I shut the drawers, flicked off the light, tingle walked into the living room and turned on the lamp, then reached for the address book. “Daddy & Mom’s” number was GRanite-9401; if I got a no answer, B & E number two was a ten-minute drive away.

I dialed; Fritz Vogel’s phone rang twenty-five times. I turned off the light and hauled ass.

Vogel Senior’s small wood frame house was totally dark when I pulled up across from it. I sat behind the wheel remembering the layout from my previous visit, recalling two bedrooms off a long hallway, the kitchen, a rear service porch and a closed door across the hall from the bathroom. If Fritzie had a private den, that had to be it.

I took the driveway to the back of the house. The screen door to the service porch was open; I tiptoed past a washing machine to the barrier to the house proper. That door was solid wood, but feeling at the jamb I found it connected to the wall with a simple hook and eyelet. I shook the knob and felt plenty of give; if I could pop the little piece of metal, I was in.

I got down on my knees and patted the floor, stopping when my hand hit a skinny piece of metal. Pawing at it like a blind man, I realized I’d found an oil gauge dipstick. I smiled at my luck, stood up and popped the door open.

Thinking fifteen minutes tops, I moved through the kitchen, over to the hallway and down it, my hands in front of me to deflect unseen obstacles. A nightlight glowed inside the bathroom doorway—pointing me straight across to what I hoped was Fritzie’s hideaway. I tried the knob—and the door opened.

The little room was pitch dark. I banged along the walls, hitting picture frames, feeling iceberg spooky until my leg grazed a tall wobbly object. It was about to topple when I snapped that it was a gooseneck lamp, reached for the top part and flipped the switch.

Light.

The pictures were photographs of Fritzie in uniform, in plainclothes, standing at attention with the rest of his 1925 Academy class. There was a desk positioned against the back wall, facing a window covered with a velvet curtain, a swivel chair and a filing cabinet.

I slid the top compartment open and fingered through manila folders stamped “Intelligence Rpt—Bunco Division,” “Intelligence Rpt—Burglary Division,” “Intelligence Rpt—Robbery Division”—all with the names of individuals typed on side tabs. Wanting some kind of common denominator, I checked the first sheets of the next three folders I came to—finding only one carbon page in each of them.

But those single pieces of paper were enough.

They were financial accountings, lists of bank balances and other assets, tallies made on known criminals that the Department couldn’t legally touch. The routing designations at the top of each sheet spelled it out plain—it was the LAPD shooting the feds hot dope so that they could initiate tax evasion investigations. Handwritten notes—phone numbers, names and addresses—filled the margins, and I recognized Fritzie’s Parker penmanship hand.

My breath came in short cold bursts as I thought: shakedown. He’s either putting the screws to the hoods based on info in the rest of the files or selling them tip-offs on impending fed rousts.

Extortion, first degree.

Theft and harboring of official LAPD documents.

Impeding the progress of federal investigations.

But no Johnny Vogel, Charlie Issler or Betty Short.

I tore through another fourteen folders, finding the same scrawled-over financial reports in all of them. I memorized the side tab names, then moved to the bottom compartment. I saw “Known Offender Rpt—Administrative Vice Division” on the first file inside it—and knew I’d gotten the whole ball of wax.

Page one detailed the arrests, MO and confessing career of Charles Michael Issler, white male, born in Joplin, Missouri, in 1911; page two listed his “Known Associates.” A June 1946 “whore book” check by his probation officer yielded six girls’ names, followed by phone numbers and the arrest dates and dispositions of their hooking convictions. There were an additional four female names below the heading “?—No Prostitution Record.” The third name was “Liz Short—Transient?”

I turned to page three and read down the column headed “KAs, cont”; one name harpooned me. “Sally Stinson” was in Betty Short’s little black book, and none of the four questioning teams had been able to locate her. In brackets beside her name, some Ad Vice dick had penciled in, “Works out of Biltmore bar—conventioneer johns.” Doodles in Fritzie’s ink color surrounded the entry.

I forced myself to think like a detective, not a revenge-happy kid. The extortion stuff aside, it was certain that Charlie Issler knew Betty Short. Betty knew Sally Stinson, who hooked out of the Biltmore. Fritz Vogel didn’t want anybody to know it. He probably arranged the warehouse stunt to find out how much Sally and/or his other girls had told Issler about Betty and the men she was recently with.

“I proved I’m not no nancy boy. Homos couldn’t do what I did. I’m not cherry no more, so don’t say nancy boy.”

I put the folders back in order, closed the cabinet, hit the light and relatched the backdoor before walking out the front like I owned the place, wondering briefly if there was any connection between Sally Stinson and the missing “S’s” in the master file. Treading air to my car, I knew it couldn’t be—Fritzie didn’t know that the El Nido work room existed. Then another thought took over: if Issler had blabbed about “Liz” and her tricks I would have overheard. Fritzie was confident he could keep me quiet. It was an underestimation that I was going to bleed him for.

Russ Millard was waiting for me with two words: “Report, Officer.”

I told him the whole story in detail. When I finished, he saluted Elizabeth Short on the wall, said, “We’re making progress, dear,” and formally stuck out his hand.

We shook, sort of like father and son after the big game. “What next, padre?”

“Next you go back to duty like none of this happened. Harry and I will brace Issler at the nut farm, and I’ll assign some men to look for Sally Stinson on the QT.”

I swallowed. “And Fritzie?”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

“I want him nailed.”

“I know you do. But you keep one thing in mind. The men that he extorted are criminals who would never testify against him in court, and if he gets wind of this and destroys the carbons, we wouldn’t even be able to get him for an interdepartmental offense. All of this is going to require corroboration, so for now it’s just us. And you had better settle down and control your temper until it’s over.”

I said, “I want in on the collar.’

Russ nodded. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He tipped his hat to Elizabeth on the way out the door.

I went back to swingwatch and played sob sister; Russ put men out to look for Sally Stinson. A day later, he called me at home with one dose of bad news, one of good:

Charles Issler had found a lawyer to file him a writ of habeaus corpus; he had been released from the Mira Loma ding farm three weeks before. His LA apartment had been cleaned out; he couldn’t be found. That was a kick in the balls, but the confirmation on the Vogel extortion front made up for it.

Harry Sears checked Fritzie’s felony arrest records—from Bunco in 1934 up through his current position in Central Detectives. At one time or another Vogel had arrested every single man on the LAPD-FBI financial carbons. And the feds did not indict a single one of them.

I rotated off-duty the next day, and spent it with the master file, thinking corroboration. Russ called to say that he hadn’t got any leads on Issler, that it looked like he’d blown town. Harry was keeping Johnny Vogel under a loose surveillance on and off duty; a buddy working West Hollywood Sheriffs Vice had kicked loose with some KA addresses—friends of Sally Stinson. Russ told me a half dozen times to take it easy and not jump the gun. He knew damn well I already had Fritzie in Folsom and Johnny in the Little Green Room.