Chapter 2

Tuesday, June 24th, 1947, 11:00 p.m.

Lauren Stanwyck was the only female homicide detective on the L.A. police force. We’d worked together a lot. Now and then, especially during the last year, we’d worked close together. And, sometimes, we’d worked apart. Far apart. She was one smart cookie. And one tough one. She’d been a cop as long as I’d been a private eye, and a detective for the last five years—one good consequence of the war was the shortage of men everywhere, including in the L.A. Detective Division. She made it her business to know every jake—detective and flatfoot alike—on every police force on the West Coast, from Vancouver to San Diego. And she knew what all of them were doing. That, and her exemplary record, was how she’d held onto her job after the war despite her high heels and pert button nose. Nonetheless, she’d risen a lot slower than most of her male counterparts because of them.

Even though it was five minutes before eleven, Stanwyck would be in her office. She was everything a cop was supposed to be—hardworking, thorough, perseverant—and her tolerance for BS was somewhere just south of mine. I admired her for it.

She said she spent way too much time at the office, though not too much time working. She was attractive and she knew it, but she didn’t socialize much—that took time—and she swore she was going to stay single: A cop’s husband had nothing but worry to look forward to. Solving crimes was her life, and the eighteen-hour workday was how she lived it. She just hated being stuck inside. Crimes, she maintained, got solved on the street. Stone walls, as far as she was concerned, did a prison make, never mind what that poet said.

The crime she was trying to solve at the moment had to do with the murder of my one-time client’s good bud, one Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, mob honcho, shot while sitting in the home of his absent girlfriend, one Virginia Hill, the previous Friday night. In fact, the forty-one-year-old Bugsy had been reading a newspaper in Hill’s parlor when some still unknown assailant pulled the trigger of a high-powered weapon. The police—Stanwyck—found nine bullet holes there. Large bullet holes, the two largest in the head of the gangster himself. The girlfriend had been in Paris when the shooting occurred, having left the City of Angels for the City of Light ten days before. We were all terribly surprised. Just like we were all terribly upset at Bugsy’s sudden and violent demise. Virginia Hill, it was widely known, had kept company with a number of notorious companions before (and, some said, during) her liaison with Siegel. Why Bugsy was in L.A. while Virginia wasn’t, instead of in Las Vegas, where he lived at (and operated) the Flamingo Hotel (and casino—Vegas’s premier gambling palace), was anybody’s guess.

So far, they’d found nothing except Bugsy’s body and his blood and the bullet holes.

Frankly, I didn’t much care that Siegel had been shot—he was pretty high on my list of Lowlifes I Have Known. Stanwyck didn’t really care either. She did care about finding the guy who shot him: It was her job, and her life was a constant battle to prove she could do her job as well as, or better than, any man could. It teed her off that those men—the Chief foremost among them—continually got in her way. Nobody really doubted her skill—she found almost every killer she set out to find, including more than a few the rest of the Homicide Division had given up on, and she had more commendations than any other two cops combined—but nobody in the department admitted it, either. Least of all the Chief: She’d saved his life once in front of a dozen other cops, back when they were both on the street, and he’d never forgiven her for it.

She answered the phone with a brusque “Homicide. This is Stanwyck.”

I said, “Hi, sweetheart.”

“Damn it, Grahame, I don’t have time for it so don’t give me any of that sweetheart bullcrap. Whattaya want?”

Stanwyck was famous for her patience. She’d give someone who had information she needed the count of three to answer her question before she sapped him. The “interviewee” was always surprised when that happened, but after it did once he usually answered her questions before she reached two on the next one. Stanwyck wielded a mean blackjack. I was glad she’d never had to interview me.

“I’m fine, too, thank you,” I said.

She sighed. “Robert, Robert, Robert,” she said. “I’m up to my neck in problems: The newspapers are screaming about the Bugsy Siegel killing—and so is the rest of the mob, Moe Sedway prominent among them.” I murmured a sympathetic “mm.” “The public is—still—screaming about the Black Dahlia, and the Chief is screaming about dog poop on the sidewalks of Beverly Hills.”

I laughed. “Yeah, that dog poop is a serious problem.”

“Tell me about it.” I heard her light a cigarette. “So what’re you gonna scream about.”

