'I don't know.'
'Does Pierce Patchett sell a variety of illegal items through a service known as Fleur-de-Lis?'
'I don't know.'
A huge lie. Hink on her face: veins pulsing.
Exley: 'Does Dr. Terry Lux perform plastic surgery on Patchett's prostitutes in order to increase their resemblance to movie stars?'
Veins smoothing out. 'Yes.'
'Is Patchett in fact a long-term procurer of expensive call girls?'
'Yes.'
'Did Patchett distribute expensive and artfully produced pornography during the spring of 1953?'
'I don't know.'
White knuckles. Jack grabbed a notepad, wrote: 'Patchett a chem whiz. L.B.'s lying & I think she's on dope to counter pentothal. Get blood sample.'
'Miss Bracken, does--'
Jack passed the note. Exley scanned it, passed it to Pinker. Pinker fixed up a spike.
'Miss Bracken, does Patchett possess secret files stolen from Sid Hudgens?'
'I don't kn--'
Pinker grabbed Lynn's arm, fed the needle. Lynn jerked up; Exley grabbed her. Pinker pulled out the spike; Exley pinned Lynn to his desk. She thrashed and kicked--Fisk got behind her and cuffed her. Spitting now--she caught Exley in the face. Fisk wrestled her out to the hall.
Exley wiped his face--red, mottled. 'I wasn't sure myself. I thought she might have been confused.'
Jack handed him _Whisper_. 'I knew how she should answer better than you. Captain, you should see this.'
Scary: that red face, those eyes. Exley read the piece, tore the rag in half. 'White did this. You go up to San Bernardino and talk to Sue Lefferts' mother. I'm going to break that whore.'
o o o
San Berdoo in an uproar: Exley breaking that whore as a slide show. 'Hilda Lefferts' in the phone book, directions, the house: white shingles, a cinderblock add-on.
A granny type watering the lawn. Jack parked, taped up the rip job on _Whisper_. The old girl saw him and rabbited--a run for the door.
He ran over. She squealed, 'Let my Susie rest in peace!'
Jack shoved _Whisper_ in her face. 'An L.A. policeman talked to you, right? Big man about forty? You told him your daughter had a boyfriend who looked like Duke Cathcart right before the Nite Owl. He told her 'get used to calling me 'Duke.'' The policeman showed you mugshots and you couldn't make the boyfriend. Is this true? You read this and tell me.'
She read, fast, squinting away sunlight. 'But he said he was a policeman, not a private detective. Those were police-type pictures he showed me, and it wasn't my fault that I couldn't identify Susie's beau. And I want to go on record as stating that Susie was a virgin when she died.'
'Ma'am, I'm sure she was--'
'And I want it to go on record that that policeman or whatever checked underneath the new wing on my house and found not a thing amiss. Young man, you're a policeman, aren't you?'
Jack shook his head--it felt sludgy. 'Lady, what are you teffing me?'
'I'm telling you that Mr. Private Eye Policeman or whatever crawled around under my house two months or so ago, because I told him Susan Nancy's beau did the same thing right after this ruckus they had with this other fellow right before that Nite Owl thing that you people keep tormenting me over, may Susie and the other victims rest in peace. All he found were rodents, not signs of foul play, so there.'
So there.
Granny pointed to a crawlspace flush with the ground--so there.
It fucking could not be. Bud White did not have the brains to let a card that strong sit.
Jack took a flashlight down under--Hilda Lefferts stood watching, so there. Dust, rot, mothball stink--light on dirt, rats, rat eyes glowing. Burlap, mothballs, gristle-caked bones, a skull with a hole between the eyes.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Ed watched Lynn Bracken through the two-way.
Kleckner was questioning her, a nice guy set-up for Mr. Bad Guy--himself. She'd been repentothaled; Ray Pinker was testing her blood. Three hours in a cell hadn't broken her--she was still lying with style.
Ed turned the speaker up. Kleckner: 'I'm not saying that I don't believe you, I'm just saying my policeman's experience has shown me that pimps usually hate women, so I don't buy Patchett as such a philanthropist.'
'You have to look at his background, how he lost a little girl to crib death. I'm sure your policeman's mentality can grasp the cause and effect, even if you can't accept it.'
'Let's talk about his background then. You've described Patchett as a fmancier with L.A. roots going back thirty years. You've said that he puts deals together, so be specific about the deals.'
Lynn sighed--pure panache. 'Movie financing deals, real estate and contracting deals. Here's one for all you movie fans in the audience: Pierce told me he'd financed a few of Raymond Dieterling's early shorts.'
Cozy: Bud White's girlfriend's pimp knew Preston Exley's good buddy. Kleckner changed tape. Ed studied the whore.
Beautiful--a good part of it hung on the fact that she wasn't perfect. Her nose was too pointed; she had crease lines on her forehead. Big shoulders, big hands--beautifully formed, all the more stunning for being large. Blue eyes that probably danced when a man said the right thing; she probably thought Bud White had primitive integrity and respected him for not trying to impress her with gifts he didn't have. She kept her clothing subtle because she knew it would make more of an impression on the people she wanted to impress; she thought most men were weak and trusted her brains to slide her through anything. Suppositions leading up to a hunch: couple her brains with the counterdope in her system and you got a pentothal-immune witness dissembling with impunity--and style.
'Captain, you got a call. It's Vincennes.'
Fisk had his phone, stretched to the end of the cord. Ed took it. 'Vincennes?'
'Yeah, and listen close, 'cause that scandal sheet story was kosher and there's lots more.'
'White?'
'Yeah, White was that phony P.I., and he braced old lady Lefferts two months or so ago. She told him that story of her daughter's boyfriend who looked like Duke Cathcart and another doozie.'
'_What?_'
'Just listen. A couple weeks before the Nite Owl, a neighbor saw Susie and the boyfriend alone at the house and heard them get into a ruckus with another guy. The boyfriend was seen crawling around under the house later that same day. Now, when White braced the old lady, he called P.C. Bell and checked their records for toll calls from the house to L.A. mid-March to mid-April '53. I did the same thing and got three tollers, all to a pay phone in Hollywood near the Nite Owl. Now, you think that's hot, you--'
'Goddammit--'
'Captain, _listen_. White crawled around under the house and told granny there was nothing there. I went under and found a stiff, wrapped in mothballs to kill the stink and a fucking bullet hole in the head. I got Doc Layman up to San Berdoo. He brought Duke Carthcart's prison dental file, the Coroner's Office copy. It was a perfect match. The first ID was bogus, off a partial plate, just like that article said. Fuck, I can't believe White put all this together and just left the stiff there. Captain, you there?'
Ed grabbed Fisk. 'Where's Bud White?'
Fisk looked scared. 'I heard he went up north with Dudley Smith. The Mann Sheriff's decided to kick loose on the Engleklings.'
Back to Trashcan. 'That article said the woman saw some mugs.'
'Yeah, White brought back some shots marked 'State Records Bureau.' Now we both know the state sets run light, so my guess is White didn't want to bring her down here to check our books. Anyway, she couldn't ID the boyfriend, and if the boyfriend was one of the Nite Owl stiffs we'll have him, 'cause Nort Layman took prison dental plate fragments out of his head back in '53. Bring her down? Show her our books?'
