[h3]Cloud Nine[/h3] [b]10:34 PM[/b] "I should have known from the very start, this girl would leave me with a broken heart.” The little Italian man crooned into his microphone while the band accompaniment behind him played an up tempo number. They were all dressed in tuxedos, several of them with cigarettes hanging out of their mouth while they played and swayed to the music. “So if you don’t want to cry like I do, keep away from runaround Sue.” Mariano continued to sing while the rest of the Moonlights played the song that had made them household names twenty years ago. The crowd applauded when the song started. It was always the band’s big finishing number. From his vantage point backstage, Stein looked out at the crowd and mostly saw middle aged men and women watching with awe. It made sense. They were all smack dab in the middle of memory lane, Mariano and the Moonlights the soundtrack of their youth. On paper, Stein was one of the band’s equipment managers. He’d traveled with them up to the ship and even helped them set up their amps and instruments for the two shows they were doing tonight. Stein had made sure he was the only one who touch the special amp that was among their equipment, the one with the false bottom. He’d taken what was in there out before they even started to set things up. The band knew to give him a wide berth; they also knew he wouldn’t be coming back with them on the ride down. It would have been too suspicious if three men like himself, Johnny, and the little doctor all showed up on Cloud Nine all at once, so they’d used the Trojan horse idea for Stein. Like a lot of entertainers, Mariano had some debt with the mob so he was in position to refuse when they demanded he slip Stein into his road crew. From out in the dim lighting, Stein could see Prussian Joe sitting at a table at the center right. He had to suppress a smile when he saw the look on the man’s face. The guy was enamored with the band on stage. It made sense, Stein figured. Joe was the right age to have grown up with the band. He could get into it all he wanted, Stein guessed. The important part was that he was here. Johnny had said if he was at the band’s late show, then that meant the job was on. The band finished its last number, getting a standing ovation from the crowd. The group bowed and exited off the stage, passing Stein without making eye contact. They knew the score. The less they saw of him, the less they’d have to lie if they were asked about him. Stein followed behind the musicians, but veered to the left instead of going right to the backstage green room. The corridor led out to the exits of the theater. The little German was waiting for him. He passed Stein a stack of chips. “Play on the floor,” he said softly. “We’re making our move at two.” He cradled the chips in his big hands and nodded as Prussian Joe disappeared into the crowd exiting the theater. --- [h3]Los Angeles [/h3] [b]77th Street Station 3:22 AM[/b] Chaos and disorder was the name of the game at the police station. Jeff Thomas was trying like hell to make sense of it. Everybody who was at the Voodoo had been brought in to the station via paddy wagon. Patrons and employees alike sat on long benches awaiting police interview. Even T-Bone and his band sat on the benches in their bright purple suits. Jeff was in the middle of it along with the rest of the cops who worked nights at 77th Street. The night boss had called in dayshift detectives to help with the interviews. Hoyt was at the scene, working it with coroners. In the back of his mind, Jeff thought about the killing of Wendall Brock from a few weeks ago and how it had only rated a couple of uniforms and two detectives and nothing else. But a white woman gets murdered and it’s no stone left unturned. “I already told you what I know,” the bartender said defiantly. Jeff knew him well enough to know the man didn’t like him. That put him in the same column as almost everyone at the Voodoo. “I know,” said Jeff. “But I gotta put it down on the record. Just, give us time.” He walked away as the bartender kept mumbling. Jeff headed towards his desk. He was the only detective at 77th Street Station who had a desk all to himself. The rest of the plainclothes shared their desks with one other detective who was always off duty when they were on. Jeff knew exactly why his desk wasn’t shared. It was the one time he didn’t mind segregation. Something on the desk caught his eye. There was a thick manila packet on the corner, resting on the top of his inbox. An LAPD logo had been stamped in the middle of the packet, a red slash cut diagonally across it meant it was an internal document not meant for distribution outside official police channels. “Mack,” Jeff called to the nightwatch sergeant as he passed. “Did someone