by James Ellroy
“Yo there, Underhill,” he said to me as Sergeant McDonald walked away from us. “Welcome to the Congo.”
“Thanks,” I said and stuck out my hand, instantly regretting it as Norsworthy crushed it in his huge fist.
He laughed. “You like that old handshake of mine? I been workin’ on it with one o’ them hand-squeezer babies. I’m the champeen arm wrestler of this station.”
“I believe you. What are we going to do on the beat tonight, Norsworthy?”
“Call me Nors. What should I call you?”
“Fred.”
“All right there, Fred. Tonight we’re gonna take a long walk up Central Avenue and let our presence be known. They got call boxes every two blocks, and we call the station every hour for instructions. Old Mac at the desk lets us know where there’s trouble brewin’. I gotta key for the call boxes. Them boxes is ironclad. If we don’t keep ’em all sealed up, them delinquents’d be bustin’ into ’em and makin’ all kinds of funny noises.
“We break up lots o’ unlawful assemblies. An unlawful assembly is two or more n———s hangin’ around after dark. We lean on known troublemakers, which is just about every wise-ass on the street. We check out the bars and liquor stores and haul out the bad jigaboos. That’s where this job gets to be fun. You like to whomp on n———s, Fred?”
“I’ve never tried it,” I said. “Is it fun?”
Nors laughed again. “You got a sense of humor. I heard ’bout you. You dispatched two taco-benders to the big frijole patch in the sky when you was workin’ Wilshire. You a genuine hero. But you gotta be some kind of fuck-up or you wouldn’t a got transferred here. You my kind of cop. We gonna be great buddies.”
Norsworthy impulsively grabbed for my hand and crushed it again. I pulled it away before he could break any bones. “Whoa, partner,” I said, “I need that hand to write reports with.”
Norsworthy laughed. “You gonna be needin’ that right hand for lots more’n writin’ reports in this here division, white boy,” he said.
If Norsworthy was less than sensitive, then he was more than instructive. Grudgingly, despite his racism and crudeness, I started to like him. I expected him to be brutal, but he wasn’t: he was stern and civil with the people we dealt with on the street, and when violence was required in subduing unarmed suspects his method was, by Seventy-seventh Street standards, mild—he would grasp the person in a fierce bear hug, squeeze them until their limbs took on a purple sheen, then drop them to the pavement, unconscious. It worked.
When we patrolled Central Avenue south of 100th Street, an area Norsworthy called “Darkest Africa,” nobody save the far-gone drunks, hopheads, and the unknowing would give us anything but frightened nods. Norsworthy was so secure in his knowledge of how dangerous he was that he granted the Negroes whom he privately maligned a stern respect, almost by rote. He never had to raise his voice. His gargantuan, tobacco-chewing presence was enough, and I, as his partner, caught the edge of the awed, fearful respect he received.
So our partnership jelled—for a while. We walked the beat and made lots of arrests for drunkenness, possession of narcotics, and assault. We would go into bars and arrest brawlers. Usually, Norsworthy would quell an incipient brawl just by walking in and clearing his throat, but sometimes we would have to go in with billy clubs flying and beat the brawlers to the ground, then handcuff them and call for a patrol car to take them to the station.
The “unlawful assemblies” that Norsworthy had told me about were easy to disperse. We would walk coolly by them, Nors would say, “Good evening, fellows,” and the group would seem to vanish into thin air.
Thus the job went. But it started to bore me, and I started to resent my partner. His constant stream of talk—about his service in Italy during the war, his athletic prowess, the size of his dick, “n———s,” “kikes,” “greaseballs,” and “gooks”—vexed and depressed me and undercut the wonder and strangeness of life in Watts. I wanted to be free of the awesome and fearful presence of my partner to be able to pursue the wonder in peace on my own, so I concocted a plan: I convinced Norsworthy that we could be twice as effective patrolling separately, on opposite sides of the street, within sight and earshot of each other. It took a lot of convincing, but finally he bought it, on the proviso that since it was against the rules, we get together once an hour to compare notes and deliberate on potential hot spots that might require the both of us.
So I was freed, somewhat, to let my mind drift and wander with fragments of the dusky neon night music. I grieved less and less for Wacky, and my once-rampant curiosity about Lorna Weinberg abated.
When I became more comfortable with solitary patrol, I would ditch out on Norsworthy completely and hit the numbered side streets off Central—tawdry rows of small, white-framed houses, tar-paper shacks, and overcrowded tenement buildings. I bought three pairs of expensive binoculars and secreted them on the rooftops of buildings on my beat. Late at night, I would scan lighted windows with them, looking for crime and wonder. I found it. The whole gamut, from homosexuality—which I didn’t bother with—to wild jazz sessions, to heated lovemaking, to tears. I also found dope addiction—which I did act on, always relaying my information on reefer smoking and worse to the dicks, never trying to grandstand and make the collar myself. I wanted to prove I was a team player, something I never was at Wilshire, and I wanted class-A fitness reports to go with the sergeancy that would be mine shortly after my twenty-eighth birthday.
