by James Ellroy
Wacky celebrated the good news by hanging a U-turn in heavy traffic, hitting the siren and flooring the gas pedal for a good five minutes, cutting in and out of the quiet residential streets that bordered the station. When he finally returned to normal driving speed and cut the siren we were all the way down on Adams and Seventh Avenue, and he was grinning like a sated lover. “Thanks, partner,” he said.
“For what?”
“For everything. Don’t ask me to explain, I’m feeling elliptical today.”
“That reminds me,” I said, “I got you a present. It’s back in my locker. A poetry anthology. But beware—I’ve looked through it pretty well, and the next time we play Name the Poet, I’m going to kick your ass.”
“That’ll be the day. Hot dog! I feel good today. You want coffee and doughnuts? I’m buying.”
“You’re on.”
We drove to a Cooper’s doughnut joint at Twenty-third and Western, where we got a dozen fresh glazed and coffee. We ate and drank in silence.
I took a seat that faced out toward the street and let my mind drift with prosaic wonder: a cold, sunny, winter’s day. My city. The propriety born of my special, inside knowledge.
Across the street on Western, in front of the liquor store, a high school kid was convincing a wino to go in and buy him some booze. When the wino went inside the kid ogled the mulatto prostitute standing next door in front of the cabstand. She caught him looking at her and snorted her amusement. The wino came back out a few moments later and surreptitiously handed the kid a paper bag. The kid took off, practically running, hurling some kind of remark at the prostitute, who flipped him the finger. The wino walked off in the opposite direction, sucking on a short-dog of muscatel that the kid had bought him for his services.
A patrol car cruised by slowly, driven by my colleague, Tom Brewer. The wino stuck the bottle hurriedly into his back pocket, looking around guiltily. Brewer just drove on by, not noticing the little dance of fear. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have cared. His father was a drunk, and he had loved his father, so he left drunks alone. Tom had told me about his father one night at a softball game at the Academy when he was half-drunk himself.
My city. My wonder.
* * *
—
Three hours later, we were driving south on Berendo when a white Ford pickup passed us going in the opposite direction. I craned my neck and saw that there were two Mexicans in the cab. They turned right at the corner, out of my vision, and I knew. “Stop the car, partner,” I said.
Wacky noted the gravity of my voice and pulled to the curb.
“We got a hot one, Wacky,” I said. “There’s a little market around the corner in back of us. The two Mexican heisters in the Ford truck just turned the corner…” I didn’t have to finish. Wacky nodded and very slowly pulled the black-and-white around in a U-turn to the opposite side of the street, stopping just short of the intersection.
We got out very slowly, in perfect synchronization. We looked at each other, nodded and unholstered our guns, then inched our way along the front of a dry-cleaning place until we were at the corner. The Ford pickup was double-parked further down the block in front of the market.
“Now, partner,” I whispered, as we flattened ourselves up against the corner building and worked our way toward the market three doors down.
We were within a few yards of it when two gunmen came running out with guns drawn. They saw us almost immediately and wheeled and aimed their .45s haphazardly, just as Wacky and I opened fire. I squeezed off three shots, and the first gunman spun to the pavement, dropping what looked like a bag full of money as he fell. Wacky sent off two wild shots at the other man, who spun and fired at me.
We were at very close range, but some kind of calm grabbed me and I returned his fire, hitting him in the chest and knocking him into the gutter. Wacky fired twice more at the man on the pavement, advancing toward him slowly. He was lying on his stomach, arms outstretched, fingers still curled around his gun.
Wacky was almost on top of him when I saw the gunman in the gutter take aim. I shot him twice, and was moving toward him to get his gun when I heard another shot. I turned and saw Wacky staggering backward, stunned, grasping at his chest. He dropped his gun and screamed, “Freddy!” and then fell over backward.
I screamed. The man on the pavement raised his automatic and got off four shots, wild, sending them into the front of the building above my head, the last one narrowly missing me. I ducked into the market and reloaded. There was screaming coming from behind me—an old man and woman.
