Clandestine

1

Wacky and I had been partners for three months when Night Train entered our lives. The roll call sergeant told us about him as we were getting into our '48 Ford black-and-white in the parking lot at Wilshire Station.

"Walker. Underhill. Come here a second," he called at us. We walked over. His name was Gately; he needed a shave and he was smiling. "The loot's got a good one for you guys. You golfers get all the breaks. You like dogs? I hate dogs. We got a dog who's terrorizing little kiddies. Stealing their lunches over at the elementary school off Orange and Olympic. Mean old trash can dog, used to belong to a wino. The janitor at the school's got him. Says he's gomg to kill him, or cut his balls off. The Animal Regulation guys don't want the squeal, 'cause they think the janitor's crazy. You guys go take the mean old dog to the pound. Don't shoot it, 'cause there's all kinds of little kiddies might get upset. You golf guys get all the breaks."

Wacky pulled the black-and-white out onto Pico, laughing and talking in verse, which he sometimes did when coffee reactivated the previous night's booze still in his system.

"Whither thou, o noble beast, the most we do is ne'er our least, o noble hound, soon to be found, awaits the pound thence gas and ground."

I laughed on while Wacky continued, driving his poetry into the pavement.

The janitor at Wilshire Crest School was a fat Japanese guy of about fifty. Wacky waggled his eyebrows at him, which broke the ice and got a laugh. He led us to the dog, who was locked up inside a portable construction toilet. As we approached I could hear a keening wail arise from the flimsy structure.

At the prearranged signal from Wacky, I kicked a hole in the side of the outhouse and shoved in our combined lunches—two ham-and-cheese sandwiches, a sardine sandwich, one roast beef on rye, and two apples. There was the sound of furious masticating. I threw open the door, glimpsed a dark furry shape with glittering sharp teeth, and slugged it full force, right in the chops. It collapsed, spitting out some ham sandwich in the process. Wacky dragged the dog out.

He was a nice-looking black Labrador—but very fat. He had a gigantic whanger that must have dragged the ground when he walked. Wacky was in love. "Aww, Freddy, look at my poor baby. Awww." He picked the unconscious dog up and cradled him in his arms. "Awww. Uncle Wacky and Uncle Freddy will take you back to the station and find a nice home for you. Awww."

The janitor was eyeing us suspiciously. "You killee dog?" he asked, drawing a finger across his throat and looking at Wacky, who was already carrying his newfound friend lovingly back to the patrol car.

I got in the driver's side. "We can't take this mutt back to the station," I said.

"The hell you say. We'll stash him in the locker room. When we get off duty I'm taking him home. This dog is gonna be my caddy. I'm gonna fix him up with a harness so he can pack my bag."

"Beckworth will have your ass."

"Beckworth can kiss my ass. You take care of Beckworth."

The dog came awake as we pulled into the parking lot of the station. He started barking furiously. I turned around in my seat to slug him again, but Wacky deflected my arm. "Awww," he said to the beast, "awww, awww!" And the dog shut up.

I led the dog around to the locker room from the back entrance. Wacky made the run to the hot dog stand next to Sears, and came back with six cheeseburgers. I was petting the hound in front of my locker when Wacky came back and dumped the greasy mess on the floor in front of me. The dog tore into it, and Wacky and I shot out the door and resumed patrol. So began the odyssey of Night Train, as the dog came to be known.

When we returned from our tour of duty that night we heard Reuben Ramos's saxophone honking from the locker room. Reuben is a motorcycle officer who picked up a love of jazz from working Seventy-seventh Street Vice, where he raided the bop joints of Central Avenue regularly, looking for hookers, bookies, and hopheads. He had taught himself to play the sax by ear—mostly honks and flub notes, but sometimes he gets going on some simple tune like "Green Dolphin Street." Tonight he was really cooking—the main theme from "Night Train" over and over.

When Wacky and I entered the locker room we couldn't believe our eyes. Reuben, in his Jockey shorts, was twisting all around, blasting out the wild first notes of "Night Train" while the fat black Lab writhed on his back on the concrete floor, yipping, yowling, and shooting a tremendous stream of urine straight up into the air. Groups of off-duty patrolmen walked in and walked out, disgusted. Reuben got tired of the action and went home to his wife and kids, leaving Wacky to yell and scream of the dog's "genius potential."

Wacky named the dog "Night Train" and took him home with him. He serenaded the dog for weeks with saxophone music on his phonograph and fed him steak, all in the fruitless hope of turning him into a caddy. Finally Wacky gave up, decided that Night Train was a free spirit, and cut him loose. We thought we had seen the last of the beast—but we hadn't. He was to go on to assume legendary status in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Two days after his release, Night Train showed up at Wilshire Station with a dead cat in his jaws. He was chased out by the desk sergeant, who threw the cat in a trash can. Night Train showed up the following day with another dead cat. This time he was chased out with the cat still in his mouth. He came back later that day with the same cat, somewhat the worse for wear. He came back at the right time, for Wacky and I were just getting off duty. When Night Train saw Wacky he swooned with joy, dropped the battered feline gift of love, ran to Wacky's outstretched arms, and urinated all over his uniform. Wacky carried Night Train to my car and locked him in. But Wacky was pissed at Lieutenant Beckworth. Beckworth was supposed to have come across with two cases of Cutty Sark at 75 percent off from a fence he knew, but he had reneged.

Wacky wanted revenge, so he retrieved the mangled dead cat and attached a note with a straight pin to the cat's hide. The note read: "This is all the pussy you're ever going to get, you cheap cocksucker." He then placed the cat on the lieutenant's desk.

Beckworth found it the next morning and went insane. He ordered an all-points bulletin for the dog. He didn't have to look far. Night Train was discovered where he had been placed the previous night—in the backseat of my car. Beckworth couldn't mess with me because he knew I could stop his golf lessons, but he could fuck over Night Train for dead sure. He had the dog arrested and placed in the drunk tank. It was the wrong thing to do. Night Train attacked and almost killed three winos. When the jailer was aroused by their screams and rushed to open the tank door, Night Train ran straight past him, out the door of Wilshire Station, across Pico Boulevard and all the way home to Wacky's apartment, where the two of them lived happily—listening to saxophone music—until the end of the last season of my youth.

A week after the dead cat episode, Beckworth was still pissed.

We were at the driving range at Rancho Park, where I was trying, unsuccessfully, to correct his chronic slice. It was hopeless. The price of working day watch was high.

"Fuck. Shit, fuck. Oh, God," Beckworth was muttering. "Show me again, Freddy."

I grabbed his 3 iron and sailed off a smooth one. Two-twenty. Straight. "Shoulders back, Loot. Feet closer together. Don't reach for the ball, meet it."

He had it perfect until he swung his club. Then he did everything I had told him not to and shank-dribbled the ball about ten yards.

"Easy, Loot. Try it again."

"Goddamnit, Freddy, I can't think today. Golf is ninety percent concentration. I've got the coordination of a superb athlete, but I can't keep my mind on the game."

I played into it. "What's on your mind, Loot?"

"Little things. Minor things. That shithead partner of yours—I've got a feeling about him. Medal of Honor winner, okay. High scores at the academy, okay. But he doesn't look, or act, like a cop. He spouts poetry at roll call. I think he's a homo."

"Not Wacky, Loot. He loves dames."

"I don't believe it."

I played into the lieutenant's sub rosa but well-known love of Negro tail. All the Seventy-seventh Street harness bulls knew him to be a frequent visitor at Minnie Roberts's Casbah—the swankiest colored whorehouse on the South Side.

"Well, Loot," I said, keeping my voice at a whisper, "he loves dames, but he's gotta have a certain kind of dame, if you follow my drift."

Beckworth was getting titillated. He smiled, something he rarely did, and exposed the two snaggleteeth at the corners of his mouth. "Drift it my way, Freddy boy."

I looked in all directions, broadly searching out eavesdroppers. "Korean women, Loot. He can't get enough of them. Only he doesn't like to talk about it, because we're at war over there. Wacky goes goo-goo for gooks. There's a cathouse on Slauson and Hoover that specializes in them. It's right next to that dump with all the colored girls—what's the name of the place?—Minnie's Casbah. Wacky goes to this chink place. Sometimes he sits in his car and has a few belts before he goes in. He told me he's seen a shitload of department brass go into the Casbah looking for poontang, but he won't tell me who. Wacky's a stand-up guy. He doesn't hate the brass hats the way a lot of street cops do."

Beckworth had gone pale, but came out of it fast. "Well, he may not be a queer, but he's still a shithead. The bastard. I had to get my office fumigated. I'm a sensitive man, Freddy, and I had nightmares about that dead cat. And don't tell me Walker didn't do it—because I know."

"I don't deny it, Lieutenant. He did it. But you got to look at his motives."

"What motives? He hates me. That's his motive."

"You're wrong, Loot. Wacky respects you. He even envies you."

"Respect! Envy! What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's a fact. Wacky envies your golfing potential. He told me so."

"Are you crazy? I'm a hacker. He's a low handicapper."

"You wanna know what he said, Loot? He said, 'Beckworth has all the moves. It's just his concentration that's fucking up his game and keeping him from putting it all together. He's got a lot on his mind. He's a good cop. I'm glad I'm just a dumb harness bull on the street. At least I can break eighty. The lieutenant is too conscientious and it fucks up his game. If he weren't such a good cop, he'd be a scratch player.' That's what he said."

I gave it a minute to sink in. Beckworth was aglow. He put down the 4 iron he was mauling and smiled at me beatifically. "You tell Walker to come and see me, Freddy. Tell him I've got some good Scotch for him. Korean pussy, Jesus! You don't think he's a red, do you, Freddy?"

"Wacky Walker? Staff sergeant, U.S. Marines? Bite your tongue, Lieutenant!"

"You're right, Freddy. That was unworthy of me. Let's go. I've had enough for today."

I drove Beckworth back to his car, then went home to my apartment in Santa Monica. I showered and changed. Then I put my off-duty .38 snub-nose into a small hip holster and attached it to my belt next to my spine in case I went dancing and got romantic. Then I got into my car and went looking for women.

I decided to follow the red trolley car. It ran from Long Beach all the way up into Hollywood. It was Friday night, and on weekend nights the red car carried groups of girls looking for an evening's fun on the Strip that they probably couldn't afford. The red car ran slightly elevated on a track in the middle of the street, so you could hardly see the passengers. Your best bet was to drive abreast of it and watch the girls as they boarded.

