“Well.”
“He’s got this crazy reputation, right? Screw-loose killer? Do you believe it?”
I shrugged. “Not entirely.”
“Do you think Benny or me, you think we would kill somebody just for the sheer fuckin’ hell of it? Would I stick icepicks in some person, just to torture them?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, thank you. Thank you very fuckin’ much.” He was rubbing the powder in. His eyes were clenched tight in the shadow of the Borsalino brim. “I can tell you I never killed a man, or had a man killed, who didn’t the fuck deserve killing by the standards of our way of life. The same is true of Benny, and the same is true of Jack Dragna.”
I could hardly believe my ears-Mickey Cohen defending Jack Dragna.
“Dragna was going to have you killed, Mick!”
“From his vantage, I deserve it!” Cohen selected a blue bottle of cologne from the toiletry troops and dabbed some behind either ear. “I took business away from him! I stole his prestige! Tell me, Heller, when did you ever see any mobster bump a civilian? What did this good-looking piece of ass, God rest her soul, do to deserve that lousy fuckin’ fate? Not a damn thing!”
“Then who did do it, Mick? Who marked Elizabeth Short as an informer, when she wasn’t one? Just to warn an informer off?”
Carefully, Cohen returned the cologne bottle to its position. “Hell, I don’t know. You’re the detective. Who else would benefit from shutting Savarino up? Anyway, Dragna’s old school-he wouldn’t have the stomach for a kill like that.”
“Are you sure? The sex-crime aspect of it sent the cops down the wrong path.”
He gave me a brief Bronx cheer. “The only way that coulda happened was if Dragna ordered this girl killed, and some goom-bah went off his noodle, and got carried away havin’ a little too much sick fun… In which case, Dragna woulda knocked this boy in the head. There’da been some Dragna gangster turn up dead in a ditch, and there ain’t been any.”
The bathroom floor, around his feet, was carpeted with talcum powder. He used a towel to rub some of the powder off, then looked at his naked reflection and held out his arms, as if in welcome.
“Now I can get dressed,” Cohen said.
The powder crunched under his feet as he walked bare-ass-but-for-his-Borsalino into the bedroom, where- after pausing to bend and pet and exchange sloppy kisses with Tuffy (none of which was pretty to see)-he took the hat off, set it on the top of the dresser, and from a drawer selected a pair of monogrammed silk shorts.
“The rumor,” Cohen said, climbing into them, “is Mark Lansom was trying to get the Short kid in the sack and havin’ no luck whatsoever. So he loses his temper and kills her gorgeous ass. Now, at the same time, Fat Ass Brown is supposedly into Lansom for five grand-and agrees to help cover up the crime, if Lansom wipes the money slate clean.”
“Is that what you think happened, Mick?”
Cohen shook his head. “Sounds like horseshit to me. First, Lansom don’t got the balls. Second, the bastard is swimmin’ in quality tail, so why’s he chasin’ some little cock tease? But, anyway, that’s what I’m hearin’, so maybe you should know.”
Soon he was in gray silk socks and a white silk shirt with a red silk tie. He curled a finger for me to follow him into a walk-in closet smaller than New Jersey where he selected a blue-gray modified zoot suit with wide, long lapels and tapered trousers, from hundreds of similar suits of various shades hanging there.
“I never wear a suit after it’s been dry-cleaned,” he said, with a little shudder, leading me out of the closet, me carrying his suit on a hanger for him. “Makes me itch… After a while, I give ’em to poor people.”
“Mick, I still want to hear Dragna’s version of this.”
Cohen smiled tightly, put a hand on my shoulder. “You go see Dragna, if you like, talk to him about this, but Heller, I guarantee you one thing: you’ll be dead in a vacant lot. No fancy cut job, just a bullet behind the ear, which will do the fuckin’ trick, don’t you think?”
“I can handle myself with gangsters, Mick.”
He hacked one more laugh, as he stepped into his trousers, then looped in a black leather belt. “This ain’t Chicago, Heller. These people got no history with you, no respect for you or dead Frank Nitti.”
From a drawer he removed a snub-nose Colt. 38 in a small holster, which he snapped onto the back of his belt, so that the gun rode his spine. Then he tapped my chest with two fingers; for some strange reason, he smelled strongly of talcum powder.
“You start sniffin’ around Jack Dragna, tryin’ to connect him with the worst, most fiendish murder since Jack the Ripper slashed them limey sluts, and you’re gonna be Jim Richardson’s next juicy headline… Help me on with my coat.”
I did.
“Speakin’ of juice, wait’ll you taste my fresh-squeezed. Gotta apologize, though, we yammered so much, I don’t have time for breakfast. I’ll have Johnny show you to the kitchen-just tell the chef you want my special lox- and-onion omelet.”
“I think maybe I lost my appetite, Mickey.”
The natty little ape glanced over his shoulder at me, snugging the Borsalino back on. “Don’t offend me, Heller. I don’t like that.”
It was delicious.
21
For a change Jim Richardson wasn’t pacing, that manic engine of his apparently having finally run down. He sat slumped at the head of the conference room table at the Examiner — he and I were alone in the narrow chamber-a cigarette drooping from slack lips. The city room editor was staring woefully at me with both eyes, even the slow one.
“This fuckin’ story is runnin’ out of steam,” he said.
I had just reported what I’d learned from my conversations with Granny and Mark Lansom at the Florentine Gardens, including Lansom’s missing address book. I also passed along what Harry the Hat had told Eliot and me about the sorry state of the LAPD’s investigation, all of which Richardson already seemed to know. Anything of value I’d learned, yesterday, I of course withheld-the McCadden Cafe group’s connection to Elizabeth Short, in particular; and certainly nothing about Welles, or Jack Dragna, who I had decided-on Mickey Cohen’s sage advice- not to bother seeing. Dragna seemed not only a dead end, but a potentially deadly one.
“There’s a lot going on,” I said, shrugging. “Should be plenty of legs left in this thing.”
Richardson shook his head mournfully. “Too many goddamn leads-too many boy friends, too many bars she frequented, too many lovesick letters she wrote to too many nobodies.”
“None of your newshounds have turned up anything interesting?”
“Best thing we got lately is the Dahlia was seen at numerous joints in the company of a big ‘bossy’ blonde.” He crushed out his cigarette in a glass tray, started up another one, then added archly, “If you can believe the cab drivers and bartenders and lushes who shared this hot information.”
The bossy blonde was probably Helen Hassau.
“When was this,” I asked, “that she was seen with a blonde?”
“Just two days before the body turned up. I hear the cops are starting to think Miss Short was a lesbian, and are hitting the dyke bars. The Hat tell you as much?”
“That he didn’t mention.” Didn’t surprise me that Hansen was holding out on me like I was holding out on him.
“Fowley’s still chasing soldiers up at Camp Cooke,” Richardson said, shaking his head. “So many leads, and none of ’em cough up a clue.”
“It’s still early, Jim.”
“Our readers are getting bogged down in this unproductive crap. I didn’t want the cops to solve this
