Black Dahlia & White Rose: Stories Read Free Page A

for feminine beauty & she’s got a cross-eye.
    The little blond girl. That one. SHE is the feminine beauty like an angel in heaven.
    (Did poor Betty Short have a “cross-eye”? Some photos you can see it, kind of—her left eye isn’t looking at you exactly the way the right eye is. So you’d think—something isn’t right about this girl, she’s witchy.)
    One day in September 1946 the phone rang— Hello? Is this K. Keinhardt the pinup photographer I am speaking to? —this prissy voice & I say Who the fuck is this? & he says Excuse me I am hoping to speak with Mr. Keinhardt on a proposition & I say What kind of a proposition? & he says I have been led to believe that you take “pinup” photos for the calendars & I say I am a studio photographer in the tradition of Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand—“nudes” are a small part of my repertoire & he says My proposition is: in my profession I see almost exclusively injured, disfigured, or malformed human bodies—particularly the female body is a sorry sight when it is far from “perfect”—and so—I am wondering if I might make a proposition to you, Mr. Keinhardt, who photographs only “perfect” female bodies . . .
    The deal was, Dr. M. would pay me twenty-five bucks—(which I later upped to thirty-five)—just to be a secret “observer”: looking through a peephole in the screen behind the camera tripod.
    Sure, I said. As long as you don’t take pictures of your own.
    How many times did Dr. M. come to the studio on Vicente Blvd., that fall and into the winter of 1947?—maybe a dozen times—& he never caused any trouble, just paid me in cash.
    Parked his shiny black 1946 Packard sedan across the street.
    Sat in the back behind the screen. “Observed.”
    Dr. M. had a face like a smudged charcoal drawing of Harry Truman, say. Same kind of glasses as Truman. You could not imagine this man young but only middle-aged with a prim little mouth & sagging jowls.
    Starched white shirt, no necktie but a good-quality coat and pressed trousers. Graying-brown hair trimmed and with a part on the left. Kind of stubby fingers for a surgeon but Dr. M. had that quiet air of “authority”—you could imagine this character giving orders to nurses and younger doctors in that voice.
    You could imagine the man giving orders to women—in that voice.
    Yes he was what you’d call a “gentleman”—“good breeding”—good taste too, he preferred the White Rose to the Black Dahlia—at least, that had been his wish.
    Of Betty Short whom he saw photographed on three separate occasions Dr. M. said frowning afterward:
    That black-haired vixen. She’s got a dirty mind—you can see it in her eyes—that cross-eye. And always licking her lips like there’s something on her lips she can’t get enough of tasting.
    Of Norma Jeane whom he saw photographed just once—(historic “Miss Golden Dreams” which was a session of just forty minutes, surprisingly)—Dr. M. did not speak at all as if tongue-tied.
    Dr. M. did request the girls’ names, telephone numbers & addresses & I told him NO.
    NO I cannot violate the girls’ privacy—that would be a considerable extra fee, Doctor!
    Something in my manner discouraged him. The Bone Doctor mumbled sorry & did not pursue the issue, did not even ask how much the “extra fee” might be—which was unexpected.
    After THE BLACK DAHLIA in all the papers the Bone Doctor vanished. He did not ever call me again & no one would ever know of his visits to my studio except me—and Betty Short.
    And how much Betty Short knew, I don’t know.
    Afterward I tried to find out who Dr. M. was—thinking maybe the Bone Doctor might find it worthwhile to pay me not to give the L.A. homicide detectives his name—but I couldn’t track him.
    So I thought Could be just a coincidence.
    A year or so before in L.A. there’d been another girl murdered in what was called a “sex frenzy”—in fact a girl Betty Short had known from the Top