Clandestine

17

The initial newspaper accounts were both lurid and disinterested. Just another murder, the reports seemed to be saying.

From the Los Angeles Herald Express, June 23, 1955:

I sat and thought, feeling strangely calm, yet engulfed by a prickly sensation when I put down the newspaper. It was too long after the facts, I told myself, too far away, too prosaic a form of murder. Strictly a non sequitur. I didn't want to catch myself up in another logical fallacy.

I needed statistics, and the only person I knew who could furnish them was a crime-buff law clerk in Lorna's firm. I called the office and got him. The receptionist recognized my voice and gave me the cold shoulder, but put me through anyway. After several minutes of amenities, I popped my question: "Bob, what are the statistics on strangulation murders of women, where the killer is not a known intimate of the victim?"

Bob didn't have to think: "Commonplace, but they usually catch the killer fast. Barroom jobs, drunks strangling prostitutes, that kind of thing. Very often the killer is remorseful, confesses, and cops a plea. Is this an academic question, Fred?"

"Yeah, strictly. How about premeditated strangulation murders of women?"

"Including psychopaths?"

"No, presupposing relative sanity on the part of the killer."

"Relative sanity, that's a hot one. Very rare, kid, very rare indeed. What's this all about?"

"It's about an ex-cop with time on his hands. Thanks a lot, Bob. Goodbye."

I watched TV that night, but television coverage of the murder was scant. The dead woman's face was flashed on the screen, a photograph taken some twenty years before upon her graduation from nursing school. Marcella Harris had been a very handsome woman: high, strong cheekbones, large widely spaced eyes, and a determined mouth.

The somber-voiced announcer called on all concerned citizens "who might be able to help the police" to call the detective bureau of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. A phone number was flashed across the bottom of the screen for a few brief seconds, before the announcer started a used-car commercial. I turned the TV off.

I started collecting all the newspaper articles I could find about the murder. By Tuesday the Harris murder had been relegated to the third page. From the Los Angeles Times, June 24, 1955:

Half of me felt crazy for even following newspaper accounts of this "case," but the other half of me screamed inside when the words "cocktail lounge" jumped out at me from the printed page. I hemmed and hawed, and pounded myself internally for several hours, until I realized there would never be a moment's peace until I gave it a whirl. Then I picked up the phone and called Sergeant Reuben Ramos at Rampart Division.

"Reuben, this is Fred Underhill."

"Jesus H. Christ on a crutch, where the hell have you been?"

"Away."

"That's for sure, man. Jesus Christ, did you get fucked! What happened? I heard tons of rumors, but nothing that sounded like the straight dope."

I sighed. I hadn't counted on recalling the past to a former colleague. "I got the wrong man, Rube, and the department had to make me look bad to take the onus off them. That's it."

Reuben didn't buy it. "I'll settle for that, man," he said skeptically, "but what's up? You need a favor, right?"

"Right. I need you to run someone through R&I for me."

Reuben sighed. "You got some amateur gig going?"

"Kind of. Are you ready?"

"Hit me."

"Marcella Harris, white female, forty-three years old."

"Isn't she that dead dame from—"

"Yeah," I cut in. "Can you run her and get back to me as soon as possible?"

"You crazy fuck," Reuben said as he hung up.

The telephone rang forty-five minutes later, and I leaped at it, catching it on the first ring.

"Fred? Reuben. Grab a pencil."

I had one ready. "Hit it, Rube."

"Okay. Marcella Harris. Maiden name DeVries. Born Tunnel City, Wisconsin, April 15, 1912. Green and red, five feet seven inches, one hundred forty. Nurse, U.S. Navy 1941-1946, discharged as a Wave lieutenant commander. Pretty impressive, huh? Now dig this: arrested in '48, possession of marijuana. Dismissed. Arrested in '50 on suspicion of receiving stolen goods. Dismissed. Arrested for drunk twice in '46, once in '47, three times in '48, once in '49 and '50. Nice, huh?"

I whistled. "Yeah. Interesting."

"What are you planning on doing with this information, man?"

"I don't know, Rube."

"You be careful, Freddy. That's all I'm gonna say. Some bimbo gets choked in El Monte, and well . . . Freddy, it's got nothing to do with the other. That's dead history, man."

"Probably."

"You be careful. You ain't a cop no more."

"Thanks, Rube," I said, and hung up.

The following morning I got up early, put on a summer suit and drove out to El Monte, taking the Santa Monica Freeway to the Pomona, headed east.

I went from smog-shrouded L.A. past picturesque, seedy Boyle Heights and a succession of dreary semi-impoverished suburbs, growing more expectant as each new postwar boom community flew by. This was new territory for me, well within the confines of L.A. County, yet somehow otherworldly. The residential streets I glimpsed from my elevated vantage point seemed sullen in their sameness, the big boom in postwar disappointment and malaise.

El Monte was smack in the middle of the San Gabriel Valley, enclosed by freeways in all directions. The San Gabriel Mountains, awash in smog, bordered the northern perimeter.

I got off at the Valley Boulevard exit and cruised west until I found Hank's Hot Spot, described by the papers as a "convivial watering hole." It didn't look like that; it looked like what it more probably was: a meeting place for lonely juiceheads.

I pulled up to the curb. The place was open at eight-thirty in the morning. That was encouraging. It went along with the scenario. I was composing in my mind: Maggie Cadwallader and Marcella Harris, lonely juiceheads. I kiboshed the thought: don't think, Underhill, I said to myself as I locked the car, or this thing—which is probably only coincidence—will eat you up.

I hastily prepared a cover story as I took a seat at the narrow, imitation-wood bar. The place was deserted, and a lone bartender who was polishing glasses as I entered approached me guardedly. He nodded at me as he placed a napkin on the bar.

"Draft beer," I said.

He nodded again and brought it to me. I sipped it. It tasted bitter; I wasn't cut out to be a morning drinker.

I decided not to waste time with small talk. "I'm a reporter," I said. "I write crime stuff laced with the human interest angle. There's a double sawbuck in it for anybody who can give me some interesting lowdown on this Marcella Harris dame who got croaked last weekend." I pulled out my billfold, packed with twenties, and fanned the cash in the bartender's face. He looked impressed. "The real lowdown," I added, waggling my eyebrows at him. "The barfly tidbits that make bartending such an interesting profession."

The barman swallowed, his Adam's apple rotating nervously in his wiry neck. "I already told the cops everything I know about that night," he said.

"Tell me," I said, taking a twenty out of my billfold and placing it under my cocktail napkin.

"Well," the barman said, "the Harris dame came in around seven-thirty that night. She ordered a double Early Times old-fashioned. She practically chugalugged it. She ordered another. She sat here at the bar by herself. She played some show tunes on the jukebox. Around eight-thirty this greasy-lookin' guy and this blond dame with a ponytail come in. They get in some kind of conversation with the Harris dame and they all go to a booth together. The guy drinks red wine and the ponytail drinks Seven-Up. The Harris dame left before them, around eleven. The greasy guy and the ponytail left together around midnight. That's it."

I fingered an inch or so of the twenty out from its hiding place. "Do you think Marcella Harris already knew these people, or do you think they just met one another?"

