Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 Read online

  “Could I have committed this act, Nathan?”

  He was asking my reflections; I answered his.

  “Orson, I don’t think so. Just because you’re a megalomaniac doesn’t make you a homicidal maniac.”

  He continued to meet my gaze in the mirror; and almost the entire conversation that followed was delivered through the buffer of glass. The cigar had disappeared. As we spoke, it was as if I were speaking not to Welles, but his image, projected on a screen, dozens of screens.

  “These Bosch-like grotesqueries,” he said, “could they have been unfulfilled wishes? Worse, images I did fulfill on a black, forgotten night?”

  “With your bad back?”

  That halted the melodrama and made him laugh. “Yes, that did occur to me. I’ve been wearing that damn metal brace about half the time, lately—when I’m under stress, these genetic anomalies of the spine of mine, which my weight hardly helps, make me as helpless . . . and as harmless . . . as a kitten. But what if drugs and alcohol combined to blot out the pain? And to unleash some murderous rage in me, and then blot out the memory?”

  I looked at him, not his reflection. “I don’t think you killed her. But you may be able to help me figure out who did, by answering a few questions.”

  “By all means.”

  “Was Beth Short a hooker, Orson?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “When did you see her last?”

  He stole a look at me, then spoke to my image. “At Brittingham’s—I hadn’t seen her since October. I bought her a sandwich and a Coke. It must have been . . . a week prior to the . . . grisly discovery.”

  “You just ran into her . . . ?”

  “I don’t think it was a coincidence—she was looking for me, hoping to see me—she admitted as much.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Money. She said she needed an operation.”

  “An abortion?”

  “That would be a reasonable assumption, considering she mentioned she was going to see a certain Dr. Dailey.”

  The back of my neck was prickling. “Why? Who is he?”

  “Wallace A. Dailey—a former L.A. County Hospital chief of staff, a retired, respectable physician . . . and, I’m told, Hollywoodland’s current abortionist of choice.”

  Sensing I’d struck gold, I scribbled the name down in my notepad, asking, “Would this Dailey happen to hail from New England, originally?”

  This line of questioning seemed to make Welles uncomfortable, and a certain irritability, even impatience, colored his tone, as he replied, “I wouldn’t know. Nor do I have an address on the man, though I presume he would be listed in the yellow pages, though probably not under ‘abortionist.’ ”

  “She tried to shake you down, didn’t she, Orson?”

  “Not precisely. There . . . may have been an implied threat of . . . embarrassment. I gave her what I could—fifty dollars. The child she was carrying was obviously not mine.”

  “You weren’t intimate with her at all?”

  “Define intimate.”

  “I would consider having your dick sucked intimate.”

  He winced at that, but admitted, “She did have a gift for fellatio. Children are seldom conceived in that fashion, you realize.”

  “She have any other gifts? Did you promise her a screen test?”

  “I did. Not a false promise, either—she was very attractive, as I’ve said, lovely, really, and I understand she had a pleasant singing voice. How did you link me with her?”

  “Florentine Gardens.”

  He nodded and dozens of him nodded in the mirrors. “N.T.G.?”

  “Yeah, him and that actress, Ann Thomson. I don’t think they’ll mention you to the cops. The cops don’t even know about her working at the Gardens, yet. And there were a lot of celebrities she came into contact with there—you’d be on a long list. I got a feeling the same is going to prove true of the Hollywood Canteen.”

  Now he looked at me—he seemed very young, like a big child with that helpless baby face. “I’d like to engage your services, Nathan.”

  “To cover this up?”

  Still holding my gaze with his, he said, “I need to know that I was not responsible for this ghastly act. I need to know, Nathan.”

  “And if you are responsible?”

  Now he spoke to me in the mirrors, again. “One calamity at a time. Let me just say, there is schizophrenia in my family, Nathan—if I in fact suffer from these agonizing Welles clan strains, then the next ‘Crazy House’ I inhabit may not be on a soundstage.”

  “You didn’t do it, Orson.”

  His most charming smile beamed at me from dozens of mirrors. “Nathan, darling, there is in even the most humane of men an irrational drive to do evil.”

