranda, but I didn't care . . .

"There will come a day,
Youth will pass away,
Then what will they say
about me?
When the . . ."

Bright Eyes bumped into me when I stopped where this guy had stepped into our path, and just as I was hitting my stride with . . .

"When the end comes, I know,
They'll say . . ."

Squinting against the light, all I could make out was the silhouette of a face and a fedora . . .

". . . just a gigolo,
as life . . .
goes on . . .
. . . without me."

The hand that had taken my shoulder was pressing me to turn toward Sarah and Clara's house and the lilacs, under the moon and the tall avocado trees. I tried to shake loose, reaching to take hold of that wrist when I heard, "You ain't goin' nowhere Bing Crosby, till ya sing the whole thing!"

"Till I . . . huh?"

"Get down!" he said, "I dig that song. C'mon now!" He had snaked his arm all the way round my shoulders, and through a strong perfume of booze, he breathed, "Ain't this the part where they change it to the 'I . . . ain't got nobody. And nobody cares for me. Cuz, I . . .'" His fingers near my jaw had started snapping to the beat. "C'mon!"

"I . . . . . am so sad and lonely," I groused.

"So lonely!" he roared, releasing his hold to raise that arm high toward Bix and Bessie, Billie and Glenn on up in the seventh heaven of all those swinging stars; he took off his hat and bowed. "So won't somebody . . . take a chance with me?" Stumbling a little, he tap-danced a few steps to balance the drink he held. "Dig me, Baby!" He put on his hat. "I am so sad and lonesome. So why don't you come in and have a drink on me?" I looked around for Brooke and didn't see her, till a chance glance through an open doorway there showed she was gone inside what must have been this guy's roost. Stepping closer I saw how every wall of this little efficiency apartment was festooned with movie posters, both recent and vintage, and Bright Eyes, like a good detective was right at the job of presenting our card to a nice-looking forty-ish sort of svelte, blondish gal in a red dress sitting with her knitting on a flowered sofa--she didn't take the card, just looked at it with a pleasant smile while purling one, knitting one. Some reckless impulse was prompting me to suppose that except it should cause the pretty lady to drop a stitch, it really couldn't hurt, so I let the guy usher me in. He gestured toward the couch and said, "That's my Sweet Mama."

She nodded and said, "Pleased, I'm sure."

"And that's my baby!" He was showing me a Smith-Corona portable enshrined on a desk that looked like it had been stricken by the Rocky Mountain spotted fever, with splotches of white-out all over the typewriter and the fake maple veneer that held it; he even had some on his fingers and thumbs as he extended a hand to shake. "Mackie's the name," he said. "I write movies." I was just about to say 'how very nice', when he said, "Say! Was that J. Hubert's pad you just came out of up there?"

"Right."

"Well . . . you a friend of his?"

"Friends of friends of his," said Bright Eyes from over where she stood admiring a poster for *Now Voyager* near the archway to the kitchenette, straight across from the entry.

"Funny thing about that guy is . . ." he took a drink of his whisky, "he never let's you see what he's writing. Keeps it all to himself. Worse than that, he won't even take so much as a peek at what you got. A real miser in my book."

"I like your decor," I said.

"It's all from the centerfold of Daily Variety," he was walking toward the kitchen. "Whisky and Seven okay?"

"No!" said Brooke. "He's had enough. Please just bring one for me, and I'll let him have a sip or two from mine, if he's good."

Motioning to me, Mackie said, "Hey man, what's your name? C'mon in here with me, and I'll show you something."

"That's Johnny," said Brooke, then flashing me the look. "Watch yourself," she added, as I passed by into the kitchenette.

"This place is crazy, I'm telling ya!" He slammed the refrigerator shut and set a quart of 7-Up on the counter. "Right there!" He was pointing at the wall toward Beverly Hills. "This broad living next door is making me nuts. All day and all night with the boom-boom-boom from the Disco music on the stereo." Now at the sink, he cracked the lever on an ice-cube tray. "I'm trying to write movies here--but how can a person concentrate with the boom-boom alla time through the walls?" He side-stepped to the counter and pulled a quart of Seagram's closer; spun off the cap. "Here!" He handed me the quart, and when I took it, he shoved the Seven across. "There's your chaser. Hurry up, before we're busted!" I took a snort and handed it back. He'd taken a tumbler down from the cupboard, to drop in some cubes, poured it fully a third of the way up. When he'd topped it off with the Seven, he set that down and crooked his finger. "C'mere and get a load of this." He'd gone around me to the other side of the sink and was pointing out the window. See that apartment right there?

"Straight across?"

"Next door." He was waving toward Palm Springs and Rio de Janeiro. "The broad who lives in there, it's all day and all night with the Big Band music from West Covina?"

"All right!" I said.

"Here!" He was handing me the whisky again. "Okay, it's great music, beats hell out of the Disco, I love it, but why does she have to play it at number ten with her door wide open while I'm in here trying to write a movie? I mean, if you can't keep it to yourself, all you're doing is showing off for somebody else to make 'em think you're hip. Know what I mean?" He handed me the Seven. "Here." I took it. "Last week, one night I completely blew it and threw a cocktail glass all the way from here, so it would smash on her steps--but it went right through that goddam plate glass window, instead. Ended up costing me seventy bucks!" I put down the Seven, and he handed me the whisky. He was pointing at the door straight across. "And that guy! I mean, look: my wife stands right here to do her cooking, peeling the carrots and stuff, okay?"

"If it's okay with her, it's okay with me."

"What are you, some kind of women's libber?" He flopped a flipper at me. "Never mind, 'cause I gotta tellya. This pervert over here, what he does, he comes out to his balcony right there in nothing but his little pink panties and a pair of pink flip-flops. Right there! He comes outside in front of God and everybody, I tellya, parading around like that. So one time, I yell across at him, 'Hey Maurice! Why don't you put your goddam pants on? Or go on up there to Universal and . . ."

"His name is Maurice?"

"Right, and . . ."

"He looks like that heavy in the Man Who Knew Too Much?"

"Whoa! You must be clairvoyant, man. Yeah. The spitting image!"

"Like, Reginald Nalder."

"Too much!"

It was. In this small world, so I said, "Go on." I gave him back the whisky.

"Yeah! So, I says, 'Hey Maurice! You look great in those pink panties. Maybe Rosalind Russell needs a stand-in for Picnic II.' So what do you suppose? He says, 'Thank you, Sweetie, but why don't you try minding your own business?' Can you imagine?" He shoved the whisky over. "Here!"

"Thanks. I'm good."

He up-ended it, swallowed three times and then he wiped his mouth. "Okay, but just tell me this." He set the whisky down. "How can a guy come out on his balcony in front of the whole world in his pink panties and say something like, 'Mind your own business!' Would you kindly explain that to me?"

Although this guy's troubles made those Satanist Sabbaoth meetings going on up on the second floor at DeMille Manor look like a Sunday School picnic, there was little consolation I could afford the guy. "Look!" He was pointing at a window, and when I saw what he saw, I ducked.

"Whatsa matter?"

"Well! I'm not a peeping tom, guy."

"But did you see Maurice in his pink panties?" He moved closer. "Look! There he is again." It was him all right. Our Maurice.


CHAPTER XIX
Five Deuces
--
Over a course of the next few days, Brooke spent most of her mornings and half the afternoon nosing around downtown at the D.A.'s office to get hold of whatever had been declassified and filed as public record on the subject of Maurice and his connection with the Black Dahlia. Also, in order to get some idea of what to request from the D.A.'s files, she was searching library archives of the two most prestigious L. A. scandal sheets of the day, the Herald Express and the Daily News. As one thing led to another, she was getting quite a little notebook full of dates, places, people and it wasn't long before a vague picture of this pretty, but strangely wayward 22 year old girl began to take shape. From lurid clippings of newsprint, and grisly scraps of typewritten text not entirely blacked out by the censor's slash; this was the body of evidence, a remains of what demanded to be put back together after so fiendishly being detached between the second and third lumbar vertebrae.

It had come to about half an hour before the time we'd usually leave and lock the office, that Wednesday, right around 5:00, and I was going over some Xerox copies I'd made from Brooke's notes; comparing this with that and then writing down such things as would occur to me to discuss with her; an observation, a question that could lead to another avenue of investigation. When I heard footsteps approaching in the corridor, I was glad to think it must be Brooke till I saw a height of shadow looming in the translucent glass of the door making that joy moot. Must've been a good six foot three or four of this guy walking in; he carried his head tilted toward the side, same as that game right leg of his was on.

