The Eden Roc Hotel. Drill job: suite 1206 into suite 1207. Crutch worked with Freddy Turentine. Freddy was the “Bug King.” Freddy’s bug rйsumй astounded. Freddy was on loan to Clyde Duber Associates. Freddy usually worked for “Shakedown King” Fred Otash.
They drilled. 1206 was their listening post. Farlan Brown was due in 1207 shortly. Time clock: the Find Gretchen Farr gig was moving way into five figures.
They drilled. They bored through to 1207 and pushed wires in. Crutch picked the door lock. They got full-suite access. They miked up the bedroom lamp shades. They tapped the two phones. They Spackle-covered the wall wires and applied touch-up paint. They stuffed baffling in the bore-through holes and sanded the rough spots down smooth. They swept up all the baseboard dust and zoomed back to 1206.
Finger-cramping drudge work-four full hours. Crutch was grit-encrusted. His fingers hurt. He had Spackle dust in his ears, eyes and nasal nooks. He took a shower and cleaned up. Freddy went to his room to snooze. Crutch turned the living room TV on and put the sound low. The screen faced the bug-tap receiver. He grabbed a chair, hooked on headphones and listened to dead air next door.
The TV half-ass absorbed him. Nixon got the nod, first ballot, yawn/snore/soporific. Nixon emitted stupe vibes. He did that V-for-victory thing and looked like a rube robot. The news cut to riot footage. The Miami Congo blazed. It derived from a spook housing-project brouhaha. Spooks were stoning and sniping white motorists. Nigger mobs, arson, looting. Hot-weather action. Groovy footage.
Crutch yawned. He was running on six-week sleep deficit, all per HIS CASE.
MS case. Not Clyde or Buzz Duber’s. HIS side deal with Dr. Fred. HIS shot at the million-dollar Hughes deal. HIS side deal side deaclass="underline" Gretchen Farr as Celia Reyes. Add the knife-scar woman. Add the house with the door markings and the body parts in the kitchen.
Farlan Brown was Miami-bound. Wayne Tedrow Jr. was here already. Junior had Senior’s hate-mail stash. Dr. Fred wanted it. Junior worked for Farlan Brown and Dracula Hughes. Dr. Fred wanted to sell Drac his racial-purity plan. Crazy shit-sure. But crazy shit with dollar signs attached.
$$$$$$$$$-
He’s hoarded his secret knowledge. He’s held it back from Clyde, Buzz and Dr. Fred. They don’t know about Gretchen as Celia. They don’t know about the knife-scar woman or the Horror House on North Tamarind.
HIS CASE-now six weeks in.
His pad was file-crammed already. His mother’s file ate up most of his floor and shelf space. He rented a second file pad downtown. The Elm Hotel-twelve scoots a week. A piss-in-the-sink dive for rum-dum pensioners. He laid in some file boxes and reams of file paper. He’s on the job full-time.
Filework: lead file, car file, forensic file, file on 2216 North Tamarind.
He researched the Horror House. It was not an Arnie Moffett party-rental crib. It was near the Gretchen/Celia-rented house and the other party cribs. Proximity did not equal connection. Yeah, but-the weird thrust of that night made everything seem connected. It was like a dream state. Gretchen/Celia and the knife-scar woman kiss-and his world re-situates.
House research. Paydirt: the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce owned Horror House and used it for fund-raisers. It stood unoccupied since mid-’67. He snuck in again and rolled every goddamn room for prints. He got nothing but smudges and bullshit partials. The Chamber let him look at their fundraiser file. Groups were listed, guest lists were not. There was no way to know who had been in the house. The girl at the Chamber told him one blood-churning thing: sleazoid hippies broke in and squatted there sometimes. Question: what were Gretchen/Celia and the knife-scar woman still doing in the Moffett house? Easy answer: squatting rent-free after their real rent expired. Question: who bought Phil Irwin off the Find Gretchen gig? Possible answer: Farlan Brown, via Hughes Tool Co. Brown got wind of the gig. Brown wanted Gretchie un-fucked with. His motive? Who fucking knows?
House file to car file.
He bribed a clerk at Hertz Rent a Car. Gretchen/Celia returned the ‘66 Comet with the radiator blown. That mandated a no-rental stint. Thus, the Comet stayed untouched since the drop-off night. Crutch re-bribed the Hertz guy and got two hours alone with the Comet. He print-wiped and got one latent. He spent five weeks hand-checking female print cards at the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and LAPD. So far, no match.
Car file to forensic file.
Clyde had dirt on the county coroner, “Tojo” Tom Takahashi. Tojo Tom was a jailbait Johnny with a yen for young Jap cooze. Crutch leaned on him and told him to keep mum with Clyde on all this. Tojo Tom agreed. Crutch waltzed him into Horror House two nights after his first entry. They split a pint of Jim Beam and tamped down their nerves. They worked by Coleman lantern light. Crutch took photos. Tojo Tom examined and bagged the body parts and took blood and tissue samples. Crutch got pix of the tattoo on the arm and the geometric wall markings. Tojo Tom removed the crumbled green stones from the arm gouge and separately bagged them.
It took hours. The smell was foul. Crutch held the lantern while Tojo Tom brushed maggots off. Tojo Tom called it an “evisceration snuff.” The victim was a young Latin woman. He had her blood analyzed and called Crutch with the results. It was type O+, very common, no outstanding characteristics. He found odd powder fragments in the gouged tissue and had them analyzed. Very odd: there was no toxicology make. Crutch had a gemologist analyze the green stone fragments. Emeralds? No, just green glass.
Forensic file to tattoo file. Canvassing from there.
Crutch hit a total of forty-seven tattoo parlors in and around L.A. He showed his photo of the partial tattoo to endless tattoo freaks. So far, no make. Tattoo file to lead file. He hit LAPD and Sheriff’s R amp;I again. He checked mug books, teletypes and occurrence-field interrogation files for mentions of Gretchen/Celia and got zero. Cop files to INS files. He scanned photo sheets for every female immigrant from every Latin American country extant and got zero on Gretchen/Celia. He remembered Bev’s Switchboard. Gretchen/Celia got calls from three foreign consulates: Panama, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic. He called all three and got three more zeros: no records of calls to Gretchen/Celia. Her Dominican driver’s license turned out to be a phony. The Dominican national DMV had no listing. That bootleg-number call to Bev’s Switchboard? No make on it yet.
$$$ to??? and back again-dollar signs, question marks and zeros.
The kiss. The shadows in and out of his vision. The knife-scar woman’s gray-streaked hair. She didn’t have a name. Gretchen/Celia had two. He wanted to know that woman’s name. He drew pictures of her and papered his walls with them. He gave her her own real features, not Dana Lund’s.
Their talk-”Grapevine,” “Tommy,” “plant”-what did it mean? He checked city directories nationwide. He found listings for 216 Grapevine restaurants, hotels, motels and bars. He didn’t know where he should start checking or if he should start checking or if it meant anything.
So, Gretchen/Celia fucked men and stole their money. “Al,” “Chuck,” “Lew,” Dr. Fred, Farlan Brown potentially. Sal Mineo spilled all that he knew. Gretchen/Celia was allegedly left-wing. What did that mean? She wanted to “get next to” Farlan Brown-say what? on that. The knife-scar woman-how did she play in? The dead woman in the Horror House-was she connected?
Crutch brain-looped and watched TV. He got nigger-riot visuals and headphone fuzz next door. Dead air-Farlan Brown’s suite was still still.