Sunset People. Herbert Kastle
were seated in that car, the black behind the wheel, the girl in the passenger’s seat. They might’ve been making out because the girl’s dress was open and disarranged at the top, the black’s fly unzipped. Neither was robbed.”
“Head wounds?”
“Correct. The girl in the left temple. The black in the upper jaw, obviously a missed headshot.”
“A bullet in the jaw killed him?”
“He’s not dead, Lieutenant.”
“Way to go!” Admer said, thinking of being able to show Diana that justice could triumph.
“But he’s in bad shape, according to the ambulance intern. Looks like bone and bullet fragments entered the brain. Anyway, he wasn’t conscious to tell us anything.”
Admer sighed. “What hospital?”
“I didn’t get that.” He looked at his partner, who was as boyish as he was. “You get it, Matt?”
“Nearest hospital to here: Cedars-Sinai.”
“Who found them?”
The first officer turned toward the entrance to a two-story, motel-like apartment complex, where an elderly woman stood holding a small white dog. She was hugging the animal and crying.
“A Mrs. Clausen. She was taking her dog for a walk. Came out of that entrance and passed the car and heard what she thought was a groan. She didn’t stop, but on the way back she again heard the sound, and this time she glanced in.”
“ID on the victims?”
“Get the stuff,” the officer said to his partner. Matt hurried toward a black-and-white parked across the street.
“Anyone hear the shots?”
“We haven’t canvassed the neighborhood, but no one’s come forward. Mrs. Clausen lives in that ground-floor apartment right off the street.” He pointed at an open window almost in a direct line with the Mustang. “She says she was resting in bed beside the window, wide awake. But old ladies get hard of hearing, right?”
Admer glanced over at her. “Doesn’t look that old. And two gunshots almost in her ear. She heard your questions all right, didn’t she?”
The officer nodded.
Admer looked up and down the street. A civilian male stood watching them from across the way. Three more were clustered half a block north, near the corner.
“Gunshots on a quiet street like this . . . we should have had a mob scene.” He made some notes, did some thinking.
Within the last three days, four people had been shot in the head, counting the black’s wound as a missed headshot. There’d been no robbery. No sexual assault, though he wanted to ask the black about the girl’s disarranged dress. No discernible motive in three of the four killings, the cabby cum Vegas-dealer being a possible professional hit.
The two in the Mustang had been found four blocks from Diana’s sister, who had been found six blocks from the cabby, all in the West Los Angeles area, not far from the Sunset Strip.
No gunshots had been heard in any of the four assaults, and this was beginning to worry him . . .
Two cars pulled up, coming from opposite directions. Detectives Marv Rodin and Vic Chasen got out of the one across the street. A fingerprint specialist from Forensic named DiLorca got out of the other, indicating DHQ was also beginning to worry.
“Go talk to them,” Larry told the young officer, giving his men a wave and pointing at the Mustang.
The other officer, Matt, was back with a large, white plastic bag. It bore a department-store logo, and Larry said, “L.A. County issue, right?
“Since Prop Thirteen, Matt said, “we even provide our own toilet paper.
They were both joking. The police had done well, despite shrinking funds. This town, like New York, like Chicago, like any large American city, was always in a criminal state of siege, and no one was willing to cut defense funds too deeply.
Larry reached into the bag.
“Wait’ll you see the loaf that jigg was carrying. You can really write off robbery in this case!”
Larry took out a bulging wallet. He handed the plastic bag to the officer and counted the bills. “Five thousand rubber-banded, and eighty loose.” He put the money back in the wallet. “Lucky you weren’t alone,” he said, smiling to show it was another joke.
“That’s what you call lucky?”
Larry read the driver’s license. “I certainly hope Mr. Melvin Crane lives. I’d like to meet a man who carries five grand in pocket money.”
The woman’s wallet held considerably less cash—eight dollars. Her name was Beth-Anne Crane, indicating she was related to the black. Which blew a possibility he’d been shaping up in his mind: that she was a hooker and the man was a customer. It figured, didn’t it, she being young and white and he being older and black? At least in and around the Sunset Strip it figured, especially in light of a possible psycho hooker-killer.
“If you’re wondering how he could make that kind of bread,” Matt was saying, “this might give you a clue.” He handed over a brown paper bag. Inside was a smaller plastic bag, and inside that a considerable quantity of marijuana. “The pocket scale shows over three ounces,” Matt said. “My nose says PCP, angel dusted.”
“You wouldn’t happen to have personal experience smoking that dust poison, would you?”
Matt smiled slightly. “If it was as bad as they tell us, half a million or more in L.A. rock audiences would be dead or crazy.”
“You like rock concerts?”
“They still legal? If so, I confess.”
Larry handed him the dope, nodding sourly. The officer walked back to his black-and-white, and locked the plastic bag in the trunk. Young, maybe twenty-two, twenty-three, and like many of his contemporaries, in as well as out of the department, with a fine contempt for the drug laws. Always comparing them to Prohibition: always asking him if he’d have given up his beer, his Scotch. What really griped him was he didn’t have an answer. And what griped him even more was that he knew, rationally, that alcoholism was a bigger problern than drug addiction, and felt, irrationally, that drugs were filthy.
He wondered whether Diana was into any kind of drugs.
Marv called from the Mustang. Larry walked over. The stocky detective held up a flattened piece of metal. “Lodged in the door jamb. Twenty-two, for sure. Now we’ll look for the other slug.”
“From what I hear, it’s in the survivor’s head, in bits and pieces.”
“Tell the doctors to save it, if not the spook.”
Larry gave him the mandatory chuckle, and headed for his car and the hospital.
The moment he flashed his badge at the Emergency desk, the young and attractive black nurse showed that prejudice worked two ways. “What did he do that you had to shoot him in the head?” she asked coolly, “pass a traffic signal?”
He smiled, and explained that Melvin Crane had been shot by an unknown assailant, and that in order to find that assailant the police had to interview Mr. Crane.
“I’m sorry,” she said, opening a folder, “Mr. Crane won’t be allowed visitors, police included, for quite a while. We’re here to save lives, not conduct investigations.”
He nodded slowly, saying nothing, until she finally looked up. He handed her a card with his station telephone number and said, “The moment he regains consciousness, someone is to call me. Or else you might have more Melvin Cranes for Intensive Care and the morgue.”
Since she still didn’t seem impressed, or cooperative,