The barman shook his head. "The cops asked me the same thing, buddy, and it beats me."

I tried another tack: "Was Marcella Harris a regular here?"

"Not really. She came in once in a while."

"Was she a pickup? Did she leave with a lot of different men?"

"Not that I ever noticed."

"Okay. Was she a talker?"

"Not really."

"Did you ever talk with her at length?"

"Sometimes. I don't know, once or twice."

"I see. What did you discuss?"

"Just small talk. You know . . ."

"Besides that."

"Well . . . once she asks me if I've got kids. I say yes. She asks me if I ever have trouble with 'em, and I say yeah, the usual stuff. Then she starts tellin' me about this wild kid she's got, how she don't know how to handle him, that she's read all these books and still don't know what to do."

"What was the problem with the kid?" I asked.

The bartender swallowed and shuffled his feet in a little dance of embarrassment. "Aw, come on, mister," he said.

"No, you come on." I stuffed the twenty into his shirt pocket.

"Well," he said, "she said the kid was gettin' into fights, and talkin' dirty . . . and . . . exposing himself to all the other little kids."

"Is that it?"

"Yeah."

"Did you tell the police about this?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because they never asked me."

"That's a good reason," I said, then thanked the man and walked back outside to my car.

I looked through the L.A. papers I had been collecting and found Marcella Harris's home address in Monday's Mirror: 467 Maple Avenue, El Monte. It took me only five minutes to get there.

I surveyed El Monte as I drove. The residential streets were unpaved, and the residences that fronted them were ugly cubelike apartment buildings interspersed with subdivided farmhouses and auto courts held over from the not too distant time when this was open country.

I parked on the dirt shoulder at the corner of Claymore and Maple. Number 467 was right there on the corner, directly across from my parking spot. Two small frame houses stood in a large front yard encircled by a shoulder-high stone wall. Both houses looked well cared for, and a beagle puppy cavorted in the yard.

I didn't want to attempt the landlady—she had probably been frequently questioned by the police on her former tenant—so I just sat in the car and thought. Finally it bit me, and I dug a briefcase out of my trunk and went walking. School had recently let out for the summer, and the kids playing in their dirt front yards looked happy to be free. I waved to them as I walked down Maple, getting slightly suspicious looks in return. My crisp summer suit was obviously not standard El Monte garb.

Maple Avenue dead-ended a hundred yards or so in front of me, where a kids' softball game was in progress. The kids probably knew the Harris boy, so I decided to brace them.

"Hi, fellows," I said.

The game stopped abruptly as I walked through their makeshift infield. I got suspicious looks, hostile looks, and curious looks. There were six boys, all of them wearing white T-shirts and blue jeans. One of the boys, standing by home plate, threw the ball to first base. I dropped my briefcase, ran and made a daring leaping catch. I fumbled the ball on purpose and crashed to the pavement. I made a big show of getting to my feet. The kids surrounded me as I brushed off my trousers.

"I guess I'm not Ted Williams, fellows," I said. "I must be getting old. I used to be a hotshot fielder."

One of the boys grinned at me. "That was still a pretty swell try, mister," he said.

"Thanks," I returned. "Geeze, it's hot out here. Dusty, too. You guys ever get the chance to go to the beach?"

The boys started jabbering all together: "Naw, but we got the municipal pool." "The beach is too far and it's full of beer cans. My dad took us once." "We play baseball." "I'm gonna pitch like Bob Lemon." "Wanna see my fastball?"

"Whoa, whoa! Hold on there," I said. "What about the Scouts? Don't any of you guys go on field trips with them?"

Quiet greeted my question. There was a general reacting of down-turned faces. I had hit a nerve.

"What's the matter, fellows?"

"Aw, nothin' really," the tall first baseman said, "but my mom got real down on our troop for somethin' that wasn't even our fault."

"Yeah." "Yeah." "What a crummy deal!" the other boys chimed in.

"What happened?" I asked innocently.

"Well," a tall boy said, "it was our troop that found the dead lady."

I tossed the battered softball into the air and caught it. "That's a shame. You mean Mrs. Harris?"

"Yeah," they all said practically at once.

I waded in cautiously, although I knew that the boys wanted to talk. "She lived here on this street, didn't she?"

This brought forth a huge response: "Ooh! Yeah, you shoulda seen her, mister. All naked. Ooh!" "Yeachh, really sickening." "Yeah, ugh."

I tossed the ball to the quietest of the boys. "Did any of you boys know Mrs. Harris?" There was an embarrassed silence.

"My mom told me not to talk to strangers," the quiet boy said.

"My dad told me not to say bad things about people," the first baseman said.

I yawned, and feigned exasperation. "Well, I was just curious," I said. "Maybe I'll get a chance to talk to you guys later. I'm the new baseball coach at Arroyo High. You guys look pretty good to me. In a few years you'll probably be my starting lineup." I pretended to leave.

It was the perfect thing to say, and it was followed by a big volley of excited "oohs" and "aahs."

"What's so bad about Mrs. Harris?" I asked the first baseman.

He stared at his feet, then looked up at me with confused blue eyes. "My dad says he saw her a whole bunch of times down at Medina Court. He said no good woman would have anything to do with a place like that. He said that she was an unfit mother, that that was why Michael acted so strange." The boy backed away from me, as if the specter of his father was right there with us.

"Hold on, partner," I said, "I'm new in this territory. What's so bad about Medina Court? And what's wrong with Michael? He sounded like a pretty good kid from what I read in the papers."

A redheaded boy clutching a catcher's mitt answered me frankly. "Medina Court is Mex Town. Wetbacks—mean ones. My dad says never, ever, ever go there, that they hate white people. It's dangerous there."

"My dad delivers the mail on Medina," the first baseman said. "He said he's seen Mrs. Harris do nasty things there."

A chill went over me. "What about Michael?" I asked.

No one answered. My expression and manner must have changed somehow, alerting some sixth sense in the youthful ballplayers.

"I gotta go," the quiet boy said.

"Me, too," another one piped in.

Before I knew it they were all running off down Maple Avenue, casting furtive glances at me over their shoulders. They all seemed to disappear into dusty front yards just moments later, leaving me standing in the street wondering what the hell had happened.

Medina Court was only one block long.

A tarnished brass plaque inlaid in the cracked sidewalk at the entrance to it said why: the street and the four-story tenements that dominated it had been constructed for the housing of Chinese railroad workers in 1885.

I parked my car on the dirt shoulder of Peck Road—the only access lane to Medina Court—and looked around. The buildings, obviously once painted white, were now as grayish-brown as the plague of smog that stifled the summer air. A half-dozen had burned down, and the charred detritus of the fires had never been removed. Mexican women and children sat on the front steps of their peeling, sunbaked dwellings, seeking respite from what must have been ovenlike interiors.

Garbage covered the dusty street through Medina Court and prewar jalopies lay dead along both sides of it. Mariachi music poured forth from inside some of the tenements, competing with high-pitched Spanish voices. An emaciated dog hobbled by me, giving me a cursory growl and a hungry look. The poverty and meanness of Medina Court was overpowering.

