The Black Dahlia

by James Ellroy

  “Bucky?”

  I turned around. “Go get ahold of Russ. Tell him what we’ve got. I’ll do a forensic here.”

  “Russ won’t get back from Tucson till tomorrow. And kid, you don’t look too healthy to me right—”

  “Goddamn it, get out of here and let me do this!”

  Harry stormed out, spitting crushed pride; I thought of the proximity to Sprague property and dreamer Georgie Tilden, bum shack dweller, son of a famous Scottish anatomist. “Really? A man with a medical background?” Then I opened up my kit and raped the nightmare crib for evidence.

  First I examined it top to bottom. Aside from obviously recent mud tracks—Harry’s tramps probably—I found narrow strands of rope under the mattress. I scraped what looked like abraded flesh particles off them; I filled up another test tube with blood-matted dark hair taken from the mattress. I checked the blood crust for different color shadings, saw that it was a uniform maroon and took a dozen samples. I tagged and packed the rope away, along with the anatomy pages and smut pictures. I saw a man’s bootprint, blood-outlined, on the floor, measured it and traced the sole treads onto a sheet of transparent paper.

  Next it was fingerprints.

  I dusted every touch, grab and press surface in the room; I dusted the few smooth spines and glossy pages in the books on the floor. The books yielded only streaks; the other surfaces brought up smudges, glove marks and two separate and distinct sets of latents. Finishing, I took a pen and circled the smaller digits on the door, doorjamb and wall molding by the mattress headboard. Then I got out my magnifying glass and Betty Short’s print blow-up and made comparisons.

  One identical print;

  Two;

  Three—enough for a courtroom.

  Four, five, six, my hands shaking because this was unimpeachably where the Black Dahlia was butchered, shaking so hard I couldn’t transfer the other set of latents to plates. I hacked a four-digit spread off the door with my knife and wrapped it in tissue—forensic amateur night. I packed up my kit, tremble-walked outside, saw the running water and knew that was where the killer drained the body. Then a strange flash of color by some rocks next to the stream caught my eye.

  A baseball bat—the business end stained dark maroon.

  I walked to the car thinking of Betty alive, happy, in love with some guy who’d never cheat on her. Passing through the park, I looked up at Mount Lee. The sign now read just Hollywood; the band was playing, “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”

  I drove downtown. The LA city personnel office and the office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service were closed for the day. I called R&I and got goose egg on Scotland-born George Tildens—and I knew I’d go crazy if I waited overnight to make the print confirmation. It came down to calling in a superior officer, breaking and entering or bribery.

  Remembering a janitor cleaning up outside the personnel office, I tried number three. The old man heard my phony story out, accepted my double-sawbuck, unlocked the door and led me to a bank of filing cabinets. I opened a drawer marked CITY PROPERTY CUSTODIAL—PART-TIME, got out my magnifying glass and powder-dusted piece of wood—and held my breath.

  Tilden, George Redmond, born Aberdeen, Scotland, 3/4/1896. 5 foot 11, 185 pounds, brown hair, green eyes. No address, listed as “Transient—contact for work thru E. Sprague, WE-4391.” California Driver’s license # LA 68224, vehicle: 1939 Ford pickup, license 6B119A, rubbish-hauling territory Manchester to Jefferson, La Brea to Hoover—39th and Norton right in the middle of it. Left- and right-hand fingerprints at the bottom of the page; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine matching comparison points—three for a conviction, six more for a one-way to the gas chamber. Hello, Elizabeth.

  I closed the drawer, gave the janitor an extra ten-spot to keep him quiet, packed up the evidence kit and walked outside. I pinpointed the moment: 8:10 P.M., Wednesday, June 29, 1949, the night a flunky harness bull cracked the most famous unsolved homicide in California history. I touched the grass to see if it felt different, waved at office workers passing by, pictured myself breaking the news to the padre and Thad Green and Chief Horrall. I saw myself back at the Bureau, a lieutenant inside of a year, Mr. Ice exceeding the wildest Fire and Ice expectations. I saw my name in the headlines, Kay coming back to me. I saw the Spragues squeezed dry, disgraced by their complicity in the killing, all their money useless. And that was what kiboshed my reverie: there was no way for me to make the arrest without admitting I suppressed evidence on Madeleine and Linda Martin back in ‘47. It was either anonymous glory or public disaster.

