Sunset Swing (City Blues Quartet Book 4) Read online

  To Julia

  ‘In a feverish buying and selling of land, the coast has become utterly transformed and unrecognizable. Each succeeding house, bigger and grander, takes the view of its neighbors in a kind of unbridled competition . . . Developers have bulldozed the Santa Monicas beyond recovery . . . Once lost, paradise can never be regained.’

  LAWRENCE CLARK POWELL,

  UCLA LIBRARIAN, 1958

  ‘This is a landscape of desire . . . More than in almost any other major population concentration, people came to Southern California to consume the environment rather than to produce from it.’

  HOMER ASCHMANN, GEOGRAPHER, 1959

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  PART FIVE

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  PART SIX

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  PART SEVEN

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  PART EIGHT

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  PART NINE

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  PART TEN

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  PART ELEVEN

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  PART TWELVE

  CHAPTER 39

  PART THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  PART FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  PART FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  PART SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER 46

  PART SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  PART EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  PART NINETEEN

  CHAPTER 51

  PART TWENTY

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  PART TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  PART TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  PART TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  PART TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  AFTERWORD

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE

  ALONE TOGETHER

  December 1967

  Los Angeles Times

  LARGEST CIRCULATION IN THE WEST

  Friday Final

  FRIDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 15, 1967

  80 PAGES, DAILY, 10c

  ~

  LOCAL NEWS

  ~

  ‘NIGHT-SLAYER’ CLAIMS

  THIRD VICTIM

  By Nick Thackery

  Crime Correspondent

  SILVER LAKE – A man was found brutally slain yesterday afternoon in a ritualistic killing that police said may connect it to two earlier ‘Night-Slayer’ murders. LAPD Detectives identified the latest victim as Anthony Butterfield, 43, an engineer at Lockheed’s ‘Skunk Works’ aviation plant. A friend discovered Mr. Butterfield’s body late Thursday afternoon in the victim’s house.

  There were reports that the same crucifix symbol seen in the previous two murders was discovered scrawled in chalk inside the property, although police at the scene refused to confirm this. The only comment made by LAPD Detective Robert Murray on the matter was that the murder ‘seems ritualistic. Like the others.’ He also declined to comment on the exact nature of the death with an autopsy still pending.

  Newly installed county coroner, Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi, arrived in the early evening. He left an hour later, but refused to answer the gathered newsmen’s questions.

  ————

  Neighborhood in Shock

  ————

  Local residents clustered on their lawns throughout the evening and night hours, watching the police and other officials move about the victim’s house and garden. The scenes echoed those of the earlier two murders, with whole neighborhoods left fearing for their safety. Despite the fact the investigation has been underway since October, no one has been arrested, although police did state that several possible suspects are being sought.

  In the previous murders, no weapons or narcotics were found at the scene, and nothing appeared to be missing, suggesting robbery was not a motive. It is unclear if this latest slaying also fits that pattern.

  ————

  Victims so far

  ————

  1) Mark McNeal, 28, doctor at LA County General, murdered in his home in Manhattan Beach, on 15th October

  2) Danielle Landry, 23, actress, murdered in her apartment in West Hollywood, on 22nd November

  3) Anthony Butterfield, 43, engineer, murdered in his house in Silver Lake, in the early hours of Thursday morning, 14th December

  ————

  Jurisdictional Tangle

  ————

  This latest murder brings the total number of law enforcement agencies involved in the case to three, as each of the crimes was committed under a different jurisdiction – Mr. Butterfield’s murder in Silver Lake falling under the purview of the LAPD, Ms. Landry’s murder in West Hollywood under the Sheriff’s Department, and Mr. McNeal’s murder under the Manhattan Beach PD. Detectives at the scene declined to comment on the extent to which the three agencies were co-operating with each other.

  Please turn to Page B, Col. 3

  1

  Tuesday, December 19th

  LA was sunshine; LA was darkness. LA was the golden dream and the broken promise. It was freeways and gridlock, canyons and smog, stars ripped out of the sky and entombed in the sidewalks. It was seven million souls dreaming the dream, drifters and grifters and corrupt politicians. LA was where the white men came and saw there was no land left. To the cops it was a battleground, to the crooks it was a playground, to the residents of Watts it was ‘Lower Alabama’. Mississippi with palm trees. LA was where you could drive all day and never arrive, a city connected and dissected by freeways that writhed like serpents in the night. It was both despoiler and despoiled. LA grew fat on defense contracts and the Cold War death-drive, but fooled the world into thinking it was in the glamour biz. LA was the beautiful lie.

