The Big Nowhere Read online

  Danny said, “A homicide is a homicide, sir.”

  Dietrich said, “You’re smarter than that, Deputy.”

  Danny said, “Yes, sir,” hung up, and rolled.

  * * *

  The day had turned cool and cloudy. Danny played the radio on the ride to Allegro; the weatherman was predicting more rain, maybe flooding in the canyons—and there was no news of the horrific John Doe. Passing the building site, he saw kids playing touch football in the mud and rubberneckers pointing out the scene of last night’s spectacle—an SID prowl of the lot would now yield zero.

  The print wagon and abandoned Buick were up at the end of the block. Danny noticed that the sedan was perfectly parked, aligned with the curb six inches or so out, the tires pointed inward to prevent the vehicle from sliding downhill. A psych lead: the killer had just brutally snuffed his victim and transported the body from fuck knows where, yet he still had the calm to coolly dispose of his car—by the dump scene—which meant that there were probably no witnesses to the snatch.

  Danny hooked his Chevy around the print car and parked, catching sight of the tech’s legs dangling out the driver’s side of the Buick. Walking over, he heard the voice the legs belonged to: “Glove prints on the wheel and dashboard, Deputy. Fresh caked blood on the back seat and some white sticky stuff on the side headliner.”

  Danny looked in, saw an old plainclothesman dusting the glove compartment and a thin patch of dried blood dotted with white terrycloth on the rear seat cushion. The seat rests immediately behind the driver were matted with crisscross strips of blood—the terrycloth imbedded deeper into the caking. The velveteen sideboard by the window was streaked with the gelatinous substance he’d tagged at the morgue. Danny sniffed the goo, got the same mint/medicinal scent, clenched and unclenched his fists as he ran a spot reconstruction:

  The killer drove his victim to the building site like a chauffeur, the stiff propped up in his white terry robe, eyeless head lolling against the sideboard, oozing the salve or ointment. The criss-cross strips on the seat rests were the razorlike cuts on his back soaking through; the blood patch on the cushion was the corpse flopping over sideways when the killer made a sharp right turn.

  “Hey! Deputy!”

  The print man was sitting up, obviously pissed that he was taking liberties. “Look, I have to dust the back now. Do you mind…”

  Danny looked at the rear-view mirror, saw that it was set strangely and got in behind the wheel. Another reconstruction: the mirror held a perfect view of the back seat, blood strips and goo-streaked sideboard. The killer had adjusted it in order to steal glances at his victim as he drove.

  “What’s your name, son?”

  Now the old tech was really ticked. Danny said, “It’s Deputy Upshaw, and don’t bother with the back seat—this guy’s too smart.”

  “Do you feel like telling me how you know that?”

  The two-way in the print wagon crackled; the old-timer got out of the Buick, shaking his head. Danny memorized the registration card laminated to the steering column: Nestor J. Albanese, 1236 S. St. Andrews, LA, Dunkirk-4619. He thought of Albanese as the killer—a phony car theft reported—and nixed the idea as far-fetched; he thought of the rage it took to butcher the victim, the ice it took to drive him around LA in New Year’s Eve traffic. Why?

  The tech called out, “For you, Upshaw.”

  Danny walked over to the print car and grabbed the mike. “Yeah?”

  A female voice, static-filtered, answered. “Karen, Danny.”

  Karen Hiltscher, the clerk/dispatcher at the station; his errand girl—occasional sweet talk for her favors. She hadn’t figured out that he wasn’t interested and persisted in using first names over the County air. Danny pushed the talk button. “Yeah, Karen.”

  “There’s an ID on your 187. Martin Mitchell Goines, male Caucasian, DOB 11/9/16. Two convictions for marijuana possession, two years County for the first, three to five State for the other. Paroled from San Quentin after three and a half, August of ’48. His last known address was a halfway house on 8th and Alvarado. He was a State parole absconder, bench warrant issued. Under employment he’s listed as a musician, registered with Union Local 3126 in Hollywood.”

  Danny thought of the Buick stolen outside a darktown jazz club. “Have you got mugs?”

  “Just came in.”

  He put on his sugar voice. “Help me with paperwork, sweet? Some phone calls?”

  Karen’s voice came out whiny and catty—even over the static. “Sure, Danny. You’ll pick up the mugshots?”

