Cold Shoulder (11 page)

The missing blonde woman had become a vital witness to the murder of Norman Hastings. Somebody out there knew who she was. A man and a woman had helped her out of the cab; the man had even paid her fare. Rooney instructed his officers to step up the search for her, and called in the two officers Lorraine had met earlier.

He checked over all the statements they had taken. They were convinced that no one had lied. They thought the cab driver might have been mistaken. ‘We saw only one blonde woman, Captain — but she’d got all her teeth, her hair was short and she was real smart, just staying with her friend. She didn’t look like a whore or the type to know one.’

Rooney told them to question everybody once more. Seeing them exchange covert, bored looks, Rooney snapped, ‘Get the cab driver to go with you, if needs be. Go on, get moving!’

The two men had just reached the office door when Josh Bean walked in. ‘You better look at this, Captain.’

Rooney reached out his podgy hand for the internal fax sheet. Bean gave the nod for the two men to leave the room, but to wait outside. Rooney looked up. ‘We’d better check this out. Looks like our missing girl.’

He snatched up his jacket, told the two officers they could go off duty. If the new information panned out, they had just found their star witness.

The run-down apartment block was a graffiti jungle. Burned-out cars littered the disused yard and every window was smashed. The Paradise Apartments billboard, showing palm trees and a semi-naked girl sunbathing, was peeling and covered in daubed slogans.

Rooney stepped under the obligatory yellow tape to join the group gathered round the covered corpse. There were five patrol cars, lights blinking, and a horde of officers assembled to protect the men in this notorious down-town area. Groups of kids were hanging around watching avidly. This wasn’t unusual in the middle of the day as most of them never bothered to attend school for more than one or two days a week, if that. This was crack-dealer territory. The kids on their BMX bikes more than likely had shooters stuck up their fashionable jackets.

‘Who found her?’ Rooney asked as he neared the corpse.

That kid over there, one with the red hat on, but he must have had help to drag her from the trunk of the car. That’s been there for weeks, by the way, the car not the body:’

Rooney stared at the kid, who was no more than six or seven and laughing as he pointed to the dead body, nudging his pals.

‘She was in the wrecked car, nearest the tapes. He dragged her out here, said he thought she was alive — but if she had any jewellery on her, she ain’t got it now.’

As he crouched down, Rooney took out his handkerchief to cover his face — the stench was of a body at least two days old. So much for the kid’s story about thinking she was still alive. She was wearing a floral patterned dress, with a belt and flat black shoes. Rooney noted they were the same size as the one they had found in Hastings’s car. Her thin legs were bare, and one stretched out at an odd angle. Her arms were by her sides, the back of her dress undone. The thin blonde hair was matted with dark congealed blood; a wound gaped at the base of her skull, so deep, he could see white bone. Slowly they turned over the unwieldy corpse. Her face had been hammered out of all recognition. Blood obliterated the brightly coloured flowers that had once patterned the front of her dress.

There was nothing Rooney could do; he couldn’t tell if it was their witness or not. His only option was to wait for the report to come in, and for her to be cleaned up so he could see her face.

‘Any of her teeth missing?’ he asked as an afterthought.

An officer peered down into the mass of blood hiding her face. ‘I can’t tell, her nose has been flattened so bad…’

Rooney returned to his office with Bean. They opened a bottle of Scotch, and both had a heavy hit. No matter how many you see, it’s always the smell that gets to you, stays in your nostrils. The sweet, sticky, cloying smell of rotting flesh.

‘I think it’s our witness. Cinderella,’ Rooney said flatly. ‘Fuck it! Really needed to talk to her.’ He sighed.

‘Yeah.’ Bean knocked back his drink.

Rooney looked up as his secretary peered in. A message had come through from the city morgue: the corpse wouldn’t be ready for viewing until at least the following day, maybe longer. Did he want to speak to the scene-of-crime officers? Rooney jerked his head for Bean to go and do the leg-work; he had some paperwork to finish. Bean raised his eyebrow, knowing Rooney always said that when he wanted to take himself off home. But he was wrong this time: Rooney spent the next hour making phone calls to different precincts. It was something one of the officers had said — or he might even have said it himself. She had been hammered in the face and at the back of the head. He wanted to know if anyone else had a similar homicide — weapon used probably some kind of hammer, that was all… In reality he passed more time chatting to old buddies, in no hurry for the facts. He knew he wouldn’t get them straight away, if at all. Old files would have to be sifted through, and checked out on computer. Probably wasting everybody’s time, but he caught up on gossip, arranged a game of billiards and agreed to have a drink with Colin Sparks, an old poker-playing pal he’d not seen for six months.