  And maybe this was why, like millions of others, Kerry Gaudet felt as if she knew LA before she ever set foot there. But when her sixty-dollar thrift flight flew in from Spokane and she stepped off the plane she sensed something more than what she’d been told by the TV shows and magazines; she sensed some friction in the air, some knife-edge, some madness. And she could tell the other passengers felt it, too. LA was as jumpy a
s Saigon.

  Kerry picked up her bag from the carousels, rented an Oldsmobile Cutlass from the Hertz concession and drove to the motel the travel agency had arranged. It was nestled amongst warehouses and machine shops in a bleak stretch of Culver City, just off the 405. Designed with an Indian theme, the motel’s concrete cabins were shaped like wigwams, so it looked as if a tribe of Sioux had set up camp right there in the shadow of the freeway.

  She changed out of her jungle fatigues, worked burn cream into her neck and chest, popped two codeine to tamp down the pain. She changed into capris and pumps and a cotton T-shirt which stuck to the burn cream. Even though there was a phone in her cabin, she left the motel to use the payphone across the road, calling the man her buddies back in Vietnam had told her about. He took her order and gave her a place to meet then hung up. She put down the receiver and a weight of fear flashed through her. Only now did she pray that she could trust the man.

  She crossed back to her wigwam and stopped a moment to stare at the giant billboard that loomed over the motel grounds, partially covering the roaring freeway behind. It depicted orange groves and oil derricks, idyllic beaches and gleaming freeways, the Hollywood sign and rolling green mountains. A couple rode horses through this landscape, and even though they were only shown in silhouette, Kerry got the sense that they were happy, healthy, well-adjusted. Underneath was the city’s municipal slogan: It All Comes Together in Los Angeles!

  A truck boomed past, making the billboard rattle.

  Back in her room, Kerry emptied her military bag and returned with it to the Cutlass. She took the Los Angeles road map from the glovebox and found where she was supposed to be going.

  She hooked north onto the 405. She watched the city flicker past, the moon bathing it in a chalky light. That frisson was in the air once more, that fever wind. She thought she could see grains of sand shooting through the night, tracing slipstreams in the dark.

  She took Sepulveda Pass through the mountains, out the other side, swung east and arrived at the meeting place – the parking lot of the Big Donut Drive-In on the corner of Kester Avenue and Sherman Way. The place was deserted, an asphalt wasteland interrupted only by the drive-in shack at its center, its roof adorned with a giant concrete donut. Kerry checked the time; she was early.

  She parked. She waited. She fretted. Under her T-shirt, the burn cream felt gummy and pricklish, the sensation bringing back nightmare echoes of the firestorm all those weeks ago. She readjusted her T-shirt and her skin peeled and stung. She studied her surroundings, feeling self-conscious, wondering if she looked suspicious.

  Her gaze landed on the giant concrete donut fixed into place above the shack. The hole in its center revealed a circle of night sky robbed of its stars by light pollution and actual pollution. Kerry stared at the concrete ring of nothingness and wondered what views she was missing out on. Somewhere beyond the smog the constellations were continuing their vast turn about Polaris, nebulas were shimmering, comets were journeying through the seamless dark.

  She switched on the radio and skipped through the dial till a song surfaced up out of the static – ‘Alone Together’ by Chet Baker – a slow, doleful jazz song her father used to listen to in the old family house in Gueydan, back when Kerry and Stevie were kids, before their mother ran away and their father waded off into the bayou and blew his brains out with an Ithaca Pump. Soon after Kerry and Stevie had been forced out of the family house, onto a long, painful trek through the children’s homes and orphanages of Vermilion Parish, Louisiana.

  And now Stevie had gone missing. Snatched into the darkness that hung about this strange, sprawling city. Her last living relative, with whom she’d been through hell.

  Chet Baker ended the song in a whisper, but the brackish memories of Louisiana continued to wash through Kerry’s mind, lapping with the slow relentlessness of bayou tides. Once more she thought she could see grains of sand, swirling about the asphalt now, fixing themselves for an instant into the glittering shape of a curl.

