At that time I put my lights out and opened the windows up and muffled the phone bell with a piece of paper and went to bed.
I had a bellyful of the Sternwood family.
I read all three of the morning papers over my eggs and bacon the next morning.
Their accounts of the affair came as close to the truth as newspaper stories usually come — as close as Mars is to Saturn.
None of the three connected Owen Taylor, driver of the Lido Pier Suicide Car, with the Laurel Canyon Exotic Bungalow Slaying.
None of them mentioned the Sternwoods, Bernie Ohls or me. Owen Taylor was "chauffeur to a wealthy family."
Captain Cronjager of the Hollywood Division got all the credit for solving the two slayings in his district, which were supposed to arise out of a dispute over the proceeds from a wire service maintained by one Geiger in the back of the bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard.
Brody had shot Geiger and Carol Lundgren had shot Brody in revenge.
Police were holding Carol Lundgren in custody. He had confessed.
He had a bad record — probably in high school.
Police were also holding one Agnes Lozelle, Geiger's secretary, as a material witness.
It was a nice write-up.
It gave the impression that Geiger had been killed the night before, that Brody had been killed about an hour later, and that Captain Cronjager had solved both murders while lighting a cigarette.
The suicide of Taylor made Page One of Section II.
There was a photo of the sedan on the deck of the power lighter, with the license plate blacked out, and something covered with a cloth lying on the deck beside the running board.
Owen Taylor had been despondent and in poor health.
His family lived in Dubuque, and his body would be shipped there.
There would be no inquest.
20
Captain Gregory of the Missing' Persons Bureau laid my card down on his wide flat desk and arranged it so that its edges exactly paralleled the edges of the desk.
He studied it with his head on one side, grunted, swung around in his swivel chair and looked out of his window at the barred top floor of the Hall of Justice half a block away.
He was a burly man with tired eyes and the slow deliberate movements of a night watchman.
His voice was toneless, flat and uninterested.
"Private dick, eh?" he said, not looking at me at all, but looking out of his window.
Smoke wisped from the blackened bowl of a briar that hung on his eye tooth.
"What can I do for you?"
"I'm working for General Guy Sternwood, 3765 Alta Brea Crescent, West Hollywood."
Captain Gregory blew a little smoke from the corner of his mouth without removing the pipe.
"On what?"
"Not exactly on what you're working on, but I'm interested. I thought you could help me."
"Help you on what?"
"General Sternwood's a rich man," I said. "He's an old friend of the D.A.'s father.
If he wants to hire a full-time boy to run errands for him, that's no reflection on the police.
It's just a luxury he is able to afford himself."
"What makes you think I'm doing anything for him?"
I didn't answer that.
He swung around slowly and heavily in his swivel chair and put his large feet flat on the bare linoleum that covered his floor.
His office had the musty smell of years of routine.
He stared at me bleakly.
"I don't want to waste your time, Captain," I said and pushed my chair back — about four inches.
He didn't move.
He kept on staring at me out of his washed-out tired eyes.
"You know the D.A.?"
"I've met him.
I worked for him once.
I know Bernie Ohls, his chief investigator, pretty well."
Captain Gregory reached for a phone and mumbled into it:
"Get me Ohls at the D.A.'s office." He sat holding the phone down on its cradle.
Moments passed.
Smoke drifted from his pipe.