I liked L.A. girls the best, they were lonelier and more individual than girls from the "suburbs," so I caught the red car at Jefferson and La Brea. I wanted to give myself five minutes or so of suspense before the Wilshire Boulevard bonanza: clusters of salesgirls from Ohrbach's and the May Company, and secretaries from the insurance companies that lined L.A.'s busiest street. I kept my '47 Buick ragtop with the gunsight hood ornament dead even with the red car and watched keenly as passengers boarded.

The parade up to Wilshire was predictable—old-timers, high school kids, some young couples. At Wilshire, a whole knot of high-voiced gigglers jumped on board, pushing and shoving goodnaturedly. It was cold out; overcoats obscured their bodies. It didn't matter; spirit is more important than flesh. They boarded fast, so I couldn't discern faces. That put me at a disadvantage. If they got out at Fountain or Sunset en masse, I would have to park quick and chase them with no time to work on a line suited to one particular woman.

But it didn't matter, not tonight, because on La Brea just short of Melrose I saw her, running out of a Chinese restaurant, handbag flying by its straps, framed for a few brief seconds in the neon glow of the Gordon Theater: an unusual-looking girl, identifiable not by type, but by an intensity of feeling. She seemed to have a harried, frightened nervousness that blasted open the L.A. night. She was dressed with style, but without regard for fashion: men's baggycuffed slacks, sandals, and an Eisenhower jacket. Men's garb, but her features were soft and feminine and her hair was long.

She barely made the red car, hopping aboard with a little antelope bound. Her destination eluded me—she had too much stuff to be running for the Strip. Maybe she was headed for a bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard, or a lover's rendezvous that would ace me out. I was wrong; she got off at Fountain and started walking north.

I parked in a hurry, placed an "Official Police Vehicle" sign under my windshield wiper and followed her on foot. She turned east on De Longpre, a quiet residential street on the edge of the Hollywood business district. If she was going home I was out of luck for tonight—my methods required a crowded street or public place, and the best I could hope for was an address for future reference. But I could see that half a block up two black-and-whites were double-parked with their cherry lights on: a possible crime scene.

The girl noticed this, hesitated, and walked back in my direction. She was afraid of cops, and this compounded my interest. I decided to risk all on that fear, and intercepted her as she passed me. "Excuse me, miss," I said, showing her my badge. "I'm a police officer, and this is an official crime scene. Please allow me to escort you to a safe place."

The woman nodded, frightened, her face going pale and blank for a brief moment. She was very lovely, with that strength-vulnerability combo that is the essence of my love and respect for women. "All right," she said, adding "Officer" with the thinnest edge of contempt. We walked back towards La Brea, not looking at each other.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Sarah Kefalvian."

"Where do you live, Miss Kefalvian?"

"Not far from here. But I wasn't going home. I was going up to the boulevard."

"Whereabouts?"

"To an art exhibit. Near Las Palmas."

"Let me take you there."

"No. I don't think so."

She was averting her eyes, but as we got to the corner of La Brea she gave me a spirited, defiant look that sent me. "You don't like cops, do you, Miss Kefalvian?" I said.

"No. They hurt people."

"We help more people than we hurt."

"I don't believe it. Thank you for escorting me. Good night."

Sarah Kefalvian turned her back to me and started striding off briskly in the direction of the boulevard. I couldn't let her go. I caught up with her and grabbed her arm. She yanked it away. "Look," I said, "I'm not your average cop. I'm a draft dodger. I know that there's a Picasso exhibit at that bookstore on Las Palmas. I'm hot to learn culture and I need someone to show me around." I gave Sarah Kefalvian the crinkly smile that made me look a bashful seventeen. She started to relent, very slightly. She smiled. I moved in. "Please?"

"Are you really a draft dodger?"

"Kind of."

"I'll go with you to the exhibit if you don't touch me or tell anyone that you're a policeman."

"It's a deal."

We walked back to my illegally parked car, me elated, and Sarah Kefalvian interested, against her will.

The exhibit was at Stanley Rose's Bookshop, a longtime hot spot for the L.A. intelligentsia. Sarah Kefalvian walked slightly ahead of me, offering awed comments. The pictures were prints, not actual paintings, but this didn't faze her. It was obvious she was warming to the idea of having a date. I told her my name was Joe Thornhill. We stopped in front of "Guernica," the one picture I felt confident enough to comment on.

"That's a terrific picture," I said. "I saw a bunch of photographs on that city when I was a kid. This brings it all back. Especially that cow with the spear sticking out of him. War must be tough."

"It's the cruelest, most terrible thing on earth, Joe," Sarah Kefalvian said. "I'm devoting my life to ending it."

"How?"

"By spreading the words of great men who have seen war and what it does."

"Are you against the war in Korea?"

"Yes. All wars."

"Don't you want to stop the Communists?"

"Tyranny can only be stopped through love, not war."

That interested me. Sarah's eyes were getting moist. "Let's go talk," I said, "I'll buy you dinner. We'll swap life stories. What do you say?" I waggled my eyebrows a la Wacky Walker.

Sarah Kefalvian smiled and laughed, and it transformed her. "I've already eaten, but I'll go with you if you'll tell me why you dodged the draft."

"It's a deal." As we walked out of the bookstore I took her arm and steered her. She buckled, but didn't resist.

We drove to a dago joint on Sunset and Normandie. En route I learned that Sarah was twenty-four, a graduate student in History at U.C.L.A. and a first-generation Armenian-American. Her grandparents had been wiped out by the Turks, and the horror stories her parents had told her about life in Armenia had shaped her life: she wanted to end war, outlaw the atom bomb, end racial discrimination, and redistribute the wealth. She deferred to me slightly, saying that she thought cops were necessary, but should carry liberal arts educations and high ideals instead of guns. She was starting to like me, so I couldn't bring myself to tell her she was nuts. I was starting to like her, too, and my blood was roiling at the thought of the lovemaking that we would share in a few hours' time.

I appreciated her honesty and decided that candor would be the only decent kind of barter. I decided not to bullshit her: maybe our encounter would leave her more of a realist.

The restaurant was a one-armed Italian place, strictly family, with faded travel posters of Rome, Naples, Parma, and Capri interspersed with empty Chianti bottles hanging from a phony grape arbor. I decided to forgo chow, and ordered a big jug of dago red. We raised our glasses in a toast.

"To the end of war," I said.

"Do you really believe that?"

"Sure. Just because I don't carry placards or make a big deal out of it doesn't mean I don't hate it."

"Tell me why you dodged the draft," Sarah said softly.

I drained my glass and poured another. Sarah was sipping hers slowly.

"I'm an orphan. I grew up in an orphanage in Hollywood. It was lousy. It was Catholic, and run by a bunch of sadistic nuns. The food stank. During the Depression we ate nothing but potatoes, watery vegetable stews, and powdered milk, with meat maybe once a week. All the kids were skinny and anemic, with bad complexions. It wasn't good enough for me. I couldn't eat it. It made me so angry my skin stung. We got sent out to a Catholic school over on Western Avenue. They fed us the same slop for lunch. When I was about eight, I knew that if I continued to eat that garbage I would forfeit my claim to manhood. So I started to steal. I hit every market in Hollywood. I stole canned sardines, cheeses, fruit, cookies, pies, milk—you name it. On weekends the older kids used to get farmed out to wealthy Catholic families, to show us a bit of the good life. I got sent regularly to this family in Beverly Hills. They were loaded. They had a son about my age. He was a wild kid, and an accomplished shoplifter. His specialty was steaks. I joined him and we hit every butcher shop on the West Side. He was as fat as a pig. He couldn't stop eating. A regular Goodyear blimp.

"During the Depression there was a kind of floating hobo jungle in Griffith Park. The cops rousted the bums out of there regularly, but they would recongregate in another place. A priest from Immaculate Heart College told me about it. I went looking for them. I was a curious, lonely kind of kid, and thought bums were romantic. I brought a big load of steaks with me, which made me a big hit. I was big enough so that no one messed with me. I listened to the stories the old bums would tell—cops and robbers, railroads and Pinkerton men, darkness. Strange things that most people had no inkling of. Perversions. Unspeakable things. I wanted to know those things—but remain safe from them.

"One night we were roasting steaks and drinking some whiskey I had stolen when the cops raided the jungle. I scampered off and got away. I could hear the cops rousting out the bums. They were firm, but humorous about the whole thing; and I knew that if I became a cop I could have the darkness along with some kind of precarious impunity. I would know, yet be safe.

"Then the war came along. I was seventeen when Pearl Harbor was bombed. And I knew again, though this time in a different way. I knew that if I fought in that war I would die. I also knew that I needed an honorable out to insure getting on the police department.

"I never knew my parents. My first adopted parents gave me my name before they turned me over to the orphanage. I devised a plan. I read the draft laws, and learned that the sole surviving son of a man killed in a foreign war is draft exempt. I also knew I had a punctured eardrum that was a possible out, but I wanted to cover my bets. So I tried to enlist in '42, right after I graduated from high school. The eardrum came through and they turned me down.

"Then I found an old wino woman, a down-and-out actress. She came with me when I made my appeal to the draft board. She yelled and screamed that she needed me to work and give her money. She said her husband, my dad, was killed in the Chinese campaign of '26, which was why I was sent to the orphanage. It was a stellar performance. I gave her fifty bucks. The draft board believed her and told me never to try to enlist again. I pleaded, periodically, but they were firm. They admired my patriotism—but a law was a law, and ironically the punctured eardrum never kept me from becoming a cop."

Sarah loved it, and sighed when I finished. I loved it, too; I was saving the story for a special woman, one who could appreciate it. Aside from Wacky, she was the only person to know of that part of my life.

She put her hand on mine. I raised it to my lips and kissed it. She looked wistful and sad. "Have you found what you're looking for?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

"Will you take me by that hobo jungle? Tonight?"

"Let's go now. They close the park road at ten o'clock."

It was a cold night and very clear. January is the coldest, most beautiful month in L.A. The colors of the city, permeated by chill air, seem to come into their own and reflect a tradition of warmth and insularity.

We drove up Vermont and parked in the observatory parking lot. We walked north, uphill, holding hands. We talked easily, and I laid on the more gentle, picaresque side of police work: the friendly drunks, the colorful jazz musicians in their zoot suits, the lost puppies Wacky and I repatriated to their youthful owners. I didn't tell her about the rape-o's, the abused kids, the stiffs at accident scenes or the felony suspects who got worked over regularly in the back rooms at Wilshire Station. She didn't need to hear it. Idealists like Sarah, despite their naiveté, thought that the world was basically a shit place. I needed to temper her sense of reality with some of the joy and mystery. There was no way she could accept that the darkness was part of the joy. I had to do my tempering Hollywood-style.

