convictions. But so far his drive to crack criminal knowledge hadn't been challenged--much less sated.
Ed walked down to the parking lot, sleep coming on. 'Quack, quack,' behind him--hands turned him around.
A man in a kid's mask--Danny Duck. A left-right knocked off his glasses; a kidney shot put him down. Kicks to the ribs drove him into a ball.
Ed curled hard, caught kicks in the face. A flashbulb popped; two men walked away: one quacking, one laughing. Easy IDs: Dick Stensland's bray, Bud White's football limp. Ed spat blood, swore payback.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Russ Millard addressed Ad Vice squad 4--the topic pornography.
'Picture-book smut, gentlemen. There's been a bunch of it found at collateral crime scenes lately: narcotics, bookmaking and prostitution collars. Normally this kind of stuff is made in Mexico, so it's not our jurisdiction. Normally it's an organized crime sideline, because the big mobs have the money to manufacture it and the connections to get it distributed. But Jack Dragna's been deported, Mickey Cohen's in prison and probably too puritanical anyway, and Mo Jahelka's foundering on his own. Stag pix aren't Jack Whalen's style--he's a bookie looking to get his hands on a Vegas casino. And the stuff that's surfaced is too high quality for the L.A. area print mills: Newton Street Vice rousted them, they're clean, they just don't have the facilities to make magazines of this quality. But the backdrops in the pictures indicate L.A. venue: you can see what looks like the Hollywood Hills out some windows, and the furnishings in a lot of the places look like your typical cheap Los Angeles apartments. So our job is to track this filth to its source and arrest whoever made it, posed for it and distributed it.'
Jack groaned: the Great Jerk-off Book Caper of 1953. The other guys looked hot to glom the smut, maybe fuel up their wives. Millard popped a Digitalis. 'Newton Street dicks questioned everyone at the collateral rousts, and they all denied possessing the stuff. Nobody at the print mills knows where it was made. The mags have been shown around the Bureau and our station vice squads, and we've got zero IDs on the posers. So, gentlemen, look yourself.'
Henderson and Kifka had their hands out; Stathis looked ready to drool. Millard passed the smut over. 'Vincennes, is there someplace you'd rather be?'
'Yeah, Captain. Narcotics Division.'
'Oh? Anyplace else?'
'Maybe working whores with squad two.'
'Make a major case, Sergeant. I'd love to sign you out of here.'
Oohs, ahhs, cackles, oo-la-las; three men shook their heads no. Jack grabbed the books.
Seven mags, high-quality glossy paper, plain black covers. Sixteen pages apiece: photos in color, black and white. Two books ripped in half, explicit pictures: men and women, men and men, girls and girls. Insertion close- ups: straight, queer, dykes with dildoes. The Hollywood sign out windows; Murphy-bed fuck shots, cheap pads: stucco-swirled walls, the hot plate on a table that came with every bachelor flop in L.A. Par for the stag-book course--but the posers weren't glassy-eyed hopheads, they were good-looking, well-built young kids--nude, costumed: Elizabethan garb, Jap kimonos. Jack put the ripped mags back together for a bingo: Bobby Inge--a male prostitute he'd popped for reefer--blowing a guy in a whalebone corset.
Millard said, 'Anybody familiar, Vincennes?'
An angle. 'Nothing, Cap. But where did you get these torn-up jobs?'
'They were found in a trash bin behind an apartment house in Beverly Hills. The manager, an old woman named Loretta Downey, found them and called the Beverly Hills P.D. They called us.'
'You got an address on the building?'
Millard checked an evidence form. '9849 Charleville. Why?'
'I just thought I'd take that part of the job. I've got good connections in Beverly Hills.'
'Well, they do call you 'Trashcan.' All right, follow up in Beverly Hills. Henderson, you and Kifka try to locate the arrestees in the crime reports and try to find out again where they got the stuff--I'll get you carbons in a minute. Tell them there'll be no additional charges filed if they talk. Stathis, take that filth by the costume supply companies and see if you can get a matchup to their inventory, then fmd out who rented the costumes the . . . performers were wearing. Let's try it this way first--if we have to go through mugshots for IDs we'll lose a goddamn week. Dismissed, gentlemen. Roll, Vincennes. And don't get sidetracked--this is Ad Vice, not Narco.'
o o o
Jack rolled: R&I, Bobby Inge's file, his angle flushed out: Beverly Hills, see the old biddy, see what he could find out and concoct a hot lead that told him what he already knew--Bobby Inge was guilty of conspiracy to distribute obscene material, a felony bounce. Bobby would snitch his co-stars and the guys who took the pix--one major class transfer requirement dicked.
