The Naked Angel Read online

  ALL OUT

  FOR HOMICIDE

  The agonizing death of a dope-ridden derelict before the confessional in the neighborhood church sent rugged, genial Father Shanley and broad-shouldered young Police Detective Sammy Golden, old allies in situations murderous, to the very heart of the seamy world of burlesque.

  All leads in the perplexing case seemed to end in the gaudiest burlesque house in town, more specifically in the enticing person of the celebrated Naked Angel, who nightly rode a white cloud, composed at least one part of heroin.

  When the precinct captain told Sammy to make better friends with the panic-stricken strippers, Sammy did just that—and found himself headlined in the tabloids and in serious trouble with the Homicide Bureau and the lovely Naked Angel herself.

  So, for a while, Father Shanley had to carry on alone in search of the elusive and deadly mastermind whose criminal tentacles reached out over the entire country.

  This is a pulse-quickening, suspenseful thriller which whisks you through the little–known world of small-time show business where colorful beauties become lissome targets for a desperate killer—and for mystery fiction’s most original super-sleuths.

  The Naked Angel

  JACK WEBB

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  “A halo swung around her brow (Weep for my lady)

  Before she fell; look at her now (Sleep not, my lady) …”

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  Copyright

  THE CHURCH OF St. Anne was of white stucco, humble and simple. But the dark green cypresses that grew before it were trim and tall like sentinels, guarding the bells in their shadowy tower and flanking the cross as somber as a sword blade against the gray of predawn.

  Inside, except for the eternal lamp before the Blessed Sacrament and the pale, variegated light sifting through the high-stained windows, the church was dark.

  Within the row of pews, beneath the First Station of the Cross, grotesque in shape with his hands clinging desperately to the back of the pew before him, a man was praying. His words were unclear and peculiarly spaced because of the way in which he was breathing and the taste of blood which was in his mouth.

  “… to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.” The perfect words, the words he had learned long ago, were hallowing the ugly end of his life as much as any words might in those last moments before he died with three smashed slugs of .45 caliber in the trunk of his body to hasten the Act of Perfect Contrition.

  • • •

  An hour passed, and halfway across town from where the Church of St. Anne held its grim burden, two sergeant-of-detectives headed up the short flight of steps to the right of the reception desk at Central Station on their way to Homicide to report to Lieutenant Cantrell. Both walked as though they were a little drunk. In truth, they were dead tired.

  The shorter of the two, a stocky, well-knit young man in his early thirties, shot a dark, brooding glance at his companion and announced savagely, “If I’d chewed those damned cigarettes my mouth couldn’t taste any rawer.”

  His redheaded partner managed a grin. “Sammy,” he said, “you should watch television. Your city police force is supposed to smoke the long cigarette. It filters the smoke to hell and gone, leaves every cop with the sweetest mouth in town.”

  Sammy Golden grunted, swung open the glass-windowed door gilt with the legend of HOMICIDE DIVISION and let Dan Adams precede him into the room.

  Lieutenant Cantrell glanced up, waved a cigar and went on listening to the phone. The two detectives found chairs beside a cigarette-scarred table and dropped into them. Adams pushed his hat back off an astonishing shock of red hair, then used the same hand to rub the back of his neck.

  Cantrell said to the mouthpiece of the phone. “He’s just come in. I’ll have him out there in twenty minutes.” He cradled the instrument and regarded his two subordinates. “So you’ve been on a joy ride.”

  “Sure,” Sammy agreed, “an all-night picnic, half-a-dozen bars, three gas stations, an all-night restaurant, spread over two counties and about as many hundred miles.”

  “Yeah,” Adams added, “and the fog was so nice we just didn’t want to come out of it.”

  “And your friend, Mr. Dempsy, why did he make this trip?” The lieutenant’s voice was as sleepy as his red-rimmed eyes.

  “Nerves,” Sammy said. “Maybe because he killed his wife, maybe because he misses the girl. Maybe he drove down the coast because he likes to ride in the fog, and maybe because he was breaking for the border and then lost his nerve. You pay your nickel and you take your choice.”

