Dial Axminster 6-400
James Ellroy
James Ellroy’s second story for NBM features Lee Blanchard, a main character in Mr. Ellroy’s forthcoming novel. The Black Dahlia, which will he published by the Mysterious Press in Fall 1987. A Los Angeles native, Mr. Ellroy has long been obsessed with his hometowns dark past, which he feels is epitomized by the 1947 murder on which the book is based. Commenting on “Dial Axminster 6-400,” Mr. Ellroy says it features two of his three loves — vintage cars and volatile women. Boxing, the third of his obsessions, will be the subject of a future story.
Ellis Loew rapped on the pebbled glass door that separated LAPD Warrants from the Office of the District Attorney. Davis Evans, dozing in his chair, muttered “Mother dog.” I said, “That’s his college-ring knock. It’s a personal favor or a reprimand.”
Davis nodded and got to his feet slowly, befitting a man with twenty years and two days on the job — and an ironclad civil-service pension as soon as he said the words, “Fuck you, Ellis. I retire.” He smoothed his plaid shirt, adjusted the knot in his Hawaiian tie, hitched up the waistband of his shiny black pants, and patted the lapels of the camel’s hair jacket he stole from a black pimp at the Lincoln Heights drunk tank. “That boy wants a favor, he gonna pay like a mother dog.”
“Blanchard! Evans! I’m waiting!”
We walked into the Deputy D.A.’s office and found him smiling, which meant that he was either practicing for the press or getting ready to kiss some ass. Davis nudged me as we took seats, then said, “Hey, Mr. Loew. What did the leper say to the prostitute?”
Loew’s smile stayed glued on; it was obviously a big favor he wanted. “I don’t know, Sergeant. What?”
“Keep the tip. Ain’t that a mother dog?”
Loew put out his hail-fellow-well-met chuckle. “Yes, it’s so simple that it has a certain charm. Now, the reason I—”
“What do you call an elephant that moonlights as a prostitute?”
Loew’s smile spread into nasty little facial tics. “I... don’t... know. What?”
“A two-ton pickup that lays for peanuts. Woooo! Mother dog!”
The Ted Mack Amateur Hour had gone far enough. I said, “Did you want something, Boss?”
Davis laughed uproariously, like my question was the real punch line; Loew wiped the smile remnants off his face with a handkerchief. “Yes, I do. Did you know that there was a kidnapping in L.A. four days ago? Monday afternoon on the USC campus?”
Davis kiboshed his stage chuckles; snatch jobs were meat and potatoes to him — the kind of cases he loved to work. I said, “You’ve got Fred Allen’s interest. Keep going.”
Loew twirled his Phi Beta Kappa key as he spoke. “The victim’s name is Jane Mackenzie Viertel. She’s nineteen, a USC frosh. Her father is Redmond Viertel, an oil man with a big string of wells down on Signal Hill. Three men in USC letter jackets grabbed her Monday, about two o’clock. It’s rush week, so all the witnesses thought it was some sort of fraternity stunt. The men called the girl’s father late that night and made their demand: a hundred thousand dollars in fifties. Viertel got the money together, then got frightened and called the FBI. The kidnappers called back and set up a trade for the following day in an irrigation field up near Ventura.
“Two agents from the Ventura office set up a trap, one hiding, one posing as Viertel. The kidnappers showed up, then it all went haywire.”
Davis said, “Wooooo,” and cracked his knuckles; Loew grimaced at the sound and continued. “One of the kidnappers found the agent who was hiding. They were both afraid of disturbing the transaction with gunfire, so they had a little hand-to-hand combat. The kidnapper beat the agent up with a shovel, then hacked off six of his fingers with the blade. The other agent sensed something was wrong and started to act fidgety. He grabbed one of the men and put a gun to his head, and the other man did the same to the girl. A real Mexican standoff, until the fed grabbed the money bag and a windstorm played hell with all that cash. The man with the girl grabbed the bag and took off, and the fed took his captive in. You see what I mean by haywire?”
I said, “So two snatchers and the girl are still at large?”
“Yes. The third man is in custody in Ventura, and the other agent is very angry.”
Davis laced his fingers together and cracked a total of eight knuckles. “Wooooo. These boys got names, Mr. Loew? And what’s this got to do with me and Lee?”
Now Loew’s smile was genuine — that of a fiend who loves his work. Consulting some rap sheets on his desk, he said, “The man in custody is Harwell Jackson Treadwell, white male, age thirty-one. He’s from Gila Bend, Oklahoma; your neck of the woods, Evans. He’s got three strong-arm convictions running back to 1934 and has two outstanding warrants here in L.A. — robbery charges filed in ’44 and ’45. Treadwell also has two charming brothers, Miller and Leroy. Both are registered sex offenders and do not seem to care much about the gender of their conquests. In fact, Leroy rather likes those of the four-footed persuasion. He was arrested for aggravated assault on an animal and served thirty days for it in ’42.”
Davis picked at his teeth with his tie clip. “Any old port in a storm. Miller and Leroy got the girl and part of the money?”
“That’s right.”
“And you want me and Lee to—”
I interrupted, seeing my Friday night go up in smoke. “This is Ventura County’s business. Not ours.”
Loew held up an extradition warrant and carbons of two bench summonses. “The kidnapping took place in Los Angeles, in my judicial district. I would very much like to prosecute Mr. Treadwell along with his brothers when they are apprehended. So I want you two to drive up to Ventura and return Mr. Treadwell to City Jail before the notoriously ill-mannered Ventura sheriffs beat him to death.”
I groaned; Davis Evans made an elaborate show of standing up and smoothing out the various tucks and folds of his outfit. “I’ll be a mother dog, but I was thinkin’ about retiring this afternoon.”
Winking at me, Loew said, “You won’t retire when you hear what the other two brothers escaped in.”
“Wooooo. Keep talkin’, boy.”
“A 1936 Auburn speedster. Two-tone, maroon and forest green. When they get captured, and you know they will, the car will go to City Impound until claimed or bid on. Davis, I expect to send those Okie shitheads to the gas chamber. It’s very hard to claim a vehicle from death row, and the duty officer at the impound is a close friend of mine. Still want to retire?”
Davis exclaimed, “Wooooooo!”, grabbed the warrants and hustled his two-thirty-five toward the door. I was right behind him — reluctantly — the junior partner all the way. With his hand on the knob, the senior man got in a parting shot: “What do you call a gal who’s got the syph, the clap, and the crabs? An incurable romantic! Wooooo! Mother dog!”
We took the Ridge Road north, Davis at the wheel of his showroom-fresh ’47 Buick ragtop, me staring out at the L. A. suburbs dwindling into scrub-covered hills, then farmland worked by Japs out of the relocation camps and transplanted Okies. The Okie sitting beside me never spoke when he drove; he stayed lost in a man-car reverie. I thought about our brief warrants partnership, how our differences made it work.
I was the prototypical athlete-cop the high brass loved, the ex-boxer one L.A. scribe labeled “the Southland’s good but not great white hope.” No one knew the “but not” better than me, and plain “good” meant flash rolls, steak, and nightlife until you were thirty, then permanently scrambled brains. The department was the one safe place where my fight juice could see me through to security — with muted glory along the way — and I went for it like Davis’s mother dog, cultivating all the right people, most notably boxing fanatic Ellis Loew.