by James Ellroy
Madeleine and Ramona were picking at their food with sullen faces, like they’d been captive audiences to the story before; Martha was still drawing, staring intently at me, her captive. “What happened to your friend?” I asked.
“God bless him, but for every story of success there’s a corresponding one of failure. Georgie didn’t butter up the right people. He didn’t have the drive to complement his God-given talent, and he just fell by the wayside. He was disfigured in a car crash back in ‘36, and now he’s what you might call a never was. I give him odd jobs tending some of my rental property and he does some rubbish hauling for the city—”
I heard a sharp screechy sound, and looked across the table. Ramona had missed stabbing a potato, and her fork had slid off the plate. Emmett said, “Mother, are you feeling well? Is the food to your liking?”
Ramona stared in her lap and said, “Yes, Father” it looked like Martha was bracing her elbow. Madeleine went back to playing footsie with me; Emmett said, “Mother, you and our certified genius have not been doing a very good job of entertaining our guest. Would you care to participate in the conversation?”
Madeleine dug her toes into my ankle—just as I was about to try to lighten things up with a joke. Ramona Sprague forked herself a small mouthful of food, chewed it daintily and said, “Did you know that Ramona Boulevard was named after me, Mr. Bleichert?”
The woman’s out-of-kilter face congealed around the words; she spoke them with a strange dignity. “No, Mrs. Sprague, I didn’t know that. I thought it was named after the Ramona Pageant.”
“I was named after the pageant,” she said. “When Emmett married me for my father’s money he promised my family that he would use his influence with the City Zoning Board to have a street named after me, since all his money was tied up in real estate and he couldn’t afford to buy me a wedding ring. Father assumed it would be a nice residential street, but all Emmett could manage was a dead-end block in a red light district in Lincoln Heights. Are you familiar with the neighborhood, Mr. Bleichert?” Now the doormat’s voice held an edge of fury.
“I grew up there,” I said.
“Then you know that Mexican prostitutes expose themselves out of windows to attract customers. Well, after Emmett succeeded in getting Rosalinda Street changed to Ramona Boulevard he took me for a little tour there. The prostitutes greeted him by name. Some even had anatomical nicknames for him. It made me very sad and very hurt, but I bided my time and got even. When the girls were small I directed my own little pageants, right outside on our front lawn. I used the neighbor’s children as extras and reenacted episodes out of Mr. Sprague’s past that he would rather forget. That he would—”
The head of the table was slammed; glasses toppled and plates rattled. I stared at my lap to give the family infighters back some of their dignity and saw that Madeleine was gripping her father’s knee so hard that her fingers were blue-white. She grabbed my knee with her free hand—with ten times the strength I thought she’d be capable of. An awful silence stretched, then Ramona Cathcart Sprague said, “Father, I’ll sing for my supper when Mayor Bowron or Councilman Tucker comes to dinner, but not for Madeleine’s male whores. A common policeman. My God, Emmett, how little you think of me.”
I heard chairs scraping the floor, knees bumping the table, then footsteps moving out of the dining room; I saw that my hand was gripping Madeleine’s the same way I curled it into an eight-ounce glove. The brass girl was whispering, “I’m sorry, Bucky. I’m sorry.” Then a cheery voice said, “Mr. Bleichert?” and I looked up because it sounded so happy and sane.
It was Martha McConville Sprague, holding out a piece of paper. I took it with my free hand; Martha smiled and walked away. Madeleine was still muttering apologies when I looked at the picture. It was the two of us, both naked. Madeleine had her legs spread. I was between them, gnawing at her with giant Bucky Bleichert teeth.
We took the Packard down to hot sheet row on South La Brea. I drove, and Madeleine had the smarts not to talk until we passed a cinderblock auto court called the Red Arrow Inn. Then she said, “Here. It’s clean.”
I parked beside a line of pre-war jalopies; Madeleine went to the office and returned with the key to room eleven. She opened the door; I flicked on the wall light.
The flop was done up in dreary shades of brown and reeked of its previous inhabitants. I heard a dope sale being transacted in number twelve; Madeleine started to look like the caricature in her sister’s drawing. I reached for the light switch to blot it all out. She said, “No. Please, I want to see you.”
