Chapter 4
During the following week I was tied up with a couple of rush-rush articles for Car Skill and I gave very little thought to either Judith Call or the project which I had undertaken for the Reverend Doctor Call. On Thursday, however, I delivered the completed articles to the Central Building and, not unexpectedly, Sam Terry insisted that I buy lunch. Sam frequently did this whenever he was forced to present me with a check. I guess it was sort of a game with him.
"That church thing wasn't bad at all," he admitted while we were lingering over our coffee. "Unusual. But you ought to get a different camera, Bill. Honestly. Those pics aren't up to standard."
Sam, who was in his forties and a family man, was one of those amateur photographers who thought that every shot had to be made with a two-hundred-dollar outfit. Once, after he'd given me a particularly hard time, I told him that I'd borrowed a Speed Graphic from a friend. He had been enthusiastic over the results. I hadn't bothered to explain that I had used the Brownie anyway.
"Sam," I said seriously, "just what do you know about dirty pictures?"
"That's easy. I know I like some of them."
"Why?"
He sipped his coffee and smiled at me. "Who knows? Why get yourself all worked up about it?"
I told him, briefly, about my agreement to work with Dr. Call on the expose. I also outlined what I had done so far, omitting, of course, the somewhat pleasant hours I had spent in Elsa Lang's apartment.
"Well, you've got to do something for a hundred and fifty a week," Sam observed dryly. "That's for sure."
"Agreed."
"Locating the minister's daughter won't account for much of it."
I had phoned Elsa almost every evening but she hadn't heard from Judith. Gracefully, I had declined another dinner date, saying that I was tied up with a lot of writing. I wondered if I'd try to think of an excuse the next time I spoke with her.
"The police might be a good bet," Sam suggested. "And the Morning Star-they ran some articles on the subject a while ago. Why don't you check with them?"
"I thought I would. I only wondered if you might know of someone connected with the operation."
"Me?" Sam laughed. "Hell, I just look at the pictures. I don't buy them and I don't know who sells them."
We spent another half an hour discussing future articles for Car Skill. When we parted at the corner of Fifth and Main I hailed a cab and asked the driver to take me down to City Hall.
It was almost three before I got in to see the chief of the vice squad, a middle-aged lieutenant by the name of Murray. He was Irish and red-headed and seemed inclined to brush me off.
"Sure, there are dirty pictures around the city," he admitted. "And prostitutes. A little bit of both pass through here everyday."
"But where do the pictures come from?"
He looked at me across the top of the wide desk, his blue eyes sober and quite obviously impatient.
"If we knew," he said, "there wouldn't be any." I received little information from the lieutenant. The only actual arrest based on the sale of indecent pictures had taken place during the previous April, near one of the schools. The peddler, a man in his early fifties, had been given a sixty-day suspended sentence and, as far as the lieutenant knew, had departed from the city shortly thereafter. As for the store owners who handled the photos, no arrests had been made. A few had been warned and a considerable number of the pictures had been seized and destroyed. But nothing else had been done. Nothing.
"We've got more important things to keep us busy," the lieutenant explained. "Take last night, for instance. There was a rape out in the East End section. A young nurse, she's coming home from work, and this guy jumps her not a block away from one of our sub-stations. That's the kind of thing we have to work on, Mr. Morgan. The pictures may be wrong and illegal, sure, but we have to take care of worst things first."
"It's a known fact that many rapes and crimes of passion are caused by this type of material," I said. "Psychologists tell us that if we can eliminate the idea we can, in many cases, avoid the crime."
The lieutenant, thoroughly unimpressed, swung around in his chair and flipped a button on the intercom.
"Send Swingle up here. He's supposed to run some flowers up to the commissioner's house."
"Thanks," I said, going to the door. "Thanks a hell of a lot for nothing, Lieutenant."
Apparently he failed to hear me and I went out into the hall, my guts churning. No wonder Dr. Call and his associates felt there was a need for a private investigation of the dirty-picture racket. At least one supposedly responsible police official appeared to be quite unconcerned about it.
On the other hand, the attitude which greeted me at the editorial offices of the Morning Star was vastly different. The editor was polite and, once aware of the purpose of my visit, he promptly introduced me to the reporter who had originally worked on the story.
The reporter's name was George Castle. He was a nervous young man in his early thirties and while I talked to him he alternately smoked and drank from a container of cold coffee.
