Millard said, “No. Not until we have a statement.”
“Give her to me, I’ll get you a statement.”
“A voluntary statement, Sergeant.”
Fritzie flushed. “I consider that a goddamn insult, Millard.”
“You consider it what you damn well like, but you do what I damn well say, Mr. Loew or no Mr. Loew.”
Fritz Vogel stood perfectly still. He looked like a human A-bomb about to explode, his voice the fuse: “You whored with the Dahlia, didn’t you, girlie? You peddled your little twat with her. Tell me where you were during her lost days.”
Lorna said, “Screw you, Charlie.”
Fritzie stepped toward her; Millard moved between them. “I’ll ask the questions, Sergeant.”
You could have heard a pin drop. Vogel stood toe to toe with Millard. Seconds stretched, and then Fritzie squeaked, “You’re a goddamned bleeding heart Bolshevik.”
Millard took one step forward; Vogel took one step back. “Get out, Fritzie.”
Vogel took three steps backward. His heels hit the wall, and he pivoted out the door, slamming it. The echo reverberated; Harry disarmed the remnants of the bomb: “How does it feel to be the object of such a fuss, Miss Martilkova?”
The girl said, “I’m Linda Martin,” and tugged at the pleats of her skirt.
I took a seat, caught Millard’s eye and pointed to the purse resting on the table, the film can poking out. The lieutenant nodded and sat down next to Lorna. “You know this is about Betty Short, don’t you, sweetheart?”
The girl lowered her head and began sniffling; Harry handed her a Kleenex. She tore it into strips and smoothed them out on the table. “Does this mean I’ll have to go back to my folks?”
Millard nodded. “Yes.”
“My dad hits me. He’s a dumb Slovak, and he gets drunk and hits me.”
“Sweetheart, when you get back to Iowa you’ll be on non-court probation. You tell your probation officer your father hits you and he’ll put a stop to it damn quick.”
“If my dad finds out what I did in LA, he’ll hit me bad.”
“He won’t find out, Linda. I told those other two officers to leave to make sure what you say stays confidential.”
“If you send me back to Cedar Rapids, I’ll just run away again.”
“I’m sure you will. Now the sooner you tell us what we want to know about Betty and the sooner we believe you, the sooner you’ll be on the train and able to escape. So that gives you a good reason to be truthful with us, doesn’t it, Linda?”
The girl went back to playing with her Kleenex. I sensed a jaded little brain considering all the angles, all the possible outs. Finally she sighed, “Call me Lorna. If I’m going back to Iowa I should get used to it.”
Millard smiled; Harry Sears lit a cigarette and poised his pen over his Steno pad. My blood pressure zoomed to the tune of “No Madeleine, no Madeleine, no Madeleine.”
Russ said, “Lorna, are you ready to talk to us?”
The former Linda Martin said, “Shoot.”
Millard asked, “When and where did you meet Betty Short?”
Lorna mussed up her Kleenex strips. “Last fall, at this career girl’s place on Cherokee.”
“1842 North Cherokee?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you became friends?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Say yes or no please, Lorna.”
“Yes, we became friends.”
“What did you do together?”
Lorna bit at her cuticles. “We talked girl talk, we made casting rounds, we bummed drinks and dinner at bars—”
I interrupted: “What kind of bars?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean nice places? Dives? Servicemen’s hangouts?”
“Oh. Just places in Hollywood. Places where we figured they wouldn’t ask me for ID.”
My blood pressure decelerated. Millard said, “You told Betty about the rooming house on Orange Drive, the place where you were staying, right?”
“Uh-huh. I mean yes.”
“Why did Betty move out of the place on Cherokee?”
“It was too crowded, and she’d tapped all the girls for a dollar here, a dollar there, and they were mad at her.”
“Were any of them particularly mad?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you sure Betty didn’t move out because of boyfriend trouble?”
“I’m sure.”
“Do you recall the names of any of the men Betty went out with last fall?”
Lorna shrugged. “They were just pickups.”
“What about names, Lorna?”
The girl counted on her fingers, stopping when she got to three. “Well, there were these two guys at Orange Drive, Don Leyes and Hal Costa, and a sailor named Chuck.”
“No last name on Chuck?”
