James Gabriel - Jake Thorne 01 - Dead is Dead, page 1
part #1 of Jake Thorne Series
Dead Is Dead
by
James Gabriel
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 James Gabriel
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Dead Is Dead
Chapter One
Two A.M. and I’m in a hurry out Sunset. A Santa Ana’s making the palm fronds rattle like old bones, and I’ve got the top down on the Caddy trying not to sweat on a silk dress shirt cost me forty bucks. Not much traffic this time of night, so I keep the big car in second and the pedal to the floor. When I hang a right through the knockoff Greek temples that flank the entrance to Bel Air, the tires squeal like lost souls.
I’m hustling because of something came over my police radio. I’ve got one tucked up under the dash real neat, just a knob sticking down for the volume. I keep it turned up when I’m driving around. Beats hell out of Lux Radio Theater, plus you never know when a big name from the Studio will pop up amongst the rapists and prowlers and naked drunks. Like the call I heard an hour ago. I was headed home from Ciro’s, feeling sleepy and a little drunk. The police dispatcher was barking numbers and addresses. If you know how to listen, the numbers add up to sad tales of faceless people screaming or bleeding or dying or dead. I’ve heard those stories before and know how they end, so I was trying not to nod off.
“Ten fifty-four D at 10034 Summit Ridge, code red” said the dispatcher, the static giving the words a sandpaper rasp. That jolts me awake. I pull the Caddy into a quick U-turn, skidding across the street car tracks in front of a Oldsmobile, whose driver scowls and leans on his horn... I’d spotted a phone booth at a Texaco, but while I’m parking a wino beat me to it. A couple slaps on the glass with the flat of my hand got him moving, brushing by me and doing a fast slink around the corner.
Soon as I push my nickel into the slot, I figured out why he was moving so fast. There’s a pool of piss on the floor, the color of muscatel. All the great outdoors to piss in, and this guy pees in here. Lot of glamour in Hollywood if you know where to find it.
You don’t call Lou Carnesi direct. Even me. You have to go through his service, so after a few clicks on the line I’m talking to the night girl, who knows my voice pretty well. I give her the number of the booth, hang up and step outside away from the smell. Sometimes, Lou calls right back and sometimes he doesn’t, but since it’s me calling in the wee hours, I figure he will, and he does.
It isn’t more than a minute.
“What is it, Jake?” There’s no mistaking that velvet baritone. Lou’s the studio shyster - the main one, the shyster in chief. His law degree is strictly night school, but you’d never know it now. As a youngster, he broke knees for the bosses on the Jersey docks. But honest work bored him.
I tell him what I heard on the police radio. I’m on my way, I tell him.
“I thought we’d agreed not to get that joker off the hook again,” says Lou. The joker he’s talking about is Clifford Langston, a big-shot director, or used to be. Langston’s the guy lives on Summit Ridge. The place is famous in certain circles, which is why after a few dozen payoffs, L.B. Mayer has had enough. He told me so himself. It was in his office. We’d been talking about the problem boys, and I’d asked what to do about a public indecency beef involving Langston in the locker room of the downtown Y. Mayer hadn’t answered right away. He’d tented his fingers, thinking about it. Then he’d slapped his hands flat on the desk: “Don’t lift a hand for the son of a bitch.” Which normally would be good enough for me, except tonight it’s not the usual lewd conduct beef, and that’s more or less what I tell Lou.
For a second or two all I can hear is heavy breathing. Lou’s the kind of guy waits until he gets his temper under control before he says anything. I’m patient since I can appreciate the problem. Langston’s a hophead with short eyes. As he’s gotten older, the boys have gotten younger which maybe could be tolerated, but the work has gone to hell, too. So naturally Mayer’s been trying to cut him loose. But there’s a contract, so it ain’t easy, and while all this is being worked out, Langston’s still one of the family. Any dirt about him is bound to spread. We make family pictures, the kind where grownups kiss without moving their lips, and the dog’s always smarter than the kid. So L.B. likes to keep the image clean. Besides which he’s a genuine prude, is L.B. Mayer—at least when it comes to other people.
The upshot is that we don’t want to help this Langston guy but maybe we got to.
Finally Lou’s voice came back over the wire. The tone’s the same, not mad or anything. There’s maybe an edge that wasn’t there before, but you’d have to know Lou real well to hear it.
“All right, Jake. Mr. Mayer won’t like it, but I suppose there’s no choice. Go up there and take care of it.”
I asked him how I’m supposed to take care of it.
“You’ll find a way. That’s what we pay you for. Just keep it out of the papers,” he says, as if that’s going to be easy. “How long will it take to get there?” I tell him 10 minutes. “Better get going,” he says. He hangs up without saying goodbye. I’m used to that, so I jump back in the car and jack it into gear. But first, I wiped the wino’s piss off my shoes on a little patch of grass.
I like Bel Air. No streetlights for one thing, so you can see the stars—the real ones—which you can’t any more down on the flats. And I like the way the Caddy’s twin pipes bounce a hushed throb off the walls that separate the rich from you and me. The air here is clean after the hot muck downtown, and I breathe deep, taking some satisfaction in the setup. If Langston’s in a jam, he had it coming. Plus I got a little history with the guy. I’ll get him off whatever hook he’s on, but I won’t mind watching him wriggle a little first.