After closing the door, he paused to ask, "You Johnny Whachamacallit, the private dick?" Something about the look in his eye was prompting me to deny it, claim I was Irving Whachamacallit, an agent for Groucho Marx, but too-honest-for-my-own-good sort that I can be, I said, "Yeah, that's me." I didn't stand or offer a hand, and not only because his looked like it had been places I didn't want mine to go, but because the look of the man was intimidating enough to pretty much keep me immobile, right there where I sat.

"Mind if I sit down for a minute?" His hand was already on the chair, pulling it into position. He was in the chair by the time I said, "Be my guest." He had no hat, his shirt was strictly from the designer rack at the Salvation Army, the trousers were unpressed, the brown socks were baggy, and the shine on the shoes had likely worn off long about the day after Pearl Harbour.

Over his knee he held an ankle as he twisted the foot at the end of it. "I guess you know a queer by the name of Maurice?" That smile! Something from the face of just one actor, from more than just one movie is what it reminded me of, but I just couldn't put my . . .

"I asked you if you know . . .

"Yeah, I heard you." The pencil I held in my hand was giving my nervousness away so I tossed it on the blotter. There were professional ethics at issue with the answer to a question like that. "Maurice?" I asked.

"I think you heard me right."

I shrugged. "What 'Maurice'? And who are you to be asking, may I ask?"

The old cliché, 'if looks could kill' would be too quick and cheap a description, so put it like this: if looks could skewer you on a spit and slowly turn you to a third degree burn, this guy sitting in front of me was surely showing you how to do it. He took his ankle down from his knee saying, "You know what Maurice, so don't play games with me."

"Well...." I lit my cigarette, snapped the lighter shut. "If I knew who you were, then maybe by that I'd know what Maurice you're talking about, but as it stands, I just don't." That smoldering stare, that tight half-smile--slowly I was starting to see it, turning from the face of Barbara Stanwick to that of William Bendix right out of Clash by Night and from the eyes of Master at Arms 'Claggart', Melville's personification of evil in Billy Budd, and from the mouth of 'Earle Slater' to the back of Belafonte in Odds Against Tomorrow, and this is not even to mention what Montgomery Clift as 'Miss Lonelyhearts' had to look at in the face of that sadistic editor of his from . . .

"Jack's the name," said the man, running a hand forward over that close-cropped hair to where it came to a peak over his forehead. "Jack Smith."

"Jack Smith," I said. "Well, well! Lucky thing it isn't 'John', or I might have been suspicious."

"Nah," he said. "There's lots of guys by that name." He observed my shrug. "But in case you don't like it, sometimes I go by Arnold Smith, and then sometimes by Jack Arnold. That's two Jacks and one Arnold in exchange for just one Maurice, so . ." he reached for my pack of Luckies and shook one out, "Mind if I have one of your cigarettes?"

It was already jumping on his lip when I grabbed the pack and dragged it back to my side of the desk. "Look!" I said. "Even if I did know somebody by the name of Maurice, in my business, I'm a dead duck if I start giving out information like that to just any 'Jack Smith' who walks in; so maybe you better make it real clear what your business is here, because . . ." I pointed to the clock. "It's about come time for me to be closing up for the day." He was sitting there chuckling to himself, and taking more time at it than the state of my nerves could rightly handle. "Well, what then?" I demanded.

"You're one of them real private type dicks, I guess, huh?" When the answer he waited for wasn't forthcoming he said, "The thing is, I might have some information about that no good degenerated Tinkerbelle, you just might want to hear."

That brought me up short, right out of my chair. I butted out my smoke, I said, "In exchange for which, you would want…."

He showed me the grimy palm of his hand. "A little bit o' that good ol' grease, a little bit o' scratch, if you know what I mean." He watched me walking over to the coffee stand.

"You want it black?"

"No!" his voice echoed. "I don't want it at all. Whisky is what I want, soon as you start buying it." He stood up, he limped across toward me with his hand held down to his thigh, palm up. "You put fifty bucks in that, and then you meet me downtown on Olive Street tomorrow night, six o'clock at the Five Deuces with the other fifty, and I start talking to you about Maurice . . . and . . . her."

That made me dizzy. I took a breath; I finished pouring my own cup, black. "Her. Who's 'her'?"

He came closer. "You know who I mean, who got cut in half, just like she had comin'?" The smile. "Her!" he said and the look in his eye was verging on the ecstatic. I walked away from it, and that hand which had come just a little too close to my zipper for comfort.

I put my coffee down on the desk, and reached into my suitcoat. "All right," I said, "but I don't like those dirty downtown dives." I removed some money, put my wallet back home. "Here's a hundred bucks, right now." I stood on the spot. "Use fifty for a new shirt, a pair of pants and a shoe-shine, and then we can meet right down the street here at the Brown Derby." He had already snapped the money from my hand, to turn toward the door.

"Six o'clock," he said. "And have another fifty for me when you get there." He turned after opening the door. "Get me?"

"Just be there," I said, watching the door close behind him.



CHAPTER XX
Night of the Dragons
--
The look I was getting from Brooke was going pretty sour, as she sat chewing on the fish-stick I'd cooked for her, to go with the potato chips, the pickle, her coffee; everything prepared and served, as I am always more than happy to do on those evenings when research work downtown has kept her past our accustomed dinner hour.

"Something wrong with that?" I was pointing with my fish-stick at her fish-stick--and I should mention that it was very nice to be seated at our new dining set, in the kitchenette there by the window looking out under the palms, up the slope to the bungalow court next door.

She sighed. "That's not it, Johnny. I keep telling you it's not necessary for you to go to all this trouble. Goodness!" She showed me her watch. "It's only a quarter past seven. It's not like I was out digging ditches with Paul Muni in a striped suit all day, ya know."

"But I like being able to . . ."

"I know, I know." She touched me with a gentle look. "But they are fish-sticks, darling."

"Well, how's the pickle?"

"Look." She pointed her fish-stick out the window. "This, we should donate to Romeo and Juliet over there for their Saturday night barbecue--marinated in a little charcoal lighter, why . . ."

"Okay, I'm sorry. So next time . . ."

"That's not it!"

This set me aback. "Well, I can't imagine . . ."

"You do know what it is."

"Brooke, we've already gone over this, and my mind is made up."

"I want to go with!"

"No."

"But, we're partners. You can't . . ."

"Now look baby, use your pretty little head. Have you stopped to wonder how such a really major creep like that managed get on to us like this?"

After a sip of coffee, she set down her cup. "That thought had occurred to me, yes."

"And?"

"One idea is that Maurice might've set him on our trail, but then . . ."

"Yes?"

"From the sound of what you've just told me, his intentions seem completely out of joint with that."

I took the napkin off my lap and dropped it on the table. "Want to go for a ride?"

"Huh?"

"Forget the fish-sticks. Forget the pickle and the chips."

"Oh sure! And, 'Take back the hat/ Take back the pearls/ What made you think/ I was one o' them kind o' girls?'"

"Vivian Blaine, the strip-tease from *Guys & Dolls*."

"So sweet! But dahling, you were saying?"

"After we've seen Maurice, we'll go out and get something decent to eat."

"Maurice!"

"A matter of life and death?"

"But yes, of course."

After the thermal cups, paper plates, the plastic spoons, forks and knives had been disposed of, we were off across town. On Palm avenue just a half block down from Sunset boulevard, Maurice in his flip-flops stood, wearing his Japanese kimono, a hairnet, and a look on his face that could have melted a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses right down to their shoes--but still, since he could plainly see we had nothing to offer in exchange for his soul, he didn't hesitate overly long to invite us in.

He was pouring Sake when he asked, "How did you find me?"

"We're in the business of finding people, Maurice," said Brooke. "It's what we're good at."

"We wouldn't be bothering you, if it wasn't a matter of life and death," I added.

His eyes dropped on me with the kind of look that is usually reserved for third party presidential candidates or the kind of people who push shopping carts full of old newspapers, mumbling on about the Bilderbergers and the Tri-Lateral Commission--but then he set a black enameled dragon decorated tray before us on the coffee table, picked up one of the glasses for himself and said, "All right. This better be good."

I didn't start talking till he'd seated himself in the chair across from the two of us sitting there on his couch. "Got a visit from some guy today who sounds like he's really got it in for you, Maurice."

He set down his drink on a small round table to his left, also black enamel and dragon emblazoned, and he said, "There's usually a few of those out there." Then came that odd, secretive smile. "So, what's this one look like?"

"Tall," I said. "Over six feet, walks with a limp, looks like he sleeps in his clothes."