  I could only think of the opening of his old radio show: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”

  Now he swiveled on the chair and looked right at me, placing a hand on my shoulder. “The only cover-up I ask is that you not breathe a word of this to the Examiner. If Hearst gets wind of my connection to the Black Dahlia, I’m finished—I might as well have done the crime.”

  Welles was right: Hearst would take immense pleasure in finally having his full revenge for Citizen Kane.

  “I’ll help you, Orson.”

  “Nathan, darling, there’s one other small problem.”

  “Another problem?”

  “I’m broke.”

  “Directing and starring in a Rita Hayworth picture, you’re broke?”

  “Dead broke. As a magician, my best act seems to be making money disappear. A horde of creditors, including the IRS, are hounding me, daily.” He gestured to his hall of mirrors. “I’m doing this to repay a fifty-grand advance Harry Cohn wired me when I desperately needed money to pay the costume rental bill for Around the World.”

  Orson had recently staged a Broadway show of Around the World in 80 Days, a lavish production with Cole Porter music that had nonetheless tanked. Rumor was Welles had sunk every cent he had into it, and was in hock for hundreds of thousands.

  “You can charge me your standard hourly rate against an interest in my next production,” he suggested, as he walked me out onto the soundstage.

  “Which is?”

  “I’m talking to Herbert Yates about a project over at Republic.”

  “Where they make all those B-westerns? You are running out of studios to alienate.”

  He was ushering me through the near-darkness of the vast chamber past the endless dragon slide.

  “Don’t be cynical, darling Nathan—I’m going to be doing Shakespeare on the same soundstages where Roy Rogers and Gene Autry bring badmen to justice. There is something delightful about that! I’m mounting it as if it were a horror movie, you know, like Universal used to make with Karloff and Lugosi.”

  “Which play?”

  “Macbeth—murder in the night, followed by nightmares, guilt and rampant paranoia.”

  “Well,” I said, stepping out into the light, “at least you got the research out of the way.”

  His expression was blank. “I only hope I haven’t been researching Othello.”

  And he slipped back into the darkness.

  Then I turned and bumped into Shorty, waiting to show me the way out of Columbia’s backlot, a maze rivaling Welles’ hall of mirrors.

  15

  The Bradbury Building, on the southeast corner of Third and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, was only slightly less bizarre than Welles’ Crazy House. The five-story turn-of-the-century building’s unremarkable brownstone exterior concealed a baroque secret life: ornamental wrought-iron stairwells and balconies, globed fixtures illuminating the open brick-and-tile corridors; caged elevators, their cables and gears and rollers exposed, like contraptions out of Jules Verne; and an enormous greenhouse-style skylight that bounced an eerie gold-white light off the glazed floor of the huge central court that was the Bradbury’s lobby.

  Our offices were on the fifth flo
or, near an elevator, behind a frosted glass door that said A-1 Detective Agency, Fredrick C. Rubinski, Chief Investigator (both our names, however, were listed on the building directory—we were the only detective agency in a world of doctors and lawyers). In the outer office sat our receptionist—an attractive gum-chewing, nail-filing blonde—who worked for free, because Fred allowed her to sit at a switchboard, running her own answering-service business. In addition to the inner office, which was Fred’s alone, an adjoining, cubicled-off office accommodated four operatives.

  Late in the afternoon, I sat across from Fred and filled him in on my day’s activities.

  “Assaulting a police detective,” Fred said archly, leaning back in his swivel chair, the dwindling stub of a once-fine cigar in a corner of his mouth, “that should be good for business. . . . Why so reckless, Nate?”

  A hard round ball of a man, Fred looked like a bald, slightly less homely Edward G. Robinson, typically natty in his gray suit and blue-and-gray patterned tie.

  “Fat Ass isn’t a cop,” I said, sipping a cup of water from the outer office cooler. “He’s just a thug on the city payroll. Anyway, there won’t be a peep out of him—he won’t tell a soul.”

  “Because he was at Lansom’s, playing bag man, you mean?”

  “That’s right. I think they’re running hookers out of that nightclub.”

