COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

      Copyright © 2013 by Arlette Lees

      Published by Wildside Press LLC

      www.wildsidebooks.com

      ALSO BY BY ARLETTE LEES

      Angel Doll: A Crime Novel

      Cold Bullets and Hot Babes: Dark Crime Stories

      Hollywood Heat: A Mystery Novel

      DEDICATION

      To the memory of my parents,

      H. Garth Lees

      Cinetechnician

      Consolidated Film Industries

      Margrit H. Lees

      Costume Department

      Paramount Studios

      PART ONE

      “Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.”

      —Frank Lloyd Wright

      CHAPTER ONE

      CLUB VELVET

      OCTOBER 1956

      There was a drum roll from the salon, disorderly customers on the verge of mutiny, chanting: “Crystal, Crystal, Crystal!” But Crystal was sick and scared and couldn’t get off the dressing room couch.

      Club Velvet was in a shabby stucco building on a semi-rural dead end east of the Los Angeles River. It was somewhere between the Housing Projects and the freight yard, not that easy to find unless you knew it was there. All the wrong people did.

      “I want you on stage in two minutes,” said César, looming over her. He was dressed entirely in black, conchos flashing from his western hat. Tall and hard, the only thing that kept him from movie star good looks was a face as acne-scarred as a bad cement pour.

      “I’m not well, César. Please, put Ariceli on, just for tonight.”

      “You’re the one they pay to see,” he said, pulling her up by her long silver-blonde hair. A few strands tangled in his turquoise ring and she cried out as he ripped his hand free.

      Crystal was just out of high school when César had offered her ‘easy money’ to strip at the club over the summer. She needed tuition for nursing school. What harm could it do? She was so popular César refused to let her go when fall came. She was statuesque and full-breasted, with a natural flare for graceful, sensuous movement. She was César’s big money-maker, but, Crystal wanted to be a nurse, not a stripper.

      The last time she’d escaped, César had abducted her fourteen-year-old sister and held her captive until she returned. In retaliation, he’d handed Crystal off to a stranger for one terrifying night to cover his gambling debts. What Lisa had endured during her three days of captivity was something she refused to discuss. That was three years ago and Crystal had not had the courage to run away since.

      César pulled Crystal’s costume from the rack and threw it in her face. It consisted of two sequined pasties, a handful of red ostrich feathers, and long velvet gloves.

      “Put it on!”

      “I’m going to be sick. I think I’m pregnant.” There, she’d finally said it.

      The muscles clenched in his jaw.

      “How could you be so stupid a second time?”

      “I didn’t get this way by myself,” she said, summoning a spark of rebellion.

      “I’ll set you up one last time, but it better not happen again.”

      “I want to go home to my mother. I can’t go through this again.”

      “You’ll do exactly as I say.”

      The next day a bus took her to an abandoned building near Skid Row. Alone and scared, she walked the three flights to a room where plaster crumbled from the walls and wind blew through a broken window. A tray of surgical instruments stood beside a wooden table.

      Crystal put two hundred dollars in the hand of the withered crone who’d fixed her up the last time, a woman who’d been a surgical nurse in a previous incarnation, or so she’d been told.

      “Get undressed,” said the woman. “I don’t have all day.”

      When Crystal lay naked and shivering on the table, the old hag pushed her knees apart and inserted an ice cold speculum.

      “Stop moving!”

      “It hurts,” said Crystal, her teeth chattering. The nurse twisted the instrument one way, then another, and removed it.

      “Get dressed,” she said, dumping the instruments in her black bag.

      “You haven’t done anything.”

      “I can’t help you. There is no fetus.”

      “What do you mean? I’ve had morning sickness for three months.”

      “You’re not pregnant.”

      A surge of wind shook the pane. Crystal sat up and wrapped her arms around her shivering body. “But.…”

      “You need to see a physician dearie, a real doctor. Something’s not right in there.”

      “Like what?”

      “I don’t know. I just do scrapes.”

      ”What about César’s money?”

      “I charge for my time.”

      The crone picked up her bag, clattered down the stairs, and left in a taxi.

      CHAPTER TWO

      DARK RENDEZVOUS

      DECEMBER 31, 1956

      Up and coming young architect Gavin Chase was lost. When you live in an upscale Hollywood neighborhood, chances are you’ll never have reason to cross the Los Angeles River into the barrios of Boyle Heights. Tonight was an exception he’d come to regret.

      Not quite midnight, and firecrackers were exploding in rusty barrels adjacent to the freight yards. A pipe bomb blew down a fence. A shotgun blasted skyward, raining buckshot down on Gavin’s car—a world gone nuts and not a cop in sight. He felt a familiar stitch of pain in his right side and kept going. The wind was up, electrical wires whipping like snakes between utility poles.

      In October, Gavin had met a drop-dead gorgeous stripper. An hour later they were in a motel room on Western Blvd. She broke through his moral defenses faster than a burglar picks a lock. He expected her to ask for money. I mean, she seemed like that kind of girl. Instead, they began sharing their deepest, most intimate troubles. He hadn’t intended to get in this deep, but they met again and again. What his wife Amanda didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. Now, he’d grown tired of pushing his luck. Tonight he’d take Crystal and her sister to a safe house and get back to his real life.

      A group of teenagers in a lowrider tossed an empty beer can against the windshield of his station wagon, then peeled into the night. He passed street corner bodegas, store front churches, second-hand shops, and a Rescue Mission with a gold neon cross burning a hole in the darkness.

      Gavin swooped beneath a graffitied overpass. When he came out the other end, the street lights were gone from his rearview mirror. Weeds grew in the cracks of sidewalks, and everything except bars and liquor stores were closed for the night. A derelict pushed a shopping cart against the wind and a bony redhead with scarecrow hair drank from a wine bottle and stumbled into a lot strewn with broken glass and discarded tires. Lovely, just lovely, he thought.

      He pulled to the side of the road, snapped on the roof light, and unfolded his map. He glanced nervously at his watch. By now he should be driving back across the river. Amanda would be in her glittery new party dress, pacing and tapping her toe.

      He folded the map, pulled back into the street,