The Glitter Dome (6 page)

“Car trouble, Cap,” Al Mackey said.

“Why should you have car trouble? The Department has mechanics, you know. Why do you think I let you take a city car home? Do you realize how much personal gasoline money you save by taking a Department car home?” Captain Woofer was extra whiny today.

“Well, we
are
on call twenty-four hours, Skipper,” Al Mackey offered.

“Homicide investigators are
supposed
to be on call, Mackey.” Captain Woofer shifted painfully on his rubber gasket.

Martin Welborn said nothing. He just sat and smiled serenely, his eyes a bit vacant, going in and out of focus. Al Mackey watched Marty's long brown eyes more than he watched Captain Woofer, who bore watching at
all
times. Captain Woofer had sabotaged two promotions so far this year and transferred one detective, because of sticky investigations that went on too long and caused the captain discomfiture. Whipdick Woofer could be a real sneaky ball whacker, they said. Martin Welborn didn't seem to mind any of this, which caused Al Mackey to worry all the more.

“We
do
have some other cases we're working on, Captain.” It was Al Mackey's last shot.

“Like what?”

“Well, there's that Cuban woman whose husband blew her eight feet out of her wig with that old .45 British Army revolver. We're still tying up that one,” Al Mackey said.

“A
Cuban
woman,” Captain Woofer sighed.

“Then there's that Korean girl who got shot on the drive-by homicide. The one where the car full of lowrider gang members were getting even with another gang by shooting
anyone
on the street. And she happened to get off a bus at the wrong stop.”

“A
Korean
girl,” Captain Woofer sighed.

“It was a double,” Al Mackey reminded him. “The bullet passed through the baby she was carrying in her arms before it killed her.”

“A
Korean
baby,” Captain Woofer sighed.

So it was no use. Captain Woofer had his mind made up. They were going to inherit a bad-news homicide, and though Al Mackey didn't have any illusions about getting promoted, he had always wanted to finish his career here at Hollywood Detectives. It was getting too late in life to have his balls whacked and transferred to Watts.

Then Captain Woofer accidentally pushed what Al Mackey knew to be absolutely, unequivocally, positively the
wrong
button for Martin Welborn. Captain Woofer said, “I can't see anything you're working on now that's time-consuming. That Meadows case is finished, isn't it?”

Al Mackey jerked his face toward Martin Welborn. Marty's long brown eyes dropped lower at the corners. They leaped out of focus. Marty stopped smiling serenely. He looked confused.

“Danny Meadows isn't finished,” Martin Welborn said.

“Well, what's left to do with the case?” Captain Woofer asked. “I thought mommy and daddy were going to cop a plea?”

“Danny Meadows isn't finished,” Martin Welborn said.

“Damn, I can't get comfortable,” Captain Woofer whined. He never noticed the lack of focus in Martin Welborn's eyes. “You still have more testimony to give, or what?”

“Danny Meadows isn't finished,” Martin Welborn said.

“They've got it wrapped,” Al Mackey said quickly, with darting glances toward Marty. “Yeah, they're copping a plea. Probably probation for mom, a little jail time for dad.”

“Then the case
is
finished?” Captain Woofer said, glancing toward the unfocused eyes of Martin Welborn.

“Yes, Captain, it's
finished
,” Al Mackey said to Martin Welborn, who didn't seem to hear him.

“It wasn't as though it was some big-deal homicide anyway,” Captain Woofer observed. “Kid would've been better off if it
was
a homicide. Anyway, I think you could tidy up your pending cases and go talk with Schultz and Simon about the ground they've covered on the St. Claire thing. I've got some theories that …”

Danny Meadows isn't finished
.

Martin Welborn could hardly hear Captain Woofer. His voice came from a cavern somewhere far away. As though from a catacomb. They told him in seminary that strange phenomena often occurred in catacombs. Voices ceased to communicate properly, they were perceived as though coming from places distant, perhaps echoing the voices of the dead holy men in the crypts
.

It wasn't as though it was a big-deal homicide anyway, Captain Woofer said
.

