L.A. Confidential (43 page)

  Jack said, "Jesus, you're good. And fast."

  "Well, Exley and Gallaudet carry weight, and the powers that be here didn't have time to prepare. Now check the goodies I brought."

  On the day room table: crowbars, chisels, mallets, a long thin pole with a hook at the end. On a blanket: a tape recorder, a tangle of wires. Goddard said, "First we tear this tier up. I admit it's a long shot, but I brought a recorder along in case we find tape."

  "I'd call that a maybe. Goldman and Cohen got paroled last fall, but they got bushwacked in July and Davey got his brains scrambled. I'm thinking if he was the one monitoring the tape then maybe he was too wet-brained to pull the machine."

  "Enough gabbing. Let's dig."

o        o          o

  They dug.

  Goddard plumbed a line from the heat duct in Cohen's cell to the heat duct in Goldman's, marked a line on the ceilings of the two cells in between, started probing with a mallet and chisel. Jack pried a protection plate off the duct on Mickey's wall, banged around inside the chute with the hook device. Nothing but hollow tin walls, no wires just inside. Frustrating: it was the logical place to plant a microphone. Heat boomed out the duct; Jack changed his mind, Washington was cold, the heat would be on too much of the time, drowning out conversation. He checked the walls and ceiling for other conduits--nothing--then the area around the vent. Irregularly applied spackling dotted with pinholes right by the protector plate; he smashed his mallet until half the wall came down and a small Spackle-covered microphone dangling off a wire came loose. The wire jerked from his hand, straight back into the wall. Five seconds later Goddard stood there holding it--attached to a tape recorder covered with plastic. "Halfway between the cells, a little hidey-hole right off the vent. Let's listen, huh?"

o        o          o

  They fired it up in the day room. Goddard hooked up his machine, changed spools, pushed buttons--tape-recorded tape.

  Static, a dog yipping, "There, there, bubeleh"--Mickey Cohen's voice. Goddard said, "They let him keep a dog in his cell. Only in America, huh?"

  Cohen: "Quit licking your schnitzel, little precious." More yips, a long silence, a click-off sound. Goddard said, "I was timing it. Voice-activated mike. Five minutes and it goes off automatically."

  Jack brushed plaster off his hands. "How'd Goldman get in to change the tape?"

  "He must have had some kind of hook thing, like that pole I gave you. The grate on his heat vent was loose, so we know somebody was poking around in there. Jesus, this thing has been in there how long? And Goldman had to have help, this is no one-man operation. Listen, here that click?"

  Another click, a strange voice: "For how much? I'll have that guard place the bet." Cohen: "A thousand on Basilio, that little guinea is mean. And take a run by the infirmary and see Davey, my God a goddamn turnip those goons turned him into, I swear I will live to see them in a vegetable puree." Overlapping voices, mumbles, Mickey cooing, his dog yipping.

  Nail the time: Goldman and Cohen had been attacked; Mickey laid down an early bet on the Robinson-Basilio fight last September, he was probably out by then--he got down before the odds dropped.

  Click off, click on, forty-six minutes of Mickey and at least two other men playing cards, mumbling, flushing the toilet. The used tape almost gone; click off, click on, the fucking dog yowling.

  Mickey: "Six years and ten months here and to lose Davey's redoubtable brain right before I leave. Such tsurus to go home on. Mickey Junior, quit licking your putt, you faigeleh."

  A strange voice: "Get him a bitch, and he won't have to."

  Cohen: "My God to be so nimble and so hung, like Heifetz on the fiddle with his shlong that dog is, and hung like Johnny Stompanato to boot. And on the topic of boots, I read Hedda Hopper's column and see Johnny's putting the boots to Lana Turner, such a crush he's had for so long, she must have a cunt like chinchilla."

  The strange-voice man cracked up. Cohen: "Enough already, you brownnoser, save some for Jack Benny. Johnny I need now, Johnny I can't locate 'cause he's playing bury the brisket with movie stars. My franchise guys keep getting clipped and I need Johnny to put an ear down for who, but that big dick dago cunt-bandit is nowhere! I want those cocksuckers clipped! I want those shitbirds who hurt Davey to cease residence on this earth!"

  Mickey cough, cough, coughed. Strange Voice: "How about Lee Vachss and Abe Teitlebaum? You could put them on it."

  Cohen: "Such a shmendrik you are for a confidant, but you do play cribbage good. No, Abe has grown too soft to work muscle, too much grease noshed at his deli, such grease clogs the arteries that inspire mayhem, and Lee Vachss loves death too much to be discerning. Lana, what a snatch she must have, like cashmere."