I needed to find the mailman-father of the first baseman, so I started by checking out the entranceways of the tenements to see if the mail had been delivered. The mailbox layout was identical in all of the buildings—banks of metal mail slots, rows and rows of them, bearing poorly printed Spanish surnames and apartment numbers. I checked out three buildings on each side of the street, getting a lot of dirty looks in the process. The mailboxes were empty. I was in luck.

Medina Court dead-ended at a combination weed patch—auto graveyard where a throng of tattered but happy-looking Mexican kids were playing tag. I walked back to Peck Road feeling grateful that I didn't live here.

I waited for three hours, watching the passing scene: old winos poking about in the rubble of the burned-out buildings, looking for shade to drink their short-dogs in; fat Mexican women chasing their screaming children down the street; a profusion of squabbles between men in T-shirts, filled with obscenities in English and Spanish; two fistfights; and a steady parade of pachucos tooling down the street in their hot rods.

At one o'clock, as the sun reached its stifling zenith and the temperature started to close in on one hundred degrees, a tired and dejected-looking mailman walked into Medina Court. My heart gave a little leap of joy—he was the very image of the blond first baseman. He walked into the "foyer" of the first tenement on the south side of the street, and I was waiting for him on the sidewalk when he walked back out.

His tired manner perked up when he saw me standing there, white and official-looking in my suit and tie. He smiled; the nervous, edgy smile of someone hungry for company. He looked me up and down. "Cop?" he said.

I tried to sound surprised: "No, why do you ask?"

The mailman laughed and swung his leather mail sack from one shoulder to the other. "Because any white man over six feet in a suit on a day like this in Medina Court has gotta be a cop."

I laughed. "Wrong, but you're close. I'm a private investigator." I didn't offer any proof, because of course I didn't have any. The mailman whistled; I caught a whiff of booze on his breath. I stuck out my hand. "Herb Walker," I said.

The mailman grasped it. "Randy Rice."

"I need some information, Randy. Can we talk? Can I buy you a beer? Or can't you drink on duty?"

"Rules are made to be broken," Randy Rice said. "You wait here. I'll deliver this mail and see you in twenty minutes."

He was good to his word, and half an hour later I was in a seedy bar near the freeway, listening politely to Randy Rice expound on his theory of the "wetback problem plaguing America."

"Yeah," I finally broke in, "and it's a tough life for the white working man. Believe me, I know. I'm on this tough case now, and none of the Mexicans I talk to will give me a straight answer." Randy Rice went bug-eyed with awe. I continued: "That's why I wanted to talk to you. I figured a smart white man familiar with Medina Court ought to be able to give me a few leads."

I ordered another beer for Rice. He gulped it, and his face contorted into a broad parody of caginess. "What do you wanna know?" he asked.

"I heard Marcella Harris used to hang out on Medina Court. I think that's a hell of a place for a white woman with a kid to be spending her time."

"I seen the Harris dame there," Randy Rice said, "lots of times."

"How did you know it was her? Did you just recognize her from her picture in the paper when she got knocked off?"

"No, she lived on my block at home. I seen her leave for work in the morning, and I seen her at the store, and I used to see her walk her dog. I used to see her play catch with that crazy kid of hers in her front yard, too." Rice swallowed. "Who hired you?" he blurted out.

"Her ex-husband. He's out for blood. He thinks one of her boyfriends croaked her. Why do you say her kid is crazy?"

"Because he is. That kid is poison, mister. For one thing, he's only nine years old and he's at least six feet tall. He hates the other kids, too. My boy told me that Michael was always breakin' up the softball games at school, always challengin' everyone to fight. He'd always get beat up—I mean he's a gigantic kid, but he don't know how to fight and he'd get beat up, then he'd start laughing like a madman, and . . ."

"And expose himself?"

". . . Yeah."

"You didn't seem surprised when I mentioned Marcella Harris's boyfriends." With a flourish I ordered the now red-faced Rice another beer. "Tell me about that," I said.

He leered and said, "I been seein' her around Medina for months, drivin' in her Studebaker, hangin' out in Deadman's Park—"

"Deadman's Park?"

"Yeah, where Medina dead-ends. Dead dogs and dead winos and dead cars. I seen her a coupla times hangin' out with Joe Sanchez on his stoop, lookin' real cozy with him. Him in his zoot suit and Harris in her nurse's uniform. Once she walked out of Sanchez's apartment real glassy-eyed, like she was walkin' on mashed potatoes, and nearly knocked me over. Jesus, I said to myself, this dame is high on dope. She—"

I halted Rice. "Does Sanchez sell dope?" I asked.

"Does he ever!" Rice said. "He's the number one pusher in the San Gabriel Valley. I seen loads of hopheads leavin' his dump like they was on cloud nine. The cops roust him all the time, but he's always clean. He don't use the shit himself, and he don't hide it at Medina. I heard lots of young punks talk about what a smart vato he is. If you ask me, scum like Sanchez should be sent straight to the electric chair."

I considered this latest information. "Have you talked to the cops about this, Randy?" I asked.

"Hell no, it's none of my business. Sanchez didn't bump off Harris, some loony did. That's obvious. I got my job to consider. I gotta deliver mail to Medina. It's no skin off my ass what Sanchez does."

"Is Sanchez tough, Randy?"

"He don't look tough, he just looks oily. Mexican-smart."

"What's his address?"

"Three-one-one Medina, number sixty-one."

"Does he live alone?"

"I think so."

"Describe him for me, would you?"

"Well, five foot eight inches, one-forty, skinny, duck's-ass haircut. Always wears khakis and a purple silk jacket with a wolf s head on the back, even in the summer. I guess he's about thirty."

I got up and shook Randy Rice's hand. He winked and started in on another windy monologue on the wetback problem. I cut him off with a wink of my own and a clap on the shoulder. As I walked out of the bar I heard him giving his spiel to the other lonely booze-hounds.

Twenty minutes later I was back on Medina Court, sweltering in the vestibule of number 311. I scanned the bank of mailboxes for apartment 61, found it, and ripped the metal latch off to find the box stuffed with letters bearing Mexican postmarks.

Taking a chance on my rudimentary Spanish, I tore open three of the envelopes at random and read. The letters were scrawled illegibly, but I managed to discern one main theme after reading all three. Cousin Joe Sanchez was moving the Mexican wing of his family up to America, cautiously, one at a time, for a nominal charge. The letters were brimful of gratitude and hope for a good life in the New World. Cousin Joe was effusively praised, and monetary commitments were promised once the new Americans found work. I started to dislike Cousin Joe.

He showed up at six-thirty, just as the sun's hammer blows were starting to fall short of Medina Court. I watched from the steps of his tenement as a purple 1950 Mercury with fender skirts pulled to the curb and a skinny Mexican with a purple silk jacket and a sullen grin got out, locked the car carefully, and skipped up the steps in my direction.

I had my eyes locked into his face, waiting to read it for signs of fear or violence when he noticed my presence. But when he saw me Sanchez just threw up his hands in mock surrender and said, "You waiting for me, Officer?" grinning broadly all the while.

I grinned back. "I know you're clean, Joe. You always are. I just wanted to have a little talk with you."

Sanchez grinned again. "Why don't we go up to my crib, then?"

