“Well, yes and no. Actually, we found the missing piece of flesh with the tattoo on it.”
“Found it? Where in hell?”
“That’s the second piece of undisclosed evidence I’m going to share with you, Nate, and you alone.”
“Where you found it?”
“Yes, where we found it. That is, where the coroner found it.”
“Where, goddamn it?”
“Stuck up that poor girl’s ass.”
I was thinking about that when the Hat tipped his hat, said, “You go on home, Nate-there’ll be no pictures over at Hollenbeck… By the way, thanks for calling your friend Ness for me.”
“Oh-have you talked to him?”
“Yes, you’ll probably be hearing from him, soon. He’s coming out by train tomorrow, to consult with us on the case.”
“Your idea or his?”
“Sort of mutual… Good night, Nate.”
So I had gone home-that is, to the bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel-and my wife, already in bed and half-asleep, had the same news for me: not the rose tattoo stuck up Beth Short, no-that Eliot had called and wanted me to pick him up at Union Station tomorrow evening at 7 P. M. He’d left no further message.
Peggy told me her long and busy first day as a Hollywood bit player had been wonderful-she did not seem to have any residual animosity from our argument, yesterday-then rolled over in bed and began to softly snore. And, for the first time, on this bizarre honeymoon of ours, a day (and night) passed without our making love. The next morning, she was up and off to the studio before I woke, courtesy of a car Paramount sent around.
So now I was again sitting in the Examiner conference room, sipping coffee, just Fowley and me and the wall-eyed, eagle-pussed Richardson.
Word from Hollenbeck Station was not promising, where Robert “Red” Manley was concerned; as a human being, Red stunk-as a suspect, he also stunk. Ray Pinker had administered a polygraph, which he deemed “inconclusive.” A second test, with which Harry the Hat himself helped Pinker (presumably probing about those three undisclosed items), tended to substantiate Manley’s story. And Manley’s alibis were looking solid.
But that was fine with Richardson; he didn’t want this case solved that quickly, anyway-it was selling too many papers.
“Those bags you boys led us to were a gold mine,” Richardson said, referring to the two suitcases (and hatbox) at the Greyhound Bus Station that Manley had told us about.
I said, “You got to them before the cops?”
“Fowley called me with that tidbit from Hollenbeck Station. I sent Sid Hughes over.” Richardson grinned as he matched a cigarette. “It’s amazing what you can buy in this town for ten dollars.”
Shifting in my hard chair, I said, “I don’t mean to be a stick-in-the-mud, but just how much of this tampering and withholding of evidence can you get away with?”
The city editor waved that off. “I called Donahoe over at Homicide, first thing this morning, and he was tickled pink to get the stuff-Fat Ass Brown picked it all up half an hour ago.”
I sipped my coffee. “After you went through it all.”
He leaned both hands on the table, beaming at me, slow eye swimming into place. “Little elves at the Examiner workshop sat up all night, gleaning info out of that junk.”
“What kind of junk?”
His cigarette bobbled as he spoke, spilling gray ash on the scarred tabletop. “Lots of that satiny sexy black clothing she liked to wear, and sheer lingerie and silk stockings-but that ain’t all, fellas and girls. Yesterday all we had for art on this story were those ghoulish vacant-lot pics and that mug shot from the Santa Barbara bust. Now? Now we got glamour photos, cheesecake yet, her in playsuits and bathing suits and sittin’ in nightclubs with sailors on her arm and white flowers in her black hair.”
I grunted. “Don’t drool, Jim-it’s not becoming.”
“Plus, we got a list of names a mile long of ex-boy friends and former roommates… We’re swimming in goddamn leads.”
Fowley said, “So how about giving us one?”
Richardson ripped a page out of a notepad. “I saved the best one for my best boys-the Florentine Gardens.”
“Hog dog,” Fowley said. “Not bad!”
Fowley’s reaction was understandable: the Florentine Gardens was a nightclub whose current floor show, The Beautiful Girl Revue for 1947, was the nudest in town-unusually so, considering the Mills Brothers were headlining, a mainstream (if colored) act for that kind of venue.
For many years, the Gardens had played second fiddle to Earl Carroll’s luxurious deco nightclub at Sunset and Vine, where nearly naked showgirls and most of the celebrities in Hollywood converged. But ever since Ziegfeld’s personal pulchritude picker-the legendary starmaker Nils Thor Granlund-had taken over as impresario, the nitery was flourishing.
“Seems till late last year,” Richardson was saying, “the Short dame was one of Mark Lansom’s harem living in that castle on San Carlos Street, behind the Gardens.”
“Who’s Mark Lansom?” I asked.
“Lansom owns the Gardens,” Fowley said. “Also, a buncha moviehouses and some dime-a-dance halls.”
I said, “I thought the Florentine was N.T.G.’s spot.”
N. T.G. was one of Nils Thor Granlund’s two well-known nicknames; the other was “Granny.”
“Granlund’s the manager of the Gardens,” Richardson said. “But Lansom owns the joint, and it’s his baby as much as Granny’s.”
“What’s this about a ‘harem,’ and a ‘castle’ behind the nightclub?”
“Lansom’s a regular ass hound,” Fowley said. “A lot of the chorus girls and waitresses live in this big house of his-fancy place, with a pool and everything.”
“A dormitory of babes,” Richardson said, leering, “and Lansom’s the housemother.”
Fowley gave me the rundown on Lansom: the former bootlegger was now a respected member of the Hollywood community, even a sponsor of the Junior Philharmonic. He was separated from a wife tied to him by mutual ownership of real estate; she lived in Beverly Hills, alone, and he lived on San Carlos Street, with all those girls.
“Jim,” I said, “I know Granny a little bit, from when he brought his revue to Chicago.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, nobody knows his way around publicity-good or bad-like Granny. If I go there alone, and let him stay off the record, we might get further.”
Fowley bolted upright. “Don’t be a pig, Heller! Aren’t you getting enough pussy on your honeymoon to hold you?”
I gave Fowley a long unfriendly look. “Is it true you’re Noel Coward’s ghostwriter?”
Richardson was pacing, nodding, smoking. “You got something there, Heller. Tell Granlund we’ll keep his name away from the cops if he talks to us on the q.t.”
“Can we do that?”
“What’s stopping us?”
“Well, this lead came from the stuff you turned over to the cops this morning, right?”
“It might have.”
“Jesus, Jim! What are you withholding?”
“Your paycheck, if you keep asking me the nosy questions.” He turned to Fowley. “I got a good little lead left for you, too-a roomful of girls at the Atwater Hotel in Long Beach… Here’s the address.”
Scowling, Fowley scribbled it down, then took the names of the girls.
“Right before Short moved in at Lansom’s,” Richardson said, “she bunked in with these babes-they’re B-girls and would-be singers and actresses. Short was one of five dolls jammed into one little hotel room.”
“Sounds like the stateroom scene in Night at the Opera,” Fowley said, his attitude toward the assignment improving visibly, “only with titties.”
“Well,” his boss said, ignoring this astute observation, “grab a camera, and don’t take all morning. I’m sending you up to Camp Cooke this afternoon.”
“I thought Sid Hughes was covering that.”
“Yeah, but Sid got busted, flashing a badge and pretending to be Harry the Hat. Irritated Harry, when he found out, and didn’t make the U.S. Army love the Examiner, either.”