Read A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.'s Scandalous Coming of Age for Free Online

the Ship) who had stepped outside to observe the fun.
    “I saw the flash of a gun and felt the bullet go through my body,” Conterno said.
    “How would you describe Albert Marco at that moment?” Clark asked. “He was snarling like a dog,” Conterno said.
    Sitting beside his lawyer, an unperturbed Marco wrote something on a pad of paper on the table in front of him; he wasn’t making notes, merely doodling.
    Under cross-examination, Dominick Conterno admitted that he’d been so drunk on bootleg grape brandy that he could no longer remember exactly what had happened—a big point for the defense. Dave Clark countered with two witnesses who testified that they’d seen Marco fire the shots and a third who declared he’d heard Marco say, just before the shooting, “I’ll kill you!” But then Evelyn Brogan, an attractive brunette who gave her profession as “legal secretary” (well, maybe she was Marco’s secretary, and what she was doing now had something to do with the law), testified on Marco’s behalf, swearing that she’d been Marco’s companion that night and he’d had nothing to do with the shooting.
    Judge Doran had placed the twelve jurors in sheriff’s custody; they stayed in a downtown hotel at night. One morning the jurors piled into a bus and left downtown, heading west on Pico Boulevard, across empty countryside, and down to Venice Boulevard where Clark led them through the Ship Café, showing them the dance floor, the orchestra stand, the restroom where the fight had started, and the roof to which Marco had fled.
    The weapon from which Marco was alleged to have fired the shots had disappeared, however; likewise had several witnesses who were, according to Coughlin in the News , “vacationing down Mexico way, courtesy of Albert Marco.” Still, after the trial had been in progress for twelve days, Dave Clark reckoned he’d laid out a strong case. “Albert Marco fired those shots. He shot Dominick Conterno in the back, not caring whether he killed Conterno or not. It’s true and it isn’t pretty and I call upon the jury to find Marco guilty,” Clark said in his closing remarks.
    The jury went out, and stayed out, for more than two days; when they trooped back in, the foreman told Judge Doran they’d been unable to reach a verdict. Nine had been in favor of acquittal, while three believed Marco guilty.
    Clark was shocked: nine had favored acquittal?
    Marco smiled while his attorneys argued strenuously that the case should be dismissed, but the judge surprised Marco and his team of legal mouthpieces by announcing that there would be a retrial. Judge Doran was a lean, balding, bespectacled USC graduate who knew his own mind, a former member of the District Attorney’s office who had argued cases against Earl Rogers and regarded himself as a mentor to Dave Clark.
    Dave Clark’s handsome face lit up with surprise and a smile; he’d been given another chance.

4
    Angel City
    L eslie White had been warned that another hemorrhage in his lung would most likely kill him. Doctors in Ventura County recommended confinement to bed and complete rest for at least a few months. White arrived with his wife at his aunt’s house in Hollywood and tried to oblige. He lay on his back, reading books and the papers. He listened to the radio, sipped orange juice, and tried to sleep. Images from the St. Francis disaster—mangled corpses with twisted limbs and faces eaten away—kept flashing through his mind. He couldn’t rid himself of the stench of decay that seemed to linger in his nostrils. He feared that he’d lost his mind as well as his health. He needed to be active, so when a different doctor told him he couldn’t fight consumption lying on his back, White was only too glad to hear the news. He got to his feet and set about exploring “the great complex metropolitan machine” in which he found himself.
    As White was walking down Hollywood Boulevard, where flashing neon signs proclaimed the Music