“Nothin’, Laur, I just—”

She almost yelled, “Don’t call me Laur!”

Stanwyck hates being called “Laur,” especially when she is not having a good night, like now. I did it on purpose. Sometimes. And, sometimes, her full name sounded just a little too much like someone else’s. I cleared my throat. “Sorry, Lieutenant.”

“So get on with it,” she snapped. “Whose Black Bird got stolen this time. Or did some little rich girl get her naughty pictures taken by a big bad wolf dressed up like an innocent rare-book seller.”

I was staring at the envelope that held Lizabeth Duryea’s note. I knew that handwriting. I decided not to think about it; it would come to me. “The name,” I told Stanwyck, “is Grahame, Lieutenant, not Spade. Or Marlowe. I wish it was. Marlowe, anyway. He makes ten times what I do.” Personally, I thought I was a better investigator than Phil; every time he took a case somebody ended up dead, usually several somebodies. I’d come across a couple of dead bodies in my time—unexpectedly viewing the suddenly and violently deceased is one of the little-known special privileges of being a private eye—but I didn’t like dealing with corpses, or taking cases that would probably end up contributing to some funeral director’s standard of living. But Marlowe lived in Hollywood; my apartment was in downtown L.A. He carried hundred-dollar bills and, I’d been told, wore silk pajamas. I kept change in my pocket and twenty bucks in my wallet when I wanted to feel flush and slept in my cheap cotton PJs. He had a higher profile and the higher-profile clientele that went with it. It pays to get rich clients; they attract other rich clients. Even if some of them die along the way.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Stanwyck. “So?”

“I got a missing person. In Seattle.”

“Geography wasn’t your best subject, was it, Grahame. That’s in Washington.”

“Yeah? Well, gee, thanks, Laur. I’ll check a map bef—”

“Don’t call me—”

“Laur!” I said with her. “I know.” Stanwyck yawned. “You sound tired,” I said.

“I am tired, Grahame. And my back and feet ache. Hell, make a male detective wear heels all day and see how his back and feet feel. And I haven’t had anything to eat since lunch.”

“Let me guess: a bologna sandwich with mayo and tomato.”

“Right on the bologna, wrong on the tomato. Wilted lettuce. Bacall forgot to ask when he ordered it.”

Other than that, Stanwyck was running on cigarettes and coffee. She was used to it. Some people had blood coursing through them; Stanwyck had nicotine and caffeine. The Chief disagreed. “Needles,” he’d opined sourly, “dipped in rattlesnake venom.” As far as he was concerned, Stanwyck wished it were true. She’d bite him at the first opportunity. So would a few other cops I knew.

“Sorry, Lauren.”

She sighed deeply. “Yeah, me too. It’s been a hell of a day, Robert. You wouldn’t believe the crap that’s coming down about Siegel.”

“He was a bad guy.”

“Yeah. An important bad guy. Who had lots of blood in him, most of which spilled all over Virginia Hill’s parlor Friday night sometime around ten thirty. I’d show you the photos, but they’re enough to make me gag.”

“I’ve seen them,” I told her. “Today’s Times has ’em on the front page in glorious black-and-white under a banner: ‘Bugsy Takes the Big Sleep.’ The newsstands have ’em plastered all over.”

“Yeah, I know.” That really teed her off. “And kids look at that stuff! Sometimes I wonder about the ‘free press.’”

I put the hand-addressed envelope into my desk drawer with the one containing the five hundred and locked it again. “Sorry, Lauren. What’re you doing?”

“Now? Looking at photos of guys who shoot other guys. Why?”

“Can I buy you a drink? I’ll toss in a hamburg and fries.”

“Robert, it’s past eleven. You think if I had time for a drink I’d still be here?”

I smiled. “Yeah. You’re L.A.’s finest.”

Her voice softened. “Thanks,” she said. “So: What can I do for you.”

I opened Lizabeth Duryea’s file. “I need some names in Seattle.”

“Cops?”

“For starters.”

“Okay. Hold on.” She covered the mouthpiece. I heard her anyway. “Hey, Bacall,” she hollered. “Get your skinny butt in here with my Seattle contacts file. Now!”