I showed her the site of the old jungle. I hadn't been here since 1938, thirteen years, and now it was just a clearing overgrown with weeds and littered with empty wine bottles.

"It all started here for you?" Sarah asked.

"Yes."

"Time and place awes me."

"Me, too. This is January 30, 1951. It's now and it won't ever be again."

"That scares me."

"Don't be scared. It's just the wonder. It's very dark here. Are you afraid of the dark?"

Sarah Kefalvian raised her beautiful head and laughed in the moonlight. Big, hearty laughter worthy of her Armenian ancestors. "I'm sorry, Joe. It's just that we're speaking so somberly, so symbolically that it's kind of funny."

"Then let's get literal. I've confided in you. You confide in me. Tell me something about yourself. Something dark and secretive that you've never told anyone."

She considered this and said, "It'll shock you. I like you and I don't want to offend you."

"You can't shock me. I'm immune to shock. Tell me."

"All right. When I was an undergrad in San Francisco I had an affair—with a married man. It ended. I was hurt and I started hating men. I was going to Cal Berkeley. I had a teacher, a woman. She was very beautiful. She took an interest in me. We became lovers and did things—sexual things that most people don't even guess about. This woman also liked young boys. Young boys. She seduced her twelve-year-old nephew. We shared him."

Sarah backed away from where we stood together, almost as if fearing a blow.

"Is that it?" I asked.

"Yes," she replied.

"All of it?"

"Yes! I won't get graphic with you. I loved that woman. She helped through a difficult time. Isn't that dark enough for you?"

Her anger and indignation had peaked and brought forth in me a warm rush of pure stuff. "It's enough. Come here, Sarah." She did and we held each other, her head pressed hard into my shoulder. When we disengaged, she looked up at me. She was smiling, and her cheeks were wet with tears. I wiped them away with my thumbs. "Let me take you home," I said.

We undressed wordlessly, in the dark front room of Sarah Kefalvian's garage apartment on Sycamore Street. Sarah was trembling and breathing shallowly in the cold room, and when we were naked I smothered her with my body to stanch her tremors, then lifted her and carried her in the direction of where the bedroom had to be.

There was no bed; just a mattress on a pallet covered with quilts. I laid her down and sat on the edge of the mattress, my long legs jammed up awkwardly. A shaft of light from a streetlamp cast a diffuse glow over the room and let me pick out shelves overflowing with books and walls adorned with Picasso prints and labor activist posters from the Depression.

Sarah looked up at me, her hand resting on my knee. I stroked her hair, then bent over and placed short dry kisses on her neck and shoulders. She sighed. I told her she was very beautiful, and she giggled. I looked for imperfections, the little body flaws that speak volumes. I found them: a small growth of dark hairs above her nipples, an acne cluster on her right shoulder blade. I kissed these places until Sarah grabbed my head and pulled my mouth to hers.

We kissed hard and long, then Sarah opened up yawningly and arched to receive me. We joined and coupled violently, strongly, muscles straining in our efforts to stay interlocked as we changed positions and thrashed the quilts off the mattress. We peaked together, Sarah sobbing as I mashed my face into her neck, rubbing my mouth and nose in the little rivulets of our combined sweat.

We lay still for a long time, gently stroking odd parts of each other. To talk would have been to betray the moment; I knew this from experience, and Sarah from instinct. After a while she pretended to sleep, a silent, loving way to ease the awkwardness of my departure.

I dressed in the dark, then reached over and brushed back her long dark hair and kissed the nape of her neck, thinking as I left that maybe this time I had given as much as I had taken.

I drove home and got out my diary. I wrote of the circumstances of my meeting Sarah, what we had talked about, and what I learned. I described her body and our lovemaking. Then I went to bed and slept long into the afternoon.

2

"Getting laid, Freddy?"

Wacky and I were pulling into the parking lot at Rancho Park Municipal Golf Course very early the following Saturday morning. I was hungry for golf, not masculine banter, and Wacky's question felt like a knife in the side. I ignored it until Wacky cleared his throat and started to speak in verse:

"Whither thou, O pussy-hound, O tireless fiend for Venus Mounds, O noble cop, you'll never stop . . ."

I set the hand brake and stared at Wacky.

"You haven't answered my question," he said.

I sighed: "The answer is yes."

"Great. What's it costing you?"

"Very little. I go to bars only as a last resort." I hauled my clubs out of the backseat and motioned Wacky to follow me. As I slung my golf bag over my shoulder and locked the car, Wacky gave me one of his rare cold sober looks.

"That wasn't what I meant, Fred."

"What did you mean, Wacky? I came here to hit golf balls, not write my sexual memoirs."

Wacky clapped me on the back and waggled his eyebrows. "Are you still planning on being chief of police someday?" he asked.

"Of course."

"Then I hope you realize that the commission will never appoint a bachelor pussy-fiend as chief. You know that they're going to get to you, don't you?"

I sighed again, this time angrily. "Exactly what are you talking about?"

"Price, Freddy. The dames are going to start to get to you. You're going to get tired of one-nighters and go loony romantic and start searching for some tomato you screwed back in '48. The woman, who'll never be able to compete with the thrill of one-nighters. You'll be screwed both ways. You make me damn glad I'm not big and handsome and charming. You make me damn glad I'm just a poet and a cop."

"And a drunk." I regretted saying it immediately and fished around for something to make it right.

Wacky preempted me: "Yeah, and a drunk."

"Then you watch the price, Wack. When I'm chief of police and you're my chief of detectives I don't want you croaking of cirrhosis of the liver."

"I'll never make it, Fred."

"You'll make it."

"Shit. Haven't you heard the rumors? Captain Larson is retiring in June. Beckworth is going to be the new top dog at Wilshire, and I'm going to Seventy-seventh Street—Niggerland, U.S.A. And you, Beckworth's golf avatar and fair-haired boy, are going to Vice, a nice assignment for a cunt-hound. I have this on very good authority, Freddy."

I couldn't meet Wacky's eyes. I had heard the rumors, and credited them. I started thinking of stratagems I could use to keep Beckworth from transferring Wacky, then suddenly realized I was supposed to meet Beckworth at seven o'clock that morning at Fox Hills for a lesson. I dropped my bag to the ground in disgust. "Wacky?" I said.

"Yes, Fred?"

"Sometimes you make me wish that I were the drunk and the fuck-up in this partnership."

"Will you elaborate on that?"

"No."

* * *

The driving range was deserted. Wacky and I dug our stash of shag balls out of their hiding place in a hollowed-out tree trunk and settled in to practice. Wacky warmed up by chugalugging a half pint of bourbon, while I did deep knee bends and jumping jacks. I started out hitting 7 irons—one seventy with a slight fade. Not good. I shifted my stance, corrected the fade and gained an additional ten yards in the process. I was working toward my optimum when Wacky grabbed my elbow and hissed at me: "Freddy, psst, Freddy!"

I slammed the head of my club into the dirt at my feet and pulled loose from Wacky. "What the fuck is wrong now?"

Wacky pointed to a man and woman arguing nearby on the putting green. The man was tall and fat, with a stomach like an avocado. He had wild reddish-brown hair and a nose as long as my arm. There was an appealing ethnic roguishness to him, broad laughter lines around his mouth, his whole face spelling out fifty-five years of good-natured conniving. The woman was about thirty, and obese—probably close to two-seventy-five. She bore the man's long nose and reddish hair, then did him one better by sporting a distinct downy mustache. I groaned. Wacky was only nominally interested in women, and fat ones were the only kind that aroused him. He pulled a fresh half pint from his back pocket and took a long pull, then pointed to the couple and said, "Do you know who that is, Freddy?"

"Yeah. It's a fat woman."

"Not the tomato, Freddy. The old guy. It's Big Sid Weinberg. He's the guy who produced Bride of the Sea Monster, remember? We saw it at the Westlake. You went bananas for that blond with the big tits?"

"Yeah. And?"

"And I'm gonna get his autograph, then I'm gonna sell him 'Constituency of the Dead' for his next picture."

I groaned again. Wacky was a horror-movie fanatic, and "Constituency of the Dead" was his attempt to capture Hollywood's monster madness in prose. In his poem, there was a world of the dead, existing concurrent with the real world, but invisible to us. The inhabitants of this world were all wonder addicts, because they had all been murdered. I considered it one of his poorer efforts.

Wacky waggled his eyebrows at me. "One thing, partner," he said, "one thing I promise."

"What's that?"

"When I'm a big-time Hollywood screenwriter I'll never highhat you."

I laughed: "Watch out, Wack. Hollywood producers are notorious shit-heels. Go for the daughter instead. Maybe you can marry into the family." Wacky laughed, and trotted away, while I returned to the blessed solitude of golf.

I was at it for over an hour, savoring the mystical union that takes place when you know that you're a gifted practitioner of something much greater than yourself. I was crunching three-hundred-yard drives with fluid regularity when I gradually became aware of eyes boring into my back. I stopped in mid-swing and turned around to face my intruder. It was Big Sid Weinberg. He was lumbering toward me almost feverishly, right hand extended. Taken aback, I extended mine reflexively, and we exchanged names in a mutual bone-crusher. "Sid Weinberg," he said.

"Fred Underhill," I said.

Still grasping my hand, Weinberg eyed me up and down like a choice piece of meat. "You're a six, but you can't putt, right?"

"Wrong."

"Okay, you're a four, and you can hit the shit out of the ball, but your short game stinks. Right?"

"Wrong."

Weinberg dropped my hand. "So you're—"

I interrupted: "I'm a hard scratch, I can drive three hundred yards, I've got a demon short game, I can putt better than Ben Hogan and I'm handsome, charming, and intelligent. What do you want, Mr. Weinberg?"

Weinberg looked surprised when I mentioned his name. "So that lunatic was right," he said.

"You mean my partner?"

"Yeah. He told me you two guys were cops together, then he tells me some lunatic story about a city of stiffs. How the hell did he ever make the force?"

"We've got lots of crazy guys, only most of them hold it better."

"Jesus. He's reading his stuff to my daughter now. They're soul mates; she's as crazy as he is."

"What do you want, Mr. Weinberg?"