  “Meet anybody, talk to anybody?”

  Adams shook his head. “Not in town, he didn’t. Twenty miles out of town, we didn’t dare show. Sammy and I have the kind of faces he might remember. What about Johnny Reyes?”

  Cantrell removed his cigar and regarded its soggy end with bloodshot eyes. “Johnny Reyes stayed in the Royal Heights area all night. Picked up a girl in the Chino Poblano on Ney and Fifteenth, stopped in Hernandez’s liquor store to buy three bottles of Tokay, then took the girl home. According to Monaghan and Haggerty, he’s still with her.”

  “That’s not money talking,” Sammy decided.

  Cantrell agreed. “If Reyes did the job, he’s acting cagey or not been paid for it.”

  Red Adams said, “It’s a slim thread at that, Lieutenant. Reyes’s past record. Being picked up in a public restroom in the city park across the street from where one Hilda Engel Dempsy dies three stories high in an apartment. Doesn’t exactly put the gun in his hand.”

  “It’s all we’ve got,” the lieutenant said dryly. “I like Reyes better than the husband.” And then, turning his attention to Sammy, “Look, Golden, I’m damned sorry to do this to you. But you’re due out in Royal Heights.” He tore a sheet from the scratch-pad on his desk and handed it to his sergeant. “I know your tail’s dragging, but this priest asked for you. Said you made a lot of friends out there on the Mendez case …”

  “Father Shanley!” Sammy exclaimed.

  The lieutenant nodded and continued, “Anyhow, you’d better get out and have a look at the church before you turn in.”

  “The church?” Sammy was interested now with the name of the priest working like anodyne in his fatigue-ridden system.

  “That’s right, the church,” Cantrell repeated. “Seems there’s a corpse out there loaded with lead. From the amount of blood on the floor, seems the poor bastard must’ve died in church.”

  Sammy pushed himself to his feet.

  “One thing more, Sergeant …”

  “Sir?” Sammy caught the fresh note of authority.

  “For the love of heaven,” Cantrell continued piously, “if you and your priest friend have to kick up any crazy shenanigans, try and keep them in line with the department!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Sammy,” Dan Adams’s lips were twitching upward.

  “Yeah, Red?”

  “Don’t let them make a Christian out of you.”

  “You go to hell,” said Detective-sergeant Samuel Elijah Golden.

  • • •

  Three city cars were parked before the Church of St. Anne. Billingsly of the crime lab was across the street, dusting the window frame of a shabby coupe. Sammy waved and started up the steps.

  “Watch your feet, Sergeant,” the uniformed policeman before the door called.

  Sammy glanced down and saw the line of dark splotches on the concrete. “Thanks, Clancy. Who’s inside?”

  “Rest of the lab bunch.”

  “Nobody from Homicide?”

  “Not in the church, Sergeant. Shannon and Holmes are casing the neighborhood.”

&nb
sp; A sign, mounted on an easel and hand printed in both Spanish and English, announced that no mass would be offered that morning. Pulling open the door, Sammy was happy with the news that Homicide was on the scene. Obviously, he was here because Father Shanley had asked for him. Not to handle the initial investigation. Bed was closer than he had dared to hope.

  Father Joseph Shanley came toward him with outstretched hand. Momentarily, Sammy’s confidence in an early bed deserted him. That hand could draw him into this case up to his neck with no place to duck. It had once before. Still, his own hand shot out to meet the warm grasp.

  “I’m glad to see you, Sergeant.”

  Sammy grinned. “The last time you pulled that routine on me, Father, we climbed on a tiger.”

  The priest smiled for an instant, the fine lines at the corners of his lips and eyes arching upward briefly, then he remembered and was grave. “I’ve something to show you.” He turned and led the way down the aisle. The detective spoke to Jansen, Songer and Allen of the crime lab. With a wry touch of humor, he noted it was the first time he’d seen that whole outfit inside with their hats off.

  On the floor between the last pew and the next, lay a crumpled body. The young priest said quietly, “It’s not a pleasant sight, the mortal remains of Paco Sanches.”

