Playland

by John Gregory Dunne

  There was no official complaint from the judge advocate general in the police file about the bullying nature of Lieutenant Spellacy’s interrogation.

  Meta Dierdorf’s green 1939 Dodge coupe was found abandoned the day after the murder in what the Los Angeles Times called “a Negro section of Los Angeles,” its gas tank empty and the key still in the ignition. There were fingerprints on the key and on the door handles, but they were too smeared to be of use to the authorities. According to Cletis Rivers, the janitor at the El Coronado apartments, Meta Dierdorf was in the habit of leaving the key in the ignition when her car was in the garage and often when it was parked in the street outside the building, in spite of his repeated warnings that she was running the risk of theft. Lieutenant Spellacy was convinced, however, that the theft of the automobile was a coincidental matter unconnected with the murder itself. There was no way of knowing if the car keys were in the apartment or had been left in the car when she parked it in the basement garage. Had it been a simple case of someone burglarizing Meta Dierdorf’s apartment, the thief would have stolen not only the car keys but also the nearly three hundred dollars in cash as well as the jewelry on her dresser, which had an insured value in excess of $7,500. Had the victim come upon the burglary unexpectedly, she might have been raped or killed by the thief, but the postmortem said she had not been raped, and in any event she had engaged in sexual intercourse with two different men after returning to her apartment, leading to the conclusion that she had been there throughout the evening.

  Along with his written reports, Lieutenant Spellacy had included some handwritten notes and speculations about the course of his investigation that, against department regulations, he had stuck into the casebook, as only official documents and transcribed interrogations were supposed to be in the department file. It was as if he knew that one day someone might come along, find his jottings, and be able to give them a fresh interpretation.

  QUESTIONS, Lieutenant Spellacy had written, and then he had ticked them off:

  1) Who is V?

  2) who is the doctor (le docteur)?

  3) Who pays for this apt? 19 yr old girl in 6 rm apt, no job, father broke. hook shop? vice says no. flyboy Benedict says no. neighbors say no unusual traffic. needs $. lets apt out for friends to screw?

  4) Motive?

  a) extortion? V paying off? what silence? what is MD keeping quiet?

  b) screwing?

  c) just unlucky?

  5) V? Vida? Vide? What is this Ooo la la SHIT anyway?

  6) B. Tyler—cool customer; she knows more than she’s letting on; claims not to have known MD well—bullshit; Mr. Smooth, her sheeny lawyer Cusak (?), says studio handles distribution of phone #s, list not updated—don’t kid a kidder.

  7) brass says lay off B. Tyler. Cusak got to someone? concentrate on PC 187, not boom boom, boom boom not police business. concentrate on colored angle, stolen Dodge coupe in negro area. Screw them. Boom boom = PC 187. V = silence = key.

  I did a Nexis search of Lieutenant T. J. Spellacy on my computer and ultimately found a small obituary in the Los Angeles Times. He had died of coronary artery disease in 1984, at the age of seventy-eight, and was buried in Twenty-nine Palms, California, beside his younger brother, the Right Reverend Monsignor Desmond Spellacy, a Catholic priest and former chancellor of the archdiocese of Los Angeles, who retired to become the pastor of a small parish in the Mojave Desert. T. J. Spellacy seemed to have had the kind of attitude problem with which I could identify, an earlier generation’s Maury Ahearne, and I would have liked to have asked him who had ordered him to lay off Blue Tyler and I would equally have liked to have shown him the photograph of the nude Meta Dierdorf that Blue Tyler had kept for fifty years. Like most good detectives I have known, he seemed to sense instinctively when someone was lying to him, and I would have bet that, like the better ones, he thought he was being lied to all the time, not least by the people with whom, and especially for whom, he worked. He was certainly right in his surmise that Blue was less forthcoming than he had claimed in his carefully neutral official report of their meeting (“Subject … could add nothing pertinent to the investigation.… Subject said she knew of no friend of deceased called Vida.…”), but I suspect his hunch was equally the result of an inbred antagonism toward Lilo Kusack and others like him who would have thought he was a not-overly-bright flatfoot, and who would have made little effort to conceal it, given their access to echelons in the department to which he was not privy. Had he known, as I did, that Meta Dierdorf was or had been the mistress of J. F. French, he would have taken enormous pleasure, I expect, in bringing the boom boom into the open and watching the squirming of the principals and their attendants, even if it brought him no closer to solving the murder itself.

