The Ticket Out (28 page)

I shut my eyes a second. A
bathtub.
Jesus—

The tub was empty because the caretaker drained it before the cops came. Georgette's head was resting at the spigot end. Her left foot was resting on the ledge at the opposite end; her right leg was resting on her left. There was a small amount of blood on the bottom of the tub under Georgette's face. The lower part of her buttocks were bloodstained, and she had bruises on her: she'd fought for her life. She was wearing a pink pajama top and nothing else.

A coroner's man removed the body from the tub. He found a piece of cloth sticking out of her mouth. Her teeth were clamped around it. The cloth had thin red borders; it appeared to be torn or cut from a towel end. Deputies searched the apartment but couldn't find a matching towel or fragments of one.

Georgette's bedroom adjoined the bath. Her pink pajama pants were laying on the floor, ripped. The cops found a blood spot on the carpet near the bathroom door. The carpet around it was wet; someone had tried to remove the spot. There was no blood on the bathroom floor or the bed, and no signs of any struggle in the bedroom. They found Georgette's diary and address book. Her jewelry box hadn't been touched, but three items were missing from her purse: an amethyst ring, seventy-five dollars in cash, and her car keys. The Oldsmobile was gone from the basement garage.

How they knew about the ring and the cash, the file didn't say.

Detectives questioned Georgette's neighbors. Some had heard a scream; some hadn't. Someone heard, “Stop, you're killing me!” at 2:30
A.M.,
thought it was a marital spat, and went back to sleep. The detectives read Georgette's diary and address book, and talked to her girlfriends. They talked to all the hostesses who worked at the Hollywood Canteen on October 11; there were 120 of them, although no movie stars were named. They called in the U.S. Provost Marshall, and Naval and Army Intelligence, and tried to locate every serviceman who knew or corresponded with Georgette. There were dozens and dozens—but her closest friends were fliers.

They talked to the three servicemen she gave rides to on October 11. They checked out every hospital, canteen, and recreation center where she volunteered. They chased a Navy cook who was barred from the Hollywood Canteen for “abnormal sexual tendencies” and “heckling.”

The coroner's report came in. Georgette died between one and two in the morning. Cause of death: strangulation. The piece of cloth had been pushed down her esophagus until she choked. She'd also been raped.

The Oldsmobile turned up in a black neighborhood ten miles east of the crime scene. The keys were in the ignition, the tank was empty, the rear license plate had been removed. The cops modified their operating theory. They had wanted a white serviceman. Now they were looking at black men, too.

They canvassed the black neighborhood and came up with zero. They broadened the investigation. They checked out burglars, rapists, dishonorably discharged soldiers, sex offenders, and general black arrestees. They wrote to the FBI; the FBI ran crosschecks on the latent prints found in Georgette's apartment. They got fingerprint cards, mug shots, and rap sheets from police departments all over the country. Deserters, drifters, and car thieves were grilled and eliminated. They checked out two female bathtub deaths in New Orleans and New York. A man in San Francisco confessed to the killing. They took a train up there to find out he didn't do it. He'd blown his inheritance money in Reno and just wanted the gas chamber.

Every man in Sheriff's Homicide worked the case. They checked out all the silly tips; everyone knew someone who hadn't come home the night of October 11. Women squealed on their exhusbands out of spite. One letter accused a Beverly Hills gardener because “he had big hands and liked to look at white girls.”

They found the soldier who made Georgette dance a jitterbug—and eliminated him. But they never identified one guy, a wounded soldier who claimed to be in love with Georgette. Georgette had told her friends that she was afraid of him. She'd called him psychopathic.

They finally identified the cloth that asphyxiated her. It was a Tetra Brand elastic bandage, ten inches wide, European made, and obsolete. A Chicago company imported the bandage. They'd only sold five ten-inch rolls in '42 and '43—but they were still used in foreign hospitals. Maybe a soldier had brought it home: the possibilities were too numerous to follow up.

Georgette's father, stepmother, and sister came back to L.A. after Christmas. Detectives walked them through the apartment and fingerprinted them for elimination purposes.

