We were all wearing Smith and Wesson .38 police specials in shoulder holsters, which gave the proceedings a ritualistic air. I was nervous, high on adrenaline and phony righteous indignation. I was prepared for anything, including the end of my career, and that strengthened my resolve to defeat these two obdurate-looking policemen.
I pulled up a chair, propped up my feet on a ledge of recruiting posters, and smiled disarmingly while Quinn and Milner dug cigarettes and Zippo lighters out of their suit coats and lit up. Milner, who was the slightly taller and older of the two, offered the pack to me.
"I don't smoke, Sergeant," I said, keeping my voice clipped and severe, the voice of a man who takes trouble from no one.
"Good man," Quinn said, smiling, "wish I didn't."
"I quit once, during the Depression," Milner said. "I had a good-looking girlfriend who hated the smell of tobacco. My wife don't like it either, but she ain't so good-looking."
"Then why'd you marry her?" Quinn asked.
"'Cause she told me I looked like Clark Gable!" Milner snorted.
Quinn got a big bang out of that. "My wife told me I looked like Bela Lugosi and I slugged her," he said.
"You should have bit her neck," Milner cracked.
"I do, every night." Quinn guffawed, blowing out a huge lungful of smoke and pulling up a chair facing me. Milner laughed along and opened a tiny window at the back of the room, letting in rays of hazy sunshine and a flood of traffic noise.
"Officer Underhill," he said, "my partner and I are here today because doubts have been raised about your fitness to serve the department." Milner's voice had metamorphosed into a precise professorial tone. He started a dramatic pause, drawing on his cigarette, and I answered, mimicking his inflections:
"Sergeant, I have grave doubts about the brass hats who sent you here to question me. Has Internal Affairs questioned Dudley Smith?"
Milner and Quinn looked at each other. Their look was informed with the humorous secret knowledge of longtime partners.
"Officer," Quinn said, "do you think we are here because a queer slashed his wrists in County Jail yesterday?" I didn't answer. Quinn continued: "Do you think we're here because you initiated, illegally, the arrest of an innocent man?"
Milner took over. "Officer, do you think we're here because you have brought great disgrace on the department?"
He took a folded-up newspaper out of his back pocket and read from it: "'Hero cop quick on the trigger? L.A.P.D. in hot water? Thanks to crack legal beagle Walter Canfield and a courageous anonymous witness, Eddie Engels almost walked out the door of County Jail a free man. Instead, humiliated and tortured by his ordeal of false arrest, he left under a sheet. Canfield and the man with whom Engels spent the night of August 12—the night he was alleged to have murdered Margaret Cadwallader—tragically got to the authorities too late with their information. Eddie Engels slashed his wrists with a contraband razor blade in his cell on the eleventh floor of the Hall of Justice yesterday afternoon, the victim of gunslinger justice.
"'Our Seattle correspondent contacted the victim's father, Wilhelm Engels, a pharmacist in suburban Seattle. "I can't believe that God would do such a thing," the white-haired old gentleman said. "There must be an investigation into the policemen who arrested my Edward. Edward was a gentle, lovely boy who never hurt anyone. We must have justice." Mr. Engels told our correspondent that Walter Canfield has offered his services, free of charge, in filing suit for false arrest against the Los Angeles Police Department. "Mr. Engels will have his justice," Canfield told reporters shortly before he learned of Engels's death, "the justice his son was denied. This is clearly a case of a quick-on-the-trigger young cop out to make a name for himself."'"
Milner paused. My vision was starting to darken at the edges, but I shook my head and it cleared.
"Go on," I said.
Milner coughed and continued. "'Officer Frederick U. Underhill, canonized within the L.A.P.D. and by Los Angeles newspapers earlier this year for killing two holdup men, brought the 'same rash justice to his investigation of Eddie Engels. Veteran L.A.P.D. Detective Lieutenant Dudley Smith told our reporter: "Fred Underhill is an ambitious young man out to make chief of police in record time. He caught myself and several others up in his crusade to get Eddie Engels. I admit I went along with it. I admit I was at fault. Last night I lit a candle for poor Eddie's family. I also lit one for Fred Underhill and prayed that he learns a lesson from this tragedy he perpetrated."'"
I started to laugh. My laughter sounded hysterical to my own ears. Milner and Quinn didn't think it was funny. Quinn snapped: "This article, which was in the L.A. Daily News, goes on to call for your resignation and an investigation into the entire department. What do you think about that, Underhill?"
I calmed myself and stared at my inquisitors. "I feel that that article was written in a very poor prose style. Convoluted, hysterical, hyperbolic. Hemingway would disapprove of it. F. Scott Fitzgerald would turn over in his grave. Shakespeare would be dismayed. That's what I think."
"Underhill," Milner said, "you know the department takes care of its own, don't you?"
"Sure. Witness that lunatic Dudley Smith. He'll come out of this thing smelling like a rose and probably make Captain. Ahhh, yes. Grand!"
"Underhill, the department was prepared to stand by you until we did a little checking up on you."
I started to go cold in the hot, smoky room. The traffic noise on Los Angeles Street sounded alternately very loud and very soft.
"Oh, yeah?" I said. "Come up with anything interesting?"
"Yes," Quinn said, "we did. Let me quote. 'Sarah had high full breasts with cone-shaped dark brown nipples. Coarse hairs surrounded them. She was an experienced lover. We moved well together. She anticipated my motions and accommodated them with fluid grace.' Want some more, Underhill?"
"You filthy bastards," I said.
"Did you know that Sarah Kefalvian is a Communist, Underhill? She's listed in the rolls of five organizations that have been classified as Commie fronts. Did you know that?" Milner leaned over me, his knuckles white from grasping the table. "Do you fuck a lot of Commies, Underhill?" he hissed.
"Are you a Communist, Freddy?" Quinn asked.
"Go fuck yourself," I said.
Milner leaned over further; I could smell his tobacco breath. "I think you are a Communist. And a filthy pervert. Decent men don't write about the women they fuck. Decent men don't fuck Commies."
I stuck my hands under my thighs to control their shaking and to keep myself from hitting someone. My head was pounding and my vision blurred from the blackness throbbing behind my eyes. "You forgot to mention I've got red upholstery on my car. You forgot to mention I also fuck Koreans, Republicans, and Democrats. When I was in high school I had a redheaded girlfriend. I've got a red cashmere sweater, you forgot to mention that."
"There's one thing you didn't forget to mention," Quinn said. "Listen: 'I told Sarah about dodging the draft in '42. She is the only person besides Wacky to know that. Telling her made me feel strangely free.'"
Quinn spat on the floor. "I served in the war, Underhill. I lost a brother at Guadalcanal. All good Americans served. Anyone who dodged the draft is a no-good Commie traitor, and not worthy to carry a badge. You have brought disgrace to the department. The chief himself has been told of what we found in your diary. He ordered this investigation. We only had a little time to search your apartment. God knows what other Commie degeneracy we would have found, if we had had more time. You have two choices: resign, or face departmental trial on charges of moral turpitude. If you don't resign, we will take your diary to the feds. Draft-dodging is a federal offense."