Humphrey Bacall, her scrawny, gawky, twenty-one-year-old secretary and gofer with a heart of overripe tomato, had a high-pitched voice that could carry from one end of the Rose Bowl to the other like a pennywhistle in the desert. He sat at a desk just outside her office and tried to reorder everything that Stanwyck disordered, which was most everything she touched. I’d been in her office; it was a hodgepodge of piles—photos, memos, reports, directives, files. They covered her desktop—literally—and a good part of her floor.

“Sure thing, Lieutenant Stanwyck,” I heard him holler back.

“It’ll take a minute, Robert. Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know, Lauren.” I rocked back and put my feet up. New cases used to excite me. Now they reminded me I was getting old because they didn’t excite me. Usually. Too many were too much alike; you’ve snapped one cavorting couple you’ve snapped them all. This one . . . ? Well, maybe.

I looked out the window. The neon flashed, and I saw some rain clouds. Some rain would be nice. It would clean the sidewalks and the air, for a couple of hours, anyway. “Girl came into my office an hour ago with a story: Her brother disappeared in Seattle. He’s supposed to be up there selling insurance to Boeing. The girl paid me five hundred bucks up front to find out what happened to him.” Stanwyck whistled. “Yeah,” I said.

She dragged on her cigarette and blew the smoke into the phone. Ten miles away I could smell it. It smelled good. “Lotta dough to be carryin’ around at ten o’clock at night,” she said, “’specially for a girl by herself in L.A. What were you doin’ at your office at ten?”

“Correction: What am I doing here at eleven?” I emptied the fedora and stacked the cards neatly and picked up the ones on the floor. Then I proceeded to flip them into the hat again one by one. I made the first five, then missed two in a row. “Decorating. I’ve been trying to make the place pretty in case a rich vampire showed up. Instead I got a rich vamp.”

“Grahame,” Stanwyck said, “you’re a smart-ass.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant. I’ll remember you’re the one who pointed that out.”

“Yeah, yea—” she began. She was interrupted by Bacall’s breathlessly thin voice blurting reedily “Here y’ are, Lieutenant Stanwyck.”

She covered the phone. “Thanks, Humphrey.” She shuffled something together and handed it to him. Probably the stack of photos she’d been looking through. “Here. Find the felons who aren’t already in the joint in this bunch.”

“Yes, ma’am!” he said smartly, the way buck privates used to say “Yes, sir” to second looies. “Anything else I can get you?”

“Coffee. Black. A whole pot.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Bacall said again. I heard him scurrying away. His long legs covered ground like a bowlegged track star’s. Walking, he reminded me of Popeye. Without the muscles.

Stanwyck picked up the phone again. “Now.”

“Not planning on sleeping much tonight, I gather,” I said.

“The city never sleeps, neither do I. Okay, let’s see.” The manila rustled as she opened the folder and riffled through it. “Ah—here’s a couple. You got a pencil?”

“Uh-huh.” I put down the cards and picked one up.

“Detective Sergeant Edward Widmark,” she offered. “Fuller-0812.”

“0812. Widmark,” I repeated as I noted it in the Duryea file. “I read something about him: Isn’t he the guy who caught that psycho, I forget his name . . . ?”

“Tommy Biddle.” Biddle, square-jawed, merciless, and absolutely nuts, had terrorized the good people of Seattle for months. Widmark had made the arrest; it had been stellar—and dangerous—police work. Stanwyck admired it. So did I. Some PIs had problems with them, but cops were jake in my book. The good ones—and most of them were good ones—worked hard and put their lives on the line, a lot. A cop was okay, so long as you didn’t flat out lie to him—or her—or do something else that was stupid. “Yeah, that was Widmark,” Stanwyck said, and flipped a page. “And Detective Lieutenant Richard G. Robinson. Howard-0530.”

I wrote it down. “Got it. Thanks, Laur. En.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “That it?”

“That’s it.”

“Mm.” I heard the folder crackle as she closed it. “I’ll take a rain check on that drink, Grahame.”

“Anytime, Lieutenant. You know where to find me.”

“Yeah. Hey, Bacall,” she yelled, “Get your butt in here with my coffee!” Then she hung up without saying good-bye.