The narco sale burst into an argument. I saw a radio on the dresser and turned it on; an ad for Gorton’s Slenderline Shop ate up the angry words. Madeleine pulled off her sweater and removed her nylons standing up; she was down to her undergarments before I began fumbling at my clothes. I snagged the zipper stepping out of my trousers; I ripped a shirt seam unhitching my shoulder holster. Then Madeleine was naked on the bed—and the kid sister’s picture was obliterated.
I was nude inside of a second and joined with the brass girl inside of two. She muttered something like, “Don’t hate my family, they’re not bad,” and I silenced her with a hard kiss. She returned it; our lips and tongues played until we had to break for breath. I ran my hands down to her breasts, cupping and kneading; Madeleine gasped little words about making up for the other Spragues. The more I kissed and felt and tasted her and the more she loved it, the more she murmured about them—so I grabbed her hair and hissed, “Not them, me. Do me be with me.”
Madeleine obeyed, going between my legs like a reverse of Martha’s drawing. Captured that way, I felt myself getting ready to burst. I pushed Madeleine away so as not to explode, whispering, “Me, not them,” stroking her hair, trying to concentrate on an inane radio jingle. Madeleine held me harder than any fight giveaway girl ever did; when I was cooled down and ready, I eased her onto her back and pushed myself inside her.
Now it was no common policeman and rich girl slut. It was us together, arching, shifting and moving, hard, but with all the time in the world. We moved together until the dance music and jingles ended and the radio dial tone came and went, the cinderblock rutting room silent except for us. Then we ended it—perfectly, together.
We held each other afterward, pockets of sweat binding us head to toe. I thought of going on duty in less than four hours and groaned; Madeleine broke our embrace and aped my trademark, flashing her perfect teeth. Laughing, I said, “Well, you kept your name out of the papers.”
“Until we announce the Bleichert-Sprague nuptials?”
I laughed harder. “Your mother would love that.”
“Mother’s a hypocrite. She takes pills that the doctor gives her, so she’s not a hophead. I fool around, so I’m a whore. She’s sanctioned, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You’re my—” I couldn’t quite say, “whore.”
Madeleine tickled my ribs. “Say it. Don’t be a cop from squaresville. Say US’
I grabbed her hand before the tickling made me helpless. “You’re my paramour, you’re my inamorata, you’re my sweetheart, you’re the woman I suppressed evidence for—”
Madeleine bit my shoulder and said, “I’m your whore.”
I laughed. “Okay, you’re my violator of 234-A PC.”
“What’s that?”
“The California penal code designation for prostitution.”
Madeleine waggled her eyebrows. “Penal code?’
I put up my hands. “You got me there.”
The brass girl nuzzled me. “I like you, Bucky.”
“I like you, too.”
“You didn’t start out liking me. Tell true—at first you just wanted to screw me.”
“That’s true.”
“Then when did you start liking me?”
“The moment you took off your clothes.”
“Bastard! You want to know when I started liking you?”
“Tell true.”
“When I tol
d Daddy I met this nice policeman Bucky Bleichert. Daddy’s jaw dropped. He was impressed, and Emmett McConville Sprague is a very hard man to impress.”
I thought of the man’s cruelty to his wife and made a neutral comment: “He’s an impressive man.”
Madeleine said, “Diplomat. He’s a hardcase, tightwad Scotchman son of a bitch, but he’s a man. You know how he really made his money?”
“How?”
“Gangster kickbacks and worse. Daddy bought rotten lumber and abandoned movie facades from Mack Sennett and built houses out of them. He’s got firetraps and dives all over LA, registered to phony corporations. He’s friends with Mickey Cohen. His people collect the rents.”
I shrugged. “The Mick’s thick with Bowron and half the Board of Supervisors. You see my gun and handcuffs?”
“Yes.”
“Cohen paid for them. He put up the dough for a fund to help junior officers pay for their equipment. It’s good public relations. The city tax assessor never checks his books, because the Mick pays for the gas and oil on all his field agent’s cars. So you’re not exactly shocking me.”
Madeleine said, “Do you want to hear a secret?”
“Sure.”
