The Devil May Dance - Tapper, Jake (short novels in english .TXT) 📗

Sheryl Ann barely noticed when Isaiah Street appeared outside the window as if by magic, standing on a ledge, clearing the remaining glass away with a handkerchief, then stepping through the frame.

Street looked at Sheryl Ann, then at Tarantula wriggling on the ground as the ravens continued their attack, then back at Sheryl Ann. He held up one finger—One second—then ran into the living room. She could hear him opening the front door and others entering the apartment. Her heart pounded. She had no idea how many days she’d been here.

“Sheryl Ann!” yelled Margaret, running to her from the living room. She took the gag out of her friend’s mouth. Sheryl Ann tried to speak but her throat was dry.

“Oh, thank God,” Sheryl Ann finally said.

A high-pitched whistle emanated from the living room and the ravens began backing off Tarantula’s bloodied face and body. They flew obediently into the other room, where Symone LeGrue stood holding deer jerky in one hand, a large cage in the other.

“Good job, Archie,” Charlie said to the first bird, which had assumed its rightful place on LeGrue’s shoulder. Charlie proceeded into the study, where Street was using a knife on the ropes constraining Sheryl Ann, whom Margaret was consoling.

Charlie looked down at Tarantula’s face, which had been pecked to shreds. His bulbous throat was a mess of deep red hash. He was gurgling. Minutes left, max.

Charlie noticed the open safe. He turned to Margaret and Street.

“Why don’t you make sure everyone gets home safely,” Charlie said. “I’m going to have a look around.”

Chapter Thirty-OneLos Angeles, California

April 1962

Charlie turned the key in the lock of his Miramar suite but Detective Meehan opened the door from inside.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” the detective said, an irritated expression on his face. “For a day.”

Charlie entered the room and looked at his watch: 4:33 a.m. “You’ve been waiting for us inside our room since yesterday?” he asked.

“We’ve had a presence in the lobby,” Meehan said, walking back to the living room; Margaret was sitting alone on the couch, having returned from Tarantula’s before her husband, who’d stayed behind to sweep the place of their fingerprints and look for anything that might prove useful. Street had dropped off Sheryl Ann Gold, then Margaret, then returned to his hotel. “After your Irish exit from the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.”

“We had things to do,” Charlie said.

Meehan rolled his eyes, sat down, and asked them to tell him again what had happened at the Oscars, which they did. It took some time because they had to explain events from the night before—Disneyland and the Hollywood sign—though in Margaret’s telling, Sheryl Ann escaped with her. There was no need to add the body of Joey Tarantula to their long list of offenses.

“All for these documents?” Meehan said, holding them up after Charlie had produced them from his inside jacket pocket and handed them to him. “Suggesting that…let me see if I have this straight—”

“Suggesting that, led by Wolff, the studios have been holding parties for VIPs at which they pimp out underage girls,” Margaret said.

“But why?” Meehan asked. “This town is crawling with young girls with stars in their eyes, eager to make any connection. Why pay for it?”

“The money’s for their silence as much as anything else,” Margaret said.

“And Wolff was filming it all,” Charlie said. “For blackmail.”

“You have proof of any of that?” Meehan asked.

“You do,” Margaret said. “You have the wireless-mike recording of Wolff, the files we just gave you, Charlotte Goode’s murder…”

“We’ve given you more than enough testimony and evidence to begin investigating these sick parties,” Charlie said.

“Did Charlotte ever tell you she’d had any confrontations with anyone?” Meehan asked.

“Like, half the city,” Margaret said. “But you must know that, Detective.”

“I do,” Meehan said. “But Stanley Kubrick didn’t kill her for being rude on a red carpet.”

“No, probably not,” Margaret allowed. “Her coworker, what’s his name—”

“Tarantula?” Charlie asked casually, mispronouncing his name on purpose. “The guy Lawford introduced us to that time?”

“‘Tah-ran-too-lah,’” Meehan corrected him.

“Yeah, him,” Margaret said. “That Tarantula guy was furious at her for that. I was in the bathroom and overheard everything.”

Meehan wrote that down in his little leather-bound notebook. He took a sip from the glass of water Margaret had given him and perused his notes from earlier in their conversation.

“So you had help in this little caper of yours,” he said. “Janet Leigh did spy work for you and John Frankenheimer’s sound guy hooked you up with recording devices.”

“And because of him, as Charlie noted,” Margaret said, “Santa Monica Police have the tape of Les Wolff confessing to having Chris Powell and Lola Bridgewater murdered to hide this pedophile ring.”

Meehan scratched his head. “Where did”—he checked his notes—“where did Charlotte Goode get these documents from anyway?”

“Hollywood Nightlife,” Margaret said, exasperated. Was he really this dumb or was he just pretending?

But Meehan didn’t ask the natural follow-ups: Why didn’t they publish any of it? A huge scandal involving studios, predators, and the wealthy and well-connected—what journalist wouldn’t run with such a story? He turned to another page in his notes.

“And, Congressman Marder, you say Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr. can corroborate this trip to Disneyland? What you say you witnessed there?”

Charlie nodded. “Yes, but please be—”

“Discreet, yes, I know,” Meehan said, writing down the names. “Okay, well, that’s a lot to work on. Thanks for your time.” He nodded, stood, hitched up his pants, and exited the room, joining two uniformed officers waiting for him in the hall.

Charlie and Margaret passed out on the bed, fully clothed, utterly spent. It would be dawn in a few hours.

Charlie woke shortly after ten that morning; Margaret was showered and dressed, and a delicious room-service breakfast was waiting for him. The sight of his beaten-up mug in the mirror was something of a shock, but closer inspection suggested there’d be no permanent scars. The stab wounds in his back were still gruesome, but they were healing acceptably, as was his bruised rib. He began brushing his