Free Hillside Stranglers by Darcy O'Brien

her?”
    “That’s it. She just split.”
    “You have no idea where she went?”
    “She could of went anywheres, right? Looks like she went out and bought it, what you tell me.”

FOUR
    “It finally made the papers,” Bianchi said. He was on the phone to Buono. “Little dipshit story way back where nobody will read it.”
    “You at work?”
    “Hell no. I took off. They think I have cancer.” Bianchi enjoyed telling people he had to go for a chemotherapy treatment when he didn’t feel like working. He was lounging in his Hollywood apartment, which he shared with his girlfriend. “I’m at Tamarind. Kelli’s out.”
    “I don’t want you calling me about this shit from work.”
    “Angelo, Angelo,” Bianchi said in his unmodulated, boyish way, “I know that much. Anyway, it’s in the paper. Might be on the news tonight. They still don’t know who she is. Was.”
    “The cunt don’t have no name?”
    “Sheriff’s asking for public assistance, can you beat that? Maybe we should help them out. They might offer a reward.Boy, that would be something. We ought to figure out how to make money from this deal. How many times do you think we could work this thing?”
    “The scam’s a winner. The scam’s foolproof. We can do what we goddam like. Just so we’re careful.”
    “The Buzzard strikes again.”
    “Got to be another,” Angelo said. “We do another, we put every bitch on notice. One other anyways.”
    “You know you’re right? I mean, nobody’s going to notice this, looks like.”
    “Got to be done. Some girls deserve to die. Dead people tell no tales.”
    “Yeah. Tonight?”
    “I got too much work piled up here. I’m gonna be beat tonight. I got this Bentley, the guy is pissed it ain’t ready. Maybe Saturday.”
    “Saturday’s not too good for me. You know, Kelli likes to go out Saturday nights.”
    “I always said you was pussy-whipped.”
    “Okay, okay, don’t get me wrong. Saturday’s okay.”
    “I got a customer.” Angelo hung up.
    Bianchi reread the newspaper article a few times and spent the afternoon watching soap operas and browsing through the latest addition to his library of texts on psychology, Psychoanalysis and Behavior Therapy. The walls of his apartment were decorated with framed degrees and certificates, including a Master of Science from Columbia University and a diploma conferring on him the title of “Certified Sex Therapist, in recognition of his attaining the required standards of competency, awarded by the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists, Washington, D.C.” He kept other bogus degrees at the office he had rented in North Hollywood at a nominal rate from a bona fide psychologist, Dr. Charles Weingarten, who had been most impressed by the spiel Bianchi had spun for him about Gestalt therapy and transactional analysis. Dr. Weingarten had thought the young Dr. Bianchi so pleasant and so sincere that he had been moved to give a struggling colleague a break.

    At this office, in a tower on Lankershim Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley, Dr. Bianchi offered weight-reduction counseling to young women. Some had responded to a flyer Bianchi had distributed which bore the salutation “Hi, Neighbor!” and asked why anyone would want to pay exorbitant fees for counseling when Dr. Bianchi from Columbia University would answer any five questions for ten dollars. Bianchi’s office walls displayed an Honorary Doctorate in Psychiatry from the National Psychiatric Association of America and a Certificate of Achievement Award of Merit as Intern in Residence, Strong Memorial Hospital, New York City. His practice, however, cannot be said to have flourished. He was leading such a varied, busy life, he had not been able to devote his full intellectual resources to counseling; but there was the future.
    In the meanwhile he had another scam cooking. One day, looking respectable in his three-piece suit and carrying his attaché case, he wandered into