the Delta Star (1983) Read online

  Then he saw his face in the reflection of the window glass. In the opaque reflection he had eyes like The Gooned-out Vice Cop. Eyes like bullet holes. He was starting to feel inexplicably scared when Chip Muirfield, with a grin as wide as a surfboard, said, "Don't you want to watch her being posted?"

  "No, you go ahead and enjoy yourself," Mario Villalobos said, "but don't get too close."

  The L. A. county coroner had recently been the object of disciplinary action and was criticized for a backlog of bodies. As a result, the pathologists were doing maximum autopsies these days. The last postmortem that Mario Villalobos attended had been on a victim who was head shot. Formerly, a cop could hang around the length of time it took to smoke a few cigarettes, waiting until the pathologist popped the slug from the corpse's skull. Now the cops had to stand around for two hours. The pathologists, not wanting any more criticism and complaints, were going at it swashbuckler style. They were flashing more steel than the Three Musketeers, everyone said. Even for a head shot they'd open up that stiff from head to toe. Every corpse became a kayak these days, which didn't displease the shoulder holster kids.

  This was only the third autopsy that Chip Muirfield had ever witnessed. He enjoyed each one more than the last. Mario Villalobos thought that if Chip started liking them any better, the kid might start moonlighting at Forest Lawn. The pathologist and technician were trying like hell to get this one zipped in time to watch Days of Our Lives.

  The former Western Avenue prostitute, who had delighted Chip Muirfield by dying not in Hollywood Division where she worked but in Rampart Division where she lived, was not broken up too badly by the fall from the roof, at least not her face. Mario Villalobos thought of the early mug shot of this face now peeled inside-out like a grapefruit. A natural blonde, fair and slight; he wondered if she drove them wild when she got that tattoo of the man-in-the-moon. It was on the inside of her left thigh, high enough to have been a very painful job. In death she looked thirty-five years old. Her identification showed her to be twenty-two.

  Mario Villalobos was one of those homicide dicks who somehow revert to uncoplike sentimentality during mid-life crisis. That is, Mario Villalobos, like his old partner Maxie Steiner, gradually came to resent needless mutilation of corpses by cutlass kids who, quite naturally, are extremely unsentimental about carcasses in which detectives have a proprietary interest.

  What Mario Villalobos didn't see while he was roaming the autopsy room, thinking of how dangerous it is to go to The House of Misery every single night, was Chip Muirfield's interest in the man-in-the-moon tattoo high up on Missy Moonbeam's torn and fractured femur, close to the inn-of-happiness which the bored pathologist figured was really what was interesting the morbid young cop.

  It was a professional tattoo. The man-in-the-moon had winked one eye at Chip Muirfield and with the other glanced up at the blond pubis of Missy Moonbeam. It was a very cute idea, Chip Muirfield thought, but the leg was so destroyed by the fall that the upper thigh was ripped open and hanging loose.

  "I wonder if the photographer thought to shoot a picture of that tattoo?" he mused aloud to the pathologist, who shrugged and said, "What for?"

  "Identification," Chip Muirfield said without conviction.

  "I thought you already knew who she was," the pathologist said.

  "We're not certain," Chip Muirfield lied. "I wish it weren't so damaged around that tattoo. It's all ragged and bloody and it's hard to see. Snip it off there and I'll have the photographer come and shoot a close-up of it that we can use."

  The pathologist shrugged again and sliced away the flap of tattooed flesh and placed it on the steel table. Chip Muirfield could hardly contain himself. He saw that Mario Villalobos was off down the hall. This might top all the macabre gags that old homicide detectives pulled on each other, if Chip Muirfield could think of something really funny to do with the slice of tattooed flesh which he slipped into a small evidence envelope.

  While Melody Waters roamed the autopsy room enjoying the show on the other tables, Mario Villalobos returned and noticed that Chip Muirfield was so intensely interested he looked ready to crawl inside Missy Moonbeam.

  "If I were you, Chip, I'd stand back a bit," Mario Villalobos said, lighting a cigarette, promising himself to cut down before he ended up under the swashbuckler's knife.

