SUICIDE HILL

625

Calderon slammed the tabletop with clenched fists. “Hopkins, nobody does something like that for nothing. What do you fucking want!”

Smiling, Lloyd took the survival script from his pocket and laid it on the table. “I don’t want anything. If you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll believe me.”

He stood up and stuck out his hand, and this time Calderon grasped it and said, “Crazy Lloyd Hopkins, Jesus Christ.”

Lloyd laughed. “I’m no savior. One more thing: have you got any idea where Joe would run to if he figured the heat was off?”

Likable Louie thought for a moment, then said, “The guitar shop on Temple and Beaudry. He’s sort of an amateur musician, and sooner or later he’ll show up there.” He put the two pieces of paper in his shirt pocket and added, “Memorize, then flush.”

Lloyd buzzed for the jailer to return. On his way out the door, he pointed a cocked-gun finger at Calderon and said, “Support your local police.”

Now the shit work.

Lloyd drove to the Western Costume Company and purchased a highquality black wig and full beard, then drove to Stan Klein’s Mount Olympus villa. A fresh morning newspaper indicated that the pad was untampered with since last night’s prowling with Rhonda. Steeling himself with a deep breath and a handkerchief around his nose, he picked the lock and walked in. The smell was awful, but not overpowering. Lloyd gave the corpse a cursory glance, then donned gloves and went to work. First he found the central heating and turned the temperature up to eighty-five, then he stripped to the waist and wiped all the downstairs touch and grab surfaces, visualizing the Klein/Rice/Garcia/Vanderlinden confrontation all the while, finally deciding that musician Joe never made it to the upper floor. The heat and the increased odor of decomposition it created were oppressive, and he gave up his wiping after a peremptory runthrough, leaving the video gadgets surrounding Klein’s body alone. With potential Garcia latents in all probability eliminated, Lloyd tossed the house for photographs of Stan Klein. Drenched in sweat, he opened drawers and tore through dressers; checked the bureaus in all three bedrooms. The upstairs yielded a half dozen Polaroids that looked recent, and the living room two framed portrait photos. Lloyd placed them by the banister, then took a pen and notebook paper from his jacket and jogged up to the master bedroom to write.

With the door shut and the air-conditioning on full, he wrote for three 626

L.A. NOIR

hours, detailing his investigation of the first two robbery/kidnaps, and Captain John McManus’s assigning of him to the Pico-Westholme robbery/

homicides. This account was factual. The rest of the report comprised a companion piece to his script for Louie Calderon, and stated how Calderon, under physical duress, gave the names Duane Rice, Bobby Garcia and Joe Garcia to Sergeants W.D. Collins and K.R. Lohmann, later partially recanting his statement to him, stating truthfully that Stanley Klein was the “third man,” and that he had named Joe Garcia for revenge on an old criminal grievance. Omitting mention of Rhonda Morrell, he concluded by stating that he had discovered Stan Klein’s body, and that a scrap of paper beside the corpse led him to Silver Foxes and his still unaccounted-for shootout with Duane Rice. Attributing his delay in reporting the body to a desire to “remain mobile and assist in the active investigation,” Lloyd signed his name and badge number, then sent up a prayer for lackluster forensic technicians to aid him in his lies.

The smell was now unbearable.

Lloyd turned off the air-conditioning and heat, then went downstairs and put on his shirt and jacket. Seeing that the body had bloated at the stomach and that the cheeks had rotted through to the gums, he tossed the wig and mustache at the pile of video tapes, then found a plugged-in stereo and turned on the FM full blast. The noise covered the three desecrated gunshots with ease, and he forced himself to look at the damage. As he hoped, the entry wounds got lost in the overall decomposition. Knowing he couldn’t bear to crawl under the house for the expended rounds, Lloyd turned off the music and sent up another prayer—this one a general mercy plea. Then he got out, hyperventilating when fresh, sane air hit his lungs.

*

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Now the loose ends.

Lloyd drove to Hollywood Station. In the parking lot, he put the report in an envelope and wrote Captain Arthur F. Peltz on the front, then left it with the desk officer, who told him that there was no word on the whereabouts of Duane Richard Rice, and that the dragnet was still in full force. The funereal air of the station was claustrophobic. From a street pay phone, Lloyd called the office of Nathan Steiner, Attorney at Law, and asked for a ballpark figure on a murder one defense. Steiner’s head clerk said 40K minimum. Hanging up, Lloyd figured that with a “police discount” he could swing it.

Now the scary part.