The big house is built on a slope hidden from the street by a high wall that steps down the hill like a staircase. The wall is real stone to impress the neighbors, with jagged glass embedded on top to discourage the curious, and right now those shards are glinting red and diamond white in the light of a half-dozen police cars. I park the Caddy a little up the hill and walk down and through an iron gate. From here, a circular drive leads up to the house. I can see flashlight beams darting here and there in the shrubbery. A portly cop, all jack boots and Sam Brown belt, moves into my way and pushes a beam in my face. “Hey, bud, where you think you’re going?” he says, real unfriendly. Then he sees it’s me. “Oh, sorry, Jake,” he says. “Didn’t recognize you.” He’s embarrassed, which is only right. After all, this is a company town, and I’m the man from the company.
A black Chevy panel truck is idling with lights off and back doors swung open. The morgue mobile. I walk a little faster.
The house is a half-timbered monstrosity looming over a cobbled courtyard, a knock-off English country house designed, I happen to know, by a coked-up set dresser Langston was diddling at the time. The hot wind swirls around, blowing dead leafs in frantic circles and bringing a jungle smell off the greenery. A short guy in a turd-brown suit stands by the front door, bouncing a little on his toes, hands moving in his pockets. He’s chewing gum so loud you can hear it twenty feet away. He’s an old-time detective called Archie Tucker, and I’ve got him on the pad for a couple bills a month, which is just a little more than the city pays him. Tucker carries marbles in his pocket—big ones, boulders we called them when I was kid. He likes to fool with them when he’s nervous. He’s working those boulders now, clicking away in his pants like he’s got glass balls.
“Hey, Jake. Didn’t think you’d be coming. Word on the street’s that you guys are down on Langston.”
“What’s going on?”
“You’re not going to believe it,” he says. LA cops get used to everything, but Tucker looks a little twitchy.
“You OK?” I ask him.
“Sure. Nothing wrong with me.” He doesn’t look me in the eye. But then he never does.
“So come on, what you got?”
“It’s over on the side of the house there,” he says and leads me around to a side garden where a gaggle of cops are milling around a corpse. Some of those portable klieg lights have been wheeled in, and the scene dazzles like a movie set. The star of the show is lying on her side, her thumb bent up toward her half-open mouth as if she’d fallen asleep sucking it, wearing what’s left of a green silk dress torn out the back and trailing off to one side like a cape. Through the tear in the dress you can see white silk panties with lace around the edges. She would look peaceful, except her head’s bent off at an angle you don’t see outside the circus or the morgue. Still, you can tell she was pretty, even with her skin made dead white in the kabuki glare of the lamps, even with her dead eyes wide open and staring back in the direction the killer must have come. I don’t look longer than I have to.
“You got the guy that did it?” I ask Tucker.
“No. But we got a hundred guys inside swearing they didn’t.”
There’s a geezer down on one knee over the body. Dr. John Doogin is deputy medical examiner and has been as long as I can remember. The boys at th
“That’s what everybody’s been saying. I’m beginning to feel unwelcome.”
“Unwelcome? Must be your delicate feelings, my boy. Too sensitive, that’s your problem.”
“Speaking of which, what are you doing here, Doc? I didn’t think you made house calls anymore.” Doogin’s mostly administration these days, signing certificates and giving talks at the Rotary.
“Orders,” he says. “Like you, Jake.” As he says it, he probes with the tweezers under a fingernail until he gets a grip on a piece of something. He holds whatever it is up to the light and peers at it. Then he heaves himself to his feet, nodding.
“What’s that?” I ask him. He’s concentrating on sticking the piece of something into a test tube.
“Skin. A little piece of skin,” he says. “She had beautiful nails, you know. Newly sharpened, by the looks of them. She used them, too. Took some hide off the guy before she died. Not that it did her much good.”
“So what do you figure?” I ask him.
“I don’t figure, Jake. Cause of death, that’s my racket. And time, of course, which in this case is a couple hours ago. All scientific. When it comes to figuring, you’ll have to consult our good friend Archie here.”
Tucker jumps a little when he hears his name. Something sure as hell’s got him spooked. He bounces a fast glance off the body. “What’s to figure?” he says. “Somebody chased her down. Caught her by the back of that dress where it’s ripped out there. Probably wanted to rape her, but she put up a pretty good fight. At least, kept her panties on by the looks of it. But the guy got pissed, or maybe he panics, who knows?”
“Broke her beautiful neck for her,” Doogin says.
“Have to be pretty strong to do that,” I say. “Or pretty mad.”
“Alas, some of our fellow creatures are mad, Jake,” says Doogin. “From the factory, as it were. Who should know that better than you, eh?”
“How old?”
“The girl?”
“Sure the girl. How old?”
“Oh, not old. Probably not legal, if that’s what you’re driving at.”
Tucker pipes up again. “She was just a party girl, Jake.” He’s getting on my nerves.
“Anyone ID her yet?” I ask Tucker.
