Murder in the Raw

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  MURDER IN

  THE RAW

  (RING AROUND ROSA)

  by Bill Gault

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  The Wayward Widow

  Also Available

  Copyright

  For Mike Tilden

  One of the best in the business

  1

  THERE IS AN OLD GRIDIRON WHEEZE that states a guard is only a fullback with his brains knocked out. I have met some rather bright guards and some extremely stupid fullbacks, but what is a fact measured against the generality?

  I’d played a few years of guard, myself, the more prominent years with the Rams and made a lot of friends in Los Angeles. So it figured that when the boys began to clobber me, Los Angeles was the logical place to open up a business.

  Beverly Hills is not Los Angeles, however. Beverly Hills is the most vigorously policed area in the nation and opening up an investigative agency in that smug little suburb is really carrying coal to Newcastle. So that supports the generality.

  But I had friends in the town and three years in the O.S.S. My old man had been a cop and I knew every Ram fan on the L.A.P.D. There are a hell of a lot of them. And in Beverly Hills, on South Beverly Drive, I found the “neatest little pine-paneled office you ever saw at a shamefully low rental.” That description is the realtor’s and almost accurate, so I gave him the first month’s shameful rental, and bought some furniture.

  And I sat and waited.

  Sitting and waiting, I imagined who my first client would be. A banker, gray at the temples, with a wife twenty years younger and fifty pounds lighter? Some luscious young widow who was beginning to have doubts about an oily and debonair suitor? Some millionaire sportsman whose son was in trouble?

  Who would walk in?

  Juan Mira walked in.

  If you live in this area, you will remember Juan Mira. He won more fights than he lost, but he lost a lot of them. The marks of all the fights are on the broad, flat face of Juan Mira.

  At the Olympic, he had always been a crowd pleaser. And outside of the ring, his reputation was that he was also a woman pleaser. Most Filipinos try to be; it is a serious business with them.

  Juan stood about five-four and would now weigh about a hundred and thirty. He wore a neat and creamy tropical weave suit and white buck shoes and a big-brimmed leghorn hat with an extremely colorful band. There are not many Miras in Beverly Hills; Juan was really out of his element.

  “I know your name,” he said. “I see you play.”

  “With the Rams?” I asked, a stupid question.

  He nodded. “With the Rams. Best damn guard in the business.”

  “Thank you, Juan,” I said. “I’ve seen you fight.” I searched my memory. “You looked mighty good against Carmine Padro.”

  Juan nodded, and his eyes were reminiscent. “I could always handle Carmine. Which Padro fight you see?”

  “The one where you knocked him out in the sixth,” I said. “At the Olympic.”

  He nodded, and sighed. He took a gold cigarette case out of an inside jacket pocket and offered me an ivory-tipped cigarette, which I refused.

  I gestured toward a chair. “You didn’t come here to talk football or fights, Juan. Sit down and tell me your troubles.”

  He sat down and lighted the cigarette with a slim, platinum lighter. He blew sweet-smelling smoke out into the room and said, “It’s about my girl. Rosa is her name. She’s gone.”

  “Gone — ? How do you mean, gone?”

  “From her place, where she lives.” He snapped his fingers. “One day she is there. Next day, no Rosa.”

  “Does she work? Did you check her place of employment?”

  “She works. Sing a little, dance a little. Not working lately.” He shook his head. “Night clubs — slow.”

  “Not all over,” I suggested. “Maybe she got a job in another town. Say — Las Vegas?”

  He shook his head. “Not Rosa. Small clubs for Rosa. She is no big-time operator.”

  Small, cheap clubs. A stripper, probably. I said, “Were you so close you’d expect her to tell you if she left town?”

  “We are engaged,” Juan said with dignity.

  “How long, Juan?” I asked.

  He looked at me doubtfully. “Two years.”

  “And she never went out with another man in those two years?”

  His eyes were hard and shiny. “So — ? What kind of question is that?”

  “Maybe she went off with another man, now,” I said.

  “Easy, Mr. Callahan,” he said.

  “You don’t know that she didn’t, do you?”

  “I know Rosa. She play around a little. But she don’t walk out on Juan, not Rosa. I treat her like a — a queen.” He clenched a fist.

  “I see. What did the police say about it? You’ve given all this to Missing Persons, I suppose?”

  He frowned. “No. Don’t you want my business?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not Dorothy Dix, Juan. You two had a quarrel, didn’t you? And she walked out on you. And you want to pay me to drag her back.”

  He took a deep breath. He reached over and crushed out his cigarette in the ash tray on my desk. He said, “No!”

  Silence in the pine-paneled office with the low rent. Then Juan stood up and looked down at me. “To hell with you. You’re so big, huh? You don’t need Filipino money. Big, Beverly Hills bastard, Brock Callahan. To hell with you, again.”

  He stood erectly, glaring at me, dignified and ferocious.

  I said soothingly, “Don’t ruffle your tail feathers, Juan. It’s just that I don’t want to cheat you. Do you want to pay me sixty dollars a day to look for her? How much of that could you take?”