“No, but I know he was a gunnery mate second class.”
Millard started to ask another question, but I held up my hand to cut him off. “Lorna, I talked to Marjorie Graham the other day, and she said she told you the police were coming by Orange Drive to talk to the tenants about Betty. You ran then. Why?”
Lorna bit a hangnail off and sucked at the wound. “Because I knew that if my picture got in the papers as Betty’s friend my parents would see it and make the police send me home.”
“Where did you go when you rabbited?”
“I met a man in a bar and got him to rent me a room at an auto court in the Valley.”
“Did you—”
Millard silenced me with a chopped hand gesture. “You said you and Betty made casting rounds together. Did you ever get any movie work?”
Lorna twisted her fingers together in her lap. “No.”
“Then could you tell me what’s in that film can in your purse?”
Eyes on to the floor and dripping tears, Lorna Martilkova whispered, “It’s a movie.”
“A dirty movie?”
Lorna nodded mutely. The girl’s tears were rivers of mascara now; Millard handed her a handkerchief. “Sweetheart, you have to tell us all of it, from the beginning. So think it all out, and take your time. Bucky, get her some water.”
I left the room, found a drinking fountain and cup dispenser in the hall, filled a large paper container and returned with it. Lorna was speaking softly when I placed the cup on the table in front of her.
“… and I was cadging at this bar in Gardena. This Mexican man—Raoul or Jorge or something—started talking to me. I thought I was pregnant, and I was desperate wicked bad for money. He said he’d give me two hundred dollars to act in a nudie film.”
Lorna stopped, slugged down the water, took a deep breath and kept going. “The man said he needed another girl, so I called Betty at the Cherokee place. She said yes, and the Mexican man and me picked her up. He got us hopped on reefers, I think ‘cause he was afraid we’d get scared and back out. We drove down to Tijuana, and we made the movie at this big house outside town. The Mex man worked the lights and ran the camera and told us what to do and drove us back to LA, and that’s all of it, from the beginning, so will you call my folks now?”
I looked at Russ, then Harry; they were staring at the girl impassively. Wanting to fill in the blank spaces of my own private lead, I asked, “When did you make the film, Lorna?”
“Around Thanksgiving.”
“Can you give us a description of the Mexican man?”
Lorna stared at the floor. “Just a greasy Mex. Maybe thirty, maybe forty, I don’t know. I was on hop, and I don’t remember too good.”
“Did he seem particularly interested in Betty?”
“No.”
“Did he touch either of you? Get rough with you? Make passes?”
“No. He just moved us around.”
“Together?”
Lorna whimpered, “Yes” my blood buzzed. My voice sounded weird to my own ears, like I was some ventriloquist’s puppet. “Then this wasn’t just nudie stuff? This was you and Betty playing lez
?”
Lorna gave a little dry sob and nodded; I thought of Madeleine and pushed ahead, oblivious to where the girl might take it: “You lez? Was Betty lez? You do any lez pub crawling?”
Millard barked, “Bleichert, can it!” Lorna leaned forward in her chair, grabbed the soft daddy cop and hugged him fiercely. Russ looked at me and brought a flat palm slowly down, like a conductor asking the orchestra for a hush. He stroked the girl’s head with his free hand, then cocked a finger at Sears.
The girl moaned, “I’m not lez, I’m not lez, it was just that one time” Millard cradled her like a baby.
Sears asked, “Was Betty a lesbian, Lorna?”
I held my breath. Lorna wiped her eyes on Millard’s coat front and looked at me. She said, “I’m not lezzie, and Betty wasn’t, and we only bummed at normal-type bars, and it was just that one time in the movie because we were broke and on hop, and if this gets in the papers my daddy’ll kill me.”
I glanced at Millard, sensed that he bought it, and got a strong instinct that the whole dyke offshoot of the case was a fluke. Harry asked, “Did the Mexican man give Betty a viewfinder?”
Lorna muttered “Yes,” her head on Millard’s shoulder.
“Do you remember his car? The make, the color?”
“I … I think it was black and old.”
“Do you remember the bar where you met him?”
Lorna lifted her head; I saw that her tears had dried. “I think it was on Aviation Boulevard, near all those aircraft plants.”