I nodded assent and let him walk into the steaming hallway ahead of me. We took the stairs up to the third floor. Sanchez fiddled with the double lock on his door, and when the door opened I slammed my right fist into the back of his neck, sending him sprawling into his immaculate, cheap-plush living room. He looked up at me from the floor, his whole body trembling in anger. I closed the door behind me, and we stared at each other. Sanchez recovered quickly, getting to his feet and brushing off his silk jacket.

The sardonic grin returned. "This ain't happened in a while," he said. "You with the sheriff's?"

"L.A.P.D.," I said, for old-times' sake. I dug the letters out of my coat pocket, holding my coat closed so that Sanchez wouldn't know that I was unarmed. I tossed them in his face. "You forgot your mail, Joe."

I waited for a reaction. Sanchez shrugged and plopped into a sofa covered with Mexican souvenir blankets. I pulled a chair up to within breathing distance of him.

"Dope and green cards, pretty nice," I said.

Sanchez shrugged, then looked at me defiantly. "What do you want, man?" He spat at me.

"I want to know what a good-looking, middle-class white woman like Marcella Harris was doing down here on Medina Court," I said, "besides buying dope from you."

Sanchez's manner seemed to crumple in relief, then tense up in fear. It was bizarre. "I didn't kill her, man," he said.

"I'm sure you didn't. Let's make this simple. You tell me what you know, and I'll leave you alone—forever. You don't tell me, and I'll have the Immigration cops and the feds up here in fifteen minutes. Comprende?"

Sanchez nodded. "A friend of mine brought her around. She wanted to buy some reefer. She kept coming back. She thought Medina Court was kicks. She was a loca, a hot-headed redhead. She liked to smoke reef and dance. She liked Mexican music." Sanchez shrugged, indicating completion of his story.

It wasn't enough. I told him so: "Not good enough, Joe. You make it sound like you just tolerated her. I don't buy it. I heard she used to hang out with you and a bunch of other pachucos down at the auto graveyard."

"Okay, man. I liked her. 'La Roja,' I used to call her. 'The Red One.'"

"Were you screwing her?"

Sanchez was genuinely indignant: "No, man! She wanted me to, but I'm engaged! I don't mess with no gringas."

"Forgive me for mentioning it. Was she hooked on stuff?"

Sanchez hesitated. "She . . . she took pills. She was a nurse and she could get codeine. She used to get crazy and act silly when she was high on it. She said she could be . . ."

I leaned forward. "She said what, Joe?"

"She . . . she . . . said she could outfight any Mexican, and out-fuck and out-drink any puta. She said that she'd seen stuff that . . . that . . ."

"That what?" I screamed.

"That would have made our cojones fall off!" Sanchez screamed back.

"Did she hang out with any other guys here on Medina?" I asked.

Sanchez shook his head. "No. She was just interested in me. I told the others to leave her alone, that she was bad news. I liked her, but I had no respect for her. She used to leave her kid alone at night. Anyway, I started giving Marcella the cold shoulder. She took the hint and didn't come around no more. I ain't seen her in six months."

I got up and walked around the room. The walls were adorned with bullfight posters and cheap landscape prints. "Who introduced her to you?" I asked.

"My friend, Carlos. He used to work at that factory where she was the nurse."

"Where can I find Carlos?"

"He went back to Mexico, man."

"Did Marcella Harris ever bring anyone else around to see you?"

"Yeah, once. She knocks on my door at seven in the morning. She had this guy with her, she was hanging on to him real tight, like they been . . ."

"Yeah, I know. Go on."

"Anyway, she starts jabbering about the guy, how he just got promoted to graveyard foreman at the plant. I sold them some reef and they split."

"What did this guy look like?"

"Kind of fat and blond. Kind of like a stüpido. He had no thumb on his left hand. It kind of spooked me. I'm superstitious and I . . ."

I sighed. "And what, Joe?"

"And I knew that Marcella was gonna die mean. That she wanted to die mean."

"Ever see Marcella with a dark-haired man or a blond woman with a ponytail?"

"No."

I got up to leave. "Poor roja," Joe Sanchez said as I walked out his door.

Mrs. Gaylord Wilder, Marcella Harris's landlady, had nervous gray eyes and a manner of barely controlled hysteria. I didn't know how to play her—impersonating a cop was too risky with a solid citizen, and intimidation might well bring repercussions from the real cops.

Standing in her doorway as she openly scrutinized me, I hit on it. Mrs. Wilder had an avaricious look about her, so I tried a wild gambit: I attempted to pass myself off as an insurance investigator, interested in the recent past of the late Marcella. Mrs. Wilder took it all in, wide-eyed, with a nervous hand on the doorjamb. When I said ". . . and there's a substantial reward for anyone who can help us," she swung the door open eagerly, and pointed to an imitation leather davenport.

She went into the kitchen, leaving me alone to survey the crammed living room, and returned in a moment with a box of See's candy. I popped a piece of sticky chocolate into my mouth. "That's delicious," I said.

"Thank you, Mr. . . ."

"Carpenter, Mrs. Wilder. Is your husband at home?"

"No, he's at work."

"I see. Mrs. Wilder, let me level with you. Your late tenant, Marcella Harris, had three policies with us. Her son, Michael, was the beneficiary on all of them. However, there has been a rival claim, filed out of nowhere. A woman who claims to be a dear friend of the late Mrs. Harris states, in an affidavit, that Mrs. Harris told her that she was the beneficiary on all three policies. Right now, I'm investigating to determine if this woman even knew Marcella Harris."

Mrs. Wilder's hands did a nervous little dance in her lap. Her eyes did a little dance of greed. "How can I help you, Mr. Carpenter?" she asked eagerly.

I gave that some mock concentration. "Mrs. Wilder, you can help me by telling me anything and everything you know about the friends of Marcella Harris."

Now the woman's whole body seemed to dance. Finally, her tongue caught up with her. "Well, to tell you the truth . . ." she began.

"You are sworn to tell the truth," I interjected sternly.

She went for it. "Well, Mr. Carpenter, Marcella's friends were mostly men. I mean she was a good mother and all, but she had lots of men friends."

"That's no crime."

"No, but—"

I interrupted. "I heard Michael Harris was a wild boy. That he got into fights. That he exposed himself to the other kids in the neighborhood."

Mrs. Wilder went red and shrieked, "That boy was the devil! All he needed was horns! Then everyone would have known. A boy without a father is a sinful thing!"

"Well, Michael is with his father now."

"Marcella told me about that one! What a no-good, handsome, good-for-nothing he was!"

"About her men friends, Mrs. Wilder . . ."

"I thought you said a woman filed this claim you're investigating."

"Yes, but this woman claimed that Marcella didn't have any gentleman friends, that Marcella was a quiet career woman dedicated to her son."

"Ha! Women like Marcella attract men the way sweets attract flies. I know. I had my share of suitors before I got married, but I never carried on the way that hussy did!"

I let Mrs. Wilder catch her breath. "Please be specific," I said.

