BECAUSE THE NIGHT

279

“Yeah. Why?”

Lloyd took a photograph of Jack Herzog from his billfold. “Ever see this man?”

Epstein shook his head. “No.”

Withdrawing a photocopy of his Identikit portrait of the man seen with Herzog, Lloyd said, “What about him?”

Epstein looked at the picture, then flinched. “Man, this is fucking weird. I did some blow with this guy outside Bruno’s Serendipity one night. This is a great fucking likeness.”

Lloyd felt two divergent evidential lines intersect in an incredible revelation. “Did this man tell you his name?” he asked.

“No, we just did the blow and split company. But it was funny. He was a weird, persistent kind of guy. He kept asking me these questions about my family and if I was into meeting this really incredibly smart dude he knew. What’s the matter, shamus? You look pale.”

Lloyd gripped the gun box so hard that he could hear his finger tendons cracking. “Did you tell him your name?”

“No, but I gave him my card.”

“Did you tell him about your guns?”

Epstein swallowed. “Yeah.”

“When did you talk to the man?”

“Maybe two, three months ago.”

“Have you seen him since?”

“No, I haven’t been back to Bruno’s. It sucks.”

“Did you see the man get into a car?”

“Yeah, a little yellow job.”

“Make and model?”

“It was foreign. That’s all I know. Listen, what’s this all about? You come in here and hassle me, break my coffee table—” Epstein stopped when he saw Lloyd run for the door. He called out, “Hey, shamus, come back and shmooze sometime! I could package a badass fuzz like you into a series!”

*

*

*

Running roof lights and siren, Lloyd made it back to Parker Center in a record twenty-five minutes. Cradling the gun box in the crook of his arm, he ran the three flights of stairs up to the offices of the Scientific Indentification Division, then pushed through a series of doors until he was face to face with Officer Artie Cranfield, who put down his copy of Penthouse and said, “Man, do you look jazzed.”

280

L.A. NOIR

Lloyd caught his breath and said “I am jazzed, and I need some favors. This box contains a gun. Can you dust it for latents real quick? After you do that, we need a ballistics comparison.”

“This is a suspected murder weapon?”

“No, but it’s a consecutive serial number to the gun I think is the liquor store murder weapon. Since the ammo in this box and the murder ammo is antique, probably from the same casting, I’m hoping that the rifling marks will be so similar that we can assume th—”

“We can’t make those kinds of assumptions,” Artie interjected. “That kind of theorizing won’t hold up in court.”

Lloyd handed Artie the gun box. “Artie, I’ll lay you twenty to one that this one gets settled on the street. Now will you please dust this baby for me?”

Artie took a pencil from his desk and propped open the lid of the box, then stuck another pencil in the barrel of the revolver, the end affixed to the upper hinge of the box, forming a wedge that held the gun steady. When the box and gun were secure, he took out a small brush and a vial of fingerprint powder and spread it over every blue steel, mother-of-pearl, and rosewood surface. Finishing, he shook his head and said, “Smooth glove prints on the grip, streak prints on the barrel. I dusted the box for kicks. Smudged latents that are probably you, glove prints that indicate that the box was carefully opened. You’re dealing with a pro, Lloyd.”

Lloyd shook his head. “I really didn’t think we’d find anything good. He stole the companion gun, but I figured he might have touched this one, too.”

“He did, with surgical rubber gloves.” Artie started to laugh. Lloyd said, “Fuck you. Let’s take this monster down to the tank and see how it kicks.”

Artie led Lloyd through the Crime Lab to a small room where water and tufted-cotton-layered ballistics tanks were sunk into the floor. Lloyd slipped three slugs into the .41’s chamber and fired into the top layer of water. There was the sound of muffled ricocheting, then Artie squatted and opened up a vent on the tank’s side. Withdrawing the “catcher” layer of cotton, he pulled out the three expended rounds and said, “Perfect. I’ve got a comparison microscope in my office. We’ll sign for the liquor store shells and run them.”

Lloyd signed a crime lab chit for the three rounds taken from the bodies of the liquor store victims and brought them, in a vinyl evidence bag, to