  Lieutenant Spellacy was nothing if not thorough. He questioned every tenant in the seventeen apartments at the El Coronado as to their whereabouts the night of the murder and what they might conceivably have seen or overheard that could add a piece to the puzzle, and all he discovered was that Dr. Otto Ress in B-2 was so addicted to morphine that the state of California had lifted his license to practice medicine, and that Mrs. Hedda Flintoff in E-1 had suffered a broken nose and two black eyes earlier that week at the hand of her estranged husband, Samuel, but was unwilling to press charges; upon further investigation, it was found that Samuel Flintoff was in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital the day of the murder, having undergone an operation for testicular cancer. Mrs. Sarah Gabler in F-2 told Lieutenant Spellacy that Hendrik Nixon, the fourteen-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Nixon in F-1, exhibited unnatural sexual tendencies—Mrs. Gabler said she had to keep telling the boy not to finger her female Airedale; Mr. Nixon in turn replied that Mrs. Gabler had for three years been a patient under psychiatric care for delusionary tendencies at a private hospital in Pacific Palisades, a charge that was in fact true. Lieutenant Spellacy also learned that the option of Mr. Archie Sullivan in H-2, a director of second-feature Westerns, had not been picked up by Republic Pictures, and to make ends meet he was working for an escort service and as an adagio dance instructor at the Biltmore Hotel downtown until he could get back into directing.

  A Mrs. Fredella Humble of Altadena, California, wrote to “Detective in Dierdorf Case, Los Angeles, California,” and in due course the typewritten letter found its way to Lieutenant Spellacy: “I am not a crank,” Mrs. Humble wrote. “I am a simple housewife who has a God-given gift of clairvoyance and I am duty-bound to tell you that the murderer in this case is a Negro, perhaps a chauffeur of someone living in the same building, or a handyman or someone like that. I am a woman of sixty-five years and during my long life I have had many such clairvoyant experiences.” Another letter, from a Mrs. Grace Prosper of Los Angeles: “May I call your attention to the fact that we dames lead the field in detective fiction, and I sometimes think that police departments could do with more women operatives, and I am not referring to female flatfoots, political appointees, or tough matron types (if you get my meaning).” Mrs. Jack Mills, of West Hartford, Connecticut, wrote: “Upon reading of the death of Meta Dierdorf in the Hartford Courant, I feel it is my duty to tell you what I know about her past. Meta and I were classmates (I was Georgette Duffy then) at the Saybrook School in Holmby Hills (Los Angeles) before she transferred to that school at the movie studio, which I think was a mistake and a bad thing, because it put her in contact with many people not of the Christian religion, with all their different customs, et cetera. This crime would not have happened if Meta had stayed at Saybrook with her co-religionists. I can truthfully say I charge and blame her father Matthew Dierdorf with the death of his daughter. Indirectly he is the murderer because of the lack of parental guidance and attention he gave her, giving her a big allowance instead of a father’s love. I think it was his idea that Meta mix with those people, even though she was not pretty enough to be a star, and bit her fingernails, because he thought people of the Hebrew persuasion might invest in his business and it is well known that
they have a gift for making money.” Dorothy Estrella of 3218 Hollywood Boulevard wrote: “My boyfriend Harold Eustis is a sex maniac and his organ is so big it tears me some times, especially if he is drunk, and if that girl was torn, you should question Harold Eustis, because he was drunk and didn’t come home that night. Please do not use my name as my husband is in the service of his country.” Harold Eustis had in fact been drunk the evening of July 26, 1945. He was arrested in Cahuenga Pass at 9:30 P.M. by Officer D. D. Hilliard of the California Highway Patrol, charged with violation of PC Section 367D, driving under the influence, and placed in the lockup at the Glendale police station. The following morning, he pleaded guilty in Glendale Municipal Court to violation of PC Section 367D, was given a thirty-day sentence in the county jail, sentence suspended, and fined twenty-five dollars. There was no mention in either the arrest record or charge sheet of the dimensions of his member.

  The cloth found stuffed down Meta Dierdorf’s throat and into her esophagus was finally identified as a crepe tetra nonelastic bandage, ten inches in width, made in France and not sold in this country since the start of the war. A canvass of local medical and surgical supply houses, as well as both civilian and military hospitals, was unable to find any remaining stock of this bandage, or records of sales in the past to pharmacies, hospitals, or doctors. A medical wholesaler in Chicago said he had fifteen rolls of the bandage in question still in stock, but that the company’s last sale of the ten-inch nonelastic tetra was in November 1942, when purchasing agents for England’s Royal Navy had bought one hundred thousand rolls. Acting on this information, Lieutenant Spellacy checked with the harbormaster of the Port of Los Angeles, and learned that HMS Resolve, a Royal Navy aircraft carrier, had put to sea at 2045 hours the night of July 26, 1945, along with six escort vessels. During the squadron’s two-day layover in port, all officers and men had been confined to their ships; after the squadron sailed, the force commander informed the U.S. Navy shore patrol that one British officer, two petty officers, and eight seamen were absent and unaccounted for. Ten of these eleven were quickly rounded up and remanded to the Long Beach brig, while the body of the eleventh, Lieutenant Commander Alastair Drummond, RN, washed up naked on the beach at San Pedro three days later, he apparently having drowned while trying to swim from the Resolve to Terminal Island. The two petty officers and eight seamen were eliminated as suspects as it could be proven that none had ventured far from Long Beach the night of the murder; Lieutenant Commander Drummond was listed as a suspect until Royal Navy authorities informed the Shore Patrol that he had been about to be accused of oral and anal copulation by an able seaman on the Resolve, and it was determined that he had committed suicide rather than face the indignity of a court-martial that would have led to his being sentenced to a naval prison and cashiered from the service.

