“In spades.”

“You get anything yesterday?”

Seeing my best friend looking like a new man made it easy to twist the truth. “You read my FI report?”

“Yeah, at University. Good work on the juvie warrant. You get anything else?”

I lied flat-out, a trim sharkskin figure dancing in the back of my head. “No. You?”

Staring through the one-way, Lee said, “No, but what I said about getting the bastard still goes. Jesus, look at Harry.”

I did. The mild-mannered stutterer was circling the interrogation room table, twirling a metal-studded sap, whacking it hard into the tabletop each time he circuited. “Ka-thack’s” filled the speaker; Red Manley, arms wrapped around his chest, quivered as each blow reverberated.

Lee nudged me. “Russ has got one rule—no actual hitting. But watch how—”

I shrugged off Lee’s hand and stared through the one-way. Sears was tapping the sap on the table a few inches in front of Manley, his stutterless voice dripping cold rage. “You wanted some fresh gash, and you thought Betty was easy. You came on strong, and that didn’t work, so you begged. That didn’t work, so you offered her money. She told you she was on the rag, and that was the final straw. You wanted to make her bleed for real. Tell me how you sliced her titties. Tell me—”

Manley screamed, “No!” Sears smashed the sap into the ashtray, the glass cracked, butts flew off the table. Red bit his lip; blood spurted out, then dribbled down his chin. Sears sapped the pile of broken glass; shards exploded all over the room. Manley whimpered, “No no no no no”; Sears hissed, “You knew what you wanted to do. You’re an old cunt chaser, and you knew lots of places to take girls. You plied Betty with a few drinks, got her to talk about her old boyfriends and came on like a pal, like nice little corporal willing to leave Betty to the real men, the men who saw combat, who deserved to get laid with a fine cooze like her—”

“No!”

Sears hit the table, ka-thack! “Yes, Reddy-poo, yes. I think you took her to a toolshed, maybe one of those abandoned warehouses out by the old Ford plant in Pico-Rivera. There was some twine and lots of cutting tools lying around, and you got a hard-on. Then you shot your load in your pants before you could stick it in Betty. You were mad before, but now you were really mad. You started thinking about all the girls who laughed at that tiny little dick of yours and all the times your wife said, ‘Not tonight, Reddy-poo, I’ve got a headache.’ So you hit her and tied her down and beat her and cut her! Admit it, you fucking degenerate!”

“No!”

Ka-thack!

The table jumped off the floor from the force of the blow. Manley almost jumped out of his chair; only Sears’ hand on the back slats kept him from toppling over.

“Yes, Reddy-poo. Yes. You thought of every girl who said ‘I don’t suck,’ every time your mommy spanked you, every evil eye you got from real soldiers when you played your trombone in the army band. Goldbrick, needle-dick, pussy-whipped, that’s what you were thinking. That’s what Betty had to pay for. Right?”

Manley dribbled blood and spittle into his lap and gurgled. “No. Please, as God is my witness, no”; Sears said, “God hates liars,” and sapped the table three times Ka-thack! Ka-thack! Ka-thack! Manley lowered his head and began to dry sob; Sears knelt by his chair. “Tell me how Betty screamed and begged, Red. Tell me, then tell God.”

“No. No. I didn’t hurt Betty.”

“Did you get another hard-on? Did you come and come and come the more you cut her?”

“No. Oh God, oh God.”

“That’s right, Red. Talk to God. Tell God all about it. He’ll forgive you.”

“No, please God.”

“Say it, Red. Tell God how you beat and tortured and ripped up Betty Short for three fucking days, then cut her in two.”

Sears smashed the table once, twice, three times, then hurled it over onto its side. Red fumbled himself out of his chair and onto his knees. He clasped his hands and mumbled, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” then started weeping. Sears looked straight at the one-way, self-loathing etched into every plane of his flabby juicehound face. He gave the thumbs-down sign, then walked out of the room.

