Clandestine

by James Ellroy

  I willed myself to form the nude image of Maggie Cadwallader. For the first time in years I didn’t gasp reflexively.

  * * *

  —

  The Packard-Bell Electronics plant was on Olympic Boulevard in the heart of the Santa Monica industrial district.

  There was a drive-in movie theater around the corner on Bundy, and when I parked my car I could see that they were screening a Big Sid horror extravaganza. That depressed me, but the anticipation of pursuit quashed the depression fast.

  The plant was a one-story red brick building that seemed to run off in several directions. Adjacent to a shipping and receiving area were two parking lots, separated by a low chain link fence. The closer lot, situated next to the front entrance, was empty. It was well lighted and bordered by evenly spaced little shrubby plants. The other lot was larger, and strewn with cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and newspapers. It had to be the lower-echelon employees’ lot.

  I hopped the fence to give it a closer look. The cars that were parked diagonally across it were for the most part old and beat-up. Little metal signs on poles marked the parking assignments, which were set up according to prestige: the maintenance men parked the furthest from the entrance. Closer in were “shippers”; closer still were “assembly crew.”

  I found what I was looking for flush up against the poorly lighted shipping entrance: a single parking slot with “foreman” stenciled in white paint on the cement.

  I checked the time—nine twenty-three. The graveyard crew probably came on at midnight. All I could do now was wait.

  * * *

  —

  It was late when I was rewarded. Over three hours of squatting in a darkened corner of the parking lot had put me in a foul mood. I watched as the night shift took off at precisely twelve o’clock, peeling rubber in my face. They seemed happy to be free.

  The graveyard crew trickled in over the next half hour, seemingly not as happy. My eyes were glued to the parking space in front of the building, and at 12:49 a well-kept ’46 Cadillac pulled in and parked in the foreman’s space. A fat blond man got out. From my vantage point, I couldn’t tell if he was missing any thumbs.

  I waited five minutes and followed him inside. There was an employees’ lunchroom at the end of a long, dimly lit corridor. I walked in and looked around. A youth in a duck’s-ass haircut gave me a curious look, but none of the other goldbricking workmen seemed to notice me.

  The fat blond foreman was sitting at a table, holding a cup of coffee in his right hand. I got a Coke from a machine and took my time drinking it. The foreman had his left hand in his pocket. He kept it there, driving me nuts. Finally, he took it out and scratched his nose. His thumb was missing—more than enough confirmation.

  I walked back outside and found a rusty old coat hanger on the ground at the edge of the parking lot. I fashioned a hook device out of it and casually walked over to the foreman’s Cadillac. The car was locked, but the wind wing on the driver’s side was open. I looked in all directions, then slipped the bent coat hanger through the window and hooked it over the door button. The hanger slipped off once, but the second time it caught and I pulled the button up.

  Quickly I got in the car and hunched down in the front seat. I tried the glove compartment. It was locked. I ran a hand over the steering column and found what I wanted: The car registration, attached in a leather holder, fastened on with buckles. I removed it and huddled even lower in the seat.

  The plastic-encased official paper read: Henry Robert Hart, 1164¼ Hurlburt Pl., Culver City, Calif.

  It was all I needed. I fastened the registration back on the steering column, locked Henry Hart’s car and ran to my own.

  * * *

  —

  Hurlburt Place was a quiet street of small houses a few blocks from the M.G.M. Studios. Number 1164¼ was a garage apartment. I parked across the street and rummaged in my trunk for some makeshift burglar’s tools. A screwdriver and a metal carpenter’s rule were all I could come up with.

  I walked slowly across the street and into the driveway that led back to the garage. No lights were on in the front house. The wooden steps that led up to Henry Hart’s apartment creaked so loudly that they must have been heard all the way downtown, but my own heartbeat seemed to drown them out.

  The lock was a joke: working the rule and screwdriver simultaneously snapped it easily.