drop something off while I was gone?” “Courier run from downtown,” Mack said in an annoyed tone. Mack was the type of nightwatch guy who liked working nights because they were quiet. The murder had thrown a monkey wrench into his plans and now he was actually having to work. Jeff turned away from the package. Whatever it was, it could wait. He picked his notebook and pencil off the desk and found the bartender again, still looking perturbed. “I don’t know why y’all interviewing me,” he said with a shake of his head. “It’s the whiteboy you need to talk to.” “Hoyt?” asked Jeff. “No, not your walking boss, Officer Tom. The mean looking one who stood out like a sore thumb, suh. The one who ain’t here, Officer Tom.” Jeff ignored his insults. They were far from clever and he had heard much worse. Instead, he thought back to the nightclub just before it all went to hell. He had seen a white man by the bar, tall and with his face hidden by a hat. The bartender was right that he had been there. And he was right that he wasn’t at the station either. Where the hell was he? --- [b]West Hollywood 3:51 AM[/b] Elliot Shaw looked both ways before he popped the lock. This time of night, the foot traffic around Claire Beauchamp’s bungalow was non-existent. He pocketed his lockpicks and pulled on the leather gloves he wore to keep them tight before going into the apartment. He knew he had to come here as soon as he saw that Beauchamp was dead. While the cops would be slowed by the procedure of forensics and confirming her identity, Elliot had no restraints. This wasn’t the first time he had to perform what Jeannie called sanitation. When western idol and gunslinger Phil McCoy died, Elliot made sure his house had been cleared of the bondage equipment and freaky porn before he pulled off the rope Phil accidentally strangled himself with while jerking it. Elliot pulled out a penlight and flicked it on. The apartment was neat and orderly, everything in its place. It wasn’t what the home of an up and coming movie actress would look like. If not for the lack of cobwebs, it almost looked like nobody lived here at all. He stepped through the living room area into a hallway towards the bedroom. If there was any dirt to be had, it would be somewhere in that room. He was on the lookout for drugs and porn, probably white on black stuff. He put odds that Claire Beauchamp’s killer was some spook that didn’t take kindly to being a white woman’s side thing. He knew the LAPD would at least try to spin it that way. A white woman is killed in darktown means a full-out assault of police resources. He knew that the cops would be an occupying force in South Central until the killer was found… or at least until one was fabricated to fit the narrative. The cops were a lot like the studios in that regard. The easier the storyline, the easier it was to sell it to the masses. As far as Elliot’s job was concerned, as long as he got rid of the scandalous shit and made the press play down the jungle fever angle, the studio would have a boon of publicity. A young starlet killed in the prime of her life. It was another Hollywood heartbreak that would turn Claire Beauchamp from footnote to a silver screen legend. Nothing under the bed, the obvious hiding place for dirt. Elliot swept out to the dresser beside the wall and went through the drawers. No pictures, but other shit. Worse shit. He found political tracts on the LAPD and the Pinkerton, a profile on some Chink commie, one glorifying the old west coast communes back during the war, one on the infamous Victor Hecht. Elliot dropped the pamphlets like they were radioactive. Claire Beauchamp was a commie. That was so much worse than being a mudshark. The other way, Elliot could strongarm enough shines until her reputation as white girl persona non grata was established. But being a commie was different. It meant she was a radical, something dangerous even out on the partially radicalized west coast. The question the press would ask, and his bosses would certainly demand, was who else in Hollywood had she infected? Pocketing the tracts, Elliot saw a sheet of paper at the bottom of the drawer with names and phone numbers on it. He pocketed that as well and did a final sweep of the house. When he was sure it was sanitized, he left the house and walked to his car parked at the end of the block. He got into his car just in time to see an unmarked police cruiser pull up to the bungalow. He watched two uniformed officers set up a perimeter in front of the house before turning to the list in his pocket. A half dozen names in all, most of them just first names or monikers that were clearly nicknames. “The good people,” Elliot said to himself, reading the heading on the paper. Putting the list back, he started his car and headed home.