As it turned out, Lisa Knowles was a nice girl. She just didn't have very much money, and she had taken a room at the Farragut only because it was the least expensive thing she could find. Lisa was the very picture of blooming, bursting, youthful California health. She looked nineteen, a barefooted, very tall girl - at least five-nine - with bright blue eyes sparkling against a suntanned face, blond hair cascading to the small of her back, long legs encased in blue jeans, firm breasts braless under a tight white cotton T-shirt. Greeting him at the door to her room, she immediately apologized for the dump she was living in, and then explained how short she was of cash. Carella followed her into the room, and she closed the door behind him. There was a bed in the room, and a single easy chair, and a standing floor lamp, and a cigarette-scarred dresser. Lisa sat cross-legged on the bed. Carella took the easy chair.
'I understand you want to talk to us,' he said.
'Yes.' She emphasized the single word with a curt nod of her blond hair. She had big hands and big feet; she was a big girl all over. He could visualize her on a Malibu beach, wearing a bikini, riding a surfboard. He could also, and he was surprised by the unbidden image, visualize her in bed. He immediately got back to business.
'What about?' he said.
'Andrew Kingsley. I got a letter from him four days after he was killed. He'd written it last Saturday. I would have taken it to the California fuzz…' She smiled radiantly. 'Cops, excuse me,' she said. 'Only I figured they'd just brush it off because it wasn't their case. Was I right?'
'Well, I don't know. The Los Angeles police are a pretty efficient bunch,' Carella said, and returned the smile. 'I'm sure they would have contacted us.'
'How'd you know it was Los Angeles? And not San Francisco or San Diego or whatever?'
'Because Kingsley's sister told us he'd been doing work in Watts. That's Los Angeles,' Carella said, and shrugged.
'Smart, smart,' Lisa said, and tapped her temple with her forefinger. 'Anyway, I raised the bread and came here personally. I didn't want to take a chance on the letter going astray, because I think it may help you find whoever killed him. Also, my folks are down in Miami, and a visit is long overdue, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone. Provided they send me the air fare. I'm afraid to give them the address of this dump, they might recognize it and call out the Marines. But I have to wire them because all I've got is about thirty cents to my name - that's an exaggeration, but really, I'm almost flat. If I don't get some financial help real soon, I'll have to join the hookers in this place,' She smiled again. The image of Lisa Knowles as prostitute suddenly filled the small, shoddy, cheerless room. Lisa in garter belt and open-crotch panties, long blond hair spread on the pillow, Lisa being used and abused by drunken sailors and…
'How old are you?' Carella asked abruptly.
'Twenty-two. Why?' she said.
'Just wondered.'
'Old enough,' she said, 'don't worry,' and again she smiled her radiant smile, and Carella suddenly felt terribly uncomfortable and wanted to get out of there, and go home, and say to his wife, 'Hey, guess what, honey? A beautiful twenty-two-year-old blonde was flirting with me today, what do you think of that, honey?' Except that Lisa Knowles wasn't flirting. Or was she? It was she, after all, who'd made the reference to prostitution. Why are you showing me all these dirty pictures, Doctor? Carella thought, and smiled.
'Yes?' she said.
'What?'
'Why are you smiling?'
'I just thought of something very funny,' he said, and then became all business again. 'Mind if I see the letter?'
'Oh, sure,' she said, and got off the bed, and went across the room, long legs devouring the worn linoleum, backside round and firm in the tight blue jeans - Now listen, Carella told himself, and watched despite the self-admonition as she dug into the leather shoulder bag on the dresser top and came up with a red-and-blue-bordered air-mail envelope. She walked back to where he was sitting, and stopped just before the chair, her knees almost touching his. He took the envelope from her, adjusted the shade on the lamp for better illumination, and then removed the letter from the envelope and unfolded it. Lisa moved behind the chair so that she could read over his shoulder.
'See the date?' she said. 'He was killed last Sunday, am I right? The letter was written on Saturday.'
'Yes, that's right,' Carella said, and began reading the letter:
Darling Golden Girl, how are you?
I'm still here crashing with my sister, which is something of a drag, but I've finally made some contacts and I think I'll be able to get started on the work I came east for.
'He used to call me Golden Girl,' Lisa said.
'Mmm,' Carella said.
'Because I'm a blonde.'
'I see that.'
He was about to say something more. He changed his mind, and started reading the rest of the letter:
Tomorrow night, I'll be going uptown to talk to the president of a gang that calls itself The Death's Heads. This is a Puerto Rican gang, and the leader is a fellow named Edwards Portoles, who I'd met through Julio Cabrera. You remember him, he's the one who used to play piano at the Sunset Shrine, on the Strip. He's here now, playing Tuesdays and Fridays at a place downtown in the Quarter, barely eking out a living, but doing he likes best—which is all that matters, am I right, Goldilocks?
'He also called me Goldilocks,' Lisa said.
'Because you're a blonde, I'll bet.'
'How'd you guess?'
'Smart, smart,' Carella said, and tapped his temple as she had done earlier.
Anyway, Julio introduced me to this Portoles fellow who lives in the same neighbourhood Julio grew up in, and that's I got to know what the situation is up there. The situation, to put it mildly, stinks. In fact, my dear, it is partially ripe for the likes of yours truly, Andrew Kingsley, to step in and try to make some progress before everybody kills everybody else. Lisa, the gangs up there are currently engaged in what amounts to full-scale warfare, and unless somebody can show them a peaceful way to settle their differences, a lot of innocent people are going to suffer. I say this with the knowledge that only two weeks ago, a mother wheeling her baby in the park was accidentally gunned down when a member of a gang called the Scarlet Avengers opened fire on a member of Portoles's gang.
The situation seems to be particularly aggravated between three gangs up there—Portoles's gang, which is called The Death's Heads, a black gang called The Scarlet Avengers, and a white gang called The Yankee Rebels. It's my idea that if I can get them working together on a constructive project, then maybe they'll stop trying to kill each other. I've already made some tentative suggestions along these lines to Portoles, whose seems interested in the idea—probably because his closest friend was murdered just six months back, in June. He seems tired of this senseless war. I think he'd like to end it. He also told me that the president of the Scarlet Avengers is a married man with a newborn baby, and really much too old for all this street bopping. It's Portoles's opinion that he might be willing to listen too. The real problem may prove to be the president of the Yankee Rebels, who—from all Portoles has told me—is an egotistical, brutal, unforgiving, humourless, puritanical, and basically rather stupid person who has deluded himself into believing he's the only one in the neighbourhood who knows the true and righteous path, and that anyone who disagrees with him is either crazy or intent on thwarting his grandiose and thoroughly self-serving schemes. His name if Randall Nesbitt, and I will try to talk to him after I see Portoles tomorrow night, and Atkins, the leader of the Avengers, later in the week.