  When the door opened, I stood there hesitantly, wondering if l dared enter. My previous B&Es had been done as a policeman; this time I was a civilian. I took a deep breath and walked in, wrapping my right hand in a handkerchief as I fumbled for a light switch.

  Stumbling in the darkness, I crashed into a floor lamp, almost knocking it over. Holding it at waist level, I turned it on, illuminating a dreary bedroom–living room: ratty chairs, ratty Murphy bed, threadbare carpet, and cheap oil prints on the walls—probably all inherited from previous tenants long gone.

  Deciding to give myself one minute to toss the room, I stood the lamp up on its stand and rapidly scanned the place, picking out a card table covered with dirty dishes, a pile of laundry on the floor next to the bed, and a stack of lurid paperbacks—held upright by two empty beer bottles—resting against a windowsill, and several empty cigarette packs.

  My minute was just about up when I spotted a stack of newspapers sticking out from under the bed. I pulled them out. They were all L.A. papers, and they all contained articles which detailed the killing of Marcella Harris.

  There was handwriting along the borders; grief-stricken pleas and prayers: “God, please catch this fiend who killed my Marcella.” “Please, please, please, God, make this a dream.” “The gas chamber is too good for the scum who killed my Marcella.” Next to a photo of the sheriff’s detective who was heading the investigation were the words: “This guy is a crumb! He told me to get lost, that the cops don’t need no friends of Marcella to help. I told him this is a case for the F.B.I.”

  I flipped through the rest of the newspapers. They were arranged chronologically, and Henry Hart’s grief seemed to be building: the last newspaper accounts were scrawled over illegibly and seemed to be stained by teardrops.

  I checked my watch: I had left the light on for eight minutes. With the handkerchief still over my hand I rifled every drawer in the three dressers that lined one wall: empty, empty, empty; dirty clothes, phone books.

  I opened the last one, and stopped and trembled at what I’d found: a pink, silk-lined dresser drawer. Black lace brassieres and panties were folded neatly in one corner. In the middle was a cigar box filled with marijuana. Underneath it were black-and-white photographs of Marcella DeVries Harris, nude, her hair braided, lying on a bed. Her sensual mouth beckoned with a come-hither look that was both the ultimate come-hither look and a parody of all come-hither looks.

  I stared, and felt my tremors go internal. There was the hardest, most knowing, most mocking intelligence in Marcella Harris’s eyes that I had ever seen. Her body was a lush invitation to great pleasure, but I couldn’t take my eyes off those eyes.

  I must have stared at that face for minutes before I came back to earth. When I finally realized where I was, I replaced the cigar box, closed the silk-lined drawer, turned off the light, and got out of the little garage apartment before Marcella Harris weaved the same spell on me that she had on Henry Hart.

  18

  I came prepared for William “Doc” Harris, stopping by a printer’s shop and getting a hundred phony business cards made up before I went to brace him. The cards read: “Frederick Walker, Prudential Insurance.” Prudential’s rock insignia was there in the middle, and underneath in official-looking italics was the single word, “investigator.” A phony telephone number completed the pretense. The ink on the cards was hardly dry when I shoved them into my pocket and drove to 4968 Beverly Boulevard.

  * * *

  —

 
“…And so you see, Mr. Harris, it’s just a case of going through the past of your late wife so that I’ll be able to tell the payment department conclusively that this claim is fraudulent. I think it is, and I’ve been a claims investigator for eight years. Nevertheless, the legwork has to be done.”

  Doc Harris nodded pensively, flicking my bogus calling card with his thumbnail and never taking his eyes from mine. Sitting across the battered coffee table from me he was one of the most impressive-looking men I had ever seen: six feet tall, close to sixty, with a full head of white hair, the body of an athlete and a chiseled face that was a cross between the finer elements of stern rectitude and rough humor. I could see what Marcella had seen in him.

  He smiled broadly, and his features relaxed into infectious warmth. “Well, Mr. Walker,” Doc Harris said, “Marcella had a knack for attracting lonely people and making them ridiculous promises that she had no intention of keeping. Be frank with me, please, Mr. Walker. What have you discovered about my ex-wife so far?”