“Half a block of Daddy’s Long Beach houses collapsed during the ‘33 earthquake. Twelve people were killed. Daddy paid money to have his name expunged from the contractor’s records.”
I held Madeleine out at arm’s length. “Why are you telling me these things?”
Caressing my hands, she said, “Because Daddy’s impressed with you. Because you’re the only boy I’ve ever brought home that he thought was worth spit. Because Daddy worships toughness and he thinks you’re tough, and if we get serious he’d probably tell you himself. Those people weigh on him, and he takes it out on Mother because it was her money he built that block with. I don’t want you to judge Daddy by tonight. First impressions last, and I like you and I don’t want—”
I pulled Madeleine to me. “Be still, babe. You’re with me now, not your family.”
Madeleine held me tightly. I wanted to let her know things were copacetic, so I tilted her chin up. Tears were in her eyes; she said, “Bucky, I didn’t tell you all of it about Betty Short.”
I gripped her shoulders. “What?”
“Don’t be mad at me. It’s nothing, I just don’t want to keep it a secret. I didn’t like you at first, so I didn’t—”
“Tell me wow.”
Madeleine looked at me, a stretch of sweat-stained bedsheet separating us. “Last summer I was bar hopping a lot. Straight bars in Hollywood. I heard about a girl who was supposed to look a lot like me. I got curious about her and left notes at a couple of places—’Your lookalike would like to meet you’ and my private number at the house. Betty called me, and we got together. We talked, and that was it. I ran into her again with Linda Martin at La Verne’s last November. It was just a coincidence.”
“And that’s all of it?”
“Yes.”
“Then babe, you’d better prepare yourself. There’s fifty-odd cops canvassing bars, and if even one of them gets hold of your little lookalike number, you’re headed for a trip across page one. There’s not a goddamned thing I could do about it, and if it happens, don’t ask me—because I’ve done all I’m going to.”
Drawing away from me, Madeleine said, “I’ll take care of it.”
“You mean your Daddy will?”
“Bucky lad, are ye telling me you’re jealous of a man twice your age and half your size?”
I thought of the Black Dahlia then, her death eclipsing my shoot-out headlines. “Why did you want to meet Betty Short?”
Madeleine shivered; the red neon arrow that gave the flop its name blinked through the window and across her face. “I’ve worked hard at being loose and free,” she said. “But the way people described Betty it sounded like she was a natural. A real wild girl from the gate.”
I kissed my wild girl. We made love again, and I pictured her coupled with Betty Short the whole time—both of them naturals.
Twelve
Russ Millard took in my rumpled clothes and said, “A ten-ton truck or a woman?”
I looked around at University squadroom starting to fill up with daywatch dicks. “Betty Short. No phone work today, okay, boss?”
“In the mood for some fresh air?”
“Keep talking.”
“Linda Martin was spotted last night out in Encino, trying to get served at a couple of bars. You and Blanchard go out to the Valley and look for her. Start at the twenty-thousand block of Victory Boulevard and work west. I’ll be sending some other men as soon as they report in.”
“When?”
Millard checked his watch. “Immediately, if not sooner.”
I eyeballed for Lee and didn’t see him, nodded assent and reached for the phone on my desk. I called the house, the City Hall Warrants office and Information for the number of the El Nido Hotel. I got a no answer for the first call and two no Blanchards for the others. Then Millard came back, with Fritz Vogel and—amazingly—Johnny Vogel in plainclothes.
I stood up. “I can’t find Lee, Skipper.”
Millard said, “Go with Fritzie and John. Take an unmarked radio car so you can keep in touch with the other men out there.”
The fat Vogel boys stared at me, then at each other. The look they exchanged said my unkempt state was a Class B Felony. “Thanks, Russ,” I said.
We drove to the Valley, the Vogels in the front seat, me in the back. I tried to doze, but Fritzie’s monologue on hooers and woman killers made it impossible. Johnny nodded along; every time his father paused for breath, he said, “Right, Dad.” Going over the Cahuenga Pass, Fritzie ran out of verbal steam; Johnny’s yes-man act fell silent. I closed my eyes and leaned against the window. Madeleine was doing a slow striptease in concert with motor hum when I heard the Vogels whispering.
