The Last Embrace Read online

  The girl threw her head back and laughed. “Heavens, no! I went through enough danger in the war to last a dozen lifetimes.”

  Harry wondered if she’d been a WAC or a WAVE. She had that confident, can-do aura.

  The gal smiled mysteriously. “I’m…doing research for a script, that’s all, Mr….?” She let the word wobble and her voice rose flirtatiously.

  “Harry. Harry Jack.”

  “And I’m…” she bit her lip and seemed to decide something. “I’m Lily Kessler. Pleased to meet you.”

  Harry found his hand caught in a grip that could have cracked Brazil nuts. His gaze fell on Lily Kessler’s watch, which said eight-thirty. An involuntary gasp went through him.

  “Come on, Mr. Jack, I didn’t squeeze that hard.”

  Harry explained that he had a job interview at the L.A. Times at nine a.m. It was a reactionary rag, but a job was a job and he didn’t want to be late. He asked for her number and was thrilled when she scribbled it on a napkin.

  Harry drove downtown in an exalted haze. His luck had changed. Suddenly he had the possibility of a staff job and romance too. By nine-fifteen, L.A. Times photo editor Richard Sykes was leafing through his portfolio, praising shots he liked, and Harry got a hopeful feeling.

  One of the managing editors walked in, an obstreperous, florid-faced man named Didrickson.

  “Who’s the kid?” Didrickson asked Sykes, inclining his chin.

  “This here is Harry Jack. A fine photographer. He’s looking for a job.”

  Didrickson took a long look at Harry.

  “You a kike?” the man asked.

  Harry got to his feet in a hurry. “What’s it to you?”

  “A Jew. That’s what you are.”

  Harry noted the half pint in the back of Didrickson’s pants, the smell of spirits on his breath. He felt the blood pounding at his temples as he packed up his portfolio.

  “’Cause the Times don’t hire Jews. Probably a Red, to boot. Sykes here ought to have saved you the trouble.”

  “Didrickson, you’re an asshole,” Sykes said. “Get the fuck out of my photo lab. Don’t you have any copy to mangle?”

  Harry tried to look down his nose at Didrickson, which was difficult, since the red-faced editor towered above him and outweighed him twice over. “Never mind, Mr. Sykes. The man’s a bigot and a bully. Someone ought to strap him down and read him his own paper’s coverage of the Nuremburg Trials. Maybe then he’d understand what this leads to. Didrickson, I wouldn’t take a job at your pig-swill paper if you offered it to me on a platter.”

  Didrickson didn’t wait for Harry to finish before he swung. The punch missed wildly. Harry stepped in and hit him in the jaw and the big man fell back and landed on his backside.

  There was the sound of breaking glass, then a piercing shriek as Didrickson levitated off the floor, cupping his posterior and screaming, “My ass!”

  His shrieks brought the Times security goons at a fast clip. By the time they finished roughing up Harry and threw him and his portfolio onto the sidewalk, his left eye was already swelling up and one leg throbbed. But Harry was more worried about his precious photos, which now lay scattered along Second Avenue. Training his good eye to the ground like a cyclops, he ran to collect them while the guards jeered. Down the street, two ladies dressed in black negligees leaned out the third-floor window enjoying a break before the lunch rush of reporters, cops, politicians, and businessmen.

  “Yoo-hoo, you missed one over there,” one called, pointing down at the street. “By the fire hydrant. Quick, before the car runs it over.”

  A grubby kid picked a photo out of the gutter and plucked off a dried bit of leaf.

  “Hey,” Harry called. “That there’s private property. Hand it over.”

  The kid froze and Harry cursed Didrickson, the guards, his sore leg, and his bad eye. The kid gave him the photo.

  “Thanks. You can move along now.”

  Instead, the kid picked up another photo and held it out.

  “I don’t need your help. So beat it.”

  Just then Harry saw a city bus bearing down on one of his best photos—Mayor Fletcher Bowron, tie loosened, hat askew, celebrating his latest election win. He lunged for it, but invisible arms yanked him back.