  “Twenty minutes.” Danny looked around and saw that the print tech was back at work. He added, “You’re a doll,” hoping the girl bought it.

  * * *

  Danny called Nestor J. Albanese from a pay phone on Allegro and Sunset. The man had the raspy voice and skewed speech of a hangover sufferer; he told a booze-addled version of his New Year’s Eve doings, going through it three times before Danny got the chronology straight.

  He was club-hopping in darktown from 9:00 or so on, the bop joints around Slauson and Central—the Zombie, Bido Lito’s, Tommy Tucker’s Playroom, Malloy’s Nest. Leaving the Nest around 1:00 A.M., he walked over to where he thought he left his Buick. It wasn’t there, so he retraced his steps, drunk, figuring he’d ditched the car on a side street. The rain was drenching him, he was woozy from mai tais and champagne, he took a cab home and woke up—still smashed—at 8:30. He took another cab back to South Central, searched for the Buick for a solid hour, didn’t find it and called the police to report it stolen. He then hailed another taxi and returned home again, to be contacted by the watch sergeant at the West Hollywood substation, who told him his pride and joy was a likely transport vehicle in a homicide case, and now, at 3:45 P.M. New Year’s Day, he wanted his baby back—and that was that.

  Danny 99 percent eliminated Albanese as a suspect—the man came off as legit stupid, professed to have no criminal record and seemed sincere when he denied knowing Martin Mitchell Goines. He told him the Buick would be kicked loose from the County Impound inside three days, hung up and drove to the Station for mugshots and favors.

  Karen Hiltscher was out on her dinner break; Danny was grateful she wasn’t around to make goo-goo eyes and poke his biceps, copping feels while the watch sergeant chuckled. She’d left the mugshot strip on her desk. Alive and with eyes, Martin Mitchell Goines looked young and tough—a huge, Butch-Waxed pompadour the main feature of his front, right and left side pics. The shots were from his second reefer roust: LAPD 4/16/44 on a mugboard hanging around his neck. Six years back; three and a half of them spent in Big Q. Goines had aged badly—and had died looking older than thirty-three.

  Danny left Karen Hiltscher a memo: “Sweetheart - will you do this for me? 1 - Call Yellow, Beacon and the indy cab cos. Ask about pickups of single males on Sunset between Doheny and La Cienega and side sts. between 3:00 to 4:00 a.m. last nite. Ditto pickups of a drunk man, Central and Slauson to 1200 block S. St. Andrews, 12:30 - 1:30 a.m. Get all log entries for pick-ups those times and locations. 2 - Stay friendly, ok? I’m sorry about that lunch date I cancelled. I had to cram for a test. Thanks - D.U.”

  The lie made Danny angry at the girl, the LASD and himself for kowtowing to teenaged passion. He thought of calling the 77th Street Station desk to tell them he was going to be operating in City territory, then kiboshed the idea—it was too much like bowing to the LAPD and their pout over the Sheriff’s harboring Mickey Cohen. He held the thought, the contempt. A killerhoodlum who longed to be a nightclub comic and got weepy over lost dogs and crippled kids brought a big-city police department to its knees with a wire recording: Vice cops taking bribes and chauffeuring prostitutes; the Hollywood Division nightwatch screwing Brenda Allen’s whores on mattresses in the Hollywood Station felony tank. Mickey C. putting out his entire smear arsenal because the City high brass upped his loan shark and bookmaking kickbacks 10 percent. Ugly. Stupid. Greedy. Wrong.

  Danny let the litany simmer
on his way down to darktown—Sunset east to Figueroa, Figueroa to Slauson, Slauson east to Central—a hypothetical route for the car thief/killer. Dusk started coming on, rain clouds eclipsing late sunshine trying to light up Negro slums: ramshackle houses encircled by chicken wire, pool halls, liquor stores and storefront churches on every street—until jazzland took over. Then loony swank amidst squalor, one long block of it.

  Bido Lito’s was shaped like a miniature Taj Mahal, only purple; Malloy’s Nest was a bamboo hut fronted by phony Hawaiian palms strung with Christmas-tree lights. Zebra stripes comprised the paint job on Tommy Tucker’s Playroom—an obvious converted warehouse with plaster saxophones, trumpets and music clefs alternating across the edge of the roof. The Zamboanga, Royal Flush and Katydid Klub were bright pink, more purple and puke green, a hangarlike building subdivided, the respective doorways outlined in neon. And Club Zombie was a Moorish mosque featuring a three-story-tall sleepwalker growing out of the facade: a gigantic darky with glowing red eyes high-stepping into the night.