I looked outside. Wacky lay on the sidewalk, motionless. The gunman in the gutter looked dead. The one who had shot Wacky was crawling toward the curb and the truck. He had his back to me, so I rushed out and pulled Wacky to safety. Inside the market I ripped open his blood-covered uniform, then put my ear to his chest. Nothing.
“No, no, no, no, no,” I muttered. Trembling, I grabbed his wrist and felt for a sign of life. Nothing. I looked at Wacky’s face. His eyes were shut. I pulled the lids up. His eyes were frozen, rigid in their final vision of terror and disbelief.
I lifted Wacky up to embrace him. As I started to cradle his head his mouth dropped open, sending a torrent of blood onto my chest. I screamed and ran outside.
The surviving gunman was still crawling toward the street when I came up behind him and spun him around, kicking the .45 out of his hand. I aimed my gun at him, and he screamed. I fired six shots into his chest, and the sound of my gunfire dissolved into the sound of my own screams. I screamed until a dozen black-and-whites poured into the street and four cops threw me into the back of an ambulance with Wacky, and I think I was still screaming at the hospital when they tried to take him away from me.
* * *
—
I got a week off with full pay to recover from the shock, at the insistence of the doctor who examined me at the hospital. I got a commendation and a standing ovation at roll call when I returned to duty.
Wacky got a hero’s funeral, and his academy graduation photograph was blown up and framed behind glass and hung in the entrance hall at Wilshire Station. Taken a scant four years before, Wacky looked whimsical and very young. There was a little metal plaque beneath the frame. It said: “Officer Herbert L. Walker. Appointed May 1947. Shot and killed in the line of duty, February 18, 1951.”
The shooting made the L.A. papers in a big way, with pictures of Wacky and myself. They made a big deal out of the Medal of Honor Wacky had won. They called him “a true American hero,” and his death “a call for all Americans to seek the path of courage and duty.” It was too ambiguous for me; I didn’t know what they were talking about.
Wacky’s mother and sister flew in from St. Louis for the funeral. I had telephoned them with the news of his death and met them at the airport. They were polite, but very detached. Their remoteness was stupefying. They thought that Wacky “should have gone into the insurance business, like his dad.” After determining that they had absolutely no inkling as to who Wacky was, I left them and went home to grieve in private.
I grieved, and fought being guilty over the way I had treated Wacky during his last weeks. I thought of his fatalistic acceptance of all the things of life and of death. I thought of our last tour of duty together and wept, knowing that my absolution was immediate and tendered with love.
* * *
—
High dark clouds were gathering on the day of the funeral. I drove out to the mortuary in Glendale anxious for the whole thing to be over.
The service was held in a roped-off area on a high grassy knoll in the middle of the cemetery. Hundreds of cops in uniform were there, from patrolmen to high brass. Wacky was eulogized by a half dozen officers who didn’t know him. There was no minister or mention of God. Wacky had left specific instructions about that with an old police chaplain several years before.
I was one of the pallbearers. The other five were cops I had never seen before. As we lowered Wacky into the ground, the police rifle team fired a twenty-one-gun salute and a bugler played “Taps.” Then I saw Wacky’s mother and sister being hustled off in the direction of a long black limousine. I could see a group of newsmen and photographers waiting by the limousine to descend on them.
Beckworth caught me in the parking lot. “Freddy,” he called to me.
“Hello, Lieutenant,” I said.
“Let’s go over to my car and talk, Fred. We need to.”
We walked over to where his car was parked, next to a walkway with statues of Jesus kneeling among friendly little animals.
Beckworth put a fatherly hand on my shoulder, and straightened the knot in my tie with his other one. He gave me a fatherly look and sighed. “Freddy, it may sound cruel, but it’s over. Walker is dead. You have a commendation and a clean double-bandit killing on your record: Years from now that will look even better. Brass hats who have never drawn their guns will be impressed with that as you move up the ladder.”
“No doubt. When do I go to Vice?”
