The Delta Star by Joseph Wambaugh

shit, and which he knew came from a little Jew on Los Angeles Street for five bucks, he knew even without the cynical brown eyes that this was a cop.
    “Name’s Villalobos.” The detective halfheartedly opened his coat and flashed the shield pinned to his belt.
    Oliver Rigby squinted through the cigarette smoke, his and the detective’s, which cast a pall over the counter in the seedy lobby. He read the rank on the badge.
    “Yes, sir … sergeant,” he said. “What can I do for you? Is it about Missy Moonbeam? Sad thing, sad thing. Little girl in the first bloom. Sad thing.”
    “Yeah, well what was this about a white pimp?” The detective examined the report made by another investigator Saturday night when they couldn’t find Mario Villalobos, who was shacked up with a Chinatown groupie.
    “Yeah, I think I seen this guy over on Western. I go over there to get the racing form every day.”
    “What makes you think he’s a pimp?”
    “Big pinstripe suit. I think I seen him last week talkin to some a the street hustlers on Western, is what made me think. Maybe he’s a play pimp?”
    “See him with Missy Moonbeam on Saturday night?”
    “No,” Oliver Rigby said, almost losing his upper plate, pushing it back in place with both thumbs. “But I seen him comin down the elevator that night. He may a been a visitor a somebody’s.” Then he quickly added, “Course I don’t rent to girls, I know their hustlin tricks. I don’t keep no rooms with hot beds. I don’t allow none a that. I don’t …”
    “Yeah, go on,” Mario Villalobos said with his peculiar, sad sort of sigh, lighting another cigarette.
    “Anyways, once in a while I find out some a the girls’re hookers on the avenue. But long as they don’t bring tricks here, I can live with it. They gotta act like ladies and don’t bring no tricks. This white pimp, this tall guy with black hair, you don’t think he was a pimp?”
    “Anything’s possible,” Mario Villalobos said. “But finding a white pimp alive and well on Western Avenue would be about like finding a blue-footed booby nesting on your roof. Which reminds me, is the door to the roof unlocked?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Isn’t it dangerous, as Missy Moonbeam proved?”
    “Some a the tenants like to sit up there and get the sun in the …” He snapped his fingers and finished it in tune: “.. . the sun in the mornin and the moon at night!” Oliver Rigby looked disappointed when the detective didn’t smile.
    “What makes you think the play pimp was involved?”
    “Cause I heard her scream. Then the cars outside started screechin their brakes and there she was layin in the street. He came rushin through the lobby.”
    “Who was her best friend in this building?” Mario Villalobos asked.
    “The kid never had no friends in this hotel, far as I know,” Oliver Rigby said, lighting a new cigarette with the butt of the last while Mario Villalobos wondered what his lungs must look like. “She only been stayin here, oh, six months maybe.”
    “She live with her old man?”
    “A real pimp? I don’t allow niggers around here. I let these white girls stay, they behave. But I tell em, you do what you want on the streets but don’t bring the streets home to the Wonderland Hotel. I don’t want no trouble with no vice squad and I …”
    “I’m sure this is a hotel fit for the Moral Majority,” Mario Villalobos nodded wearily. “Ever see someone, a righteous pimp, let’s say, hanging around outside?”
    “No niggers in the Wonderland Hotel,” Oliver Rigby said. “And no greasers neither.” Then the hotel clerk looked at the dark eyes and coloring of Mario Villalobos, realized the name was Hispanic and quickly added, “Course I ain’t got nothin against clean decent Mexicans, you understand.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Mario Villalobos said.
    “I love Fernando Valenzuela and all the other greas — … all the other Mexicans and foreigners on the Dodgers,” the hotel clerk said.
    “Me