Sitting on a bar stool in Joe’s Diner, his fat ass bulging over the red plastic stool top, Rooney had downed two beers and a chaser by the time Sparks walked in, but promptly ordered another round and a fresh bowl of peanuts.

Sparks whacked him on the back, then produced a dog-eared file. ‘I’m late because I got interested in that! It happened before I got transferred — it’s been around for four years. Dead hooker. Go on, read it.’

Rooney grinned at the young, fresh-faced lieutenant, and cuffed him like a father would his son. ‘Looking sharper than ever, Colin. How you keeping?’

‘Fine, new baby on the way — everything’s good.’

Rooney opened the file. He looked at the prostitute’s face, her dyed blonde hair scraped back from her head showing at least an inch of dark hair growth. Half Mexican. Maria Valez, aged thirty-two. The next page had a photograph of her body when it was discovered in the trunk of a wrecked Buick. Like the dead woman that afternoon, Maria’s face had been virtually obliterated by heavy blows. There was an enlarged shot of the back of her scalp, showing the deep wound. Type of weapon, possibly a claw-sided hammer. No witness, no arrest, no charges, case closed for lack of evidence, but authorized to remain open on file.

Rooney closed the file and tossed a handful of peanuts into his mouth. ‘Can I keep this? There’s a few details on blood groups I’d like to check out with my case.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Thanks,’ smiled Rooney, as he waved at the waitress for another round. ‘An’ I’m gonna treat you to the best curry in Pasadena!’

Rooney, well toasted, and Sparks, soberish, left Joe’s Diner to head for the Star of Asia curry house. Rooney’s crumpled alpaca coat flapped. The file was stuffed under his arm and he was sweating in the early-evening heat. He upped his flat-footed pace to get into the air-conditioned restaurant.

Lorraine emerged from the health club Fit as a Fiddle feeling like a washed-out rag. Her heels were blistered, her silk blouse creased, tears of sweat dripped from her fringe, and her hair was wet at the nape of her neck. So far she had applied for ten different jobs to discover either that the position had been filled, or that she didn’t have the required experience. At Fit as a Fiddle she had snapped back at the Cher-with-muscles lookalike: ‘How much fucking experience do you want to pick up a phone and book an appointment?’

‘Cher’ had wafted a hand adorned with fake nails. ‘Maybe I was just bein’ polite. You look like death warmed up for starters — and you’re too old, okay? That real enough for you?’

Lorraine had slammed out and was about to throw in the towel and go home, when she realized she was standing outside Seller Sales, the next job prospect she had noted down. She pulled at her jacket, using the sleeve to wipe the sweat from her face, and walked into the run-down office. A moment later and she would have faced Captain Rooney as he and Sparks went into the restaurant three doors down the street. As it was, she almost walked straight out of Seller Sales: no one was in what she supposed passed for reception — a counter, a bowl of wilting flowers, two posters for Gay Liberation, and a faded breakfast cereal ad. She opened the door, which buzzed, and a man shot round from a room at the back. ‘Thank God! Come on, come on, hurry up. I’m Art Mathews. I’ve been getting desperate.’

Lorraine hesitated and closed the door, following Art round the screen and into the back room. He was about five foot four, tight, muscular little body, shown off by a close-fitting white T-shirt, skintight white jeans, white sneakers and white socks. His dark eyes were too large for his face behind huge glasses — round, thin, red-framed bifocals — and made even more striking by his complete baldness.

The room was cluttered with paints, trestle tables, stacks of canvases, ladders and rolls of carpet. Art walked in small, mincing steps, side-stepping all the paraphernalia with a dancer’s precision.

‘Now the phone is somewhere, and the lists. Oh, Jesus, where did I put the lists? I’m so behind — and they said you’d be here hours ago…’

Lorraine looked around. ‘I think there’s a misunderstanding.’

