by James Ellroy
“Knock, knock,” Dudley bellowed in his brogue. “Who’s there? Dudley Smith, so queers beware. Ha-ha-ha! Police officers, Brubaker, here to assure our constituency that we are on the job, ever vigilant!”
Lawrence Brubaker stood in the middle of the office, his thin body trembling.
“What’s the matter, man?!” Dudley screamed. “Have you nothing to say?”
I took my cue. “Leave the gentleman alone, Dud. He’s no queer, he’s a property owner.” I slapped Dudley on the back, hard. “I think that Vice sergeant had it wrong. This is no homo hangout, is it, Mr. Brubaker?”
“I don’t ask my customers for their sexual preferences, Officer,” Brubaker said. His voice was light.
“Well put. Why should you?” I said. “I’m Detective Underhill and this is my partner Detective Smith.” I clapped Dudley’s broad back again, this time even harder. Dudley winced, but his brown eyes twinkled at me in silent conspiracy. I pointed to a sofa at the back of the little office. “Let’s all sit down, shall we?”
Brubaker shrugged his frail shoulders and took the chair facing the sofa, while Dudley sat on his desk, dangling one leg over the edge and banging his heel against the wastebasket. I sat on the couch and stretched out my long legs until they were almost touching Brubaker’s feet.
“How long have you owned this bar, Mr. Brubaker?” I asked, taking out a pen and note pad.
“Since 1946,” he said sullenly, his eyes moving from Dudley to me.
“I see,” I went on. “Mr. Brubaker, we’ve had numerous complaints about your bar being used as a pickup place for bookmakers. Plainclothes officers have told us this is a hangout for known gamblers.”
“And a homo den of iniquity!” Dudley bellowed. “What was the name of that flashy-dressing gambler we rousted, Freddy?”
“Eddie Engels, wasn’t it?” I asked innocently.
“That’s the pervert!” Dudley exclaimed. “He was taking bets at every queer joint in Hollywood.”
Brubaker’s eyes went alive with recognition when I mentioned Engels’s name, but no more. He was holding his ground stoically.
“Do you know Eddie Engels, Mr. Brubaker?” I asked.
“Yes, I know Eddie.”
“Does he frequent your bar?”
“Not really, not for a while.”
“But he did in the past?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The first few years I owned the Cabin.”
“Why did he quit coming here?”
“I don’t know. He moved out of the area. He broke up with the woman he was living with. She used to come here frequently, and when they broke up Eddie stopped coming around.”
“Eddie Engels used to live here in Venice?” I asked mildly.
“Yes, he and Janet lived in a house near the canals, around Twenty-ninth and Pacific.”
I let my breath out slowly. “When was this?”
“The late forties. From sometime in ’47 to early ’49, as I recall. Why all this interest in Eddie?” Brubaker inched his feet closer to my outstretched legs so that they touched my ankles. I felt a queasy sort of revulsion come up, but I didn’t move.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dudley swivel his neck. “Enough horseshit!” he bellowed. “Brubaker, are you and Eddie Engels lovers?”
“What the world, are you—” Brubaker exclaimed.
“Shut up, you goddamned degenerate! Yes or no?”
“I don’t have to—”
“The hell you say. This is an official police investigation, and you will answer our questions!”
Dudley got up and advanced toward Brubaker, who fell over in his chair, got up and backed himself into the wall, trembling.
I came between them as Dudley closed his hands into fists. “Easy, Dud,” I said, pushing him gently at the shoulders. “Mr. Brubaker is cooperating, and we’re investigating bookmaking, not homosexuality.”
“The hell you say, Freddy, I want to get a handle on this degenerate Engels. I want to know what makes him tick.”
I sighed, and released Dudley. Then I sighed again. I took Brubaker by the arm and led him to the couch. He sat down and I sat down beside him, letting our knees touch lightly. “Mr. Brubaker, I apologize for my partner, but he has a point. Could you tell us about your association with Eddie Engels?”
Brubaker nodded assent. “Eddie and I go back to the war. We were stationed together down at Long Beach. We became friends. We went to the races together. We stayed friends after the war. Eddie is a very popular guy at the racetrack, and he brought lots of people here to the Cabin. Lots of beautiful women, gay and straight. I introduced him to Janet, Janet Valupeyk, and they moved in together, here in Venice. He still comes by here once in a while, but not so much since he broke it off with Janet. We’re still friends. That’s about it.”