"How much do you make with the cops?"

"Two hundred ninety-two a month."

Weinberg snorted. "Spinach. Peanuts. Worse than that, popcorn. The ducks in the lake at Echo Park make more moolah than that."

"I'm not in it for the money."

"No? But you like money?"

"Yeah, I like it."

"Good, it ain't a crime. You wanna walk across the street to Hillcrest and play a class-A kosher course? Scramble? The two of us versus these two ganefs I know? We'll slaughter 'em. C-note Nassau? What do you say?"

"I say you put up the money, and my partner comes with us to read our greens. He gets twenty percent of our action. What do you say, Mr. Weinberg?"

"I say you musta been Jewish in a previous life."

"Maybe in this one."

"Whaddaya mean?"

"I never knew my parents."

Big Sid raised his head and roared: "Ha-ha-ha! That's par for the course, kid. I got two daughters and I don't know them from a hill of beans. You got yourself a deal."

We shook hands on it, sealing the last carefree alliance of my youth.

Hillcrest was only a block away geographically, but it was lightyears away from Rancho in every other respect: lush, manicured fairways, well-tended, strategically placed bunkers and sloping greens that ran like lightning. There were eight of us in the group: Big Sid and I, our opponents, two caddies, and our giggling, moonstruck gallery—Wacky and Big Sid's gargantuan daughter, Siddell. Those two seemed to be rapidly falling into lust, swaying into each other as they trudged fairway and rough, holding hands surreptitiously when Big Sid had his back to them.

And Sid was right; it was a slaughter. Our opponents—a Hollywood agent and a young doctor—were pitifully mismatched; shanking, hooking, slicing into the trees and blowing their only decent approach shots. Big Sid and I played steadily, conservatively, and sank putts. We were well-aided by Wacky's superb green reads and the club selections and yardage calls of our short-dog-sucking wino caddy, "Dirt Road" Dave.

"Hey, hey, shit, shit," Dave would say. "Play a soft seven and knock it down short of the green. It breaks left to right off the mound. Hey, hey, shit, shit."

Dave fascinated me: he was both sullen and colloquial, dirty and proud, with an air of supreme nonchalance undercut by terrified blue eyes. Somehow, I wanted his knowledge.

The match ended on the fourteenth hole, Big Sid and I closing our opponents out 5-4. Nine hundred dollars changed hands, four hundred and fifty for Big Sid, four hundred and fifty for me. I felt rich and effusive.

Big Sid clapped me on the back. "It's just the beginning, doll! You stick with Big Sid and the sky's the limit! Va-va-va-voom!"

"Thanks, Sid. I appreciate it."

"Va-va-va-voom, kiddo!"

I looked around. Wacky and Siddell had disappeared into the woods. Our opponents were heading back to the clubhouse dejected, their heads down. I told Big Sid I would meet him at the clubhouse, then went looking for Dirt Road Dave. I found him walking across the rough toward the eighteenth hole with Big Sid's bag as well as mine slung across his bony right shoulder. I tapped him on that shoulder and when he turned around stuck a fifty-dollar bill into his callused, outstretched palm. "Thanks, Dave," I said. Dirt Road Dave unhitched the bags, put the money into his pocket and stared at me. "Talk to me," I said.

"About what, sonny boy?"

"About what you've seen. About what you know."

Dirt Road Dave let my bag fall to the grass at my feet, then he spat. "I know you're a smart-mouth young cop. I know that's a roscoe and handcuffs under your sweater. I know the kind of things you guys do that you think people don't know about. I know guys like you die hungry." His finality was awesome. I picked up my bag and walked to the clubhouse—only to be ambushed by another madman en route.

It was Wacky, materializing out of a grove of trees, scaring the shit out of me. "Jesus!" I exclaimed.

"Sorry, partner," Wacky whispered, "but I had to catch you out of earshot of Big Sid. I need a favor, a big-o-rooney."

I sighed: "Name it."

"The car—for an hour or so. I've got a hot date that won't wait, passion pie in the great by-and-by. I'm eating kosher, partner. You can't deny me."

I decided to do it, but with a stipulation: "Not in the car, Wack. Rent a room. You got that?"

"Of course, I'm a cop. Would I break the law?"

"Yes."

"Ha-ha-ha! One hour, Fred."

"Yeah."

Wacky disappeared into the trees, where his high-pitched laughter was joined by Siddell Weinberg's baritone sighs. I walked to the clubhouse feeling sad, and weighted down by strangers.

3

I figured that Wacky would be at least two hours late returning my car, and moreover that good taste dictated I remain to drink and shoot the shit with Big Sid. I wanted to take a run to Santa Barbara and look for women, but I needed my car for that,

I showered in the men's locker room. It was a far cry from the dungeonlike locker room at Wilshire Station. This facility had wall-to-wall deep-pile carpets and oak walls hung with portraits of Hillcrest notables. The locker room talk was about movie deals and business mergers with golf a distant third. Somehow it made me uneasy, so I showered fast, changed clothes, and went looking for Big Sid.

I found him in the dining room, sitting at a table near the large picture window overlooking the eighteenth hole. He was talking with a woman; she had her back to me as I approached the table. Somehow I sensed she was class, so I smoothed my hair and adjusted my pocket handkerchief as I walked toward them.

Big Sid saw me coming. "Freddy, baby!" he boomed. He tapped the woman softly on the shoulder. "Honey, this is my new golf partner, Freddy Underhill. Freddy, this is my daughter Lorna."

The woman swiveled in her chair to face me. She smiled distractedly. "Mr. Underhill," she said.

"Miss Weinberg," I replied.

I sat down. I was right: the woman was class. Where Siddell Weinberg had inherited the broadness of her father's features, Lorna exhibited a refined version: her hair was more light brown than red, her brown eyes more pale and crystalline than opaque. She had Big Sid's pointed chin and sensual mouth, but on a softer, muted scale. Her nose was large but beautiful: it informed her face with intelligence and a certain boldness. She wore no makeup. She had on a tweed suit over a white silk blouse. I could tell that she was tall and slender, and that her breasts were very large for her frame.

I immediately wanted to know her, and quashed a corny impulse to take and kiss her hand, realizing that she wouldn't be charmed by such a gesture. Instead, I took a seat directly across from her where I could maintain eye contact.

Big Sid slammed me so hard on the back that my head almost hit the linen tablecloth. "Freddy, baby, we killed them! Four hundred and fifty simoleons!" Big Sid leaned over and explained to his daughter: "Freddy's my new gravy train. And vice versa. What a swing!"

Lorna Weinberg smiled. I smiled back. She patted her father's hand and looked at him with exasperated fondness. "Dad's a fanatic, and a hyperbolic personality. He loves to classify people with colloquialisms. You must forgive him." She said it lovingly, but with the slightest air of condescension to her father—and of challenge to me.

Big Sid laughed, but I took the challenge. "That's an interesting perception, Miss Weinberg. Are you a psychologist?"

"No, I'm an attorney. And you?"

"I'm a police officer."

"In L.A.?"

"Yes."

Lorna smiled guardedly. "Are you as good at police work as you are at golf?"

"I'm better."

"Then you're a double threat."

"That's a colloquialism you'd better elaborate on."

"Touché." Lorna Weinberg's eyes bored in on me. They were dancing with a bitter mirth. "I'm a deputy district attorney, for the city of Los Angeles. We have the same employer. I would rather be a deputy public defender, but that's the rub of the green, as Dad would say. I deal with policemen every day—and I don't like them. They see too little and arrest too often. What they can't understand or won't accept, they arrest or beat up. The jails in Los Angeles are full of people who don't belong there. My job is to prepare cases for the grand jury. I wade through tons of reports from overzealous detectives. Frankly, I see myself as watchdog on arrest-crazy police agencies. This gets me a lot of flak from my colleagues, but they accept me, because I'm damn good at what I do, and because I save them a lot of work."

I breathed it all in, and gave what I hoped would pass for an ironic grin: "So you don't like cops," I said. "Big deal. Most people don't. Would you rather have anarchy? There's only one answer, Miss Weinberg. This is not the best of all possible worlds. We have to accept that, and get on with the administration of justice."

Big Sid noted the fire in his daughter's eyes, and hurried off in the direction of the bar, embarrassed by the intensity of our conversation.

Lorna did not relent. "I can't accept that, and I won't. You can't change human nature, but you can change the law. And you can weed out some of the sociopaths who carry badges and guns.

"For example, my father told me you were curious about that man who caddied for you today. I know about him. He's one of your victims. An attorney who's a member of this club once represented Dirt Road Dave in his suit against the Los Angeles Police Department. During the Depression he had stolen some food from a grocery. Two policemen saw him do it and chased him, and when they finally caught him they were angry. They beat him unconscious with their billy clubs. Dave suffered internal hemorrhaging and almost died. He sustained irreparable brain damage. The A.C.L.U. sued your police department, and lost. Cops are above the law and can do what they please. Abe Dolwitz, the attorney, looks after Dave somewhat, but Dave's only lucid half the time. I imagine the other half of the time is a nightmare for him. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I understand that you're moving into areas way beyond your bailiwick, counselor. I understand that your opinion of cops is academic and one-sided and removed from the daily context we work in. I understand your compassion, and I understand that the problems you've described are insoluble."

"How can you be so jaded?"

"I'm not. I'm just realistic. You said that cops see too little and arrest too much. It's the opposite with me. I'm in the job for what I see, not the crummy salary I make."

Lorna Weinberg dropped her voice condescendingly: "I find that very hard to believe."

I dropped mine to match hers. "I don't really care, counselor. But one question. You called me a 'double threat.' What in the world is threatening about golf?"

Lorna sighed. "It keeps people from thinking about the important things in life."

"It also keeps them from thinking about the unimportant things," I countered. She shrugged. We were even. I got up to go, chancing a parting shot: "If you hate golf so much, why do you come to this club?"

"Because they have the best food in L.A."

I laughed, and took Lorna Weinberg's hand casually. "Good day, Miss Weinberg."

"Good day, Officer," Lorna said, her voice now richly ironic.

I found Big Sid, thanked him for the pleasure of his golfing company, and promised to call him soon for another game. Big Sid's offer of friendship was touching, but my encounter with Lorna Weinberg left me feeling aggressive and enervated.

I picked up my clubs and walked out to the parking lot to look for my car. It wasn't in the main lot for members, or the one for club employees. I walked out the gate onto Pico. Wacky was getting to be too unreliable to trust.

