Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 (11 page)

On Temple Street, between Broadway and Spring, the Los Angeles County Hall of Justice engulfed a block’s worth of prime real estate, its fourteen limestone-and-granite stories making it one of the taller edifices in this earthquake-mindful downtown. The rusticated stonework, massive cornices, and two-story crowning colonnade seemed a little grand for a building whose top five stories housed the county jail—granted the municipal courts, sheriff’s department, and D.A.’s offices were here as well.

So was the county morgue—in the basement. Murderers could await trial in the upper reaches of this fine Italian Renaissance-styled building; their victims had to settle for the sweating pale yellow brick halls of a cramped, squalid warren of fogged-over glass, leaky water pipes, and electric-fan-circulated formaldehyde fumes.

Late afternoon, we had come in the back way, through the wide entry that Black Marias backed up to, to deposit the various questionable deaths, unidentified corpses, and murder victims who made up the morgue’s client base. Fowley—having parked next to a sign that said
NO PARKING AT ANY TIME
—went up three cement steps, past a sign that said
POSITIVELY NO ADMITTANCE
.

I followed.

Just inside the hot, humid hallway, Fowley lighted up a cigarette (next to a
NO SMOKING
sign) and offered me one.

I declined and tagged after him down the hallway, our footsteps echoing like small-arms fire.

“They keep threatening to shut this shithole down,” Fowley said, striding past several gurneys bearing covered, unattended bodies. “But there’s only so much money, and lots of pockets that need filling—and the corpses never bitch about the accommodations, so what the fuck?”

We moved by several rooms whose doors had moisture-frosted glass panels, creating a haze through which could be made out stiffs stacked on steel tables, like so much firewood.

“Local funeral parlors have been raising a stink, though,” Fowley said, just making conversation. “Half the time the bodies sent over from here ain’t been sewn back up . . . you know, some poor bastard’s face, folded back up over his skull, with the wife and kids waiting on the other end.”

Fowley paused at an open doorway, which revealed a lounge of sorts, where deputy coroners in blood-splotched white sat at tables drinking Cokes or coffee and eating doughnuts or candy bars, laughing, talking, their patients in no hurry.

One of the deputy coroners looked up—a pudgy, balding, rat-faced little guy with dark, squinty, yet glittering eyes behind wirerim glasses—and frowned at Fowley, who crooked his finger, like a parent summoning a child. The little man sighed heavily, pushed to his feet and left his half-eaten doughnut and paper cup of coffee behind.

“Hiya, Doc,” Fowley said, moving down the hall, away from the open door.

The round little guy trailed after the reporter, but his eyes—blinking like a mole seeing sunshine—were fixed on me.

“Who’s this? Who’s this?” he asked, pointing at me. His voice was a high-pitched whine.

“My photographer,” Fowley said, blowing smoke. “He’s new.”

“We have to talk in front of him?”

“Yeah.”

Tight lips twitched a grimace; then he shrugged. “Well . . . doesn’t matter, anyway. I don’t have anything for you.”

Fowley frowned. “Haven’t they done the autopsy yet?”

The deputy coroner nodded. “Just. I assisted. Jane Doe Number One. Down in room four. Newbarr and CeFalu.”

Fowley whistled, impressed. “First string. Important homicide to you boys?”

The little man looked furtively about. “Unusual. Unusual.”

Nodding, sucking on his cigarette, Fowley said, “Getting cut in half, you mean.”

“That, and—I can’t say any more.”

“You haven’t said anything yet.”

The squinty eyes somehow managed to narrow behind the wirerims. “I can tell you she was disemboweled. Certain organs were missing. There were . . . other irregularities.”

Shaking his head, grinning, cigarette bobbling, Fowley reached a hand in his pants pocket; but the little rat-faced man held up his hands, as if in surrender.

“Skip it. Skip it. . . . I can’t say anything. This time I can’t say.”

“Why not, Doc?”

“Certain facts are being withheld. Facts only the murderer and his victim could know. If I leak what I have, I could lose my job. Obstructing justice, it’s called.”

“Doc . . . you can trust me. . . .”

“Forget it. Forget it! We’ll do business some other time.”

And the little round ratman clip-clopped back down the hall and slipped inside the lounge to finish his doughnut.

“What the hell could they have found out?” Fowley asked.

