Hollywood Nocturnes (11 page)

  I held up my hands in mock surrender, feeling like I had just taken four hard jabs from Billy Conn and didn't want to go for sloppy fifths. "Smart girl, but you forgot to mention that I work goon squad for Firestone Tire and get a kickback for fingering wetbacks to the Border Patrol."

  Cora straightened the knot in my disreputable necktie. "Hey, baby, a gig's a gig, you gots to take it where you finds it. I done things I ain't particularly proud of, and I--"

  I shouted, "That's not it!"

  Cora moved back to the window and smiled. "It certainly is, Mr. _Po_-liceman."

  Angry now, angry at losing, I did what I always did when I smelled defeat: attack. "Shitcan it. Shitcan it now, before I forget I was starting to like you."

  Cora gripped the dashboard with two white-knuckled hands and stared through the windshield. Union Station came into view, and pulling into the parking lot I saw a dozen black-and-whites and unmarked cruisers near the front entrance. Bullhorn-barked commands echoed unintelligibly as I killed my siren, and behind the police cars I glimpsed plainclothesmen aiming riot guns at the ground.

  I pinned my badge to my jacket front and said, "Out." Cora stumbled from the car and stood rubber-kneed on the pavement. I got out, grabbed her arm, and shoved-pulled her all the way over to the pandemonium. As we approached, a harness bull leveled his .38 at us, then hesitated and said, "Sergeant Blanchard?"

  I said "Yeah" and handed Cora over to him, adding, "She's a material witness, be nice to her." The youth nodded, and I walked past two bumper-to-bumper black-and-whites into the most incredible shakedown scene I had ever witnessed:

  Negro men in porter uniforms and white men in army khakis were lying facedown on the pavement, their jackets and shirts pulled up to their shoulders, their trousers and undershorts pulled down to their knees. Uniformed cops were spread searching them while plainclothesmen held the muzzles of .12 gauge pumps to their heads. A pile of confiscated pistols and sawed-off shotguns lay a safe distance away. The men on the ground were all babbling their innocence or shouting epithets, and every cop trigger finger looked itchy.

  Voodoo Simpkins and Billy Boyle were not among the six suspects. I looked around for familiar cop faces and saw Georgie Caulkins by the station's front entrance, standing over a sheetcovered stretcher. I ran up to him and said, "What have you got, Skipper?"

  Caulkins toed the sheet aside, revealing the remains of a fortyish negro man. "The shine's Leotis McCarver," Georgie said. "Upstanding colored citizen, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters big shot, a credit to his race. Put a .38 to his head and blew his brains out when the black-and-whites showed up."

  Catching a twinkle in the old lieutenant's eyes, I said, "Really?"

  Georgie smiled. "I can't shit a shitter. McCarver came out waving a white handkerchief, and some punk kid rookie cancelled his ticket. Deserves a commendation, don't you think?"

  I looked down at the stiff and saw that the entry wound was right between the eyes. "Give him a sharpshooter's medal and a desk job before he plugs some innocent civilian. What about Simpkins and Boyle?"

  "Gone," Georgie said. "When we first got here, we didn't know the real soldiers and porters from the heisters, so we threw a net over the whole place and shook everybody down. We held every legit shine lieutenant, which was two guys, then cut them loose when they weren't your boy. Simpkins and Boyle probably got away in the shuffle. A car got stolen from the other end of the lot--citizen said she saw a nigger in a porter's suit breaking the window That was probably Simpkins. The license number's on the air along with an all points. That shine is dead meat."

  I thought of Simpkins invoking protective voodoo gods and said, "I'm going after him myself."

  "You owe me a report on this thing!"

  "Later."

  "_Now!_"

  I said, "Later, _sir_," and ran back to Cora, Georgie's "now" echoing behind me. When I got to where I had left her, she was gone. Looking around, I saw her a few yards away on her knees, handcuffed to the bumper of a black-and-white. A cluster of blue suits were hooting at her, and I got very angry.

  I walked over. A particularly callow-looking rookie was regaling the others with his account of Leotis McCarver's demise. All four snapped to when they saw me coming. I grabbed the storyteller by his necktie and yanked him toward the back of the car. "Uncuff her," I said.

  The rookie tried to pull away. I yanked at his tie until we were face-to-face and I could smell Sen-Sen on his breath. "And apologize."