“… he’s alseep, Daddy.”
“Don’t call me ‘Daddy’ on the job, I’ve told you a million goddamn times. It makes you sound like a nancy boy.”
“I proved I’m not no nancy boy. Homos couldn’t do what I did. I’m not cherry no more, so don’t say nancy boy.”
“Be still, damn you.”
“Daddy, I mean Dad—”
“I said be still, Johnny.”
The fat braggart cop reduced to a child grabbed my interest; I faked a snore-wheeze so the two would keep it up. Johnny whispered, “See, Dad, he’s asleep. And he’s the nance, not me. I proved it. Buck-tooth bastard. I could take him, Dad. You know I could. Job-stealing bastard, I had Warrants in the bag until—”
“John Charles Vogel, you hush this instant or I’ll take a strap to you, twenty-four-year-old policeman or not.”
The radio started barking then; I faked a big yawn. Johnny turned around and smiled. He said, “Catch up on your beauty sleep?” wafting his legendary halitosis.
My first instinct was to call him on his crack about taking me—then my sense of squadroom politics took over. “Yeah, I had a late night.”
Johnny winked ineffectually. “I’m a quiff hound myself. I go a week without it, I’m climbing the walls.”
The dispatcher droned, “… repeat, 10-A-94, roger your location.”
Fritzie grabbed the mike. “ 10-A-94, rogering at Victory and Saticoy.”
The dispatcher replied, “See the barman at the Caledonia Lounge, Victory and Valley View. Warrantee Linda Martin reported there now. Code three.”
Fritzie hit the siren and punched the gas. Cars pulled to the curb; we shot forward in the middle lane. I sent one up to the Calvinist God I believed in as a kid: don’t let the Martin girl mention Madeleine Sprague. Valley View Avenue appeared in the windshield; Fritzie hung a hard right turn, killing the siren in front of a mock-bamboo hut.
The bar’s mock-bamboo door burst open; Linda Martin/Lorna Martilkova, looking as fresh-scrubbed as her picture, burst out. I tumbled from the car and hit the sidewalk running, Vogel and Vogel huffing and pu
ffing behind me. Linda/Lorna ran like an antelope, clutching an oversized purse to her chest; I closed the distance between us by sprinting flat-out. The girl reached a busy side street and darted into traffic; cars swerved to avoid hitting her. She looked over her shoulder then; I dodged a beer truck and motorcycle on a collision course, sucked wind and hauled. The girl stumbled over the opposite curb, her purse went flying, I made a final leap and grabbed her.
She came up off the pavement spitting and beating at my chest; I grabbed her tiny fists, twisted them behind her back and cuffed her wrists. Lorna tried kicking then, well-aimed little shots at my legs. One kick connected with my shinbone; the girl, off balance from the cuffs, hit the ground ass-first. I helped her up, catching a wad of spittle on my shirtfront. Lorna yelped, “I’m an emancipated minor and if you touch me without a matron present I can sue you!” Catching my breath, I push-pulled her over to where her purse was lying.
I picked it up, surprised by the bulk and weight. Looking inside, I saw a small metal film can. I said, “What’s the movie about?” The girl stammered, “P-P-Please, mister, my p-p-parents.”
A horn tooted; I saw Johnny Vogel leaning out the window of the cruiser. “Millard said to bring the girl to Georgia Street juvie.”
I hauled Lorna over and shoved her into the backseat. Fritzie hit the siren, and we leadfooted.
The run to downtown LA took thirty-five minutes.
Millard and Sears were waiting for us on the steps of Georgia Street Juvenile Hall. I led the girl in while Vogel and Vogel strode ahead. Court matrons and juvie dicks cleared a path for us inside; Millard opened a door marked DETENTION INTERVIEWS.I removed Lorna’s cuffs, Sears walked into the room, pulled out seats and arranged ashtrays and notepads. Millard said, “Johnny, you go back to University and work the phones.”
Fat Boy started to protest, then looked at his father. Fritzie nodded yes; Johnny exited, looking wounded. Fritzie announced, “I’m gonna call Mr. Loew. He should be in on this.”