The day was breezy, cool; Jack took Olympic straight west. He kept the radio going; a newscast featured Ellis Loew: budget cuts at the D.A.'s Office. Ellis droned on; Jack flipped the dial--a kibosh on thoughts of Bill McPherson. He caught a happy Broadway tune, thought about him anyway.
_Hush-Hush_ was his idea: McPherson liked colored poon, Sid Hudgens loved writing up jig-fuckers. Ellis Loew knew about it, approved of it, considered it another favor on deposit. McPherson's wife filed for divorce; Loew was satisfied--he took a lead in the polls. Dudley Smith wanted more--and set up the tank job.
An easy parlay:
Dot Rothstein knew a colored girl doing a stretch at Juvenile Hall: soliciting beefs, Dot and the girl kept a thing sizzling whenever she did time. Dot got the little twist sprung; Dudley and his ace goon Mike Breuning fixed up a room at the Lilac View Motel: the most notorious fuck pad on the Sunset Strip, county ground where the city D.A. would be just another john caught with his pants down. McPherson attended a Dining Car soiree; Dudley had Marvell Wilkins--fourteen, dark, witchy-- waiting outside. Breuning alerted the West Hollywood Sheriff's and the press; the Big V dropped chloral hydrates in McPherson's last martini. Mr. D.A. left the restaurant woozy, swerved his Cadillac a mile or so, pulled over at Wilshire and Alvarado and passed out. Breuning cruised up behind him with the bait: Marvell in a cocktail gown. He took the wheel of McPherson's Caddy, hustled Bad Bill and the girl to their tryst spot--the rest was political history.
Ellis Loew wasn't told--he figured he just got lucky. Dot sent Marvell down to Tijuana, all expenses paid-- skim off the Woman's Jail budget. McPherson lost his wife and his job; his statch rape charge was dismissed-- Marvell couldn't be located. Something snapped inside the Bigggg V--
The snap: one shitty favor over the line. The reason: Dot Rothstein in the ambulance October '47--she knew, Dudley probably knew. If they knew, the game had to be played so the rest of the world wouldn't know--so Karen wouldn't.
He'd been her hero a solid year; somehow the bit got real. He stopped sending the Scoggins kids money, closing out his debt at forty grand--he needed cash to court Karen, being with her gave him some distance on the Malibu Rendezvous. Joan Morrow Loew stayed bitchy; Welton and the old lady grudgingly accepted him--and Karen loved him so hard it almost hurt. Working Ad Vice hurt--the job was a snore, he hot-dogged on dope every time he got a shot. Sid Hudgens didn't call so much--he wasn't a Narco dick now. After the McPherson gig he was glad--he didn't know if he could pull another shakedown.
Karen had her own lies going--they helped his hero bit play true. Trust fund, beach pad paid for by Daddy, grad school. Dilettante stuff: he was thirty-eight, she was twenty-three, in time she'd figure it out. She wanted to marry him; he resisted; Ellis Loew as an in-law meant bagman duty until he dropped dead. He knew why his hero role worked: Karen was the audience he'd always wanted to impress. He knew what she could take, what she couldn't; her love had shaped his performance so that all he had to do was act natural--and keep certain secrets hidden.
Traffic snagged; Jack turned north on Doheny, west on Charleville. 9849--a two-story Tudor--stood a block off Wilshire. Jack double-parked, checked mailboxes.
Six slots: Loretta Downey, five other names--three Mr. & Mrs., one man, one woman. Jack wrote them down, walked to Wilshire, found a pay phone. Calls to R&I and the DMV police information line; two waits. No criminal records on the tenants; one standout vehicle sheet: Christine Bergeron, the mailbox 'Miss,' four reckless- driving convictions, no license revocation. Jack got extra stats off the clerk: the woman was thirty-seven years old, her occupation was listed as actress/car hop, as of 7/52 she was working at Stan's Drive-in in Hollywood.
Instincts: carhops don't live in Beverly Hills; maybe Christine Bergeron hopped some bones to stretch the rent. Jack walked back to 9849, knocked on the door marked 'Manager.'