  Chip Muirfield was so enchanted by the ragged bloody shell that used to be a girl from Omaha that he ignored the older detective's admonition.

  Mario Villalobos looked at the butter-brickie three-piece suit worn by Chip Muirfield, hesitated a moment, and then said, "Even Boris Karloff wasn't so eager, Chip. If I were you I'd step back just a bit."

  But Chip Muirfield didn't seem to hear him, so Mario Villalobos went for coffee. The pathologist pulled off his gloves and called it a wrap. The technician looked up at the clock and ... Jesus Christ! Days of Our Lives was going to start in three minutes!

  That did it. He reached for the faucet over the gut pan to get this baby zipped. He wasn't paying any attention to a young surfer-cop in a butter-brickie suit. He was eying that clock like a death-row convict and he cranked the faucet full blast. The water hit the gut pan with a crash. And Chip Muirfield was wearing Missy Moonbeam.

  His butter-brickie three-piece suit was decorated by a geyser of blood. A piece of Missy Moonbeam was plastered to his necktie. Another little slice of her hit him on the lapel. A swatch of Missy Moonbeam's purple gut plopped on his shoulder and oozed like a snail. But worst of all for Chip, who was yelling and cursing the technician-who couldn't care less-Chip Muirfield had a wormy string of Missy Moonbeam's intestine dangling from his sunburned surfer's nose.

  Chip Muirfield and Melody Waters couldn't come along on the trip that Mario Villalobos made to the Wonderland Hotel that afternoon. Chip and Melody had to drive straight to Chip's apartment in Venice so that Chip could change his blood-spattered clothes. Then they hastily dropped off the butter-brickie suit at a local dry cleaner's.

  When the pants presser who was working the counter saw all the bloodstains, he said, "My gosh, what happened?"

  To which a very cross and cranky Chip Muirfield replied, "I cut myself shaving. Just write the frigging thing up. I'm in a hurry."

  Chip Muirfield's smart mouth ruined the remainder of the pants presser's miserable day. The pants presser was getting sick and tired of chemicals and starch and burning his fingers on the hot iron and he didn't need some prick poor-mouthing him just because he asked about some bloodstains. Suddenly the pants presser found a little envelope in the pocket of the suit. It had something soft in it. Maybe a few bucks folded up? Serve the prick right if the pants presser nicked him for it, which is what he decided to do. He looked around slyly and tore open the envelope and ...

  "Get over here right away!" the pants presser screamed into the phone to the desk cop at Venice Police Station. "Get the homicide detectives! Call the press room! Get the six o'clock news team alerted!" Jesus Christ, he better shave and change his shirt before the television crew got here!

  The Venice detectives arranged a stakeout for that evening at the address given by one Chip Muirfield, who was a new tenant and unknown to his neighbors. When the young man finally showed up with a tipsy Melody Waters, who had told her accountant husband that she had to work all night on a murder case, they were jerked out of Chip's car by four detectives with shotguns and spreadeagled across the hood of the car by a big cop who got fairly frantic when he discovered that their man was carrying a gun.

  The upshot was that Chip and Melody eventually got to identify themselves and explain the piece of Missy Moonbeam that Chip carried in his pocket. They made peace with most of the cranky detectives who had thought they had an L. A. version of the Yorkshire Ripper, but they didn't make peace with the big detective.

  When Chip got yanked out of the car by the big detective, he resented being spread over the hood of his car, and yelled, "Knock it off, asshole! Do you know who I am?" And he made the big, big mistake of trying to
shove the detective at the same moment that the detective saw that his man was carrying a gun.

  Chip found himself on the wrong end of the controversial police choke hold which the L. A. police chief had promised would be curtailed when he made his famous statement about the veins and carotid arteries of some blacks failing to open like those of normal people.

  The choking of Chip Muirfield was good for lots of carotid artery jokes around The House of Misery for several weeks. They would say things like, "It proves that the veins and arteries of surfers open just like those of normal people."

