by James Ellroy
“Thank you, sir,” I said. “Where will I be assigned?”
“I don’t know yet. To a squad somewhere, probably.” He consulted his calendar. “You report back to me one week from today, at eight o’clock. That will be Friday, September 12. We’ll have found a suitable assignment for you then.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Thank you, Officer.”
I wrote my report down the hall in a vacant storage room and left it with the chief’s secretary, then retrieved my car and drove home to Night Train, a shower, and a mercifully dreamless sleep.
12
A sparkling twilight found me waiting for the evening papers at a newsstand on Pico and Robertson. They came and the headlines screamed “Korea” rather than “Murder in L.A.” I was disappointed. I was curious to see how the department’s press release would jibe with Dudley Smith’s press handout.
After checking the second and third pages for a flash update, I started to feel relieved: I had Dudley by the balls, and the day’s reprieve the press was giving us would help smooth out what might be a tense evening with Lorna.
* * *
—
As I parked on Charleville I could see Lorna in her living room, smoking abstractedly and staring out her window. I rang the bell, and all my anger and enervation dropped like a rock. I started to feel a delicious anticipation.
The buzzer that unlocked the door sounded, and I sprinted up the stairs to find Lorna standing in the middle of the living room, leaning on her cane. She wore pink lipstick and a trace of mascara, and her burnished light brown hair had been set in a new style—swept up and back on the sides. It gave her a breathless look. She was wearing a tartan skirt and a man’s French-cuffed dress shirt that perfectly outlined her large breasts.
She smiled blankly when she saw me, and I walked to her slowly and embraced her, cradling the new hairdo gently.
“Hello,” was all I could think of to say.
Lorna dropped her cane and held me around the waist. “It’s not going to the grand jury, Freddy,” she said.
“I didn’t think it would. He confessed.”
“To how many?” I started to release Lorna, but she held on. “To how many?” she persisted.
“Just to Margaret Cadwallader. Let’s not talk about it, Lor.”
“We have to.”
“Then let’s sit down.”
We sat on the couch.
“I looked for you at the Hall of Justice. I figured you’d be there for the booking,” Lorna said.
“I got summoned to see the chief of detectives. I imagine Smith went back and booked Engels. I was dog tired. I went home and slept. Why?” Lorna’s face darkened angrily. “Why?” I repeated. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I was there, I got a jail pass. The D.A. was there. He and Dudley Smith were talking. Smith told him that the Cadwallader killing was just the tip of the iceberg, that Engels was a mass murderer.”
“Oh, God.”
“Don’t interrupt me. He was booked on just the one count. Cadwallader. But Smith kept repeating, ‘This is a grand jury job, there’s no telling how many dames this maniac’s bagged!’ The D.A. seemed to go along with it. Then the D.A. saw me and mentioned to Smith that I read potential grand jury cases. Smith notices that I’m a woman, and starts to lay on the blarney. Then he asks me what I’m doing here, and I tell him that you and I are friends. Then he goes livid and starts to shake. He looked insane.”
Shaken, I said: “He is insane. He hates me, I crossed him.”
“Then you’re insane. He could ruin your career!”
“Hush, sweetheart. No, I’ve been promoted. Smith reported first, I reported afterward. I’m going to the detective bureau. To a squad room somewhere. Thad Green told me himself. Whatever Smith told Green jibes with my report to you and my official arresting officer’s report, which is the truth. What Smith told the D.A. is just hyperbole. All I—”
“Freddy, you told me there was no hard evidence to connect Engels to any other murders.”
“That’s absolutely true. But…”
Lorna was getting more red-faced and agitated by the second: “But nothing, Freddy. I saw Engels. He was beaten terribly. I asked Smith about that and he handed me some baloney about how he tried to resist arrest. I kept saying to myself, Good God, could my Freddy have had anything to do with that? Is that justice? What kind of man have I gotten involved with?”
I just stared at the Hieronymus Bosch print on the wall.
“Freddy, answer me!”
“I can’t, counselor. Good night.”