“And he likes boys, right?” Dudley hissed.
“That’s none of my business, Officer.”
“You tell me, Brubaker, now!”
“He’s a switch-hitter,” Brubaker said, and stared into his lap, ashamed at divulging that intimacy. Dudley snorted in triumph and cracked his knuckles.
“What does Eddie do for a living, Mr. Brubaker?” I asked gently.
“He gambles. He gambles big and he usually wins. He’s a winner.”
Dudley caught my eye and nodded toward the door. Brubaker continued to stare downward.
“Thank you for your cooperation, Mr. Brubaker. You’ve been very helpful. Good day.” I got up from the sofa to leave.
Dudley got in a parting shot: “You don’t breathe a word of this to a soul; you got that, you scum?”
Brubaker moved his head in acquiescence. I gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze as I followed Dudley out the door.
* * *
—
Walking back to my car, Dudley let out a big whoop. “Freddy, lad, you were brilliant! As was I, of course. And we got solid evidence—handsome Eddie was living two blocks away when that tragic young woman was croaked in ’48. Just think, lad!”
“Yeah. Are we going to put someone on that?”
“We can’t, lad. Mike and Dick are tailing Engels twenty-four hours a day. There’s just the four of us on this investigation, and besides, the trail’s too cold—three and a half years cold. But don’t worry, lad. When we pop Eddie for Margaret Cadwallader, he’ll confess to all his sins, don’t you fear.”
“Where to now?”
“This Janet Valupeyk bimbo. She lives in the Valley. She was the other credit reference for handsome Eddie. We can mix business with pleasure, lad; I know a great place on Ventura Boulevard—corned beef that melts in your mouth. I’m buying, lad, in honor of your stellar performance.”
With our guts full of corned beef and cabbage, Dudley and I drove to Janet Valupeyk’s house in Sherman Oaks.
“Let’s just hope old queer Larry didn’t call her ahead. Kid gloves with this one, lad,” he said, pointing at the large, white, one-story ranch-style house. “She’s obviously got dough and she’s got no record at all. It’s no crime being charmed by a lounge lizard like charming Eddie.”
We knocked and a handsome, full-bodied woman in her late thirties threw open the door. She was blurry eyed and wearing a wrinkled yellow summer dress.
“Yes?” she said, slurring slightly.
“We’re police officers, ma’am,” Dudley said, showing her his badge. “I’m Lieutenant Smith, this is Officer Underhill.”
The woman nodded at us, her eyes not quite focusing. “Yes?” She hesitated, then said, “Come in…please.”
We took seats uninvited, in the large air-conditioned living room. The woman plopped down in a comfortable armchair, looked at us and seemed to draw on hidden resources in an effort to correctly modulate her voice: “I’m Janet Valupeyk,” she sa
id. “How can I help you?”
“By answering a few questions,” Dudley said, smiling. “This is an absolutely charming home, by the way. Are you an interior decorator?”
“No, I sell real estate. What is it?”
“Ahhh, yes. Ma’am, do you know a man named Eddie Engels?”
Janet Valupeyk gave a little tremor, cleared her throat and said calmly, “Yes, I knew Eddie. Why?”
“Ahhh, yes. You said ‘knew.’ You haven’t seen him recently, then?”
“No, I haven’t. Why?” Her voice was steady, but her composure seemed to be faltering.
“Miss Valupeyk, are you all right?” I asked.
“Shut up,” Dudley snapped.
I went on, “Miss Valupeyk, the purpose of our—”
“I said, shut up!” Dudley roared, his high-pitched brogue almost breaking.
Janet Valupeyk looked like she was about to break into tears.
Dudley whispered, “Wait for me in the car. I won’t be long.”
I walked outside and waited, sitting on the hood of my car and wondering what I had done to irk Dudley.
He came out half an hour later. His tone was conciliatory, but firm; his voice very low and patient, as if explaining something to an idiot child. “Lad, when I tell you to shut up, do it. Follow my lead. I had to play that woman very slowly. She was on dope, lad, and too confused to follow the questions of two men.”
