Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 Page 29

  “No offense meant, Mick. So who does Brown work for?”

  “Himself! He’s one of the biggest bookies in town.”

  “A cop is one of the biggest bookies in town?”

  Cohen hacked another laugh. “Fat Ass is the fuckin’ LAPD’s in-house bookie, Heller . . . and Lansom, he covers all of Fat Ass’ big bets.”

  I frowned, trying to make this work. “Mark Lansom is Fat Ass Brown’s layoff man?”

  Another quick glare, as Cohen began to brush his hair. “Do I fuckin’ stutter? Yeah, that’s what Fat Ass was doin’ at Lansom’s house, when you rearranged his nostrils—business with his backer. . . . Get me my hat, would you?”

  “Where is it?”

  “Should be on the dresser.”

  It was—a pearl-gray Borsalino that would have made Harry the Hat envious. When I reached for the lid, the bull terrier—whose corner I had neared—began to growl.

  “Tuffy!” Cohen called. “Shut up, you little bastard!”

  The dog stopped growling.

  I handed Cohen the hat from the bathroom doorway.

  Cohen put the Borsalino on—he would have looked absurd enough in the oversize sombrero, but wearing nothing but a towel. . . .

  “Listen, Heller, you mind me losin’ the towel? It ain’t no queer thing. It don’t make me no faggot ’cause I like to stay clean—it’s just, I’m just late for a meet and I gotta get myself ready.”

  “Do what you gotta do, Mick.”

  He removed the towel, folded it up, and set it on the counter. For an ugly little shrimp, Mickey Cohen had always attracted a good class of fine-looking women and I now knew what they saw in him.

  The hairy naked little (in stature) gangster now selected a can of talcum powder from the battalion before him. He began shaking the talc all over himself, pausing now and then to put the can down and rub in the powder.

  “Listen, I know all about these smalltime McCadden heisters,” he said, standing in the little snowstorm (the hat, apparently, was to protect his hair from the talc blizzard), “and Fred told me about some of your thinkin’, where this dead bimbo is concerned.”

  “I can tell you one thing, Mick—it’s no sex crime. She was smiling the informer’s smile.”

  “Tell me about it.” The talcum can was empty; Cohen—who looked as if he’d been dipped in flour, awaiting a frying pan—selected a new can and started the process again. “But Brown is gonna keep steering the investigation in that sex maniac direction, ’cause if his partner the Hat starts diggin’ into the Florentine Gardens, well, the Hat’s gonna find out his fat-assed partner is the LAPD’s house bookie.”

  “Don’t you think Hansen must already know that?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Cohen said, shaking more talc on himself. “Sure bet the Hat knows his partner is a fuckin’ crook—but not necessarily the department’s win-place-and-show window.”

  “Or maybe the Hat does know,” I said, thinking aloud, “and might relish exposing Fat Ass.”

  “Either way,” Cohen shrugged, “Brown wants to keep that investigation outa the Florentine Gardens.”

  “And your old pal Jim Richardson likes the sex angle better than a dime-a-dozen mob rubout, anyway—sells more papers.”

  Nodding, powdering himself, Cohen said, “That’s why no paper in town has noticed that cut-up bimbo got dumped in Jack Dragna’s backyard.”

  I was leaning against the doorframe. “Then you agree with me, Mick—that Dragna had this murder done, to send a warning to Savarino, to shut him the fuck up?”

  The naked gangster in the Borsalino shook his head, chin wrinkling. “I do not agree, in any way, shape, or form.”

  I almost fell over. “Jesus, Mickey—Jack Dragna tried to hire those McCadden boys to bump you off!”

  He put down the empty can of talc, reaching for a third. “Yeah, probably. That’s just business.” He began salting himself again. “Gotta remember, Jack was the big boss in town before your buddy Benny Siegel and me got sent out here. We butted in on Dragna’s territory, no question—two Jews, yet. But Dragna couldn’t do nothin’, not out in the open, ’cause he had ties to Lucky and Meyer.”

  Luciano and Lansky.

  “So every now and then,” Cohen continued, “Jack tries to stop my clock, but tries and make it look like it was somebody else’s idea. But much as it would do me a favor having you go whack his wop ass, I can tell you without no doubt, Jack Dragna did not have that broad killed.”