Russ Millard met him just outside the door and led him away from the general crowd of officers, in my direction. Eavesdropping on their whispered conversation, I picked up the gist of it: they both thought Manley was clean, but wanted to shoot him with Pentothal and give him a polygraph test to make sure. Looking back through the one-way, I saw Lee and another plainsclothesman handcuffing Red, easing him out of the interrogation room. Lee was giving the man the kid gloves treatment he usually reserved for children, talking softly to him, one hand on his shoulder. The crowd broke up when the three of them disappeared into the holding tank. Harry Sears went back into the cubicle and began cleaning up his mess; Millard turned to me. “Good report yesterday, Bleichert.”

I said, “Thanks,” knowing I was being sized up. We locked eyes. I asked, “What’s next?”

“You tell me.”

“First you send me back to Warrants, right?”

“Wrong, but keep going.”

“Okay, then we canvass around the Biltmore and try to reconstruct Betty Short’s movements from the tenth, when Red dropped her off, to the twelfth or thirteenth, when she got snatched. We blanket the area and collate the FIs and hope to hell the legit leads don’t get lost with all phonies this publicity is getting us.”

“Keep going.”

“We know Betty was movie-struck and promiscuous, and that she bragged about being in a movie last November, so my bet is that she wouldn’t turn down a roll on the casting couch. I think we should query producers and casting directors, see what we get.”

Millard smiled. “I called Buzz Meeks this morning. He’s an ex-cop, works as head of security at Hughes Aircraft. He’s the Department’s unofficial liaison to the studios, and he’ll be asking around. You’re doing well, Bucky. Run with the ball.”

I wavered—wanting to impress a senior officer; wanting to roust the rich lezzie myself. Millard’s pump job came on as condescending, bones of praise to keep a young cop from balking at his unwanted assignment. Madeleine Cathcart Sprague framed in my mind, I said, “All I know is that you should keep an eye on Loew and his boys. I didn’t put it in my report, but Betty Short sold it outright when she needed money bad enough, and Loew’s been trying to keep it kiboshed. I think he’ll sit on anything that makes her look like an outright tramp. The more sympathy the public has for the girl, the more juice he gets as prosecuting attorney if this mess ever gets to court.”

Millard laughed. “Bright penny, are you calling your own boss an evidence suppressor?”

I thought of myself as the same thing. “Yeah, and a shitbrained, grandstanding son of bitch.”

Millard said, “Touché,” and handed me a piece of paper. “Betty sightings—restaurants and bars in Wilshire Division. You can work it single or with Blanchard, I don’t care.”

“I’d rather canvass around the Biltmore.”

“I know you would, but I want foot beat men who know the area to work there, and I need smart pennies to eliminate the phonies from the tip list.”

“What are you going to be doing?”

Millard smiled sadly. “Keeping an eye on the evidence suppressor shit-brained son of a bitch and his minions to make sure they don’t try to coerce a confession out of that innocent man in the holding tank.”

I couldn’t find Lee anywhere around the station, so I checked out the tip list as a single-o. The canvassing territory was centered in the Wilshire District, restaurant bars and juke joints on Western, Normandie andrd Street. The people I talked to were mostly barflies, daytime juicers eager to suck up to authority or gab with someone other than the usual boon acquaintances they found in gin mills. Pressing for facts, I got sincere fantasy—virtually every person had Betty Short giving them a long spiel taken from the papers and radio when she was really down in Dago with Red Manley or somewhere getting tortured to death. The longer I listened the more they talked about themselves, interweaving their sad tales with the story of the Black Dahlia, who they actually believed to be a glamorous siren headed for Hollywood stardom. It was as if they would have traded their own lives for a juicy front-page death. I included questions on Linda Martin/Lorna Martilkova, Junior Nash and Madeleine Cathcart Sprague and her snow-white Packard, but all it got me was stuporous deadpans. I decided that my FI report would consist of two words: “All bullshit.”