I tossed the billfold on the bed and eased the pressure on my gun; Dolphine squirmed. “That money’s jackshit compared to what Blanchard was holding. You go partners with me and it’s easy street.”
I kicked his legs out from under him. Dolphine hit the floor and sucked dust off the carpet. “You tell me all of it, and you watch what you say about my partner, or it’s a B&E roust and the Ensenada jail.”
Dolphine pushed himself up onto his knees. He gasped, “Bleichert, how the fuck did you figure I knew to come here? It occur to you that maybe I was nearby when you did your gringo cop routine with Vasquez?”
I sized the man up. He was past forty, fat and balding, but probably tough—like an ex-athlete whose hardness reverted to smarts when his body went. I said, “Somebody else is tailing me. Who is it?”
Dolphine spat cobwebs. “The Rurales. Vasquez has got a vested interest in you not finding out about Blanchard.”
“Do they know I’m staying here?”
“No. I told Cap I’d start the tail. His other boys must have picked you up. You lose them?”
I nodded and flicked Dolphine’s necktie with my gun. “How come you’re so cooperative?”
Dolphine put a light hand on the muzzle and eased it away from him. “I got my own vested interest, and I am damn good at playing both ends against the middle. I also talk a sight better sitting down. You think that’s possible?”
I grabbed the chair and placed it in front of him. Dolphine got to his feet, brushed off his suit and plopped himself into it. I reholstered my piece. “Slow and from the beginning.”
Dolphine breathed on his nails and buffed them on his shirt. I took the only other chair in the flop and sat down facing the slats so that I’d have something to grab. “Talk, goddamnit.”
Dolphine obliged. “About a month ago, this Mexican woman walked into my office in Dago. Chubby, wearing ten tons of makeup, but dressed to the nines. She offered me five hundred to locate Blanchard, and she told me she thought he was somewhere down around TJ or Ensenada. She said he was an LA cop, some kind of lamster. Knowing the LA cops love that green stuff, I started thinking money pronto.
“I asked my TJ snitches about him, showed around this newspaper picture the woman gave me. I heard that Blanchard was in TJ around late January, getting in fights, boozing, spending lots of dough. Then a pal on the Border Patrol tells me he’s hiding out in Ensenada, paying protection to the Rurales—who are actually letting him booze and brawl in their town—something Vasquez just about never tolerates.
“Okay, so I came down here and started tailing Blanchard, who’s playing the rich gringo to the hilt. I see him beat up these two spics who insult this señorita, with Rurale troopers standing by doing nothing. That means the protection tip is straight dope, and I start thinking money, money, money.”
Dolphine traced a dollar sign in the air; I grabbed the chair slats so hard that I could feel the wood start to give. “Here’s where it gets interesting. This one pissed-off Rurale who’s not on the Blanchard payroll tells me that he heard Blanchard hired a couple of Rurale plainclothesmen to kill two enemies of his in Tijuana in late January. I drive back to TJ, pay out some bribe money to the TJ cops and learn that two guys named Robert De Witt and Felix Chasco were bumped off in TJ on January twenty-third. De Witt’s name sounded familiar, so I called a friend working San Diego PD. He checked around and called me back. Now get this, if you didn’t already know. Blanchard sent De Witt up to Big Q in ‘39, and De Witt vowed to get even. I figure that De Witt got early parole, and Blanchard had him snuffed to protect his own ass. I called my partner in Dago, and left a message with him for the Mexican woman. Blanchard is in Ensenada, protected by the Rurales, who probably snuffed De Witt and Chasco for him.”
I let go of the slats, my hands numb. “What was the woman’s name?”
Dolphine shrugged. “She called herself Delores Garcia, but it was obviously a phony. After I heard about the De Witt-Chasco angle, I pegged her as one of Chasco’s bimbos. He was supposed to be a gigolo with plenty of rich Mex gash on the line, and I figured the dame wanted revenge for the snuff. I figured she already knew somehow that Blanchard was responsible for the killings, and she just needed me to finger him.”
I said, “You know the Black Dahlia thing up in LA?”
“The Pope a guinea?”
“Lee was working on the case right before he came down here, and in late January there was a Tijuana angle on it. Did you hear of him asking questions about the Dahlia?”
Dolphine said, “Nada. You want the rest of it?”
“Rapidamente.”
“Okay. I went back to Dago, and my partner told me that the Mex dame got the message I left. I took off for Reno and a little vacation, and I blew the money she paid me at the crap table. I started thinking of Blanchard and all that money he had, wondering what the Mex dame had in mind for him. It really got to be a bug up my ass, and I went back to Dago, worked some missing persons jobs and came back to Ensenada about two weeks later. And you know whatt? There was no fucking Blanchard.
“Only a fool would’ve asked Vasquez or the troopers about him, so I hung around town picking up skinny. I saw this punk wearing Blanchard’s old letterman’s jacket, and this other punk with that Legion Stadium sweatshirt of his. I get word that two guys got hanged in Juarez for the De Witt-Chasco job, and I think, Rurale railroad all the way. I stay in town sucking up to Vasquez, snitching hopheads to him to stay on his good side. Finally I piece the Blanchard thing together. So if he was your buddy, get ready.”
At “was,” my hands broke off the chair slat I was grabbing. Dolphine said, “Whoa, boy.”
I gasped, “Finish it.”
The PI spoke slowly and calmly, like he was addressing a hand grenade. “He’s dead. Chopped up with an axe. Some punks found him. They broke into the house he was staying in, and one of them blabbed to the troopers, so they wouldn’t get tagged for it. Vasquez bought them off with pesos and some of Blanchard’s belongings, and the Rurales buried the body outside town. I heard rumors that none of the money was found, and I stuck around because I figured Blanchard was rogue and sooner or later some American cop would come looking for him. When you showed up at the station with that horseshit about working Metropolitan, I knew it was you.”
I tried to say no, but my lips wouldn’t move; Dolphine speedballed the rest of his pitch: “Maybe the Rurales did it, maybe it was the woman or friends of hers. Maybe one of them got the money and maybe they didn’t, and we can. You knew Blanchard, you could get a grip on who-”
I leaped up and roundhoused Dolphine with the chair slat; he caught the blow on the neck, hit the floor and sucked carpet again. I aimed my gun at the back of his head; the shitbird private eye whimpered, then double-speeded a mercy plea: “Look, I didn’t know it was so personal with you. I didn’t kill him, and I’ll back off if you want to get whoever did it. Please, Bleichert, goddamn it.”
I whimpered myself. “How do I know it’s true?”
“There’s a sand pit by the beach. The Rurales dump stiffs there. A kid told me he saw a bunch of troopers burying a big white man right around the time that Blanchard got it. Goddamn you, it’s true!”
I eased down the .38’s hammer. “Then show me.”
The burial ground was ten miles south of Ensenada, just off the coast road on a bluff overlooking the ocean. A big, burning cross marked the spot. Dolphine pulled up next to it and killed the engine. “It’s not what you think. The locals keep the damn thing lit up because they don’t know who’s buried there, and lots of them have got missing loved ones. It’s a ritual with them. They burn the crosses, and the Rurales tolerate it, like it’s some kind of panacea to keep the great unwashed gun-shy. Speaking of which, you want to put that thing away?”