I crossed the street, deciding to kill time by taking a walk around the outskirts of the 20th Century-Fox studio. I walked north, past a large expanse of vacant lots.

The sky was darkening, black clouds competing for primacy with a brilliant blue sky. I hoped for rain. Rain was a good catalyst. It was good to look for women on rainy nights—they seemed more vulnerable and open when foul weather raged.

I was almost up to Olympic when I spotted my red and white '47 Buick in an alley behind the studio's prop department. It was rocking and there were moans coming from inside. I walked up and peered in the driver's side window. It was fogged from heavy breathing, but I could still plainly see Wacky and Siddell Weinberg writhing in a hot nude embrace.

I felt the perfect calm that settles on me when I get very angry. I took a 5 iron out of my bag and opened the door of the car. "Police officer!" I called as Wacky and Siddell started to shriek and attempted to cover themselves. I didn't let them. I poked my 5 iron roughly between them, probing, kneading, and pushing at where they were joined. "Get the fuck out of my car, you stupid shitheads!" I screamed. "Now! Get out! Get the fuck out!"

Somehow they disengaged themselves and tumbled out the door. Siddell was sobbing and trying to cover her breasts with her arms. I threw their clothes out after them, and hurled Wacky's holstered .38 and handcuffs over the fence into the prop department. As he tried to pull on his pants I kicked him hard in the ass.

"Don't fuck with me, you asshole! Don't fuck with my career, you fucking disgrace of a cop! Take your fucking fat pig and get the fuck out of my life!"

They stumbled off down the alley, pulling on clothes as they went. I looked into my car. There was a half empty fifth of bourbon on the floor. I took a long drink and threw it after them. The dark clouds had almost completely eclipsed the blue sky.

I retrieved the bourbon bottle and drank while awaiting the rain. I thought of Lorna Weinberg. When the first raindrops fell I discarded the bottle and started the car, with no particular destination in mind.

Aimless driving consumed three hours. Lorna Weinberg, Wacky, and Dirt Road Dave consumed most of my thoughts. They were depressing thoughts, and my random driving reinforced my grim state of mind.

The rain was coming down in sheets, driven by a fierce north wind. It turned dark early, and for no logical reason I was drawn to the winding, treacherous Pasadena Freeway. Maneuvering its abrupt turns on rain-slicked pavement at top speed got me feeling better. I started thinking about my opportunities for advancement and the wonder-seeking that working Vice would afford me.

That provided me with a destination. As soon as I hit Pasadena I turned around and drove back to L.A., to Wilshire Division, to some vice hot spots old-timers had told me about. I drove by the hooker stands on West Adams where knots of Negro prostitutes, probably hopheads, waited under umbrellas on the off chance that a customer would brave the rain and supply them with money for dope. I cruised by the known bookie joints on Western, then parked and watched bettors come and go. They seemed as desperate as the hopheads.

I got the feeling that Vice wonder would be sad wonder, pathetic and hopeless. The neon signs on the bars and nightclubs I passed looked like cheap advertisements for loneliness eradicator.

It was almost nine o'clock. I stopped at the Original Barbecue on Vermont and took my time with a sparerib dinner, wondering where to go look for women. It was too late and too wet to chance anything but bars, and women who were looking for the same thing I was. That made me sad, but I decided that while I cruised I could peruse the bar scene from the standpoint of a rookie Vice cop and maybe learn a few things.

The joint on Normandie and Melrose was dead. Its main draw was the television above the bar. Slaphappy locals were laughing at the "Sid Caesar Show." I left. In the next place, near L.A. City College, there were nothing but animated college kids, all coupled off, most of them shouting about Truman and MacArthur and the war.

I made my way southwest. I found a bar on Western that I had never noticed before—the Silver Star, two blocks north of Beverly. It looked warm and well kept up. It had a tricolored neon sign: three stars, yellow, blue, and red, arranged around a martini glass. "Silver Star" flashed on and off in bright orange.

I parked across the street at Ralph's market, then dodged cars as I ran toward the neon haven. The Silver Star was crowded, and as my eyes became accustomed to the indoor fluorescent lighting I could tell that the place served more as a pickup joint than a local watering hole. Men were making advances to women seated beside them. The gestures were awkward, and the women feigned interest in the spirit of booze-induced camaraderie. I ordered a double Scotch and soda and carried it over to a dark row of booths against the back wall, choosing the only empty one. My legs were too long to keep from jamming into the table, so I stretched them out and sipped my drink, trying to look casual while remaining alert, with my eyes on the bar and front door.

After an hour and two more drinks, I noticed a comely woman enter the bar. She was a honey blond in her middle thirties. She walked in hesitantly, as though the place were unfamiliar and potentially hostile.

I watched as she took a seat at the bar. The bartender was busy elsewhere so the woman waited to be served, fiddling with the contents of her purse. There was an empty stool next to her, and I made for it. I sat down and the woman swiveled to face me.

"Hi," I said, "it's kind of busy tonight. The barman should be with you by Tuesday afternoon, though." The woman laughed, her face slightly averted. I could tell why; her teeth were bad, and she wanted to be fetching without exposing them. It was the first endearment in what I hoped would be a long night of them.

"This is kind of a nice place, don't you think?" she asked. Her voice was nasal and slightly midwestern.

"Yes, I do. Especially on a night like this."

"Brrr," the woman said. "I know what you mean. I've never been here before, but I was driving by in a cab and it looked so warm and inviting that I just had to stop in. Have you been here before?"

"No, this is my first time, too. But please excuse my bad manners. My name is Bill Thornhill."

"I'm Maggie. Maggie Cadwallader."

I laughed. "Oh, God, our names are so solid, like a trip to Great Britain."

Maggie laughed. "I'm just a Wisconsin farm girl."

"I'm just a big-city hick."

We laughed some more. It was good laughter; we were playing our roles with both naturalness and refinement. The bartender came and I ordered a beer for myself and a stinger for Maggie. I paid. "How long have you lived in L.A., Maggie?" I asked.

"Oh, for years. What about you, Bill?" From that added intimacy I knew it was going to be. Relief and ardor flooded through me.

"Too long, I think. Actually, I'm a native."

"One of the few! Isn't it some place, though? Sometimes I think I live here because anything can happen, do you know what I mean? You can be walking down the street and something crazy and wonderful might happen, just like that." The wonder in a nutshell. I started to like her.

"I know exactly what you mean," I said, and meant it. "Sometimes I think that's what keeps me from moving away. Most people come here for the glamour and the movies. I was born here, so I know that's a lot of baloney. I stay here for the mystery."

"You put that so well! Mystery!" Maggie squeezed my hand. "Wait a second," she said as she finished her drink. "Let me see if I can guess what you do. Are you an athlete? You look like one."

"No, guess again."

"Hmmm. You're so big. Is it an outside job?"

"No hints. Guess again."

"Are you a writer?"

"No."

"A businessman?"

"No."

"A lawyer?"

"No."

"A movie star!"

"Hah! No."

"A fireman?"

"No."

"I give up. Tell me what you do, and I'll tell you what I do."

"Okay, but prepare yourself for a letdown. I sell insurance." I said it with boyish mock humility and resignation. Maggie loved it.

"What's so bad about that? I'm just a bookkeeper! What we do isn't what we are, is it?"

"No," I lied.

"So there!" Maggie squeezed my hand again.

I signaled the bartender, who brought us refills. We raised our glasses in a toast. "To mystery," I said.

"To mystery," she repeated.

Maggie finished her drink quickly. I sipped my beer. It felt like time to make a move. "Maggie, if this weather weren't so damn rotten, we could take a drive. I know L.A. like the back of my hand, and there's lots of beautiful places we could go."

Maggie smiled warmly, this time not worrying about showing her teeth. "I feel like getting out of here, too. But you're right, the weather is rotten. We could go to my apartment for a nightcap."

"That sounds nice," I said, my voice tightening.

"Did you drive? I came in a cab."

"Yeah, I drove. We can take my car. Where do you live?"

"In Hollywood. On Harold Way. That's a little street off of Sunset. Do you know where it is?"

"Sure."

"That's right, you know L.A. like the back of your hand!"

We both laughed as we left the bar and hurried across rainy Western Avenue to my car.

Driving north on Wilton Place, the rain started to abate. Maggie and I avoided flirting, and talked instead about things like the weather and her cat. I didn't particularly like cats, but faked great interest in meeting hers. I kept wondering about her body. In the bar she had never taken off her coat. Her legs were well formed, but I wanted to know the size of her breasts and breadth of her hips before we were nude together.

Harold Way was a small, dimly lighted side street. Maggie showed me where to park. Her apartment building was postwar ugly with a Hawaiian motif. It was a giant boxlike structure of eight or ten units, stucco, with phony bamboo trim along the doors and windows. The entrances were along the side of the building.

Maggie and I chatted nervously as we walked down the long entranceway to her apartment. When she opened the door and flipped on the lights a fat gray cat jumped out of the darkness to greet us. Maggie put down her umbrella and picked him up. "Mmmm, my baby!" she cooed, hugging the captive feline. "Lion, this is Bill. Bill, this is my protector, Lion."

I patted the cat's head. "Hello, Lion," I said naturally, not changing my voice. "How are you this fine winter's evening? Caught any rodents lately? Are you earning your keep in this wonderful abode your lovely mistress has given you?"

My deadpan expression and voice sent Maggie into gales of laughter. "Oh, Bill, that's so funny!" she gasped. She was slightly drunk.

I took the cat as Maggie locked the door behind us. Lion was very fat, probably not a ball bearing mousetrap. I looked around the living room. It was tidy, and a virtual ode to faraway places: Greece, Rome, France, and Spain were represented on the four walls, courtesy of Pan American Airways. I dropped the cat to the floor, where he started to sniff my trouser legs.

"It's a nice apartment, Maggie. You've obviously taken a lot of care with it."

Maggie beamed, then took my hand and led me to a plush overstuffed sofa. "Sit, Bill, and tell me what you'd like to drink."

"Cognac, neat," I said.

"One minute."

While Maggie was in the kitchen I transferred my gun and cuffs from my belt to my coat pocket. She returned a moment later with two snifter glasses each containing a solid three ounces. She sat next to me on the sofa. We toasted silently. As the brandy hit my system I realized that I had little to say. There was nothing I could impart to this woman—who was probably ten years my senior—that she didn't already know.