  The kid flushed, and I walked back to my unmarked cruiser. I heard muttering behind me, and then I felt a tap on my shoulder. Cora was there, smiling. "I owe you one," she said.

  I pointed to the passenger seat. "Get in. I'm collecting."

  The ride back to West Adams was fueled by equal parts of my nervous energy and Cora's nonstop spiel on her loves and criminal escapades. I had seen it dozens of times before. A cop stands up for a prisoner against another cop, on general principles or because the other cop is a turd, and the prisoner takes it as a sign of affection and respect and proceeds to lay out a road map of their life, justifying every wrong turn because he wants to be the cop's moral equal. Cora's tale of her love for Billy Boyle back in his heister days, her slide into call-house service when he went to prison, and her lingering crush on Wallace Simpkins was predictable and mawkishly rendered. I got more and more embarrassed by her "you dig?" punctuations and taps on the arm, and if I didn't need her as a High Darktown tour guide I would have kicked her out of the car and back to her old life. But then the monologue got interesting.

  When Billy Boyle was cut loose from Chino, he had a free week in L.A. before his army induction and went looking for Cora. He found her hooked on ether at Minnie Roberts's Casbah, seeing voodoo visions, servicing customers as Coroloa, the African Slave Queen. He got her Out of there, eased her off the dope with steambaths and vitamin B-12 shots, then ditched her to fight for Uncle Sam. Something snapped in her brain when Billy left, and, still vamped on Wallace Simpkins, she started writing him at Quentin. Knowing his affinity for voodoo, she smuggled in some slave-queen smut pictures taken of her at the Casbah, and they got a juicy correspondence going. Meanwhile, Cora went to work at Mickey Cohen's southside numbers mill, and everything looked peachy. Then Simpkins came out of Big Q, the voodoo sex fantasy stuff became tepid reality, and the Voodoo Man himself went back to stickups, exploiting her connections to the white criminal world.

  When Cora finished her story, we were skirting the edge of High Darktown. It was dusk; the temperature was easing off; the neon signs of the Western Avenue juke joints had just started flashing. Cora lit a cigarette and said, "All Billy's people is from around here. If he's lookin' for a hideout or a travelin' stake, he'd hit the clubs on West Jeff. Wallace wouldn't show his evil face around here, 'less he's lookin' for Billy, which I figure he undoubtedly is. I--"

  I interrupted, "I thought Billy came from a square-john family. Wouldn't he go to them?"

  Cora's look said I was a lily-white fool. "Ain't no square-john families around here, 'ceptin those who work domestic. West Adams was built on bootlegging, sweetie. Black sellin' white lightnin' to black, gettin' fat, then investin' white. Billy's folks was runnin' shine when I was in pigtails. They're respectable now, and they hates him for takin' a jolt. He'll be callin' in favors at the clubs, don't you worry."

  I hung a left on Western, heading for Jefferson Boulevard. "How do you know all this?"

  "I am from High, _High_ Darktown, sweet."

  "Then why do you hold on to that Aunt Jemima accent?"

  Cora laughed. "And I thought I sounded like Lena Home. Here's why, sweetcakes. Black woman with a law degree they call 'nigger.' Black girl with three-inch heels and a shiv in her purse they call 'baby.' You dig?"

  "I dig."

  "No, you don't. Stop the car, Tommy Tucker's club is on the next block."

  I said, "Yes, ma'am," and pulled to the curb. Cora got out ahead of me and swayed around the corner on her three-inch heels, calling, "I'll go in," over her shoulder. I waited underneath a purple neon sign heralding "Tommy Tucker's Playroom." Cora come out five minutes later, saying, "Billy was in here 'bout half an hour ago. Touched the barman for a double saw."

  "Simpkins?"

  Cora shook her head. "Ain't been seen."

  I hooked a finger in the direction of the car. "Let's catch him."

  For the next two hours we followed Billy Boyle's trail through High Darktown's nightspots. Cora went in and got the information, while I stood outside like a white wallflower, my gun unholstered and pressed to my leg, waiting for a voodoo killer with a tommy gun to aim and fire. Her info was always the same: Boyle had been in, had made a quick impression with his army threads, had gotten a quick touch based on his rep, and had practically run out the door. And no one had seen Wallace Simpkins.

