Then, class act that I am, I stumbled back to bed and fell asleep next to her.
When I awoke, she was gone; and the next time I heard from her was in January, on the telephone, from a pay phone at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.
And the next time I saw her, she was nude, just as she’d been in my bed, only this time she was in two pieces, in a vacant lot on South Norton Avenue.
5
Fowley parked his blue Ford in the lot across from the gloomy-looking, five-story cream-colored stucco building at 11th and Broadway. The sun had finally banished the clouds and burned off the smog, making a reflective blur of the Examiner building, a huge American flag flapping above the main entrance, adding a splash of color and just the proper hint of hypocrisy.
Feeling shaky and sick and trying to hide it, I had suggested-as we’d rolled along Olympic Boulevard, heading to the Examiner — that we postpone our meeting with Fowley’s city editor, Richardson, since this hot new story had dropped in their laps.
“Not a chance in hell,” Fowley had said, grinning, cigarette bobbing. “Richardson says he’s more anxious than ever to talk to you. Hell, you’re our star photographer!”
Now we were crossing Broadway, on foot, navigating traffic, stepping over trolley tracks, the newspaper’s massive black printing presses looming through the big plate-glass windows that took up much of the Examiner’ s ground floor. Those presses, silent now, would soon roar to life with an extra edition, newsprint threading through at sixty miles an hour, headlines screaming of the “werewolf” killing.
I had made this appointment with the Examiner in hopes of getting myself some ink; but WEREWOLF SUSPECT IN CUSTODY — PRIVATE EYE KNEW VICTIM wasn’t what I had in mind.
Lavishly corniced brown-marble columns did their best to dominate the impressive lobby, competing with a vaulted ceiling across which strode gilded centuries-ago heroic figures-nobody ever accused publisher William Randolph Hearst of a light touch. After all that ostentation, a single, comically insufficient wrought-iron cage elevator awaited us. The two of us and the operator made a crowd.
“Why aren’t you out in Leimert Park,” I asked Fowley, the elevator grinding its way up to the third floor, “knocking on doors, looking for leads?”
“Richardson already sent out his foot soldiers,” Fowley said. “I think he’s got something else in mind for us.”
I didn’t like the sound of that: by “us” did Fowley mean himself and the rest of the city-room crew? Or did he mean… us?
Not anxious for the answer, I just followed the little reporter through a low-slung swinging gate across a nominal reception area, where he went in a door whose opaque glass window bore the black block letters CITY ROOM. The world beyond was a big, bustling one: thirty or more plastered-over steel bearing beams kept things open, despite the countless desks (often paired up and facing each other) where reporters and (with phone receivers cradled at their necks) rewrite men banged away at ancient machines that looked more like coffee grinders than typewriters. Against one wall, a pair of telephone operators spoke into horns sprouting from their chests, as they fielded constant incoming and outgoing calls at a red-light-flashing switchboard; teletypes machine-gunned out wire-service copy, only to be ripped free by attentive copy boys, while-in the midst of all this controlled chaos-blue-pencil-wielding proofreaders sat engrossed at their copy, like monks doing calligraphy. Cutting straight down the center was an aisle, a copy boy’s gauntlet (“Boy! Copy boy!”) from the news desk to the city desk which sat in front of a big window, on either side of which were wainscoted, glassed-in offices.
I knew city editor Jim Richardson a little, from the Peete case-he was feared by cub reporters, and respected by the veteran newshounds, a chainsmoking, mostly bald, bullnecked, self-proclaimed son of a bitch.
He was also wall-eyed. Richardson’s left eye had a weak muscle, and when he looked at you, it took half-a-second for the left eye to catch up with the right. The effect was no more eerie than seeing Karloff as the Frankenstein monster for the first time.
Richardson rose behind his desk and waved at us to follow him into a glassed-off editorial chamber. He barked at several other reporters, seated in the nearby bullpen, who trailed after him into the conference room. Fowley and I were the last ones in.
Everybody had taken a chair around the big, scarred table except Richardson himself, who was expectant-fathering at its head, lighting up a fresh cigarette off the butt of his previous one. While Fowley and the three other reporters were wearing their suits and ties and, in several instances, their hats, Richardson had long since removed his tie and the sleeves of his suspendered white shirt were rolled up over Popeye-powerful forearms.
“So we’re stuck with that fucking prima donna Hansen,” Richardson said, as if this were the middle and not the beginning of the discussion.
Fowley, not missing a beat, said, “The Hat made that clear at the scene-we try to go over his head to Donahoe, he’ll freeze us out. And you know what a weak sister Donahoe is.”
One of the reporters said, “Hey, this crime beat stuff is new to me, boss. What’s the story on Donahoe?”
“He just got transferred from Robbery,” Richardson said, grimacing, cigarette dangling. “Before that he was in Administration, doing what he does best-pushing paper. He doesn’t have a clue about pushing people-captain or not, Jack Donahoe’s no match for that hotdogging Hansen.”
“Too bad,” Fowley said, and the other reporters looked at him for more. Fowley gave it to them: “The boss here has done favors for Donahoe… could easily play him, if Harry the Hat was out of the way.”
“Well, he’s not gonna be out of the way,” Richardson said. He cast his eerie gaze around the room at us, the right eye leading, the left one eventually swimming into place. “But, goddamn it, this is our story. We found it, and we’re going to keep it, and turn it into the fucking crime of the century.”
“What if the victim turns out to be a hooker?” another of the reporters asked. “How do we make that the crime of the century?”
“Okay-let’s say she died a whore,” Richardson said, gesturing with open hands. “You don’t think she started out that way, do you? She was a good little girl once upon a time, some daddy’s sweet little girl, before she started banging for bucks, and suckin’ off sailors.”
Inside, I groaned.
“I still think it’s a hard sell, boss,” Fowley gently insisted.
“Boys,” Richardson said, slapping the table, making them jump, “Jack the Ripper killed whores back in a day when a whore was considered less than human. And look at the ink that crazy bastard got.”
Behind us, the door opened, and a guy with a black rubber apron, rubber gloves, and a distasteful expression came in carrying by his thumbs a dripping-wet print, a big one-11” by 14”. Grinning, eyes gleaming, Richardson pointed to the table like he was showing a bellboy where to put the room service tray.
“Put it down-lay it right down there,” he instructed the guy, who obeyed, and left.
The print lay there, dripping moisture like tears.
“Jesus,” somebody said.
It looked just as bad in black and white: the bisected body of a once beautiful girl, on grotesque display, in the weeds and grass.
The reporters had stood, gathering ’round to get a closer look-though Fowley and I kept our seats, having already had our share of close looks at this grim subject matter-and, hardened though they were to every disaster a major city might visit upon a human being, several gasped and they to a man sat back down, faces white as blistered skin.
“Take a good look, boys,” Richardson said, arms folded, rocking a little on his heels. “This is what you’re going to be working on, till I say different… Pretty photography, don’t you think? Nice work, Heller. Guess you bedroom dicks get a lot of practice shooting dames in the raw.”