  My head was reeling. “Why do you say that, Mickey? How can you be so goddamn sure?”

  Patting himself with powder, he smirked at me. “Heller, how well do you know Benny Siegel?”

  “Well.”

  “He’s got this crazy reputation, right? Screw-loose killer? Do you believe it?”

  I shrugged. “Not entirely.”

  “Do you think Benny or me, you think we would kill somebody just for the sheer fuckin’ hell of it? Would I stick icepicks in some person, just to torture them?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, thank you. Thank you very fuckin’ much.” He was rubbing the powder in. His eyes were clenched tight in the shadow of the Borsalino brim. “I can tell you I never killed a man, or had a man killed, who didn’t the fuck deserve killing by the standards of our way of life. The same is true of Benny, and the same is true of Jack Dragna.”

  I could hardly believe my ears—Mickey Cohen defending Jack Dragna.

  “Dragna was going to have you killed, Mick!”

  “From his vantage, I deserve it!” Cohen selected a blue bottle of cologne from the toiletry troops and dabbed some behind either ear. “I took business away from him! I stole his prestige! Tell me, Heller, when did you ever see any mobster bump a civilian? What did this good-looking piece of ass, God rest her soul, do to deserve that lousy fuckin’ fate? Not a damn thing!”

  “Then who did do it, Mick? Who marked Elizabeth Short as an informer, when she wasn’t one? Just to warn an informer off?”

  Carefully, Cohen returned the cologne bottle to its position. “Hell, I don’t know. You’re the detective. Who else would benefit from shutting Savarino up? Anyway, Dragna’s old school—he wouldn’t have the stomach for a kill like that.”

  “Are you sure? The sex-crime aspect of it sent the cops down the wrong path.”

  He gave me a brief Bronx cheer. “The only way that coulda happened was if Dragna ordered this girl killed, and some goom-bah went off his noodle, and got carried away havin’ a little too much sick fun . . . In which case, Dragna woulda knocked this boy in the head. There’da been some Dragna gangster turn up dead in a ditch, and there ain’t been any.”

  The bathroom floor, around his feet, was carpeted with talcum powder. He used a towel to rub some of the powder off, then looked at his naked reflection and held out his arms, as if in welcome.

  “Now I can get dressed,” Cohen said.

  The powder crunched under his feet as he walked bare-ass-but-for-his-Borsalino into the bedroom, where—after pausing to bend and pet and exchange sloppy kisses with Tuffy (none of which was pretty to see)—he took the hat off, set it on the top of the dresser, and from a drawer selected a pair of monogrammed silk shorts.

  “The rumor,” Cohen said, climbing into them, “is Mark Lansom was trying to get the Short kid in the sack and havin’ no luck whatsoever. So he loses his temper and kills her gorgeous ass. Now, at the same time, Fat Ass Brown is supposedly into Lansom for five grand—and agrees to help cover up the crime, if Lansom wipes the money slate clean.”

  “Is that what you think happened, Mick?”

  Cohen shook his head. “Sounds like horseshit to me. First, Lansom don’t got the balls. Second, the bastard is swimmin’ in quality tail, so why’s he chasin’ some little cock tease? But, anyway, that’s what I’m hearin’, so maybe you should know.”

  Soon he was in gray silk socks and a white silk shirt with a red silk tie. He curled a finger for me to follow him into a walk-in closet smaller
than New Jersey where he selected a blue-gray modified zoot suit with wide, long lapels and tapered trousers, from hundreds of similar suits of various shades hanging there.

  “I never wear a suit after it’s been dry-cleaned,” he said, with a little shudder, leading me out of the closet, me carrying his suit on a hanger for him. “Makes me itch. . . . After a while, I give ’em to poor people.”

  “Mick, I still want to hear Dragna’s version of this.”

  Cohen smiled tightly, put a hand on my shoulder. “You go see Dragna, if you like, talk to him about this, but Heller, I guarantee you one thing: you’ll be dead in a vacant lot. No fancy cut job, just a bullet behind the ear, which will do the fuckin’ trick, don’t you think?”