  “Why, you…” he said, arms flailing. His dander up, the guards’ laughter ringing in his ears, the managing editor’s insults still smarting his pride, he turned and swung. An absurdly light figure landed with a limp flop on the sidewalk. Too late, Harry realized he’d coldcocked the kid. As he squinted to inspect the damage, a black car whooshed past. He hadn’t seen it coming because of his bad eye. Just then the bus arrived, destroying his prize photo.

  Harry groaned. “Kid,” he said, shaking the inert form. “You okay, kid? Jesus, I’m sorry.”

  He looked up and beckoned the guards.

  A uniformed man stepped out of his box and spat. “What do you think this is, the Union Rescue Mission?”

  Cursing, Harry scooped up the kid and stalked back to the twenty-five-cent auto-pay lot where he’d left his car. He removed the kid’s knapsack and dumped the unconscious body in the backseat. Light as a puppy, with a musty smell and gray skin. Twelve years old, tops, Harry figured, as he placed a thumb against the inside of the twiglike wrist, feeling for a pulse.

  Harry’s police radio crackled. The body of a young woman had been found in a ravine below the Hollywood sign. Holy shit, that would bring every news photog in town running. What if the Dahlia’s killer had struck again? That sicko had never been caught. If Harry managed to get off some good shots, he’d have every paper in the country screaming for those photos.

  Harry cursed some more. He knew he should take the kid to a hospital. But then he’d miss the shot.

  “I’m sorry, junior, but I gotta do this.”

  Jumping into the driver’s seat, Harry hauled ass across town, ear cocked to the radio for more details. When he hit Hollywood, Harry turned north and nosed the car up the narrow windy streets of Whitley Heights that the movie stars liked so much. When he saw an LAPD Crime Lab truck and a coroner’s van, he pulled over. The crew was unloading equipment.

  In the backseat, Harry saw the kid’s narrow chest moving up and down. Grabbing his camera, he ran after the tech men. The fifty-foot letters towered white against the sun-scorched hillside. Harry could see the scaffolding behind the sign, heard the structure creak in the breeze. On the hillside, men were loading something onto a gurney. Damn. She was covered up. A uniformed officer appeared. He flipped his baton sideways and stood, chest thrust out in a belligerent manner.

  “You need to wait here.”

  Harry said okay and snapped a few photos, even though the forensics guys were too far away for him to see much. Hurry, he thought, checking over his shoulder for the newshounds he knew would arrive any minute.

  The grim procession wound its way up the ravine, past the gnarled grace of manzanita and creosote, the metallic blue of long-tongued century plants, until they reached Harry. After several snaps of the bundled body, he stepped back respectfully. One of the pallbearers was a tech guy Harry knew from the police bars he patronized.

  “Hey, Mack, wouldja mind…?” Harry pantomimed pulling the sheet back.

  “Not gonna happen right now. Sorry,” Mack said. Harry dropped to his knees and took a few more shots, then followed the cortege along the fire road to the coroner’s vehicle, back doors open to receive the body.

  By this time, reporters had arrived.

  “We got a jumper or a homicide?” one called out.

  “If she took a dive,” said a KNX reporter, “then my money’s on the D. Nice and roomy up there. Who’ll give me twenty-five dollars on the D?”

  “The Y,” another voice said. “Thirty on the Y.”

  The techs began loading the body and a cry went up, all bets momentarily forgotten.

  “No fair. C’mon, fellas, give us a peek.”

  The techs stopped and turned to the commandin
g officer.

  “All right,” the LAPD sergeant said. “Let’s hold it right there a minute.”

  The techs put the stretcher down and lit up cigarettes. The sergeant counted the waiting journalists.

  “Ten dollars apiece and she’s yours,” he announced. “Smithy will bring around the collection plate.”

  A patrol officer upended his police hat and circulated among the flacks, who grumbled but stuffed in bills. Then the unveiling took place, with so many cameras going off at once that Harry got a prickly, panicky feeling in his scalp that he was back in the war.

  The vic’s face and neck were grotesquely swollen, bloodied, and scraped, her head crooked at an unnatural angle. The chestnut hair was matted with dirt and leaves, her clothes torn, bits of brush embedded in the fabric. Decomposition was well under way, and the body gave off a sickening odor. Even so, Harry could see this had been a pretty girl, with a smart figure and a lush mouth that even now was faintly outlined in red lipstick.

