Then I was alone with the two cops, and the dead girl, under a gray sky, waiting for all the other cops in L.A. to show up.
“Poor kid,” the older cop said to the younger one, shaking his head. “That was a nice body ’fore it got butchered. What a waste.”
Jerry swallowed; he was as pale as she was. “Geez… I wonder who she is?”
“You mean you wonder who she was,” the older cop said.
I wonder.
2
I suppose I would have been happier hearing my bride say she was pregnant if my girl friend hadn’t phoned that same day with similar news.
Former girl friend, that is-what kind of heel do you take me for?
“This is Elizabeth,” the voice on the phone had said. The voice was soft, low, husky, vaguely refined.
It was early on a Thursday evening, six days prior to that vacant lot in Leimert Park.
I was in the living room of our bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and my wife was sitting on the sofa next to me. The bungalow, a modest affair with a marble fireplace and French doors looking out on a private patio, was outfitted in plush furnishings that matched the peachy-pink walls and pink-and-green floral carpeting. My wife’s dainty yet curvaceous frame was outfitted in a dark green bolero slacks suit with a white top; her open-toe-sandaled feet were on the Queen Anne coffee table, ankles crossed.
“Who?” I asked the phone. The voice had been familiar but I didn’t immediately place it.
“You know-Beth. Beth Short.”
“Oh!” I glanced at my wife, who glanced back at me, pausing as she leafed through the latest Silver Screen magazine, in that chilling “Who is that, dear?” manner known by all men who’ve received a phone call from a woman while their wife is in the room.
“I take it you remember me,” said the sultry voice on the phone.