1939 was not a good year for a lot of people. Just ask Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians and Poles. Well, the Germans and the British now fighting Stalin's hordes in Poland probably have something to say about it as well, I suppose. And come to think of it, I am sure the poor bastards in those hordes might not have been all that keen on invading Europe either, but no one asked them. Closer to home, 1939 was the year the uncrowned princes of Los Angeles gangland fell one by one. Jack Dragna drowned in a shallow puddle. Mickey Cohen stabbed himself in the stomach seven times while shaving. "Big Willy" Goering got lead poisoning courtesy of three Chicago typewriters. And Bugsy Siegel jumped out of a perfectly good seaplane without a parachute while flying over the Hollywood Hills.
After Bugsy's skydive, there were no more princes, or even dukes and earls for that matter, just some barons holding patches of territories. Some were better than others. Some worse. And they feuded.
The morning of Saturday, December 2nd, 1939 found me standing over one of them. "Handsome Johnny" Roselli was an asshole. Now he was a dead asshole. He lay on a blood soaked once white Persian rug in the penthouse of the Imperial Hotel in West Hollywood and stared at me with his dumb guinea face with a bullet hole where his left eye should have been. He shared the room with five other corpses. Handsome still wore his suit. The other two dead men were half dressed. And the three women were half naked. A prelude to a good old fashioned orgy. Then came a gunman.
No witnesses, naturally. Nobody saw nothing. Nobody heard nothing. The maid found bodies when she went to change the sheets, at nine. My stomach told me it was now close to noon. A worried face attached to a black tux floated in the doorway. The no doubt assistant vice junior manager.
"Hey, mack. Get the kitchen to send up a burger and fries, would you?"
The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department finest lounging in the plush armchair in a butternut shirt that had more wrinkles than my landlady's neck gave a grunt. He was the first man on the scene.
"And whatever Deputy Shaughnessy here wants as well."
The face atop the tux blinked and stared at me, then Shaughnessy.
I left Shaughnessy to deal with the details and concentrated on identifying the other bodies. The one closest to Handsome belonged to a square. Average height. Average weight. White, of course. If he wasn't, then he could not get into the hotel. The square got it twice in the chest, as he backpedaled from whomever came through the door, presumably after the gunman got Handsome. He was down to his shirt, slacks and socks when he was interrupted. All of the clothes seemed respectable, but nowhere near Handsome's flash. I went to a nearby chair where a man's jacket matching the slacks of the square hung. Inside was a wallet.
Shaughnessy made another grunt. I glanced back. The tux and its face were gone.
"How much cash did he have?"
Shaughnessy tried to do math. It was painful to watch.
"I won't ask for a cut, mack. But need to know if he was loaded, that's all."
"He wasn't loaded. Barely a sawbuck, and a dollar ticket to the UCLA-Berkley game. No license."
I looked into the wallet. It had two one-dollar bills left. The Berkeley game was today and a buck ticket could go for a fiver on game day, since Jackie Robinson was going to start for the Bruins.
"And what did Handsome have on him?"
Shaughnessy tried to do the math again.
"Mack, I need to know if he was robbed by the killer or you."
"246 dollars and a pair of car keys."
"How much did you leave him?"
Shaughnessy hesitated.
"Put 46 bucks back. And give me a C-note."
"I thought you said..."
"I wasn't going to ask for a cut with the square here, but never said anything about Handsome."
Shaughnessy gave a resigned grunt, eased his bulk out of the chair and carried out the operation.
"Did the square have car keys on him?"
"No. And no house keys."
Shaughnessy handed me five twenties. I slipped the money into my pocket and went to Handsome. He had a bundle of keys on him. One of them was for a Lincoln Zephyr Touring. A Lincoln because he was a gangster. A Zephyr because he was a baron. And a Touring because he was a flash asshole. I kept the keys and turned my attention to the youngest man among the dead.
The corpse was furthest from the other men and I had to walk past three dead women to get to it. There was something of an alfons about him. His fingernails were neatly cut and polished and his chest was shaved. He was down to his skivvies and was sitting on a futon when he got it, like Handsome Johnny, in the left eyeball. His clothes were in a pile on a chair. There was no cash in his wallet, thanks to Shaughnessy, but there was an active vehicle operator's license belonging to a "Vittorio Marchetti." He was listed as white and male and the height and weight generally matched the corpse, but there was no photograph to confirm. The Golden State, as all other states in our good nation, only requires photographs of those licensed to be chauffeurs and taxi drivers. Los Angeles city requires a residency permit to live in our fair town and it should come with a photograph, but he did not have a permit on him and per regulations he did not have to have it until January of next year. In his left pocket was a ring with three keys. One was for a Plymouth sedan of a slightly differing, if equally uninspiring, quality as the one issued to me and all the other LASD dicks.
The woman closest to the futon lay on her side, also with a bullet hole in her left eye. She still wore her skirt and stockings and had a bra that strained to contain the bounty with which she was blessed. There was a spilled open purse not far from where her right arm had landed. I walked up, squatted down and riffled through the purse. As always, a shiver of half-fear went up my spine. I was once again reduced to a four year old looking through the purses of one my aunts, set imperiously on the counter in the living room, while they and my mom sat in the kitchen and washed the bones of half the yentas in Santa Monica. In the purse before me now there was the usual debris of a female actress in Los Angeles living in the half lit corner of hope and reality, but there was no license or permit.
