SUICIDE HILL
543
Re: Hawley/Issler–Eggers/Confrey Investigation
Gentlemen:
Having participated in every aspect of this investigation, and having read the case file a dozen times, I have come to one conclusion concerning the robbery gang’s access to information on the four victims, one supported by sound suppositions based on existing facts. We know that Robert Hawley and John Eggers, both middle-aged bank managers, are as yet not connected to each other in any discernible personal or professional way. Exhaustive record searches have turned up no common denominators other than:
1. Identical professions;
2. Long-term marriages that appear to be flourishing despite the fact that both men are engaged in extramarital affairs; 3. The said extramarital affairs themselves, both involving women in their late twenties.
The same absence of connections exists between the two women involved. All our victims live and work in the San Fernando Valley, yet interrogations and cross-checks of credit card records show that these two sets of clandestine lovers have not even dined in the same restaurants or drunk in the same bars as each other, at any time in the course of their affairs. The odds of a criminal gang divining the existence of two such potentially lucrative and jeopardy-prone liaisons separately is preposterous. I think there is a viable Hawley/Issler–Eggers/Confrey link, one that the four principals are either willfully or subconsciously suppressing. I believe all four principals should be induced to undergo rigorous polygraph tests, and, should that fail to reveal the link, Pentothal and/or hypnosis questioning—radical investigatory measures that I think are justified in this case. Also, since the basic facts of this series of crimes will be aired and published by the media late tomorrow (released by me in the interest of a public safety precaution), I deem it advisable that the four principals be taken into custody and held without media access on Monday morning, in order to avoid repercussions deriving from familial reaction to exposure of the two affairs. I undertook the media release on my own authority, realizing the full implications. Both my newspaper and television contacts told me they 544
L.A. NOIR
would include a plea for information along with their coverage, and pass said information along to us immediately.
Respectfully,
Lloyd W. Hopkins,
#1114,
Robbery/Homicide
Division
Finishing, Lloyd looked out his kitchen window and saw that it was dawn. Feeling the family angle gouging at him, he walked through the downstairs of the house that he once shared with four women; the four rooms he had apportioned himself in their absence. Every step made him both more exhausted and more aware of the need to work. Finally he gave in to the need and slumped into the big leather chair where he used to sit with Penny. No thoughts came, and neither did sleep. Staring at the telephone, hoping it would ring, supplied one minor brainstorm: Louie Calderon’s phone number or numbers. Lloyd called the top supervisor at Bell and gave his name and badge number, then feverishly asked his question. The woman came back with a sadly unfeverish answer: Louis Calderon of 2191 Tomahawk St., L.A., had one house and one business phone—with the same number. The red phone was total bootleg.
More numbing sleeplessness followed, temporarily interrupted by a call from Peter Kapek. The first surveillance shift had just reported that Louie Calderon had left his pad only once, at 6:00 A.M. He walked to the corner and bought a case of beer. “Beer-guzzling motherfucker,” Kapek said, promising to call with the next shift’s report.
Lloyd shaved, showered and forced himself to eat a packet of cold luncheon meat, chased with a pint of milk and a handful of vitamins. Still unable to sleep, he checked the mailbox for the previous day’s mail. There were three bills and a postcard from Penny, Fisherman’s Wharf on the front, her perfect script on the back: Daddy—Hang in. Roger’s dog peed on Mom’s beloved carpet. Rog refused to pay for the cleaning. Mom’s response: “Your father, despite his many faults, was housebroken and never cheap.” Hang in, Daddy. Love Love Love—Penguin.
Now Lloyd’s shot at blissful unconsciousness was broken up by an injection of hope. Feeling a second mental wind coming on, he dialed the home number of Judge Wilson D. Penzler, prepared to listen to a long right-wing