Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 (14 page)

The prints the
Examiner
sent by wire to the FBI were too blurred to be identifiable; but one of Richardson’s staff photographers suggested sending 8” by 10” negative blowups. Within minutes the prints were identified as those of Elizabeth Short, who had—four years before—applied for, and landed, a civilian job at an Army base near Santa Barbara, working at the post exchange at Camp Cooke.

A description derived from the job application was as follows: weight, 115 pounds; height, five feet five; race, Caucasian; sex, female; hair, brunette; eyes, blue-green; complexion, fair; date of birth, July 29, 1924; place of birth, Hyde Park, Massachusetts.

In addition, the FBI had cross-referenced an arrest in 1943, Santa Barbara, California; a minor, Elizabeth Short had been picked up for drinking in a bar where she’d been with a girl friend and two soldiers. To her description were added these telling details: an I-shaped scar on her back from a childhood operation, a quarter-size brown birthmark on her right shoulder, and a small tattoo of a rose on her outer left thigh. The girl had been sent by bus back home to Medford, Massachusetts, to be given over into the custody of her mother, Mrs. Phoebe May Short.

“Look at this little beauty,” Richardson said, gesturing to a police mug photo, side and front, of Elizabeth Short. With her dark
hair tousled, translucent eyes sullenly blank, wearing none of the China doll makeup at all, under the unyielding gaze of a police photographer, she was as lovely as a movie queen’s soft-focus, airbrushed glamour portrait.

Richardson was standing at the head of the scarred wooden conference table; he and I and Fowley were in the glassed-off editorial chamber where we’d confabbed yesterday with a whole gaggle of reporters. This morning it was just the three of us.

“She does look better than in the shots Heller took yesterday,” Fowley said. Wearing a light brown checkered sportcoat and a darker brown tie with yellow horses prancing across it, he was seated to Richardson’s right and I was across from the reporter, on the editor’s left.

“A living doll,” Richardson said, managing to fix both his eyes on the photo, “or at least she used to be—and that gives us a genuine star for our ‘A’ picture.”

The editor—in shirtsleeves and suspenders—was giddy as a schoolgirl. Yesterday, when the competition’s afternoon editions appeared with the “Werewolf Slayer” story, it was two hours after the
Examiner
’s extra hit the street, in a sold-out press run second only to VJ Day.

“You want us to hit Camp Cooke, boss?” Fowley asked.

“Sid Hughes is already on his way up there,” Richardson said, lighting up a cigarette, waving out a match.

“We could check out that Santa Barbara arrest,” I suggested.

“I got two men on that.” Glee was coming off Richardson like heat off asphalt. “Right now we’re so far out in front of the pack—they’re never gonna catch up. I’ve had crews out digging since five o’clock this morning, and the other papers didn’t even know Elizabeth Short’s name till they read it in our morning edition.”

Fowley shifted in his hard chair; his tone vaguely irritated, he said, “So what’s left for the first string, if you’ve emptied the bench covering every lead the FBI gave us?”

“The best lead of all. . . . Get your notepad out, Mr. Fowley.” Richardson turned his eerie stare on me, his slow eye playing catch-up. “Nate, you’re the best interrogator in house at the moment.”

I frowned. “Gee whiz, thanks—but what are you getting at?”

His left eye was still swimming into place as he fixed his gaze on me. “Plus, you were a cop for a lot of years.”

“What’s on your mind, Jim?”

“You’ve had to break bad news before, I mean.”

I’d grabbed a bacon and eggs breakfast at a diner on my way over here; the greasy remains were turning in my stomach. “What exactly do you have in mind?”

“Also, you know how to work a phone.”

That was self-evident: private detectives spent most of their working day on the phone. “What the hell do you—”

“Just a second . . .” Richardson went to the door, opened it, and yelled for a copy boy to bring him in two phones. Then he looked at me again, one eye at a time, and unleashed a smile almost as ghastly as his gaze. “. . . I want you to locate Mrs. Phoebe May Short, in Medford, Massachusetts.”

“That’s the news you want me to break? Her daughter’s death?”

He strode back to the head of the table, nodding. “Unlikely she’s heard yet, unless the cops got right on it . . . and I don’t think Hansen even gets in till nine or nine-thirty.”

I sighed. “All right. It’s gotta be done.”

“Yeah . . . but gracefully . . . you know, let her down easy. First, tell her that Elizabeth won a beauty contest.”