Private Joseph Allen wrote to the cops in February 1945. His letter was the last item in the file. He said he was Georgette's former fiance and wanted to know what progress they had made on her case. He'd misspelled Bauerdorf.

I closed the folder and squared it with the edge of the tablecloth. Gadtke had pushed back from the table; he looked flushed and sweaty. McManus was finishing a piece of pie.

I tapped the file. “Where's Jules Silverman?”

Gadtke giggled. I said, “I heard Silverman was a major suspect, but his name's not in here.”

McManus put his fork down and looked away from me.

I said, “Lockwood.”

Gadtke swirled the ice in his whiskey. I said, “Lockwood had you pull the part about Silverman. You discussed it on the telephone.”

McManus looked at Gadtke. Gadtke shrugged: “Your call, partner.”

McManus cleared his throat. “This has to be off the record.”

I said, “Forever?”

McManus reached for the file. “Or until Detective Lockwood says otherwise.”

I nodded.

McManus flipped pages. He found a summary report dated November 1, 1944, and pointed to a paragraph at the end.

I'd skimmed right over it. It said that the unit had one major suspect but the information pertaining to him was highly confidential and couldn't be disclosed at that time. The report was written exclusively for the eyes of Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz.

I said, “Is that Silverman? They talked to so many people—there's a million names mentioned.”

Gadtke nodded his head. “Needle in a haystack. Your worst fucking nightmare.”

McManus said, “Jules Silverman was a pilot for the Navy and frequented the Hollywood Canteen during a leave in October of '44. Several hostesses placed him there on the night of the eleventh. He was also seen in the parking lot after 11:20
P.M.,
talking to the victim. The chief hostess had to caution him and Miss Bauerdorf because the girls weren't allowed to make dates with servicemen or see them off-premises.”

I said, “A deranged sexual atmosphere.”

McManus nodded. Gadtke giggled and nodded; he was pretty plastered. I said, “What's confidential about a nobody Navy pilot?”

Gadtke kicked his seat further back. “Silverman had powerful friends even then.”

McManus said, “That's our assumption. When Miss Stenholm came around asking about the case, we reviewed the file. We were familiar with the Abadi case, and when we read that a Jules Silverman—”

Gadtke said, “Shitbird.”

McManus said, “—was a major suspect on Bauerdorf, we paid special attention. We guessed that Miss Stenholm had learned of Silverman's involvement from some other source. We almost let her see the Silverman material, to see if she'd shake the Abadi tree for us, but we decided it was too risky. From what you told Detective Lockwood, she went after Silverman anyway.”

I said, “Maybe.”

Gadtke said, “He shipped out of Long Beach on a Navy transport at six in the morning on the twelfth. Our guys had a hell of a time tracking him down in the middle of the Pacific. The first time he was interviewed, he couldn't account for his whereabouts between midnight and four the night of the murder. Then the file hems and haws, and there's that shit about confidentiality.”

McManus said, “At the third interview, Silverman suddenly produced an alibi. He claimed he attended an orgy in Culver City with executives from the movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He worked there before the war—and
orgy
was his word, not ours.”

I had a premonition. “Where in Culver City was the orgy?”

McManus said, “You know the place yourself, the Casa de Amor. Back then it was a high-rent private whorehouse.”

I whispered, “Wow.”

Gadtke said, “Something went down. The studio put the screws on—Biscailuz handled Silverman through unofficial channels, told the Homicide guys to lay off, something.”

I said, “It could be Silverman was covering for some married men, not that his alibi was phony.”

McManus nodded. “That was our first thought.”

Gadtke smiled. “But remember the loose lightbulb?”

I remembered. The night after the murder, the caretaker noticed that Georgette's porch light was off. He tested it, saw the bulb was loose, and told the detectives. They'd assumed that Georgette opened her door voluntarily, since there were no signs of forced entry. Now they knew: the killer probably jumped out of the dark and surprised her.

I said, “The bulb went in for fingerprinting, but I didn't see the results.”

McManus said, “The lab identified one latent. It matched Jules Silverman's left thumb.”

I whistled. “How did Silverman explain it?”

Gadtke banged the table; an empty glass tipped over. “He didn't explain it! Or if he did, nobody filed a report of his explanation, and the investigating officers are dead!”

