Calm Kikey: 'Some new shvoogies, right? All I know's what I read in the papers.'
Bud: 'Maybe, but if it wasn't some new niggers, then that purple car by the Nite Owl was a plant. Take care, guys. If you see Deuce, tell him to call me at the Bureau.'
Calm Johnny tap-tap-tapped.
Calm Kikey coughed, popped sweat.
Calm Bud, not so calm: out to the car, around the corner to a pay phone. The P.C. Bell police number, one long fucking wait.
'Uh, yes, who's requesting?'
'Sergeant White, LAPD. It's a trace job.'
'For when, Sergeant?'
'«For now». It's a homicide priority, private lines and pay phones at a restaurant. «It's now».'
'One second, please.'
Transfer click-click-clicks-a new woman. 'Sergeant, what exactly do you need?'
No Calm Bud. 'Abe's Noshery at Pico and Veteran. All calls out on all phones for the next fifteen goddamn minutes. Lady, don't hump me on this.'
'We can't initiate actual traces, Officer.'
'Just who the calls are to, goddamn it.'
'Well, if it «is» a homicide priority. What is your number now?'
Bud read off the phone. 'GRanite 48112.'
Harumph. 'Fifteen minutes then. And next time allow us more operating leeway.'
Bud hung up-Dudley Dudley Dudley Dudley Dudley-hard time cut off by «brrrinnngg». He grabbed the phone, fumbled it, cradled it. 'Yeah?'
'Two calls. One to DUnkirk 32758-a Miss Dot Rothstein holds that number. The second to AXminster 46811, the residence of a Mr. Dudley L. Smith.'
Bud dropped the receiver. The clerk babbled from someplace safe and calm that he'd never see again-no Lynn, no safety in a badge.
Captain Dudley Liam Smith for the Nite Owl.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Jack Vincennes confessed.
He confessed to knocking up a girl at the St. Anatole's Orphan Home, to killing Mr. and Mrs. Harold J. Scoggins. He confessed to tank-jobbing Bill McPherson with a hot little nigger girl, to planting dope on Charlie Parker, to shaking down hopheads for «Hush-Hush» Magazine. He tried to jerk out of bed and raise his hands to form the Stations of the Cross. He babbled something like hub rachmones, Mickey, and bump bump bump bump the cute train. He confessed to beating up junkies, to running bag for Ellis Loew. He begged his wife to forgive him for fucking whores who looked like women in dirty picture books. He confessed that he loved dope and was unfit to love Jesus.
Karen Vincennes stood by weeping: she couldn't listen, she had to listen. Ed tried to shoo her out-she wouldn't let him. He called the Bureau from outside Arrowhead; Fisk gave him the word: Pierce Patchett shot and killed last night, his mansion torched, burned to the ground. Fireman had discovered Vincennes in the backyard-smoke inhalation, rips in his bulletproof vest. They got him to Central Receiving, a doctor took a blood sample. The results: Trashcan on a test flight, a heroin/antipsychotic drug compound. He'd live, he'd be fine-when the OD in his system flushed out.
A nurse swabbed Vincennes' face; Karen fretted Kleenex. Ed checked Fisk's memo: 'Inez Soto called. No info on R.D. $ dealings. R.D. suspicious of queries???-she was cryptic-D.W.'
Ed crumpled it, tossed it. Vincennes went in barefoot-while he was shacked with Lynn. Somebody killed Patchett, left them both to burn.
Burned like Exley father and son-Bud White holding the torch.
He couldn't look at Karen.
'Captain, I've got something.'
Fisk in the hallway. Ed walked over, led him away from the door. 'What is it?'
'Nort Layman completed the autopsy. Patchett's cause of death was five.30-30 slugs fired from two different rifles. Ray Pinker ran ballistics tests and came up with a match to an old Riverside County bulletin. May of '55, unsolved with no leads, I checked. Two men gunned down outside a tavern. It looked like a gangland job.'
All coming down to the heroin. 'That's all you've got?'
'No. Bud White tore up a dope den in Chinatown and beat three Chinamen half to death. He came in asking questions, badged them and went crazy. One of them ID'd his personnel photo. Thad Green called l.A. on it, and I caught the squeal. Pickup order, sir? I know you want him and Chief Green said it's your call.'
Ed almost laughed. 'No, no pickup order.'
'Sir?'
'I said no, so cut it off there. And you and Kleckner do this for me. Contact Miller Stanton, Max Pelts, Timmy Valburn and Billy Dieterling. Have them come to my office tonight at 8:00 for questioning. Tell them I'm the investigating officer, and if they want no publicity, then bring no lawyers. And get me Homicide's file on the old Loren Atherton case. Seal it, Sergeant. I don't want you to look at it.'