“What?”

He shrugged elaborately, held his palms up. “If you just flat-out tell the poor woman that her little girl’s dead, she’s gonna go to pieces on you, Heller—you know that. We need to get all the background, before you inform her of, you know, the tragic event.”

“You are one sorry son of a bitch.”

“True, but if you don’t make this call for me, Heller, you won’t be working for this sorry son of a bitch any longer. You and Fred Rubinski will be on the outside of this case, as well as this newspaper, and you can pony up some real dough for a real press agent, which you will sorely need, considering the bad ink we will drown you in.”

“How do you sleep at night?”

“Like a dead baby. Anyway, you got the skills for this, Nate. You can do it. I know you can.”

“That show of confidence just sends me soaring. Why don’t you have Fowley here do your dirty work? He oughta be used to it by now.”

Fowley leaned back in the chair, raised his eyebrows, and his hands, like he’d just touched both burners of a hot stove.

Richardson, his left eye floating, said kindly, “He’s going to be taking notes while you work your magic.”

“Fuck you.”

“By ‘fuck you,’ I take that to mean, yes, you’ll do it.”

“Yes, fuck you. Yes, I’ll do it.”

Soon two phones on long wires had been plugged into the wall, one each in front of Fowley and me. The switchboard connected us, so that Fowley could listen in.

It took a while to track the woman down. No Medford telephone was listed for the Shorts, but by sweet-talking an operator, I was able to find my way to the next-door neighbor, who told me the Shorts rented out a flat upstairs in their house and that the flat did indeed have a phone. I got ahold of the tenant, and, before long, Mrs. Phoebe Short was on the line. I identified myself as a reporter with the
Examiner
.

“Why yes, I have a daughter named Elizabeth.” The voice was medium pitched and touched with a New England accent, and its pleasantness indicated that news of her daughter’s death had surely not reached her yet.

“Is your daughter by any chance in California?” I asked.

“Yes, she is. She’s been out there some while, off and on, trying to break into the moving pictures.”

Richardson was seated next to Fowley, listening in as the reporter jotted down notes; the editor’s eyes—including the slow one—lighted up like a candle in a jack-o-lantern. The Werewolf’s victim was a starlet! What more could a sleazebag editor ask?

“Mrs. Short,” I said, “your daughter has won a beauty contest out here—Miss Santa Monica.”

“Oh! How wonderful . . . I can’t say I’m surprised. She’s such
a pretty girl—she’s won these sort of contests before, you know, starting with right here in Medford. And when she worked in the PX at Camp Cooke, during the war? She was selected ‘Cutie of the Week.’ ”

Fowley was scribbling and Richardson was grinning.

“She’s such a wholesome young woman,” the excited mother was saying. “She doesn’t smoke, or drink. . . .”

She was just arrested for underage drinking, and had a tattoo on her left thigh.

“How long has Elizabeth been in Hollywood, Mrs. Short?”

Now a little embarrassment seemed to creep into the proud parent’s tone. “Well, you have to understand, everyone back here was always telling Elizabeth how beautiful she was, that she was born to be a movie star.”

“Is that right?”

“She dropped out of Medford High in her junior year. Of course, pursuing her acting dreams is only part of why she left school. Hard to imagine, healthy as she looks, but she’s always suffered from asthma, and other lung conditions. So that sunny weather is good for her. She’s spent some time in Florida, too.”

I didn’t want to get into Elizabeth Short’s travel habits—since they included “sunny” Chicago—so I moved the mother back to Hollywood.

“Has your daughter appeared in any movies since she’s been out here?”

“She’s had some small parts—what do they call it, when you’re in the background of a scene?”

“An extra?”

“Yes, an extra. She’s appeared as an extra.”

“Has Elizabeth always been interested in acting?”

“I’m afraid my daughter’s always been kind of movie struck,” the mother bubbled, “and I’m afraid I have to take credit, or maybe blame.”

“Are you a movie fan, too?”

“Oh yes, I’ve always loved the movies. From when they were little girls, I always took Betty and her sister Muriel to the picture
show, two or three times a week. Everyone says Betty looks like Deanna Durbin, you know.”

“There is a striking resemblance.”

“Betty’s sister, Ginnie, is very talented, too, studying opera, and the two girls would just battle over the radio—Ginnie wanting to listen to that long-hair stuff, and Betty just loved the popular songs. Was there a talent competition for Miss Santa Monica? Did she dance? Betty’s a wonderful dancer.”