Maggie took the matter out of my hands. She finished her brandy and placed her glass on the coffee table. The cat scampered up to us and I playfully lunged at his tail. Maggie reached down to pet him and our shoulders brushed together. We looked at each other for a split second, then I grabbed her and we fell to the floor. She giggled, and I took my cue. I barked like some breed of gentle dog and covered her shoulders with gentle dog bites, barely pinching her skin beneath the fabric.

Maggie laughed and laughed. She tightened her arms around me. "Oh, Bill. Oh, Bill. Oh, Bill," she squeaked between laughing fits.

I dog-nipped my way down her back, turning and looking every few seconds at her tear-stained face. I lifted the hem of her skirt and bit my way down her legs to her ankles, trying not to snag her nylons. Her hand was stroking and mussing my hair. I pulled off her shoes and bit her toes, one at a time, barking "Woof! Woof!" between each bite. Maggie was shrieking now, her whole body wracked with uncontrollable laughter.

Now that I knew what I had come to give, I rolled her over onto her side and elbowed myself up until we were face to face. We had a long interim where Maggie held me tightly and I stroked her hair. Just as her laughter would subside, I would "woof, woof" tenderly into her ear and kiss her neck until she cracked up again.

Finally Maggie took her head from my chest and looked at me. "Woof, Bill Thornhill," she said.

"Woof, fair Maggie Cadwallader," I said.

Maggie's lipstick was gone, mashed into my lapels and shirtfront. Her mouth was completely guileless as I bent in slow motion to kiss it. Maggie's lips parted and her eyes closed as she sensed my intention. Our lips and tongues met and played in perfect, experienced unison. We rolled together as we kissed, kicking over the coffee table, sending magazines and artificial flowers to the floor. We broke our long kiss, and Maggie made small noises as my hands fumbled at the clasp at the back of her dress.

"The bathroom first, Bill, please." As I released her, she leaped out of my embrace and stumbled to her feet, making more small noises as she moved to the bathroom.

I got to my feet and took off my clothes, laying them neatly on the sofa. Wearing only undershorts, I walked softly to the bathroom. The door was slightly ajar and the light was on. I could hear Maggie rummaging in the medicine cabinet. There was a ritual going on that I had long wanted to observe.

I pushed open the door. Maggie was starting to insert her diaphragm when she saw me. She jumped, startled and angry, into the bathtub, where she covered herself with the shower curtain.

"Bill," she said, flushed. "Please, goddamnit, I'll just be a minute. Wait in the bedroom, honey. Please. I'll be right there."

"I just wanted to watch you, sweetheart," I said. "I wanted to help you with it."

Maggie said nervously, "It's a private thing, Bill. A woman's thing. If you don't see me do it, then you don't really know it's there. It's better for you. Believe me, honey."

"I believe you, but I want to see. Show me, please."

"No."

"Please?"

I lowered my head and nudged Maggie back against the shower wall. She started to giggle. I pulled her away from the bathtub, hoisted her into the air, spun her around and set her down in the same posture she had been in when I had pushed open the bathroom door.

"Do you ever lose at anything, Bill?"

"No."

"How old are you?"

"I'll be twenty-seven next week."

"I'm thirty-six."

"You're beautiful. I want to love you so much."

"You're very handsome. You've never seen a woman put in her diaphragm?"

"No."

"Then I'll show you."

She did. "You're a strange, curious young man, Bill."

"Intimate things like that mean a lot to me."

"I believe you. Now make love to me."

Maggie led me to her bedroom. She left the light off. She unbuttoned her blouse, unhooked her bra and let the garments fall to the floor. I stepped out of my undershorts. We lay on the bed and held each other for a long time. I stroked Maggie's hair. She cooed into my chest. I grew tired of it, and tried to bring her chin up so I could kiss her, but she resisted, pushing her head harder against me. After a while her grip loosened and I was able to cover her neck with kisses. Maggie sighed, and I began to suck her breasts. I felt her hand between my legs, urging me toward her. She positioned herself beneath me and guided me in. I began to move. Maggie didn't respond. I tried slow, exploratory thrusts, then hard insistent ones. Maggie just lay there, motionless. I propped myself up on my hands, the better to look at her face. Maggie looked up at me, smiling. She reached up and framed my face with her hands, her smile more beatific as my thrusts multiplied in their urgency. I came very hard. I groaned, shuddered and collapsed on top of her. She never said a word. When I finally managed to look at her she was still smiling; and I realized I had been thinking of Lorna Weinberg.

Maggie had seemed to change during our lovemaking. She had gotten what she wanted, and it wasn't love, or sex. Her smile and post-lovemaking ritual of bringing in brandy and snifters on a tray seemed to be saying, "Now that we have gotten that over with, we can get down to the real business of our meeting."

We sat in bed and sipped brandy, both of us nude. I liked Maggie's body: pale, freckled skin, gently rounded shoulders, soft stomach, and small soft breasts with large dark red nipples. I liked her openness in showing it to me even more, and had no desire to leave. The brandy was good, but I watched my intake. Maggie was sipping steadily, and would soon be pie-eyed. Maggie beamed at me as I shifted postures. I waggled my eyebrows a la Wacky Walker. Maggie beamed some more. I told her some lies about the insurance racket. She still beamed.

Finally she said, "Bill, let's go into the living room, okay?" She dug two terry cloth robes out of her bedroom closet, then led me into the living room, gave me a big kiss on the cheek, and sat me down on the couch like a loving mother or schoolteacher. She went back into the bedroom and returned with a large leatherbound scrapbook.

She sat down between me and my piled-up clothes and poured herself more brandy. My robe was well worn and smelled fresh. As Maggie arranged the scrapbook on the coffee table I adjusted her robe to show off a fair amount of cleavage. She reacted with a prim kiss on my cheek. I disliked her for it. The ten-year gap in our ages was beginning to show.

"Memory lane, Bill," Maggie said. "Would you like to take a little trip down memory lane with old Maggie?"

"You're not old."

"In some ways I am."

"You're in your prime."

"Flatterer."

She opened the scrapbook. On the first page were photographs of a tall, light-haired man in a World War I doughboy's uniform. He stood alone in most of the sepia-tinted photos, and in a preeminent spot in the group shots.

"That's my daddy," Maggie said. "Mama used to get exasperated with him sometimes, and say bad things about him. When I was a little girl I asked her once, 'If Daddy was so mean, why did you marry him?' and she said, 'Because he was the handsomest man I'd ever seen.'"

She turned the page. Wedding pictures and baby pictures.

"That's Mama and Daddy's wedding—1910. And that's me as a little baby, just before Daddy went into the army."

"Are you an only child, Maggie?"

"Yes. Are you?"

"Yes."

She flipped the pages more rapidly. I watched time pass, seeing in minutes Maggie's parents go from young to old and seeing Maggie go from infancy to lindy-hopping adolescent. Her face, as she danced at some long-gone high school sock-hop, was a heartbreakingly hopeful version of her current one.

She drank brandy, talking on in a wistful monotone, barely heeding my presence. She seemed to be leading up to something, working slowly toward some goal that would explain why she wanted me here.

"End of volume one, Bill," Maggie said. She got up unsteadily from the sofa and knocked over my folded sportcoat. When she picked it up, she noted its heaviness and started to fumble in the pocket where I had put my gun and handcuffs. Before I had a chance to stop her, she withdrew the .38, screamed, and backed away from me, holding the gun shakily, pointed to the floor.

"No, no, no, no!" she gasped. "Please, no! I won't let you hurt me! No!"

I got up and walked toward her, trying to remember if both safety locks were on. "I'm a policeman, Maggie," I said softly, placatingly. "I don't want to hurt you. Give me the gun, sweetheart."

"No! I know who sent you! I knew he would! No! No!"

I picked up my trousers and pulled out my badge in its leather holder. I held it up. "See, Maggie? I'm a police officer. I didn't want to tell you. A lot of people don't like policemen. See? It's a real badge, sweetheart."

Maggie dropped the gun, sobbing.

I went over and held her tightly. "It's all right. I'm sorry you were scared. I should have told you the truth. I'm sorry."

Maggie shook her head against me. "I'm sorry, too. I was a ninny. You're just a man. You wanted to get laid, and you lied. I was a ninny. I'm the one who should be sorry."

"Don't say that. I care about you."

"Sure you do."

"I do." I kissed the part in her hair and pushed her gently away. "You were going to show me volume two, remember?"

Maggie smiled. "All right. You sit down and pour me a brandy. I feel funny."

While Maggie got her other scrapbook I put my gun back in my coat pocket. She came back hugging a slender black leather album. She beamed as if the gun episode had never happened.

We took up where we left off. She opened the album. It contained a dozen snapshots of a little baby, probably only a few weeks old, still bald, peering curiously up toward some fascinating object. Maggie touched her fingers to her lips and pressed them to the photos.

"Your baby?" I asked.

"Mine. My baby. My love."

"Where is he?"

"His father took him."

"Are you divorced?"

"He wasn't my husband, Bill. He was my lover. My true love. He's dead now. He died of his love for me."

"How, Maggie?"

"I can't tell you."

"What happened to the baby?"

"He's in an orphanage, back east."

"Why, Maggie? Orphanages are terrible places. Why don't you keep him? Children need parents, not institutions."

"Don't say that! I can't! I can't keep him! I'm sorry I showed you, I thought you'd understand!"

I took her hand. "I do, sweetheart, more than you know. Let's go back to bed, all right?"

"All right. But I want to show you one more thing. You're a policeman. You know a lot about crime, right?"

"Right."

"Then come here. I'll show you where I keep my buried treasure."

We went back into the bedroom. As I sat on the bed, Maggie unscrewed the left front bedpost. She pulled off the top part and reached down into the hollowed-out bottom piece. She extracted a red velvet bag, its end held together by a drawstring.

"Would a burglar look in a place like that, Bill?" she asked.

"I doubt it," I said.

Maggie opened the velvet bag and drew out an antique diamond brooch. I almost gasped: the rocks looked real, perfectly cut, and there were at least a dozen of them, interspersed with larger blue stones, all mounted on heavy strands of real gold. The thing must have been worth a small fortune.

"It's beautiful, Maggie."

"Thank you. I don't show it to many people. Only the nice ones."

"Where did you get it?"

"It's a love gift."

"From your true love?"

"Yes."

"You want some advice? Put it in a safe-deposit box. And don't tell people about it. You never know the kind of person you might meet."

"I know who I can trust and who I can't."

"All right. Put it away, will you?"