  For several days Chip Muirfield had a little surfer imprinted on his neck from the charm he wore on his gold chain. Otherwise he looked like normal people. And it was a very unhappy Chip Muirfield who said goodnight to Melody Waters that night and sent her home to her accountant husband because Chip was too sore and shaken to put a move on her. It was a sad young cop who painfully swallowed, and gave Melody Waters a wistful little kiss as they stood for a moment heart to heart, shoulder holster to shoulder holster.

  The pants presser reluctantly agreed to give Chip Muirfield a freebie on the dry cleaning after the outraged young detective threatened to sue for physical and mental anguish. It was an unhappy affair for all concerned. The pants presser didn't get on the six o'clock news, and Chip Muirfield, still a very young cop, for the first time began to wonder if anything is ever as it seems.

  ***

  One of the tiny vagaries of fortune, which veteran policemen like Mario Villalobos strongly suspect decide great events, was about to occur while The Bad Czech stuffed his face in the dining room of the Pusan Gardens, a Korean restaurant near Olympic Boulevard.

  The Bad Czech was, to the chagrin of the chef, downing his second order of volcanic kimchi cabbage pickle, and dusting off a load of yukkive raw beef which had been meant to feed six people at an intimate party that night. The Korean chef was so mad that he dumped enough hot sauce on that minced beef to blister porcelain, but all it did was make The Bad Czech sweat like a whore in a hot tub and order more Japanese beer, which stimulated his appetite.

  The chef conceded that it was hopeless. The restaurant owner insisted that the beat cops, who so sympathized with his "police problem," were worth a few free snacks-which turned into these gastronomical orgies, causing the chef again to run out to the market in Korea Town before he could get the menu ready for the evening.

  Between huge bites of red snapper and bean cakes and bottles of Japanese beer, The Bad Czech sang for his supper, as it were, commiserating with every waiter and busboy within earshot who couldn't have cared less if. the cops threw their boss in jail for life.

  "I think it's a damn shame the vice cops waste their time hasslin the good people who run clean establishments like this one," The Bad Czech announced theatrically.

  "Uh huh," Cecil Higgins mumbled, trying to quench the flames with water, since the Japanese beer didn't seem to be doing it for him.

  The Korean dilemma, the dilemma of many bar owners from the Orient, was that they could not convince the police department that their customs were not a threat to public safety. And that what is at most unsavory in America is commonplace in Seoul and in most of the rest of the Orient and southeast Asia.

  "It's a damn shame that in this day and age the vice squad still wastes time and money and manpower to infiltrate fine places like this and pose as customers just to write a few lousy tickets to B-girls," The Bad Czech said for the benefit of a nighttime cocktail lounge B-girl who doubled during the afternoon as a food waitress.

  She knew that the opinions of a lowly public servant like the monster beat cop carried about as much clout with the chief of police as the message in a fortune cookie. Still, she went along with the charade with Korean forbearance.

  "Yes yes," she said. "Too bad."

  "I mean, look at it this way, Cecil," The Bad Czech said to his partner, who was wiping the dripping perspiration from his face with a napkin. "The vice squad spends maybe a hundred bucks buy in drinks in the bar here, pretendin to be customers, until they finally get one poor little hostess to ask them to buy her a drink. And then they go, 'Dum, de dum dum!' and pull out the shield and write her a ticket for solicitin drinks. Big deal. They protected the public morality? I ask you, is that police work in this day and age? What with the streets overrun with maniacs and insane people and murderers and rapists and all the other things we owe to the Democrats? I ask you."

  "Uh uh," Cecil Higgins mumbled, wondering if a glass of milk would put out the fire.

  "It's just the Oriental culture, for chrissake! They like to come into a place and meet pretty girls and they don't mind if the pretty girls ask them for a drink and tell them how manly they are. Hell, I used to love that when I was in Nam and Thailand and Cambodia and Japan. That's what it's all about."

  "Uh huh." Cecil Higgins had his lines down pat.

  "The city licenses taxi dancers. Round-eyed taxi dancers. I think they dump on these people cause they're foreigners."

  The Bad Czech looked toward the waiter clearing the next table and the waiter nodded at the monster cop and said, "Light on," which The Bad Czech understood to be "Right on," but which were the only two words the Korean knew, and he didn't have the faintest idea what the monster cop was babbling about and wished he'd get the hell out.

