I knew I couldn’t eat a steak with my tooth as loose as it was, but I did want to ask him about the possibility of the Haskell family having any involvement with the L.A. County DA’s office prior to 1945.
“Oh, man, that sounds good.” I wiggled my tooth again. “But I’ll just have a bowl of chicken soup.”
“Chicken soup? Are you nuts? We’re talking prime beef here, thick porterhouse steaks smothered in onions. What’s the matter, you sick?”
“Yeah, well, something like that,” I said. “Hey, I called you earlier. I want to talk to you about-”
“We’ll talk when you get here.”
I pulled the yellow tablet I used at the motel from the desk drawer. “I’ve also got a list of phone numbers that I need you to track down.”
“No sweat, bring it with you.” The phone clicked off.
“Oy vey! Jimmy, what happened to you? You look like hell,” Sol said as I slid into his private booth at Rocco’s. Laughter and music from the bar area swirled around us.
I rubbed the left side of my jaw. A bump had formed and it felt tender. “A couple of bruisers tried to persuade me to drop the Roberts case. Nothing serious. I’ll be fine, except my Vette needs a little work.”
“Hired muscle, but who do they work for?” Sol said quietly, almost to himself. His brain was engaged, mulling over the same question that played continually in my mind.
“Someone who obviously has something to hide.”
“Jimmy, I know you well enough to know that you’re not going to quit the case.”
“Of course not. I’d handle it for nothing, now.”
“You are handling it for nothing.”
“I got fifty bucks from the county.”
“Where’s my cut?” Sol said, his face easing into a smile.
“You have my company for dinner. You want more?”
Sol turned serious. “You think you’ll need protection?”
“Nah, I’ll just have to keep on my guard up.”
Jeanine appeared, and Sol ordered the porterhouse. Nothing more was said about my liquid diet when I requested a large bowl of chicken soup, heavy on the broth. Jeanine looked at me and nodded knowingly.
When the waitress left, I told Sol my hunch that the Haskell family may have had dealings with the DA’s office prior to the Roberts affair. “They were a powerful family even back then,” I said. “Just a guess, but maybe Charles Jr. and Raymond’s old man had been in bed with Byron before Roberts appeared on the scene. Maybe that’s why Byron jumped in later and took over the case personally.”
“Could be, Jimmy. I’ll put a couple of my men on it. Might be some records buried somewhere, or maybe there might be someone still around who worked in the DA’s office back then that would come clean. It’ll take a few days, but if Haskell and Byron had anything funny going on, we’ll find out.” Sol paused for a moment and lit up a cigar. Puffing while looking at the ceiling, he said, “Hey, my boy, not bad. It’s a good theory.”
“Think so?”
“Yeah, well, better than average.”
While Sol polished off his steak and I sipped my soup we avoided discussing the case and nothing more was said about the bad guys who asked me, in a less than polite manner, to quit the case. But after we finished our meal, I put the list of phone numbers on the table. I told Sol about Mrs. Hathaway and her lawsuit and how she’d saved the telephone bills along with a Photoplay movie magazine, a newspaper, Vera’s makeup paraphernalia, and other objects in the murder room that the cops hadn’t bagged.
“After almost thirty years, is there any way we can connect names with these numbers?” I asked.
“Aw, finding a link that Byron might’ve had with the Haskell family could be a little tough, but this one’s easy.” Sol glanced around the room until he caught Jeanine’s attention. “Sweetheart, bring me a phone, will you please?”
While the waitress ran to get a telephone, he studied the numbers and prefixes listed on the yellow tablet. “Lot of calls, but maybe we’ll get lucky with a few.”
“Didn’t they have cross directories back in those days?”
“Maybe they did, but the directories wouldn’t be in public hands. They’d be for the police department only. I doubt if any of them are still in existence.”
“Then back in 1945 it would’ve been easy for the cops to find out who Vera had called. Isn’t that right, Sol?”
“Easy to do, if they bothered to check. But after they arrested Roberts and he confessed, why muddy the waters with a few phone calls that probably didn’t have anything to do with the murder?”
Jeannie appeared with a phone. She plugged the cord into a socket hidden in an area behind the booth. Sol picked up the receiver, glanced once more at the list of phone numbers and began to dial.
“Who you calling?” I asked.
“I’m calling your phone numbers, changing the exchange letters for their number.” He held up a finger. “Sorry, wrong number,” he said into the phone. He dialed again, listened for a moment and then hung up. He kept dialing, listening, and hanging up until he had called all the numbers on the list. Finally he looked up at me. “Most of the numbers are no longer in service. But some are still the same.”
“How could that be?” I pointed to one of the phone numbers on the paper, a Crestview exchange number. What about that one, CR 5-4211? There’s no area code or anything.”
“That’s easy. The Crestview exchange used to be in Beverly Hills. The area code for Beverly Hills is now 310, same as here, so I just dialed the number, substituting 27 for the corresponding letters, CR.”
“Who answered?”
“It’s Saks Fifth Avenue, on Wilshire. Vera must’ve have been planning to pick up a new wardrobe. There’s also another Crestview number on your list, CR 6-5723, but no one answered.”
“Wouldn’t the telephone company have changed the phone numbers after thirty years?”
“Nope, not for businesses. Why would they?” He thought for a moment. “Remember that Glenn Miller song, recorded in the forties, ‘Pennsylvania Six Five Thousand’?”
“Vaguely.”
“The title of the song was the actual phone number for the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York, PE 6-5000. Before the war, Miller and his band used to perform in their ballroom. But after all these years the hotel has the same number now as they had then, Pennsylvania 6-5000. Numbers instead of letters, of course.”
“No kidding?”
“Don’t believe me? Dial the number, 212 area code.”
“I believe you.”
“Dial it.”
“Sol, I said I believe you.”
But when he handed me the phone I dialed 212-736-5000. The hotel desk clerk answered. I asked him how long they had that number. “Forever,” the guy said and hung up.
After I put the receiver down, I asked Sol about the other numbers on the list. “Okay, you’re right. But who else had Vera called?”
“As I said, most of them are no longer in service, people move and stuff. With a couple of numbers, the phone rang but no one answered. One belonged to a Chinese takeout, Chung’s Chop Suey,” Sol said. “Hey, I haven’t had Chinese in a while, maybe we should try to find a good Chinese joint, but not chop suey, Peking duck-”
“Sol, the phone numbers.”
Oh, yeah. Here’s something interesting.” He pointed to a couple of numbers on my list.
I leaned forward. “What?”
“Three calls were made to a VErmont number, Culver City. Do you know what’s in Culver City, Jimmy?”
“I don’t know. Used car lots, restaurants? Christ, what kind of question is that?”
“Take a guess. It’s big.”
“Sol, damn it, just tell me who she called.”
“She called the MGM movie studio. In fact, two of the calls were made to the private line of their security department.”
CHAPTER 12
The next morning I woke up early, unusual for a Saturday, and when I looked in the mirror I noticed that the bruise on my jaw had spread to my cheek. My shoulder was black and blue and still throbbed. I took three aspirins and washed them down with coffee. My tooth seemed okay, so I figured I’d head to Dolan’s Donuts for breakfast, have a couple of glazed and relax with the Times before driving to the LAPD to report the incident. I’d need the report for insurance purposes-though again I hoped that Mabel had paid the last premium.