Under the tarp was the bottom half of a woman’s torso, with one leg attached.
Ohls had no reaction.
The medical examiner draped the tarpaulin back over the corpse.
“There’s couple other parts,” he said, “over here.” He nodded his head toward another tarp. “We let everything lie where we found it.”
“Wonderful,” Ohls said.
“Want to take a look?”
“Not right now,” Ohls said. “You know anything?”
“Woman’s dead,” the medical examiner said.
“Always brightens up a case,” Ohls said, “to have a funny ME.”
The medical examiner chuckled so that the fat on his neck wobbled a little over his collar.
“Don’t know a hell of a lot more than that, yet.”
“Cause of death?” Ohls said. “Aside from getting cut up like a fryer?”
“No way to know until we find all the pieces,” the medical examiner said. “Don’t know if she was alive when she was cut up.”
Ohls shook his head harshly as if there was a bee in his ear.
“ID?” he said.
“Caucasian, female, judging from what we’ve got, not an old woman. Twenties or thirties, maybe a well-preserved forty at the oldest. Skin tone is still pretty good, what there is of it.”
“Any idea yet when?”
The medical examiner shook his head.
“Last couple days at the outside, assuming she was dumped here shortly after she was killed, and wasn’t refrigerated someplace. That’s as close as I can get.” He glanced down at the tarpaulin heap in front of him. “We’ve got a stomach, at least, so we can make some guesses depending on when she ate, and what she ate, but we’re not going to get much closer. Blood’s all drained out of her. That screws us up.”
“What a shame,” Ohls said. “Any thoughts, Marlowe? Could be the Sternwood girl.”
“Guess on the skin coloration?” I said.
The medical examiner reached down. “I’d say dark. Here, take a look.”
“No, thanks,” I said. “That was my guess. Was she slim?”
The medical examiner shrugged, still bending over with a hand on the edge of the tarpaulin. He peeled it back again. I looked away. From the corner of my eye I could see him bend over and pinch some flesh on the one leg. I looked away harder.
“No,” he said. “I’d say she was fleshy — not fat, mind you, but sort of, you know, buxom. Mae West, say.”
“That would make her not one of the Sternwood girls,” I said.
“Body hair’s black,” the medical examiner said.
“Carmen was blonde,” I said.
Ohls nodded.
“Who found her?” he said to one of the sheriff’s deputies.
“Couple high school kids had three quarts of beer,” the deputy said, “slid down here in the woods to drink it and stumbled right on her. Probably take care of their underaged drinking for a while.”
“Every cloud,” Ohls said. “Lemme talk to them, and the officer that found the matchbook.”
He climbed back up the banking to the road with me behind him. By the time I got to the road my shirt collar was limp and I could feel the sweat trickling down my spine. I leaned against the car while Ohls talked to the scared kids and to the young L. A. cop that had discovered the purse with the matchbook. Above us a little way the hill crested and Beverly Glen turned and headed down into the valley. Ventura, Sherman Oaks, people in ranch houses with two bedrooms and GI mortgages. People with kids, coming home from work, sitting down to supper, talking about the job and about the weather and about baseball and the stock market. None of them thinking anything about a one-legged half of a female body with the blood long since drained from it lying in the leaf mulch at the bottom of an arroyo off Beverly Glen. None of them were talking about that or thinking about it. But I was and I’d think about it for a long time.
Ohls came back to the car when he finished with the witnesses. He jerked his head at me and we got in and headed back toward Hollywood.
“Why don’t you kind of tell me about what it is exactly that you’re doing with Carmen Sternwood,” he said.
I told him what I knew except for the part about Eddie Mars and Vivian. I left that out for no particular reason, except there’s never any need for cops to know everything. And there was something about telling him that Vivian was with Eddie Mars that I didn’t like.
“This Bonsentir,” Ohls said. “He’s got so much clout that he doesn’t need to cooperate.”
“That’s what he says.”
“And Al Gregory says so?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And he’s up the top of Coldwater Canyon?” Ohls said.
“Yeah.”
Ohls wrenched the car around and headed up Beverly Drive.
“Let’s you and me go give his chain a jangle,” Ohls said.
13
Ohls showed the slick-haired guy at the door his buzzer and said he was here to see Dr. Bonsentir. The slick-haired guy gave me the fisheye and said to Ohls, “May I enquire what it’s about, officer?”
“Lieutenant,” Ohls said, “not officer. And it’s about police business which ain’t your business so hustle it up.”
The slick-haired man ushered us into the foyer and excused himself and walked away with his shoulders hunched in a stiff angle.
“You’ve hurt his feelings,” I said.
“I do that,” Ohls said.
We waited in front of the founder’s picture for a couple of minutes and then the slick-haired guy brought his hurt feelings back into the foyer and with him came the Muscle Beach boy that I’d last seen snoozing on a chaise in the backyard.
He gave me a long stare and then said to Ohls, “What is it you want, Lieutenant?”
Ohls looked tired.
“Not you,” he said to the beachboy. “I wanted you, I’d go out to Venice. I could get fifty like you in Venice.”
“You think so?” the beachboy said.
“Listen, sonny, if you would like to go downtown and dance with me in the back room where the boys pitch pennies against the wall, you keep talking to me like I wasn’t a cop. I want to see your boss, and it better be very damned quick.”
The beachboy reddened, but he didn’t say anything. He turned and went back in through the big door that led to Bonsentir’s office, and in another minute he returned and beckoned us to follow.
Bonsentir was at his desk again. His tie up tight, his vest buttoned, his white coat spotless. He was on the phone. He hung up as we entered.
“I have very little time,” he said. “Please make this as brief as possible.”
“I’m investigating a murder,” Ohls said. “Marlowe here is helping me. Not heavyweight stuff like you do, but it keeps me from hanging around poolrooms. Carmen Sternwood is a possible witness in the murder and I want to question her.”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant... Ohls is it? Miss Sternwood has been discharged.”
“In whose care?” I said.
“In her own, Mr. Marlowe.” Bonsentir’s face was beatific. He had his fingers steepled near the point of his chin.
“She’s fully cured of her problems.”
“How about Mrs. Swayze?” I said. “We’ll talk with her, then.”
“Mrs. Swayze too has been discharged,” Bonsentir said. “We have great success in returning our patients to the pursuit of a normal healthy life.”
“I’ll bet you do,” Ohls said.
“Did you turn Mrs. Swayze loose on her own?” I said.
“Certainly. She’s a grown woman with no further mental problems.”
“I think we might just amble around a little,” Ohls said.
“Without a warrant?” Bonsentir said.
“Well, well,” Ohls said.