"You're welcome to the job," he told me. "And I think you should know that you ought to be prepared to collect some lumps on your skull. In fact, if you don't have a will it might be a good idea to sit down and write one out. You'll find that some of these people are willing to play pretty rough, Mr. Morgan."
His account was most enlightening. His paper, encouraged by numerous complaints received from school teachers and parents, had entered into the series with the thought of revealing the whole gruesome story. After three installments the series had been dropped.
"As you know," Castle said, lighting another cigarette, "a newspaper must rely upon its distributor to maintain circulation. After the first chapter of our 'Vice for Sale' appeared we took a twenty percent boost in newsstand sales. However, on the third day our distributor told us that he would no longer continue to handle our paper if we were determined to see the series through to the bitter end. The distributor claimed that we were inviting libel action, since we had charged the police and other public officials with gross negligence, and the distributor felt he also could be held accountable. You know, of course, what happened. We stopped the series and everybody-that is, everybody who might have been involved-was happy about it."
"Perhaps the distributor had been threatened."
"I don't know, Mr. Morgan. All I know is that after breaking ground we were forced to-put away our shovels."
Castle asserted that he had assembled little concrete information about the operation. His, articles had been general in scope, outlining the obscene material available in various outlets, and suggesting quite pointedly that the police should talce some positive action. He had hoped, through the articles, to encourage someone in the know to step forward and present him with additional facts. This, he said, had not happened.
"There is no doubt," he told me, "but what some of the model agencies are involved. Pretty girls are needed for this sort of thing and that's about the only source of supply. Probably some of the movie hopefuls are used in the two-reelers. I don't know. But I know that many of the more lurid movies are imported from the port of Basra, on the Persian Gulf. Once the master film reaches this country there are hundreds of prints made of it. A five thousand dollar investment may, I understand, yield as much as two hundred thousand. It is a big business, Mr. Morgan. Very, very big."
I talked with Castle until long after five but I was unable to learn much of anything further. He continued to impress upon me that the stakes in this type of enterprise were tremendous and that the risk for the one who attempted to expose it only slightly less. I finally departed from the offices of the Morning Star feeling something like a condemned man who had just been sentenced to the chair for a crime he did not commit.
Upon returning to my apartment I found a considerable amount of mail awaiting me. Some of it, I am forced to admit, was rather interesting.
All of the replies were either from within the city or from nearby sections of the east coast, there not having been sufficient time for the west coast outlets to have responded. I noted that all had been sent to me first class mail which, of course, eliminated the possible chance of them being opened for postal inspection. I scanned the material carefully, especially the stuff which had been mailed in the city, but any clues as to the senders were, I might say, conspicuous by their absence. In nearly all instances the return addresses were either general delivery or post office box numbers. Only two boasted a definite street number and these I recognized as having originated from well-known mailing centers in the downtown region. Many of the envelopes, as well as contents, contained no return addresses whatsoever. These, as you might suspect, were from sources dealing in naked pictures of the female form. All of the photos had been retbuched and I am quite sure that none of them could have been termed definitely obscene in the legal sense of the word. One could assume them to be, as advertised, practical "art studies."
The gimmick offers which were enclosed with many of the returns were of the most interest to me. One firm promised to have a lovely model write to me, personally, and "in her own handwriting," if I would return the pink slip, indicating the type of correspondent desired. A dollar, it was pointed out, was all that was needed to start a chain of events which would "let us show you everything we've got!" A rather hastily printed brochure called my attention to the fact that Janie posed for intimate photos and films; Paulette was long-legged and balloon-curved in the right places; Helen was torrid, her body as lovely as a "flawless work of art"; and, of course, I mustn't overlook Cleo, "a honey-blonde with exotically slanted eyes who thought up all her own poses all by herself." A handwritten letter which was signed "Ella" and which had been reproduced by photo-offset promised that all girls in the "club" were "sexsational calendar girl pin-ups" and that I would be pleased with the pictures which they had made "in secret." This offer came from the Garden State Pen Pals Club and it gave me a choice of purchasing still shots at ten for three dollars or, if I wished, either 8mm or 16mm reels with or without sound. The proposal suggested that I might experience more enjoyment if I went the whole distance and acquired the movies complete with sound.
