Angel in Black

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The two pieces of her lay porcelain-white in the ankle-high grass and weeds of a vacant lot on South Norton Avenue, like the upper and lower sections of a discarded marionette. No strings could ever reanimate this disassembled figure, however-a sadistic puppeteer had made certain of that.

“Jesus frig,” Fowley said, as ashen as the bisected corpse that lay, bizarrely posed, alongside the sidewalk. “Where’s a fuckin’ photographer when you need one?”

We were in a neighborhood of Los Angeles called Leimert Park, an area where development had been stalled by the war, and the weedy lots retained sidewalks, driveways and fire hydrants, as if the houses had been whisked away by a particularly tidy tornado.

“Yeah,” I said, “Richardson wouldn’t want to leave entertainment value like that just layin’ around.”

James H. Richardson was Fowley’s boss, the city editor of Hearst’s morning Examiner, and Bill Fowley-son of a legendary New York American editor-was one of about twelve guys who fancied themselves Richardson’s star reporter.

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