gurneys.
“Credit,” I said.
7
In a perfect world I might have been able to confide in my wife. In this imperfect place I inhabited, I didn’t feel like discussing with my new bride the fact that I’d known the once-lovely victim of the “Werewolf Slayer,” much less share the news that the dead girl had (like my bride) been carrying a child of mine.
When in the early evening I returned to our honeymoon bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Peggy was napping on the double bed, in a black slip, legs bare, atop the floral spread, somehow having found a place to do so amid the array of boxes and sacks (Sak’s Fifth Avenue, Christian Dior, Van Cleef amp; Arpel’s) that were the spoils of her day of shopping.
Hanging my suitcoat in the bedroom closet, getting out of my tie, I gazed at the pretty young woman to whom I was so freshly married; she was in more or less the same position Elizabeth Short had been, in the vacant lot, except in one piece. I bent over and kissed her freckled nose-freckled under her makeup, anyway-and she smiled a little, groaned sexily, and turned over on her side.
Looking at her, I had a terrible pang-guilt, sorrow, shame, regret-a whole series of emotions all mixed together, emotions most people (including me) figured I was immune to. But I loved Peggy, loved her dearly and deeply, and I had today been subjected to the sight of another woman-of whom I’d been at least a little fond, primarily because she reminded me so of Peg-butchered and dumped like two sides of beef in a vacant lot. Beneath the sentimental twinges, a slow rage was burning in my belly; I knew it would kindle, and finally ignite, and blot out those other emotions.
Even with everything I had at stake-my marriage, my business, my freedom-the thing I wanted most was to find the sick son of a bitch who had done this and drain him of just enough of his blood to drown him in.
Leaving the door cracked, so I could see her a little from the living room, I fixed myself a rum and Coke from the bungalow’s wet bar, and plopped onto the couch and sat there trembling. Watching Peg’s slumbering form, I wondered if I dared confide in my new A-1 partner, Fred Rubinski. After turning it over in my mind a few dozen times, I decided no. Fred and I were good friends, and business partners. But he was not one of the two or three people I considered my closest friends, my best friends.
Funny thing was, one of my best friends was in Hollywood this very minute-Barney Ross, the former lightweight (and welterweight) champ. We went way back-I’d grown up on the West Side of Chicago with him, and we’d worked together as kids as “pullers,” hustling goods outside Maxwell Street shops; I was even Shabbes goy to his Orthodox folks. Starting in the mid-twenties, Barney had run a speakeasy on the ground floor of a building he owned at Van Buren and Plymouth; when I left the cops, and was just starting out as an independent investigator, Barney traded me office (and living) space in exchange for keeping an after-hours eye on his building. He was that kind of friend.
We had even got drunk and joined the Marines together, one ill-advised evening in 1942, two overage idiots with patriotic hard-ons; and we had fought side by side, notably in a muddy shell hole on Guadalcanal where we had somehow managed to get dozens of Japs killed and not ourselves.
And, yes, we had both been wounded on that foul island, but my scars were mostly the kind that didn’t show, which is to say I was honorably discharged on a Section Eight, Mental Instability Due to Combat Trauma. On the other hand, Barney had left the military with all his marbles, as well as a morphine habit that turned a good- natured, sweet-hearted guy into a lowlife junkie. By pulling strings with my friend Frank Nitti, I managed to dry up Barney’s street sources-in Chicago anyway-which ultimately sent the former champ, however reluctantly, into rehabilitation.
According to the Examiner and other local rags, Barney had just been released from the U.S. Public Health Service addiction hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, and was making his first post-rehab stop in Los Angeles as a part of a public-relations attempt to win back his wholesome reputation with the public. I had a hunch it was in part for the benefit of his ex-wife Cathy, who lived out here, a beautiful former showgirl who had walked out on him when the monkey on his back started meaning more to Barney than she did.
So my best friend in the world-one of my two best friends in the world, anyway-was staying at the Roosevelt Hotel, maybe ten minutes away, and I couldn’t talk to him about this. I couldn’t talk to him about anything, because he hadn’t spoken to me since March of 1943, when I pulled the plug on his Chicago connections.
I knew only one person I could confide in, and that was my partner back in Chicago, Lou Sapperstein. Maybe Lou and I weren’t as tight as Barney and I once had been, but I knew I could count on Lou-and, anyway, I simply had to clue him in on this. Using the endtable phone, keeping my voice low, I called Lou at home; he didn’t say much as he listened to my sad tale, and when I finally stopped talking, an endless, crackling long-distance silence was all I heard.
“You still there, Lou?” I asked, almost whispering, the sleeping Peg in view through the cracked door.
After another long staticky pause-a pregnant pause, if you will-Lou’s baritone, a sort of tone-deaf Crosby, purred, “Are you sure you want to go this direction?”
“I’ve already gone. What choice do I have, Lou? These damn coincidences make me look dirty as hell.”
“Time of death on the girl?”
“With a corpse drained of blood, that’s no easy thing to pinpoint. The coroner estimates within twelve hours of the body’s discovery.”
“You got an alibi for last night?”
“Just Peggy-we spent a quiet evening here at the hotel. Even had a room service supper… went to bed early. She starts that picture at Paramount tomorrow and is trying to get herself on an early schedule.”
“Well, a wife’s alibi is better than nothing.”
“Tell it to Bruno Hauptmann. Anyway, who’s to say I didn’t get up in the middle of the night, leave Peg sleeping, and go play mad doctor on that poor kid?”
Lou’s sigh was world-weary enough for both of us. “Even if the cops clear you, you know, your name and reputation will be dragged through the slime.”
“Hell, that’s the least of my worries-I already got a shady reputation, which in our business isn’t all bad.”
“Shady is one thing, Nate. But immoral? Evil? Not so good… even in our business.”
I sipped my rum and Coke. Shook my head. “I’m not arguing, Lou. You’ve just confirmed what I been thinking.”
“Which is?”
“Which is, I have to try to crack this thing, before somebody lays it on my doorstep.”
“That’s a lousy idea, Nate… How can I help?”
“First of all, we never had this conversation. I don’t want you to face aiding and abetting after the fact.”
“Be quiet. How can I help?”
“First things first. Keep an eye on our esteemed Chicago press-this thing is going to get major play out here… I need to know how much space it gets back home.”
“That’s easily enough done.”
“Pretty soon the cops and reporters will have the girl identified. Maybe in Chicago, all that’ll rate is a few column inches, inside. But if Beth Short’s picture is splashed on the front page-like it will be out here in sunny Southern California-then she’s going to get recognized.”
“Was Elizabeth Short that distinctive looking?”
Gazing at the sleeping Peggy, I said, “Think of Deanna Durbin, Lou, but sexy-jet-black hair, pale pale skin, dark dark lipstick, lovely lovely smile, figure like Lana Turner.”
“Yeah,” Lou said dryly, “kid like that just mighta got noticed.”
I cautioned Lou to keep a close eye on the Herald-American, because the Hearst papers were the most likely to play it up big. I explained that a handful of people-at the Morrison Hotel, the St. Clair, Lindy’s, Henrici’s-could possibly link the Short woman and me.
“And eventually,” I told him, “even these dumb L.A. coppers will figure out Beth Short spent time in Chicago,