Mrs. Wilder continued, warily this time. "Well . . . when Marcella moved in I offered to throw a little get-together for her, invite some of the ladies in the neighborhood. Well . . . Marcella told me that she didn't want any women friends, that women were all right to have a cup of coffee with once in a while, but she'd take men any day. I told her, 'You're a divorcée. Haven't you learned your lesson?' I'll never forget what she said: 'Yes, I did. I learned to use men the way they use women, and keep it at that.' I don't mind telling you, Mr. Carpenter, I don't mind telling you I was shocked!"

"Yes, that is shocking. Did Marcella Harris ever talk about her ex-husband at length? Or any of her boyfriends?"

"She just told me that Doc Harris was a charming, good-for-nothing snake. And about her boyfriends? If I'd known they were sleeping over I would have put a stop to it right away! I don't put up with promiscuous goings-on."

I was getting tired of Mrs. Wilder. "How did you finally find out about Mrs. Harris's goings-on?" I asked.

"Michael. He . . . used to leave notes. Anonymous ones. Obscene ones. I don't—"

I came awake. "Do you still have them?" I blurted.

Mrs. Wilder shrieked again: "No, no, no! I don't want to talk about it, I knew she was bad from the moment she moved in. I require references, and Marcella gave me fake ones, fake all the way down the line. If you ask me, she—"

The telephone rang. Mrs. Wilder went into the kitchen to answer it. When she was out of sight, I gave the room a quick toss, checking out the contents of shelves and bookcases. On top of the television set I found a stack of unopened mail. There was a letter addressed to Marcella Harris. Someone, probably Mrs. Wilder, had written in pencil on the envelope: "Deceased. Forward to William Harris, 4968 Beverly Blvd., L.A. 4, Calif."

I heard the landlady jabbering away in the kitchen. I put the envelope into my pocket and quietly left her house.

It was almost dusk. I drove toward the freeway, stopping a few blocks from the on-ramp to check the letter. It was just an overdue dentist's bill, and I threw it out the window, but it fit in: Marcella Harris lived a fast life and neglected small commitments. I wondered what kind of nurse she had been. I headed back toward Santa Monica to see if I could find out.

The freeways that night were surreal; seemingly endless red and white glowing jet streams carrying travelers to home and hearth, work and play, lovers' rendezvous and unknown destinations. This was not my Los Angeles I was passing over, and the dead nurse was none of my business, but as the eastern suburbs turned into good old familiar downtown L.A., old instincts clicked into place and the excitement of being out there and on the track of the immutable yet ever-changing took me over. There was nothing happening in my life, and looking for a killer was as good a way as any to fill the void.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

18

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Call me Doc."

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

Harris shook his head. "Mr. Walker—"

"Call me Fred."

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

"I have. They were evasive."

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

"Alma Jacobsen."

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

"Completely, Doc. Lonely people will do strange things."

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

I made my laughter match Harris's perfectly. "I look for women. You?"

"I've been known to," Doc laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No," Michael said softly.

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

"Yes."

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

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

"Can we, Dad?" Michael pleaded. "I'm dying of thirst."

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

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

I queried Doc on his nickname, and he laughed and said, "Med school dropout, Fred. It was too bloody, too abstract, too timeconsuming, too literal, too much."

"Where did you attend?"

"University of Illinois."

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

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

"Why not?" I asked. It was a challenge.

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

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

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

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

"Where did you go?" I asked.

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

"No, Doc."

"You should have. It's instructive."

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

"Right!"

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

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

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

"Michael, we have to talk about your mother," I said.

"Okay," Michael said.

"Tell me about your mother's friends," I said.

Michael grimaced. "She didn't have any," he said. "She was a bar floozy."

I grimaced, and Michael looked to Doc for confirmation. Doc nodded grimly.

"Who told you that, Michael?" I asked.

"Nobody. I'm no dummy, I knew that Uncle Jim and Uncle George and Uncle Bob and Uncle What's-his-face were just pickups."

"What about women friends?"

"She didn't have any."

"Ever heard of a woman named Alma Jacobsen?"

"No."

"Was your mother friendly with the parents of any of your friends?"

Michael hesitated. "I don't have any friends."

"None at all?"

Michael shrugged. "The books I read are my friends. Minna is my friend." He pointed to the puppy, tethered to a phone pole outside the plate glass window.

I kicked this sad information around in my head. Michael leaned his shoulder against me and gazed longingly at my half-finished root beer float.

"Kill it," I said.

He did, in one gulp.

I opened up another line of questioning: "Michael, you were with your dad when your mother was killed, right?"

"Right. We were playing duckball."

"What's duckball?"

"It's catch. If you miss the ball, you have to get down on your knees and quack like a duck."

I laughed. "Sounds like fun. How did you feel about your mother, Michael? Did you love her?"

Michael went red all over. His long skinny arms went red, his neck went red, and his face went red all the way up to his soft brown crew cut. He started to tremble, then swept an arm across the tabletop and knocked all the glassware and utensils onto the floor. He pushed his way across me and ran outside in the direction of his beagle pup.

Doc stared at me, letting an alarmed waitress pick up the detritus of our root beer floats.

"Does that happen often?" I asked.

Doc nodded. "My son is a volatile boy."

"He takes after his dad." It was both a challenge and a compliment. Doc understood that.

"In some ways," he said.

"I think he's a wonderful boy," I added.

Doc smiled. "So do I."

I laid a five-dollar bill on the table. Doc and I got up and walked outside. Michael was playing tug-of-war with his dog. The dog held the leather leash in her jaws and strained happily against the pull of Michael's skinny arms.

"Come on, Colonel," Doc called. "Time to go home."

Michael and the dog ran ahead of us across Western Avenue and they remained a good forty yards in front as we walked west in the hot afternoon sun. Doc and I didn't talk. I thought about the boy and wondered what Doc was thinking. When we got to the apartment building on Beverly and Irving, I stuck out my hand.

"Thanks for your cooperation, Doc," I said.

"It was a pleasure, Fred."

"I think you've been a big help. I think you've proven conclusively that this Jacobsen woman's claim is a phony."

"I didn't know Marcella had a policy with Prudential. I'm surprised she didn't tell me about it."

"People do surprising things."

"What year did she take out the policy?"

"In '51."

"We were divorced in '50."

I shrugged. "Stranger things have happened."

Doc shrugged too. "How true," he said. He reached inside his pants pocket and pulled out the business card I had given him earlier. He handed it to me. The ink on it was smudged. Doc shook his head. "A smart young insurance bulldog like you should get his cards printed at a better place."

We shook hands again. I felt myself start to go red. "So long, Doc," I said.

"You take care, Fred," Doc returned.

I walked to my car. I had the key in the door when suddenly Michael ran to me and grabbed me in a fierce hug. Before I could respond, he shoved a wadded-up piece of paper into my hand and ran away. I opened up the paper. "You are my friend" was all it said.

I drove home, moved by the boy and puzzled by the man. I had a strange sensation that Doc Harris knew who I was and somehow welcomed my intrusion. I had another feeling, equally strange, that there was a bond building between Michael and me.

When I got home I called Reuben Ramos and begged for some favors. Reluctantly, he did what I wanted: he ran Doc Harris through R&I. No record in California. Next he came up with the addresses Marcella Harris had given at the time of her many arrests: in 1946, nine years ago, she lived at 618 North Sweetzer, Los Angeles. In 1947 and '48, 17901 Terra Cotta, Pasadena. In 1949, 1811 Howard Street, Glendale. At the time of her last drunk arrest in 1950, she was living at 9619 Hibiscus Canyon, Sherman Oaks.