His eyes went narrow. He stood up, turned to the door and opened it a crack. He said, "You watch to see if anybody followed you over here?"

Brooke gave me a nudge, vigorously nodding her head for my answer. "Why, of course," I said. "In our business, we never go anywhere without making sure about that." I lit a cigarette. "Unless you want to count the time it was you who was out there sneaking around in the dark . . ."

"Well!" Bright eyes gave my thigh a quick punch. "Who'd o' thought you can't stop for a perfectly innocent cup of tea with a nice old Goldwyn Girl without . . ."

"Cut the rhubarb!" said Maurice. "Who'd he tell you he was?"

"Said his name was Smith, Jack Smith, when it wasn't Jack Arnold, or Arnold Smith."

His hands did battle, one with the other before the curtained folds of his robe. "I thought he was out of the picture! In stir, I mean. Up in Oregon." Maurice remained standing. "You sure you aren't tryin' to . . ."

"Johnny's got an appointment with him tomorrow night." She opened her purse. "And he says he's got some terrible things to tell us about you." She took out her notepad. "That's why we're here, Maurice, to give you first shot at giving it to us straight, the whole thing."

"That's right," said I. "Then we don't get headed off on some bum steer by some Jack the Creep who looks like his name should be 'Ripper' instead of Smith."

Maurice had already tossed off his drink on his way across the room to the bar and kitchenette on our left. He was pouring another, and spilling. "You need to keep out of this!" He turned to us. "The damned thing's been quiet for nearly twenty years. What's in it for you?"

I stood up. "For starters, you got some more of that?"

He slammed the bottle down on the counter. "There! Knock yourself out."

"The thing is," said Brooke, "we've gotten to be kind of fond of you, Maurice."

He looked at me. "Sure, you are, just like you said before, since you got that thousand smash of mine in your purse. It's like I'm your sugar daddy."

I finished pouring my drink. "Maybe, or it could be we just got some kind of sentimental affection for the under-dog."

"Or for the falsely accused?" offered Brooke, watching him come fast and breezy into the living room; his black kimono parting to render a quick flash of blue panties. "Woo-woo!" she said.

After a sour, almost prim look at her, he pulled the folds together, sat down and said, "In your dreams, baby."

Bright Eyes made a little smile. "Guess you're gay, huh, Maurice." She handed me her glass.

"It wouldn't take Charlie Chan to get that figured out," said he.

"Oh, don't worry!" she said. "That's just all the more you've got going in your favor."

"What can you be talking about?" His nose was in his glass, his mouth all distorted behind. "What did that bum tell you about me?"

I was pouring. "Said you were a fairy of the first flower and a pervert." I tried a long-shot. "And you always had the hots for him--because you thought he was big and mean and tough like Robert Ryan in *Bad Day at Black Rock*."

Silently, he laughed like it was killing him. I brought Bright Eyes her drink and sat down. Slowly the eyes of Maurice settled generally upon us. He reached for a pack of Newports on that table. "As you can see, I don't give a damn who knows about me. People around here see me for what I am." He lit his cigarette and blew out the match. "Jack's the kind that gets all twisted up inside by it, hides it and hates himself for it. He's the kind that never faces the facts about himself, so he's the last to know. He doesn't know!" He blew some smoke toward me. "Know what I'm talking about?"

"Not sure," I said.

"Don't be dumb! They're a dime a dozen, his kind; predatory types that kid themselves into thinking it's some kind of manly sport of forcing other men into submission."

"Okay," I said. "It's always the other guy who's queer, not him."

"Yeah, now you got the picture." He touched a scar on his face. "See this, what I got when I tried to tell him the truth about himself, about how much in love with me he was, how he couldn't get on without me." He shook his head, remembering things. "We got along all right at first, when we were doing business together."

"Business?" asked Brooke.

"Yeah, you know. He was my hawker."

I turned to her. "The dirty pictures business."

"He was my downtown man, mainly, doing all the strip-tease and B-girl joints. I gave him a good cut, too good. Bum could sit around drinking all night, hawking pictures under the table, and still have enough to buy himself a decent hat and suit of clothes, send his shirts to the laundry." He sighed. "I didn't need the money, I just liked the action, wining and dining the models, and I liked doing the photo work; all of it, from the set to the dark-room."

Brooke motioned about the room. "I don't see any cameras, no tripods . . ."

"You kidding? This is a different world. I was never some photographer with a commercial studio, I was a guy who took dirty pictures and sold them as snap-shots and enlargements, not as magazines. You don't understand how it was back then!"

"When it was illegal," I said.

"A felony--depending on how they wanted to book you. But . . ." he stood up with his empty glass. "There was some money in it, excitement, the thrill of corrupting the morals of pretty young boys and girls. You just have no idea what it's like when you get to be the Devil."



CHAPTER XXI
When Love was a Crime
--
"So, what do you say, Maurice?" I watched him sit down with his drink. "Want to tell us how the whole thing got started between the two of you?"

"No," he said, "I don't. It's got nothing to do with what I'm paying you for."

"Oh, but it does," said Brooke, "now that something with such a mean and dangerous look as Jack Smith's come and stepped into the picture."

I watched him blow some smoke, straight up to the ceiling, and I said, "Its just gone and put the whole thing on a brand new need to know basis, Maurice."

Brooke sat forward. "The way it looks to us, he's the sort of gent who'd do anything it takes to have something smooth and warm as a pint of cheap muscatel to cuddle up with at night--like putting the frame on you for the murder of Liz Sharp."

I gave him my nicest smile. "So the way it looks tonight, you got a lot more to worry about than just a few missing dirty pictures." I stood up. "Get our drift?" I waited and watched while he sat picking at the sleeve on that old gown.

"The way it turns out," said Brooke, "is right around the time she was seeing a lot of you, she was also being seen with at least two other men who fit your description."

He looked up. "How do you know anything about that?"

"It's a matter of public record." She tapped her notepad.

"Yeah? Well, sure! That was the whole stinking thing, the way they had me all crossed up with that hood from the McCadden Street mob, for one. Probably Mike Otero for the other."

Brooke's bright eyes went wide. "You knew Otero?"

"He was a voice coach, worked with the radio studios."

"Whoa!" said Brooke. "Did you set that up for her through your position at CBS?"

"That's right."

I took a few steps and stopped the other side of him. "So, who's this hood you're talking about?"

Brooke shot me a look and said, "Henry Hassau."

"Names, I don't remember." He brushed a bit of ash from the black satin at his breast.

After a few more steps, I stopped to reach for the blinds to have a look out the window. Brooke was saying, "Short, skinny, oily hair, often went around in a sort of neo-zoot, cardigan suit?"

Maurice blinked a couple of times. He turned to me. "What the hell is this? She knows more about the whole rotten thing than I hoped to forget after all these years."

I dropped the blind. "Is that the guy?"

"Sure it is!"

He looked a little startled to find me there just to his left, but he went right on. "The bum was always hanging around the Nightspot, Al Greenberg's joint, till the day he got pinched for that Mocambo job." He scratched the back of his neck. "Funny thing is, it happened right around the time that she turned up--like they found her down there."

"You want 'funny'?" Brooke showed us her notebook. "Try this for laughs: It was on the morning of January 14th when Hassau and Savarino were busted, and it was on that very night or the early hours of the 15th when Elizabeth Sharp had her mouth slashed open from ear to ear, just before somebody that you probably knew, Maurice, hauled off and pistol whipped her to death." She slammed her notebook to the coffee table. "Now just how hilarious is that?"

He was out of his chair and pointing at her. "Where do you get the nerve?" He clenched his hands into fists that shook beside his hips. As I approached he turned on me. "Get her out of here, before I . . ." I gave him a hard push that landed him back in his chair. "Before you sit down, and take a load off?" I asked. When he grabbed the arms of the chair, I doubled a fist and smacked my hand with it. That's when he crumpled. I took his glass to pour him another drink.

"It's just that it's gotten to be kind of a life or death situation for us too," said Brooke, taking the glass over to Maurice. She laid hold of his shaking hand and put his drink in it.

After a few moments, he set the drink down and looked at me, where I stood not far from where I'd been before, between him and the window at his left. "So you think they had her figured for a rat," said Maurice. "And that's why they . . ."

"Mutilated her like that?" asked Brooke, again from the couch.

"Yeah."

"Maybe," she said, "depending on what you can tell us, Maurice. Beside Hassau and his sidekick Savarino, nobody else got busted that morning, but there were more people involved in the robbery."

Maurice looked at me. "Jack Smith was one of 'em."

