Los Angeles Noir - Denise Hamilton [3]
Tobar’s story is set in working-class East Hollywood and his Armenianand Mexican-American detective duo reminisce about the moldering movie star photos of famous alums at their alma mater, Hollywood High. When the authors in this collection write about The Industry, they refract it through an oblique angle—Janet Fitch’s ’70s actress hiding away in a decaying Los Feliz mansion; Scott Phillips’s sexy Valley cocktail waitress whose claim to fame lies in the title, “The Girl Who Kissed Barnaby Jones”; Morrison’s security chief for the studios who quashed the story about the producer bludgeoned by his own jewel-encrusted dildo.
These are stories that begin after the tourists go home and the klieg lights turn off. It’s the city examining itself through a gritty, glamorous, tawdry, and desperate lens and finding grifters, gamblers, newly arrived immigrants, thirdgeneration bluebloods, confused kids, millionaires, has-been actors, murderers, meth addicts, and traitors of the heart.
It’s impossible to distill L.A. into one noir story. That’s why we’ve brought you seventeen. Los Angeles Noir creates a kaleidescopic template for what it means to live and die in L.A. today. Read. Shudder. Enjoy.
Denise Hamilton
Los Angeles
March 2007
PART I
POLICE & THIEVES
MULHOLLAND DIVE
BY MICHAEL CONNELLY
Mulholland Drive
Burning flares and flashing red and blue lights ripped the night apart. Clewiston counted four black-and-whites pulled halfway off the roadway and as close to the upper embankment as was possible. In front of them was a firetruck and in front of that was a forensics van. There was a P-one standing in the middle of Mulholland Drive ready to hold up traffic or wave it into the one lane that they had open. With a fatality involved, they should have closed down both lanes of the road, but that would have meant closing Mulholland from Laurel Canyon on one side all the way to Coldwater Canyon on the other. That was too long a stretch. There would be consequences for that. The huge inconvenience of it would have brought complaints from the rich hillside homeowners trying to get home after another night of the good life. And nobody stuck on midnight shift wanted more complaints to deal with.
Clewiston had worked Mulholland fatals several times. He was the expert. He was the one they called in from home. He knew that whether the identity of the victim in this case demanded it or not, he’d have gotten the call. It was Mulholland, and the Mulholland calls all went to him.
But this one was special anyway. The victim was a name and the case was going five-by-five. That meant everything about it had to be squared away and done right. He had been thoroughly briefed over the phone by the watch commander about that.
He pulled in behind the last patrol car, put his flashers on, and got out of his unmarked car. On the way back to the trunk, he grabbed his badge from beneath his shirt and hung it out front. He was in civies, having been called in from offduty, and it was prudent to make sure he announced he was a detective.
He used his key to open the trunk and began to gather the equipment he would need. The P-one left his post in the road and walked over.
“Where’s the sergeant?” Clewiston asked.
“Up there. I think they’re about to pull the car up. That’s a hundred thousand dollars he went over the side with. Who are you?”
“Detective Clewiston. The reconstructionist. Sergeant Fairbanks is expecting me.”
“Go on down and you’ll find him by the—Whoa, what is that?”
Clewiston saw him looking at the face peering up from the trunk. The crash test dummy was partially hidden by all the equipment cluttering the trunk, but the face was clear and staring blankly up at them. His legs had been detached and were resting beneath the torso. It was the only way to fit the whole thing in the trunk.