I wrote it all down and spent a long time staring at the information before going to bed. I slept fitfully, waking up repeatedly, expecting to find my bedroom inhabited by ghosts of murdered women.

The following day, Friday, I went out to retrace the past of Marcella DeVries Harris. I went first to shady, tree-lined Sweetzer Avenue in West Hollywood, and got the results I expected: no one at the 618 address, a Spanish-style walk-up apartment building, recalled the redheaded nurse or her then-infant son. I inquired with people in the neighboring houses and got puzzled shakes of the head. Marcella the cipher.

At Terra Cotta Avenue in Pasadena the results were the same. There Marcella had rented a house, and the current tenant told me that the previous owner of the house had died two years ago. The people on the surrounding blocks had no recollection of Marcella or her little boy.

From Pasadena I drove to nearby Glendale. It was hot and smoggy. I took care of 1949 in short order: the bungalow court Marcella had lived in that year had been recently demolished to make way for a modern apartment complex. "Marcella Harris, good-looking red-haired nurse in her late thirties with a three-year-old son?" I asked two dozen Howard Street residents. Nothing. Marcella, the phantom.

I took the Hollywood Freeway to Sherman Oaks. A gas station attendant near the freeway off-ramp directed me to Hibiscus Canyon. It took me five minutes to find it; nestled in a cul-de-sac at the end of a winding street, lined, appropriately, with towering hibiscus bushes. Number 9619 was a four-story walk-up, in the style of a miniature Moorish castle.

I parked the car, and was walking across the street toward 9619 when my eyes were riveted to a sign stuck into the front lawn of the house next to it. "For Sale. Contact Janet Valupeyk, Valupeyk Realty, 18369 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks."

Janet Valupeyk. Former lover of Eddie Engels. The woman Dudley Smith and I had questioned about Engels back in '51. I felt myself go prickly all over. I forgot all about 9619 Hibiscus Canyon and drove to Ventura Boulevard instead.

I remembered Janet Valupeyk well. She had been nearly comatose when Smith and I had interviewed her four years ago.

She had changed; I could tell that immediately as I looked at her through the plate glass window of her real estate office. She was seated at a metal desk near the window, shuffling papers and nervously smoking a cigarette. During the four years since I had last seen her she had aged ten. Her face had gone gaunt and her skin had turned a pasty white. One eyebrow twitched dramatically as she fumbled with her paperwork.

I could see no one else within the office. I walked through a glass door that set off little chimes as I entered. Janet Valupeyk nearly jumped out of her skin at the noise. She dropped her pen and fumbled her cigarette.

I pretended not to notice. "Miss Valupeyk?" I asked innocently.

"Yes. Oh, God, that goddamned chime! I don't know why I put it in. Can I help you?"

"I'm interested in the house on Hibiscus Canyon."

Janet Valupeyk smiled nervously, put out her cigarette and immediately lit another one. "That's a dandy property," she said. "Let me get you the statistics on it."

She moved from her desk to a bank of metal filing cabinets, opening the top drawer and rummaging through the manila folders. I joined her, watching her nervous fingers dig through files that were arranged by street name and subheaded by street address. She found Hibiscus Canyon and started muttering, "9621, 9621, where the hell is that little devil?"

My eyes were glued to the street numbers, and when 9619 came up I reached my hand into the cabinet and yanked out the file.

Janet Valupeyk said, "Hey, what the hell!"

I shouted at her, "Shut up! Or I'll have Narcotics detectives here within fifteen minutes!" It was a stab in the dark, but it worked: Janet Valupeyk collapsed in her chair, her face buried in her hands. I let her sob and tore through the file.

The tenants were listed in chronological order, along with the amount of rent they had paid. The tenant list went back to 1944, and as I thumbed through it the blood rushed to my head and the periphery of my vision blackened.

"Who are you?" Janet Valupeyk choked.

"Shut up!" I screamed again.

Finally I found it. Marcella Harris had rented apartment number 102 at 9619 Hibiscus Canyon from June, 1950, to September, 1951. She had been a resident there at the time of Maggie Cadwallader's murder. Next to the listing there were comments in a minute hand: "Mrs. Groberg's bro. to sublet 7/2/51—?" Next to that, a check mark in a different color ink and the letters "O.K.-J.V."

I put down the file and knelt beside the quaking Janet Valupeyk. Stabbing again, I asked, "Who told you to rent to Marcella Harris, Janet?" She shook her head violently. I raised my hand to hit her, then hesitated and shook her shoulders instead. "Tell me, goddamnit, or I'll get the heat!"

Janet Valupeyk began to tremble from head to toe. "Eddie," she said. "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie." Her voice was very soft.

So was mine as I said, "Eddie who?"

Janet looked at me carefully for the first time. "I . . . I know you," she said.

"Eddie who?" I screamed, shaking her by her shoulders again.

"Eddie Engels. I . . . I know you. You—"

"But you broke up with him."

"He still had me. Oh, God, he still had me!"

"Who's Mrs. Groberg?"

"I don't know. I don't remember—"

"Don't lie to me. Marcella Harris is dead! Who killed her?"

"I don't know! You killed Eddie!"

"Shut up! Who's Mrs. Groberg?"

"She lives at 9619. She's a good tenant. She wouldn't hurt any—"

I didn't hear her finish. I left her sobbing for her past as I ran to my car and rushed headlong back into mine.

Five minutes later I was parked crossways at the end of the Hibiscus Canyon cul-de-sac. I ran down the street to the Moorish apartment house, flung open the leaded glass door, and scanned the mailboxes in the foyer. Mrs. John Groberg lived in number 419. I took the stairs two at a time to the fourth floor. I listened through the door to a TV blasting out a game program. I knocked. There was no answer. I knocked again, this time louder, and heard mild cursing and the volume on the TV diminished.

Through the door a cranky voice called out, "Who is it?"

"Police officer, ma'am," I called out, consciously imitating Jack Webb of "Dragnet" fame.

Giggles answered my announcement. The door was flung open a moment later, and I was confronted by the adoring gaze of a gasbag matron. I quickly sized her up as a crime buff and took my act from there.

Before the woman could ask me for my nonexistent badge I said forcefully, "Ma'am, I need your help."

She fidgeted with her housecoat and the curlers in her hair. She was on the far side of fifty. "Y-yes, Officer," she said.

"Ma'am, a former tenant here was murdered recently. Maybe you've heard about it; you look like a woman who keeps abreast of the news."

"Well, I—"

"Her name was Marcella Harris."

The woman's hands flew up to her throat. She was shaken, and I compounded her fear: "That's right, Mrs. Groberg, she was strangled."

"Oh, no!"

"Oh, yes, ma'am."

"Well, I—"

"Ma'am, could I come in?"

"Oh, yes, Officer."

The apartment was hot, stuffy, and overfurnished. I took a seat on the couch next to Mrs. Groberg, the better to bore in quickly.

"Poor Marcella," she said.

