“Nate,” Richardson said, and he came over and looked right at me, hand settling on my shoulder just about the same time his left eye caught up with his right. “Stick around-we’ll talk.”
“We can hash out this p.r. business later,” I said, “when it’s not so frantic around here-”
“Yeah, yeah… but just sit back down, give me a few minutes. I gotta call the Hearst Washington bureau, gotta phone the FBI… Want me to get you some coffee?”
“No-no, that’s okay.”
“Sit, sit, sit.”
I sat, sat, sat. Alone in the editorial chamber, I wondered what the hell I was still doing here, right smack in the middle of an investigation into a crime for which I might momentarily become a suspect. My head start had evaporated, or likely soon would, thanks to Fowley’s wirephoto brainstorm and the FBI’s 104 million sets of fingerprints.
All the while, the grisly photo of that poor butchered girl glistened on the table, taunting me… and then, as if Elizabeth Short herself had whispered in my ear, it finally dawned on me that right smack in the middle was still the best place for me. With the jump Richardson had on this case, I could be in a position to know whether Beth’s murder was in any way leading back to me.
And if Fowley’s slant on sending those prints via wirephoto really did i.d. the corpse as Elizabeth Short, the cops would owe them bigtime-meaning most everything the cops had would be shared with Richardson and his boys.
Much as I wanted to flee the Examiner, like Stepin Fetchit exiting a haunted house, I knew the best way not to be a suspect in this murder would be to solve the fucking thing-to find the maniac responsible. If I could lend my skills to the investigation, help bring it to a quick resolution, I could clear myself before I needed clearing, before anybody had even tumbled to my connection to the girl.
After all, I had known her in Chicago, hadn’t even seen her in L.A., the only contact being that single phone call.
So what I needed to do now was find some way to stay a part of this… to stay on the Examiner ’s team…
I was pondering that when Richardson came back in, as usual lighting up a new cigarette off an old one. He shut the door, unintentionally slamming it a little, glass rattling-and rattling me.
But then the city editor settled in next to me and again placed a friendly hand on my shoulder.
“We have a singular opportunity, Nate,” Richardson said, and smiled, and looked at me sideways-of course, he always looked at you sideways, even when he was looking at you frontways.
“What would that be… Jim?”
“This whole notion of ballyhooin’ your agency in the Examiner? It’s blossomed from a nice little mutually beneficial arrangement into a once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity.”
“Really.”
“Oh, yeah. I believe this ‘Werewolf’ case is gonna be the biggest thing since the Lindbergh baby. Fifty years from today, they’ll still be talking about the L.A. ‘Werewolf’ slayer.”
“It really ought to be ‘Vampire.’ ”
The wall-eyes flinched. “Huh?”
“She was drained of blood. That’s not a werewolf-it’s a vampire. Also, ‘Werewolf’ slayer sounds to me like somebody’s going around slaying werewolves…”
Richardson patted his chest. “Leave the wordsmithing to us, Heller-your job is investigating.”
Perfect-this was going to be his idea…
Playing reluctant, I said, “But this isn’t my case. And you know how the cops frown on private detectives working an active murder.”
“I’m putting every man I can spare on this thing.” He swiveled to look right at me-one eye at a time. His smile was just slightly crazed. “Nate, I’ve just talked to the Chief on the phone… and he’s as excited about this story as I am. Sees the full potential.”
By “the Chief,” Richardson meant Old Man Hearst himself.
“We’ll run circles around every other paper in town,” Richardson was saying, “and the cops, too-we’ve got expense accounts that make their allocations look silly.”
“Are you saying you want to hire me, Jim?”
“You’re goddamn right I want to hire you.”
“I’m not a reporter, you know-and you’re damn lucky those pictures turned out halfway decent…”
So to speak.
“Listen, Nate, the difference between a reporter and a private detective is no wider than a gnat’s eyelash. Hell, when I was in between reporting jobs, I worked as a private eye myself.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Some of my best friends are private eyes-Harry Raymond, remember him?”
“Got blown up in a car, helping you try to bring down Mayor Shaw?”
“That’s the one. Hell of a guy.”
This was all so reassuring.
Richardson sucked on his cigarette, then said, “Considering the possible scope of this thing, me sending out crews of reporters and photogs, I’m gonna be shorthanded as hell-stay and help investigate this thing, Nate. You and Fowley’ll be the guys who were in on it from the start. You stick with Fowley, and keep playing photographer.”
“I told you, I’m no photographer, Jim.”
“Well, pretend you’re peeping through a window-we can always hang drapes on a Speed Graphic, to make you feel at home.” He laughed, raspily, and it turned into a cigarette cough, after which he continued: “We’re gonna solve this damn case, Nate, and hand the murdering son of a bitch to the cops on a platter… and when we’re done, we’ll be the only paper that anybody in this town bothers reading, and you’ll be the most famous private eye in America.”
One way or the other.
“Okay, Jim,” I said, never more sorry to get what I wanted. “Get out Mr. Hearst’s checkbook.”
6
On Temple Street, between Broadway and Spring, the Los Angeles County Hall of Justice engulfed a block’s worth of prime real estate, its fourteen limestone-and-granite stories making it one of the taller edifices in this earthquake-mindful downtown. The rusticated stonework, massive cornices, and two-story crowning colonnade seemed a little grand for a building whose top five stories housed the county jail-granted the municipal courts, sheriff’s department, and D.A.’s offices were here as well.
So was the county morgue-in the basement. Murderers could await trial in the upper reaches of this fine Italian Renaissance-styled building; their victims had to settle for the sweating pale yellow brick halls of a cramped, squalid warren of fogged-over glass, leaky water pipes, and electric-fan-circulated formaldehyde fumes.
Late afternoon, we had come in the back way, through the wide entry that Black Marias backed up to, to deposit the various questionable deaths, unidentified corpses, and murder victims who made up the morgue’s client base. Fowley-having parked next to a sign that said NO PARKING AT ANY TIME — went up three cement steps, past a sign that said POSITIVELY NO ADMITTANCE.
I followed.
Just inside the hot, humid hallway, Fowley lighted up a cigarette (next to a NO SMOKING sign) and offered me one.
I declined and tagged after him down the hallway, our footsteps echoing like small-arms fire.
“They keep threatening to shut this shithole down,” Fowley said, striding past several gurneys bearing covered, unattended bodies. “But there’s only so much money, and lots of pockets that need filling-and the corpses never bitch about the accommodations, so what the fuck?”
We moved by several rooms whose doors had moisture-frosted glass panels, creating a haze through which