  “Got an ID for us, Sarge?” he called out.

  “She’s Jane Doe Number Fifteen for now, boys,” the sergeant said, covering the dead girl to provide a semblance of dignity. But he yanked the shroud too high over her head, exposing her legs.

  “Wait a minute. Would you look at that shoe,” someone yelled.

  Harry followed the long coltlike legs down—the girl’s skirt was hiked above the knee—and saw a dirt-streaked, high-heeled red patent leather shoe still strapped to one foot, which swelled over the ankle strap like a loaf of rising bread. The other foot was bare.

  “Where’s the other shoe, Sarge?” came a voice from the crowd.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, boys.”

  “Not already bagged and tagged?”

  “Negative.”

  “You’ve canvassed the area?”

  “Affirmative.”

  There was a hum of excitement as the full import hit them—here was the detail that would send papers flying off the newsstands.

  “So it’s Cinderella’s Slipper, then,” a man called out.

  “The Princess and the Missing Slipper,” said another.

  “Red Cinderella,” came a third, the call and response heating up as the reporters tried out, then discarded various names. Because every journo worth his salt knew that a lurid death required an equally lurid moniker.

  “Not Red Cinderella,” someone said, “or everyone’ll think it’s a HUAC thing.”

  “This look like the Dahlia killer’s handiwork?” asked a female voice from the back. Harry recognized Florabel Muir, a spitfire for the Mirror.

  An excited murmur rose from the crowd. “Good thinking, Florabel. Is our boy back in action?”

  “We don’t know that it’s a murder yet, gentlemen. And let me point out that she’s in one piece.”

  “Was she raped?” someone asked.

  “We’ll leave that to the coroner.”

  The journalistic hive brain began to hum with purpose again.

  “We need a name,” one said. “Something like Dahlia.”

  “Smithy, be a good fellow and pick us a flower off that bush, tuck it behind her ear, and she’ll be the Red Bougainvillea,” said another.

  “Red. Crimson. Scarlet. How about Scarlet Sandal?” a third voice said.

  A roar of approval went up for the Scarlet Sandal and everybody wrote it down.

  “So come on, someone did her, right, Sarge?” a man called out.

  The sergeant scratched his chin. “There’s severe bruising, possible ligature marks on her neck.”

  There was momentary quiet. Then a buzz of excitement.

  “Strangled?” a man said, whistling. “We got ourselves a Hollywood Strangler?”

  “Let’s leave pronouncements to the coroner.”

  “Which letter was she found under, Sarge?”

  The sergeant stared for a long moment. “The D,” he said finally.

  “What’d I tell ya?” a voice crowed. “You owe me twenty-five dollars.”

  “Banyan, you disgust me,” Florabel Muir said. She turned to the sergeant. “So the vic wasn’t killed elsewhere and dumped in the ravine?”

  “We’ll have more in a few days, folks,” the sergeant said. He signaled the techs, who threw down their cigarettes, ground them out with their heels—it was fire season, after all—and walked back to the gurney.

  The photogs took a final set of snaps as the body was loaded into the van. Harry snapped away too, wondering who he could sell the photos to. He didn’t see the Daily Mirror photographer, a roustabout named Larry Bostone. Inquiring, Harry learned the man was sleeping off a drunk in a whorehouse in the sticks of Ventura Boulevard. Ka-ching. Harry heard the sound of a cash register.

  The kid was sitting in Harry’s backseat, eating an apple. When he saw Harry, he froze.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you, son. I owe you an apology. You saved me from getting run over back there at the Times.”

  Harry got in the car, the film itching a hole in his pocket. “You really better?”

  The kid nodded.

  “Good, because we’ve got a little errand to run. Hold on, we need to fly.”

  Fifteen minutes and an inch of tire rubber later, Harry pulled into the Mirror’s parking lot.

  “Back in a flash,” he told the kid, who watched beadily from the rear seat but said nothing. Harry hoped he’d be gone when he returned.

  Taking the stairs three a time, Harry burst into the Mirror’s photo lab. Photo editor Steve Chawkins was screaming into the phone.