I drove home, steadfastly quelling all speculation regarding Lorna, woman-killers, and lunatic cops. I tried out my new rank: Detective Frederick U. Underhill. Detective Fred Underhill. The dicks. At twenty-seven. I was probably the youngest detective in the Los Angeles Police Department. I would have to find out. In November, the sergeant’s exam. Detective Sergeant Frederick Underhill. I would have to buy three new suits and a couple of sport jackets, some neckties and a half dozen pair of slacks. Detective Fred Underhill. But. It kept rearing its beautiful, burnished brown head. Lorna Weinberg, counselor at law. Lorna Weinberg.
Be still, I said to myself, trying to heed my own advice—just don’t think.
At home, after a roughhouse session with Night Train, some kind of nameless future-fear hit me and to combat it I dug out some textbooks.
I tried to engross myself, but it was useless; the words flew by undigested, almost unseen. I couldn’t stop thinking.
I was about to give it up when my doorbell rang. Not daring to guess, I flung the door open. It was Lorna.
“Hello, Officer,” she said. “May I come in?”
“I’m a detective now, Lorna. Can you accept what I had to do to get there?”
“I…I know I convicted you of an unknown crime on insufficient evidence.”
“I would have filed a writ of habeas corpus, counselor, but you would have beat me in court.”
“I would have appealed, in your behalf. Did you know that you are the only Frederick U. Underhill in all the L.A. area phone books?”
“No doubt. What are you doing here, Lorna?”
“Stalking your heart.”
“Then don’t stand in the doorway, come in and meet my dog.”
* * *
—
Many joyful hours later, sated and engulfed with each other, too tired to sleep or think and unable to relinquish each other’s touch, I had an idea. I dug out my meager collection of corny ballads, formerly used to seduce lonely women. I put “You Belong to Me” by Jo Stafford on the phonograph and turned the volume up so that Lorna could hear it in the bedroom.
She was laughing when I returned to her. “Oh, Freddy, that’s so…”
“Corny?”
“Yes!”
“My sentiments, too. But, needless to say, I feel romantic tonight.”
“It’s morning, darling.”
“I stand corrected. Lorna?”
“Yes?”
“May I have the next dance?”
“Dance? Freddy, I can’t dance!”
“Yes, you can.”
“Freddy!”
“You can hop on your good leg. I’ll hold you up. Come on!”
“Freddy, I can’t!”
“I insist.”
“Freddy, I’m naked!”
“Good. So am I.”
“Freddy!”
“Enough said, Lor. Let’s hit it!”
I scooped the naked, laughing Lorna into my arms and carried her into the living room and deposited her on the couch, then put Patti Page singing “The Tennessee Waltz” on the phonograph. When she began to intone the syrupy introduction, I walked to Lorna and extended my hands.
She reached for them and I pulled he
r to me and held her close, encircling her at the buttocks and lifting her slightly off the floor so that her bad leg was suspended, and her weight was stationed on her good one. She held me tightly around my back, and we moved awkwardly in very small steps as Patti Page sang.
“Freddy,” Lorna whispered into my chest, “I think I—”
“Don’t think, Lor.”
“I was going to say…I think I love you.”
“Then think, because I know I love you.”
“Freddy, I don’t think this record is corny.”
“Neither do I.”
* * *
—
We drove to Santa Barbara Saturday afternoon, taking the Pacific Coast Highway. The blue Pacific was on our left, brown cliffs and green hills were on our right. There was hardly a cloud or a trace of smog. We cruised along with the top down in comfortable silence. Lorna kept her hand on my leg, giving me playful squeezes from time to time.
We hadn’t talked about the case all morning, and it hovered benignly on some back burner of my mind. By silent agreement we had not turned on the radio. The present was too good, too real, to be marred by intimation of the harsh reality we both worked in.
So we drove north, on our first outing together. Lorna inched her hand, broadly in a parody of stealth, up my leg until I went, “Garrr! What the hell are you doing?”
She laughed. “What do you think?”
I laughed. “I think it feels good.”
“Don’t think, just drive.” Lorna removed her hand. “Freddy, I was thinking.”