  The tape ran out. Goddard said, "Mickey sure does have a verbal style, but what did all that have to do with the Nite Owl case?"

  "How's 'nothing' sound?"

CHAPTER SIXTY

  One wall of his den was now a graph: Nite Owl related case players connected by horizontal lines, vertical lines linking them to a large sheet of cardboard blocked off into information sections--events culled from Vincennes' deposition. Ed wrote margin notes; his father's call still hammered him: "Edmund, I'm running for governor. Your recent notoriety may have hurt me, but put that aside. I don't want the Atherton case resurrected in print and tied to your various cases, and I don't want Ray Dieterling bothered. I want you to direct all your queries along those lines to me, and between the two of us we'll work things out."

  He agreed. It rankled. It made him feel like a child--like sleeping with Lynn Bracken made him feel whorish. And too many Dieterling names were popping up on the graph.

  Ed crossed lines.

  Sid Hudgens lined to the ink smut Vincennes found in '53; the smut lined to Pierce Patchett. Line to: Christine Bergeron, her son Daryl and Bobby Inge, smut posers who disappeared almost concurrent with the Nite Owl. Have Fisk and Kleckner initiate a new search for them; attempt to identify the other posers--one more time. Put the smut/Hudgens line to the Atherton case aside, former Inspector Preston Exley would make discreet inquiries when asked.

  A theoretical line--Pierce Patchett to Duke Cathcart. Lynn Bracken denied it, a lie, Vincennes' deposition had Patchett pushing the smut Cathcart planned to distribute--_but who made it?_ Hudgens to Patchett and Bracken: the dirtmonger was terrified that Vincennes was nosing around Fleur-de-Lis; Lynn told Jack that Patchett and Hudgens were going in on a gig together, she now denied it, another lie. He needed another graph just to chart lies--he didn't have a room big enough to hold it.

  More lines:

  Davey Goldman to Dean Van Gelder to Duke Cathcart and Susan Nancy Lefferts--incomprehensible until Vincennes reported back from McNeil Island, and Bud White, obviously hiding out, was questioned on what he might be suppressing. Vocational lines--Patchett, the Englekling brothers and their father possessed chemistry backgrounds; Patchett, a reputed heroin sniffer, had plastic surgery connections to Dr. Terry Lux, the owner of a booze/dope sanitarium. Dudley Smith's report to Parker stated that Pete and Bax Englekling were tortured to death with corrosive chemicals, no other details added. Conclusion: the link to decipher every interconnected line had to be Patchett--his whores, his smut posers, Patchett the conduit to the man who made the blood smut, killed Hudgens and formed the final line stretching back to 1934 and his own father's glory case.

  Too many lines to ignore.

  Patchett bankrolled early Dieterling films. Dieterling's son Billy and boyfriend Timmy Valburn used Fleur-de-Lis; Valburn was a Bobby Inge K.A. Billy worked on Badge of Honor, the first focus of the Hudgens homicide investigation. Badge of Honor co-star Miller Stanton was a Dieterling kid star around the same time that Wee Willie Wennerholm was murdered--by Loren Atherton? Slash lines--Atherton to the smut to Hudgens; lines of coincidence too convenient not to cut at family loyalty-- seventeen years post-Atherton, Preston Exley builds Dreama-Dreamland.

  Governor Exley. Chief of Detectives Exley.

  Ed thought of Lynn, tasted her, shuddered. A quick jump to Inez--a new line to utilize.

  He drove to Laguna Beach.

o        o          o

  The press, swarming: perched by their cars, playing cards on Ray Dieterling's lawn. Ed pulled around the block, walked up, sprinted.

  They saw him, chased him. He made the door, slammed the knocker. The door opened--straight into Inez.

  She slammed it, bolted it. Ed walked into the living room-- Dream-a-Dreamland smiled all around him.

  Gimcracks, porcelain statues: Moochie, Danny, Scooter. Wall photos: Dieterling and crippled children. Canceled checks encased in plastic--six figures to fight kids' diseases.

  "See, I've got company."

  Ed turned to face her. "Thanks for letting me in."

  "They've been treating you worse than me, so I figured I owed you."

  She looked pale. "Thanks. And you know it'll pass, just like last time."

  "Maybe. You look lousy, Exley."

  "People keep telling me that."

  "Then maybe it's true. Look, if you want to stay and talk awhile, fine, but please don't talk about Bud or all this _mierda_ that's going on."

  "I wasn't planning on it, but small talk was never our forte."

