The four shuffled out, scissor-walking sideways, their chains dragging the floor. I pointed them to a side exit adjoining the catwalk; the jailer opened the door from outside. The loony conga line scissored into the parking lot; the jailer held a bead on them while I found the drunk wagon and backed it up.
The jailer opened the wagon’s back door; I checked the rearview mirror and watched my cargo climb aboard. They were whispering among themselves, taking gulps of the crisp night air as they stumbled up and in. The jailer locked the door behind them and signaled me with his gun barrel; I took off.
1701 South Alameda was in the East LA Industrial District, about a mile and a half from the city jail. Five minutes later, I found it—a giant warehouse smack in the middle of a block of giant warehouses, the only one with its street facade illuminated: KOUNTY KING LUNCH MEAT—SERVING LOS ANGELES COUNTY WITH INSTITUTIONAL FOOD SINCE 1923. I tapped the horn as I parked; a door beneath the sign opened up, the light went off, Fritzie Vogel was standing there with his thumbs hooked in his belt.
I got out and unlocked the back door. The loonies stumbled into the street; Fritzie called, “This way, gentlemen.” The four scissor-walked in the direction of the voice; a light went on in back of Fritzie. I secured the van and walked over.
Fritzie ushered the last loony in and greeted me in the doorway. “County kickbacks, boyo. The man who owns this place owes Sheriff Biscailuz, and he’s got a plainclothes lieutenant who’s got a doctor brother who owes me. You’ll see what I’m talking about in a while.”
I shut the door and bolted it; Fritzie led me past the scissor-walkers and down a hall reeking of meat. At the end, it opened into a huge room—sawdust-covered cement floors, row after row of rusted meathooks hanging from the ceiling. Sides of beef dangled from over half of them, in the open at room temperature while horseflies feasted. My stomach looped; then, at the rear, I saw four chairs stationed directly beneath four unused hooks and got the picture for real.
Fritzie was unlocking the loonies’ manacles and cuffing their hands in front of them. I stood by and gauged reactions. Old Man Bidwell’s palsy was going into overdrive, Durkin was humming to himself, Orchard sneered, his head cocked to one side, like his butch-waxed pompadour was weighing it down. Only Charles Issler looked lucid enough to be concerned—he was fretting his hands and looking from Fritzie to me, his eyes constantly darting.
Fritzie took a roll of tape from his pocket and tossed it to me. “Tape the rap sheets to the wall next to the hooks. Alphabetically, straight across.”
I did it, noticing a sheet-draped table wedged diagonally into a connecting doorway a few feet away. Fritzie led the prisoners over and made them stand on the chairs, then dangle their handcuff chains loosely over the meathooks. I skimmed the rap sheets, hoping for facts that would make me hate the four enough to get me through the night and back to Warrants.
Loren Bidwell was a three-time Atascadero loser, the falls for aggravated sexual assault on minors. Between prison jolts, he confessed to all the big sex crimes, and was even a major suspect in the Hickman child snuff case back in the ‘20s. Cecil Durkin was a hophead, a knife fighter and a jailhouse rape-o who played jazz drums with some good combos; he took two Quentin jolts for Arson and was caught masturbating at the scene of his last torch—the home of a bandleader who had allegedly stiffed him on payment for a nightclub gig. That fall cost him twelve years in stir; since his release he’d been working as a dishwasher, living at a Salvation Army domicile.
Charles Issler was a pimp and career confessor specializing in copping to hooker homicides. His three procuring beefs had netted him a year county jail time; his phony confessions two ninety-day observation stints at the Camarillo nut farm. Paul Orchard was a jack roller, a male prostitute, and a former San Bernardino County deputy sheriff. On top of his vice beefs, he had two convictions for grievous aggravated assault.
A little surge of hate juice entered me. It felt tenuous, like I was about to go into the ring against a guy I wasn’t sure I could take. Fritzie said, “A charming quartet, huh, boyo?”
“Real choirboys.”
Fritzie curled a come-hither finger at me; I walked over and faced the four suspects. My hate juice was holding as he said, “You all confessed to killing the Dahlia. We can’t prove you did, so it’s up to you to convince us. Bucky, you ask questions about the girlie’s missing days. I’ll listen in until I hear syphilitic lies.”
I braced Bidwell first. His palsy spasms had the chair rocking underneath him; I reached up and grabbed the meat hook to hold him steady. “Tell me about Betty Short, pops. Why’d you kill her?”
The old man beseeched me with his eyes; I looked away. Fritzie, perusing the rap sheets on the wall, picked up on the silence. “Don’t be timid, boyo. That bird made little boys suck his hog.”
My hand twitched and jerked the hook. “Come clean, pop. Why’d you snuff her?”
Bidwell answered in a breathless geezer’s voice: “I didn’t kill her, mister. I just wanted a ticket to the honor farm. Three hots and a cot’s all I wanted. Please, mister.”
The geez didn’t look strong enough to lift a knife, let alone tie a woman down and carry the two halves of her stiff out to a car. I moved to Cecil Durkin.
“Tell me about it, Cecil.”
The hepcat mocked me. “Tell you about it? You get that line from Dick Tracy or Gangbusters?”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Fritzie watching, measuring me. “One more time, shitbird. Tell me about you and Betty Short.”
Durkin giggled. “I fucked Betty Short and I fucked your mama! I’m your daddy!”
I one-two’d him in the solar plexus, hard little shots. Durkin’s legs buckled, but he kept his feet on the chair. He gasped for breath, got a lungful and went back to bravado: “You think you clever, don’t you? You the bad guy, your buddy the nice guy. You gonna hit me, he gonna rescue me. Don’t you clowns know that bit went out with vaudeville?”
I massaged my right hand, still bone bruised from Lee Blanchard and Joe Dulange. “I’m the nice guy, Cecil. Keep that in mind.”
It was a good line. Durkin fumbled for a comeback; I turned my attention to Charles Michael Issler.
He looked down and said, “I didn’t kill Liz. I don’t know why I do these things, and I apologize. So please don’t let that man hurt me.”
His manner was quietly sincere, but something about him put me off. I said, “Convince me.”
“I… I can’t. I just didn’t.”
I thought of Issler as a pimp, Betty as a part-time prostie, and wondered if there was a possible connection between them—then remembered that the hookers in the little black book questionings said she always worked freelance. I said, “Did you know Betty Short?”
“No.”
“Did you know of her?”
“No.”
“Why’d you confess to her murder?”
“She… she looked so sweet and pretty and I felt so bad when I saw her picture in the paper. I… I always confess to the pretty ones.”
“Your rap sheet says you only cop to hooker snuffs. Why?”
“Well, I…”
“You hit your girls, Charlie? You get them gone on hop? You make them service your pals—”
I stopped, thinking of Kay and Bobby De Witt. Issler bobbed his head up and down, slowly at first, then harder and harder. Soon he was sobbing, “I do such bad things, nasty, nasty things. Nasty, nasty, nasty.”
Fritzie walked over and stood beside me, brass knuckles coiled in both fists. He said, “This kid gloves routine is getting us nowhere,” and kicked Issler’s chair out from under him. The confessor-pimp screamed and flopped like an impaled fish; bones snapped as the cuffs caught the brunt of his weight. Fritzie said, “Watch, boyo.”