“About what?”
“I just realized that I don’t know a damn thing about what you do—I mean, with your time.”
I considered this, and decided to be candid. “Well, before Wacky was killed I used to spend a lot of time with him. I don’t really have any friends. And I used to chase women.”
Surprisingly, Lorna laughed at this. “Strictly to get laid?”
“No, it was more than that. It was partly for the wonder, but that was B.L.”
“B.L.?”
“Before Lorna.”
Lorna squeezed my leg and pointed to the shoulder. “Pull over, please.”
I did, alarmed at the darkly serious look on Lorna’s face. I framed that face with both my hands. “What is it, sweetheart?” I asked.
“Freddy, I can’t have children,” Lorna blurted out.
“I don’t care,” I said. “I mean, I do care, but it doesn’t make a goddamned bit of difference to me. Really, I—”
“Freddy, I just had to say it.”
“Because you think we have a future together?”
“Y-yes.”
“Lorna, I couldn’t even consider a future without you.” She twisted away from me and bit at her knuckles. “Lorna, I love you, and we’re not leaving here until you tell me you believe what I’ve just told you.”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“Don’t think.”
Lorna burst out laughing, tearfully. “Then I believe you.”
“Good, now let’s get the hell out of here, I’m hungry.”
* * *
—
We timed our arrival perfectly, Santa Barbara opening up before us, muted in the twilight like a heaven-sent reprieve from the humid, smog-bound commonness of L.A.
We found our weekend haven on Bath Street, a few blocks off State: the Mission Bell Hotel, a converted Victorian mansion painted a guileless bright yellow. We registered as Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Underhill. The desk clerk started to look askance at our lack of luggage, but the sight of my badge when I pulled out my billfold to pay for the room calmed him down.
Giggling conspiratorially, I took Lorna’s arm as we walked to the elevator. Our room had bright yellow walls festooned with cheap oil paintings of the Santa Barbara Mission, bay windows fronting the palm-lined street, and a big brass bed with a bright yellow bedspread and canopy.
“I’ll never eat another lemon,” Lorna said.
I kissed her on the cheek. “Then let’s not have fish tonight. I left my shaving kit in the car. I’ll be right back.”
I took the yellow-carpeted stairs down to street level. The clerk, a skinny, middle-aged man with incongruous bright red hair, started to fidget when he saw me walk through the foyer. I had the feeling he wanted to ask me something. He put out his cigarette and approached me.
I made it easy for him. “What’s up, doc?” I asked.
The man slouched in front of me, his hands jammed into his trouser pockets. He hemmed and hawed, then blurted it out: “It ain’t none of my business, Officer,” he said, looking around in all directions and lowering his voice, “but when they say ‘degenerate’ do they really mean ‘queer’?”
“What the—” I started to say, then realized the source of the crazy non sequitur and sighed. “You mean it made the Santa Barbara papers?”
“Yes, sir. You’re a big hero. Is that what it means?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss it,” I said, leaving the clerk alone in the yellow foyer contemplating semantics.
I trotted down to State Street and found a newsstand, where I bought copies of the L.A. Times and the Santa Barbara Clarion. It was on the front page of both papers, big headlines complete with photos. I started with the Times:
GAMBLER CONFESSES TO
KILLING OF HOLLYWOOD WOMAN!
Linked to at Least Six Other Murders!
LOS ANGELES Sept. 7: Police today arrested a suspect in the August 12 strangulation murder of Margaret Cadwallader, 36, of 2311 Harold Way, Hollywood. The suspect was named as Edward Engels, 32, of Horn Drive, West Hollywood. Shortly after his arrest, Engels, a gambler with no visible means of support, confessed to L.A.P.D. detectives Dudley Smith, Michael Breuning, and Frederick Underhill, saying, “I killed Maggie! She treated me like dirt, so I returned her to the dirt.”
Miss Cadwallader, who worked as a bookkeeper at the Small World Import-Export Company in Los Angeles, was believed to have been killed by a burglar she interrupted in the early morning hours of August 12. Police had been carrying their investigation along those lines, questioning burglars known to use violence and getting no results, until the intervention of Detective Underhill, who was then assigned to patrol duties.