It wasn't any kind of homicide. And it wasn't often that veteran homicide detectives rolled on a call unless it was a code three call. This was only a code two broadcast. The next-door neighbor who heard the boy whimpering on the service porch had been too hysterical to respond hysterically. She had simply told the communications operator that someone had been hurt by someone else, and to send the police and an ambulance. Then she hung up and couldn't stop screaming even after the police arrived
.

Martin Welborn remembered exactly what he and Al had been talking about when they heard the radio call. They had been discussing Paula's agreement not to seek a divorce, thus remaining his spouse and heir as far as the Department was concerned. He was willing to pay her far more than she could have gotten in spousal support. A marriage was not dead without an official seal. Not in the eyes of man. God no longer mattered. But a bitter call from Paula for more money had precipitated a night of haunting loneliness. Martin Welborn did not sleep a moment the night before. He replayed sad and happy and hurtful scenes over and over in his mind. Mostly he thought of his two daughters, Sally and Babs. Al Mackey had been through it twice and said the second time was no easier. Al said they were statistics in a divorce-plagued profession in a divorce-plagued city in a divorce-plagued country
.

Perhaps if Paula hadn't called the night before. It had exhausted him physically as well as spiritually. He was in no condition to accommodate the meeting with Danny Meadows
.

Perhaps if the radio call hadn't been broadcast at that precise moment. Two minutes later they'd have been back at the station. The crime wasn't even in his area. It would have been given to other detectives. Martin Welborn distinctly remembered what he had said when Al asked if he wanted to roll on the call since they were so close. He'd said, “I'm tired, Al. Do what you like.” The words were etched like a steel engraving. He remembered precisely. What if he hadn't said the last part? Al Mackey would have shrugged and driven to the station, and Danny Meadows would never have become that unrelenting little specter rising to torment Martin Welborn in the night
.

Captain Woofer and Al Mackey were staring at him. Al Mackey looked alarmed.

“I asked if you were feeling okay, Welborn,” Captain Woofer said. “You're sweating, and you're trembling like a goat shitting soup cans. Do you have the flu?”

“He might be getting the flu,” Al Mackey said quickly. “I was saying this morning on the way to work that Marty looks like he's getting the flu. Why don't you take a walk, Marty? Get some air. If you're not feeling well, you better go off sick.”

Martin Welborn stared at them for a moment and then focused on Al Mackey's gaunt face.

“I said take a walk and get some air, Marty,” Al Mackey repeated.

Martin Welborn nodded, got up, and walked out of the captain's office. He looked around blankly for a moment, then left the squadroom.

“Your partner's a little shaky,” Captain Woofer said, relighting the briar for the third time.

“The flu, I think,” Al Mackey said. “Also he's gone through a marital separation.”

“Haven't we all?” Captain Woofer shrugged. “If I had a buck for every divorced cop, I could've retired ten years ago instead of ruining my health going for thirty.”

“Maybe Marty's been working too hard. Maybe …”

“He should take a vacation.” Captain Woofer nodded. “
After
you two clear the Nigel St. Claire homicide.”

“Maybe he should take the vacation
now
, Cap.”

“After. He's got troubles, you've got troubles, I've got troubles. It's a troubled world.” The captain suddenly didn't look so old. He smiled as he got the pipe cooking.

And Al Mackey decided that Whipdick Woofer had the crafty reptile eyes of a
real
ball whacker. The detective sighed and said, “You're the boss … Boss.”

Martin Welborn returned to his chair at the table belonging to the homicide teams. He looked composed as he read last night's reports, oblivious to the scowling faces of Schultz and Simon.

Al Mackey approached the homicide table with outstretched conciliatory hands. Al Mackey was big on body language.

“Listen, we didn't ask for this,” he said, knowing what was on the minds of the huge detectives who were stuffing their notes and follow-up reports into the case envelope bearing the name of Nigel St. Claire.

“Sure,” said Schultz. “We're just the junior varsity is all we are. Well, good luck.”

“Here it is, Mackey, all of it,” said Simon. “The follow-ups are up-to-date: Suspect unknown, investigation continued, arrest is imminent. That's all we got. Good luck to the first team and fuck you very much.”

“We didn't ask for this,” Al Mackey said, with lots of squirming and shrugging. “You think we want this case?”