  Or back-door justice.

  I drove to Hancock Park. Ramona’s Cadillac and Martha’s Lincoln were gone from the circular driveway; Emmett’s Chrysler and Madeleine’s Packard remained. I parked my lackluster Chevy crossways next to them, the rear tires sunk into the gardener’s rose bush border. The front door looked impregnable, but a side window was open. I hoisted myself up and into the living room.

  Balto the stuffed dog was there by the fireplace, guarding a score of packing crates lined up on the floor. I checked them out; they were filled to the top with clothes, silverware and ritzy bone china. A cardbox box at the end of the row was overflowing with cheap cocktail dresses—a weird anomaly. A sketch pad, the top sheet covered with drawings of women’s faces, was wedged into one corner. I thought of commerical artist Martha, then heard voices upstairs.

  I went to them, my .45 out, the silencer screwed on tight. They were coming from the master bedroom: Emmett’s burr, Madeleine’s pout. I pressed myself to the hallway wall, eased down to the doorway and listened.

  “… besides, one of my foremen said the goddamn pipes are spewing gas. There’ll be hell to pay, lassie. Health and safety code violations at the very least. It’s time for me to show the three of you Scotland, and let our Jew friend Mickey C. utilize his talent for public relations. He’ll put the onus on old Mack or the pinkos or some convenient stiff, trust me he will. And when things are kosher again, we’ll come home.”

  “But I don’t want to go to Europe, Daddy. Oh God, Scotland. You’ve never been able to talk about it without saying how dreadful and provincial it is.”

  “Is it your toothy chum you think you’ll be missing? Ahh, I suspect it is. Well, let me put your heart to rest. Aberdeen’s got strapping plowboys who’ll put that piss-poor excuse for a man to shame. Less inquisitive, lads who know their place. You’ll not lack for sturdy cocksmen, let me assure you. Bleichert served his purpose to us a long time ago, and it’s just the danger-loving part of you that took him back in. An injudicious part, I might add.”

  “Oh Daddy, I don’t—”

  I wheeled and stepped into the bedroom. Emmett and Madeleine were lying on the big canopied bed, clothed, her head on his lap, his rough carpenter’s hands massaging her shoulders. The father-lover noticed me first; Madeleine pouted when Daddy’s caresses stopped. My shadow hit the bed; she screamed.

  Emmett silenced her, a whip-fast hand glinting with gemstones over her mouth. He said, “This isn’t a cuckold, lad. It’s just affection, and we’ve a dispensation for it.”

  The man’s reflexes and dinner table tone were pure style. I aped his calm: “Georgie Tilden killed Elizabeth Short. She called here on January twelfth, and one of you fixed her up with Georgie. She took the Wilshire bus out here to meet him. Now you fill the rest of it in.”

  Madeleine, eyes wide, trembled under her father’s hand. Emmett looked at the none too steady gun aimed at him. “I don’t dispute that statement and I don’t dispute your somewhat belated desire to see justice done. Shall I tell you where George can be found?”

  “No. First you tell me about you two, then you tell me about your dispensation.”

  “It’s not germane, lad. I’ll congratulate you on your detective work and tell you where Georgie can be found, and we’ll leave it at that. Neither of us wants to see Maddy hurt, and discussing dour old family matters would affect her adversely.”

  As
if to underline paternal concern, Emmett released his hand. Madeleine wiped smeared lipstick off her cheeks and murmured, “Daddy, make him stop.”

  I said, “Did Daddy tell you to fuck me? Did Daddy tell you to invite me to dinner so I wouldn’t check your alibi? Did you all figure that a little hospitality and some cunt would brazen things out for you? Did you—”

  “Daddy make him stop!”

  Emmett’s whip hand flashed again; Madeleine buried her face in it. The Scotchman made the next logical move. “Let’s get down to brass tacks, lad. Put the Sprague family history out of your mind. What do you want?”