  “I can handle myself with gangsters, Mick.”

  He hacked one more laugh, as he stepped into his trousers, then looped in a black leather belt. “This ain’t Chicago, Heller. These people got no history with you, no respect for you or dead Frank Nitti.”

  From a drawer he removed a snub-nose Colt .38 in a small holster, which he snapped onto the back of his belt, so that the gun rode his spine. Then he tapped my chest with two fingers; for some strange reason, he smelled strongly of talcum powder.

  “You start sniffin’ around Jack Dragna, tryin’ to connect him with the worst, most fiendish murder since Jack the Ripper slashed them limey sluts, and you’re gonna be Jim Richardson’s next juicy headline. . . . Help me on with my coat.”

  I did.

  “Speakin’ of juice, wait’ll you taste my fresh-squeezed. Gotta apologize, though, we yammered so much, I don’t have time for breakfast. I’ll have Johnny show you to the kitchen—just tell the chef you want my special lox-and-onion omelet.”

  “I think maybe I lost my appetite, Mickey.”

  The natty little ape glanced over his shoulder at me, snugging the Borsalino back on. “Don’t offend me, Heller. I don’t like that.”

  It was delicious.

  21

  For a change Jim Richardson wasn’t pacing, that manic engine of his apparently having finally run down. He sat slumped at the head of the conference room table at the Examiner—he and I were alone in the narrow chamber—a cigarette drooping from slack lips. The city room editor was staring woefully at me with both eyes, even the slow one.

  “This fuckin’ story is runnin’ out of steam,” he said.

  I had just reported what I’d learned from my conversations with Granny and Mark Lansom at the Florentine Gardens, including Lansom’s missing address book. I also passed along what Harry the Hat had told Eliot and me about the sorry state of the LAPD’s investigation, all of which Richardson already seemed to know. Anything of value I’d learned, yesterday, I of course withheld—the McCadden Cafe group’s connection to Elizabeth Short, in particular; and certainly nothing about Welles, or Jack Dragna, who I had decided—on Mickey Cohen’s sage advice—not to bother seeing. Dragna seemed not only a dead end, but a potentially deadly one.

  “There’s a lot going on,” I said, shrugging. “Should be plenty of legs left in this thing.”

  Richardson shook his head mournfully. “Too many goddamn leads—too many boy friends, too many bars she frequented, too many lovesick letters she wrote to too many nobodies.”

  “None of your newshounds have turned up anything interesting?”

  “Best thing we got lately is the Dahlia was seen at numerous joints in the company of a big ‘bossy’ blonde.” He crushed out his cigarette in a glass tray, started up another one, then added archly, “If you can believe the cab drivers and bartenders and lushes who shared this hot information.”

  The bossy blonde was probably Helen Hassau.

  “When was this,” I asked, “that she was seen with a blonde?”

  “Just two days before the body turned up. I hear the cops are starting to think Miss Short was a lesbian, and are hitting the dyke bars. The Hat tell you as much?”

  “That he didn’t mention.” Didn’t surprise me that Hansen was holding out on me like I was holding out on him.

  “Fowley’s still chasing soldiers up at Camp Cooke,” Richardson said, shaking his head. “So many leads, and none of ’em cough up a clue.”

  “It’s still early, Jim.”

  “Our readers are getting bogged down in this unproductive crap. I didn’t want the cops to solve this overnight, but I didn’t expect ’em to mount their horses and gallop off in all directions.”

  “She was a good-looking girl who got around town—sorting out her life and loves could take a year.”

  “Meanwhile, my readers get their asses bored off.”

  I rose from the hard chair. “Well, I’m takin’ the rest of the day off. You can let me know Monday morning if you still want me in on this thing.”

  The editor nodded. “Thinkin’ about headin’ back to Chicago with that good-lookin’ bride of yours?”

  “Yeah. Maybe you could sit down with Fowley or somebody and do that puff piece, first—give my agency that boost you promised.”

  “Sure thing. Of course, it would be a better story under a headline about how you found the Black Dahlia’s killer.”

  I was at the door, now. “I’ll see what I can do, over the weekend.”

  “You do that. And I’ll see if maybe I can figure out a way to goose this thing in the ass.”

