Джеймс Эллрой - The Big Nowhere

Danny was about to say no; the barkeep turned to a bearded young man with an alto sax slung around his neck. “Coleman, you know that white trombone from Bido’s? Marty what the fuck?”

Coleman reached over the bar, grabbed two handfuls of ice and pressed them to his face. Danny checked him out: tall, blond, late twenties and off-kilter handsome — like the boy lead in the musical Karen Hiltscher dragged him to. His voice was reedy, exhausted. “Sure. A from-hunger horn, I heard. Why?”

“Talk to this police gentleman here, he’ll tell you.”

Danny pointed to his glass, going two shots over his nightly limit. The barman filled it, then slid off. The alto said, “You’re with the Double Seven?”

Danny killed his drink, and on impulse stuck out his hand. “My name’s Upshaw. West Hollywood Sheriff’s.”

The men shook. “Coleman Healy, late of Cleveland, Chicago and the planet Mars. Marty in trouble?”

The bourbon made Danny too warm; he loosened his tie and moved closer to Healy. “He was murdered last night.”

Healy’s face contorted. Danny saw every handsome plane jerk, twitch and spasm; he looked away to let him quash his shock and get hepcat again. When he turned back, Healy was bracing himself into the bar. Danny’s knee brushed the alto’s thigh — it was taut with tension. “How well did you know him, Coleman?”

Healy’s face was now gaunt, slack under his beard. “Chewed the fat with him a couple of times around Christmas, right here at this bar. Just repop — Bird’s new record, the weather. You got an idea who did it?”

“A lead on a suspect — a tall, gray-haired man. The bartender saw him with Goines last night, walking toward a car parked on Central.”

Coleman Healy ran fingers down the keys of his sax. “I’ve seen Marty with a guy like that a couple of times. Tall, middle-aged, dignified looking.” He paused, then said, “Look, Upshaw, not to besmirch the dead, but can I give you an impression I got — on the QT?”

Danny slid his stool back, just enough to get a full-face reaction — Healy wired up, eager to help. “Go ahead, impressions help sometimes.”

“Well, I think Marty was fruit. The older guy looked like a nance to me, like a sugar daddy type. The two of them were playing footsie at a table, and when I noticed it, Marty pulled away from the guy — sort of like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar.”

Danny tingled, thinking of the tags he eschewed because they were too coarse and antithetical to Vollmer and Maslick: PANSY SLASH. QUEER BASH. FRUIT SNUFF. HOMO PASSION JOB . “Coleman, could you ID the older man?”

Healy played with his sax. “I don’t think so. The light here is strange, and the queer stuff is just an impression I got.”

“Have you seen the man before or since those times with Goines?”

“No. Never solo. And I was here all night, in case you think I did it.”

Danny shook his head. “Do you know if Goines was using narcotics?”

“Nix. He was too interested in booze to be a junk fiend.”

“What about other people who knew him? Other musicians around here?”

“Ixnay. We just gabbed a couple of times.”

Danny put out his hand; Healy turned it upside down, twisting it from a squarejohn to a jazzman shake. He said, “See you in church,” and headed for the stage.

Queer slash.

Fruit snuff.

Homo passion job.

Danny watched Coleman Healy mount the bandstand and exchange back slaps with the other musicians. Fat and cadaverous, pocked, oily and consumptive looking, they seemed wrong next to the sleek alto — like a crime scene photo with blurs that fucked up the symmetry and made you notice the wrong things. The music started: piano handing a jump melody to the trumpet, drums kicking in, Healy’s sax wailing, lilting, wailing, drifting off the base refrain into chord variations. The music digressed into noise; Danny spotted a bank of phone booths next to the powder room and rolled back to police work.

His first nickel got him the watch boss at the 77th Street Station. Danny explained that he was a Sheriff’s detective working a homicide — a jazz musician and possible dope addict slashed and dumped off the Sunset Strip. The victim was probably not currently using drugs — but he wanted a list of local H pushers anyway — the snuff might be tied to dope intrigue. The watch boss said, “How’s Mickey these days?” added, “Submit a request through official channels,” and hung up.

Pissed, Danny dialed Doc Layman’s personal number at the City Morgue, one eye on the bandstand. The pathologist answered on the second ring. “Yes?”

“Danny Upshaw, Doctor.”

Layman laughed. “Danny Upstart is more like it — I just autopsied the John Doe you tried to usurp.”

Danny drew in a breath, turning away from Coleman Healy gyrating with his sax. “Yes? And?”

“And a question first. Did you stick a tongue depressor in the corpse’s mouth?”

“Yes.”

“Deputy, never, ever , introduce foreign elements into interior cavities until after you have thoroughly spotted the exterior. The cadaver had cuts with imbedded wood slivers all over his back — pine — and you stuck a piece of pine into his mouth, leaving similar slivers. Do you see how you could have fouled up my assessment?”

“Yes, but it was obvious the victim was strangled by a towel or a sash — the terrycloth fibers were a dead giveaway.”

Layman sighed — long, exasperated. “The cause of death was a massive heroin overdose. The shot was administered into a vein by the spine, by the killer himself — the victim couldn’t have reached it. The towel was placed in the mouth to absorb blood when the heroin hit the victim’s heart and caused arteries to pop, which means the killer had at least elementary anatomical knowledge.”

Danny said, “Jesus fuck.”

Layman said, “An appropriate blasphemy, but it gets worse. Here’s some incidentals first:

“One, no residual heroin in the bloodstream — Mr. Doe was not now addicted, although needle marks on his arms indicate he once was. Two, death occurred around 1:00 to 2:00 A.M., and the neck and genital bruises were both postmortem. The cuts on the back were postmortem, almost certainly made by razor blades attached to something like a pine slab or a 2 by 4. So far, brutal — but not past my ken. However...”

Layman stopped — his old classroom orator’s pause. Danny, sweating out his jolts of bonded, said, “Come on, Doc.”

“All right. The substance in the eye sockets was KY Jelly. The killer inserted his penis into the sockets and ejaculated — at least twice. I found six cubic centimeters of semen seeping back toward the cranial vault. O+ secretor — the most common blood type among white people.”

Danny opened the phone booth door; he heard wisps of bebop and saw Coleman Healy going down on one knee, sax raised to the rafters. “The bites on the torso?”

Layman said, “Not human is what I’m thinking. The wounds were too shredded to make casts from — there’s no way I could have lifted any kind of viable teeth marks. Also, the ME’s assistant who took over after you pulled your little number swabbed the affected area with alcohol, so I couldn’t test for saliva or gastric juices. The victim’s blood — AB+ — was all I found there. You discovered the body when?”

“Shortly after 4:00 A.M.”

“Then scavenging animals down from the hills are unlikely. The wounds are too localized for that theory, anyway.”

“Doc, are you sure we’re dealing with teeth marks?”

“Absolutely. The inflammation around the wounds is from a mouth sucking. It’s too wide to be human—”

“Do you think—”

“Don’t interrupt. I’m thinking that — maybe — the killer spread blood bait on the affected area and let some kind of well-trained vicious dog at the victim. How many men are working this job, Danny?”