'Sir…'
Ed turned away. Karen in the doorway, dry-eyed. 'Do you think Jack did those things?'
'Yes.'
'He musm't know that I know. Will you promise not to tell him?'
Ed nodded, looked in the room. The Big V begged for communion.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
A file room at the main DMV- boxes stacked shoulder-high. A confirmation search-a riff on Johnny and Kikey's last hink. Riff in, out, back, around-he was so high he could think it through and prowl registration records at the same time.
Make Stomp, Teitlebaum and Lee Vachss for the Nite Owl triggers; make them the shooter gang bumping upstart mobsters and Cohen franchise holders. Deuce Perkins was part of the gang-the others didn't know he beat hookers to death-they'd consider it amateur shit, wouldn't tolerate it. Dudley was the leader-he couldn't be anything else. All his job offer stuff was a try at recruiting him; the Lamar Hinton roust was Dud frosting out loose ends on the Patchett side of things-make Patchett and Smith some kind of K.A.'s, make Hinton dead, Breuning and Carlisle part of the gang. 'Contain,' 'Contained,' 'Containment,' 'Profit Dispensation.' Call it Dudley trying to control the L.A. rackets-and pin the Nite Owl on a new bunch of jigs.
Bud tore through boxes: auto registrations, early April '53. Schoolboy thinkm he figured the car by the Nite Owl was a plant; the shotguns in Coates' car, the shells in Griffith Park, both plants-the killers followed the case, got lucky on the Merc, found some boogies to take the heat. Wrong-LAPD conspirators were in on the job. They read crime reports, got hipped to some joyriding spooks firing shotguns-lay the onus on them- they figured the arresting officers would kill them, case closed.
So they got themselves a car that matched the crime report description. They made sure it was spotted near the Nite Owl. They wouldn't steal a car-cops wouldn't risk a late night roust. They didn't buy a purple car-they bought a different colored one and painted it.
Bud kept working. No logic to the file mess: Mercs, Chevies, Caddies, L.A., Sacramento, Frisco, whoever registered the car would've used a phony name. One luck-out: the registers' race, DOB and physical stats listed on cards attached to the initial purchase carbons. Facts to eliminate against, like he learned in school: '48-'50 Mercs, Southern California purchasers, stats that matched to Dudley, Stomp, Vachss, Teitlebaum, Perkins, Carlisle and Breuning. Hours of digging, a pile inches thick-then a strange one that felt warm.
1948 primer-gray Merc coupe, purchased April 10, 1953. Register: Margaret Louise March, W.F., DOB 7/23/18, brown and brown, 5 '9', 215 lbs. Register's address: 1804 East Oxford, Los Angeles. Phone number: NOrmandie 32758.
Warm to scalding-Fat Dot Rothstein's specs. Oxford ran north-south-not east-west. The call to Dot from the Noshery- DU-32758-the dumb dyke tacked her own number onto a different exchange.
And bought herself some purple paint.
Bud whooped, punched the air, kicked boxes. Two cases made in one day-if anyone believed him. All dressed up and no one to kill. Circumstantial Dudley evidence-no hard proof. Dudley too well placed to fall, nobody who cared like he did.
Except Exley.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
A stakeout on the house he grew up in. He couldn't go in and question his father; he couldn't ask for his help. He couldn't tell the man he confided secrets to a woman-and gave a brutal enemy the means to patricide. He brought the Atherton file with him-there was nothing in it he didn't already know, the man who made the smut and killed Sid Hudgens was intrinsic to the Atherton murders, maybe the killer himself-truths Preston Exley would dispute out of pride. He couldn't go in; he couldn't stop thinking. He counted memories instead.
His father bought the house for his mother; it was really just a sop to his pride-the Exleys flee the middle class grandly. They never had Christmas lights on the lawn-Preston Exley said it was lowlife. Thomas fell off balconies-and had the style not to cry. His father threw him a 'back from the war' party-only the mayor, the City Council and LAPD men who could further his career were invited.
Art De Spain walked to his car, looking frail, one arm bandaged. Ed watched him drive off, his father's man, his Dutch uncle. Memory: Art said he wasn't cut out to be a detective.
The house loomed big and cold. Ed drove back to the hospital.
Trash was up, giving Fisk a statement. Ed watched from the doorway.
'… and I was playing off Exley's script. I don't remember exactly what I said, but Patchett pulled out a gun and shot me. That shit piece Exley gave me jammed, and Patchett slammed me with a hypo. Then I heard shots and 'No, Abe, no, Lee, no.' And now you know as much as I do.'