  His voice was ice. “You think I’m poor? Because I don’t live in Beverly Hills, you think I’m nothing. Don’t worry about Juan Mira.”

  He took out an alligator billfold and removed three crisp, new bills. He tossed them contemptuously onto the desk. Hundred dollar bills.

  If he left here, he’d go somewhere else. He might go to one of the big reputable agencies, but the chances were he’d go to one of the small, disreputable agencies. And he was my first client.

  I said, “Sit down, Juan, and tell me about her.”

  He told me about her. She was Portuguese, Filipino and Chinese and her name was Rosa Carmona. He had two pictures of her, one a head and one a full-length, theatrical portrait of her in spangles and not much else.

  Her face was round and there was a trace of slant to the merry brown eyes. Her figure was rounded and not so plump it would displease any reasonable man. For a man with a face like Juan Mira’s she would be an exceptionally lucky catch.

  “Ve
ry pretty,” I said.

  “Hmmmm,” he said, which could have meant anything.

  “What was her last place of employment?”

  “Chico’s,” he said. “That’s in Culver City.”

  “And before that?”

  He named some other places in Culver City, Santa Monica and Venice. None of them were places I’d ever heard of, but I was no booze hound.

  I put it all down in my neat script and said, “Okay, Juan, I’ll keep in touch with you.”

  He rose and smiled. “I am sorry about before. You are no bastard, Brock Callahan. Best damn guard in the business.”

  “Thank you,” I said, again. “And you looked mighty good against Carmine Padro.”

  He nodded, and held a fist aloft, and went out the door, trying not to walk on his heels.

  Out at Redlands, my old buddies were working under that baking sun, getting ready for the Times charity game with the Redskins that always opened the season for us.

  In my little office, there was just a tinge of smog coming through the open window. And my bad right knee told me there was some moisture in the air. I’d had the torn cartilage removed and the knee no longer locked on me. But it ached on damp days.

  I looked at the photographs of Rosa Carmona and could guess she had one of those smooth, dark and hair-free bodies the boys on Oahu could never seem to get enough of.

  The bills looked newly minted. I made out a deposit slip and took them around to the bank. Then I climbed into the flivver and drove out to Culver City.

  It was an hour before noon and there was a chance the place wasn’t open yet. I could have phoned, but I was getting awful sick of sitting around that office.

  In front of Chico’s, an eight-foot color cutout depicted the fine long legs and feminine bumps of “Billie Brent — The Girl Who Invented The Sensational Zipper Flipper. You’ll Flip Your Lid When She Unzips What’s Hid.”

  For Culver City, this was mild, institutional-type advertising.

  Inside Chico’s, a swamper was wearily mopping the asphalt tile floor. The chairs were on the tables and the odors of detergent and stale beer fought an air war to a stalemate.

  Behind the bar in the small barroom to my left, a thin, sour-looking man in a white shirt was carefully arranging the bottles of watered whiskey.

  “We’re not open yet,” he told me. “How’d you get in?”

  “Through the big room. I’m not a customer. I’m making a check.” I put the mildest of my business cards on the bar, the one that read, Credit Investigations.

  He looked at it and yawned. “Checking who?”

  “A girl named Rosa Carmona. This was her last place of employment so far as we know.”

  He nodded. “She worked here. Hot little bundle of mama, that one. Biggest attraction we ever had. She wasn’t afraid to put on a show, that Rosa.” He gestured toward the bigger room. “Most of these tramps are phonies.”

  “But you let her go, just the same, eh?”

  “Not me. I’m not the boss. I just work here, Mac. What queered Rosa here was that boy friend of hers. Jealous’ little bastard. Maybe you remember him — Juan Mira?”

  I frowned. “I think so. Wasn’t he a fighter?”

  “Yeh — one of those bums that used to be so big at the Olympic. Club fighter, going nowhere, but real big among his own kind, I guess.”

  “Filipino, isn’t he?”

  “That’s right. And jealous as hell. Used to come in here, just waiting for some guy to make a dirty crack during Rosa’s show. We had to bounce him a couple times. Felony, you know, for a fighter to use his fists outside the ring in this state.”

  I nodded. “So Juan really queered the kid, huh?”

  “Sure. Little bastard — ”

  “You don’t know where Rosa went from here, then?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t, Mac. Didn’t she say, when she applied for credit?”

  I said easily. “She applied for the credit when she was working here. And she got it. Now, some bills are due, and we’re trying to find her.”

  “Oh. Well, your best bet would be Mira. He’s probably got her set up some place.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll check that. Could I buy you a drink?”

  He shook his head. “Never touch it.”

  From Culver City to Santa Monica and from Santa Monica to Venice. Nothing in Santa Monica, but in Venice, on Windward Avenue, the bartender referred me to a bleached and battered blonde going over some sheet music with the piano player.

  The blonde bore a faint resemblance to the picture in the window advertising — “Sue Ellen, the Savannah Songbird.”