  I looked around the bedroom, picking out objects—and the price tags that Madeleine had bragged to me. There was the Picasso oil on the back wall—a hundred and twenty grand. Two Ming vases resting on the dresser—seventeen big ones. The Dutch Master above the headboard cost two hundred odd thou; the ugly Pre-Columbian gargoyle on the nightstand a cool twelve and a half. Emmett, smiling now, said, “You appreciate nice things. I appreciate that, and nice things like those can be yours. Just tell me what you want.”

  I shot the Picasso first. The silencer went “Pffft” and the .45 hollow point blew the canvas in half. The two Mings were next, crockery fragments exploding all over the room. I missed the gargoyle with my first shot—a gold-bordered mirror the consolation prize. Daddy and darling daughter huddled on the bed; I took sight on Rembrandt or Titian or whoever the fuck it was. My bull’s-eye blew a dandy hole out of it, along with a chunk of the wall. The frame toppled and hit Emmett’s shoulder; the heat of the weapon singed my hand. I held on to it anyway, one round still in the chamber to get me my story.

  Cordite, muzzle smoke and plaster haze making the air almost unbreathable. Four hundred grand in bits and pieces. The two Spragues a tangle of limbs on the bed, Emmett coming out of it first, stroking Madeleine, rubbing his eyes and squinting.

  I placed the silencer to the back of his head. “You, Georgie, Betty. Make me believe it or I’ll take your whole fucking house down.”

  Emmett coughed and patted Madeleine’s stray curls; I said, “You and your own daughter.”

  My old brass girl looked up then, tears drying, dust and lipstick mottling her face. “Daddy’s not my real daddy and we’ve never really… so it’s not wrong.”

  I said, “Then who is?”

  Emmett turned, gently pushing my gun hand out of the way. He didn’t look broken or angry. He looked like a businessman warming to the task of negotiating a tough new contract. “Dreamer Georgie is Maddy’s father, Ramona is her mother. Do you want the details, or will that fact suffice?”

  I sat down in a silk brocade chair a few feet from the bed. “All of it. And don’t lie, because I’ll know.”

  Emmett stood up and tidied his person, giving the room damage a weather eye. Madeleine went into the bathroom; a few seconds later I heard water running. Emmett sat on the edge of the bed, hands firm on his knees, like it was man-to-man confessional time. I knew he thought he could get away with telling me only what he wanted to; I knew I was going to make him spill it all, whatever it took.

  “Back in the mid-20’s Ramona wanted a child,” he said. “I didn’t, and I got damn sick and tired of being nagged about fatherhood. One night I got drunk and thought, ‘Mother, you want a child I’ll give you a lad just like me.’ I did her without wearing a skin, sobered up and put it out of my mind. I didn’t know it, but she took up with Georgie then, just to get that foal she craved so dearly. Madeleine was born, and I thought she was from that one mean time. I took to her—my little girl. Two years later I decided to go for a matched set, and we made Martha.

  “Lad, I know you’ve killed two men, which is more than I can brag. So I know you know what it is to hurt. Maddy was eleven when I realized she was the stark spitting image of Georgie. I found him and played tic-tac-toe on his face with a nigger shiv. When I thought he’d die I took him to the hospital and bribed the administrators into putting ‘car crash victim’ on their records. When Georgie got out of the hospital he was a pitiful disfigured wreck. I begged him to forgive me, and I gave him money and I got him work tending my property and hauling rubbish for the city.”

  I recalled thinking that Madeleine resembled neither of her parents; I remembered Jane Chambers mentioning Georgie’s car crash and descent to stumblebum. So far, I believed Emmett’s story. “What about Georgie himself? Did you ever think he was crazy? Dangerous?”

  Emmett tapped my knee, man-to-man empathy. “Georgie’s father was Redmond Tilden, quite a celebrated doctor in Scotland. He was an anatomist. The Kirk was still strong in Aberdeen back then, and Doc Redmond could only legally dissect the corpses of executed criminals and the child molesters the villagers caught and stoned. Georgie liked to touch the organs his dad threw out. I heard a tale when we were boys, and I credit it. It seems that Doc Redmond bought a stiff from some body snatchers. He cut into the heart, and it was still beating. Georgie saw it, and it thrilled him. I credit the tale because in the Argonne Georgie used to take his bayonet to the dead Jerries. I’m not sure, but I think he’s burgled graves here in America. Scalps and inside organs. Ghastly, all of it.”

