Jonathan Santlofer - L.A. Noire - The Collected Stories

“I got nothing against you,” she said. “It isn’t personal. But business is business, and it’s what runs the world. You finish up here, Warren. Make it look like a robbery. Mess things up some more.”

Warren didn’t seem to be listening. He was concentrating on choking the life out of Coats. Ali wandered off, sat in a chair at the table, and coiled one leg over the other.

“You are quite the waste, baby,” she said.

Coats pushed his shoulders up. It helped a little, lessened the choke. There were fewer black dots. He glanced sideways, saw a broken cup from the cabinet. He snatched it up and dragged it hard across the side of Warren’s neck. Warren yelled and sat up. One hand flew to his neck, the other still clutched Coats’s throat. Blood crept through Warren’s fingers, leaked onto the floor.

Coats smashed what was left of the cup into Warren’s nose and rolled him off. There was a shot. Coats felt a bit of a pinch in his side. He scuttled his feet underneath him and rushed at Ali. She was coming out of the chair, pointing the gun. Coats dropped down and the gun barked and his ears rang. He kept coming. She tried to fire again, but he had her wrist now and was shoving her into the wall. When he did he lost his grip on her, but she lost the gun. It went sailing across the room. He struck her with a hard right to the side of the head. She dropped like a brick and didn’t move.

A big hand grabbed Coats’s shoulder and jerked him backward. He went tumbling across the floor. When he looked up, Warren was looking at him. He had one hand to his cut neck. His nose was flat and bloody. His teeth were bared and there was a look in his eye that made Coats feel weak, as if from a blow. Warren trudged forward a couple of steps. Coats lifted his fists, ready to fight. He figured he might as well be bear hunting with a switch.

Warren’s face changed. He had a look that reminded Coats of a man who’s forgotten his money. Warren swallowed, then coughed. Blood flew out of his mouth. He pulled his hand away from his neck and blood squirted high and wide. Warren looked at his bloody hand as if it had been replaced with a catcher’s mitt. Coats saw now that the first shot he had fired had hit Warren in the side. The big galoot hadn’t even noticed.

Warren sat down on the floor and tried to put his hand against his neck again, but he was too weak. It kept sliding off.

“Damn it,” Warren said. Blood gurgled out of his mouth. He carefully stretched himself out on the floor and made a sound like someone trying to swallow a pineapple. Then he didn’t move again. He was as dead as last year’s Christmas.

Coats went over and looked at Ali. She was breathing heavily, and she had a blue knot on the side of her head, but that was the worst of it. When he stood up, he went weak. The hole in his side was dripping big time. He leaned against a chair for a moment, got it together.

Outside, through the doorway, he saw lights. The shots had been heard and someone had called. Pretty soon, cops would be coming up the stairs. He grinned, thought maybe it would look better all around if he could at least put on his pants.

They were lost girls looking for their fathers.

So I knew they’d come crawling back to me.

It is true that I was lost —but I knew that no one would find me except myself—if I became a Star in the sky of Hollywood where I could not be hurt.

He was the one—“K.K.” we called him—who took pictures for the girlie mags & calendars—the one I begged Please don’t make me into a joke. Oh please that is all I ask of you.

Nasty lies told about me post mortem but none nastier than that I did not have an actual father —only just a pretend-father like Norma Jeane whose crazy mother would show her studio publicity photos of Clark Gable—whispering in the child’s ear Here is your father, Norma Jeane! But no one must know—yet.

Poor Norma Jeane! Some part of her believed this craziness, why she was always looking for Daddy . Why Norma Jeane made bad mistakes seeking men like she did but that was not why I made my bad mistake winding up post mortem in a weedy vacant lot in a dingy neighborhood of Los Angeles so mutilated the hardened LAPD detectives shrank from seeing me & quickly covered my “remains” with a coat for I had an actual father named Cleo Marcus Short who favored me above my four sisters Kathryn & Lucinda & Agnes & Harriet & wrote to me solely, in 1940, when I was sixteen, to invite me to live with him in California—which Daddy would not have done if he had not truly loved me.

Post mortem —is the Latin term. Post mortem is this state I am in, now. That you do not know exists when you are “alive” & you cannot guess how vast & infinite post mortem is for it is all of the time—forever & ever—after you have died.

Later, Daddy would deny me. Daddy would be so shocked & disgusted by the newspaper headlines & photos—(which were not the coroner’s photos or the LAPD crime scene photos which could not be published of course—too ugly & “obscene”)—but photos of Elizabeth Short a.k.a. THE BLACK DAHLIA —(for since the age of eighteen when I came to L.A., I wore tight-fitting black dresses with dipping necklines & often black silk trimmed in lace & undergarments as well in black & my hair glossy-black & my skin pearly-white & my mouth flame-red with lipstick)—which were glamour photos striking as any stills from the studios—Daddy refused to identify me still less “claim” me—the (mutilated, dissected) remains of me in the L.A. coroner’s morgue.

Or maybe Daddy thought he would have to pay some fee. He would have to pay for a burial, Daddy would fear.

Oh, that was mean of Daddy! To tell the L.A. authorities he would not drive to the morgue to make the “I.D.” (For there is no law to compel a citizen in such circumstances, it seems.) If Daddy had not already broke my heart this sad news post mortem would do it.

But that was later. That was January 1947. When you were all reading of THE BLACK DAHLIA shaking your hypocrite heads in revulsion & chastisement A girl like that. Dressing in all black and promiscuous, it is what she deserves.

When Daddy wrote to me, to summon me to him, it was seven years before. I had dropt out of South Medford High School to work (waitress, movie-house cashier) to help Momma with the household for we were five daughters & just Momma and no father to provide an income for we had thought that Daddy was dead & what a shock—Daddy was not dead but alive.

Cleo Short had been a quite-successful businessman selling miniature golf courses! All of us brought up swinging miniature golf clubs & hitting teeny golf balls & our photos taken—FIVE SHORT DAUGHTERS OF MEDFORD BUSINESSMAN CLEO SHORT TAKE TO THE “MINIATURE LINKS”—& published widely in Medford & vicinity for we were all pretty girls especially (this is a fact everyone acknowledged, this is not my opinion) “Betty” who was the middle sister of the five and the most beautiful by far.

& then the Depression which hit poor Daddy hard & soon collapsed into bankruptcy & utterly shamed so Daddy drove to the Mystic River bridge & what happened next was never made clear but Daddy’s 1932 Nash sedan was discovered on the river bank & not Daddy, anywhere—so it was believed that Cleo Marcus Short was a tragic suicide of the Depression as others had been, & declared dead two years later, & Momma collected $3,000 insurance & was now officially a widow & we were bereaved for our beloved Daddy, for years.