  A Lincoln Continental pulled into the lot. All black and silver trim, gliding like a shark. Kerry’s chest tightened. The Continental slow-rolled, turned. Its low beams swept the ground. She raised a hand warily. The car pulled into the space next to her and a man got out, hauled a duffel bag from the trunk. He walked round and got into Kerry’s front passenger seat.

  He was Japanese or Korean, maybe, wore a sky-blue suit with a pink carnation in his lapel, his hair side-parted and caked in styling wax that smelled something like her burn cream. His features were angular, severe, almost like they’d been carved by a scalpel.

  Kerry nodded at the man, tried to hide how tense she was. He nodded back and flicked his gaze to the scars on her face, surprised by her appearance. How often did he sell his wares to disfigured women barely out of their teens?

  ‘You found it OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure.’

  She looked around the empty parking lot and wondered why he’d asked to meet here. They couldn’t be more obvious if they tried.

  ‘I know the owners,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘And the donuts are good.’

  He opened up the duffel bag, took out an aluminium-framed Colt .38, a police-issue Ithaca Pump, cartons of bullets and shells. She checked the guns to make sure the serials had been removed, noticed how the sights on the front of the Colt had been filed down. She ran a hand over the pump, its barrel gleaming black. She thought briefly of her father, saw his body floating out there in the bayou still. She transferred everything to her military bag.

  ‘You got the other stuff, too?’ she asked.

  The man nodded. He rummaged around and pulled out two pill bottles with enough Dilaudid in them to keep the pain in check for the duration of her stay.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said.

  ‘You want anything else, I can get hold of it for you – pot, acid, coke, horse, ludes, benzos, meth, amyl, STP, MDA.’

  ‘Just these, please. How much do I owe you?’

  This was the moment she’d been worried about, but now she’d met the man she knew he wouldn’t try to rob her, or worse.

  He gave her the price. It was almost half the money she’d brought with her, but she took out her purse and paid without haggling. He nodded his thanks.

  ‘Well, I better be going,’ he said, opening the door. ‘You need anything more, just call the number. And stay safe, there’s a killer on the loose.’

  She frowned at this, but he didn’t stop to explain.

  2

  A Santa Ana was sweeping through the city that night. A desert wind. It started in the Mojave to the east of LA, picking up speed and sand particles and positive ions. It rushed over the mountains and rolled across the city’s great asphalt plains, powdering them with sand and a prickly, nerve-fraying heat. The crime rate went up. The suicides, too. Los Angeles teetered on a knife-edge.

  And so it was in Fox Hills, on its lonely streets, on the veranda of a house where Ida Young sat at a rickety fold-out table, hunched over a Remington typewriter, grappling with her memoirs. The going was especially tough that night, and Ida could tell it was because of the Santa Ana. She could sense its presence even before she heard it rattling down the street, before the coyotes started howling, before faraway hills began to glow, for as well as everything else, the Santa Ana set brushfires blazing.

  Ida knew. She’d been in the city in ’57, when the wind blew for fourteen days and reached hurricane force and people were ordered off the streets. And she’d been there in ’61 and ’64 when the wildfires destroyed Bel Air and Santa Barbara. And just the previous year a dozen men had died battling blazes across the San Gabriel Mountains.

  Tonight the city would stew in violence. And on Ida’s veranda in Fox Hills, the wind made the paper curl and the ink run dry. She thought about calling it a night and lying down to sleep, but the Santa Ana turned limbs restless, made breathing hard.

  She walked back into the bungalow to pour herself a whiskey and returned to the veranda
. In the distance, she spotted the lights of a car turning off toward Sepulveda Boulevard, its low beams tracing a path through the night, heading in her direction. It used to be on nights like this, when the city was sweltering under the itchy malevolence of the wind, Ida could expect to be summoned into the heart of the slaughter, to some scene of gruesome violence. But now it was for other people to pick through the gore. Now all she could do was wait it out.

  She tracked the lights as they glimmered and strobed then disappeared into the darkness once more. Ida sat down on the rocking chair just by the front door, leaned over to the side table and switched on the radio. It was tuned to a jazz station and it was playing a song she knew – ‘Alone Together’ by Chet Baker. A mournful song, all rainy days and hotel rooms and sorrow. She turned up the volume, listened to the beautiful, haunted trumpet and wondered what had happened to the beautiful, haunted man who played it all those years ago; if he was still alive, if he’d found some solace, if he’d gone the bitter way of so many other jazzmen.