Art stood, hands on hips, his little rosebud mouth pursed. ‘Seller thingy closed down months ago, I’ve taken the shop lease over. I’m opening an art and photographic gallery here tomorrow, would you believe it? My God, if you knew what I’ve been through… WHERE’S THE FUCKING PHONE!’

Lorraine spotted it beneath a table. Art dragged it out, swore because it was off the hook and sat cross-legged on the floor. Lorraine watched as he arched his body to enable him to drag out a card from his jeans pocket, and punched out some digits.

‘What are you here for?’

She coughed. ‘Receptionist.’

He looked at the card, then back to Lorraine, his eyes darting like a demented frog’s. He pursed his lips as his call was connected. ‘This is Mr Art Mathews and I was promised a… hello? FUCKING ANSWER MACHINE!’

He sprang to his feet. ‘I need someone to call my guest list, there’s over a hundred people, and I need it done by tonight. I need someone here to help me open this up. I’ve got to get that paint on the walls, hang those canvases and photos—’

Lorraine unbuttoned her jacket. ‘I’ll do it. How much you paying?’

Art clapped his hands. ‘Ten bucks an hour — I love you. What’s your name, darling?’ She told him. ‘Right, Lorraine, here’s the phone, grab a seat, I’ll find the list and you start with the calls. I need to know how many are coming so I can order the wine…’

‘Have they been invited already?’ Lorraine asked.

‘They have, dear, but not to this address. I had a problem with my last place. Now if I don’t open and show all the canvases and the photographs then I’ll be fucked — I’ll lose my credibility and it’s hanging on a thread as it is…’

He alighted on a bulging Filofax. ‘Right, darling, here you go. Be charming, be distant, but get an answer.’

Lorraine put down her cigarettes and lighter, and studied the guest list, detailed in a neat fine scrawl, in pinks, greens and blues with red stars drawn against some names. ‘Does the red star mean they’re important?’

‘No — just a good lay!’ Art shrieked with laughter. He almost did a triple spinning turn as the buzzer sounded in reception.

Lorraine could hear a lot of shrieking and raised voices, then Art returned with a massive floral display — and two extraordinary-looking transsexuals, carrying a basket of food, a crate of distilled water, and two more floral displays. ‘These are my dearest friends, Nula and Didi, they’re going to help me. This is — what’s your name again, dear? She’s going to make all the phone calls, and be Girl Friday.’

Nula and Didi began to put down their goods as Art moved to clear the back of the room. Lorraine pulled out a clean page from the Filofax, and started making calls. She looked up gratefully as Nula placed a paper cup and a bottle of spring water by her side. Didi was inspecting some tapes, then crossed to a ghetto blaster and slipped in a tape. Lorraine expected some ear-shattering music to interrupt her call, but she was surprised by Mahler’s Symphony No.9, the volume almost restful. Didi laid out a neat row of tapes, choosing each with studied concentration. She turned to Lorraine, her husky voice half whispering: ‘Do you like opera?’

She nodded as Didi selected the next tape. She had never listened to opera in her life.

The pace at which Art and his two friends worked was astonishing. They had painted all the walls with a quick-dry rough white, swept the floors, stacked the rubbish, torn down the screen partitioning at the front of the shop, and were now painting that area, using big roller brushes on sticks.

Lorraine remained at the table, making calls and listing acceptances and refusals. She now had her spiel down to a bare minimum: ‘Good evening, I am calling on behalf of Art Mathews’s new gallery, Art’s Place…’ She gave the address, time of the show and mentioned that wine and canapés would be served from seven o’clock. Most said they would try to make it, but only twenty would definitely be there.

The strains of Puccini floated into the room, and Lorraine downed two bottles of water as she continued her calls. Nula slipped her some home-made banana cake wrapped in a napkin, a little bowl of fruit salad, and some crispbread with home-made pâté. Her big hands were rough from scrubbing, her overall covered in white paint splashes but she had the sweetest of smiles. Didi paid Lorraine hardly any attention as she was intent on finishing the work. When they did take a short break the three huddled together, admiring the gallery, discussing where the paintings and photographs would look best.

Art occasionally leaned over her to see the list, but on the whole behaved as if she weren’t there. It was almost ten o’clock when Lorraine made the last call to a Craig Lyall. The deep, rather camp voice enquired if it could speak to Art. She covered the mouthpiece. ‘Art, it’s a Craig Lyall, he wants to speak to you.’