  Using Meta Dierdorf’s address book, her photo albums, and her considerable correspondence, and with the assistance of provost marshals at military facilities both in this country and abroad, Lieutenant Spellacy and his investigators interrogated, fingerprinted, and eliminated one hundred and nine officers and enlisted men from all the services as possible suspects in her murder. The crime-against-person reports of all sex crimes in the months preceding and following her death, whether resulting in homicide or not, were examined for any similarities in M.O. to the Dierdorf case. Nameless suspects were identified only as being “left-handed” or having “tattoo of naked woman with pubic hair on right arm” or as “dope fiend.” Two nights after Meta Dierdorf was killed, and only three blocks away from her apartment at 8497 Fountain Avenue, there was an attack against a young woman living alone that also involved a bandage. Miss Evangeline McGuinn, a twenty-year-old cashier at the Fox Wiltern Theater, reported that after counting the box office receipts for the 9:00 P.M. showing of The Story of G.I. Joe, she had returned to her apartment at 1016 Hancock Avenue, listened to Jimmy Dorsey on the radio, and then had gone to bed. At 11:30, she was awakened by a male Caucasian, age twenty to thirty years, approximately five feet ten inches tall, with a medium build. The attacker had apparently entered the apartment via a rear door with a broken latch. According to the crime-against-person report filed with the LAPD:

  Victim stated she was awakened by a man who had his hands around her neck. Susp said, “I don’t want to rape you, all I want to do is kiss you all over. If you scream, I’ll fix it so you can’t scream.” Susp then took victim’s hands, and tied them behind her back with an Ace bandage. Victim said she had purchased said bandage when she had sprained her wrist when she fell from a step ladder while painting her apt in the spring. Ace bandage was in her bathroom medicine cabinet. After tying vict’s hands, susp raised vict’s nightgown and began to caress her body with his lips, finally placing his mouth on her private parts. Susp then said. “I think I’ll change my mind and rape you after all.” Vict stated, “Under other circumstances, I might enjoy this, but as you see, I am very upset.” At this, susp apologized and told vict not to scream. Vict said, “He then proceeded to play with himself until he came.” Vict pointed out several apparent semen stains on carpet where susp had been kneeling. A few seconds after susp left the house, vict McGuinn heard a car start and drive away down rear alley. Vict was able to remove Ace bandage, and after waiting to make sure susp would not return she dialed operator and asked her to call police. Susp did not remove anything from vict’s apt, even though she was wearing amethyst ring and had $57 in her purse.

  F. Y. Masaryk

  Robbery-Homicide

  Investigator (Primary)

  CC: Lieutenant Spellacy for Dierdorf File

  From Lieutenant Spellacy’s notes:

  1) how’d he know Ace bandage was in medicine cabinet? ck it out first? she tell him?

  2) bet she knew him? likes getting tied up? there’s them that do.

  3) “Under other circumstances I might enjoy this.” Under any circumstances, I bet.

  4) “Until he came,” she says. Since when do nice girls say “came.” “Climax” is what they say, or “You know,” something like that. This is a live wire, this one. Re-interrogate HOLlywood 3685.

  I wondered if Lieutenant Spellacy had something other than interrogation in mind for the live wire at 1016 Hancock Avenue, Hollywood 3685, and if the circumstances were right for Evangeline McGuinn to enjoy it.

  Other leads vanished, other trails led only to dead ends. As if by rote, Lieutenant Spellacy sent letters:

  With reference to above subject, Wallace Morris, who was executed at Walla Walla January 15, 1948, I would appreciate some information respecting the subject which might connect him to a similar unsolved murder I have open in my files. Specifically if subject Morris was known to be in the Los Angeles or southern California area o/a July 26, 1945.

  And again:

  I would greatly appreciate if you would question Jack Tunney Kiefer, who as I understand it is to be executed at Utah State Penitentiary for a similar crime, and ascertain if he was in the vicinity of Hollywood, California, o/a July 26, 1945.