  “One of your parishioners, Father?”

  The priest nodded, and added curiously, “In my grief, I called for you. Forgive me my weakness, Sergeant, as God may forgive me for failing Him so utterly.”

  Golden put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, and said with a gentleness surprising in his hard cop’s voice. “I don’t understand you, Father.”

  The priest turned, pivoting under the firm grip on his shoulder, so that he faced the detective. His eyes and his voice were level. “What I’m trying to tell you, Sergeant Golden, is that I am as responsible for this man’s death as the individual who pulled the trigger. More than that, in his last terrible moments, I was not even here to serve him.”

  “Hold it,” Sammy began, and then more quietly, “If you’d known he needed you, you’d have broken your neck to get here. Forgive me, Father, but murder isn’t usually arranged with a priest convenient.”

  “But he came to the door of the parish house,” the priest went on. “There’s blood on my door step. Then to the church …”

  Sammy felt the pain in Joseph Shanley’s voice, deep and personal, and as tightly drawn as a steel spring, felt it so it cried out inside him, and his own voice was rasp-rough when he spoke, forgetting the holiness of the place in which he stood and the curious stares of the hard-boiled crew around him. “And just where in the devil were you when this Paco Sanches needed you, shooting craps with the archangels?”

  Father Shanley flinched, then realized what the detective was up to, and half smiled, remembering. “I was at the hospital with Barbara Mendez.”

  “Barbara,” Sammy exclaimed, “hurt!”

  “Hurt?” The half-smile grew full. “As hurt as having a seven-pound boy can hurt.”

  “Holy smoke!” Sammy exploded. Then, apologetically, “Excuse me, Father, but that’s wonderful!”

  “As wonderful as this is tragic,” Father Shanley answered. Kneeling beside the still figure on the floor, he raised his head and asked, “Is it all right to touch the body?”

  Sammy glanced at Jansen. “What do you say, Lieutenant?”

  “Sure,” said the crime lab chief, “we’re just waiting for the basket.”

  “Look here, Sammy, will you?”

  As he knelt beside the priest, the detective realized it was the first time he had been addressed by his given name. They were back now, he decided, on the old basis.

  Father Shanley gently lifted the left arm of the dead man and pulled back the sleeve of soiled blue denim shirt. From wrist to elbow on the lighter inside of the arm were a series of marks, mostly tiny scars, some ugly where they had healed after festering, some punctures fresh and raw.

  “Hypodermic needle marks, Sammy?” Father Shanley asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Amateurishly applied. Probably with the instrument not sterilized. Probably by Paco, himself?”

  “Right again, Father.”

  The priest stood and said simply, “He was a fisherman, Sammy. Peter was a fisherman. My Lord took care of His fisherman. I didn’t.

  “And Paco’s been in trouble. He tried to tell me about it. Only he was always too frightened. Perhaps of me. Perhaps of God. There were signs of his trouble, I suppose. I should have guessed.”

  It was Lieutenant Jansen who answered him. “It’s not an easy thing to tell, Father. Not unless you suspect. Not unless you know what you’re looking for.”

  “I’ll know now,” Father Shanley said quietly. “I’ll know about narcotics the rest of my life.”

  There was nothing for the others to say. They were professionals. They knew about junkies and hopheads and smokes. They could show them to you in a multitude of places—as close as the city jail or as far away as the most exclusive sanitarium. They could show them to you on street corners and in pool halls; in some fancy clubs where they would never be suspected, and in certain high-school “frats” where high living was the thing. But they had never met a drug addict in church. Not dead in church with three bullets in him as well as the junk.

  After a moment, the priest asked, “Will you come back to the parish house with me, Sammy?”

  “Sure, Father.” Over his shoulder, the detective said to Jansen, “If Shannon and Holmes get back before you leave, will you tell them I’ll see them as soon as Father Shanley and I have had our little talk?”