Another company, "Classic Arts," claimed it was only interested in selling me a viewer which would make my drawing lessons come easier and give them "the pulse of life." Of course, if I found myself in need of adequate subject material the company would be delighted to assist me in my work and I might, for a rather substantial sum, order one of the many "art study" sets of female anatomy which were available. The several samples enclosed for my information were of chic young girls with big busts, tiny waists and rounded hips.
I noted that one firm, which specialized in adult movies, presented a rather provocative sounding list of titles. There was, for instance, "The Buxom Golfer ... See what happens when this busty gal in a scant costume learns to play golf ... Wow!" Another likely appearing number was the "Shawl Boogie," which informed me that I shouldn't miss the "roaring action of this peek-a-boo shawl as Busty goes through this teaser and busts through the shawl." Still another, "A Day With Donnie Dilson," suggested that I might want to spend a full day with a model, "from the time luscious Donnie tumbles out of bed in the morning until she takes her tummy-flattening exercises late in the evening." This firm, however, had not gotten itself into a rut by offering only one type of entertainment. There were several books available, all of them illustrated, which revealed how kids were trapped into a sin syndicate, how a madam worked and thought and the "heart-breaking" story of a teenager who had become a "B" girl. The books were a bargain, it said, at only one dollar each. Another book, which cost five dollars, contained twenty-five uncensored letters describing the experience of being spanked. The blurb which served as a plug for the spanking book raised the age-old question about whether spanking was a matter of discipline or was it, in reality, a means of self-satisfaction.
The claims for the products of one firm proved to be of little interest to me since I had not, as far as I knew, "lost my vigor."
With the exception of the photos I placed all of the material in a brown manila envelope and stored it away in the closet on the top shelf. I then sat down and counted the number of photos which I had received. There were ninety-six. I separated these into piles of eight and obtained a dozen cellophane sandwich-bags from the kitchen. After I had placed the photos in the bags I closed the flaps with scotch tape and filed the entire collection in my coat pockets.
During the evening hours I called on several of the bookstores in the midtown area but, as I had imagined, many of the proprietors had long since departed for the day. Some of the better stores I failed to approach since I knew that their owners wouldn't be caught dead in the same block with one of my humble offerings. In one store, however, a small place off Darwin Circle, I managed to draw my first blood.
"They're lousy pictures," the grubby old man informed me. "But I'll take six packs at half a buck each. My own supplier must have got stuck in a door someplace."
I assured him I hoped to have something better the next time.
"Look," he said as he gave me three ones. "I don't know you and you don't know me. But I'll tell you one thing: you have to have the real stuff or you can't find a market. These pics are for kids. And kids don't have any money. I have to give my trade real spicy pictures or they aren't interested."
I explained that I was new in the business, that I was attempting to work up a route and I suggested, without evidencing too much interest, that I might be able to be of assistance to the person who had been servicing him.
"Well, I don't know," the old man said, doubtfully. "I think he works alone. And I don't see him very often. When I do, though, I'll mention it to him."
"Thanks a lot. I'll stop back in a week or so."
"Suit yourself."
I went out into the street. The mid-evening show crowd spilled out over the sidewalks. A million lights winked and blinked and a hundred different signs offered a hundred different products.
I felt depressed. This, I decided, was no way to get anywhere. I had to approach the problem from another direction. Or, at least, I had to try something else while I continued to work the stores.
I went into a quiet-looking restaurant and phoned Elsa at her apartment. No, she had not heard from Judith Call. She had my number and she'd let me know as soon as she did.
"Busy tonight?"
"Well-yes." Then, softly, "I'm sorry, Bill."
"How well do you know your boss?" I wanted to know, hiding my disappointment. "I mean, I was thinking about doing an article on a model agency-you know, how it's run, things like that-and I wondered if you might be able to pave the way for me with your people. It would be good publicity for them and about the cheapest advertising they ever had."
The wire hummed for a moment while she thought about it.
"Why, yes," she said at last. "I don't see why not."
"Fine. I'll call you tomorrow."
She said that would be all right, that I could phone her at the office, and we hung up.
I wondered, as I went outside, if anything would ever come of it. But I had to start somewhere; I had to do something. Perhaps this angle might furnish me with a lead. In any event, it might give me a clue as to where I could locate Judith Call. , Somehow, finding that girl had become very important.