  “That’s the best place to apply a goose.”

  Richardson snorted a laugh.

  Just as I went out, I glanced back and he was an oddly pitiful figure, sitting there alone in the big room, staring into nothing, one eye going this way, the other that, his bald head wreathed in cigarette smoke.

  Back in the Beverly Hills hotel bungalow, I found a note from Peggy. She was going out shopping with Cathy Ross, for the afternoon—“while I still can.” I knew this to be a reference to her time of the month—tomorrow, or later today, if the flow got really heavy, she’d be bed-bound. She had really hard periods, sometimes accompanied by blazing headaches.

  Couldn’t blame her for wanting to get in a little relaxation before the menstrual onslaught, but I felt helpless and as alone as Richardson had looked. For a case with so many leads, I was fresh out, particularly since Cohen had scratched Dragna off my list.

  I walked the hotel’s manicured, flower-flung grounds and slipped inside the lobby, and grabbed lunch at the Fountain Coffee Shop. When I was strolling past the front desk, an assistant manager called out to me, and handed me a note from my mailbox.

  Lou Sapperstein had been trying to call, all morning—six little slips of paper represented as many attempts.

  That put some spring in my step, and back in the bungalow I called Lou at his home number, and got him on the first ring.

  “You found something,” I said.

  “I found something,” Lou said.

  “Well, it better be good, ’cause as we speak, Sergeant Finis Brown of the LAPD is in town—that is, the town you’re in, partner, Chicago? And Sergeant Brown and I are not good friends.”

  “How unfriendly are you?”

  “Well, if he finds his way to our offices, Lou, you’ll notice a bandage on his nose.”

  Lou sighed. “You broke his nose. You broke the nose of one of the investigating cops.”

  “Why, doesn’t that sound like me, Lou?”

  “It sounds exactly like you, Nate,” he said wearily. “Now I want to ask you something, before I share my tidbit of information, which by the way only cost the A-1 three hundred bucks—”

  “Three hundred!”

  “Yeah—this comes from a doctor in Hammond, Indiana, a rabbit-puller who does not want the attention of the cops or the press, which being the Black Dahlia’s doctor would certainly bring.”

  I frowned. “Black Dahlia? You know the nickname, so the case has hit the Chicago papers.”

  “Yeah, no pics of her yet. Just small, juicy articles; but with a moniker like that—”

  “Right. So spill, Lou—what did this Hammond Dr. Kildare give you?”

&n
bsp; “Let me ask you my question, first. Have you run across any men who say they slept with her? Who actually screwed this girl?”

  “No. She went down on her share, though.”

  “And didn’t you tell me you didn’t remember screwing her, yourself? That you were drunk on your ass that night?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “My love life is a regular Cole Porter tune, isn’t it?”

  “Nate, there’s a reason for this girl, this slutty girl, never fucking anybody. She couldn’t.”

  I sat up. “What the hell do you mean? She was pregnant, wasn’t she?”

  “No. She was not.”

  I was shaking my head, as if not sure my ears were hearing right. “Then what was she going to an abortionist for?”

  Another sigh. “Like a lot of those guys, this quack in Hammond is also a gynecologist. The problem the Short girl had was not that she had your, or anybody’s bun, in her oven. She requested a colposcopy.”

  “Talk English, Lou.”

  “A vaginal exam. But she couldn’t have one. You see, Elizabeth Short had a physical abnormality that made even a routine vaginal exam impossible. The doc called it . . . let me check my notes . . . ‘vaginal atresia.’ ”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  There was a shrug in Lou’s voice: “She had something the doctor said happens maybe once in a million births: an undeveloped vaginal canal.”

  “Undeveloped. You mean, like a . . . kid’s?”

  “Like a child, a female child—Nate, your beautiful Black Dahlia did not have fully developed adult genitals.”

  I just sat there, phone against my ear, staring at a vase of cut flowers on a stand across the room—lovely pink flowers, feminine, delicate. Dead.

  “Nate? You still there?”

  I nodded, then realized Lou couldn’t see that, and said, “Still here. It’s just . . . so many things make sense now. Of course she satisfied her boy friends orally—it’s all she had.”