“Well, I wasn’t at the competition, Mrs. Short—I’m trying to get in touch with Betty. Would you happen to have her most recent address?”

“I don’t understand. If she won the beauty contest, why don’t you have—”

“We got Elizabeth’s name from the Chamber of Commerce,” I said glibly, feeling like the goddamn liar I was, “who sponsored the contest, but they neglected to give us her address, in their press release.”

“I don’t know if I have her most recent address—she was staying in San Diego, at least until two weeks ago.”

Richardson was nodding at me, mouthing, “Good, good.”

“But it doesn’t surprise me she’s back in the Hollywood area,” her mother was saying.

“Why is that, Mrs. Short?”

“Well, Elizabeth said she only went down to San Diego because of the movie union strikes—she said everything in the film industry was kind of shut down. But I know she had to get back to Hollywood before too long.”

“Why is that?”

The pride in Mrs. Short’s voice was palpable. “Betty had a screen test coming up.”

“Really? Do you know for what studio?”

“It wasn’t a studio, I don’t think. She said it was a director, some famous director.”

“Well, that’s swell. Did she say what director?”

“No—just that he was very, very famous. It’s someone she met at the Hollywood Canteen.”

“Oh, she worked at the Canteen?” Actually, I knew that
already—Beth had mentioned that, and the “famous director”—but I hadn’t shared the information with anybody.

“I don’t think she did, officially. But she said she was on the list to be a junior hostess, and got meals there, free, sometimes.”

“The Hollywood Canteen, that’s a wonderful thing, supporting our servicemen like that.”

Mrs. Short laughed, lightly. “I don’t mean to speak out of school, but my daughter does have a soft spot for a man in uniform.”

“Well, a lot of girls do these days, Mrs. Short.”

“They certainly do. . . .” And now her tone turned somber. “. . . Elizabeth was engaged to a major in the Army Air Corps, oh, for almost three years. But he died in action.”

“I’m so sorry. Do you, uh, happen to know where she was staying in San Diego?”

“I told you, I don’t think she’s still staying there. . . .”

“Have you heard from her since she left San Diego?”

“Well, no—but maybe the nice people she was staying with would have a forwarding address for Elizabeth . . . Let me see if I can find that letter for you . . . Do you mind hanging on? I mean it is long distance, and this must be terribly expensive for you.”

“No, please, do see if you can find that letter.”

“All right.”

As she put down the phone, I could hear Mrs. Short excitedly telling her tenant the good news about Elizabeth winning a beauty contest in Hollywood.

“Heller,” Richardson said, “you’re doing great.”

“Kiss my ass,” I said.

“I just might, if you land that address.”

Finally Mrs. Short came back on the line, and said, “I found it! Let me just read through this letter, refresh my memory. . . . She was working part-time at a Naval hospital in San Diego, staying with a girl friend named Dorothy French, at the home of the girl’s mother, Mrs. Elvera French—in Pacific Beach. I believe that’s a suburb of San Diego. Do you have a pencil?”

“Yes,” I said, and she read off the address.

I glanced over at Fowley and Richardson. Covering the mouthpiece, I said, “You got your goddamn address.”

“Now,” Richardson said.

“What?”

“Tell her now.”

“What a sweet bastard you are. . . .” Into the phone, I said, “Mrs. Short, I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you. Are you sitting down, ma’am?”

“Why, yes, I am—what is it? Is something wrong?”

“Forgive me for the pretense. I had to make sure I was speaking to the right person . . . that you were in fact Elizabeth Short’s mother, the right Elizabeth Short. . . .”

“Something’s happened to her, hasn’t it?”

“Forgive me—yes. A young woman was killed, probably Tuesday night.”

“Oh God . . . oh dear God . . .”

“Her body was found Wednesday morning.”

“Do you mean . . . murdered? My Betty was murdered?”

“This young woman, who we believe to be your daughter, was murdered, yes.”

“Are you . . . are you sure it’s Betty?”

“This girl had black hair, weighed about 115 pounds, was five feet five, a lovely girl with blue-green eyes and a fair complexion.”

“That could be a lot of girls in Hollywood, couldn’t it? Did this girl have a scar on her back? Elizabeth had a scar on her back from a lung operation—she was sick with pleurisy, when she was small, and had to have a rib removed. If this girl didn’t have that, then—”