The Black Marble by Joseph Wambaugh Page A

power seldom got one’s picture anywhere but the society page. It couldn’t buy celebrity. In Old Pasadena, Madeline Whitfield would soon be as popular as a movie star.
    She was so caught up in it she drove down Vine Street without rubbernecking. No matter, there were no movie stars lunching at the Derby at that moment. But if she had looked she might have noticed a gangly, middle-aged dog handler she’d often seen at shows. He was standing at Hollywood and Vine, thinking about a massage parlor on the Sunset Strip.
    He was watching the door of the Brown Derby. He was about to commit a crime on a very holy day. But then, only two waiters in the Brown Derby and nobody in a Sunset Strip massage parlor knew it was a holy day, that it was Russian Christmas.
    Like so many Big Moments in Philo’s life, it all came down to a lost erection. Philo Skinner, ever the gambler, tossed a quarter in the air. Heads I drive to that massage parlor on the Strip and give my last fifty bucks to some pimply runaway bubblegummer with undeveloped tits to go down on me. Tails, I snatch the schnauzer from the Rolls-Royce and get rich. The blood was surging in his throat, his temples, his ruined chest. He sucked his twenty-ninth cigarette of the day, and flipped the quarter.
    Heads. Later, maybe dejection, depression, regret, but now—relief. Thank God. He hadn’t slept five minutes all night. He was suddenly horny as a billy goat.
    But she wasn’t a pimply runaway. The woman in the massage parlor was a forty-five-year-old professional with lurid eyebrows, who wasn’t impressed with Philo’s white-on-white leisure suit, and the imitation gold chain dangling on his bony chest.
    â€œI already told you, honey,” she said, all business, “I’ll give you the standard massage, the businessman’s special, or the super massage of the day. The prices are listed.”
    â€œSweetie,” Philo Skinner retorted, “I got a picture of General Grant in my pocket, but I’m not about to give him away without knowing exactly what I can expect.”
    â€œI’ll give you the standard massage, the businessman’s …”
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you?”
    â€œNothing, Officer.”
    â€œOfficer?”
    â€œYou sound like a cop.”
    â€œA cop.”
    â€œLast vice cop that tossed me in the slam looked about like you. Can’t depend on cops being young and healthy-looking anymore. They dig up some ole bag a bones, give him a Lady Clairol dye job …”
    â€œYou miserable cunt!”
    â€œGet outta my place of business!”
    â€œWhy you old pile a dog shit you got some nerve!”
    â€œGet outta here!” she said, “before I call a young cop with a blue suit. I ain’t goin for any a your vice cop entrapment.”
    Philo Skinner was outraged when he roared through the door onto Sunset Boulevard, as limp as linguini. Lady Clairol! With her lousy dye job? That old hound had a lot of room to talk!
    And it was anger now, more than fear, even more than the thrill of it, which gave him the impetus. An amateur was about to make his irrevocable first step into crime.

    Millie Muldoon Gharoujian always had lunch at the Brown Derby on Friday. Just as she always had dinner Thursday at Scandia and Wednesday at La Strada. Millie Muldoon Gharoujian was a creature of habit. It made it much easier to keep her life in order because she had a third-grade education and a 90 I.Q. In her younger days she had a body and bleach job like Harlow which got her out of the uniform of a waitress and into the bed of an Armenian junk dealer who obligingly departed for the Great Scrapyard after his second heart attack, leaving Millie to marry and divorce four young studs in succession and live a hell of a sexy life high up in Trousdale Estates overlooking all the glittering lights of Baghdad. She had owned at various times, in addition to the studs, a pet ocelot, a cheetah, a boa