That was my cue to leave. I checked my watch. It was two-forty. I had three hours before I had to report to duty.
I walked out to my car amidst a tangle of grumbling detectives. I lowered the top and sat in the front seat and thought. No, not burglary, I kept saying to myself; not this time. Maybe the Jensen woman, maybe the matches were coincidental, but Maggie Cadwallader had a strangeness about her, almost an aura of impending doom, and when she saw my gun she had screamed, "Please, no! I won't let you hurt me! I know who sent you! I knew he would." She had been a strange woman, one who had wrapped her small world tightly about herself, yet let frequent strangers in.
The Silver Star bar was the place to start, but it was useless to hit it in the daytime, so I drove to a phone booth and got the address of the Small World Import-Export Company: 615 North Virgil. I drove there, exhilarated—and feeling slightly guilty about it.
The Small World Import-Export Company was in a large warehouse in the middle of a residential block specializing in rooming houses for students at L.A. City College a few blocks away. Every house on the block advertised "Student Housing," and "Low Rates for Students." There were a lot of "students" sitting on their front porches, drinking beer and playing catch on their beat-up front lawns. They were about my age, and had the superior look of G.I. Bill recipients. Two wars, Underhill, I thought, and you avoided them both and got what you wanted. Now here you are, a patrolman in Watts imitating a detective in Hollywood. Be careful.
I was. I entered the warehouse through its ratty front door stenciled with a ratty-looking globe by a guy who obviously didn't know his geography very well. But the receptionist knew a cop and a badge when she saw them, and when I inquired about friends of Maggie Cadwallader she said, "Oh, that's easy." She dialed a number on her desk phone, saying, "Mrs. Grover, our head bookkeeper, was a good friend of Maggie's. They had lunch together almost every day." Into the phone she said, "Mrs. Grover, there's a policeman here to talk to you about Maggie." The receptionist put down the phone and said, "She'll be out in a minute." She smiled. I smiled back.
We were exchanging about our eighth and ninth smiles when an efficient-looking woman of about forty came into the waiting room. "Officer?" she asked.
"Mrs. Grover," I answered, "I'm Officer Underhill, Los Angeles Police Department. Could I talk with you?"
"Certainly," she said, very businesslike. "Would you like to come to my office?"
I was enjoying my role but her brusque manner was unnerving. "Yeah, sure," I replied.
We walked down a dingy hallway. I could hear great numbers of sewing machines whirring behind closed doors. Mrs. Grover sat me down in a wooden chair in her sparsely furnished office. She lit a cigarette, settled behind her desk, and said, "Poor Maggie. What a godawful way to die. Who do you think did it?"
"I don't know. That's why I'm here."
"I read in the papers that you people think it was a burglar. Is that true?"
"Maybe. I understand you and Maggie Cadwallader were good friends."
"In a sense," Mrs. Grover replied. "We ate together every workday, but we never saw each other socially."
"Was there a reason for that?"
"What do you mean?"
"What I mean, Mrs. Grover, is that I'm trying to get a handle on this woman. What kind of person was she? Her habits, her likes, dislikes, the people she associated with, that kind of thing?"
Mrs. Grover stared at me, smoking intently. "I see," she said. "Well, if it's helpful I can tell you this: Maggie was a very bright, disturbed woman. I think she was a pathological liar. She told me stories about herself and later told stories that contradicted the earlier ones. I think she had a drinking problem, and spent her nights alone, reading."
"What kind of stories did she tell you?"
"About her origins. One day she was from New York, the next day the Midwest. She once told me she had a child out of wedlock, from a 'lost love,' then the very next day she tells me she's a virgin! I sensed that she was very lonely, so once I tried to arrange a dinner date for her with a nice bachelor friend of my husband's. She wouldn't do it. She was terrified. She was a cultured person, Maggie, and we had many lovely conversations about the theater, but she told me such crazy things."
"Such as?"
"Such as the nonsense about the baby back east. She showed me a photo once. It broke my heart. She had obviously clipped it from a magazine. It was so sad."
"Do you know of any men in her life, Mrs. Grover?"
"No, Officer, none. I really do believe she died a virgin."
"Well," I said, standing up, "thank you for your time, Mrs. Grover. You've been very helpful."
"She deserved so much better, Officer. Please find her killer."
"I will," I said, meaning it.
I wasn't much good on the beat that night. My mind was elsewhere. I knew I would need a very fast transfer to day watch in order to continue my investigation at night. I thought over my options—requests to Jurgensen? To the head of the Detective squad? Going on sick leave? All too chancy.
The following morning I drove to the station and knocked on Captain Jurgensen's door. He greeted me warmly, surprised to see me in the daytime. I told him what I wanted: I had a very sick friend from my orphanage days who needed someone to look after him at night while his wife went to work at Douglas Aircraft. I wanted day watch temporarily, to help out my friend, and to better acquaint myself with the area I was serving in.
Jurgensen put down his copy of Richard III and said, "Starting today, Underhill. We've got a man on vacation. No solo, though. No golden boy stuff. just walk the beat with a partner. Now go to work."
At eleven-thirty that night I committed my first crime as an adult. I drove up to Hollywood, parked in a gas station lot and walked up to Maggie Cadwallader's apartment on Harold Way. Wearing gloves, I picked the lock on the door and made my way through the dark apartment to the bedroom. I carried a pocket flashlight, and by risking using it every few seconds I could tell that all of Maggie's personal belongings had been cleaned out, presumably to better show the apartment to prospective new tenants when the publicity of her death died down.
In the bedroom, holding the flashlight awkwardly, I unscrewed the bedpost that had contained Maggie's "priceless love gift." It was gone. I replaced the post and unscrewed the other one: nothing there. The two remaining ones were solid, melded into the bedstead. It was as I had hoped. Still, there was double-checking to be done.
I drove to Hollywood Station, parked, walked in and showed my badge to the desk sergeant. "I'm with Seventy-seventh dicks," I told him. "Is there anyone upstairs I can talk to?"
"Give it a try," he replied, bored.
The squad room was deserted, except for a tired old cop writing reports. I walked in like I owned the place, and the old-timer looked up only briefly from his paperwork. When I didn't see what I wanted lying around in plain sight, I cleared my throat to get his attention.
He looked up again, this time displaying bloodshot eyes and a weary voice. "Yes?" he said.
I tried to sound brisk and older than my years. "Underhill, Seventy-seventh Street dicks. I'm working South Central pawnshop detail. The loot told me to come up here and check the property report on that dead dame, Cadwallader. We find a lot of stuff pawned down in the Seventy-seventh that got clouted in Hollywood and West L.A. The lieutenant figured maybe he could help you out."