On the other hand, if I kept quiet now, and the cops found out about the connection between us later, I could wind up breathing in more than a Camel cigarette, namely cyanide fumes at San Quentin.
Still… despite the jam I was potentially in-and the murdered girl’s attempt to shake me down-I felt my eyes welling up and throat getting lumpy, and I wasn’t catching cold, either, despite the nippy wind under the gray sky. I had liked this girl-she’d been nice to me, and not just sexually; sure, she’d been troubled, with more ambition than common sense, one of the legion of pretty girls who came west daily, looking to trade beauty for fame, hoping to be discovered-just not in a vacant lot.
More cops (from neighboring divisions), more reporters (from all five Los Angeles daily papers), arrived, as did numerous plain citizens; this desolate stretch of wired-off lots-previously populated chiefly by weeds and telephone poles-was suddenly teeming. The circus had come to this neighborhood once again, just not Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey this time. Onlookers, kept back by cops, stood on top of their parked cars to get a gander.
Oddly, for such a mob, a quiet settled over the scene. People were talking, sure, but with voices low, respectful, as if this were visitation at a funeral home.
Before long, a plainclothes dick from nearby University Station-Lieutenant Haskins-took charge, casually informing Aggie that this would be his case. That proved to be wishful thinking.
Aggie had moved away from the crime scene and was interviewing a little boy on a bike from the neighborhood when an unmarked midnight-blue Chevy sedan arrived and parked, barricade-style, to help block traffic.
Even before they climbed out, I pegged them as homicide dicks from Central Division; no great deduction on my part: it happened I knew one of them a little-again from the Peete case-and this was not a lucky break for me. Aggie, distracted by the extreme nature of the slaying, had glossed over the presence of a private detective at this crime scene; Detective Harry Hansen would not.
On the force for over twenty years, better than half of them working out of Homicide Division, Hansen stepped out from the rider’s side and just seemed to keep coming: tall, tanned, lanky, in his late forties, he had an oblong, deeply grooved face with deceptively sleepy eyes, a long blunt nose and a pursed kiss of a mouth. The big redheaded Dane-who supervised most significant L.A. homicide investigations-had a reputation as the most dapper cop in the department, which his wardrobe this morning lived up to: tailored dark blue suit, white-and-shades-of-blue-striped silk tie, and dark-banded powder-blue snapbrim fedora.
The fedora-probably a fifty-dollar number-was his trademark, and he was seldom seen out of one, even indoors-in part, it was said, because he was balding. The newspapers liked to call Hansen “Mr. Homicide,” a sobriquet rumored to have been suggested by Hansen himself; but what he was called on the street, by both cops and crooks, was Harry the Hat.
I didn’t recognize his partner, who’d been driving. Whoever he was, this plainclothes dick was not the second most dapper cop on the force: a prematurely gray, thirtyish, round-faced, chunky character in an off-the-rack slept-in-looking brown suit with red-and-white-dotted tie, with a rumpled brown fedora shoved back on his head, revealing a hairline that had receded to the next county.
The Hat scowled, glancing down and around at the cigarette butts and spent black flashbulbs littering the street and sidewalk. Maybe because his eyes were lowered, he didn’t notice me, as he and his partner were ushered to the bisected body by that University Station lieutenant who, seeing Hansen, almost certainly realized he had just been usurped of his case.
Along the way, Lieutenant Haskins-slender, nondescript, his gray suit flapping in the breeze-introduced himself to the city’s most famous homicide detective.
“I’m the one who called Captain Donahoe and requested backup,” Haskins said.
Hansen’s sleepy eyes snapped awake at the suggestion that he was “backup.”
“I don’t much care who called Captain Donahoe,” Hansen said, his tone as gentle as his words were sharp, nodding toward the white shape in the weeds. “What I do care about is, who called this in?”
“An unidentified female.”
“That makes two unidentified females we have on our hands.”
The lieutenant shrugged. “The anonymous woman caller just said somebody was lying in the weeds, and needed attending to.”
“I would call that an understatement,” Hansen said, and ambled to the edge of the sidewalk. His chunky partner followed him, and when Hansen squatted to regard the corpse, the partner squatted beside him, as if their entire relationship were a game of Simon Says.
Like Aggie Underwood, Harry the Hat had seen damn near everything; but even from my vantage point in the street, I could see his stony mask slip. The chunky cop at Harry’s side was scowling in disgust.
“Christ, Harry,” he was saying, waving away the flies.
“Somebody spent his sweet time on her, Brownie,” Hansen said to his partner. “Ever see a face cut up like that?”
“Hell no.”
“That grin carved in her face? Cut clean through the cheeks… Somebody made a real hobby out of her.”
The Hat rose; so did “Brownie.”
Lieutenant Haskins said, “I already called in the lab boys. They should be on the way.”
The Hat shot him a look. “Who did you talk to?”
“Lieutenant Jones-Lee Jones.”
“Call again. Get Ray Pinker over here.”
Pinker was chief of the LAPD crime lab.
“Yes, sir,” Haskins said, and went off to use the police radio.
The Hat called out to him. “Don’t use the radio! We got enough bystanders and meddling cops and damn reporters, already. Where’s the nearest pay phone?”
“There’s one on Crenshaw.”
“Good… Hurry back.”
The lieutenant paused, as if trying to find the sarcasm in Hansen’s words; but the Hat was a deadpan comic and you couldn’t always tell.
Gazing with what might have been mild disgust at the lieutenant, who was climbing into his squad car to go make his phone call, Hansen finally noticed me.
Initially, surprise tightened the Robert Mitchum eyes; then his tiny mouth puckered into a smile. “And I thought this already was interesting… Come say hello, Nate.”
I nodded at the Hat as I made my way to the sidewalk.
“We have a celebrity at the scene, Brownie,” Hansen was saying. “This is Nate Heller, that Chicago private detective you’ve heard so much about.”
“I have?” Brownie asked.
“Fred Rubinski’s new partner. The one who helped me break the Peete case.”
Actually, I had broken it by myself, but never mind.
“Good to see you again, Harry,” I said, and offered my hand.
The Hat grasped my hand with one of his, using the thumb of his other hand to indicate his partner. “This is Sergeant Brown- Fine — us Brown…”
That was spelled Finis, I later learned.
Shaking Brown’s hand, I said to the Hat, “I thought you worked exclusively with Jack McCreadie.”
“They split us up. Share the wealth-spread the expertise. I’m known for my skills as a detective, you know-like right away, my nose is twitching, finding a Chicago private dick at an L.A. crime scene… and what a crime scene.”
I gave a quick explanation of how I came to be here.
“I don’t know what became of Fowley,” I said, looking around, not hiding my irritation. “Son of a bitch stranded me here.”