"You know that for a fact?" asked Brooke.

"Sure he was, because all I ever heard from him right after it went down was his moaning and groaning about how he'd been stiffed by Greenberg on it, didn't get paid his share. And it was the first time they'd let him in on anything."

"And here he thought this was his ticket into the Syndicate," I said.

"That's right. Big time gangster."

"Okay," said Brooke. "The Mocambo job was pulled on the 6th of January, at 10:30 in the morning. Liz Sharp was still in San Diego ever since the ninth of December, and it was on that very afternoon of the big stick-up, according to the women she was mooching off down there, when a car with two men and a woman pulled up out in front of their house, and she told them to shut up, keep down and pretend nobody was home."

"Well, that's . . ." I got no further.

"That same day, or early on the next, she put in a long distance call to Mark Hansen at the Florentine Gardens, and though the record's blank as to what the call was about, the question is why it was made at all, after a month of no contact, now she places this call on or about the day of the Mocambo job? Did she make it before or after the mystery visit--these are all things . . ."

"That wife of his had something going at the Florentine Gardens."

"Whose wife?" asked Brooke.

"The hood, the bum."

"The cardigan suit," I said.

"Yeah, and whether she was working the house stiffing guys for drinks or dancing--what it was, I don't know. But that's how the girl met that crumb, through his wife there--think her name was Alice ." He jerked around to flick an ash. "Same thing went for the big-shot who ran the joint."

"Hansen," I said.

"Yeah. She got friendly with his main squeeze of the time, an actress, very pretty dame. He snapped his fingers. "Name?"

"Anne Toth," said Brooke. She flashed me a glance. "The movie extra. The only thing you find on her in the production records was one screen appearance as a stand-in."

Like it was enough to rip the lips loose from his skin, Maurice made a smile. "That Chaplin movie."

"That's it," she said. "A talking picture released in '47, exactly the time we're talking about, here."

"Chaplin plays a woman killer," said Maurice, eyeing Brooke with a smirk so tight you could have drummed a paradiddle on it with a pair of chop-sticks.

It came to me. "Monsieur Verdoux!"

"That's the one," said Brooke. "But I've got a point to clear up here, which is that according to police records, Maurice, you're the one who helped her move her stuff on October 1st, from the Figueroa Hotel to Mark Hansen's place on Carlos?"

"To his dame stable up there behind the Gardens? Me? What kind of chump do you take me for anyway? I was paying her rent at the Hawthorne in Hollywood."

Brooke looked up from her notepad. "The hotel on North Orange Drive."

"Up by the Chinese theatre, just south of the Boulevard, there."

She nodded. "Right. So it was you, picking up her tab at that dump?"

"That's what I just told you. But it wasn't for any Hotel Figueroa. Who lives there? Don't be ridiculous! That's downtown, very posh. Who says she was staying there--while I was putting her up here in town?"

"According to the FBI report, she stayed there after she got picked up on a street corner by some G.I., name of Sid Zaid."

"Never heard of him!"

"She stayed there on or about the twentieth of September with him and her pal Margie." said Brooke, "Only they had to lose the little 16 year old street-walker . . ." she flipped a couple pages. "Lynda Marvin."

After a big sigh from Maurice, "There you see?"

"What?"

I stared. "Huh?"

He snapped his fingers. "No sooner was she out of your sight . . ." he enjoyed his scornful laugh made of nothing but breath. "I had that pretty little stinker paid up for the whole month there, and then . . . Yeah! I remember. That's why I didn't see her again till . . . must've been a couple of weeks. She'd moved out, hat-boxes, bags and who knew where she'd gone, till that afternoon she comes looking for me again at Brittenham's. 'Oh, Maurice!' she says, 'How grand to see you again--but I've got so much to tell you!' Next thing you know, she's sitting across from me, picking the fries off my plate just like old times, and going, 'I should have let you know, but my sister up in Berkeley suddenly took sick and . . .'" Maurice stared blankly toward his bar.

"Brittenham's, where you first met her." said Brooke. "And because you worked there at Columbia Circle, she knew just where to find you."

Ruefully sneering over that, he said, "Right down on Sunset and Vine."

Brooke was madly scribbling in her notes. "CBS, where you worked in the talent department," she said, then looked up. "You see, Maurice? That's exactly the kind of thing that has to be set straight."

I turned to Brooke. "Then it must have been Hassau they saw driving up with her, the day she moved in with Hansen and his Garden Girls."

Brooke turned back through the pages. "Wait." She flipped another. "Okay 1946. August 28th, she moves into the Hawthorne, the hotel where her pal Margie Green and the little hooker were staying, where they take her in exactly the day after she gives the breeze to her fly-boy from Long Beach . . ."

"Or vice-versa," said I, "depending which way the breeze was blowing."

"All right," she said, "but the two of them had only been up here in town for a week from Long Beach." She waited to see if that would sink in. "'Cause she'd come out here from Chicago, as of the twelfth of July--supposedly to marry the guy, the Lieutenant, like she told her dear old mo--"

"Finckle!" said Maurice. "His name was Godfrey Finckle."

"It was Fickel," said Brooke. "And they were together down there for a little better than a month. He'd put her up in a beach hotel, so they could shack up there any time he could get a weekend pass, up till he got his discharge, around the middle of August." She flipped a page. "And this is where things get screwy." She flipped the page back. "Because somehow this other guy, this salesman gets--"

"She didn't come up here with Finckle," said Maurice.

Brooke stared at him. "But they checked in together as Mr. and Mrs. Godfrey Fickel, for a week at the Brevoort hotel, down there by Santa Monica and Vine--let's see, okay--starting from the twentieth of August, till--"

"She didn't come up here with him, I told you!" Maurice re-crossed his legs, and watched as Brooke tapped down the lines of the page she had open.

She looked up. "Okay! There is a gap here. It's only known that they checked in together on that date."

"At that hotel down on Lexington. But she got here before he did, I know that, because she told me." He licked his lips.

"Ha!" said good old Bright Eyes. "Then the story about her copping a ride up here from Long Beach with the radio ad-man can fit in here just fine. She leaves her fly-boy fiancé high and dry, to--"

"Or vice-versa," said I. "Dry and high, he waves her good-bye."

"Okay! But one way or the other, she's got a guy who sells radio ads telling her how he's got some big connection with the Great Gildersleeves at CBS in Hollywood."

"That would not have impressed her so much as the ride uptown," said Maurice.

"She was quite the little hipster, then?" I asked.

"She could jitterbug and Lindy Hop the ass off a couple squares like you anytime," he informed me.

"But the point is," said Brooke, "she had a date with the radio ad salesman, some day just before the twentieth of August, to take her to a CBS show."

"And that's how she turned up at Brittenham's, afterward." said Maurice.

Both Bright Eyes and I were staring at him.

"Well no, for the crissakes! How am I supposed to remember any lousy dates?"

"But you did put her up at the Hawthorne," said Brooke. "Or was she already . . ."

"She was already there, behind in her rent. So I put up for the three of them till the end of that next month."

"September." Brooke had to wipe a bit of a snigger from her lip. "Quite the little hustler!" She made a careful note.

From Maurice's bookcase, I selected a hard-bound copy of Henry Miller's *Plexus*. I opened it and asked, "You stay with her there?"

"No!" He stared at me in horror. "What do you take me for--some kind of a heterosexual?"

"Well gee, Maurice!" said Brooke. "It's all very confusing. I mean, the way you obviously felt about Elizabeth and . . ." she was fanning herself with the notebook. "How is it that you were living with that woman at the Fontenoy, then?"

"Rene Germaine was not a woman."

"Oh, for cryin' out loud." I looked straight at him. "You mean she was a . . .?"

"Yes he was," said Maurice.

Brooke had to laugh. "And nobody at the Fontenoy ever knew the two of you were shacked up like that?"

"That was the whole idea," said Maurice, catching a bit of her grin.

Both Brooke and I in chorus: "Things were different back then."

"To be in love like that was a crime," said Maurice.



CHAPTER XXII
No Tomorrow
--
When I showed up at the appointed time for the meeting with Jack Smith, wouldn't you know that I wound up getting stiffed? Sure, and by the time I'd struck bare ice in my third hilariously expensive Brown Derby round of generic bar Scotch & water, the clock was hitting on ten past seven. I was fit to be tied--and whipped, by just the dominatrix I best deserved: a rubber corseted J. Edgar Hoover in gartered nylons and bunny slippers. How could I have been so dumb?

