My Dark Places - James Ellroy [84]
Charlie Brown’s swung hard. The waitresses were always dodging passes. Bunny Krauch got pawed and groped every night.
This Don guy was the King of the Gropers. He worked as a bug exterminator. He was unattractive and well into his ’50s. The waitresses loathed him. He became Bunny Krauch’s lover. Nobody could figure them out.
Don was 20 years older than Bunny. Don was disgusting. Don was a flagrant ass-pincher and a drunk.
The affair went on for three years. Don and Bunny met at a motel on Admiralty Way. They met at Charlie Brown’s and other restaurants in the Marina. They were not discreet. Bunny’s friends knew the score. Robert Krauch did not.
Robert got a vasectomy. Bunny said she wanted to stay on the pill. The pill regulated her period.
Robert did not get the picture.
Bunny died in her car. It was parked in a cul-de-sac near Charlie Brown’s. Somebody strangled her. They tied two Charlie Brown’s napkins around her neck and pulled. Somebody raped her and sodomized her. Her dress was pushed up and her blouse was ripped open. She left Charlie Brown’s at midnight and died soon after. She died in her Charlie Brown’s outfit.
A private patrol guard found her. Sheriff’s Homicide took over.
Don had an alibi. Robert Krauch said he was asleep at home when the murder occurred. A witness saw a man on a bike near the crime scene. Robert Krauch said it wasn’t him. Robert Krauch said he didn’t know his wife was cheating on him.
The patrol guard was a red-hot suspect. A woman said the man and his cousin raped and sodomized her two years ago. It was her word against theirs. The cops believed them. The matter went no further.
Detectives leaned on the guard. He denied the earlier sex beef and denied killing Bunny Krauch. He took a polygraph test and passed it.
A half-dozen detectives were assigned to the case. Dozens more volunteered. The case became the rage of Sheriff’s Homicide. It featured a beautiful victim and a rocking milieu. It was Laura updated to a promiscuous era. Bunny Krauch bewitched all the guys. They wanted to find her killer and fuck him over good. They wanted to meet all the Charlie Brown’s girls. They wanted to shake up the Marina.
They hit the area hard. They turned Charlie Brown’s upside down and hassled every creep who ever pawed Bunny Krauch. They interviewed the L.A. Lakers and Bunny’s waitress pals. They leaned on tit pinchers and registered sex offenders. They chased Bunny’s ghost.
Some drank too much. Some fell in love. Some got righteously laid. A few took the big plunge behind sex and murder and flushed their family lives down the shitter for women they just met.
Bunny Krauch put a hex on Sheriff’s Homicide. Stoner loved her for it. He was sorry some other women got hurt. He knew how to keep things straight. He knew how to keep his thing with women sealed up inside him.
He fell hard for Bunny. He wished the guys who took the big plunge knew how to love like he did.
He clicked with Charlie Guenther. They both liked to work fall-tilt.
They read the Cotton Club file individually and together. They talked to the surviving investigator and got their facts straight.
It started as an LAPD missing-persons case. Roy Radin’s assistant reported Radin missing. Radin was staying at a hotel-apartment complex in West Hollywood. He walked out the door on 5/13/83. He got into a limo with a female coke dealer named Laney Jacobs. Radin and Jacobs were pissed off at each other. Jacobs thought Radin got one of her minions to steal some dope and money from her. Radin and Jacobs were hooked up with a has been producer named Robert Evans. They were haggling over the Cotton Club film project. It was acrimonious bullshit.
Radin and Jacobs were meeting to hash out their disputes. They were supposed to dine at La Scala in Beverly Hills. Radin feared foul play. He told his pal Demond Wilson to tail Laney’s limo. Wilson was a has-been actor. He used to star in the Sanford