  Fred lifted a thick dark eyebrow. “If so, I haven’t heard about it. Ever since that underage-chorus-girl shit hit the fan, Granny’s been keeping the Garden squeaky clean.”

  “Yeah? Then why is Granny quitting?”

  “The hell you say!”

  “Granlund told me as much today. Seems Lansom’s up to something that’s rubbing our esteemed road-company Ziegfeld the wrong way.”

  “That’s pretty goddamn interesting . . .” Fred pressed out the stub of his cigar in a brass tray on his tidy desk. “. . . but I still don’t think it’s hookers. Did you break Brown’s nose?”

  “Probably. Fat Ass won’t fuck with me—he thinks I’m a Chicago Outfit guy.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  I wadded up the empty Dixie cup and tossed it in a corner wastebasket. “Not in any major way, but I’m not going to burst his bubble, on that score. Listen, what can you tell me about a . . .” I checked my notepad. “. . . Dr. Wallace A. Dailey?”

  Fred rocked in the chair, fingers tented on his belly over his silk tie. “Just that he’s everybody’s favorite rabbit-puller, these days.”

  “Abortionist to the stars.”

  “Yeah, and the social set.”

  “And how does a physician achieve such distinction?”

  Fred laughed, shrugged. “We’re not talking about some back-room abortion mill, Nate—Doc Dailey is, or anyway was, a prominent member of the medical community, out here.”

  According to Fred (who confirmed and expanded upon what Welles had told me), Dr. Dailey was a former chief of staff at Los Angeles County Hospital, and—until fairly recently—had been an associate professor of surgery at the University of Southern California.

  “There was some kind of scandal that got hushed up,” Fred said, “back in early ’45 . . . a malpractice situation that got paid off and swept under the carpet. But serious enough that the doc had to resign both his positions.”

  “You don’t know what the nature of that malpractice was?”

  “Well, you gotta understand, the doc’s in his late sixties, or anyway that’s what I’d guess . . . and it’s pretty well known he’s not really functioning on all cylinders, these days.”

  “How so?”

  Fred shrugged. “He’s forgetful, turned into a regular absent-minded-professor type—hell, maybe even senile. He probably sewed a scalpel up inside somebody.”

  This wasn’t tracking. “Then what makes a pregnant movie star want to go under his knife?”

  “Dailey’s respectable, with a spotless reputation . . . prior to those resignations, anyway . . . and, besides, I would venture to say he’s not doing the cutting, himself. It’s probably that amazon, doing it.”

  I leaned back in my chair, arms folded, shaking my head. “If you’re under the impression I know what the hell you’re talking about, partner, you’re as batty as this doc sounds.”

  Fred selected a fresh cigar out of a carved wooden box—like Welles, Rubinski was strictly a Havana man. “I’m talking about this South American woman Dailey took in as a partner—Dr. Maria Winter. Big, handsome gal in her forties, some kind of war refugee.”

  “The war was in Europe, as I recall.”

  “Yeah, well,” he said, puffing the cigar, getting it going, “she was over there studying, when the bombs started dropping, went to the University of Prague or some such—what landed her in that part of the world, how the hell should I know? . . . But eventually she wound up on Doc Dailey’s doorstep, when he was still at the County Hospital. He took her under his wing, and she worked as his nurse while she took classes, till she could pass the boards for her California medical license.”

  “How do you happen to know all this?”

  “I don’t ‘happen’ to know it.” He drew on the cigar, held in some smoke, blew it out, choosing his next words carefully. “I refer clients to them, in need of the Dailey clinic’s particular medical specialty.”

  “Oh.”

  “Look, any number of people could have filled you in on those two characters—I mean, it’s one of those only-in-Hollywood affairs.”

  “How so?”

  Fred shook his head, grinned, cigar in his teeth now, like he was waiting for a circus marksman to shoot it out. “Respectable doctor, at the end of his career, happily married, kids, grand-kids—and then this built-like-a-brick-shithouse hot tamale good-neighbor-policies her way into his life.”

  I frowned. “She’s not just his business partner, you mean?”

  “Naw! The doc is separated from his wife, maybe filed for divorce by now, for all I know. It’s comical—Dailey’s this proper little old man, suddenly in the clutches of this tall, curvy femme fatale—”

  “And they’re running an abortion clinic together,” I said. “Right out in the open?”