It was almost prophetic how I sat there just tipsy enough to dream of a day when guys new to the profession like me will avoid such pitfalls by knowing about them in advance thanks to something with a title like "Private Dickery for Dummies," available from every news-stand and super market shelf. But this was 1976, in the day when a budding young Private Eye like me still had to learn the hard way, never to put that kind of money up front for anything in this racket--especially when it comes to the slippery mitt of a devoted drunk who would treat that C-note as nothing less than a ticket to no tomorrow. Well, this was that day after today and the evening of it as I walked out past the doorman to Vine street. All I could see in store for me as I clapped on my hat was the deluge of sass destined to come splashing into my face from the fountaining lips of Bright Eyes, no sooner than she should hear the news.

I decided to forestall the inevitable by taking a walk down to Selma and one block west to Cosmo where I could kill a little time browsing around at Moldy Milton's, my girl's favorite pulp merchant for remaindered and back issue magazines. Milton himself was on duty behind the high desk by the door when the jingle announced my entrance. From over the top of an old copy of Collier's, he peered down upon me as I strolled past toward his marvelous stock of deteriorating detective magazines--such a highly popular item here, that he'd reserved for them the very front row of bins. Moldy Milton kept them all arranged by date, and woe betide the miscreant whose negligence was so verminous as to put a magazine back into the bin out of sequence.

He had his eye on me, as I pulled up a copy of *Scandalous Detective* from the collection of 1949. There were a lot of newsprint smudged wooden slats laying about that you were supposed to insert to hold the place of the issue you took out, and I was about to dutifully perform according to expectations, when a better idea occurred to me. I put the magazine back in place, turned and said, "Say there, Moldy Milty!" His eyes were already there to ask, "Why don't you just dissolve into dust with the rest of the back issues, you with that re-bop five dollar flea-market felt fedora?"

I stayed right where I stood because I don't like being dwarfed by a dwarf sitting behind a high desk. And because there was nobody in the shop, I didn't mind talking loud enough to blow that Collier's from his hands, out the door and into the street. "So maybe you can save me some time here, eh buddy?" I tipped up the brim of my hat. "I'm looking for anything you've got on the Black Dahlia murder case."

He lowered his magazine about a millimeter. "Anything?" He reached for a thermal cup of something steaming.

"Well then make it not just anything," I said. "Make it something that would go beyond the same old rehashing of the case."

"A different angle," he said.

"Yeah, like that."

His hand reappeared, to take hold of something you could smell for a liverwurst and horseradish sandwich, soon as it moved. I waited in a gathering nausea, but not for long.

"Like an exclusive interview with one of the principles--something like that?"

Despite the virtually visible gaseous mist of liverwurst vapor and the horse radish fog, I could not resist taking a step forward into it. "Yeah," I said. "Like that."

"Wull--mghm-hghm--guesh what you might wunt--" he picked up the cup and I waited for the swallows that promised to wash it all down. "Aghaaah," he said, using the remaining point of his sandwich to direct my attention north along the bins toward Hollywood Boulevard. "Go check out that *Federal G-Man Gazette* issue that come out in '49, lessee--" he scratched a place where the bushy gray curls over his ears met the shining dome above. "April-May," he said. "Look for the May number."

It was a snap to locate what I was after down there just off the aisle, because the G-Man Gazette was a large magazine, big as Life and Look, tallest of the genre, or had been all the way on up through the '50s, and you couldn't miss it; there was never a newsstand without that rag or the obligatory pimple-faced fourteen year old kid thumbing fervently through it for those saucy pin-ups of burlesque queens, which nearly always also adorned the cover with flesh, feathers, stockings and scanties; this being but for those issues dedicated to major title fights, when the lace pants would make way for the middle or heavy-weight boxing trunks of some champ or contender, whose chances or challenges or crowning achievement had recently been all the sporting news.

I located the May issue, pulled it and shoved in the stick. I noted the price of ten bucks. "Whoa, I said."

And Moldly Milton? He said, "What I tell you?"

I moved to open it to the page indicated on the cover, and being stunned by the title, I stood there to stare at it: *Frolic with Black Dahlia in Posh L.A. Hotel: G.I. Tells All* "Yeah!" I replied.

"Moldy Milton won't steer you wrong." His rising cup, the only thing in sight behind something illustrating a woman in high-plied pompadour showing her back to model a girdle. As I came closer, I saw "Indiscreet Confessions" on the cover.
--

As I walked out of Moldy Milton's and turned up the street toward Hollywood boulevard, I tried to think of a place where I could go to sit down, order a cup of coffee and do some reading without getting the bum's rush. There was the Stars Deli up on Wilcox, but as I looked up the Boulevard toward the place, seeing how close it was as yet to the dinner hour, I nixed it and turned in the opposite direction toward Vine street, thinking of the Celebrity Cafeteria up there just north of the Boulevard.

There was nothing wrong with the hot beef sandwich they served there at the Celebrity, nor with the company in which to enjoy it, as you could almost always count on seeing so many as two, three perhaps even four real, honest to Pete Hollywood personalities scattered here and there among the tables. And so what if they were mainly comprised of a few old Munchkins left over from Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, still hanging on to haunt the local hotels in hopes of a part for a dwarf or midget to be once again a hot ticket around town.

It was swell to see those Munchkins there, grumbling over their soup about a useless agent, smoking, bragging, arguing, throwing the occasional tantrum, or plate of peas, one at the other, but that was all part of the charm for Bright Eyes and I. And we would often fondly reminisce over the morning we saw a major hub-bub get started over the entrance of the one Celebrity Cafeteria regular who right then truly was receiving some action from his agent, along with the status among his peers of a true cafeteria celebrity. It was quite the thing to see him walk in with that high shine on his summer vented saddle shoe loafers, cutting a long stride as he puffed like the Illinois Central a long trail of smoke behind from his foot-long cigar, clenched under a lately barbered mustache, and just looking ever so 'reet' in a brand new wide brimmed hat, with feather and zoot suit--it was none other than the very person of R.J. Johnston . . .

"Well, you can call me Ray,
Or you can call me Jay,
Or you can call me R. J.,
for Ray J. Johnston!"

We couldn't have been more completely thrilled than to see that the man (actor, Bill Saluga) was not a whit different in person than as he appeared in the various variety shows and Budweiser commercials that featured him on television.

I stopped in my tracks, as the thought of those aging old phantoms of the Hollywood sound stage and horse opera set had caused me to think of the lobby of the Fontenoy and our good old Goldwyn Girl. I crossed the boulevard at Ivar and hustled along the four blocks to Whitely. Turning the corner there, it was just another block across Yucca to the front door and vestibule of the Fontenoy. I had to buzz some three or four times before a somewhat sleepy sounding Gladys got on the horn. My apologies were not accepted and I was ordered to come right up and never mind troubling an old lady's sleep, if it came to having some nice company! She buzzed me in.

The sweet old thing after a nice big hug and some kisses, was more than pleased to brew me up a piping hot cup of coffee to take downstairs to the lobby with me. And though she'd have been more than happy to have me sit right there with her, I managed to explain to her satisfaction that I just happened to be in one of those moods that demanded the atmosphere that nothing other than the lobby of a hotel can afford, most particularly for this sort of reading.

"I know just what you mean," she said. "To be reading the Federal G-Man Gazette anywhere other than at least in the lobby of an apartment hotel like the Fontenoy, would be like taking a shower with your raincoat on."

"You're so right!" I was simply bowled over by the worldly wise knowingness of this woman.

"Why sure," she said, "I know exactly what you mean."

"I had so hoped you would, Gladys."

"Now if anyone molests you down there, you just tell them that you're from Gladys."

"I'm from Gladys."

"That's right, and if any question arises, you can just have them buzz me. I'll set them straight quick enough."

When I got down to the lobby, and settled into a chair, I can tell you that it worked like a charm, when I answered to the three or four suspicious stares of the others lounging there, "I'm from Gladys." I only had to say it once for them all to hear, and better than that, over the course of the next hour, as new patrons came and went, one or the other of those sweet old things, would just tell them, "He's from Gladys," and there was no more to be said. I was left to read my G-Man Gazette in peace.

Seeing that this was the America of 1976, nobody gave a damn if I smoked, as indeed a fair number of those who shared in all this radiant old Art Deco ambiance were complicit with me in the crime, even to the extent of such an outrage as the occasional shade-grown Muriel corona going off here or over there like the Fat Man mushroom cloud over Nagasaki. It was like being aboard over the sea in a pirate ship with a crew of devil-may-care old Yankee sailors who had nothing in this world to fear so long as they knew you were "from Gladys." With the big old late-forties model Crosley radio console in the corner by the tall, tall, tall velvet draped windows softly playing the Big Band station from West Covina, I opened my G-Man Gazette to the first page of the article, and this is the story that I found . . .