"Yes, indeed, ma'am. Did you know her well?"

"No. To tell you the truth, I didn't like her, really. I think she drank. But I doted on her little boy. He was such a sweetheart."

I tossed her a ray of hope: "The boy is doing fine, Mrs. Groberg. He's living with his father."

"Thank God for that."

"I understand that Marcella sublet her apartment to your brother in the summer of '51. Do you recall that?"

The Groberg woman laughed. "Yes, I do! I set it up, and what a mistake it was. My brother Morton had a drinking problem, just like Marcella. He came out from Omaha to go to work at Lockheed and dry out. I lent him the money to come out here, and the money to rent the apartment. But he found Marcella's liquor and drank it all! He was swacked for three weeks."

"How long was Morton in the apartment?"

"For two months! He was on a bender, and he ended up in the hospital. I—"

"Marcella was gone that long?"

"Yes."

"Did she tell you where she was going?"

"No, but when she got back she said, 'You can't go home again.' That's the name of a book, isn't it?"

"Yes, ma'am. Had Marcella taken her son with her?"

"No . . . I don't . . . no, I know she didn't. She left the tot with friends. I remember talking with the child when Marcella came back. He didn't like the people he stayed with."

"Marcella moved out after that, didn't she?"

"Yes."

"Do you know where she went?"

"No."

"Did she seem upset when she returned from her trip?"

"I couldn't tell. That woman was a mystery to me! Who . . . who killed her, Officer?"

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out," I said by way of farewell.

Barely controlling my exultation, I drove with shaky hands over the Cahuenga Pass into Hollywood. I found a pay phone and called Doc Harris. He answered on the third ring: "Speak, it's your dime."

"Doc, this is Fred Walker."

"Fred, how are you? How's the insurance game?" The bluff heartiness of his tone told me that he knew the game wasn't insurance, but that he wanted to play anyway.

"Fifty-fifty. It's a racket like any other. Listen, how would you and Michael like to go for a ride tomorrow? Out to the country somewhere, just get in my car and go. I've got a convertible."

There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally, Doc said, "Sure, kid. Why don't you pick us up at noon?"

"Until then," I said, and hung up.

I drove to Beverly Hills.

Lorna's office was in a tall building attached to the StanleyWarner Theater on Wilshire near Beverly Drive. I parked down the street and walked there. I checked out the rear parking area first; I was afraid Lorna had already left for the day, but I was in luck: her '50 Packard was still in its space. Hardworking Lorna—still on the job at six-thirty.

The sky was turning golden, and people were already lining up for the first evening performance of "The Country Girl." I waited an hour by the parking entrance, until the sky turned a burnished copper and Lorna turned the corner onto Canon Drive, staying close to the building, jamming her heavy wooden cane into the space where the wall met the sidewalk.

When I saw her, I felt the old shakiness grip me. She walked head down, abstracted. Before she could look up and see me, I committed to memory the look on her face, her hunched posture and her light blue summer dress. When she did look up, she must have seen the love-struck Freddy Underhill of old, for her drawn face softened until she realized this was 1955, not 1951, and that walls had been constructed during the interim.

"Hello, Lor," I said.

"Hello, Freddy," Lorna said coldly. Her manner stiffened, she sighed and leaned against the marble of the building. "Why, Freddy? It's over."

"No, it's not, Lor. None of it."

"I won't argue with you."

"You look beautiful."

"No, I don't. I'm thirty-five and I'm putting on weight. And it's only been four months."

"It's been a lifetime."

"Don't do that with me, goddamn you! You don't mean it, and I don't care! I don't care, Freddy! Do you hear that?"

Lorna gave herself a shove and almost toppled over. I moved to steady her and she swatted at me clumsily with her cane. "No, goddamn you," she hissed. "I won't be charmed one more time. I won't let you beat up my friends, and I won't take you back."

She hobbled into the parking lot. I stayed behind, wondering if she would believe me, or think me insane, or even care. I let her get all the way to her car. I watched as she fished her keys out of her purse, then ran up and grabbed them out of her hand as she began to unlock the door. She started to resist, then stopped. She smiled patiently and put her weight on her cane. "You never listened, Freddy," she said.

"I listened more than you know." I countered.

"No, you didn't. You just heard what you wanted to hear. And you convinced me you were listening. You were a good actor."

I couldn't think of a retort, or a dig, or a plea, so I just said—moving a few steps backward to give myself objectivity—"It's on again. I've connected Eddie Engels to a woman who was murdered recently. I'm going to see it through, wherever it takes me. Maybe when it's all over we can be together."

Lorna was perfectly still. "You are insane," she said.

"It's been hanging over us like a plague, Lor. Maybe we can have some peace when it's over."

"You are insane."

"Lorna—"

"No. We can never be together again; and not because of what happened four years ago. We can never be together because of what you are. No, don't touch me and don't try to charm me or sweet-talk me. I'm getting in my car and if you try to stop me I will make you regret we ever met."

I handed Lorna the keys to her car. Her hand shook as she took them from me. She fumbled her way into the car and drove away, spewing exhaust fumes on my trouser legs.

"Nothing's ever over, Lorna," I said to the air. But I didn't know if I believed it.

We drove east on the San Bernardino Freeway with the top down, away from the stifling, sun-blinded L.A. streets, past successions of interconnected working-class communities spread through terrain ranging from desert sand flats to piny woods. I was at the wheel, Michael was beside me on the front seat, and Doc was sprawled in the back, his long legs propped up on the passengerside doorjamb, where Michael wrapped a protective arm around his ankles and beat time to the big-band boogie-woogie coming from the radio.

The air that whizzed past us got hotter and thinner as we climbed the winding roads of a fir-covered forest. Lake Arrowhead was nominally our destination, but none of us seemed to care if we ever got there; we were lost in games of silence—Doc and I each knowing that the other knew, but knew what? And unwilling, as yet, to push it any further. And Michael, craning his long neck above the windshield, getting full blasts of summer air, gulping it in as fuel for what I knew had to be a brilliant imagination.

Lake Arrowhead came upon us abruptly at the end of a scrublittered access road. It was shimmering light blue, miragelike in the heat and dotted with rowboats and swimmers. I stopped the car at the side of the road and turned to face my companions.

"Well," I said, "here or beyond?"

"Beyond!" they both exclaimed in unison, and I accelerated, skirting the blue oasis and driving a circuitous path through small mountain ranges piled up one on top of the other.

But soon my mind clicked in. We were miles from Los Angeles and I had work to do. I started getting itchy, looking around for a quiet, shady place for us to stop and eat the picnic lunch I had made. Almost as if in answer to my anxiety, it shot up in the near distance: "Jumbo's Animal Park and Rest Area." It looked like a set from a western movie: a single street of battered one-story frame buildings, and behind that a small wooded area crowded with picnic tables. A weatherbeaten sign at the entrance exclaimed: "Christmas in the Summertime! See Santa's Reindeer at Jumbo's."

I nudged Michael as I pulled into the parking area. "Do you believe in Santa Claus, Mike?"

"He doesn't like to be called Mike," Doc said.

"I don't mind," Michael retorted, "but Santa Claus sucks a big dick." He giggled at his own wit. I laughed along with him.