That she was pregnant when she was killed.

But I just shook my head, like I was wondering the same thing. “It’s not like she was keeping any secrets, lying there naked, cut in half.”

Fowley squinted in thought. “Something inside her, maybe. Something she swallowed. Or something in her pussy . . .” He snapped his fingers, eyes wild. “Maybe he fucked her in the ass!”

Only Fowley could make a foul-smelling morgue like this even more distasteful.

I said, “Come on, Bill—we’re not going to find anything out, down here.”

“Don’t give up so easy, Nate,” he said, and dropped his
cigarette to the cement floor, grinding it out with his heel. “What kind of detective are you? Let’s check out room four.”

I followed Fowley down several more dank hallways, past more unattended corpses on gurneys.

“Sometimes they do the autopsies right on the gurneys,” Fowley told me, lightly, “when things get bottled up. Rims around the gurney edges are too shallow to catch fluids, and blood and guts just spill on the floor, and they just wade in the shit. It’s the fuckin’ Middle Ages around this joint.”

“Spare me the tour-bus chatter, will you, Fowley? And remind me not to die in Los Angeles.”

The door to room four—which lacked any glass panel to peer through—was closed. Fowley stood there, studying the doorknob, apparently trying to decide whether to just barge in, when the door opened and two men ambled out: Harry the Hat Hansen trailed by his pudgy Watson, Finis Brown.

I got just a glimpse of her on the shining steel table, the two halves of her, pelvis tipped obscenely up; her head was to one side, staring at me, teeth showing through the gaping wound across her mouth. The flesh of her scalp had been cut and pulled away, the top of her head had been sawed off, for the removal of her brain.

Then, thankfully, the door was closed.

Harry—his powder-blue fedora snugged in place, still natty in his dark blue tailored suit despite a brutally long day—looked at us blankly. He was the kind of premeditated man who had to decide whether or not he was pleased or pissed off.

Brown—his rumpled fedora in hand, his suit looking more slept-in than ever—didn’t need time to know how he felt.

“What the hell are you shitheads doing here?” the chunky cop exploded, moving forward, putting a flat hand against Fowley’s chest. “Get the fuck out. This is restricted!”

Hansen, however, was smiling. He rested a hand on Brown’s shoulder. “Brownie—relax. These are the men who found the body, remember? Perhaps they’re just here to volunteer their formal statement.”

“We can go down to Central Homicide, if you like,” Fowley
said, obviously a little cowed from having the beefy Brown in his face.

Gazing sleepily at us, the Hat spoke as if in benediction. “That’s not necessary. Brownie here can take your statement, Bill—and we’ll send over a typewritten version to the
Examiner
, for your approval, and signature.”

Fowley didn’t quite know what to make of that.

“Brownie,” the Hat said, “go see to it that police guards are posted at the ambulance entrance of this fine facility, would you?” To us, the Hat added, “That
is
how you got in?”

We nodded.

“Do that, Brownie, please, and then get right back here, to take Mr. Fowley’s statement.”

“Sure, Harry,” Brown said, flashing us a couple of dirty looks that would have seemed silly if the fat S.O.B. hadn’t been such a nasty piece of work.

Once Brown had bounded off, the Hat looked from Fowley to me and back again, clapping his hands together. “First, do you boys have any questions? We’re going to cooperate, after all—the
Examiner
and the LAPD, that is. Two fine institutions with the public’s welfare at heart.” This son of a bitch was so dry, you could never tell when he was pulling your chain.

“Any surprises in there, Harry?” Fowley said, nodding toward the closed door to room number four. He got out his notepad and a pencil and waited for an answer.

It finally came.

The Hat’s tiny mouth puckered a smile. “Of course there are . . . ‘surprises.’ I’m sure your source in the coroner’s office has already told you that . . . and I presume he’s also refused to share those surprises with you, or you wouldn’t still be standing here.”

Fowley grinned, tapping his notepad with the pencil. “Fair enough, Harry. What
can
you give me?”

“Let’s back up a little. Your extra edition has been on the street, what, two hours?”

“Something like that.”

The Hat lifted an eyebrow and the blue fedora rose a tad. “We’ve already had six confessions.”

Fowley smirked. “I guess that’s no surprise—something this splashy . . . and this friggin’ weird . . . it’s gonna bring ’em out of the woodwork.”