  It was tough getting The Bad Czech to stop singing for his supper. When the boss was here, his expressions of sympathy and understanding with the Asian plight might have gone on for half an hour. But he was tired and it was time to close the show, which always ended with The Bad Czech making a gesture to pay the bill. Of course it was always refused, with lots of bogus smiles and bowing by long-suffering people who wished the boss would dump these two big dummies and start concentrating on bribing politicians and other people who counted.

  Unlike Cecil Higgins, who in a more traditional fashion would halfheartedly reach in the pocket with a mumbled, "Whadda we owe ya?" The Bad Czech had panache, and took the trouble to display his credit card, saying, "How much for the lovely chow?"

  The employees would grin through tight flesh and say, "No, no. On house. Come back soon."

  And The Bad Czech would look surprised and say, "Really? Why, that's awful nice. Thanks a lot. And if I can ever help ya in any way ..."

  But then a singular thing happened. Not singular in itself but, as he later would consider it, something that helped Mario Villalobos come to the inescapable and troubling conclusion that most Big Events are decided by the falling of less than a sparrow. Of a leaf, perhaps.

  Or in this case, of a chopstick.

  When The Bad Czech was doing his act with the credit card he stepped on a dropped chopstick. The chopstick lodged between the ripples of The Bad Czech's ripple-soled shoes. The chopstick clicked along the parqueted floor when The Bad Czech took a step. He looked down and tried to kick the chopstick out of his ripple sole. The stubborn chopstick became lodged more securely.

  "I got a chopstick in my shoe," The Bad Czech complained to Cecil Higgins, who was belching lava.

  "Oooohhhh, I knowcd we shoulda had gumbo," Cecil Higgins moaned. "This Ko-rean soul food gives me heartburn."

  But The Bad Czech wasn't commiserating with Cecil Higgins. He was dancing around in the darkened cocktail lounge on one foot, bitching and groaning and trying to extract the stubborn chopstick.

  "I can't get it out!" The Bad Czech cried.

  Cecil Higgins belched fearfully loud, moaned, and said, "Gud-damn, Czech. I know it ain't your day but I can't help ya with this one. Ya gotta take chopsticks outa your own shoes. My stomach hurts too much to be takin chopsticks outa anybody's fuckin shoes."

  The Bad Czech sat down crankily and took off his size 15 EEE shoe, and broke off the chopstick trying to dislodge it from the rippled rubber, and finally grabbed a soup spoon and dislodged the broken shaft of the stubborn chopstick.

  And after he did, he got up grumpily and picked up an American Express card which he had apparently dropped on
the floor while he was dancing around on one foot. He had an American Express card because Karl Maiden played a cop in their commercials.

  Except that he hadn't dropped his credit card. It was still on the table where he had put it when he started fretting about the chopstick. The Bad Czech's credit card was later thrown into the lost-and-found drawer by the busboy who eventually cleaned and reset the table.

  Mario Villalobos would come to understand and explain to The Bad Czech how it really worked, the thing called destiny. How an insignificant event could connect with something so great, something that signified for some men the ultimate honor that one human being can bestow upon another. And for some men even more than that.

  The Bad Czech, despite the fact that he wondered if it was really real, would become linked with a double murder and a Nobel Prize for science.

  And it happened because he mistakenly picked up a credit card from the floor. It happened, in the final analysis, because he had a stubborn chopstick in his shoe.

  Chapter FOUR

  THE SPIKE

  Dilford and dolly, The Personality Team, constantly sulked while on patrol, turning one persecuted face to the other persecuted face only when it was absolutely necessary.

  It hadn't been easy for Dolly, to adjust to an out-and-out chauvinist like Dilford. It was bad enough with the run-of-the-mill chauvinists who couldn't adapt to the idea of females on patrol even though women were now undergoing academy training identical to the men's.

  Dilford was one of those who never tired of short-people jokes when he had a male audience.

  "Hey, Rumford," Dilford might yell to one of his pals from the morning watch, "bet you thought I was working alone. I got a partner: Too-tall Dolly. Stick up your shotgun, Dolly, so Rumford can see you."