  “What the hell do you mean, he’s on assignment on Ventura Boulevard and you can’t reach him? Excuse my French, Mrs. Bostone, but this is the last straw. Tell him not to bother to come in to work tomorrow. He’s fired.”

  The photo editor threw down the phone and Harry popped the film out of his camera and held it up.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Chawkins. I got it. Here it is.”

  Chawkins was cross-eyed with rage.

  “Here’s what, you simpleton?”

  “Film of the dead girl in Hollywood. It’s all here.” Harry was so excited he could barely get the words out.

  Chawkins snatched the film out of Harry’s hands, ran to the darkroom, and tossed it to a technician. Stepping back out, he said, “How much do you want for it?”

  “Um, a hundred dollars?” Harry closed his eyes in terror at the unmitigated gall of asking for so much money.

  “Fifty,” Chawkins snapped.

  “Seventy-five.”

  “It better be good.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Lily opened one eye, saw buttery light filtering through the bedroom window, and knew it was past noon. She rolled over and promptly fell onto the floor. She’d forgotten the strange bed, the rickety frame. For a moment, she lay there, stunned. Then a sense of urgency seized her. She had a lot to do today.

  Grabbing her toiletries, she headed for the bathroom, then squealed as her bare foot landed on something furry and wet just outside her door. It was the small, bloody haunch of a mouse. Ugh. Who’d left this nasty calling card outside her door? Mrs. Potter’s cat?

  Once she was dressed and groomed, she went down to the kitchen, which was deserted. The icebox held Carnation cottage cheese, fried chicken, and a bottle of milk. Peeling off the foil top, she chugged in a most unladylike fashion.

  “Would you like to contribute to the dairy fund?” Mrs. Potter stood in the doorway.

  Lily blushed and reached for her purse. Then she mentioned the mouse remains.

  “Caligro’s a good ratter,” Mrs. Potter said, spooning chunks of meat and congealed fat into the animal’s dish. “Come get your reward, my pet.”

  A queasy feeling settled over Lily and she hurried from the house. The day was half gone. She’d grab a quick bite at the drugstore, then call Max Vranizan at RKO. And she’d ask the police about the odd little gangster from last night.

  “Extra, extra,” a newsboy shouted as she reached the corner. People crowded around, pushing an
d shoving, eyes darting and eager. “Here ya go, folks. Read all about it. Strangled girl found in Hollywood Hills. Read all about it.”

  With a sense of foreboding, Lily tapped the shoulder of a gray-haired lady who’d managed to get a paper.

  “May I see?”

  Obligingly, the woman held it up.

  “Body of Strangled Young Woman Found Below Hollywood Sign,” the enormous headline read. “Search Continues for Scarlet Sandal’s Identity and Her Killer.”

  A girl’s face stared from the front page, puffy and waxy and rigid, with the closed lids and blurry impersonality of death, her hair askew, makeup smudged, cheeks scraped. Add in the blotchy ink and rough newsprint, and it looked very little like the artfully lit glamour shots of Kitty Hayden that Mrs. Croggan had shown Lily. Still, there were undeniable similarities to Joseph. The large generous mouth, high forehead, and wide-spaced eyes.

  “Oh god,” Lily said, as the world tilted and spun. She staggered backward. At that moment, a truck screeched up to the newspaper stand and burly arms tossed out two stacks of papers so fresh they still reeked of newsprint. Lily grabbed blindly to brace herself, the stack wobbled, and she tumbled off the curb, the papers falling on top of her.

  The truck, which was already pulling out, swerved to avoid hitting her. Someone lay on the horn and a man leaned out the window.

  “Jesus, lady, do you want to get killed?”

  The newsstand employee helped her up, then stared dolefully at his scattered goods. Lily helped him pick up the mess, then bought every paper the guy had—the Mirror, the Herald, the World, the Hollywood Citizen News, the Times, the Examiner.

  “They’re going like hotcakes,” the man intoned. He had an Eastern European accent, Romanian, she thought. Unwilling to accept that the dead girl might be Kitty, Lily instead recalled the night at Bucharest’s Athénée Palace when Joseph had clipped amber teardrop earrings to her lobes and asked her to marry him. Lily had rejoiced, then, to think of the family she’d be joining. Now she could only hope the blurry newsprint had played a cruel trick.