McManus said, “Silverman claimed he'd never been to Miss Bauerdorf's residence. But Nance Carter said he showed up twice in early October and Miss Bauerdorf had trouble keeping him out.”

Gadtke leaned toward me. “You know the motto of Sheriff's Homicide?”

I said, “‘It isn't as hard as it looks'?”

Gadtke guffawed. McManus said, “‘Our day begins when yours ends.'”

Gadtke banged the table again. “Fucking right! And the day has just begun for Mr. Jules Silverman!”

I put my head down on the Bauerdorf file. She was mine now, too.

T
HE NEIGHBORHOOD
of Whitley Heights sat back in the hills west of Los Feliz. Like Los Feliz, it was a former movie-star enclave intact from the silent era. Whitley Terrace was a dark street that stopped and started, turned corners, stopped and started again. I found 3617 after a long trip to the wrong end. I expected the house to be a fake Italian villa, the kind that made the neighborhood famous. It wasn't. It was a big, straggling ranch stuck on a hillside planted with cactus instead of ivy or grass.

Luxury sedans lined the street below it. I parked in a red zone and rechecked the name on Arnold Tolback's note. “Lynnda-Ellen.” I remembered his message to her: You can all kiss my ass.

I stuck the note back in my pocket. I was still buzzing from Georgette Bauerdorf. I would've been happy to punt this errand, stay at the restaurant, and go through the file again. But McManus decided that his partner was drunk enough. He'd packed Gadtke out after coffee and taken the file with him.

That didn't stop me from thinking about it.

The bathtub.

Georgette died in one; Greta died in one. Edward Abadi didn't, but his killer tried to disguise the murder as suicide, and Greta's killer tried the same thing. The methods might not connect Bauerdorf to Abadi to Stenholm. But one name did: Jules Silverman.

Days ago I'd wondered about a third possible motive for Greta's death. Blackmail seemed iffy; romantic revenge looked better but not ironclad. What if the real motive was Georgette Bauerdorf? What if Georgette was the reason
behind
the reason?

What if the Sheriff's never got near the motive in Abadi's death. What if the Abadi motive and the Stenholm motive were the same. What if Edward Abadi stumbled onto Jules Silverman's old secret. What if Hannah Silverman shot her fiance to protect her father. What if Jules Silverman shot him—with jilted Hannah standing by to deflect suspicion. What if, one year later, Jules arranged Greta's death to protect his secret again.

I bounced
what ifs
around while I watched Lynnda-Ellen's house.

A party was in progress. The front drapes were open and I had an excellent view. The living room was full of guys standing around in pairs and groups. They wore dark suits with dark shirts and I put the average age at thirty-five. Adding that to the luxury sedans, I figured it had to be an Industry crowd—

The stink of cologne.

It blew in the car window. I turned my head: Hawaiian shirt. Purple palm trees on an orange cotton—

The car door flew open. Dale Denney grabbed my collar and jerked hard.

I reacted fast. I braced my feet and hooked one arm through the steering wheel. Denney started to drag me out. I grabbed my bag; I found the brass knuckles. I slid my right hand into them and roundhoused a shot. It caught Denney low. He wheezed and doubled over.

He dragged me with him. I thrashed and swung wild. I caught his nose flush. It split the tip in two.

Denney screamed. Blood sprayed out on the doorsill and asphalt. Denney let go and clutched his nose. Blood foamed over his hands down his face.

I grabbed the handcuffs, grabbed Denney's wrist, and clicked a cuff on. I yanked him forward by the cuff. He fell on his knees. I locked the other cuff to the steering wheel.

I grabbed my sap, slid out the passenger side, ran around the car, and tried to push him inside. He whipped around to slug me. He saw he was cuffed and let out a yell:

“You cunt!”

I went nuts with the sap. I sapped his neck, I sapped his shoulders. He dipped and dodged, throwing elbows, twisting around on his knees. I aimed for his nose. He protected it and crawled backward onto the front seat. I slammed the door on his legs—once, twice, three times. He howled and pulled his legs inside.

I slammed the door shut. Denney kicked his foot out the window. It missed me. He kicked the door, coughed up blood, and said that word again.