BLOOD ON THE MOON
69
open the door and see her in amber light, Janice ran a teasing hand between her legs.
But the bedroom door didn’t open; she heard Lloyd tiptoe past it and walk down the hall to Penny’s room, then rap his knuckles lightly on her door and whisper, “Penguin? You want to hear a story?” The door creaked open a second later, and Janice heard father and child giggle in gleeful conspiracy. She gave her husband half an hour, angrily chain-smoking. When her last remnants of ardor had fled and she started to cough from the half-dozen cigarettes, Janice threw on a robe and walked down the hall to listen. Penny’s bedroom door was ajar, and through it Janice could see her husband and youngest daughter sitting on the edge of the bed, holding hands. Lloyd was speaking very softly, in an awe-tinged storyteller’s voice:
“. . . after clearing the Haverhill/Jenkins homicide, I got assigned to a robbery deployment, a loan-out to the West L.A. squad room. There had been a series of nighttime burglaries of doctor’s offices, all in large buildings in the Westwood area. Cash and saleable drugs were the burglar’s meat; in shortly over a month he’d ripped off over five grand in cash and a shitload of pharmaceutical speed and heavyweight downers. The West L.A. dicks had his M.O. figured out this way: The bastard used to hide out in the building until nightfall, then hit his mark, then break into a second-floor office and jump out the window into the parking lot. There was evidence to point to this—chipped cement on the window ledges. The dicks figured him for a gymnast, a bullshit cat burglar type who could jump two stories without getting hurt. The commander of the squad was setting up parking lot surveillances to catch him. When the burglar hit an office building on Wilshire that two teams of detectives were staking out, it blew their thesis to hell and I was called in.”
Lloyd paused. Penny nuzzled her head into his shoulder and said, “Tell me how you got the scumbag, Daddy.”
Lloyd brought his storyteller’s voice down to its lowest register: “Sweetheart, nobody jumps two stories repeatedly without getting hurt. I formed my own thesis: The burglar brazenly walked out of the buildings, waving to the security guards in the foyer as if everything were hunky-dory. Only one thing troubled me. Where was he carrying the dope he ripped off? I went back and checked with the guards on duty the nights of the robberies. Yes, both known and unknown men in business suits had walked out of the building in the early evening hours, but none were carrying bags or pack-70
L.A. NOIR
ages. The guards assumed them to be businessmen with offices in the building and didn’t check them out. I heard that same statement six times before it all came together in my mind: The burglar dressed in drag, probably in the protective coloring of a nurse’s uniform, carrying a large purse or shoulder bag. I checked with the guards again and, bingo! An unknown woman wearing a nurse’s uniform and carrying a large shoulder bag was seen leaving the burglarized buildings at almost the exact time on all six burglary nights. The guards couldn’t describe her, but said she was ‘ugly,’ ‘a dog,’ and so forth.”
Penny fidgeted when Lloyd took in a deep breath and sighed. She took her head from his shoulder and poked him sharply in the arm. “Don’t be a tease, Daddy!”
Lloyd laughed and said, “All right. I ran a computer cross-check on vice offenders and registered sex offenders with burglary convictions. Double bingo! Arthur Christiansen, a.k.a. ‘Misty Christie,’ a.k.a. ‘Arlene the Queen’ Christiansen. Specialties: giving cut-rate blow jobs to drunks who thought he was a woman and full-drag B&Es. I staked out his pad for thirtysix hours straight, determining that he was dealing uppers and Percodan—
I heard his customers comment on the righteous quality of his stuff. This was solid corroboration, but I wanted to catch him-her in the act. The following afternoon old Arthur-Arlene left the pad with a giant quilted shoulder bag and drove to Westwood and walked into a big office building two blocks from the U.C.L.A. campus. Four hours later, an hour after dark, a very ugly creature in a nurse’s uniform walks out, carrying the same shoulder bag. I whip out my badge, yell ‘Police officer!’ and rush Arthur-Arlene, who screams, ‘Chauvinist!’ and swings on me. The blows are ineffectual and I’m reaching for my handcuffs when Arthur-Arlene’s falsies pop out of his blouse. I get him handcuffed and flag down a black-and-white. ArthurArlene is screaming ‘sisterhood is powerful’ and ‘police brutality,’ and a crowd of U.C.L.A. students start shouting obscenities at me. I barely managed to get into the black-and-white. The scene was almost L.A.’s first transvestite police riot.”
Penny laughed hysterically, collapsing on the bed and pounding the covers with her fists. She burrowed her head into the pillow to wipe away her tears, then giggled, “More, Daddy, more. One more before you go to bed.”
Lloyd reached over and ruffled Penny’s hair. “Funny or serious?”
“Serious,” Penny said. “Give me some dark stuff to sate my ghoulish cu-