"A jaded lad," Doc piped in wryly from the backseat.

"Like his dad?"

"Very much like his dad. In some respects. I take it this is our destination?"

"Let's vote. Mike?"

"Yes!"

"Doc?"

"Why not?"

I dug a big paper bag full of sandwiches and a large thermos of iced tea out of the trunk, and we strolled through the little town. I was right—the building facades were studio sets: Dodge City Jail, Miller's General Store, Diamond Jim's Saloon, Forty-niners Dance Hall. But only the roofs remained intact—the fronts had been ripped out and replaced with bars, behind which a scrawny assortment of wildlife reposed. The Dodge City Jail held two skinny lions.

"The king of beasts," Doc muttered as we passed by.

"I'm king of the beasts," Michael countered, walking next to me ahead of his father.

Diamond Jim's Saloon held a bloated elephant. It lay comatose on a cement floor covered with feces.

"Looks like a certain Republican I could name," I said.

"Watch out!" Michael squealed. "Dad's a Republican, and he can't take a joke!" Michael started to giggle and leaned into me. I put my arm around him and held him tightly.

Our last stop before the picnic area was "Diamond Lil's Carny House and Social Hall," no doubt a B-movie euphemism for "whorehouse." Diamond Lil and her girls were not in residence. Ugly, chattering, pink-faced baboons were there instead.

Michael tore free from my arm. He started to tremble as he had in the drive-in two days before. He pulled large hunks of dirt from the ground and hurled them full force at the baboons.

"Dirty fucking drunks!" he screamed. "Dirty, filthy, goddamned, fucking drunks!" He let loose another barrage of dirt and started to scream again, but no words came out, and the jabbering of the creatures in the cage rose to a shrieking cacophony.

Michael was bending down to pick up more ammunition when I grabbed him around the shoulders. As he squirmed to free himself, I heard Doc say soothingly, "Easy, fellow. Easy, Michael boy, it's going to be okay, easy . . ."

Michael slammed a bony elbow into my stomach. I let go of him and he tore off like an antelope in the direction of the rest area. I let him get a good lead, then followed. He was fast, and sprinting full out, and I knew in his condition he would run until he collapsed.

We ran through the wooded area into a miniature box canyon laced with scrub pines. Suddenly there was noplace left to run. Michael fell down at the base of a large pine tree and encircled it fiercely with his skinny arms, rocking on his knees. As I came up to him, I could hear a hoarse wail rise from his throat. I knelt beside him and placed a tentative hand on his shoulder and let him cry until he gradually surrendered his grip on the tree and placed his arms around me.

"What is it, Michael?" I asked softly, ruffling his hair. "What is it?"

"Call me Mike," he sobbed. "I don't want to be called Michael anymore."

"Mike, who killed your mother?"

"I don't know!"

"Have you ever heard of anyone named Eddie Engels?"

Mike shook his head and buried it deeper into my chest.

"Margaret Cadwallader?"

"No," he sobbed.

"Mike, do you remember living on Hibiscus Canyon when you were five?"

Mike looked up at me. "Y-yes," he said.

"Do you remember the trip your mother took while you were living there?"

"Yes!"

"Ssssh. Where did she go?"

"I don't . . ."

I helped the boy to his feet and put my arm around him. "Did she go to Wisconsin?"

"I think so. She brought back all this gooey cheese and this smelly sauerkraut. Fucking German squarehead bastards."

I lifted the boy's chin off his chest. "Who did you stay with while she was gone?"

Mike twisted away from me, looking at the ground at his feet.

"Tell me, Mike."

"I stayed with these fly-by-night guys my mom was seeing."

"Did they treat you all right?"

"Yeah. They were drunks and gamblers. They were nice to me, but . . ."

"But what, Mike?"

Mike screamed, "They were nice to me because they wanted to fuck Marcella!" His tears had stopped and the hatred in his young face aged him by ten years.

"I don't know, Uncle Claude, Uncle Schmo, Uncle Fucko, I don't know!"

"Do you remember the place where you stayed?"

"Yeah, I remember; 6481 Scenic Avenue. Near Franklin and Gower. Dad said . . ."

"Said what, Mike?"

"That . . . that he was going to fuck up Marcella's boyfriends. I told him they were nice, but he still said it. Fred?"

"Yes?"

"Dad was telling stories last night. He told me this story about this guy who used to be a cop. Did you used to be a cop?"

"Yes. What—"

"Michael, Fred, where the hell are you?" It was Doc's voice, and it was nearby. A second later we saw him. Michael moved away from me when Doc came into view.

He walked toward us. When I saw his face up close I knew that all pretense was gone. His expression was a mask of hatred; the hard, handsome features were drawn inward to the point where each plane melded perfectly in a picture of absolute coldness.

"I think we should go back to L.A.," Doc said.

No one said a word as we made our way back to Los Angeles via a labyrinthine network of freeways and surface streets. Mike sat in back, and Doc sat up front with me, his eyes glued straight ahead for the entire two hours.

When we finally pulled up to the house all three of us seemed to breathe for the first time. It was then that I smelled it, a musky, sweaty pungency that permeated the car even with the top down: the smell of fear.

Michael vaulted out of the backseat and ran without a word into his concrete backyard. Doc turned to face me. "What now, Underhill?" he said.

"I don't know. I'm blowing town for a while."

"And then?"

"And then I'll be back."

Harris got out of the car. He looked down at me. He started to smile, but I didn't let his cold face get that far.

"Harris, if you harm that boy, I'll kill you," I said, then drove off in the direction of Hollywood.

Scenic Avenue was a side street about a mile north of Hollywood Boulevard. Number 6481 was a small stone cottage on the south side. There was a small yard of weeds encircled by a white picket fence. It was deserted, as I knew it would be; all the front windows were broken and the flimsy wooden front door was half caved in.

I walked around the corner of the house. The backyard was the same as the front—same fencing, same high weeds. I found a circuit box next to the fence, attached to a phone pole, and wedged a long piece of scrap wood under the hinge, snapping the box open. I toyed with the switches for five minutes until the dusk-shrouded inside of 6481 was illuminated as bright as day.

I brazenly walked across the wooden service porch and through the back door. Then I walked quietly through the entire house, savoring each nuance of the evil I felt there.

It was just an ordinary one-family dwelling, bereft of furniture, bereft of all signs of habitation, bereft even of the winos who usually inhabited such places; but it was alive with an unspeakable aura of sickness and terror that permeated every wall, floorboard, and cobweb-knitted corner.

On the oak floor of the bedroom near an overturned mattress I found a large splotch of dried blood. It could have been something else, but I knew what it was. I upended the mattress; the bottom of it was soaked through with brownish matter.

I found what I knew to be old blood in the bathtub, in the living room closet, and on the dining room walls. Somehow each new sign of carnage brought forth in me a deeper and deeper sense of calm. Until I walked into the den that adjoined the kitchen and saw the crib, its railings splattered with blood, the matting that lined the inside caked thick with blood, and the teddy bear who lay dead atop it, his cotton guts spilling out and soaked with blood from another time that was reaching out to hold me.

Then I got out, knowing that this was the constituency of the dead that Wacky Walker had written about so many years before.