"Why? I thought you liked it."

"I do, but it makes me sad."

Maggie replaced the brooch in its hiding place. I lifted her and set her down on the bed.

"I don't want to," she said. "I want to talk and drink some more brandy."

"Later, sweetheart."

Maggie slipped off her robe reluctantly. I tried to be passionate, but my kisses were perfunctory, and I was filled with a sense of loss that not even lovemaking could surmount.

When it was over Maggie smiled and kissed my cheek absently, then threw on her robe and went to the kitchen. I could hear her digging around for bottles and glasses. It was my cue. I padded softly into the living room and dressed in the semidarkness.

Maggie came out of the kitchen carrying a tray with a liqueur bottle and shot glasses on it. Her face crashed for an instant when she saw I was leaving, but she recovered quickly, like the veteran she was.

"I have to go, Maggie," I said. She did not put down the tray, so I leaned over it, bumping it slightly, and brushed my lips against her cheek. "Goodbye, Maggie." She didn't answer, just stood there holding the tray.

I walked to my car. The cold air felt good, and dawn was just starting to break.

I knew that this Saturday, February 6, 1951, had been a redletter day for me. When I got home I wrote in my diary only what I knew: Maggie Cadwallader and Lorna Weinberg. I would not realize until later that this had been the pivotal date of my life.

4

Beckworth called me into his office on Monday morning. I had expected him to be angry with me for standing him up, but he was surprisingly magnanimous. He told me flat out what I had already heard from several other less reliable sources: come June he would be the new commander of Wilshire Station, and would initiate a purging of "shit-head deadwood" sending a half dozen "fuck-up bluesuits" to Seventy-seventh Street Division, "Niggerland, U.S.A.," where they could learn "the real meaning of police work." He never mentioned names—he didn't have to. Wacky Walker would obviously be on the first stage to Watts, and I gravely accepted the fact that there was nothing I could do about it.

Wacky and I had resolved our differences that weekend through booze and poetry. I had gone over to his apartment Sunday bearing gifts—a crisp C-note as payment for his green-reading duties, handcuffs and gun, a bottle of Old Grand Dad and a limited edition volume of the early poetry of W. H. Auden. Wacky was delighted and almost wept in his gratitude, causing me to feel the strangest detachment; love mixed with pity and bitter resentment at his dependence on me. It was a feeling I would carry with me until the end of the last season of my youth.

I walked into the muster room for the immortal police ritual of Monday morning roll call. The room was noisy, and filled with cigarette smoke. Gately, the muster sergeant, needed a shave as usual.

I found a seat next to Wacky. He was staring into his lap, pretending to read traffic reports. As I sat down, I glanced at his real reading material: enclosed in the traffic holder was a copy of the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot.

Gately made it brief. No drunk arrests—the Lincoln Heights drunk tank had flooded during the recent heavy rains—and lots of traffic summonses; the city attorney wanted shitloads of them—the heavy implication being that the city needed moola. We were told to lay off the streetwalkers on West Adams, and to look out for a stickup team: two Mexican gunsels had hit a liquor store and a couple of markets on the Southern border of the division, near the Coliseum. The dicks had learned from eyewitnesses that they drove a souped-up white Ford pickup. They were packing .45 automatics. When Gately mentioned this there was an immediate reaction in the room—this is why we are all here, every cop in the room seemed to be thinking. Even Wacky stirred and looked up from his Eliot. He pointed his right index finger at me and cocked his thumb. I nodded; it was why I was there, too.

We got our black-and-white from the lot and cruised east on Pico to Hoover, then south toward the Coliseum. Wacky wanted to spend some time warning local merchants about the Mexican heisters. He was in an effusive mood and wanted to gab with his "constituents."

We parked, and Wacky insisted that I accompany him to talk to Jack Chew. Jack Chew was a Chinaman with a Texas drawl. He owned a little market-butcher shop at Twenty-eighth and Hoover and said things like, "Ah, sooo, pardner." Wacky loved him, but he hated Wacky because he helped himself to the canned litchi nuts that Jack kept behind the counter for the cops on the beat. Jack was very courtly and Old World: he liked to offer or be asked, and he thought that Wacky was a pig for grabbing.

He was behind the meat counter when we walked into his openair store, wrapping up some kind of candied duck for an old Chinese lady.

"Hey there, Jack," Wacky called, "where'd you get that quacker? I thought the guys at Rampart told you to quit raiding Westlake Park. Don't you know all those used rubbers they got floating round in the lake spoil the flavor? The guys at Rampart told me the ducks wear the rubbers at night to keep their beaks warm. Whither thou, O quacker beak; Peter juice and soon you'll peck; O noble duck, Such bad, bad luck; To end at Jack's you're really fucked."

Jack groaned and the old woman giggled as Wacky did his Frankenstein imitation, walking toward her slowly, arms extended, groaning deeply.

"Fuck you, Walker," Jack said. To me he said, "Ah, sooo, Officer Freddy," then handed me an open can of litchi nuts. Jack spoke a few words to the woman in Chinese. She left, giggling and waving at Wacky.

"They all love me, Jack. What is it about me?" Wacky said. "But this isn't a social call."

"Good," Jack said.

Wacky laughed and went on, "Jack, we got some bad hombres operating on this side of the range, carrying hardware. They like little markets like yours, and being greasers they probably don't know that Chinamen are tough giver-uppers. They're in their mid twen—"

Wacky didn't get to finish. A young woman ran into the market. She was opening her mouth to scream, but no sound was coming out. She grabbed at Wacky's arm.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow," she choked.

Wacky held both her hands to her sides. He spoke calmly. "Yes, dear. 'Officer.' Now what's wrong?"

"Off . . . ic . . . er," she got out, "ma, ma—my neighbor . . . dead!"

"Where?" I said.

The woman pointed to Twenty-eighth Street. She started to run in that direction. I ran after her. Wacky followed me. She led us halfway down the block and up to an old, white wood-framed fourflat. She pointed up the stairs leading to the second story. The door was wide open.

"Uh, uh, uh," she stammered, then pointed again and backed up against a row of mailboxes, biting at her knuckles.

Wacky and I looked at each other. We both nodded and Wacky gave me the beginning of a smile. We drew our guns and raced up the stairs. I entered first, into what had once been a modest living room. Now it was in a shambles: chairs, bookshelves, and cabinets were overturned and the floor was covered with broken glass. I held my breath, and advanced slowly, my gun held in front of me. Behind me, I could hear Wacky breathing hoarsely.

There was a small kitchen straight ahead. I tiptoed up to it. The white linoleum was broadly spattered with congealed blood. Wacky saw it and immediately tore back into the rear rooms of the apartment, completely forgetting caution. I ran after him, almost knocking him over in the bedroom doorway just as I heard his first exclamations of horror: "Oh, God, Freddy!"

I pushed him aside, and looked into the bedroom. Lying on the floor on her back was a nude woman. Her neck was black and purple and twisted to the side. Her tongue was hugely swollen and stuck out obscenely. Her eyes bulged in their sockets. There were puncture wounds on her breasts and abdomen and deep gashes on the insides of her thighs. She was covered with dried blood.

I checked my watch—9:06 A.M. Wacky stared at the dead woman and then at me as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. His eyes moved back and forth frantically while he remained motionless.

I ran downstairs. The woman who had summoned us was still next to her open apartment door, still gnawing at her knuckles. "The phone!" I yelled at her. I found it in her crowded front room and called the station, requested a team of detectives and a meat wagon, then ran back upstairs.

Wacky was still staring at the dead woman. He seemed to be committing to memory the details of her desecration. I walked through the apartment, writing down descriptions: the overturned furniture, the broken glass, and the configuration of the dried blood in the kitchen. I knelt down to check the carpet: it was a dark-orange phony Persian, but light enough so that the trail of blood was still visible. I followed it into the bedroom where the dead woman lay. Wacky suddenly spoke out behind me, causing me to almost leap through the ceiling: "Jesus fucking Christ, Freddy. What a mess."

"Yeah. The dicks and the coroner are on their way. I'm gonna keep looking around here. You go downstairs and get a statement from the woman."

"Right."

Wacky took off and I returned to my note-taking. It was just a homey middle-class apartment, clean and comfortable looking, not the kind of place that even a desperate hophead would burglarize, but that was what this looked like. Further investigation revealed a blood-soaked terry cloth bathrobe on the floor in the little dining room that separated the living room and kitchen. At the end of the kitchen was a door that led downstairs to what looked like a laundry room; there were bloody footprints on the rickety wooden steps.

I went through the apartment looking for the murder weapon and found nothing, no sharp instruments of any kind. I checked the victim again. She was a pretty brunette and looked to be in her middle twenties. She had a slender body and very light green eyes. She was wearing dark red toenail polish and lipstick that matched perfectly the color of her dried blood. Her body was sprawled in what seemed like reluctant acceptance of death, but her face, with its open mouth and bulging eyes, seemed to be screaming, No!

I went through the rooms again, looking for more details that might mean something. I found a bloody partial fingerprint on the hallway wall near the bedroom door. I circled it with my pen. There was a telephone stand in the living room with no phone on it, just an ornate crystal ashtray filled with matchbooks. One of them caught my eye—a colorful orange job with three stars on it, all arranged around a martini glass. The Silver Star. I poked in the ashtray. All the matchbooks were from bars and nightspots in the central L.A-Hollywood area. I looked around for smoking materials—pipes, cigarettes, or tobacco. Nothing. Maybe the woman was a barhopper or matchbook collector.

I heard loud footsteps thumping up the stairs. It was Wacky, followed by two plainclothes cops and an old guy I knew to be an assistant medical examiner. I nodded them in the direction of the bedroom. They went in ahead of me. I heard whistles, moans, disgusted snorts, and declarations of awe:

"Oh, God. Oh, shit," the first detective said.

"Holy Jesus," the second detective said.

The medical examiner just stared and exhaled slowly, then walked over and knelt beside the dead woman. He poked and prodded at her skin, then ran a thumbnail over the caked blood on her legs. "Dead at least twenty-four hours, fellas," he said. "Cause of death asphyxiation, although the stomach and breast wounds could have been fatal. Look at her eyes and tongue, though. She died gasping for breath. Look for a switchblade knife—and a fucking lunatic."

"Who found the body?" the first detective asked. He was a tall, burly guy I had seen around the station.

"I did," Wacky said.

"Name and shield number?" he asked.

"Walker, five eighty-three."