  “Sue Ellen,” I said, “I understand you’re a friend of Rosa Carmona’s.”

  “I know her. So?”

  “I thought you might know where I could find her.” I handed her the credit investigation card.

  Sue Ellen looked at the card for seconds. When she looked up again, her eyes were blanker than usual.

  “Something wrong with her credit?”

  “Just routine checking,” I said in my Dragnet best. “Her credit seems to have been excellent up until recently. Now, there are a few bills due, and Miss Carmona has left no forwarding address.”

  “You’re no credit man,” Sue Ellen said. “Credit men don’t talk about due bills. What’s the pitch, Buster?”

  “I’ve explained it to you,” I said. “You’re not compelled to answer, of course.”

  “No kidding — ? Take off, Buster. I know who you’re working for, that punchy little Mira. Breeze, man, you’re in enemy country.”

  I shrugged. “All right. When you see Miss Carmona, though, I wish you would have her phone me at the number on that card. One’s credit is very important, today, you know.”

  “Blow,” Sue Ellen said. “Good-by. Don’t hurry back.”

  I shook my head. “You certainly don’t sound like Savannah to me, Miss Sue Ellen. You needn’t be crude.”

  The piano player got up from his bench, studied me — and sat down again. The bartender gave a lot of attention to the glass he was polishing.

  I gave them all my broad back and went out into the sea-tinged air of Windward Avenue. I drove from there to Rosa’s last place of residence, a triplex on Barrington. It was a neat and colorful place of brown stucco and chartreuse trim. The flower beds were edged neatly along the perfect lawn and bougainvillaea covered the front wall of the landlady’s apartment.

  Rosa, she told me, had been paid up until the first of the month, but hadn’t given the proper month’s notice. She had left two evenings before, to the best of the landlady’s knowledge.

  She sniffed. “That — that wrestler person, that friend or whatever, thought that Miss Carmona might be ill or — or worse, as she hadn’t answered her phone or doorbell. So I used my master key and we saw that she had taken all her clothes. The furniture is mine, of course.”

  “You don’t mean ‘wrestler,’ do you? You mean Juan Mira, the boxer?”

  “That’s the man.”

  “Did Miss Carmona have other friends?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know, Mr. — ” she looked at my card “ — Callahan. I don’t check on my tenants’ social life.”

  “And Miss Carmona left no forwarding address, not even with the mailman?”

  “None. The mailman told me that only this morning.”

  I thanked her and went back to the flivver. Where now? All the places Juan had named, I had checked. And where now? I headed back toward Beverly Hills.

  It was after two o’clock and I had eaten no lunch. I put my car on the lot, and walked over to the drugstore for their special of the day — beef stew.

  Out on Beverly Drive, the local Cadillacs moved impatiently around the cheaper, transient cars. In the drugstore, the big fan overhead turned lazily and the malt mixers whirred and the fat woman on the stool next to mine slowly turned the pages of Vogue, while she spooned into a hot fudge sundae with marshmallow topping.

  The count
erman said, “How’s it going, Brock? I’ll bet you’re sorry you’re not out there at Redlands with the boys, huh?”

  “It must be hot in Redlands,” I said. “I’ll take the beef stew. And some of those rye rolls if there are any left.”

  He winked at me. “I figured you’d be in. I saved you a couple.”

  The Rams are well loved in L.A.

  The fat lady looked at me briefly and quizzically but evidently couldn’t identify me as a movie, stage, radio, TV or night-club star. She went back to her Vogue and hot fudge.

  She left before I’d finished my beef stew, and the counterman shook his head as he watched her waddle over to the cashier. “Now we have a nice hot fudge and marshmallow stained Vogue to sell. These rich old broads kill me. They buy a sundae and read seven magazines and put them back.”

  “Maybe she’s not a rich old broad,” I said. “Maybe she’s a tourist from Westwood.”

  “That’s pretty good,” he said. “Maybe you should have worked up a night-club act. More butter, Brock?”

  He always called me by my first name, though I never did learn either of his. I ate the beef stew and drank a cup of coffee and went up the steps to my office.

  My phone answering service told me there had been no calls. I got out some forms and began to type up the reports on my calls for the day. It was slow going on my hunt and peck system. I was about half through when the phone rang.

  “Meester Brock Callahan?”

  “This is he.”

  “This is Rosa Carmona. Why you want me?”

  “A friend of yours is looking for you, Miss Carmona,” I explained. “He is very worried about you.”

  “So, you lied, eh? You said I owe money. You told my friend I owe money. You leave me alone, Meester Callahan. And you tell Juan Mira to leave me alone. I don’t want to see him. Ever!”

  “Juan loves you very much, Rosa,” I said gently. “Don’t send his ring back until he’s had a chance to talk to you.”

  “Ring? He wants the ring? I’ll give him — He got plenty from me for that ring. He wants his ring?”

  It had just been a bit of phraseology, but I said, “Why don’t you bring it to the office, here, and we can talk this out? You and Juan have been sweethearts a long time, you know.”