'There's an expression in show business about beautiful, dumb actresses. 'God gives with one hand, but takes away with the other.'
That was Chrissy. She was gorgeous, but if you're a guy, don't get caught in a locked room with her when you're planning to keep your clothes on. You could die of boredom.'
'And Mr. Berman liked that?' I asked.
'I think so. She was easy for him to be with. She made no intellectual demands.'
'Can you tell me about the Christmas party last night?'
'He went to last year's party, so this was his second time. I bought a diamond tennis bracelet at Tiffany's for him to give to Chrissy as a Christmas gift. Fifteen grand. That's me, the working girl's friend,' she quipped. Hitch and I both smiled at her attempt at humor.
'Did Scott have any enemies?' Hitch asked, getting to the meat of it. 'Was there anybody you can think of who might have wanted to kill him?'
'You mean, besides the entire movie department at CAA and Endeavor?' she said, smiling. We nodded.
'As a matter of fact, he almost didn't go to that party because of Chrissy Sweet's husband, who she was divorcing. His name is Carl. He called here twice yesterday. He told Mr. Berman to stay away from his wife or there would be big trouble.
'Even though she was in the midst of divorcing him, Carl wasn't about to let go. He was extremely possessive. Scott wasn't going to go to the party because of that threat. Then unfortunately he changed his mind and went at the last minute. If I were you, I'd definitely go find Carl Sweet,' she added. 'If he doesn't have a hell of a good alibi, I'd bust him.'
'Any idea where he lives?' Hitch asked.
'No. I don't think Scott even knew Chrissy's real address. It was one of Miss Dublin's strict rules. All dates had to be arranged through her Internet site. The girls were prohibited from giving out their addresses. At first, the only name we had for her was Slade Seven.
Eventually, she told Scott her real name. The Double Click Club kept it all very arms length, because that's the way Yolanda wanted it.'
We talked to her for another ten minutes, but that was all Shay could really tell us. As we stood to go, Hitch took her hand then bowed elegantly like Count Hollywood.
'Shay is a very beautiful name,' he said in his most bullshit courtly manner.
'Thank you,' she demurred. 'My father was from the South Pacific. In some obscure Indonesian dialect, Shay means princess.'
We left and walked back across the lot.
'Nice lady,' Hitch noted.
But I had tuned him out. My mind was parsing another idea. By the time we were back to the car, I had it.
'If Shay means princess in Indonesian, I wonder how you say Sweet in Czechoslovakian.'
'Wow,' Hitch said. 'Good get, homes.'
Once we were inside the car, I picked up the radio mic and I called the research desk at LAPD. It took five minutes to find out that the Czechoslovakian translation for Sweet was 'Sladky.'
We ran 'Carl Sladky,' spelling the whole name out.
'Roger, D-28,' the RTO came back. 'But the first name is Karel, spelled with a K and an E. Sladky is as you spelled it. He has three outstanding domestic violence warrants, all for aggravated assault. The warrant delivery team says they have tried three times to serve those warrants, but have no current address. According to their notes, since his wife moved out on him, he lost his apartment in Hollywood. She was paying for it. They think he's living in his van.'
Chapter 15
We flagged the outstanding warrants so if the warrant delivery team finally pulled up an existing address on the guy, we would be on their contact list. Then I called in a new firearms check, giving them the correct name and spelling.
When we got back to the office, guess what? No Brooks Dunbar. Stender Sheedy was there with his little jar of Vaseline, trying to get another six hours. I jammed the warrant into his hand.
'That's a copy. If your client even makes an illegal turn, he's gonna end up in jail. You want my opinion, we should let it happen. He's got too many people protecting him. Next time he falls, you oughta let his ass hit the dirt instead of always shoving a feather pillow under him. Maybe some jail time will straighten him out.'
'Don't do this,' Stender pleaded.
'Already did.'
After he left, we were pulled into Jeb s office. We'd been working the whole night and for us, it seemed like forever since we'd gotten the case. Jeb, on the other hand, had gone home to bed, and since Scott Berman's death was blasting out of every radio and TV speaker when he awoke, he was complaining about how quickly the press had gotten it.
We brought him up to date on Karel Sladky, who was a definite person of interest. The fact that we had a name to chase after seemed to please our captain.
'This is good progress,' he said. 'Good stuff. You've made me happy.'
'We live for those moments, Skipper,' Hitch said. I couldn't tell if he was kidding or just in the midst of a monumental ass kiss.
'You guys now have a prosecutor assigned to work with you,' Jeb continued.
'Already?' Hitch moaned. 'Aren't we supposed to arrest somebody before they assign a prosecutor?'
'District Attorney Chase Beal wants to make sure none of the evidence is compromised. He put one of his best gunslingers on this.'
'Uh-oh,' I said. 'Who'd we get?'
'The Black Dahlia.'
'Dahlia Wilkes?' we both said, simultaneously groaning.
'She wants to meet with you before the end of the clay to be briefed. In the meantime, she gave instructions that she wants you to personally get back out to Skyline Drive with an evidence collection team and some metal detectors to locate every single slug that was fired from that Bizon.
'So far CSI got no prints off the cartridges they found,' Jeb continued, 'but they only picked up twenty casings and fourteen slugs. The Bizon's got a sixty-four-shot clip, so there's a lot still out there. It's a big job. Sorry.'
'Do you think there'll be time for us to wash and wax Miss Wilkes's car before we go?' I said.
'Look, Shane, you're the one who wanted to work on high-profile hits.'
We left the captain's office and sat at Hitch's cubicle because Sally still hadn't cleaned out her desk. I looked up at Hitch's cork divider. He had put up pictures of different clothing ads from GQ and Vanity Fair. The men in the shots had sculpted chins and moussed hair. They stood in poses that could get you killed in a biker bar.
'These are nice.' I frowned.
'Hey, Shane, 'til I was assigned to partner up with you I had no fucking cases. I was working on my spring look.'
We arranged for an evidence team to meet us at the crime scene. I walked over to my desk, unlocked the bottom drawer, and switched guns. I left the Ultra-Lite. 38 revolver with its ankle holster in favor of a bigger-bore 9 mm automatic. Something told me I might want to pack heavy. Then, because I was still separated from my vehicle, we were back in the Porsche Carrera. Hitch gunned the engine.
'Can we at least put the top up?' I suggested.
'Sure, homes.' He hit a button and a mechanical hardtop lifted out of the trunk deck and cantilevered forward, snapping down and locking itself into the brackets.
'Pretty sweet, huh?' he said.
I nodded because it was, and we were out of there.
We parked down the hill from 3151 Skyline Drive and walked up. The vacant lot we'd assigned to the press