And I made collars, good ones. I found myself a crackerjack snitch, a crazy-acting old shoeshine man who hated hopheads and pushers. Willy saw and retained everything, and he had the perfect cover. The neighborhood pimps, lowlifes, and pushers came to him to “glaze their alligators,” and they talked freely in front of him—he was considered to be a blubbering idiot, rendered that way by thirty years of sniffing shoe polish.
He went along with the act, working for peanuts at his shine stand and selling information to me for a sizable chunk of my pay. Through Willy I was able to effect the arrest of a whole slew of grasshoppers and heroin pushers, including a guy wanted on a murder warrant back east.
Norsworthy resented my successes, feeling that I had usurped his power, making his fitness reports look bad by comparison. I felt his resentment and his frustration building. I knew what he was going to do, and took immediate steps to circumvent it.
I went to the commander of the detective squad and leveled. I told him of the collars I had given his men, and how I obtained the information that led to them—I had been walking my beat, at night, alone, free of my intrusive patrol partner.
The grizzled, skinny old lieutenant liked this. He thought I was a tough guy. I told him old big-dick Bob Norsworthy was about to blow all this to hell, that he was pissed off and wanted to horn in on my action, and was about to rat on me to Captain Jurgensen for ditching out on the beat.
The old lieutenant shook his head. “We can’t let that happen, can we, son?” he said. “As of now, Underhill, you are the only solitary foot patrolman in this station. God have mercy on your soul if you ever run into trouble, or if Norsworthy ever quits the department.”
“Thanks, Lieutenant,” I said, “you won’t regret it.”
“That remains to be seen. One word of advice, son. Watch out for ambition. Sometimes it hurts more than it helps. Now close the door behind you, I want to turn on my fan.”
7
I was at home the following Wednesday frying Night Train his morning hamburger when he brought me the news that was to change my life forever.
My landlady, Mrs. Gates, had been complaining about Train chewing up her plants, shrubs, garden chairs, newspapers, and magazines. She was a dog lover, but frequently told me that Night Train was more “voodoo beast” than dog, and that I should have him “fixed” to curb his rambunctiousness. So when I heard a shrill, “Mr. Underhill!” coming from the front lawn, I
put on my widest smile and walked outside ready to do some placating.
Mrs. Gates was standing above Night Train, swatting him with a broom. He seemed to be enjoying it, rolling in the grass on his back with the morning paper wedged firmly between his salivating jaws.
“You give me my paper, voodoo dog!” the woman was shouting. “You can chew it up when I’m finished reading it. Give it to me!”
I laughed. I had come to love Night Train in the months since Wacky’s death, and he never failed to amuse me.
“Mr. Underhill, you make that evil dog stop chewing my newspaper! Make him give it to me!”
I bent down and scratched Night Train’s belly until he dropped the paper and started to nuzzle me. I flipped it open to show Mrs. Gates that no damage had been done, then caught the headlines and went numb.
“Woman Found Strangled in Hollywood Apartment” it read. Below the headline was a photograph of Maggie Cadwallader—the same Maggie with whom I had coupled in February, shortly before Wacky’s death.
I pushed Train and the caterwauling Mrs. Gates away, then sat down and read:
A young woman was found strangled to death in her Hollywood apartment late Monday night by curious neighbors who heard sounds and went to investigate. The woman, Margaret Cadwallader, 36, of 2311 Harold Way, Hollywood, was employed as a bookkeeper at the Small World Import-Export Company on Virgil Street in Los Angeles. Police were summoned to the scene, and the woman’s body was removed pending an autopsy. However, assistant L.A. County medical examiner David Beyless was quoted as saying, “It was a strangulation, pure and simple.” Detectives from the Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department have sealed the premises, and are looking at burglary as the motive.
“I think the woman was killed when she awakened to her apartment being ransacked. The state of the apartment confirms this. That will be the starting point of our investigation. We expect a break at any time,” said Sgt. Arthur Holland, the officer in charge.
The victim, originally from Waukesha, Wisconsin, had been a resident of the Los Angeles area for two years. She is survived by her mother, Mrs. Marshall Cadwallader, of Waukesha. Friends from her place of employment are tending to the funeral arrangements.
I put the newspaper down and stared at the grass.
“Mr. Underhill? Mr. Underhill?” Mrs. Gates was saying. I ignored her and walked back to my apartment and sat on the couch, staring at the floor.
