“Hi, I’m Lorraine.”
I turned around. Close up she could have been any pretty brunette—perfect molding clay. “Hi, Lorraine. I’m… B-B-Bill.”
The girl snickered, “Hi, Bill. You wanna go now?”
I nodded; Lorraine walked outside ahead of me. Straight daylight showed off the runs in her nylons and old needle scars on her arms. When she got in the car I saw that her eyes were dull brown; when she drummed her fingers on the dashboard I saw that her closest link to Betty was chipped nail polish.
It was enough.
We drove to the El Nido and walked up to the room without saying a word. I opened the door and stood aside to let Lorraine enter; she rolled her eyes at the gesture, then gave a low whistle to let me know the place was a dive. I locked the door behind us, unwrapped the wig and handed it to her. “Here. Take off your clothes and put this on.”
Lorraine did an inept strip. Her shoes clunked on the floor, she snagged her nylons pulling them off. I made a move to unzip her dress, but she saw it coming, turned away and did it herself. With her back to me, she unhooked her bra, stepped out of her panties and fumbled with the wig. Facing me, she said, “This your idea of a big thrill?”
The coiffure was askew, like a gag rug on a vaudeville comic; only her breasts were a good match. I took off my jacket and started to work at my belt. Something in Lorraine’s eyes stopped me; I snapped that she was afraid of my gun and handcuffs. I got the urge to calm her down by telling her I was a cop—then the look made her seem more like Betty, and I stopped.
The girl said, “You won’t hurt—”; I said, “Don’t talk,” and straightened the wig, bunching her lank brown hair up inside it. The fit was still all wrong, whorish and out of kilter. Lorraine was shaking now; head-to-toe shivers as I stuck the yellow barrette into the coif to make things right. All it did was rip loose strands of black as dry as straw and tilt everything off to one side, like the girl was the slash mouth clown, not my Betty.
I said, “Lie down on the bed.” The girl complied, legs rigid and pressed together, hands underneath her, a skinny length of tics and twitches. Prone, the wig was half on her head, half on the pillow. Knowing the pictures on the wall would spark perfection, I pulled off the sheets covering them.
I stared at portrait-perfect Betty/Beth/Liz; the girl screamed, “No! Killer! Police!”
Wheeling around, I saw a naked fraud transfixed by9th and Norton. I hurled myself onto the bed, pressed my hands over her mouth and held her down, talking it right and perfect: “It’s just that she has all these different names to be, and this woman won’t be her for me, and I can’t be just anybody like her, and every time I try I fuck it up, and my friend went crazy because his little sister might have been her if somebody didn’t kill her—”
“KILL—”
The wig in disarray on the bedspread.
My hands on the girl’s neck.
I let go and stood up slowly, palms out, no harm meant. The girl’s vocal cords stretched, but she couldn’t come up with a sound. She rubbed her throat where my hands had been, the imprint still bright red. I backed off to the far wall, unable to talk.
Mexican standoff.
The girl massaged her throat; something like ice came into her eyes. She got off the bed and put on her clothes facing me, the ice getting colder and deeper. It was a look I knew I couldn’t match, so I got out my ID buzzer and held up LAPD badge 1611 for her to see. She smiled; I tried to imitate her; she walked up to me and spat on the piece of tin. The door slammed, the pictures on the wall fluttered, my voice came back in racking fits, “I’ll get him for you, he won’t hurt you anymore, I’ll make it up to you, oh Betty Jesus fuck I will.”
Chapter 31
The airplane flew east, slicing through cloud banks and bright blue sky. My pockets were stuffed with cash from my all but liquidated bank account, Lieutenant Getchell had bought my line about a grievously ill high school pal in Boston and had granted me a week’s accumulated sick leave. A stack of notes from the Boston PD’s background check was on my lap—laboriously copied from the El Nido file. I already had an interrogation itinerary printed out, aided by the metropolitan Boston street atlas I’d purchased at the LA airport. When the plane landed, it would be Medford/Cambridge/Stoneham and Elizabeth Short’s past—the part that didn’t get smeared across page one.
I’d hit the master file yesterday afternoon, as soon as I quit shaking and was able to put how close I’d gotten to havoc out my brain—at least the front part of it. One quick skimming told me that the LA end of the investigation was dead, a second and third told me it was deader, a fourth convinced me that if I stayed in town I’d go batshit over Madeleine and Kay. I had to run, and if my vow to Elizabeth Short was to mean anything, it had to be in her direction. And if it was a wild-goose chase, then at least it was a trip to clean territory—where my badge and live women wouldn’t get me into trouble.
The revulsion on the hooker’s face wouldn’t leave me; I could still smell her cheap perfume and imagined her spitting indictments, the same words Kay had used earlier that day, only worse—because she knew what I was: a whore with a badge. Thinking about her was like scraping the bottom of my life on my knees—the only comfort in it the fact that I couldn’t go any lower—that I’d chew the muzzle of my .38 first.
The plane landed at 7:35; I was the first in line to disembark, notebook and satchel in hand. There was a car rental place in the terminal; I rented a Chevy coupe and headed into the Boston metropolis, anxious to take advantage of the hour or so of daylight left.
My itinerary included the addresses of Elizabeth’s mother, two of her sisters, her high school, a Harvard Square hash house where she slung plates in ‘42 and the movie theater where she worked as a candy girl in ‘39 and ‘40. I decided on a loop through Boston to Cambridge, then Medford—Betty’s real stomping ground.
Boston, quaint and old, hit me like a blur. I followed street signs to the Charles River Bridge and crossed over into Cambridge: ritzy Georgian pads and streets packed with college kids. More signs led me to Harvard Square; there was stop one—Otto’s Hofbrau, a gingerbread structure spilling the aroma of cabbage and beer.
I parked in a meter space and walked in. The Hansel and Gretel motif extended to the whole place—carved wood booths, beer steins lining the walls, waitresses in dirndl skirts. I looked around for the boss, my eyes settling on a smock-clad older man standing by the cash register.
I walked over, and something kept me from badging him. “Excuse me. I’m a reporter, and I’m writing a story on Elizabeth Short. I understand that she worked here back in ‘42, and I thought you could tell me a little about her then.”
The man said, “Elizabeth who? She some sort of movie star?”
“She was killed in Los Angeles a few years ago. It’s a famous case. Do you—”
“I bought this place in ‘46, and the only employee I got left from the war is Roz. Rozzie, come here! Man wants to talk to you!
The battle-axe waitress of them all materialized—a baby elephant in a thigh-length skirt. The boss said, “This guy’s a reporter. Wants to talk to you about Elizabeth Short. You remember her?”
Rozzie popped her gum at me. “I told the Globe and the Sentinel and the cops the first time around, and I ain’t changing my story. Betsy Short was a dish dropper and a dreamer, and if she didn’t bring in so much Harvard business, she wouldn’t a lasted a day. I heard she put out for the war effort, but I didn’t know none of her boyfriends. End of story. And you ain’t no reporter, you’re a cop.”
I said, “Thank you for that perceptive comment,” and left. My atlas placed Medford twelve miles away, a straight run out Massachusetts Avenue. I got there just as night was falling, smelling it first, then seeing it.