  Jumbo parking lots linked the clubs; big Negro bouncers stood beside doorways and signs announcing “Early Bird” chicken dinners. A scant number of cars was stationed in the lots; Danny left his Chevy on a side street and started bracing the muscle.

  The doormen at the Zamboanga and Katydid recalled seeing Martin Mitchell Goines “around”; a man setting up a menu board outside the Royal Flush took the ID a step further: Goines was a second-rate utility trombone, usually hired for fill-in duty. Since “Christmas or so” he’d been playing with the house band at Bido Lito’s. Danny read every suspicious black face he spoke to for signs of holding back; all he got was a sense that these guys thought Marty Goines was a lily-white fool.

  Danny hit Bido Lito’s. A sign in front proclaimed DICKY MCCOVER AND HIS JAZZ SULTANS—SHOWS AT 7:30, 9:30 AND 11:30 NITELY—ENJOY OUR DELUXE CHICKEN BASKET. Walking in, he thought he was entering a hallucination.

  The walls were pastel satin bathed by colored baby spotlights that hued the fabric garish beyond garish; the bandstand backing was a re-creation of the Pyramids, done in sparkly cardboard. The tables had fluorescent borders, the high-yellow hostesses carrying drinks and food wore low-cut tiger costumes, the whole place smelled of deep-fried meat. Danny felt his stomach growl, realized he hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours and approached the bar. Even in the hallucinatory lighting, he saw the barman make him for a cop.

  He held out the mugshot strip. “Do you know this man?”

  The bartender took the strip, examined it under the cash register light and handed it back. “That’s Marty. Plays ’bone with the Sultans. Comes in before the first set to eat, if you wants to talk to him.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Las’ night.”

  “For the band’s last set?”

  The barman’s mouth curled into a tight smile; Danny sensed that “band” was square nomenclature. “I asked you a question.”

  The man wiped the bartop with a rag. “I don’ think so. Midnight set I remember seein’ him. Sultans played two late ones las’ night, on account of New Year’s.”

  Danny noticed a shelf of whiskey bottles without labels. “Go get the manager.”

  The bartender pressed a button by the register; Danny took a stool and swiveled to face the bandstand. A group of Negro men was opening instrument cases, pulling out sax, trumpet and drum cymbals. A fat mulatto in a double-breasted suit walked over to the bar, wearing a suck-up-to-authority smile. He said, “Thought I knew all the boys on the Squad.”

  Danny said, “I’m with the Sheriff’s.”

  The mulatto’s smile evaporated. “I usually deal with the Seven-Seven, Mr. Sheriff.”

  “This is County business.”

  “This ain’t County territory.”

  Danny hooked a thumb in back of him, then nodded toward the baby spots. “You’ve got illegal booze, those lights are a fire hazard and the County runs Beverage Control and Health and Safety Code. I’ve got a summons book in the car. Want me to get it?”

  The smile returned. “I surely don’t. How can I be of service, sir?”

  “Tell me about Marty Goines.”

  “What about him?”

  “Try everything.”

  The manager took his time lighting a cigarette; Danny knew his fuse was being tested. Finally the man exhaled and said, “Not much to tell. The local sent him down when the Sultans’ regular trombone fell off the wagon. I’d have preferred colored, but Marty’s got a rep for getting along with non-Caucasians, so I said okay. Except for ditching out on the guys last night, Marty never did me no dirt, just did his job copacetic. Not the world’s best slideman, not the worst neither.”

  Danny pointed to the musicians on the bandstand. “Those guys are the Sultans, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Goines played a set with them that ended just after midnight?”

  The mulatto smiled. “Dicky McCover’s up-tempo ‘Old Lang Syne.’ Even Bird envies that—”

  “When was the set finished?”

  “Set broke up maybe 12:20. Fifteen-minute break I give my guys. Like I said, Marty ditched out on that and the 2:00 closer. Only time he did me dirt.”

  Danny went in for the Sultans’ alibi. “Were the other three men on stage for the final two sets?”

  The manager nodded. “Uh-huh. Played for a private party I had going after that. What’d Marty do?”

  “He got murdered.”