  11 P.M. found me standing under the awning of Hanks' Swank Spot, feeling pinpricks all over my exhausted body. Square-john negro kids cruised by waving little American flags out of backseat windows, still hopped up that the war was over. Male and female, they all had mug-shot faces that kept my trigger finger at half-pull even though I knew damn well they couldn't be him. Cora's sojourn inside was running three times as long as her previous ones, and when a car backfired and I aimed at the old lady behind the wheel, I figured High Darktown was safer with me off the Street and went in to see what was keeping Cora.

  The Swank Spot's interior was Egyptian: silk wallpaper embossed with pharaohs and mummies, paper-mache pyramids surrounding the dance floor, and a long bar shaped like a crypt lying sideways. The patrons were more contemporary: negro men in double-breasted suits and women in evening gowns who looked disapprovingly at my rumpled clothes and two-and-ahalf-day beard.

  Ignoring them, I eyeballed in vain for Cora. Her soiled pink dress would have stood out like a beacon amid the surrounding hauteur, but all the women were dressed in pale white and sequined black. Panic was rising inside me when I heard her voice, distorted by bebop, pleading behind the dance floor.

  I pushed my way through minglers, dancers, and three pyramids to get to her. She was standing next to a phonograph setup, gesturing at a black man in slacks and a camel-hair jacket. The man was sitting in a folding chair, alternately admiring his manicure and looking at Cora like she was dirt.

  The music was reaching a crescendo; the man smiled at me; Cora's pleas were engulfed by saxes, horns, and drums going wild. I flashed back to my Legion days--rabbit punches and elbows and scrubbing my laces into cuts during clinches. The past two days went topsy-turvy, and I kicked over the phonograph. The Benny Goodman sextet exploded into silence, and I aimed my piece at the man and said, "_Tell me now_."

  Shouts rose from the dance floor, and Cora pressed herself into a toppled pyramid. The man smoothed the pleats in his trousers and said, "Cora's old flame was in about half an hour ago, begging. I turned him down, because I respect my origins and hate snitches. But I told him about an old mutual friend--a soft touch. Another Cora flame was in about ten minutes ago, asking after flame number one. Seems he has a grudge against him. I sent him the same place."

  I croaked, "Where?" and my voice sounded disembodied to my own ears. The man said, "No. You can apologize now, officer. Do it, and I won't tell my good friends Mickey Cohen and Inspector Waters about your behavior."

  I stuck my gun in my waistband and pulled out an old Zippo I used to light suspects' cigarettes. Sparking a flame, I held it inches from a stack of brocade curtains. "Remember the Coconut Grove?"

  The man said, "You wouldn't," and I touched the flame to the fabric. It ignited immediately, and smoke rose to the ceiling. Patrons were screaming "Fire!" in the club proper. The brocade was fried to a crisp when the man shrieked, "John Downey," ripped off his camel hair and flung it at the flames. I grabbed Cora and pulled her through the club, elbowing and rabbit punching panicky revelers to clear a path. When we hit the sidewalk, I saw that Cora was sobbing. Smoothing her hair, I whispered hoarsely, "What, babe, what?"

  It took a moment for Cora to find a voice, but when she spoke, she sounded like a college professor. "John Downey's my father. He's very big around here, and he hates Billy because he thinks Billy made me a whore."

  "Where does he li--"

  "Arlington and Country Club."

  We were there within five minutes. This was High, _High_ Darktown--Tudor estates, French chateaus, and Moorish villas with terraced front lawns. Cora pointed out a plantation-style mansion and said, "Go to the side door. Thursday's the maid's night off, and nobody'll hear you if you knock at the front."

  I stopped the car across the street and looked for other out-ofplace vehicles. Seeing nothing but Packards, Caddys, and Lincoins nestled in driveways, I said, "Stay put. Don't move, no matter what you see or hear."

  Cora nodded mutely. I got out and ran over to the plantation, hurdling a low iron fence guarded by a white iron jockey, then treading down a long driveway. Laughter and applause issued from the adjoining mansion, separated from the Downey place by a high hedgerow. The happy sounds covered my approach, and I started looking in windows.

  Standing on my toes and moving slowly toward the back of the house, I saw rooms festooned with crewelwork wall hangings and hunting prints. Holding my face up to within a few inches of the glass, I looked for shadow movement and listened for voices, wondering why all the lights were on at close to midnight.

  Then faceless voices assailed me from the next window down. Pressing my back to the wall, I saw that the window was cracked for air. Cocking an ear toward the open space, I listened.

  ". . . and after all the setup money I put in, you still had to knock down those liquor stores?"