Chapter XXIII
I Dated the Dahlia
--
Sergeant Joe (whose real name is being withheld for reasons that would be obvious to his mother) since his return on active duty from the European theatre, had been serving out the rest of his hitch with the Army as an MP. In September of '46, some 5 months prior to discharge, he was on mission out of Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, California, assigned to a duty of tracking down a certain soldier gone AWOL.

Not quite three weeks ago, Joe and I were having a few beers in the cocktail lounge of the Pittsburgh hotel where I was staying, having come in from Chicago for purposes of this interview. He sat tall in his chair, all 6 foot 2 of him, and you could say that if it came to a beauty contest between Jack Palance and Sergeant Joe, Joe would lose, if only by a hair. It was right at the beginning of our talk when he mentioned that being a military cop had not always been to his liking. "But don't get me wrong," he told me, "the Sam Spade part of it, that was jake. I'll play the hot-shot detective for you any day, only just don't put Army uniforms on the bad guys--know what I mean?" That wasn't too hard to get, nor was the next part: "And I have to admit I was never in any big hurry to get out after 'em."

I asked if this is why, according to the FBI report, he and his partner had finagled a four day furlough, soon as they'd hit 'Pedro'? The big smile he had on him pretty much said it all, till he decided to add a few words: "Well, that wasn't exactly what you'd call 'official' or anything. But see, the way we ran it down to the Captain; if we could get out around town for a few days, then we'd know something of what the layout was, before taking a crack at turning it upside down after our man." As this, to Joe's superior officer, sounded good enough for government work, the four days was granted, off the record, to shake from an otherwise dicey assignment, a toss at the kind of enticements a big city like L.A. holds in store for a couple of guys hot into town from Hell on Earth at Normandy Beach and the Forest of Ardennes.

"Thing is," said Sergeant Joe, "nothing was down on paper, so we had to make it look good. And seeing as how this guy we were after could have been just about anywhere in the Los Angeles area--well, you had to start somewhere. So, it was the beaches that my corporal, Frank, thought would be the most likely place to scare up the kind of culprit we were after--and that was his idea of the thing. But me? I saw different, that if the man was anything like me, then the first place I'd go look--for me--would be downtown at the movies, or in the night clubs, maybe in some of those dime-a-dance ballrooms they got down there. See, I had my best hunch for this kind of Dick Tracy work and Frank had his--which was a problem until he got a swell idea. Frank would go to the beach and I'd go to the movies, cover the two suspect locations at once."

I told Joe that this had all the earmarks of the kind of police work I'd been reporting on for years, and coming from me, a staff writer for the biggest crime magazine on the rack, the tallest and the widest, if not always the thickest--he took that for the compliment he hoped to think it was.

I asked him to describe what happened when he first arrived downtown. He thought a bit, "Well, I'd been strolling around, checking out the sights that morning--" I interrupted to establish if, as according to the report, this would have been the morning of the 20th? He set to counting on his fingers until he had it, quite suddenly to say, "Yeah, it was the 20th." While I was making a note of that, he went on: "So, first thing after I got off the trolley is I went for coffee and donuts in that Clifton's cafeteria on Broadway. I sat down at a window table there and did some girl watching--or well, I was watching for my fugitive from military justice, of course, first of all, you understand. The girl watching was just . . ." The cream in his coffee.

"And the sugar," he added. "So, after about an hour or so, when there was no sign of the man going by out there, I decided to get out for a look-see in the first of all the most likely places." He went on to explain that there was not a more common hide-out for every sort of suspicious character than in the dark of a cheapie movie theater, or better, and the cheaper yet, an all-night B-movie double-feature grindhouse. When I had approved the idea, he said, "Natch! So that's the first place I went after I left the cafeteria. I got right on it; found me a theater showing a good Western, paid my money, took my ticket, went in, got some popcorn, had a good look around and seeing no sign of that outlaw I was after, well, so long as I was there, I took a seat, because you just never know when your man could come sneaking in."

I asked if he could remember what was on the screen, and it took him no time at all to recall it was a single-feature, *Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die* with Richard Dix. "I remember it because of how it made me feel to watch old Wyatt Earp up there bigger than life, getting down that street to take care of the bad guys. It had me so fired up by the time that movie was over, I was hoofing it down Grand avenue on my way to the Nickel with a jingle on my spurs, and a cock to my cap that said I meant the same kind of OK Corral business." I had to ask him about that "Nickel."

"That's for Fifth street, down around Main. And see, if they call it 'the Nickel' all those bums and tramps and the ploughed out prostitutes around there, they can forget it's Skid Row."

That explained it.

"It's the first place in any city that law enforcement goes to look for a guy on the lam--it's where he can get a bed for thirty-five cents a night and a free bowl of soup at the Mission." Of course this was no news to an old crime reporter but that didn't matter; I let him go on:

"I went through the bars up and down there, flashing an Army I.D. mugshot of the guy around, which is, on the face of it, seldom any good in dives like that unless you've got some 'talk money' to throw down beside, which we never did. So instead you work from the expression on a person's face when they first lay eyes on a picture. If you see any sign of recognition, and you will if it's there, then you start putting the arm on; you jar 'em with some talk about bringing in the cops or the FBI."

He was ripping the cellophane strip from a fresh pack of Phillip Morris. "Or you can wait till they come out of the bar, to try some more exotic types of persuasion--there's always an alley nearby. As it was, nobody I talked to showed any sign they'd seen this guy." He ripped foil from the top of his pack in a neat square and started rolling that silver in his fingers. "Guess it must've been right around high noon when I decided to start looking for a room, since that's by and large an hour past check-out time. I'd had it in mind to head up a little west of downtown around Bunker Hill, maybe talk to some desk clerks, landlords, janitors, residents of some of the dumps in that neighborhood, while I was looking for a room, but by the time I got to around 6th and Olive, I was all in, so I sat down to rest my dogs in Pershing Square."

I wondered if that was on the east side across from the Biltmore. He had to think, until -- "You know how downtown L.A. is, the way it sits all cock-eyed against the rest of the town, like maybe one too many earthquakes must of knocked it out of joint?" I had to agree, as a look at the map will show what Joe was talking about, how the whole downtown region is skewed rightward against the meridians, toward two o'clock with all the so-called 'north' running streets headed east toward Pasadena or Las Vegas. Some call it the "City of Angels", while to others it's "Angles".

"So, the only way I can ever get it pictured right in mind is to think of how the trolley comes in from what they call the 'west' along Sunset from Hollywood, till suddenly you're coming down over the edge of the bowl from Bunker Hill. So that's up top where you've got all the government buildings, and what's called 'north', even though its slanted way off to the east. But, if you're on Olive Street, then you're walking downhill toward the so-called 'south', even though from the bird's eye view you're damn near headed toward Santa Monica." Had he said 'Playa Del Rey', he'd have been right on the money.

"Yeah. So, when I came walking back downtown from the Nickel, west along 5th street, I cross Broadway and then Hill street, and I'm walking the side of the street that goes alongside the park, Pershing Square on my left. I go around the corner, and that's the Biltmore across the street on my right. I'm walking south on Olive toward the first vacant bench; that's where I sit down to take a load off, right there across from the hotel."

I asked if he knew that walking south toward Sixth from the lobby of the Biltmore was the last anyone had seen of Liz Sharp, alive. He sat there and stared as if he were looking straight across from that bench to the very spot. "And that's the first place on earth ever I saw her," he said. "But I can tell you she was a live one then, as never you did see the like."

I asked him to expand on that, and start from the moment he'd first seen her.

"I'd just been sitting there, you know. And after about a half-hour of watching the crowd go by, I got up to join it with a mind to head on up to Bunker Hill, like I had planned. So I walked down to 6th, turned there and crossed Olive." He thought for a moment. "But then, for some reason, all of sudden I wasn't in all that big of a hurry to go on up there and get all holed up in some cheap hotel. And seeing it was just getting on toward two o'clock, and there being plenty of time, I'm thinking of maybe getting a bite to eat. So, I'm just leaned up against the building, lighting a cigarette and considering the idea of a grilled cheese sandwich when . . ."

I asked if he could remember what that building was.

"It was the one on the corner, down from the hotel." He snapped his fingers. "Yeah, I remember there was pictures of airliners, palm trees and hula-girls in the window, and there was a big sign up on the roof." I told him that was the United Airlines ticket office in the old Pacific Mutual building on Sixth and Olive, just south of the Biltmore, like he said.