In a formally signed statement to the press, Detective Underhill, 27, said: “When I was working Wilshire Patrol earlier this year, my partner and I discovered the body of a young woman. She had been strangled. When the Cadwallader case made the papers, I noted similarities between the two deaths. I began an investigation of my own, and brought my evidence, which at this time I cannot discuss, to Lieutenant Dudley Smith. Lieutenant Smith headed the investigation, which led to the arrest of Edward Engels.”
Lieutenant Smith praised Underhill for his “grand, splendid police work” and went on to say, “We got Engels through dogged police work; long stakeouts at the many bars where he went looking for lonely women. His arrest is a victory for justice and a moral America.”
Links to More Victims Sought
In his rich brogue, the Irish-born L.A.P.D. lieutenant, 46, with 23 years on the force, continued: “I believe the tragic Miss Cadwallader is just the tip of the iceberg. Engels is a known degenerate who has frequented bars catering to his kind in the Hollywood area for many years. We know for a fact that he picks up women in cocktail lounges and pays them to be beaten. I strongly believe Engels to be responsible for at least half a dozen strangulation killings of women over the past five years throughout Southern California. I hope to persuade the district attorney to launch a massive investigation along these lines.”
I couldn’t think for my sudden anger. Hurriedly, I read through the front pages of the Santa Barbara paper. There was nothing new, they copied the Times almost verbatim.
Dudley Smith, the fat-mouthed glory-monger, was pulling
out all the stops in his monomania. I was covered, but he was out to hang fresh victims on the head of a one-time murderer.
I ran back to the hotel, bursting through the foyer and taking the stairs three at a time. The door to our room was open, and Lorna was sitting in an armchair, smoking contentedly and reading a Santa Barbara tourist brochure.
I flung the newspapers at her lap. “Read these, Lorna,” I said.
She did, after giving me a long, concerned look. I watched her read. When she finished, she said, “It’s nothing I didn’t expect.”
“What do you mean?”
“I knew Smith would milk it for all it was worth.”
“You don’t know him, Lor. Not like I do. He’ll try to pin everything from the Johnstown flood to World War II on Engels. He’s out of his goddamned mind!”
Lorna smiled and took my hands. “Freddy, did Eddie Engels kill Margaret Cadwallader?”
“Yes, but—”
“Be still. Then he’s in custody where he belongs. And you put him there, not Dudley Smith. If you’re worried about Smith starting some insane, far-flung investigation that would involve you, forget about it. The D.A. would never authorize it.”
I calmed down, slightly. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. He would never spend the money. He believes in letting sleeping dogs lie. You think Engels is innocent of those other killings?”
“Yes. He killed Cadwallader, and that’s it.”
Lorna took my face in her hands and kissed it several times, softly. “You are beginning to care about justice, darling,” she said, “and it’s a wonderful thing to see.”
“I’m not sure of that.”
“I am. Did you read the story on the twelfth page of the Times?”
“No.”
“Good. Then I’ll read it to you.” Lorna put out her cigarette and cleared her throat. “The title is ‘Hailing a True-Life Hero,’ and the subtitle is ‘Policeman Is a One-Man Crimestopper Wave!’ Here we go: ‘Detective Frederick U. Underhill, twenty-seven, is the youngest officer to achieve that rank in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department. He is not your average cop. He is a 1946 graduate of Loyola College who didn’t want to be a college man. He fought tenaciously to enter the service during World War II, petitioning the draft board several times to let him enlist, despite his punctured eardrum. He was refused, and made the most of his college years, graduating magna cum laude with a degree in history. Detective Underhill is an orphan, and possessed the highest grade point average ever achieved at the St. Brendan’s Home for Children. Monsignor John Kelly, principal of St. Brendan’s High School, where Underhill attended, said, “Fred’s recent successes as a police officer don’t surprise me at all. He was a hard-working, devout boy who I knew was destined for great things.”