Ready, prepared. "No."
"Ah, grand. That aside then, I have an assignment for you here at the Victory tonight. A very large and muscular man requires a bracing, and frankly Mike and Dick lack the presence to appropriately impress him. It's a small world, lad--I think this chap knew our friend Duke Cathcart back in '53. Maybe he can give you some information on your Kathy Janeway fixation. Does fair Kathy's fate still concern you, lad?"
Bud swallowed--dry.
"Lad, forget that I asked. Fixations like that are like prostitutes--they can reform, but their old ways still linger. Tonight at 10:00, lad. And be of good cheer. I have some extracurricular work for you soon, work that should rekindle your old fearsome habits."
Bud blinked.
Dudley smiled, walked to room 6.
Prostitute equals Lynn. Janeway jibe equals just how much?
Joe Sifakis screamed--through four walls, out to the edge of the courtyard.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Gallaudet slipped him the news: the Attorney General's Office was set to press for a reopening: statefinanced, state-run. Ellis Loew was set to usurp their investigation-- the LAPD, Nite Owl redux. Time to call it all in.
Ed in a coffee shop on La Brea. Jack Vincennes due, paperwork on the table: Nite Owl, notes on the Hudgens case.
Check mark: was the man at San Quentin telling the truth? Most likely yes--whatever his motives.
Check mark: did the Englekling killings tie in to the Nite Owl? No way to tell until the Mann Sheriff's shared their information.
Check mark: the purple car by the Nite Owl. A hunch: it was an innocent vehicle, the real killers followed the publicity, located Ray Coates' car before the LAPD, planted the shotguns. This meant--astoundingly--that they planted the spent shells found in Griffith Park. Hall of Justice Jail records '35 to '55 had been destroyed--if the killers gleaned the information as part of a jail connection, finding that connection would most likely prove impossible. Have Kleckner and Fisk thoroughly investigate every logical possibility pertaining to the purple car/planted shotguns.
Check mark: victim Malcolm Lunceford, ex--LAPD officer/wino security guard. Did he tie in to some kind of criminal conspiracy that resulted in the Nite Owl massacre? Answer: unlikely--he was a certified, long-term Nite Owl habitué, late nights always.
Ed sipped coffee, thought POWER. Abused: IAD was autonomous inside and outside the Department; he'd had Fisk and Kleckner working toward a possible reopening--LAPD's or his own. Vincennes admitted his tail on Bud White and lied about White knowing his sporadic girlfriend--Lynn Bracken--during the spring of '53. Lynn Bracken was placed under loose surveillance; Fisk just submitted a report.
The woman was rumored to be an ex-prostitute; she co-owned a dress shop in Santa Monica. Her partner: Pierce Morehouse Patchett, age fifty-six. Kleckner secured a fmancial report: Patchett emerged as a wealthy investor known to pimp call girls to business associates. The financial kicker:
Patchett owned an apartment building in Hollywood. A weird shootout took place there--in the middle of the Nite Owl time frame. He caught the squeal himseffi no suspects apprehended, sadomasochist gear in a shot-riddled downstairs unit. The manager claimed not to know the building's owner--he was paid by mail, suspected a dummy corporation issued him his paycheck. He knew the first name of the apartment's tenant--"Lamar," a "big blond guy." The manager blamed Lamar for the shootout; a Hollywood Division follow-up report stated that Lamar had not been seen since the incident. Incident closed.
Trashcan was late. Move to the Hudgens notes.
God-awful butchery, no hard suspects, Hudgens roundly hated. A lackluster investigation--heat fell briefly on Max Peltz and the _Badge of Honor_ crew--_Hush-Hush_ published an article "exposing" Peltz and his lust for teenage girls. Peltz passed a polygraph test; the rest of the "crew" proffered alibis. Between the lines--Parker considered the victim scum, short-shrifted the case.
Still no Trash. Ed skimmed the alibi sheet.
Max Peltz engaged in statutory rape--heavily implied, no charges filed. Script girl Penny Fulweider home with her husband; Billy Dieterling alibied--Timmy Valburn. Set designer David Mertens--a sickly man suffering from epilepsy and other ailments--alibied by Jerry Marsalas, his live-in male nurse. Star Brett Chase at a party; co-star Miller Stanton likewise. A bust--but Hudgens' death had to play central to Vincennes' spring '53.
Trashcan walked up, sat down. No preims. "You're calling it in?"
"I'm meeting with Parker tomorrow. I'm sure he's going to announce a reopening."
Vincennes laughed. "Then don't look so grim. If you're crazy enough to want it, at least act happy."
Ed placed six shell casings on the table. "Three of these are target rounds I retrieved from your last range practice, three are rounds I took out of a Hollywood Division evidence locker. Identical lands and grooves. April '53, Jack. You remember that shootout on Cheramoya?"
Trash grabbed the table. "Keep going."
"Pierce Patchett owns that building on Cheramoya, and it's a nicely hidden ownership. S&M gear was found on the premises, and Patchett is a K.A. of Lynn Bracken, Bud White's girlfriend, who you denied knowing. You were working a smut job for Ad Vice then, and smut and sadomasochist paraphernalia are in the same ballpark. The last time we talked you admitted that Hudgens had a file on you, that that was why you were all over the place then. Here's my big leap, so correct me if I'm wrong. Bracken and Patchett were K.A.'s of Hudgens."
Vincennes dug his hands in--the table shook. "So you're a smart fucker. So what?"
"So did Bud White know Hudgens?"
"No, I don't think--"
"What does White have on Patchett and Bracken?"
"I don't know. Exley, look--"
"No, _you_ look. And you answer me. Did you get Hudgens' file on you?"
Trashcan, sweating. "Yeah, I did."
"Who from?"
"The Bracken woman."
"How did you get it out of her?"
"Deposition threat. I wrote out a deposition on her and Patchett, everything I put together about them. I made carbons and stashed them in safe-deposit boxes."
"And you--"
"Yeah, I've still got them. And they've still got a carbon on me."
Educated guess. "And Patchett was pushing that smut you were chasing?"
"Yeah. Exley, look--"
"No, Vincennes, _you_ look. Do you still have copies of the smut books?"
"I've got the depositions and the books. You want them, I get my evidence suppression wiped. And half the Nite Owl collar."
"A third. There's no way to make the case without White."
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Room 6 at Victory. Dudley, a muscle creep chained to the hot seat. Dot Rothstein ogling _Playboy_. Bud watched her scope cheesecake: a bull-dyke cop in a Hughes Aircraft jumpsuit.
Dudley skimmed a rap sheet. "Lamar Hinton, age thirty-one. One ADW conviction, a former telephone company employee strongly suspected of installing bootleg bookie lines for Jack 'The Enforcer' Whalen. A parole absconder since April 1953. Lad, I think it is safe to refer to you as an organized crime associate, thus someone in need of reeducation in the ways of polite society."