There was a liquor cabinet with one bottle each of Scotch, bourbon, gin, and brandy. There were no photographs of family or loved ones. It was a maddeningly impersonal habitat, the home of a phantom.
I went into the kitchen. It was as I expected, compact and very tidy; a breakfast nook, a sink that held no dishes, a refrigerator with nothing but a cold-water bottle inside, and a 1950 calendar tacked to the wall with no notations on any of its pages.
Which left the bathroom. Maybe old Eddie cut loose in there. Maybe the bathtub would be filled with mermaids or alligators. No such luck—the bathroom was pink tile, spotless, with a giant mirror above the sink, and a full-length mirror on the inside of the door. Eddie, the narcissist.
Above the toilet was a medicine cabinet. I opened it, expecting to find toothpaste and shaving gear, but found instead a half-dozen tiny shelves holding rolled-up neckties. Eddie, the sartorially splendid, used the full-length mirror to ensure a perfect Windsor knot. I ran a hand over the collection of silk, arranged according to color and style. What a mania for order; what a mania for small perfections. Then I noticed what seemed like a strange anomaly—one silk tie, a green one, was sticking out further than the others. I poked at it with a finger, and felt something solid inside. I pulled the tie out carefully and unrolled it. Maggie Cadwallader's diamond brooch fell into my hand.
I stared at it for long moments, shocked. After a minute or so, my calm flew out the window and my mind started churning with plans. I rolled the brooch back into the tie and replaced it in the little cabinet exactly as I had found it. I turned the bathroom light off and walked through the dark apartment to the front door. I locked it behind me, checking the jamb for signs of entry. There were none.
All the lights in the courtyard were off. I stood there a few moments, savoring the wonder of the night and what I had just discovered, then walked behind the bungalows. There was a corrugated overhang that sheltered the tenants' cars. The car on the end, shiny in the moonlight, was a bright red '49 Ford with a white ragtop. A foxtail dangled from the radio antenna. I flicked it with my finger.
"You killed Maggie Cadwallader and God knows who else, you degenerate son of a bitch," I said, "and I'm going to see that you pay."
9
My case. My suspect. My revenge? My collar? My glory and gravy train? All these thoughts went through my head the following day as I walked my beat on sun-beaten Central Avenue.
A decision was due, and I would have to act either rationally or quixotically. I gave my options more thought, and as my tour ended I made a decision—a humbling, but safe one. I changed back into my civvies and knocked on Captain Jurgensen's door.
"Enter," he called through it. I walked in and saluted. Jurgensen dog-eared his paperback Othello and looked at me. "Yes, Underhill?" he said.
"Sir," I said, "I know who killed that woman who was found strangled in Hollywood last week. He may have killed others. I can't make the collar myself. I need to turn my evidence over to someone who can formalize an investigation, so I came to you."
"Perdition, catch my soul," Jurgensen said, then sighed and drew a pipe and pouch from his desk drawer. I stood at parade rest while he took his time packing the pipe and lighting it. He seemed to have forgotten I was there. I was about to clear my throat when he said, "For Christ's sake, Underhill, sit down and tell me about it."
It took me twenty minutes, by the electric clock on the captain's wall.
I covered everything, except my coupling with Maggie Cadwallader. I told him of the similarities between the two killings. I told him of my noticing the matches in Leona Jensen's apartment last February, and how that was the link that drew me to the Silver Star. I omitted my knowledge of the diamond brooch.
During the course of telling my story, I watched Jurgensen's normally stoic expression veer between curiosity, anger, and some kind of bitter amusement. When I finished he stared at me in silence. I stared back, sensing that phony contrition for the liberties I had taken wouldn't be believed. We stared at each other some more.
The captain looked very grave. He started to tamp his pipe bowl into his palm very slowly and deliberately. "Underhill," he said, "you are a supremely arrogant young man. In the course of what you arrogantly call your 'investigation,' you have committed infractions of departmental regulations that could end your career; you have committed two felonies that could send you to San Quentin; and implicitly you have held the detectives of two divisions and the Homicide Bureau up to ridicule—"
"Sir, I—"
"Don't interrupt, Underhill! I am a captain and you are a patrolman, and don't forget it." Jurgensen's face was very red, and there was an angry blue vein throbbing in his neck.
"Sir, I apologize."
"Very well. I could crucify you for your arrogance, but I won't."
"Thank you, sir."
"Don't thank me yet, Officer. You are a very gifted young man, but your arrogance supersedes your gifts. Arrogance cannot be tolerated in police officers; to tolerate it would be to promote anarchy. The Los Angeles Police Department is a superbly structured bureaucracy, one you have sworn allegiance to. Your actions have reviled the department. Know that, Underhill. Know that your ambition is threatening to kill you as a policeman. Do you understand me?"
I cleared my throat. "Sir, I do believe I acted rashly, and I apologize to you—and to the department—for that. But I think my motives were sound. I wanted justice."
Jurgensen snorted and shook his head. "No, Underhill, you didn't. I would accept that from many young officers, but not from you. Beyond self-aggrandizement, I'm not sure that even you know what you want, but it certainly isn't justice. You laugh at the penal code of this state, and tell me you want justice? Don't insult my intelligence."
Jurgensen's anger was winding down. I tried to deflect his attack. "Sir, with all due respect, what do you think of my case?"
"Your 'case'? I think that as of this moment you have nothing but a strong suspect and an incredible gift of intuition. This man Engels is so far nothing but a gambler and a womanizer, neither of which is criminal behavior. He's also probably a homo, which doesn't make him a murderer. You have no hard evidence. I don't think much of your 'case.'"
"And my intuition, Captain?"
"I trust your intuition, Underhill, or I would have suspended you from duty half an hour ago."
"And, sir?"
"And . . . what do you want, Underhill?"
"I want to be part of the investigation, and I want to go to the Detective Bureau when I pass the sergeant's exam later this year."
Jurgensen laughed bitterly. He reached into his desk, pulled out a scratch pad, and wrote something on it, ripping the page free and handing it to me. "This is my home address, in Glendale. Be there tonight at eight-thirty. I want you to tell your story to Dudley Smith. He'll decide the course of this investigation. Now leave me alone."
When he said the words "Dudley Smith," Jurgensen's cold blue eyes had bored into me like poison darts, waiting for me to show fear or apprehension. I didn't.
"Yes, sir," I said, then got up and walked out the door without saluting.
Dudley Smith was a lieutenant in the homicide bureau, a fearsome personage and legendary cop who had killed five men in the line of duty. Irish-born and Los Angeles-raised, he still clung tenaciously to his high-pitched, musical brogue, which was as finely tuned as a Stradivarius. He often lectured at the academy on interrogation techniques, and I remembered how that brogue could be alternately soothing or brutal, inquisitive or dumbfounded, sympathetic or filled with pious rage.