"Okay, Walker. I'm DiCenzo, my partner's name is Brown. Let's get out of here, stiffs depress me. Brownie, call the lab guys."

"I did, Joe," Brown said.

"Good."

We all walked into the living room, except for the doctor, who stayed with the body, sitting on the bed and rummaging through his black bag.

"Okay, Walker, tell me about it," DiCenzo said.

"Right. My partner and I were at the market around the corner when the lady who lives in the downstairs apartment comes running in, hysterical. She leads us back here. That's it. After we discovered the stiff and called you guys, I got the dame calmed down. She said she had a feeling something was wrong. The stiff was a friend of hers, and she didn't show up at work yesterday or today. They both work at the same place. She's got a key to the stiff's apartment, because sometimes the stiff went away for the weekend and she fed her cat. Anyway, she had this feeling and went up and unlocked the apartment. She found the stiff and went running for the cops. The woman's name is June Haller, the stiff's name is Leona Jensen. She was employed as a secretary at the Auto Club downtown. She was twenty-four. She's got parents someplace up north, near 'Frisco."

"Good, Walker," DiCenzo nodded. We were interrupted by a team of three guys from the crime lab. They were in plainclothes and were carrying cameras and evidence kits.

Brown pointed toward the bedroom. "In there, guys. The doc's waiting for you."

DiCenzo started scanning the living room, notebook in hand. I tapped him on the shoulder and motioned him to the kitchen. "Holy shit," he said when he saw the blood-splattered linoleum floor.

"Yeah," I said. "He sliced her in here, then got her into the bedroom and strangled her. She resisted as he dragged her through the living room—that accounts for the overturned furniture and broken glass. There's a door leading downstairs at the end of the kitchen. There are bloody footprints going down. He had to have come and gone that way. There's a bloody fingerprint in the hall near the bedroom. I circled it. What do you think?"

DiCenzo was nodding along with me. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Underhill," I said.

"You a college man, Underhill?"

"Yes, Sergeant."

"Well, I'd say that nothing you learned in college is gonna help us with this here homicide. Unless that print is complete and belongs to the killer. That's college stuff—scientific. It looks to me like a botched-up burglary. When we find out what the lab report says, which ain't gonna mean much, we're gonna get stuck with hauling in every known burglar, dope addict, and degenerate in Los Angeles. What I'm hoping is that the dame was raped—rapeo-burglar is a rare MO. Not too many of those bastards around. Is this your first murder victim?"

"Yes."

"Is it getting to you?"

"No."

"Good. You and your partner go back to the station and write your reports."

"Right, Sergeant."

DiCenzo winked at me. "It's a shame, ain't it, Underhill? That tomato had it all, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I know."

I found Wacky in the bedroom. Flashbulbs were popping and he was writing in his notebook, shielding his eyes from the glare, casting occasional glances at the late Leona Jensen. He was getting angry looks from the lab men, so I pulled him into the hallway.

"Let's go. We've got to get back to the station and write our reports."

Wacky continued scribbling in his notebook. "There," he said. "I'm finished. I wrote a poem about the stiff. It's a masterpiece. It's dedicated to John Milton. It's called 'Piece of Ass Lost.'"

"Forget it, Wacky. Let's just get out of here."

We drove north on Hoover in silence.

"You think they'll find the guy who croaked her?" Wacky finally asked.

"DiCenzo thinks there's a chance."

"Frankly, I'm pessimistic."

"Why?"

"Because death is going to be the new fad. I can feel it. It's going to replace sports. I'm writing an epic poem about it. All forty-eight states are going to have the atom bomb and drop them on each other. L.A. is going to drop the A-bomb on 'Frisco for stealing tourists. The Brooklyn Dodgers are going to A-bomb the New York Giants. I can feel it."

"You're crazy, Wack."

"No, I'm a genius. Freddy, you gotta call Big Sid. I loved Hillcrest. I want to play it. It's a shot-maker's course. I could shoot sixty-eight there."

I laughed. "That's a riot. You just want to throw the salami to Siddell again. Tell me, Wack, did you ever get to finish with her?"

"Yeah, but I've been calling her to try to fix up another date, and every time I call some maid answers and says, 'Miz Siddell ain't at home, officer.' I think she's giving me the bum's rush."

"Maybe, but don't worry. There's lots of other fat girls around."

"Yeah, but not like Siddell; she's class. Listen, partner, I need a favor. Will you talk to Siddell? Sound her out on how she feels about me? You're in tight with Big Sid, you can do it."

I hesitated, then felt my wheels start to turn. "Sure, Wack, I'll drop by Big Sid's place sometime next weekend. He gave me carte blanche for visits. I'm his new gravy train."

Wacky punched me in the arm. "Thanks, pard. When I'm dodging flaming arrows down in Nigger Gulch and you're king of Wilshire Vice I'll remember this moment."

We pulled into the parking lot of the station. I started to offer a snappy rejoinder as token resistance, but couldn't. Instead, I walked upstairs to the detectives' squad room and typed up my report.

I drove to Beverly Hills early Saturday evening, getting honest with myself en route: I could invent all the pretexts I wanted, but I knew I was going to Big Sid's home for only one reason: to search out Lorna Weinberg and attempt, somehow, to satisfy my curiosity about her. The house was on Canon Drive, just south of Sunset. I was expecting some outrageous pretensions to class and was surprised: the large white Colonial edifice with the well-tended front lawn was understated, almost somber.

I knocked on the door and a Negro maid answered, informing me that "Mr. Big Sid ain't at home, Miz Siddell be up in her room takin' a nap."

"What about Lorna?" I blurted.

The withered old woman looked at me as if I were nuts. "Miz Lorna done moved out years ago."

"Sorry," I said, peering through the crack in the door, scanning a living room furnished in old wood and rich fabrics. Somehow I felt that the place might be a treasure trove of wonder, even in Lorna's absence. I paused, then said forcefully, "Wake up Siddell, will you, please? I have an important message from a friend of hers."

The old woman eyed me suspiciously, then opened the door and gestured toward the living room. "You waits here," she said, "I get Miz Siddell."

The maid trotted upstairs, leaving me alone in the richly appointed room. I noticed some framed photographs above the red brick fireplace, and went over and looked at them. They were individual portraits of Big Sid, Siddell, and Lorna. Sid beamed proudly, Siddell looked as slender-faced as a good photographer could make her, and Lorna looked grave and abstracted, wearing a graduation gown and cap. There was another, larger photo of the family trio: Big Sid clutching his omnipresent cigar, Siddell looking sullen, and Lorna leaning on a cane. I noticed that her right leg was withered and deformed, and felt a nervous flush come over me. I shook my head to clear it, then recalled: Lorna had remained seated during our one meeting. But where was Mother Weinberg?

Lost in my reverie, I felt a sharp tug at my coat sleeve and turned to find Siddell Weinberg pushing herself against me. "I know what you must think of me," she was saying, "but I don't do those kinds of things all the time . . ."

I held the feverish-looking woman at arm's length and took a stern tack, the better to secure the information I now had to have. "Well, I do, Miss Weinberg, so it's not really a big issue. But you should call Wacky. He's fond of you, and wants to see you again."

"I know, but I can't! You have to tell Herbert not to call me here. Daddy thinks that anyone interested in me is just out for his money. Besides, I'm engaged."

"Does Big Sid approve of your fiancé?"

"No, not really, but at least he's Jewish, and he's in graduate school. He's got a future."

"And policemen don't have futures?"

"I didn't mean that!" Siddell wailed. "Daddy likes you, but he thinks Herbert is crazy."

I led Siddell to a plush red leather couch next to the fireplace. "Your father is right," I said. "He is. Are you in love with this guy you're going to marry?"

"Yes, no! I don't know!"

"Then call Wacky. He's in the phone book—Herbert L. Walker, 926 South St. Andrews, L.A. All right?"

"All—all right. I'm going out of town next week, but I'll call Herbert when I get back."

"Good." I patted Siddell's hand, then started fishing around for conversational lead-ins to get to the real purpose of my visit. Finally, I got one: "This is a hell of a nice house, Siddell. Your mother obviously puts a lot of time into it."

Siddell lowered her head. "Mama is dead," she said.

"I'm sorry. Was it recently?"

"No, it was in 1933. I was nine and Lorna was thirteen."

"That's a long time ago."

"Yes and no."

"You mean you still feel it?"

"Y—Yes . . . but mostly, Lorna does." Siddell's voice had taken on the resonance of a person explaining a profound truth.

I prodded gently. "What do you mean, Siddell?"

"Well, Mama died and Lorna got crippled at the same time, so Lorna hates and loves Mama at the same time. They were driving down Sunset. Mama was pregnant again. It was raining, and Mama skidded into a tree. Her stomach hit the steering wheel. She lost the baby, but aside from that she wasn't hurt. Lorna went through the windshield. Her pelvis was crushed, that's why she walks so funny, and why her right leg is so skinny—all the nerve endings got torn up. Anyway, Mama wanted another baby, really badly. She knew Daddy wanted a son. She held the baby in there; she wouldn't believe it was dead. She was supposed to go to the hospital to get labor induced, but she didn't. The baby infected her stomach, and she ran away. They found her dead, up in the Hollywood Hills. She had made a little nest for herself up there, with all these baby clothes she bought from Bonwit Teller. She couldn't believe the baby was dead."

It was almost more than I wanted to know.

Siddell sensed this: "Don't be sad," she said. "It was a long time ago."

I nodded. "And your father never remarried?"

Siddell shook her head. "Daddy hasn't touched another woman since the day Mama died."

I got up to leave. By way of farewell, Siddell said, "Tell Herbert I'll call him. Tell him I like him."

"I will."

I walked out to my car, looking up at the sky and hoping for rain. As I hit the ignition, the wonder caught me, and the irony—my adopted family were orphans, too.

5

Wacky was out with the flu Monday and Tuesday, and Beckworth bought it because Wacky hardly ever used his sick leave. In reality, he was juiced up and working on his new "epic" poem and waiting by the phone for a call from Siddell Weinberg.

Early Wednesday morning as we swung out of the station parking lot, I put his fears to rest: "She's going out of town for a week or so. She's going to call you when she gets back."

"Really?"

"Yeah. We had a nice chat. She's engaged to some Jewish guy, but she isn't in love with him."

"And she's hot for some un-kosher meat on the side?" Wacky was almost drooling.

"I think so. She thinks you're the cat's meow."

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 backyard. 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.