"Yeah, so I'm just leaning there, you know, kind of looking straight across the street at the square--and what do you suppose but there's perfume in the air enough to knock you down. And now here's this pair of blue eyes sparkling in a face like you never see down from the movie screen, or off the page of a magazine. I mean, it almost scared me to try and keep my eyes on anything so gorgeous."

I urged him to expand on this first impression, much as he could.

"Yeah, well, thing was, she had her eyes on me, that brunette. She was the closest, see, because the other one was on the street side."

I asked for the other girl's name, but he didn't remember. I wondered if 'Margie' or 'Marge' rang a bell, but it was no good. He went on:

"As I've gone back over it in my mind, I'm pretty sure now they must have come around the corner, the way they were just there out of nowhere, walking real slow and easy-like down toward the hotel. And she's giving me this smile, that brunette. But what's with such a glamorous looking doll as that bothering about a second glance at a mug like me?" He just had to shake his head over it. "I had no idea," he said. "Maybe she never saw a guy's eyes go wide as white sidewalls like that before." He blew some smoke up in the air and looked at it. "She was all in black from her heels and nylons to the lace on her hat."

I had to ask if there were no white flowers in her hair. "Later on that night, after I bought 'em for her--yeah, you bet. But now, just when I was getting an eyeful of those legs--damn if she didn't cast a glance over her shoulder and catch me at it." He tapped an ash to the tray. "She'd seen right where my eyes were stuck--but do you know what?" He went right on. "She giggled and grabbed her friend, so now they're both beaming the old wise-eye at me. Yeah, so then this brunette takes hold of the other dame and they come to a stop." He rolled his eyes. "I'm standing there wondering how any of this could be happening to me, so I think I better have a look around to see if Alan Ladd or Robert Montgomery just came round the corner." He shrugged. "Nope. It was only a little old Mexican lady and me."

When I urged him to continue, he was pleased to oblige . . .

"When I turned back around, here she is! I mean, right at my arm--and that's not all. She was tapping a long polished nail at my Lucky 7th insignia." I asked him to be more specific about that. "Seventh Armored Division, the patch; it shows a tank tread, gun and bolt of red lightening under a big number 7. And here's the brightest blue eyes you ever saw looking up over that triangle on my arm, and she says, 'The Lucky 7!' I'm standing there about ready to . . ." What the man said here, in words not fit for distribution to your average drugstore magazine rack in Duluth or Fort Dodge, was more or less to say that he found himself--like any healthy red-blooded young man--intensely aroused by this encounter.

"Me?" He threw a thumb to his chest. "I'm struck dumb, but that's okay; she's just purring on with, 'I know a guy in this outfit.' Well, that's just fine with me! So I says, 'No lie?' She names the guy and says he was her boyfriend once upon a time back east in her hometown. So what am I going to say to that? Would I tell her, 'Oh no, honey, I don't know this Jack, and how would I, out of only the ten or twenty thousand other soldiers in the 7th? But then again, who do you really know out of all the men you just happened to dive into a hole with here or there, ducking the same mortar blast--not that you'd recognize the guy again without the mud in the face, but still, 'Maybe I do know him,' I says to her." He saw how that form of strategy made perfectly good sense to the reporter, who then urged him on . . .

"Now she's getting all excited, see? She says, 'Well how about that, anyway?' She gives me a little push to say, 'I hope you're not like him though because he was the real jealous type.' So I say, 'Not me, but that sure sounds like ol' what's-his-name, all right.' Except I used the name she mentioned. Now she's got a grand old giggle going with, 'It couldn't be anybody else.' Me, I'm thinking it's now or never, so I make my move. 'Say, beautiful!' says me, 'Maybe we should have us a date tonight, so we can talk about the good times we had with old--whatever she'd told me his name was . . ." He thought for a moment. "It could of been 'Melvin.'" I told him that according to the FBI report it was a big black mark. That was good as any, and 'Mark' would do just fine for our purposes, whatever the 'big' and 'black part, since neither of us was prejudiced. I asked him to go on with his story.



Chapter XXIV
The Mermaid that Got Away
--
"What do you suppose? Next thing I knew, she had her arm hooked into mine, turning me right around and saying, 'Come on!' Me, I'm thinking what's this? She says, 'Why wait for tonight?' We're stepping off the curb, going across Sixth Street, and just look at me there--me! with a girl on either arm, wondering if they'd mind dropping a hint about where we're going? That's when this dame they call the 'Dahlia' says, 'Just shut up and walk, buster, if you know what's good for ya.'"

I watched Joe's eyebrows jack up a whole notch. "Look at that! Laughing their pretty heads off over how easy it was to Shanghai a guy, and there I am just going along with it, about ready to pass out in the middle of a perfume gas attack. It's no good trying to make with the small talk. Shoot! I couldn't of got a word in edgewise, the way they kept pulling me this way and that, going on about everything in the store-windows, the hats and shoes, the hose and lingerie. They couldn't pass a single dolled up dummy all the way down Seventh Street from Grand to Flower without stopping to get a good old gander at something they loved and just had to have, or what they hated and wouldn't be caught dead in--they even had to stop for that!"

I asked if these women hadn't some interest in what his mission in Los Angeles was about, or as to his combat experiences at the front in Europe, and he said, "Naw, not a bit of it, and besides which I wasn't offering any of it either. All they wanted to know from me would be, 'How do you think I'd look in a lacey scrap of nothing like that, big boy?' Yeah, and that time I says, 'Doll, if you want to knock me dead, go right on ahead and just blow me some Taps while I'm on my way down.' That Dahlia dame, she laughs, 'Aw go on.' And me, I says, 'Yeah, then just see how I stand to attention for the 21 gun salute.'"

Hotel Figueroa rises to the L.A. skyline between Olympic Boulevard and Ninth Street. "Inside," said Joe, "across the lobby from the desk there was a shop with magazines, cigars, postcards and such-like. Other side of the aisle from there was a davenport and some wicker chairs." He raised his hands and gave a push. "That Dahlia dame, she says, 'Sit there!' Down I drop into that cushy davenport; the two of them having a gay old time, giggling behind their beads while they're pulling chairs up close. 'So how 'bout it then, Soldier Boy?' says the dark-haired doll, getting all cross-legged and comfy. 'What would you like to do now?' Migod! Does she want the truth?"

He grinned: "What am I going to say? 'Yeah Baby--want to go upstairs and play Doctor?' Maybe some guys are slick as that, but me, I ain't been around all that much, so . . ." This reporter mentioned that these women had, after all, brought him directly to their hotel. "You bet they did, but I'm the type that's going to take a longer way around to it. So what I say to 'em is like, 'I'll bet the two of you know some pretty swell places to see here in town.' Now the blonde . . ."

"Marge."

"Yeah. She says, 'You can bet we do.' Then the Dahlia dame . . ."

"Elizabeth, Liz, Betty, Beth."

"That's her. She says, 'How about Hollywood?' And me, 'Say!' I says, 'Wouldn't that be grand.' And now on account of the way this Liz was sitting in her chair there--well!" He put out his tongue and ran a finger round his collar. "Of course you know that soon as the war was over, how women's skirts been getting long again--like that Marge, hers was down below the knee as it goes with the fashion now--but that brunette, she had last year's style on her but good, with that hemline an easy two inches higher, walking."

He smiled. "But this was sitting and so you know how that's gonna go. Brother!" He rolled his eyes and the reporter indicated having at least some vague sense of what he was driving at. "Shoot!" he said. "Don't kid me, because I can tell you that this dame knew just exactly what she, or say, what her skirt was up to over there. I'm saying I never seen a girl play with a man like that before." The reporter had to inquire as to just exactly what he meant by that.

He demonstrated from where he sat. "How she would sit there and shift this way and that, maybe while she'd be looking at her friend, but then she'd flash a glance to see if you'd been trying to sneak a peek at what more was showing up her leg there. Go on!" He threw his hand over. "It was some kind of cat and mouse game she was playing. Because then, she'd catch you at it, see? And you're wishing you could slip down in the crack between your back and the cushion--until she gives you that smirk."

He paused to shake a cigarette from his pack. "I never saw the like. And I've been to a few USO canteens, ridden the streetcars and buses plenty of times but I never seen a dame who knew how to turn that cozy little peek-a-boo game into something that a girl, uh . . ."

Knew how to exploit?