  “To be candid, Mr. Harris, that she was promiscuous and an alcoholic.”

  “No man has to lie when he talks to me,” Harris declared. “I give and expect complete candor. So how can I assist you?”

  I leaned back and folded my arms. It was an intimidation gesture, and it didn’t work. “Mr. Harris—” I started.

  “Call me Doc.”

  “All right, Doc. I need names, names, and more names. All the friends and acquaintances you can recall.”

  Harris shook his head. “Mr. Walker—”

  “Call me Fred.”

  “Fred, Marcella picked up her lovers and her entourage of friends, if you can call them that, in bars. Bars were the sole focus of her social life. Period. Although you might try the people at Packard-Bell, where she worked.”

  “I have. They were evasive.”

  Harris smiled bitterly. “For good reason, Fred. They didn’t want to speak badly of the dead. Marcella hit bars all over L.A. She didn’t want to become familiar in any one place. She had a tremendous fear of winding up as a slatternly bar regular, so she moved around a lot. She had, I think, several arrests for drunk driving. What’s the name of this phony claimant?”

  “Alma Jacobsen.”

  “Well, Fred, let me tell you what I think happened: Marcella met this woman at some gin mill, drunk. She bowled her over with her personality and her nurse’s uniform, and showed the woman, who was probably also half-gassed, some official-looking papers. Marcella then told the woman how desperately alone she was, and how she needed someone to carry on her antivivisectionist work in case of her death. Marcella was a big animal lover. Marcella, in her alcoholic effusion, then probably made a big show of getting the woman’s name and address and made a big show of signing the papers. Marcella was a superb actress, and the woman undoubtedly went for it. When Marcella’s death made the papers, Alma thought she had herself a gravy train. Sound plausible, Fred?”

  “Completely, Doc. Lonely people will do strange things.”

  Harris laughed. “Indeed they do. What do you usually do, Fred?”

  I made my laughter match Harris’s perfectly. “I look for women. You?”

  “I’ve been known to,” Doc laughed.

  I got serious again. “Doc, could I talk to your son about this? I think your theory is valid, but I want to touch all bases in the report I file. Maybe your son can tell me something that will disprove this Jacobsen woman conclusively. I’ll be gentle with him.”

  Doc Harris considered my request. “All right, Fred. I think Michael is up at the park with the dog. Why don’t we walk up there and talk to him? It’s only two blocks from here.”

  It was three, and it wasn’t much of a park; it was just a vacant lot overgrown with weeds. Doc Harris and I talked easily as we trod through knee-high grass looking for his son and his son’s dog.

  When we did find them we almost tripped over them. Michael Harris was lying on his back on a beach towel, his arms outstretched in a crucifixion pose. The beagle puppy I had seen in the yard on Maple Street in El Monte was chewing grass by his side.

  “On your feet, Colonel!” Harris bellowed good-naturedly.

  Michael Harris got to his feet, unsmiling, brushing the grass from his blue jeans. When he stretched to his full height I was astounded—he was almost as tall as I. The boy looked nervously at his father, then at me. Time froze for a brief instant as I recalled another brown-haired, fiercely bright boy of nine playing in the desolate back lot of an orphanage. It was over twenty years ago, but I had to will myself to return to the present.

  “…And this is Mr. Walker, Colonel,” Doc Harris was saying. “He represents an insurance company. They want to give us some money, but there’s a crazy old woman who says your mother promised it to her. We can’t let that happen, can we, Colonel?”

  “No,” Michael said softly.

  “Good,” Harris said. “Michael, will you talk to Mr. Walker?”

  “Yes.”

  I was starting to feel controlled, manipulated. Doc Harris’s manner was unnerving. The boy was intimidated, and I was starting to feel that way myself. I had the feeling that Harris sensed I wasn’t on the up-and-up. Intellectually, we were evenly matched, but so far his will was the greater, and it angered me. Unless I asserted myself I would only know what Harris wanted me to know.