  She walked up. Ed embraced her; she grabbed his arms and pushed herself away. Ed tried a smile. "I saw some gray hairs. When you're my age you'll probably be as gray as I am. How's that for small talk?"

  "Small, and I can do better. Preston's running for governor, unless his notorious son ruins his chances. I'm going to be his campaign coordinator."

  "Governor Dad. Did he say I'd ruin his chances?"

  "No, because he'd never say bad things about you. Just try to do what you can not to hurt him."

  Reporters outside--Ed heard them laughing. "I don't want Father to be hurt either. And you can help me prevent it."

  "How?"

  "A favor. A favor between you and me, nobody else to know."

  "What? Explain it."

  "It's very complicated, and it involves Ray Dieterling. Do you know the name 'Pierce Patchett'?"

  Inez shook her head. "No, who is he?"

  "He's an investor of sorts, that's all I can tell you. I need you to use your access at Dream-a-Dreamland to check his financial connections to Dieterling. Check back to the late '20s, very quietly. Will you do that for me?"

  "Exley, this sounds like police business. And what does it have to do with your father?"

  Recoiling: doubting the man who formed him. "Father might be in some tax trouble. I need you to check Dieterling's financial records for mention of him."

  "Bad trouble?"

  "Yes."

  "Check back to '50 or so? When they began planning for Dream-a-Dreamland?"

  "No, go back to 1932. I know you've seen the books at Dieterling Productions, and I know you can do it."

  "With explanations to follow?"

  More recoil. "On Election Day. Come on, Inez. You love him almost as much as I do."

  "All right. For your father."

  "No other reason?"

  "All right, for what you've done for me and the friends you gave me. And if that sounds cruel, I'm sorry."

  A Moochie Mouse clock struck ten. Ed said, "I should go, I've got a meeting in L.A."

  "Go out the back way. I think I still hear the vultures."

o        o          o

  The recoil got squared driving back.

  Call it standard elimination procedure:

  If his father really did know Ray Dieterling during the time of the Atherton case, he had a valid reason for not revealing it, he was probably embarrassed at plumbing business deals with a man he once rubbed shoulders with in the process of a hellish murder investigation. Preston Exley believed that policemen striking friendships with influential civilians was inimical to the concept of impartial absolute justice, and if he fell short of his own standards it was understandable that he would not want the fact known.

  Squared with love and respect.

  Ed made the Dining Car early; the maître d' said his guest was waiting. He walked back to his favorite booth--a private nook behind the bar. Vincennes was there, holding a tape spool.

  Ed sat down. "That's tape off a bug?"

  Vincennes slid the spool over. "Yeah, filled with Mickey C. running off at the mouth on stuff that has nothing to do with the Nite Owl. Too bad, but I think we can put Davey down as a traitor to Mickey, and I think he must have heard the Engleklings offer Mick the Cathcart deal. He liked the sound of it and sent Van Gelder after Duke. And that's as far as I can take it."

  The man looked shot. "Good work, Jack. Really, I mean it."

  "Thanks, and that first name bit just went over large."

  Ed picked up a menu, emptied his pockets underneath it. "It's midnight and I'm all out of subtlety."

  "You're working up to something. What'd you get out of Bracken?"

  "Nothing but lies. And you're right, Sergeant. The McNeil end is dead for now."

  "So?"

  "So tomorrow I'm hitting Patchett. I'm sealing l.A. off from Dudley and his men and bringing in Terry Lux, Chester Yorkin and every Patchett flunky that Fisk and Kleckner can find."

  "Yeah, but what about Bracken and Patchett?"

  Ed saw Lynn naked. "Bracken tried to buy out of your deposition. She snitched you on that escapade in Malibu, and I played her back on it."

  Trash slammed his head down on two clenched fists. Ed said, "I told her you'd do anything to get the file back. I told her you still love dope and you're in hock to some bookies. You're up for a trial board and you want to crash Patchett's rackets."

  Vincennes raised his head--pale, knuckle-gouged. "So tell me you'll square what's in the file."

  Ed picked up his menu. Underneath: heroin, Benzedrine, a switchblade, a 9mm automatic. "You're going to shake Patchett down. He snorts heroin, so you offer him some. If you want some stuff to get your own juice up, you've got it. You're going after him to get your file back and to find out who made the blood smut and killed Hudgens. I'm working on a script, and you'll have it by tomorrow night. You're going to scare the shit out of Patchett and you're going to do whatever it takes to get what we both want. I know you can do it, so don't make me threaten you."