He had to think on that. "Maybe, but . . ." He blew out a match and let go some smoke through his nose. "Nah, more for the devil of it, the way it seemed." He shrugged. "Otherwise, I don't know what she would've expected to get out of it, but for a show-ticket, drinks and dinner, but . . ." He was thinking again. "You never know what some women might want . . ."

He tipped his pack of Phillip Morris up on end. "Thing is . . ." he flipped it to one side. "Okay, maybe something kind of odd happened just then, after this doll, the dark one, this 'Black Dahlia' as they say, excused herself to go on up to their room and change clothes. That's when I started to get into quite a little talk with the other one--Margie, you say?"

So the reporter did say.

"Yeah. Well now this Marge, she starts filling me in on a thing or two about her friend." Joe was asked to describe Margie Green.

"A sweet kid, that's what I'd have to say about her." He smiled on that thought. "On account of she had that certain way about her of a person who's always trying to look on the bright side." The one photo of the girl available to the press would tend to bear Joe out on that, although his memory of her as a 'blonde' would be corrected toward the more strawberry end of the spectrum. The smile is of that, you might almost say 'valiant' sort that looks like it would shine in the dark, and once you get a load of that dim gray tint about the eyes, as of clouds about to burst with rain, then you know the 'dark' from which that smile shines. Though it could easily be said that her looks hold little of the mysterious allure in the fashion magazine features of her glamorous friend, maybe for Nature's own reasons there appears in other faces a lighter kind of loveliness in a class of its own; what Joe was putting down for "Cute as a bug."

"Anyway," he said, "it seemed like all she wanted to talk about was her friend, like it was all really hard on her mind, or you could say 'right up front' as the first thing on it. For instance, right away she wanted me to know that Liz was a divorcee." He turned the burning tip of his cigarette in a green glass groove to remove an ash and then looked up. "Then right after that, she started telling me about how this doll was broke most of the time and never had anything you could call a 'job'. She talked about lending her money, now and again."

Joe was asked if he knew that it had since turned out that Liz Sharp could not have been a divorcee, due to the fact she'd never been married?

"Shoot!," he said. "First I've heard of it." He laughed. "How d'ya like tellin' me a thing lie like that?"

The reporter suggested to Joe there well may have been purpose in it, to give a guy the idea that she'd been around, had tasted of an intensity of thrills that a woman of her status just might be yearning for, and seeing there was nothing anymore to be saved . . .

"How about that!" Joe had to give his ear-lobe a good pinch, just one, not both, and which one doesn't matter. "Y'know, I guess maybe it did have some kind of effect on me like that."

Sure it did, and along that same order of investigation, when this reporter asked whether he thought that by telling him something negative about the girl, the Dahlia's friend may have been making a play at him for herself?

"Well you know," he said, "I wasn't too sure of what was going on there at all. It was kind of funny, her telling me all that stuff, because by the look of her you didn't get the feeling she was talking bad about that gal, but more like, 'the poor kid,' you know? She kept saying things like, 'So she has to borrow from me, the poor kid.' Like that."

It seemed then, that this was one hunch of the Reporter that went wide of the mark, so Joe was asked if maybe on the other hand he hadn't got the sense that something was being hinted by all this, as respecting the girl's monetary needs, with regard to himself, what he might be able to do about that, just right there and then?

Joe straightened up. There was time to wait for him to consider it.

"Like I could of just asked for the room number, right then?"

The reporter waited.

"Hah! Especially when there's such a good looking doll up there changing her clothes, and all."

There was hardly need for comment.

Joe said: "Like, 'Why don't you come on up with your big fat wallet and get you a nice, hot eyeful there, soldier?'" He had himself a rueful laugh to think of it. "So! you see how I am." He gave himself a knock on the forehead. "Shoot. So there I sit without a clue, asking this other dame did she know of a place where a stranger in town could find a room for the night?" He smiled, reached, took a bolt from his beer, set it down, and then his eyes went wider. He said:

"Well you know, now as I think, it kind of ties right in with how she answered me on that. Yeah. Like, 'fat chance' she says--if I can find a place for the night? Well c'mon! Since when? This is L.A., right? Okay, but I'm finally getting the drift and playing along like I'm just hick enough to fall for it. So I'm going on with the 'Boy! Am I out of luck, or what?'"

He snapped his fingers. "Right then she gives me this saucy little wink and says, 'Maybe not, if you don't mind putting up some dough to help Liz 'n me with the bill on our room.' Well! You could o' knocked me over with a fan dancer's feather. So now she adds, 'We do have twin beds.' But that little lift to her brow said, 'Forget I mentioned it.'

He let some air out, tapped the table. "So now I'm wondering, is this the way they do it in California--single guys and gals shacking up in hotels? I mean to tell you. They got laws against that in Pittsburgh, let alone Philadelphia."

Joe described what happened after Margie left his side to take the elevator up and have a talk with Liz Sharp, to see if she'd be willing to go along with it. "So, when they got back down to the lobby--man! You should have seen how dolled up that Dahlia dame was now. Instead of the suit, it was a black dress, maybe what they call a 'shift' . . .

I asked him to give the best description he could.

"Well . . ." he had to think for a moment, and then: "it folded over her--you know, up here--very filmy material, sort of pleated or gathered, as you might say, by a sash tied at the waist. The shoes were what they call 'peep-toed', black ankle-strapped sandals, spike heels so high it looked like she'd need ballet lessons just to walk in 'em. They came right on over to where I sat, and that Dahlia she just reaches right out for my arm. 'C'mon handsome! We're going to show you the town.' Can you picture it?" He had to chuckle. "Next thing I knew, we were on a bus, headed down Sunset Boulevard for Hollywood."

Joe sat forward to gesture with both his big hands. "So, I'm sitting there riding next to this girl, Marge while that Liz just went and sat down next to this Marine across the aisle, and I'm there thinking--well, how d'ya like that?'" He stopped me in the middle of a question. "Hold on!" he said. "It gets even funnier. Right when I'm thinking like, how about this dame--after all that flirting and fooling in the lobby, now look what she does? Of course this Marge sitting next to me isn't exactly from dumb and stupid or anything, so she can see I'm getting knocked about three sides from cockeyed by all this." To the suggestion that things like that weren't the greatest thing for friendly relations between the Army and the Marine Corps, Sergeant Joe had to agree:

"You got that right! So, right then couldn't have been a better time for this Marge to give me the old elbow to tell me that everything was on for my staying with them at the Figueroa that night." He looked straight at me. "Can you imagine?"

There was little time for it, as Joe was hot to go right on: "Now get this: this Marge tells me she's a taxi-dancer and she's right now on her way to work at this ballroom in Hollywood down on Melrose boulevard, so she'll be leaving us when we get off the bus on Sunset and Vine, at Columbia Circle there. But then she says, 'So how would you like to take Liz to the Tony Martin Show at CBS, on account of how that's about the best thing going in Hollywood right around the dinner hour?'"

And how did he like the idea of that?

"Yeah, well, on a soldier's pay? Frankly, I wasn't too sure; didn't know right then whether those things were free or cost a lot of scratch--not that spending the money itself was bothering me so much. It was just the idea that, maybe I'm kind of being used, you know, what with her riding over there next to that Marine?"

It was not hard to get Joe's point.

"Yeah, and you should have seen the way she was carrying on with the guy. I mean, you never saw nothing like it! I could've dropped through a hole in the floor of the bus two miles back for all she would of known, the way she's giggling and dropping that black-gloved hand on his shoulder--well shoot! But now it turns out I'm to have a date with her anyway?"

Joe sat back, raised a hand to straighten the collar on a short-sleeved 'Hawaiian-style' shirt. "O'course now I'm remembering what she was saying nearly soon as I met her about how she doesn't like it when guys get jealous. And who would soon forget something like that? So I think maybe she's just testing me, playing around to see if I'm the kind of guy she likes--or not. And then I think, okay, what am I going to do, come off looking like some big tight-wad on top of it? Besides, I was getting a place to stay for the night, maybe on the cheap or maybe not but--damn! The more I looked at her over there carrying on with that Marine, strange as it seems, she just kept looking better to me."

So, Sergeant Joe did wind up taking the Black Dahlia to the Tony Martin Show at CBS on the evening of September 20, 1947.

END PART ONE

Be sure not to miss the next issue for the thrilling conclusion of this two part exclusive to the National G-Man Gazette!
--

What was this? I turned the magazine over in my hands, and the action of having done that caused me to get a glance at my watch. It was 11:00 already! I looked up to see I was the only one left in the lobby. Bright Eyes home at DeMille Manor would have her fingernails chewed all the way down to her toe-nails if I didn't get there pronto.
--
To Be Continued

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