  I clapped Harris hard on the back. “Jesus,” I said, “it’s hot here! I noticed a drive-in down on Western. Why don’t we go get cream sodas? My treat.”

  “Can we, Dad?” Michael pleaded. “I’m dying of thirst.”

  Doc didn’t lose a second’s worth of his considerable aplomb. He clapped me on the back, equally hard. “Let’s go, amigos,” he replied.

  * * *

  —

  We walked the four blocks in the hot summer sun, three generations of American males united by darkness and duplicity. The dog trotted behind us, stopping frequently to explore interesting scents. I walked in the middle, with Doc on my left on the street side. Michael walked to my right, closed in against my shoulder by the hedges that ran along the sides of the homes on Beverly Boulevard. He leaned into me, seeming to relish the contact.

  I queried Doc on his nickname, and he laughed and said, “Med school dropout, Fred. It was too bloody, too abstract, too time-consuming, too literal, too much.”

  “Where did you attend?”

  “University of Illinois.”

  “Jesus, it sounds grim. Were there a lot of farm boys wanting to be country doctors?”

  “Yes, and a lot of Chicago rich kids out to be society doctors. I didn’t fit in.”

  “Why not?” I asked. It was a challenge.

  “It was the twenties. I was an iconoclast. I realized that I’d be spending the rest of my life treating smug, small-town hicks who didn’t know shit from Shinola. That I’d be prolonging the lives of people who would be better off dead. I quit in my final year.”

  I laughed. Michael did, too. Michael’s prematurely deep voice went up a good two octaves in the process. “Tell him about the dead horse, Dad.”

  “That’s the Colonel’s favorite,” Harris laughed. “Well, I used to have a racket going in those days. I knew some gangsters who ran a speakeasy. A real third-class dive where all the rich kids from school hung out. Cheap booze and cheaper food. The joint had one distinction: big juicy steaks for a quarter. Sirloin steaks smothered in onions and tomato sauce. Ha! They weren’t steaks, they were fillet of horse. I was the butcher. I used to drive around the countryside with a stooge of mine and steal horses. We used to lure the nags into the back of our truck with oats and sugar, then we’d drive back to town to this warehouse and inject the nags with small quantities of morphine I’d stolen. Then I’d sever their neck arteries with a scalpel. My partner did the real dirty work, I had no stomach for it. He was the cook, too.

 
“Anyway, as events came to pass, business went bad. The owners tried to stiff me on my rustling dues. This was about the time I decided to give med school the big drift. I decided to go out in style. I knew the goombahs would never pay me, so I decided to give them a good fucking. One night there was a private party at the speak. My stooge and I got ourselves two broken-down old nags, put them in the truck and backed them up to the front door of the joint. We gave the password and the door opened and the nags ran right in. Jesus! What a sight! Tables destroyed, people screaming, broken bottles everywhere! I got out of town and Illinois and never went back.”

  “Where did you go?” I asked.

  “I went on the bum,” Harris said. “Have you ever been on the bum, Fred?”

  “No, Doc.”

  “You should have. It’s instructive.”

  It was a challenge. I took it. “I’ve been too busy being on the make—which is better than being on the bum, right, Michael?” I squeezed the boy around the shoulders, and he beamed at me.

  “Right!”

  Doc pretended to be amused, but we both knew that the gauntlet had been thrown down.

  * * *

  —

  We took seats inside the Tiny Naylor Drive-In on Beverly and Western. It was air-conditioned, and Michael and Doc seemed to crash in relief from the heat as we all stretched our long legs out under the table.

  Michael sat down beside me, Doc across from us. We all ordered root beer floats. When they arrived, Michael gulped his in three seconds flat, belched, and looked to his father for permission to order another. Doc nodded indulgently and the waitress brought another tall glass of brown and white goo. Michael chugged this one down in about five seconds, then belched and grinned at me like a sated lover.