My Dark Places - James Ellroy [85]
Radin split with Laney. Wilson blew his tail. Radin dropped off the face of the earth.
The LAPD couldn’t find Laney Jacobs. Bob Evans didn’t know where Roy Radin was. The LAPD had Radin pegged as a fly-by-night cokehead. They figured he’d turn up sooner or later. They dropped their investigation.
Radin turned up dead five weeks later. A beekeeper found his body in Caswell Canyon up near Gorman. It was badly decomped. Twenty-two-caliber shell fragments were scattered all around it. Somebody stuck dynamite in Radin’s mouth postmortem. The explosion failed to obliterate his teeth. Forensic techs ID’d the body from dental charts.
Gorman was in L.A. County. Carlos Avila and Willy Ahn caught the case for Sheriff’s Homicide.
They studied the LAPD missing-persons file. They tagged Laney Jacobs as a major coke dealer. They learned that she was tight with a strongarm man named Bill Mentzer. They located Jacobs in Aspen, Colorado. They decided not to jerk her chain just yet. They couldn’t locate Mentzer.
Months passed. Willy Ahn got sick. He learned he had a potentially fatal brain tumor. He worked the Radin case anyway. Carlos Avila checked the LAPD computer and learned that Bill Mentzer was suspected of a recent contract hit.
The victim was named June Mincher. She was an ugly, 200-pound black woman. Most people thought she was a drag queen or a man. She was a prostitute, phone-sex entrepreneur and shakedown artist.
She was hassling a wealthy family. The grandson was one of her tricks. The family hired a private eye named Mike Pascal to teach her a lesson. Pascal farmed the job out to Bill Mentzer. Mentzer pistol-whipped June Mincher and a trick she was fucking at her pad. Mincher kept bugging the family. She was shot to death on 5/3/84. Mentzer was their number-one suspect. They had jackshit for proof.
Avila couldn’t find Mentzer. Months went by. Avila worked fresh murders and came back to the Radin case when his workload thinned out. Willy Ahn was now gravely ill.
An LAPD narc named Freddy McKnight shot his mouth off to a guy in the DA’s Office. McKnight said he had the inside scoop on the Roy Radin job. He was going to bust a big Sheriff’s case himself.
The DA’s man called Bob Grimm. Grimm called his top contact at LAPD and told him to squeeze McKnight. The squeeze worked. McKnight told Grimm and Avila his story.
McKnight had a snitch named Mark Fogel. He popped Fogel with a big load of Laney Jacobs’ coke. Fogel ran a limo service. Bill Mentzer and a guy named Bob Lowe drove for him part-time. Fogel said that Mentzer and Lowe were in on the Radin snuff. Fogel just clued McKnight to a big coke deal. Mentzer and Lowe were bringing two kilos in to the L.A. airport. It was Laney Jacobs’ dope. McKnight was set to bust Mentzer and Lowe right there at LAX.
Avila joined the arrest team. The bust went down smoothly. They took two kilos off Mentzer and Lowe. Mentzer and Lowe refused to discuss the Radin snuff. They bailed out of custody fast.
Mentzer and Lowe shared an apartment in the Valley. Avila got a warrant and searched it. He found a snapshot of Mentzer and two unknown men in the desert. It looked like the spot where Roy Radin’s body was found. Avila found some car registration papers. Laney Jacobs gave Bob Lowe a Cadillac the very day Roy Radin disappeared.
Avila revisited the Radin crime scene. The photo was shot right there. Avila ran the photo by his witnesses. Nobody knew the two men with Mentzer.
Willy Ahn died. Mentzer and Lowe beat the dope rap on a search-and-seizure glitch. Avila braced the DA. The DA read his Radin case summary and declined to file. He said the case was weak.
Avila caught some fresh murders. He ran the Radin case by the DAs Office every so often. Nobody wanted to file. Two years and some months passed.
Stoner knew they could break it. They had to make the right people talk.
It was all there.
Radin vanished in a limo. Mentzer and Lowe drove limos part-time. Mentzer worked for Laney Jacobs. Laney hated Roy Radin. Mentzer was an amateur hit man.
Stoner wanted to move.