“This summer. As soon as Captain Larson retires.”
“Good.”
“It all worked out, Freddy. I know you wanted the best for Walker. In a sense, he got it. He was a true hero. A Medal of Honor in the war and a hero’s death in the war against crime. I’m sure he died knowing that. And it’s funny, Freddy. Although I’ve spoken harsh words about Walker, I think that, somehow, I knew he was a true hero, and that he had to die.”
Beckworth lowered his voice for dramatic effect and tightened his grip on my shoulder. I knew what I had to do. “You’re full of shit, Lieutenant. Wacky Walker was a fucked-up crazy drunk, and that’s all. And I didn’t care, I loved him. So don’t romanticize him to me. Don’t insult my intelligence. I knew him better than anyone, and I didn’t understand him, so don’t tell me you did.”
“Freddy, I—”
I shrugged my shoulder free of his grasp. “You’re full of shit, Lieutenant.”
Beckworth went beet red, and started to tremble. “Do you know who I am, Underhill?” he hissed.
“You’re a fuck for the city,” I said, and flipped his necktie up into his face.
* * *
—
It had started to rain by the time I got to Wacky’s apartment. His landlady, intimidated by my uniform, let me in.
The living room was in a shambles. I found out why—Night Train had been left alone there since Wacky’s death, and had torn the sofa and chairs apart looking for food. I found him in the back yard. The resourceful Labrador had chewed his way through a screen door and was now lying under a large eucalyptus tree munching on the carcass of a cat.
He came to me when I called him. “Wacky’s dead, Train,” I said. “He shuffled off this mortal coil, but don’t worry, you can live with me if you don’t shit in the house.” Night Train dropped the dead cat and nuzzled my legs.
I went back into the apartment. I found Wacky’s poetry bin: three large metal filing cabinets. Wacky was messy about everything and his apartment was completely disordered, but his poetry was immaculately kept—filed, dated, and numbered.
I carried his life’s work out to my car and locked it in the trunk, then went back inside and found his golf clubs in the heavy leather bag he loved so much and brought them out, too.
Night Train hopped into the front seat with me, giving me quizzical looks. I found some raucous jazz on the radio and turned up the volume. Night Train wagged his tail happily as I drove him to his new home.
I found a safe, dry spot in my hall closet for the three filing cabinets. I cooked Night Train some hamburger and sat down to write a short biography of Wacky, one to send out to publishers with samples of his poetry.
I wrote: “Herbert Lawton Walker was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1918. In 1942 he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1943, while serving in the Pacific theater. In 1946 he moved to Los Angeles, California, and in 1947 joined the Los Angeles Police Department. He was shot and killed by a holdup man on February 18, 1951. He wrote poetry, unique in its humorous preoccupation with death, from 1939 to the time of his own death.”
I sat back and thought: I could cull the files and look for what I thought to be Wacky’s best. I could also look for poetry authorities and pay them to go through the filing cabinets and select what they thought were his best works, then send them off to publishers and poetry journals. Maybe Big Sid had some friends in the publishing racket he could fix me up with. If all else failed, I could have Wacky’s complete opus printed up and distributed by a vanity press. It had to be done.
But it didn’t seem enough. I needed to do penance. Then it hit me. I got my golf bag out of the bedroom and hauled it, along with Wacky’s, out to my car.
Still wearing my uniform, I drove all the way out to East L.A. and stopped at the edge of the concrete sewage sluice known affectionately as the Los Angeles River. I looked down into it, some thirty feet below me. The water was five or six feet deep all the way across and flowing south very swiftly. I waited for a break in the rain to give me time to reminisce and try to savor the wonder that Wacky had said was there in death. I waited a long time. When the rain finally abated it was getting dark. I hauled the two golf bags to the edge of the cement embankment and dumped them into the garbage-strewn water, then watched the tangle of iron, wood, and leather move south out of my vision, carrying with it a thousand dreams and illusions. It was the end of my youth.
