“The Hat and Fat Ass are on their way… Go out to the car and grab your camera… Somebody’s here to see our boy.”
Fowley had barely said that when Harriet Manley-blonde hair tucked up under a flowered kerchief, shapely frame tied into a dark topcoat, pretty features delicately made up-rushed in, brushing by him, dashing desperately toward the kitchen.
When I returned with the Speed Graphic, Red and Harriet were in each other’s arms. She was looking up at him, her red-lipstick-glistening lips quivering, her blue eyes moist, touching his face with red-painted fingertips, her expression a mixture of tenderness and hurt. They held hands, they embraced, they kissed, and I caught it all on film.
“He’s gonna get away with it,” Fowley said, shaking his head.
He meant Manley, getting back into the good graces of his lovely wife; but I wondered if the same might apply to whoever had killed the Black Dahlia.
11
The next morning was a big one for the Examiner, with its exclusive coverage of the arrest of Robert “Red” Manley. This made up, some, for getting beat to the punch by the Herald-Express on the Black Dahlia nickname, which their reporter Bevo Means had unearthed in time for yesterday’s afternoon edition, thanks to a Long Beach druggist.
Outside the Palmer home, we had staged some photos for Harry the Hat, showing the cops making the capture; those-and my shots of Red trying to make up with his lovely, hurting bride-made the competing papers’ coverage look sick. At the scene, Fowley had suggested to the Hat that he and Sergeant Brown take Manley over to the Hollenbeck Station, instead of downtown, since a swarm of reporters who’d been monitoring police calls would no doubt be waiting. And that’s what the Hat arranged-lie detector, relay teams from Homicide, and even the police psychiatrist were soon waiting at the neighborhood station. But we weren’t invited to the party.
“You boys have done a nice job,” the Hat said, a tiny kiss of a smile puckering, his eyes gazing sleepily in the shadow of his pearl-gray fedora’s brim. He had one hand on my shoulder, and the other on Fowley’s. “But I think you have all the coverage you need to make the morning edition.”
“Bull fucking shit, Harry,” Fowley said, “I’m going over to Hollenbeck!”
That had been the point, after all, of leaving the rest of the press stranded downtown.
The Hat lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You can come sit in the press room, if you like… and I’ll give you a report or two, as things progress-but that’s all you get.”
Fowley sighed and nodded. That was better than nothing.
The Hat slipped an arm around my shoulder and walked me inside the Palmer garage, where Manley’s tan Studebaker was still parked. He apparently wanted a quiet moment.
“Is there anything you’ve picked up on,” the Hat asked, nodding toward Fowley, out in the drive frowning at us like a kid who didn’t get invited to play ball, “that may have eluded that esteemed member of the fourth estate you’ve been tagging along with?”
I tried to think of a bone I could toss Hansen-and promptly told him he needed to talk to Mrs. Elvera French and her daughter Dorothy down San Diego way. Manley would soon spill those names, anyway, so it didn’t hurt anything.
The Hat jotted that information down, nodding, saying, “You were a good boy, Nate-you didn’t give up that piece of information I gave you.”
He meant that nasty piece of business-that Elizabeth Short had eaten, or been fed, human feces before her murder-which was one of the three pieces of key evidence he was keeping up his sleeve.
“I may be dumb, Harry, but not dumb enough to cross you.”
“Good.”
“So how about another? You could give me one more, you know, and still have one left.”
He puckered up another smile. “Think it would help you in your investigation?”
“Who knows? Sure couldn’t hurt.”
I didn’t expect this request to work, but the Hat surprised me.
“All right, Nate… here’s another evil morsel for you. A piece of skin was carved out of Elizabeth Short’s outer left thigh… it had a tattoo of a rose on it.”
“I guess I knew that already,” I said, scratching my head, “or should have. I noticed at the crime scene some flesh had been cut away from her thigh. And I suppose you learned she had a rose tattoo there, from her Santa Barbara arrest record.”
“Well, yes and no. Actually, we found the missing piece of flesh with the tattoo on it.”
“Found it? Where in hell?”
“That’s the second piece of undisclosed evidence I’m going to share with you, Nate, and you alone.”
“Where you found it?”
“Yes, where we found it. That is, where the coroner found it.”
“Where, goddamn it?”
“Stuck up that poor girl’s ass.”
I was thinking about that when the Hat tipped his hat, said, “You go on home, Nate-there’ll be no pictures over at Hollenbeck… By the way, thanks for calling your friend Ness for me.”
“Oh-have you talked to him?”
“Yes, you’ll probably be hearing from him, soon. He’s coming out by train tomorrow, to consult with us on the case.”
“Your idea or his?”
“Sort of mutual… Good night, Nate.”
So I had gone home-that is, to the bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel-and my wife, already in bed and half- asleep, had the same news for me: not the rose tattoo stuck up Beth Short, no-that Eliot had called and wanted me to pick him up at Union Station tomorrow evening at 7 P. M. He’d left no further message.
Peggy told me her long and busy first day as a Hollywood bit player had been wonderful-she did not seem to have any residual animosity from our argument, yesterday-then rolled over in bed and began to softly snore. And, for the first time, on this bizarre honeymoon of ours, a day (and night) passed without our making love. The next morning, she was up and off to the studio before I woke, courtesy of a car Paramount sent around.
So now I was again sitting in the Examiner conference room, sipping coffee, just Fowley and me and the wall-eyed, eagle-pussed Richardson.
Word from Hollenbeck Station was not promising, where Robert “Red” Manley was concerned; as a human being, Red stunk-as a suspect, he also stunk. Ray Pinker had administered a polygraph, which he deemed “inconclusive.” A second test, with which Harry the Hat himself helped Pinker (presumably probing about those three undisclosed items), tended to substantiate Manley’s story. And Manley’s alibis were looking solid.
But that was fine with Richardson; he didn’t want this case solved that quickly, anyway-it was selling too many papers.
“Those bags you boys led us to were a gold mine,” Richardson said, referring to the two suitcases (and hatbox) at the Greyhound Bus Station that Manley had told us about.
I said, “You got to them before the cops?”
“Fowley called me with that tidbit from Hollenbeck Station. I sent Sid Hughes over.” Richardson grinned as he matched a cigarette. “It’s amazing what you can buy in this town for ten dollars.”
Shifting in my hard chair, I said, “I don’t mean to be a stick-in-the-mud, but just how much of this tampering and withholding of evidence can you get away with?”
The city editor waved that off. “I called Donahoe over at Homicide, first thing this morning, and he was tickled pink to get the stuff-Fat Ass Brown picked it all up half an hour ago.”
I sipped my coffee. “After you went through it all.”
He leaned both hands on the table, beaming at me, slow eye swimming into place. “Little elves at the Examiner workshop sat up all night, gleaning info out of that junk.”