Maggie Cadwallader, a lonely woman, dead. My one-night conquest, dead. Her death was not unlike that of the woman whose body Wacky and I had discovered. Probably the deaths were unrelated, yet there was the slightest bit of physical evidence linking them: I had met Maggie at the Silver Star. Her first time, she told me. But she may well have returned, frequently. I wracked my brain for the name of the woman whose body Wacky and I had found, and came up with it: Leona Jensen. She had had matches from the Silver Star in an ashtray filled with matchbooks. It was slight, but enough.
I changed clothes, putting on my light blue gabardine summer suit, made coffee and mourned for Maggie—thinking more of her little boy in the orphanage back east who would never see his mother. Maggie, so lonely, so much in need of what I and probably no man could have given her. It was a sad night I had spent with her. My curiosity and her loneliness had been left unresolved, anger on her part and self-disgust the only resolution on mine. And now this, leaving me feeling somehow responsible.
I knew what I had to do. I had three quick cups of coffee and locked Night Train in the apartment with a half dozen big soup bones, then got my car and drove to my old home, Wilshire Station.
I parked in the Sears lot a block away and telephoned the desk, asking for Detective Sergeant DiCenzo. He came on the line a minute later, sounding harried. “DiCenzo here, who’s this?”
“Sergeant, this is Officer Underhill. Do you remember me?”
“Sure, kid, I remember you. You got famous right after I met you. What’s up?”
“I’d like to talk to you briefly, as soon as possible.”
“I’m gonna get lunch in about five minutes, across the street at the Shamrock. I’ll be there for the better part of an hour.”
“I’ll be there,” I said, then hung up.
The Shamrock was a bar-lunch joint specializing in corned beef sandwiches. I found DiCenzo at the back, wolfing a “special” and chasing it down with a beer. He greeted me warmly. “Sit down. You look good, college man. Too bad about your partner. Where you been? I ain’t seen you around.”
I filled him in as quickly as I could. He seemed satisfied, but surprised that I liked working in Watts.
“So what do you want, kid?” he asked finally.
I tried to sound interested, yet offhand. “You remember that dead woman my partner and I found on Twenty-eighth Street?”
“Yeah, a beautiful young dame. A real pity.”
“Right. I was wondering what the upshot of your investigation was. Did you ever find the killer?”
DiCenzo looked at me curiously. “No, we never did. We rousted a lot of burglars, but no go. We checked out the dame’s personal life, which was nothing hot—no enemies, all her friends and relatives had alibis. That print you circled on the wall belonged to the dame herself. We got a couple of dozen crazies who confessed, but they were just nuts. It’s just one of those things, kid. You win some, you lose some. How come you’re interested?”
“The woman looked like an old girlfriend of mine. Finding her dead got me, I guess.” I lowered my head, feigning disbelief at the awesomeness of death.
DiCenzo bought it. “You’ll get over these things,” he said. Lowering his voice, he added, “You’ll have to, if you wanna stay on the job.”
I got up to go. “Thanks, Sergeant,” I said.
“Anytime, kid. Be good. Take care of yourself.” DiCenzo smiled heartily and went back to devouring his lunch.
* * *
—
I drove up to Hollywood Station on Wilcox just south of Sunset and lucked out, walking brazenly through the entrance hall, nodding at the desk sergeant and walking straight upstairs to the detective squad room, where a briefing on Maggie Cadwallader’s murder had just begun.
The small room was packed with at least twenty dicks standing and sitting at desks, listening as a portly older cop explained what he wanted done. I stood in the doorway, trying to blend in like just another off-duty officer. No one seemed to notice me.
“I think we got burglary,” the older cop was saying. “The woman’s apartment was ransacked but good. No prints—the only prints we got belong to the victim and her landlady she used to play cards with. The man from downstairs who found the body left some, too. They’ve been questioned and are not suspects. We got no recent murders on the books that match this. Now here’s what I want: I want every burglar known to use violence brought in and questioned. There was no rape, but I want all burglars with sex offenses on their rap sheets brought in anyway. I want all burglary reports in the Hollywood area for the past six months that resulted in arrest and dismissal checked out. Phone the D.A.’s office for disposition of all cases. I want to know how many of these shitheads we caught are back out on the street, then I want all of them brought in and questioned.
“I’ve got two men talking to neighbors. I want to know about what valuables this Cadwallader dame owned. From there we can lean on fences and check out the pawnshops. I want all the dope addicts on the boulevard brought in and leaned on hard. This is probably a panic killing, and a hophead looking for a fix might strangle a dame and then leave without taking anything. I’ve got two men questioning people in the neighborhood about that night. If anyone saw or heard anything, we’ll know about it. That’s it for now. Let’s break it up.”
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.