Tucker looks confused. “I don’t know,” he says, staring off into the trees.
“You don’t know?”
“I been outside here. Gimme a break. Anyway, like I say, she was just a chippy. Somebody got over-excited. Open and shut. Easy job for both of us, right?”
Sure, that’s right. Easy job. Just another chippy. The hills around here are full of them. You don’t even need a license. If she was legal, or close enough, the police won’t be too interested, and the payoffs will be petty cash. And normally I’d let it go at that. So why am I rattled? Maybe it’s the eyes. The side of her face is mottled blue-black from a bruise that runs up from her neck. Her painted mouth is slack. But there’s something about the eyes that gives you the feeling they’re not as dead as the rest of her. Like maybe the windows of her soul are not quite shut. Not yet. “Can’t someone cover her up, for chrissakes?” I hear myself saying.
Doogin gives me a look, but he motions and a couple of cops drape a sheet on the body. Now it’s just a lump under a shroud, but my eyes avoid it. I want to get out of here.
“I’ll be in touch, Doc,” I say to Doogin. I start back toward the front of the house, Tucker trailing behind.
“Jake’s on the job,” I hear Doogin say behind me. “Justice is sure to be done.”
Chapter Two
As we walk back around front, Tucker tells me the call came in about midnight. “Some guy. The sergeant who took the call said the voice sounded educated, if that means anything. Anyway, this guys says we got to get out here. Somebody’s dead. He gives the address and hangs up. When the black and white showed, people were scattering in every direction.”
“Who?”
“Men mostly, some women, a few boys, some undecided.” Tucker barks a laugh. “Like my wife says: there’s somebody in this world for everybody.” His right hand is worrying those marbles, clickity-click. “Rounded them all up. Fished some out of the bushes. Lot of faces you’d recognize, Jake, but nobody you have to worry about. Just has-beens, most of them. Oh, and ten or so of the best-looking young babes you ever saw. Hostesses, dressed to the nines. The dead broad was one of them. We put ‘em all in the ballroom. Hey, that’s rich, don’t you think? The guy’s got a room just for ballin’. Me and the wife, we gotta use the bedroom, or maybe the kitchen table,” and he chuckles at his own joke. When I don’t react, he darts a look my way.
“None of this is my idea,” he says.
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” he says. “Nothing. Who the hell knows?” Then he finally looks me in the eye. “Only do me a favor, Jake. Don’t make it complicated.” I stare at him for a few seconds, but he clams up and walks off. So I follow.
We’re at the front door, one of those two-story wooden numbers under a peaked iron archway. A pair of stone gargoyles snarl down at us, ragged-toothed jaws hanging over the storm drain. I’m thinking that things are a little out of focus here. Tucker may be stupid, but he’s usually reliable. Not tonight. So I make sure we get one thing straight before we go in. “I want to get Langston out of here,” I tell him. It’s the usual thing: get the big shot out of the way, sober him up, wheel in the lawyers. Tucker knows the drill as well as I do, but tonight he’s squirmin’ around.
“I don’t know, Jake,” he says.
“Whadda you mean you don’t know? You damn well better know.”
“Heat’s on, Jake. I can’t help you as much as I want.”
“Things are tough all over. Just make sure we get Langston the hell out of here.”
I wait for an answer, but Tucker is busy pushing through the door. It opens with a rush of money’d air, and we’re in an entry hall out of King Arthur, complete with flags, coats of arms, and a checkerboard floor of black and white stone. Our heels click across toward an archway on the long wall to the left. Inside is a wood-paneled library filled with the kind of books your decorator buys by the yard. Langston sits on a leather couch, hands braced on knees like a drunk trying to look sober. There’s a uniform with him, but Archie shoos the guy out.
I know Langston from the old days when he was making two-reelers for this fly-by-night outfit in the Valley. He didn’t remember me when we met again, but I remembered him. He was a sharp blade once, but he’s weathered hard—hair dyed, nose pocked, skin the color of bacon rind. He’s gotten up in a maroon dressing gown with a pale yellow cravat bunched under his chin to hide the wattles. When we come in, he jumps up and scuttles over, rummy eyes fixed on me like I’m Jesus come to save him.
He grabs my forearm with fingers that are all bone. His pupils are the size of buffalo nickels. Close to, I see he’s wearing makeup.
“Thank God you’re here, Jake!” He sounds like he means it. I try to shake off those fingers, but he has a death grip on my arm.
“Let go, Cliff!” He looks down at his hand as if it’s jumped up there on its own.
“Don’t call me Cliff,” he says, straightening his back. He likes to be called Clifford. I’d have remembered that if I gave a damn. The hand drops to his side.
“What happened here?” I ask him.
“A girl’s dead. Outside.”
“What happened?” I say it slow this time.
“I never saw her before.”
This isn’t getting me anywhere, so I grab his shoulder and give him a shake. Not hard, but enough to snap his head.
He looks at me, startled. Then he giggles. “Thanks,” he says. “I needed that,” and he starts to laugh. It’s a high-pitched sound like a hopped-up hyena. That lasts maybe five seconds, and suddenly he’s sober, calm, smiling at me a little, trying for a little drunken dignity.