II
DEATH BY STRANGULATION
6
Wacky Walker never made it to Seventy-seventh Street Division, Watts, L.A.’s heart of darkness, but I did.
Beckworth bided his time and in June, when Captain Larson retired, to muted fanfare, after thirty-three years on the job, I got my orders: Officer Frederick U. Underhill, 1647, to Seventy-seventh Street Division to fill manpower shortage.
Which was a joke: the ranks at Seventy-seventh Street were swelled to bursting. The ancient red brick building that served the hottest per capita crime area in the city was pitifully overstaffed with cops, and undersupplied with every crime-fighting provision from toilet paper to fingerprinting ink. There was a shortage of chairs, tables, floor space, lockers, soap, brooms, mops, and even writing implements. There was no shortage, however, of prisoners. There was an unsurpassed daily and nightly parade of burglars, purse snatchers, dope addicts, drunks, wife beaters, brawlers, pimps, hookers, perverts, and cranks.
The fifteen four-man cells held at least twice their capacity every day, and weekends were the worst. The drunks were kicked out on the street, usually to return several hours later, and the other misdemeanor offenders were released on their own recognizance—which left the tiny, sweltering jail filled with a minimum of a hundred howling felons, with more coming in every hour.
Standing at my first evening roll call I felt like a pygmy at a reunion of the Paul Bunyan family. At six feet two and a hundred ninety pounds, I was a shrimp, a dwarf, a Lilliputian compared to the gland cases I served with. They were all cut from the same mold: World War II combat vets from the South or Midwest with low academy test scores and extensive body-building experience who all hated Negroes and who all seemed to possess a hundred esoteric synonyms for “n———.”
Physically, they were splendidly equipped for fighting crime, what with their great size and illegal dumdum bullets, but there their efficacy ended. They were sent to the Seventy-seventh to hold down the lid of a boiling cauldron, by scaring or beating the shit out of suspects real and imagined, and that was it. They had no capacity for wonder, only a mania for order. Knowing that, and knowing I would pass the sergeant’s exam with very high marks in less than a year, I decided to make the most of Watts and to throw myself into police work as I never had before.
Actually, that would be easy. Night foot patrol would put the kibosh on chasing women and let me observe the wonder close up.
After roll call the station commander, a harsh-looking old captain named Jurgensen, called me into his office. I saluted and he pointed me to a chair. He had my personnel file open on his desk, and I could tell he was baffled: in a sense that was good; it meant that he wasn’t a buddy of Beckworth’s and that they hadn’t conspired together on my transfer.
Jurgensen gave me a handshake that matched his face in sternness, then got right to the point: “You have an excellent record, Underhill. College man. Top-flight marks at the academy. Killed two holdup men who killed your partner. Excellent fitness reports. What the hell are you doing here?”
“May I be candid, sir?” I asked.
“By all means, Officer.”
“Sir, Captain Beckworth, the new commander of Wilshire Station, hates my guts. It’s personal, which is why no dissatisfaction with my performance is reflected on my fitness reports.”
Jurgensen considered this. I could tell he believed me. “Well, Underhill,” he said, “that’s too bad. What are your plans regarding the department?”
“Sir, to go as far as I can as fast as I can.”
“Then you have the opportunity to do some real police work. Right here in this tragic sinkhole.”
“Sir, I’m looking forward to it.”
“I believe you are, Officer. Every man who comes to this division starts out the same way, walking a beat at night in the heart of the jungle. Sergeant McDonald will fix you up with a partner.”
Jurgensen motioned his head toward the door, indicating dismissal. “Good luck, Underhill,” he said.
* * *
—
When I met my new partner in the crowded, sweltering muster room, I knew I was going to need luck—and more. His name was Bob Norsworthy. He was from Texas and he chewed tobacco. He fingered his Sam Browne belt and rotated his billy club out from his right hip in a perfect circle as the desk sergeant introduced us. Norsworthy was six and a half feet tall and weighed in at about two-thirty-five. He had black hair cut extra close to his flat head and blue eyes so light that they looked like he sent them out to be bleached.