The Dream of the Broken Horses by William Bayer Page A

glasses and carefully tended goatee, he looks more like a professor than a cop. He's also, I'm discovering, a shrewd street-smart psychologist. That he'd struggled to reason out the attraction between this unlikely pair tells me he's probably good at his job.
    We're at the end of the drive, the turnabout area, heading toward the broad steps that lead to the front door.
    "We were sure Cody did it," Mace tells me. "He was vicious and he was jealous. Two years before the Flamingo killings, he found out his girlfriend, a singer, was two-timing him. He used the broken end of a gin bottle to rip her face, and, though there wasn't any proof, we were pretty sure he also had her lover whacked. His body turned up in a ravine in Lucinda Heights. No family. Nobody cared. Cody's lawyers settled with the girl. She refused to press charges and left the state. It was common knowledge he was capable of whacking people who crossed him or people he thought had done so. So why not Mrs. Fulraine and Jessup? She was his mistress after all, then he found out she was spending dirty afternoons with this nothing schoolteacher. That made him murderously furious so he killed them. Least that's how we had it figured."
    The Elms house, unlike the gates, appears to be in good repair. When I mention this, Mace tells me a syndicate acquired the property last year with a plan to divide it into high-end condos.
    When Mace opens the front door, we're hit by a blast of over-heated air.
    "Closed up this time of year, it gets like a furnace. Of course Cody had it air-conditioned. They'll redo that, heating, wiring, plumbing. Some snazzy downtown firm's got it figured out. The top unit'll be a duplex enclosing the old gaming room, an upstairs suite, and the terrace and garden area off the back. I hear they'll be asking a million four for that one." Mace mops his brow. "Come on, I'll show you around . . ."
    He takes me first into the Cub Room where the torch singers performed. Even though it's daytime and the room's been stripped of furniture, I can sense what it must have been like. Thick, plush carpeting, tufted white leather banquettes, tables arranged on tiers, and a sweeping, curving staircase like the one in the fabulous Buenos Aires nightclub in Gilda that Rita Hayworth descends while singing "Put the Blame on Mame ."
    "The singers made their entrances down those steps," Mace tells me. "The musicians worked against the back wall. The dining banquettes were on the upper level, the smaller tables for drinkers below. There was a small dance floor for customer dancing between sets."
    He leads me into an adjoining room. "Quieter dining in here." He points toward the glassed-in kitchen. "The partition's triple glazed so you could watch the chefs but not hear the noise."
    He shows me a small private dining room reserved for Cody's mob pals.
    "They'd start all-night poker games in here after the swells went home."
    " 'Swells'?"
    Mace laughs. "Don't you love it? Right out of the twenties. Even back twenty-six years, this scene was from another era. I tell you, this was one swanky joint."
    We retrace our steps to the entrance hall, pass through a small room with an intimate curved bar where people waited for friends or gamblers retired to take a break, then enter the long gaming room in the back, which extends the length of the building. It's a magnificent space with three sets of French doors leading to a terrace overlooking a garden, now gone to seed.
    Mace gestures. "This was the heart of The Elms. The Cub Room, bar and entertainers—they were just bait to lure the suckers. I'll say this for Cody, he ran an honest club. No fixed roulette wheel or loaded dice. Wasn't necessary. This room was a money machine. 'Course he had his costs including payoffs to local law enforcement. Every so often the complaints would pile up, forcing the sheriff to stage a raid. They never found anything. No craps tables, roulette wheels, or blackjack stands. Cody was always tipped with