  The study of the parish house was spotlessly clean, tidy, and close enough to being threadbare that the least of the good father’s parishioners would feel at home. The sag in the leather chair beside the reading table gave evidence that a more corpulent priest than Father Shanley had called it his own. Gratefully, Sammy accepted the offer of this prize seat and sank into it, stretching his weary legs full length before him. With a glint of amusement bordering on affection, Sammy noted that between the bronze book ends on the table, Father Brown, Detective, stood shoulder to shoulder with Augustine, Saint.

  Father Shanley filled his charred brier from a canister, and stood staring down at the detective as he performed the familiar ritual. “You’re tired, Sammy.”

  Sammy said, “We’ve both had a night of it, Father. I helped no new life into this world to give me a lift.”

  The priest pulled up a straight chair and sat with his elbows perched upon the stiff arms. His pipe forgotten, he came to the point. “I don’t know much about police procedure, but can you be assigned to the case of Paco Sanches?”

  Sammy considered his finger tips. After driving all night, his nails needed a file. He said, “Before I answer that question, I want to tell you something else. I was going to sleep on it and see you this afternoon. But this Paco Sanches business has put me on the spot.

  “I don’t know whether you read about it in the paper or not. Anyhow, Sunday night a woman named Hilda Engel Dempsy died in the Park Apartments. The mortal wound was caused by a single shot from a .38-caliber revolver fired at close range. The gun was found on the floor beside the body. The wound could have been self-inflicted. We don’t think so.

  “The department wants to hang it on a boy named Johnny Reyes. He’s out here in your neighborhood now with a couple of our men keeping an eye on him. To get back to Sunday night, however, Johnny was picked up in a public restroom opposite the Park about a half an hour after the shooting. We held him over night and then let him go. The reason we let him go is pretty obvious. We hope we’ve given him enough rope to hang himself. He’d be easier to convict than Gerald Dempsy, the woman’s husband, who apparently has no motive.

  “As for Johnny’s motive, that’s easy. A five-thousand-dollar diamond solitaire is missing off Hilda Dempsy’s left hand. The ring was insured and the line around her finger beside her wedding band indicates she wore the
stone habitually. Her husband can’t explain its absence. So, if we can even manufacture a connection between the Dempsy apartment and Johnny Reyes, we’ve got a five-grand motive to add to Johnny’s past record and a pretty good chance to buy him a one-way ticket to ‘Q.’ I don’t like the smell of it …”

  “Nor I!” exclaimed Father Shanley.

  “So, I want to stay on the case,” Sammy continued, “until the folder’s sent down to Records. Dan Adams is with me and you know as well as I that Red’s not going to railroad anybody. Besides, we had a lot of ideas last night, tailing Gerald Dempsy.”

  Father Shanley found a match and got his pipe alight. Through a cloud of smoke, he considered both the tired, hard face of Sammy Golden and the subject that was uppermost in his mind. Finally, he broke the silence.

  “I don’t want to seem uncharitable, but I’m most anxious that your Sergeant Shannon be pulled off this case, be taken out of this neighborhood before he does irreparable harm. When he came into church this morning, he referred to Paco Sanches as ‘another damned greaser.’ If he thinks of my friends so, he’ll treat them in kind. You know that.”

  With his finger tips, the detective probed the tiredness pushing out from his eyes into his temples. Then, deciding, he said, “Look, Father, I’m going to tell you a tale out of school and be uncharitable as the devil. Mike Shannon has a tramp for a wife. She has some fancy friends and she’s playing hell with his homework. Mike’s a good cop. At least, he used to be. Now, he’d bite the ear off a police dog.”

  • • •

  Diagonally across the street from the Church of St. Anne, two houses from where Paco Sanches had ridden his battered coupe into the curb on his last, awful ride, stood the bungalow of the family of Lalo Sepulveda. Papa Lalo, as was his custom, had breakfasted and left the house at four o’clock that morning to drive a trash truck on the Kashka franchise.

  So it was Mama Rubia, a frail ninety pounds of woman, who answered the door to Sergeant Mike Shannon’s knock.

  “Buenas dias,” she began timidly. A question was in her enormous, liquid brown eyes.