The Weasel and the Ferret were jazzed up from winning all the loot, and they particularly enjoyed seeing Schultz and Simon suffer. The giant homicide detectives were possibly the only team of officers in the L.A.P.D. who still wore their hair in crewcuts. They had to drive all the way downtown to City Hall to find a barber who remembered how to cut them. Occasionally, when Schultz was feeling particularly militant, he'd ask for medium whitewalls and come off looking like a
Wehrmacht
tank commander. The Weasel said the two hunkers blotted out the. sun when they entered the squadroom. The Ferret said the mastodons registered 5.3 on the Cal Tech Richter when they walked down the stairs.

Hearing the behemoths bitching and moaning to Al Mackey for taking over the Nigel St. Claire case, the Weasel said, “I don't know why Mackey and Welborn should get that hot homicide. After all, Schultz and Simon solved three and a half homicides last month.”

“What do you mean, three and a half?” asked the Ferret, always anxious to play Mr. Bones to the Weasel's interlocutor.

“The fourth one refused to die.”

“Yeah, but if he had, who woulda told Schultz and Simon who killed him?”

“That's true. They ain't
never
found a bad guy unless somebody pointed him out.”

And so forth. But even though he was a daredevil who carried a long knife in his motorcycle boot, the Ferret was wise enough to keep his voice down when he was dumping on Schultz and Simon, who had once threatened to squeeze both narcs into little hair balls and hang them from his rearview mirror.

The Weasel decided to console the big detectives with some hot information. Schultz and Simon had been distraught of late since losing a murder case wherein a boulevard cowboy named William Bonney Anderson, a.k.a. Billy the Kid, had blown away three good citizens of Hollywood, two for money, one for fun, and was found not guilty by reason of diminished capacity, after two psychiatrists (it was always the same shrinks the defense dug up in these cases) convinced the jury that Billy the Kid's destiny was preordained the moment his mother laid on him the name of the notorious outlaw.

The Weasel slipped Schultz and Simon the address and phone number of a former and present Hollywood mental case named Pat Garrett Williams, who, the Weasel was convinced, would consider himself officially deputized if given one of those “Have you hugged a vice cop today?” buttons that the gay community was recently flaunting. Then he could be shown a mug shot, given a throwaway gun, and programmed to relive the century-old killing of the Kid by blowing William Bonney Anderson right out from under his fucking Stetson the next time he went to the coffee shop on McCadden Place to pick up a drag queen.

“It might work!” Schultz said.

“Sounds feasible,” Simon said. “You two hairballs come up with a good idea once in a while.”

Schultz even let the Weasel rub his crewcut for luck before hitting the bricks today, since the narcs hoped to culminate a big hash bust in the Hollywood hills. In fact, Schultz and Simon seemed so enthusiastic about owning their own certifiably psycho vigilante that they didn't even look up when Al Mackey and Martin Welborn stuffed the story of Nigel St. Claire into its final resting place in a case envelope and set out toward square one.

Square one was not necessarily the scene of the crime. Square one was where the body was found. If they were going to clear this one for Captain Woofer, the crime scene might have to be the goddamn French Riviera, Al Mackey said. It was going to take more than their
nimble inventive ways
to clear this killing. They might actually have to solve this one.

When they got close to the parking lot of the bowling alley on Gower Street, Al Mackey looked around and said, “We're going to have one hell of a time finding a skinny junkie with a fat Buddha
this
time, partner.”

Martin Welborn seemed more or less back to normal after reading the crime and follow-up reports while Al Mackey drove through the morning smog. “What was a man like St. Claire doing at a bowling alley at that time of night?”

“I say we start by assuming the body was dumped here,” Al Mackey said.

“The pathologist was doubtful on that score. The posting indicates he was killed here.”

It always amazed Al Mackey how quickly Marty could read and digest a police report, especially something as convoluted as a Schultz-Simon report, which drove district attorneys mad but seldom resulted in complaint to Captain Woofer. There was something about their combined bulk of 560 pounds which discouraged complaints from
anyone
. Even the doctors at the police physicals failed to send their “fat-man notices” to the department. Schultz and Simon were overweight the way grizzlies are overweight during hibernation: too heavy for their own good but everyone decided not to tell them about it.