I groaned; that part of Gardena was a solid mile of juke joints, poker parlors and cop-sanctioned whorehouses. Harry said, “When did you see Betty last?”
Lorna moved back to her own chair, clenching herself against another display of emotion—a hardcase reaction for a fifteen-year-old kid. “The last time I saw Betty was a couple of weeks later. Right before she moved out of the Orange Drive place.”
“Do you know if Betty ever saw the Mexican man again?”
Lorna picked at the chipped polish on her nails. “The Mex was a fly-by-nighter. He paid us, drove us back to LA and left.”
I butted in: “But you saw him again, right? There’s no way he could have made a copy of the movie before you all drove back from TJ.”
Lorna studied her nails. “I went looking for him in Gardena, when I read in the papers about Betty. He was about to go back to Mexico, and I conned him out of a print of the movie. See … he didn’t read the papers, so he didn’t know that all of a sudden Betty was famous. See … I figured that a Black Dahlia stag film was a collector’s item, and if the police tried to ship me back to my folks I could sell it and hire a lawyer to fight my extradition. You’ll give it back to me, won’t you? You won’t let people look at it?”
Out of the mouths of babes. Millard said, “You went back to Gardena and found the man again?”
“Uh-huh. I mean yes.”
“Where?”
“At one of those bars on Aviation.”
“Can you describe the place?”
“It was dark, with flashing lights out front.”
“And he willingly gave you a copy of the film? For nothing?”
Lorna eyed the floor. “I did him and his friends.”
“Can you improve on your description of him, then?”
“He was fat and he had a tiny little pecker! He was ugly and so were his friends!”
Millard pointed Sears to the door; Harry tiptoed quietly out. Russ said, “We’ll try to keep this out of the papers, and we’ll destroy the film. One question before the matron takes you up to your room. If we take you down to Tijuana, do you think you could find the house where the movie was shot?”
Shaking her head, Lorna said, “No. I don’t want to go down to that awful place. I want to go home.”
“So your father can hit you?”
“No. So I can get out again.”
Sears returned with a matron; the woman led hard/soft/pathetic/feisty Linda/Lorna away. Harry, Russ and I looked at one another; I felt the girl’s sadness smothering me. Finally the senior man said, “Comments?”
Harry kicked in first. “She’s hedging on the Mex and the pad in TJ. He probably beat her up and screwed her, and she’s afraid of reprisals. Aside from that, I buy her story.”
Russ smiled. “What about you, bright penny?”
“She’s covering on the Mex angle. I think she might have been screwing him regularly, and now she’s protecting him from a smut rap. I’d also lay odds the guy is white, that the Mex routine is a cover-up to go along with the TJ stuff—which I do buy—because that place is a cesspool, and most of the smuthounds I rousted working Patrol got their stuff there.”
Millard winked à la Lee Blanchard. “Bucky, you are a very bright penny today. Harry, I want you to talk to Lieutenant Waters here. Tell him to hold the girl incommunicado for seventy-two hours. I want a private cell for her, and I want Meg Caulfield detached from Wilshire Clerical to play cellmate. Tell Meg to give her a good pumping and report in every twenty-four hours.
“When you finish that, call R&I and Ad Vice for the rap sheets on white and Mexican males with pornography convictions, then call Vogel and Koenig and send them down to Gardena to check the bars for Lorna’s movie man. Call the Bureau too, and tell Captain Jack we’ve got a little Dahlia film to look at. Then call the Times and give them the smut lead before Ellis Loew sits on it. Give them a Jane Doe for Lorna, have them add an appeal for pornography tips and pack a bag, because we’re going down to Dago and TJ later tonight.”
I said, “Russ, you know this is a long shot.”
“The biggest one since you and Blanchard beat the crap out of each other and became partners. Come on, bright penny. It’s blue movie night at City Hall.”
A projector and screen had already been set up in the muster room; an all-star cast was awaiting the all-star smut movie. Lee, Ellis Loew, Jack Tierney, Thad Green and Chief of Police C.B. Horrall himself were seated in front of the screen; Millard handed the film can to the clerical stooge manning the projector, muttering, “Where’s the popcorn?”
The big chief walked over and gave me a gladhander’s shake. “A pleasure, sir,” I said.