Nodding, the Hat said, “I anticipate more Confessin’ Sams than you could shake a stick at, making all kinds of work for us, pointless work that can get in the way of actually solving this thing.”

I asked, “What can be done about that?”

Harry held up three fingers. “Let the public know that Detective Hansen is withholding three pieces of information—three things that only that poor dead girl and her killer could know. That may help minimize the false confession problem.”

“Or,” I said, as Fowley jotted that down, “present your ‘Confessin’ Sams’ with a challenge, a guessing game.”

“It will also tell the real killer that we are already breathing down his neck. That we have three pieces of evidence just waiting to put him in the gas chamber.”

I said, “Is this a sex crime, Harry?”

Irritation flashed through the sleepy eyes. “She was mutilated and tortured and left naked, and cut in half. If we’re not dealing with a sex crime, what are we dealing with?”

“I told you at the scene, Harry—her mouth is cut the way mobsters send a warning to squealers.”

“It’s a sex crime. Half the department is interviewing known sex offenders, and our dragnet’s going to be spread statewide by tomorrow morning. Within twenty-four hours, hundreds of sex degenerates and suspected sadists will have been thoroughly interrogated.”

Fowley wrote that down.

I asked, “Was there semen in her vagina?”

Hansen frowned. “Let’s just say it’s a sex crime and leave it at that.”

“I knew it!” Fowley said, slapping the pad with the pencil. “He fucked her in the ass, didn’t he?”

Hansen looked at Fowley a long time; buried in the blank grooves of the cop’s face were ribbons of contempt.

“What?” Fowley asked, wide eyed.

Echoing footsteps announced Sergeant Brown’s return.

“It’s took care of, Harry,” Brown said. “I got a couple sheriff’s deputies to help out.”

“There, you see, gentlemen?” the Hat said to us. “Cooperation.”

“I may advise Richardson to put out another extra,” Fowley said, smirking. “That’s a first for the sheriff’s department and the LAPD.”

With a small, insincere smile, the Hat said, “Mr. Fowley, give your statement to Sergeant Brown, would you? . . . Mr. Heller, Nate—a word in private?”

Hansen took me by the arm—gently—and walked me down the hallway and stopped; the yellow brick walls and the Hat’s tanned complexion were strangely compatible.

“Nate,” the Hat said, his tiny mouth pursed in its kiss of a smile, “I understand you’ve gone to work for the
Examiner
.”

“Not as a reporter, just providing some investigative backup. They’re gonna be shorthanded.”

“Richardson is going all the way with this one.”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s fine. You tell Jim I’ll be glad to cooperate with him . . . as long as he cooperates with me.”

I shrugged. “Richardson is his own man, Harry. If you want to know the truth, I think he plans an end run around you boys.”

“That’s not surprising news. Nate, can I trust you?”

“Can I trust you?”

He put a fatherly hand on my elbow. “We worked well on the Peete case, together, wouldn’t you say?”

“Sure.”

Now the hand rose to my shoulder and settled there. “I know you feel I . . . took credit where perhaps it wasn’t due.”

“I didn’t give a shit—what good would California publicity do me back in Chicago?”

He removed the hand from my shoulder, gesturing as he did. “Yes, but now you’re doing business here, and that changes things. . . . Nate, I want to work out an arrangement with you.”

“What kind of arrangement, Harry?”

The pouchy eyes tightened. “You keep me abreast of what the
Examiner
is up to, and I’ll do the same for you, where my efforts are concerned.”

“And the point of this is . . . ?”

“To find the fiend who did this awful thing!” Oddly, he was smiling as he said that, revealing just enough teeth to make him look like a big well-dressed rabbit. “And to be the detectives who solved the most notorious murder in the history of California.”

“It’s a little early to be calling it that, Harry, don’t you think?”

“Not really—not considering the crime . . . not considering the noise Jim Richardson and Old Man Hearst are making, and will make. . . . What do you say, Nate? Is it a deal?”

“All right.”

He offered his hand—it was smaller than a frying pan—and I shook it, firmly.

The Hat sighed, contentedly, as if he’d just finished a big, fine meal. He folded his arms and said, casually, “Now, let’s move on to that other question.”

“What other question?”

“The one about trust. Can I trust you, Nate?”