  I saw an opening, a stab in the dark that might hit home. Jane Chambers had mentioned Georgie and Ramona filming pageants that centered on Emmett’s World War I adventures, and two years ago at dinner, Ramona had said something about “Reenacting episodes out of Mr. Sprague’s past he would rather forget.” I swung out with my hunch: “How could you put up with someone so crazy?”

  Emmett said, “You’ve been idolized in your time, lad. You know how it is when a weak man needs you to look after him. It’s a special bond, like having a daft little brother.”

  I said, “I had a daft big brother once. I looked up to him.”

  Emmett laughed—fraudulently. “That’s a side of the fence I’ve never been on.”

  “Oh yeah? Eldridge Chambers says otherwise. He left a brief with the City Council before he died. It seems that he witnessed some of Ramona and Georgie’s pageants back in the thirties. Little girls with soldier kilts and toy muskets, Georgie holding off the Germans, you turning tail and running like a goddamn chickenshit coward.”

  Emmett flushed and tried to dredge up a smirk; his mouth twitched spastically with the effort. I shouted, “Coward!” and slapped him full force—and the hardcase Scotchman son of a bitch sobbed like a child. Madeleine came out of the bathroom, fresh makeup, clean clothes. She moved to the bed and embraced her “Daddy,” holding him the way he’d held her just a few minutes before.

  I said, “Tell me, Emmett.”

  The man wept on the shoulder of his ersatz daughter; she stroked him with ten times more tenderness than she’d ever given me. Finally he got out a shell-shocked whisper: “I couldn’t let Georgie go because he saved my life. We got separated from our company, all alone in a big field of stiffs. A German patrol was reconnoitering, sticking bayonets in everything British, dead or alive. Georgie piled Germans on top of us. They were all in pieces from a mortar attack. Georgie made me crawl under all these arms and legs and guts and stay there, and when it was over he cleaned me up and talked about America to cheer me up. So you see I couldn’t …”

  Emmett’s whisper died out. Madeleine caressed his shoulders, ruffled his hair. I said, “I know that the stag film with Betty and Linda Martin wasn’t shot in TJ. Did Georgie have anything to do with it?”

  Madeleine’s voice had the timbre Emmet’s had earlier, when he was the one holding up the front. “No. Linda and I were talking at La Verne’s Hideaway. She told me she needed a place to make a little movie. I knew what she meant, and I wanted to be with Betty again, so I let them use one of my daddy’s vacant houses, one that had an old set in the living room. Betty and Linda and Duke Wellington shot the movie, and Georgie saw them doing it. He was always sneaking around Daddy’s empty houses, and he got crazy over Betty. Probably because she looked like me… his daughter.”

  I turned away to make it easier for
her to spill the rest. “Then?”

  “Then, around Thanksgiving, Georgie came to Daddy and said, ‘Give me that girl.’ He said he’d tell the whole world that Daddy wasn’t my daddy, and he’d lie about what we did together, like it was incest. I looked around for Betty, but I couldn’t find her. Later I found out she was in San Diego then. Daddy was letting Georgie stay in the garage, because he was making more and more demands. He gave him money to keep him quiet, but he was still acting nasty and awful.

  “Then, that Sunday night, Betty called, out of the blue. She’d been drinking, and she called me Mary or something like that. She said she’d been calling all the friends in her little black book trying to get a loan. I put Daddy on, and he offered Betty money to date a nice man he knew. You see, we thought Georgie just wanted Betty for … sex.”

  I said, “After all you knew about him, you believed that?”

  Emmett shouted, “He liked to touch dead things! He was passive! I didn’t think he was a goddamned killer!”

  I eased them into the rest. “And you told her Georgie had a medical background?”

  “Because Betty respected doctors,” Madeleine said. “Because we didn’t want her to feel like a whore.”

  I almost laughed. “Then?”

  “Then I think you know the rest.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  Madeleine delivered, hate oozing out of her. “Betty took the bus out here. She and Georgie left. We thought they’d go someplace decent to be together.”