  The mulatto choked on the smoke he was inhaling. He coughed the drag out, dropped his cigarette on the floor and stepped on it, rasping, “Who you think did it?”

  Danny said, “Not you, not the Sultans. Let’s try this one: was Goines feeding a habit?”

  “Say what?”

  “Don’t play dumb. Junk, H, horse, a fucking heroin habit.”

  The manager took a step backward. “I don’t hire no god-damned hopheads.”

  “Sure you don’t, just like you don’t serve hijack booze. Let’s try this: Marty and women.”

  “Never heard nothing one way or the other.”

  “How about enemies? Guys with a hard-on for him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What about friends, known associates, men coming around asking for him?”

  “No, no and no. Marty didn’t even have no family.”

  Danny shifted gears with a smile—an interrogation technique he practiced in front of his bedroom mirror. “Look, I’m sorry I came on so strong.”

  “No, you ain’t.”

  Danny flushed, hoping the crazy lighting didn’t pick it up. “Have you got a man watching the parking lot?”

  “No.”

  “Do you remember a green Buick in the lot last night?”

  “No.”

  “Do your kitchen workers hang out in the lot?”

  “Man, my kitchen people is too busy to hang out anyplace.”

  “What about your hostesses? They sell it outside after you close?”

  “Man, you are out of your bailiwick and way out of line.”

  Danny elbowed the mulatto aside and threaded his way through the dinner crowd to the bandstand. The Sultans saw him coming and exchanged looks: cop-wise, experienced. The drummer quit arranging his gear; the trumpeter backed off and stood by the curtains leading backstage; the saxophone man stopped adjusting his mouthpiece and stood his ground.

  Danny stepped onto the platform, blinking against the hot white light shining down. He sized up the sax as the boss and decided on a soft tack—his interrogation was playing to a full house. “Sheriff’s. It’s about Marty Goines.”

  The drummer answered him. “Marty’s clean. Just took the cure.”

  A lead—if it wasn’t one ex-con running interference for another. “I didn’t know he had a habit.”

  The sax player snorted. “Years’ worth, but he kicked.”

  “Where?”

  “Lex. Lexington State Hospital in Kentucky. This about Marty’s parole?”

/>   Danny stepped back so he could eyeball all three men in one shot. “Marty got snuffed last night. I think he was snatched from around here right after your midnight set.”

  Three clean reactions: the trumpeter scared, most likely afraid of cops on general principles; the drummer trembling; the sax man spooked, but coming back mad. “We all gots alibis, ’case you don’t already know.”

  Danny thought: RIP Martin Mitchell Goines. “I know, so let’s try the usual drill. Did Marty have any enemies that you know of? Woman trouble? Old dope buddies hanging around?”

  The sax said, “Marty was a fuckin’ cipher. All I knew about him was that he hung up his Quentin parole, that he was so hot to kick he went to Lex as a fuckin’ absconder. Big balls if you asks me—that’s a Fed hospital, and they mighta run warrant checks on him. Fuckin’ cipher. None of us even knew where he was stayin’.”

  Danny kicked the skinny around and watched the trumpet player inch over from the curtains, holding his horn like it was a ikon to ward off demons. He said, “Mister, I think I got something for you.”

  “What?”

  “Marty told me he had to meet a guy after the midnight set, and I saw him walking across the street to the Zombie parking lot.”

  “Did he mention a name?”

  “No, just a guy.”

  “Did he say anything else about him? What they were going to do—anything like that?”

  “No, and he said he’d be coming right back.”

  “Do you think he was going to buy dope?”

  The saxophone player bored into Danny with blue eyes lighter than his own brown ones. “Man, I fuckin’ told you Marty was clean, and intended to stay clean.”

  Boos erupted from the audience; paper debris hit Danny’s legs. He blinked against the spotlight and felt sweat creeping down his rib cage. A voice yelled, “Ofay motherfuck”; applause followed it; a half-chewed chicken wing struck Danny’s back. The sax man smiled up at him, licked his mouthpiece and winked. Danny resisted an urge to kick the horn down his throat and quick-walked out of the club by a side exit.

  The night air cooled his sweat and made him shiver; pulsating neon assaulted his eyes. Little bursts of music melded together like one big noise and the nigger sleepwalker atop the Club Zombie looked like doomsday. Danny knew he was scared, and headed straight for the apparition.