The second dead woman was a small thing wedged in the corner. She had squatted there, knees to chest, arms around her head, begging and praying. She was shot through both eyes. A departure. She was in stockings and a bra and I could tell she was a natural brunette despite having a blonde mop top. Her purse was splayed out between her corpse and the futon. Inside was a residency permit with a smiling blonde with blue eyes. Her name was Connie Keane and she was "white," "Protestant - Episcopalian," had her occupation listed as "Actress" and was alleged to have been a "Democrat." She was registered to live in the Beverly Hills. Her address put her in a nest of houses owned by slumming bankers from a previous era. A poor little rich girl gone awry. I needed a drink.
Luckily, there was only one more body left to paw. Her frame had a bigger heft to it than her sisters and was located much closer to Handsome and Square than Alfons, Mystery Girl and Connie. She lay on her face and had a chunk of her right shoulder blade missing. Part of it was on the carpet and some of it got on the nearby coffee table. She was naked, save for a pair of canary yellow garters. A toad sticker lay on the bloody carpet not far from where her right hand would have been had she been upright. I grabbed the left shoulder and gave a tug. A single blue eyed shone menace. The left eye was shot through. I took another gander at the shoulder blade. She charged the gunman and took him off his game. He did not have time to aim, and slowed her down with a chest wound that ripped out her shoulder blade on exit and then got her in the eye with his second shot.
The fighter's clutch lay on the bloody coffee table. Inside were a jangle of house and car keys, a pack of smokes and a flying permit issued by the Los Angeles Aviation Department. The permit had a photo of my blue-eyed blonde and attested she had right to fly a dozen types of aircraft. It was issued to one "Valkyrie Goering."
I stared at the corpse. Big Willy Goering and I went way back, back to when he was just a stunt flier for Howard Hughes in the picture business. One day, Hughes had trouble on his lot with union men getting crew hands organized and sent for some of his Okie trash to thrash them. Well, the Okies were the ones that got thumped that day, until Big Willy, zonked out on greenies and still in his stunt flier togs jumped atop a flatbed truck and lit into the German extras on hand that day with a speech so full of fire, they rallied to him and beat ten kinds of crap out of the union organizers, anyone who stood with them and a few more besides. The next day, Hughes gave him a raise and put him in charge of busting unions, and a star was born. Also, that same day, a greener than leprechaun vomit deputy stopped by the lot and questioned folks about what went on the previous day. Big Willy was all smiles and charmed that deputy pretty well. And when that deputy got his shield, Big Willy - union-buster-for-hire and dope peddler - sent him a crate of whiskey. And when that Deputy-Detective made Homicide, Big Willy - whore-runner, dope king and union killer - sent him a stunner in high heels, a fur coat and nothing else. So, yeah, you could say I knew Big Willy. And I knew that he had no kids.
His dipshit director brother, Albie, spread his seed among the starlets as best he could, but hadn't managed to harpoon an ovary just yet. I vaguely recalled there were other brothers and sisters back in Germany and there was also a Mormon gardener, of all things, in Utah, with the same last name, whose annoying snot nosed kid came out here to be in the pictures and was sent home. But I never heard of this here "Valkyrie Goering."
I disregarded the dead Goering in yellow garters for a time, took three steps back and took in the whole scene. Three men and three women come up to play horizontal games. The three men are a square, a wop gangster and a wop pretty boy. The women are two B-girls and an aviatrix. The female trio's white crow was obvious. But with the men, it was more difficult. At first glance, it was the Square was the odd man, being likely Midwestern and Presbyterian, unlike his eye-tie gangster papist companions, and he was shot in the chest, twice, not through his left eye. But the locations of the corpses relative to each other argued against making that assumption too strongly. The alfons was on the futon with the two actresses near him and the square was close to Handsome. Then again, the square could have been dressing in the corner by himself, with Handsome and the alfons entertaining the actresses when the bell rang and Handsome, being such a good host, walked up, opened the door and met his fate.
As I stood there pondering, the assistant vice junior manager reappeared, sweaty and sans food.
"A reporter is downstairs, asking about the, uh, incident in the penthouse."
"Kindly remind them that his Honner deemed Los Angeles the safest city in America and the world and if he tries to write up about these murders, he'll get his dick broke and lose a job."
"I... It's Dorothy Parker."
At this even Shaughnessy sat up straight and I felt a link of my lower intestine suddenly go cold. But I managed to put on a smug look and peeled back my lips to feign a smile:
"Is she drunk?"
The assistant vice junior manager blinked in terror.
"I'll talk to her, mack. But not here. At the bar. She should be at home there. Be there in five minutes."
The floating above the tux blinked and the tux skittered off.
"Shaughnessy, call Dispatch and have them run the names of the stiffs for any jackets and known addresses. Also, have them put out a line to stations regarding this eye stuff. You don't just wake up one day and start shooting people in their eyeballs. This fella might have done this sort of thing before. Oh, and when the guy comes back with our food, get him to find out where the stiffs parked their cars."
Shaughnessy nodded, studying me with a new fascination.
"You really gonna talk to Dorothy Parker?"
I gave a casual nod and walked off.