“You don’t have to prove a goddam thing,” said Milo. “Just tell me what you know.” He peeled off more bills. Crotty snatched them.

“Your doctor,” he said, “sounds exactly like a guy named Neurath. Donald Neurath, M.D. You described him to a T, Curly, and I know he and Linda Lanier had a thing going.”

“How do you know that?” said Milo.

Crotty looked ill-at-ease.

“C’mon, Ellston.”

“Okay, okay. One of my assignments, when I wasn’t snaring faggots, was working the Scraper Club detail- illegal abortions. Back in those days there were three ways for a girl in trouble to go: coat hanger in the alley, some butcher in a white coat, or a bona fide medico moonlighting for big bucks. Neurath was one of the bona fides- plenty of doctors did it. But it was still a Class A felony, meaning excellent payoff potential for the department.

“There was an approved group of abortionists- we used to call it the Scraper Club- maybe twenty or so doctors, spread all over the city, respectable guys with established practices. They kicked back a percentage of their fees in return for protection by Vice and a guarantee that anyone not in the club would get busted hard and fast. And it worked. There was this one guy, osteopath out in the Valley, tried to muscle in on one of the approved guys’ business by charging half as much for a scrape. A week after he started, they busted him- using a female cop who just happened to be pregnant. Bail denied, stuck in a county cell with hardcases. While he was in lockup, his office got torched and someone scared his daughter while she was walking home from school.”

“Pretty,” said Milo.

“That’s the way it was back then, Lump. Are you sure it’s that much better now?”

“You’re positive this Neurath was a member of the club.”

“I know it for a fact because I picked up moolah from his office. Big fancy suite on Wilshire near Western.” He stopped, stared at Milo. “That’s right, I played bagman too. Not my favorite frigging assignment, but I had enough on my mind without worrying about some penny-ante payoff for something that was gonna happen anyway. Hell, today a kid can walk into a clinic and leave scraped, half-hour later. So what’s the big deal, right?”

Milo said, “Keep talking.”

Crotty gave him a sour look. “We conducted our business after hours, no one around. I’d ride the elevator up to his office, make sure I was alone, give a coded knock on the door. Once I was in, neither of us would talk- pretending it wasn’t happening. He’d hand me a manila envelope; I’d do a superficial count and be off.”

“What kind of doctor was he?”

“Obstetrician. Nice little irony there, eh? Neurath giveth, Neurath taketh away.”

“What about him and Lanier?”

“One evening, after I picked up the loot, I went down the block to this Chinese place to have a little moo-goo and rice wine before heading back. I was sitting in a back booth when in walks Neurath with this platinum-blond dish. It was dark; they didn’t notice me. She had her arm in his- they were looking pretty cozy. They took a table across the room, sat close together, talking pretty intense. The old piece-on-the-side routine, except this dish was really elegant-looking, no tramp. Few minutes later she got up to go to the ladies’ room and I got a good look at her face. It was then that I recognized her- from Belding’s party. She’d been wearing a black dress- no back, very little front, lots of mink trim. Because of the mink, I’d figured her for a rich brat. She’d stuck in my mind because she was gorgeous, really gorgeous. Perfect face, delicious body. But elegant. Classy.”

He shifted his glance to me. “I’m not without feeling for females, Dr. Psychology. Probably appreciate the species a lot more than most hetero studs.”

“What else?” said Milo.

“Nothing else. They had a couple of drinks, coochy-cooed, then left- no doubt for some motel. No big deal. Then, about a year later, the dish’s face is all over the papers. And the more I learn about it the more curious I get.”

He coughed again, scratched his midriff. “There was this dope bust, lots of shooting. She got killed, along with some guy who turned out to be her brother. The papers made both of them out to be big-time pushers. She was a contract player with Belding’s studio- never made a single film and supposedly that was strong evidence it was just a cover. No matter that most of the players never worked, and she’d been a party girl- not a word of that in print. The brother worked at the studio, too, as a grip. Both of them small potatoes. Yet they managed to pay the rent on this very ritzy pad on Fountain- ten rooms- owned a fancy car, were living frigging high. Papers made a big deal about that, going into detail about her furs and jewelry, about how the two of them had come a long way for a couple of Texas crackers-’cause that’s what they were. Her real name was Eulalee Johnson. The brother was a nasty little punk named Cable, used to strong-arm small-time bookies, lean on streetwalkers, but never got too far- small-time all the way. Not exactly your big-time pushers, huh, Lump? But the department fed it to the papers, and the papers ate it like candy. Three hundred grand worth of H found on the premises- hell of a lot in those days. John Q. Public bought it.”

“You didn’t.”

“Hell, no. No one pushing that much smack south of Fresno was doing it without mob connections- Cohen or Dragna. Certainly not a couple of Texas crackers who’d come out of nowhere. I checked the brother’s sheet- drunk and disorderly, lewd conduct, larceny, the strong-arm stuff. Penny ante. No connections with anyone- no one on the street had ever seen him with a reefer in his pocket. The whole thing smelled bad. And the fact that Hummel and DeGranzfeld did the shooting made it stink to high heaven.”

“Why were you checking, Ellston?”

Crotty smiled. “Always searching for leverage, Lump, but this was too scary. I didn’t want to touch it. Still, it stuck in my craw. Now here you are stirring it up again- ain’t that sweet.”

“How’d it go down?” asked Milo.

“Supposedly someone phone-tipped Metro Narc to a huge stash in the Fountain pad. Hummel and DeGranzfeld took the call, brought a couple of black-and-whites along for backup, but had the uniforms wait outside while they checked out the premises. All’s quiet on the western front, then bang bang bang. The uniforms rush in. Both Johnsons are shot to pieces on the living room floor; Hummel and De Granzfeld are tallying up this giant dope stash. Department’s version is they knocked on the door, were met with unfriendly fire, smashed the door down and jumped in, guns ablazin. Cute, eh? A party girl and a small-time drifter taking on Narco bulls.”

“Any board of inquiry into the shooting?” said Milo.

“Very funny, Lump.”

“Even with a woman getting shot? John Q.’s usually squeamish about that.”

“This was ’53, McCarthy fever, height of the dope panic. John Q. was paranoid about pushers in every schoolyard. And the department made Lanier out to be a big-time bad girl, Satan’s frigging bride. Not only weren’t Hummel and Sticky Vicky investigated, they were instant heroes- the mayor pinned ribbons on them.”

This was ’53. Just before Leland Belding had turned into a playboy.

The year of Sharon and Shirlee’s birth.

“Did Linda Lanier leave any children?” I asked.

“No,” said Crotty. “I’d remember that. That kind of thing would have made it into the papers- human interest and all that. Why? You got family members out for revenge?”

“Revenge against who?” asked Milo.

“Belding. That phony bust had his name written all over it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Hummel and DeGranzfeld were his boys; Lanier was his party girl- supporting that place on Fountain woulda been like you and me springing for lunch. In the process of asking around, I learned Lanier might have been more than just a party girl- she’d been known to enter Belding’s private office on the studio lot, stay in for a couple of hours, leave happy. This is stuff office boys knew, but it never got a line of print. I figure they had something or other going, she offended Belding in some serious way, and he had to get rid of her.”