Max Collins - Angel in black

He had cleared out Saturday, around noon-leaving no forwarding address.

On Tuesday morning, I told Fred what I wanted done. We would contact agencies with whom we had reciprocal arrangements and have Wilson looked for in both San Diego and San Francisco, two prior known haunts of his (according to Patsy Savarino). Concentrate on skid rows, I said, and bars catering to sexual deviants. Fred thought that was a good plan-but what did I want done if somebody finds him?

“Sit on the son-of-a-bitch,” I said, “and call me. I’ll fly in from Chicago, immediately.”

Fred had a sick expression. “We’re kinda asking for them to… you know, abduct the bastard.”

“There’s a five-grand bonus for the man that finds him.”

“Five grand?”

“Not out of the business funds, Fred-my personal money.”

“… Okay. But a slimeball like this-knowing somebody’s after him, as he’s gonna gather when he learns about Lloyd-is gonna make every effort to disappear.”

I knew Fred was right. A guy who moved in criminal circles, whose private life was down among the human dregs of big cities, could surely find some sewer to vanish into.

“You heading over to the Examiner?” Fred asked.

“Yeah-gonna see if I can finally shake that p.r. article out of ’em.”

“D’you see the morning paper?”

“No.”

“Better take a look.”

The Examiner ’s front page told quite a story. Seemed Jim Richardson had been working late, Sunday night, when he received a phone call at his desk.

“Is this the city editor?” said a voice that Richardson described as “silky.”

“This is Richardson.”

“Well, Mr. Richardson, congratulations on the excellent coverage the Examiner has given the Black Dahlia case.”

“Thanks.”

“But things seem to be getting a little… bogged down.”

“Beginning to look that way.”

“Maybe I can be of assistance… Tell you what I’ll do. Watch the mail for some of the things the Dahlia had with her when she… disappeared.”

“What kind of things?”

“Things she had in her handbag.”

And the phone had clicked dead.

So Richardson said.

In the conference room at the Examiner, Bill Fowley and several other reporters were standing around an array of material spread out like a banquet before them. At the head of the long table, Richardson-in shirtsleeves and suspenders, his cigarette angling upward-cast his fish-eye on me as I entered. Oddly, a scent of gasoline was in the air, mingling with cigarette smoke.

“Heller! Nate!” Richardson gestured grandly from the head of the table. “Come right in, come right in, and see what the Postal Service brought us.”

Fowley, grinning, gestured at the table. “It’s goddamn Christmas!”

Yes, it was, and the presents (all of them reeking with gasoline) included:

Elizabeth Short’s birth certificate.

Her social security card.

A Greyhound Bus Station claim check for two suitcases and a hatbox.

A newspaper clipping about the marriage of an Army Air Force major named Matt Gordon with the name of the bride scratched out and “Elizabeth Short” written in, in ink.

Several photos of the beautiful black-haired girl with flowers in her hair and this serviceman or that one, on her arm.

A small leather item with the name “Mark Lansom” embossed on the cover-the fabled stolen address book.

Plus the oversize envelope these goodies had arrived in, a three-by-eight white number pasted with odd-sized letters cut from newspapers and magazines to form the following address and message:

To Los Angeles Examiner

Here is Dahlia’s belongings

Letter to follow.

“Do the cops know about this?” I asked Richardson.

My less than gleeful tone seemed to make the gaggle of reporters nervous-a few even had embarrassed expressions. But not Fowley, and certainly not the boss.

“Of course they do,” Richardson said. “Donahoe himself is on the way over, and so is Harry the Hat… This opens up whole new avenues. There’s seventy-five names in that address book.”

“You been handling this stuff?”

“Carefully, with a handkerchief… but there’s no prints.”

“How do you know?”

“The, uh, fiend who sent this apparently was well versed in contemporary police science, and knew soaking that stuff in gasoline would wipe out all traces of fingerprints.”

I nodded, and turned to head toward the door.

“Where are you going?” Fowley asked.

“I’m off this case. I’m tired of pretending I’m a newshound, and I don’t have any desire to get in the thick of it with the cops, either.”

Richardson hustled around the big conference table and cornered me at the door. His right eye stared at me while his left eye dogpaddled into position. “What about that interview?”

“Talk to Fred. You can call me at my office in Chicago. Glad to give you anything you need.”

“This story is heating back up.”

Very softly, I said, “You heated it back up, Jim.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I nodded toward the table. “That stuff is evidence you withheld from those suitcases at the bus station that you beat the cops to. Or did you find that Express office trunk?”

“Fuck you! That came in the mail-”

“You sent it to yourself, Jim, just like you imagined that phone call you got Sunday night-or did you have Fowley or somebody call you from a booth?”

The left eye had caught up in time for him to glare at me. “What’s got you so high and mighty all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know. Something about this town-it’s a turd dragged through glitter, all nice and shiny, but Jim, it’s still shit. I’m ready to go back to Chicago-it’s shit, too, but it doesn’t pretend to be anything else.”

The Examiner got several more front-page weeks out of the story, including a few fake letters, some of which Richardson may have sent to himself; but the cops didn’t make any headway with the new evidence, even the address book. Between dead ends and LAPD cover-ups, the investigation fizzled out.

On the gray morning of January 25, 1947, a graveside service was held for a murdered young woman, on a hillside in Oakland’s Mountain View Cemetery. Half a dozen family members were present, but her father, Cleo, did not attend. The stone was pink-Beth’s favorite color, her mother said, not black-and bore this inscription: DAUGHTER, ELIZABETH SHORT, JULY 29, 1924- JANUARY 15, 1947.

In 1949 a Grand Jury investigation into a notorious call-girl scandal-the top madam in L.A. had been working hand-in-hand, so to speak, with LAPD vice-invoked the botched Dahlia investigation when its report spoke of “deplorable conditions indicating corrupt practices and misconduct by some members of the law enforcement agencies in the county.”

Thus ended the eight-year regime of Chief Horrall, and began a shake-up and reorganization in the department that would soon lead to the sixteen-year reign of Chief William Parker, who would bring a new attitude to the LAPD-Parker was, after all, the man who had invented that dreaded self-policing unit known as Internal Affairs.

The Dahlia case did result in one notable contribution to society: the California state legislature passed a Sex Case Registry. The murder of Elizabeth Short had led to the creation of the nation’s first required registration of convicted sex offenders.

I stopped in to see Harry the Hat before I left town, and told him about my having known Elizabeth Short, and apologized for having withheld the information.

“It was a coincidence,” I said, “and detectives don’t believe in coincidence.”

“Actually,” the Hat said, seated at his desk in his pearl-gray fedora and a loud green-and-red silk tie, “I do… If it wasn’t for coincidence, most murders wouldn’t get solved.”