“A mutual pleasure, Mr. Ice, and my wife sends her belated regards for the pay raise you and Mr. Fire got us.” He pointed to a seat next to Lee. “Lights! Camera! Action!”
I sat down beside my partner. Lee looked drawn, but not dope-juiced. A Daily News was unfolded on his lap; I saw “Boulevard-Citizens Mastermind to be Released Tomorrow— LA Bound After 8 Years in Custody.” Lee checked out my raggedy state and said, “Getting any?”
I was about to respond when the lights went off. A blurred image hit the screen; cigarette smoke wafted into it. A title flashed—Slave Girls From Hell—then a big, high-ceilinged room with Egyptian hieroglyphics on the walls came into view in grainy black and white. Pillars shaped like coiled serpents were stationed throughout the room; the camera zoomed in for a close-up of two inset plaster snakes swallowing each other’s tails. Then the snakes dissolved into Betty Short, wearing only stockings, doing an inept hoochie-koochie dance.
My groin clenched; I heard Lee draw a sharp breath. An arm entered the screen, passing a cylindrical object to Betty. She took it; the camera moved in. It was a dildo, scales covering the shaft, fangs extending from the large circumcised head. Betty put it in her mouth and sucked it, eyes wide open and glassy.
There was an abrupt cut, then Lorna, naked, was lying on a divan, her legs spread. Betty entered the picture. She knelt between Lorna’s legs, stuck the dildo inside her and simulated sex with it. Lorna buckled and rotated her hips, the screen went out of focus, then blipped to a close-up—Lorna writhing in phony ecstasy. Even a two-year-old could tell she was contorting her face to hold back screams. Betty re-entered the frame, poised between Lorna’s thighs.
She looked up at the camera, mouthing, “No, please.” Then her head was shoved down, and she worked her tongue next to the dildo in a shot so close
in that every ugly detail seemed to be magnified ten million times.
I wanted to shut my eyes, but couldn’t. Next to me, Chief Horrall said calmly, “Russ, what do you think? You think this has got anything to do with the girl’s murder?”
Millard answered with a hoarse voice. “It’s a long shot, Chief. The movie was made in November and from what the Martilkova girl said, the Mexican doesn’t play as a killer. It’s got to be checked out, though. Maybe the Mex showed the movie to somebody, and he got a case on Betty. What I—”
Lee kicked his chair over and shouted: “Who gives a fuck if he didn’t kill her! I’ve sent Boy Scouts to the green room for less than that! So if you won’t do something about it, I will!”
Everyone sat there, shock-stilled. Lee stood in front of the screen, blinking from the hot white light in his eyes. He wheeled and ripped the obscenity down; the screen and tripod hit the floor with a crash. Betty and Lorna continued their sex on a chalked-up blackboard; Lee took off running. I heard the projector knocked over in back of me; Millard yelled, “Bleichert, get him!”
I got up, tripped, got up again and tore out of the muster room, catching sight of Lee stepping into the elevator at the end of the hall. When the doors shut and the elevator descended, I ran for the stairs, hurtled down six flights and out into the parking lot just in time to see Lee peeling rubber northbound on Broadway. There was a string of unmarked cruisers lined up on the Department’s side of the lot; I jogged over and checked under the driver’s seat of the nearest one. The keys were right there. I hit the ignition, then the gas, and took off.
I gained ground quickly, coming up behind Lee’s Ford as he swerved into the middle lane on Sunset, heading west. I gave him three short horn blasts; he responded by tapping his horn in the LAPD semaphore that meant “Officer in Pursuit.” Cars pulled over to let him through—there was nothing I could do but hit my own horn and stay glued to his tail.
We hauled ass out of downtown, through Hollywood and over the Cahuenga Pass to the Valley. Turning onto Ventura Boulevard, I got spooked by the proximity of the lez bar block; when Lee ground his Ford to a halt smack in the middle of it, I choked on a wave of panic and thought: He can’t know about my brass girl, there’s no way; the lezzie film must have flipped his switch. Then Lee got out and pushed through the door of La Verne’s Hideaway. Worse panic made me stomp the brakes and fishtail the cruiser into the sidewalk; thoughts of Madeleine and evidence suppression raps propelled me into the dive after my partner.