  Fred smirked. “That’s not hard in L.A. It’s a homicide bureau setup, y’know—a protected ring with Dailey and Winter up near the top of the list. The State Medical Board investigates any complaints or info that comes in, regarding abortions performed by doctors or chiros or midwives or whoever; but they turn their results over to the homicide bureau, who either shake down or crack down on anybody outside of the ring . . . and those who are in the ring, tip-offs are made, any arrests are smothered . . . you get the picture.”

  “Are we back to Fat Ass again?”

  “He’s a homicide dick,” Fred said, nodding. “Now, Harry the Hat, he wouldn’t touch this kind of crap.”

  “And you’re saying, the A-1 has an existing relationship with Dr. Dailey and his partner—”

  “Dr. Winter. Yeah. We get a referral fee.”

  “A kickback.”

  Half a smile dimpled Fred’s plump cheek. “Why, does that offend your sensibilities, Nate? We swim in Hollywood waters—so what if it’s a swimming pool, and not the Chicago River? That doesn’t make the water any less scummy.”

  I sat thinking for a while, then asked, “Early this month, did you get a phone call from a girl—kind of a low, husky voice—wanting to get in touch with me?”

  Fred’s endless forehead clenched in thought. “Come to think of it . . . yeah—she was the daughter of an old friend, she said, wanted to say hello.”

  “And you gave her my number at the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

  “I think I did. Why? Shouldn’t I have . . . ?”

  I didn’t answer. My heard was whirling. I was still trying to wrap my brain around the notion that Beth Short had chosen an abortionist who took referrals from my own detective agency! What the fuck was going on?

  “I have to talk to this Dailey,” I said, “and his amazon partner—sooner the better.�
��

  Fred was looking at me, funny. “Well, his office is probably open for another half hour or so. . . . What are you not telling me, Nate?”

  “You don’t want to know.” I stood, digging my car keys out of my trousers. “Where is Dailey’s office, Fred? Can I make it there before he closes?”

  Fred blinked. “Are you kidding?”

  “Do I look like I’m fucking kidding?” I yelled, leaning in, a hand against the desktop. “Where is Dailey’s office, Fred?”

  He swallowed and pointed to his left. “Just down the hall, Nate.”

  Down the corridor, around a corner, there it was, on the frosted glass: Doctor Wallace A. Dailey, M.D., Surgeon; Doctor Maria Winter, M.D., Gynecologist. The Dailey practice seemed to engulf the equivalent of three or four standard Bradbury Building office layouts.

  So.

  Elizabeth Short had gone to see her doctor—that is, the abortionist whose fee she was trying to raise—and had noticed, either on her way to or from that doctor’s office, the neighboring A-1 Detective Agency. She had recognized the A-1 as mine, remembered my talking about opening a California branch, and may even have checked the building directory, where my name was listed. Then she called Fred Rubinski and got my number at the hotel.

  All of which led me to believe the baby she was carrying had not been mine: that seeing my name had simply reminded her of one more male acquaintance she could shake down in her effort to raise that five hundred dollars she needed to abort somebody’s child.

  But if I wasn’t the father, then who was?

  A man who tortured her and cut her in half and left her, drained of blood, in a vacant lot?

  The chairs that lined the waiting room were empty, and the receptionist—a pleasant white-uniformed brunette in her early twenties—looked up and out from her window and informed me the office would be closing, momentarily.

  I gave her my card, explained that I was the president of the A-1 Detective Agency, and would like the opportunity to briefly introduce myself to the two doctors.

  Soon I was waiting in an office whose walls were decorated with framed diplomas, awards, and group photographs in both hospital and academic settings. I took one of two wooden, cushioned chairs across from a desk that was massive and mahogany and bare except for a blotter and family photos in standing frames—if any work had been done at this desk lately, it wasn’t showing. Wooden filing cabinets hid in corners, and along the back wall a lighted cabinet displayed a considerable collection of carved jade—mostly Buddhas and dragons and other Oriental figurines, with a shelf of exquisite jewelry and an intricate Chinese fan.