The Black Dahlia

Mr. White Hat to the hilt, I said, “I’m Detective Bleichert, Mr. Short. This is my partner Sergeant Blanchard. We’d like to express our condolences for the loss of your daughter.”

Cleo Short slammed the door. “I read the papers, I know who you are. Neither one of you would have lasted one round with Gentleman Jim Jeffries. And as far as your condolences go, I say c’est la vie. Betty called the tune, so she had to pay the piper. Nothing’s free in this life. You want to hear my alibi?”

I sat down on a threadbare sofa and eyeballed the room. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with shelves spilling dime novels; there was the couch, one wooden chair and nothing else. Lee got out his notebook. “Since you’re so anxious to tell us, shoot.”

Short slumped into the chair and ground the legs into the floor, like an animal pawing the dirt. “I was Joh

Lee yawned and wrote it down; Cleo Short crossed his arms over his bony chest, daring us to make something of it. I said, “When was the last time you saw your daughter, Mr. Short?”

“Betty came west in the spring of ‘43. Stars in her eyes and hanky-panky on her mind. I hadn’t seen her since I left that dried-up old ginch of a wife of mine in Charlestown, Mass., on March 1, 1930 A.D. and never looked back. But Betty wrote me and said she needed a flop, so I—”

Lee interrupted: “Cut the travelogue, pop. When was the last time you saw Elizabeth?”

I said, “Back off, partner. The man is cooperating. Go on, Mr. Short.”

Cleo Short dug in with his chair, glaring at Lee. “Before punchy here got wise, I was go

I wrote the information down, then asked, “Did you know she was in LA recently?”

Cleo Short quit glaring at Lee and glared at me. “No.”

“Did she have any enemies that you knew of?”

“Just herself.”

Lee said, “No cute answers, Pops.”

I whispered, “Let him talk,” then said out loud, “Where did Elizabeth go when she left here in June of ‘43?”

Short jabbed a finger at Lee. “You tell your pal he calls me Pops I call him stumblebum! Tell him disrespect’s a two-way street! Tell him I repaired Chief CB Horrall’s Maytag 821 model myself, and I mean air tight!”

Lee walked into the bathroom; I saw him chasing a handful of pills with sink water. I put on my calmest white hat voice: “Mr. Short, where did Elizabeth go in June of ‘43?”

Short said, “That palooka lays a hand on me, I’ll fix his wagon air tight.”

“I’m sure you will. Would you ans—”

“Betty moved up to Santa Barbara, got a job at the Camp Cooke PX. She sent me a postcard in July. It said some soldier beat her up bad. That was the last I ever heard from her.”

“Did the card mention the soldier’s name?”

“No.”

“Did it mention the names of any of her friends up at Camp Cooke?”

“No.”

“Any boyfriends?”

“Hah!”

I put my pen down. “Why ‘hah’?”

The old man laughed so hard that I thought his chicken chest would explode. Lee walked out of the bathroom; I gave him a sign to ease off. He nodded and sat down next to me; we waited for Short to laugh himself out. When he was down to a dry chortle, I said, “Tell me about Betty and men.”

Short giggled. “She liked them and they liked her. Betty believed in quantity before quality, and I don’t think she was too good at saying no, unlike her mother.”

“Be specific,” I said. “Names, dates, descriptions.”

“You musta caught too many in the ring, So

“Give us the names you do remember.”

Short hooked his thumbs in his belt and rocked in the chair like a cut-rate cock of the walk. “Betty was man crazy, soldier crazy. She went for lounge lizards and anything white in a uniform. When she was supposed to be keeping house for me she was out prowling Hollywood Boulevard, cadging drinks off servicemen. When she was staying here this place was like a branch of the USO.”

Lee said, “Are you calling your own daughter a tramp?”

Short shrugged. “I’ve got five daughters. One bad apple ain’t so bad.”

Lee’s anger was oozing out of him; I put a restraining hand on his arm and could almost feel his blood buzzing. “What about names, Mr. Short?”

“Tom, Dick, Harry. Those punks took one look at Cleo Short and amscrayed with Betty pronto. That’s as specific as I can get. You look for anything not too ugly in a uniform, you won’t go wrong.”

I flipped to a fresh notebook page. “What about employment? Was Betty holding down a job when she stayed here?”

The old man shouted: “Betty’s job was working for me! She said she was looking for movie work, but that was a lie! All she wanted to do was parade the Boulevard in those black getups of hers and chase men! She ruined my bathtub dying her stuff black, then she took off before I could dock the damage out of her wages! Prowling the streets like a black widow spider, no wonder she got hurt! It’s her mother’s fault, not mine! No-cunt shanty Irish bitch! Not my fault!”

Lee drew a hard finger across his throat; we walked out to the street, leaving Cleo Short screaming at his four walls. Lee said, “Jesus fuck”; I sighed, “Yeah,” thinking of the fact that we’d just been handed the entire U.S. armed forces as suspects.

I dug in my pockets for a coin. “Toss you for who writes it up?”

Lee said, “You do it, okay? I want to stick at Junior Nash’s pad and get some license numbers.”

“Try and get some sleep, too.”

“I will.”

“No, you won’t.”

“I can’t shit a shitter. Look, will you go over to the house and keep Kay company? She’s been worried about me, and I don’t want her to be alone.”

I thought of what I’d said at9th and Norton last night—that statement of what all three of us knew but never talked about, that move forward that only Kay had the guts to take. “Sure, Lee.”

I found Kay in her usual weeknight posture—reading on the living room couch. She didn’t look up when I walked in, she just blew a lazy smoke ring and said, “Hi, Dwight.”

I took a chair across the coffee table from her. “How’d you know it was me?”

Kay circled a passage in the book. “Lee stomps, you tread cautiously.”

I laughed. “It’s symbolic, but don’t tell anybody.” Kay stubbed out her cigarette and put the book down. “You sound worried.”

I said, “Lee’s all bent out of shape on the dead girl. He got us detached to work the investigation when we should be going after a priority warrantee, and he’s taking Benzedrine and starting to go a little squirrely. Has he told you about her?”

Kay nodded. “A little.”

“Have you read the papers?”

“I’ve avoided them.”

“Well, the girl is being played up as the hottest number since the atom bomb. There’s a hundred men working a single homicide, Ellis Loew’s looking to get fat off of it, Lee’s cuckoo on the subject—”

Kay disarmed my tirade with a smile. “And you were front page news on Monday, but you’re stale bread today. And you want to go after your big bad robber man and get yourself another headline.”