“All right, Dudley,” I said, letting the slightest edge of pride go into my voice. “It won’t happen again.”
“Good, lad. I got more confirmation, lad. She lived with handsome Eddie for two years. She paid the bills for that no-good gigolo. He used to beat her up. Once he tried to choke her, but came to his senses. He’s a longtime cunt-hound, lad. He used to pick up girls even when he was living with lonely Janet. She was in love with him, lad, and he treated her like dirt. He bought whores and paid them to stand abuse. And he’s queer, lad. Queer as a three-dollar bill. Boys are his passion, and women his victims.”
I was amazed. “How did you get that out of her?”
Dudley laughed. “When I realized she was on dope, rather than booze, I checked out her medicine cabinet. There was a doctor’s prescription bottle of codeine pills. A hophead, lad, but a legal one. So I played on her fear of losing that prescription, and it all came out: Eddie jilted her for some muscle boy. She loves Eddie and she hates him and she loves codeine most of all. A tragedy, lad.”
Without being told, I took the long way back to downtown L.A. Laurel Canyon Boulevard, with its rustic, twisting streets would give me plenty of time to probe the man who was growing before my eyes in several different directions.
Dudley Smith was a wonder broker, but a brutal one, and I felt a very strange ambivalence about him. He was too sharp for elliptical games, so I came right out with it: “Tell me about the Dahlia,” I said.
Dudley feigned surprise. “The Dahlia? What Dahlia?”
“Very funny. The Dahlia.”
“Oh. Ahhh, yes. The Dahlia. What precisely was it you wanted to know, lad?”
“How far you had to go in your investigation, what you saw, what you had to do.” I turned to give Dudley a look that I hope conveyed equal parts interest and tight-lipped allegiance. He smiled demonically and I felt another little chill go through me.
“Watch the road, lad, and I’ll tell you. You’ve heard tales, have you?”
“Not really.”
“Then hear one now, from the horse’s mouth: I have seen many, many crimes on women, lad, and the crime on Elizabeth Short exceeded them all by a country mile—the atrocities committed on her defied even Satan’s logic. She was systematically tortured for days, and then sawed in half while she was still alive.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“Jesus Christ, indeed, lad. The investigation was three weeks old when I was called in. I was given a special assignment: check out all the psycho confessors that were being held without bail as material witnesses; the ones the dicks thought could actually have done it. There were thirty of them, lad, and they were the scum of the earth—degenerate mother-haters and baby-rapers and animal-fuckers. I eliminated twenty-two of them right away. Breaking an arm here and a jaw there, I confronted them with intimate facts about lovely Beth’s wounds. I gauged their reactions as I hit them and made them fear me more than Satan himself. None of them did it; they were guilty, filthy degenerates who wanted to be punished, and I obliged them. But none of them were guilty of the crime against lovely Beth.”
Dudley paused dramatically and stretched, waiting for me to ask him to continue.
I obliged: “And the other eight?”
“Ahhh, yes. My hard suspects; the ones whose reactions old Dudley wasn’t quite astute enough to gauge. Well, lad, I was astute enough to know that those eight had one thing in common: they were stark raving insane, slobbering, frothing-at-the-mouth lunatics capable of anything, which made them rather difficult to deal with. I was sure their insanity was of such an intensity that they could withstand any degree of physical duress. Besides, they thought they actually had croaked lovely Beth; they’d confessed to it, hadn’t they?
“The dicks I’d talked to told me they figured the killer had hung lovely Beth from a ceiling beam; there were rope burns on her ankles. That got me to thinking. I needed to shock these degenerate lunatics. I needed to break through their insanity. First I rented a friend’s warehouse. A big, grand, deserted place it was. Then I procured a fine-looking young female stiff from a pathologist at the morgue who owed old Dudley a favor. A big one, lad—old Dudley looked the other way for this fellow, and he belonged to old Dudley for life.
“Dick Carlisle and I snuck the stiff over to the warehouse late one night. I dyed her hair jet black, like the Dahlia’s. I stripped her nude, and tied her ankles with a rope, and Dick and I hoisted her up feet first and hung her from a low ceiling beam. Then Dick went and got our eight degenerates from the Hall of Justice jail. We let them view her, one at a time, lad, with appropriate props. One scum was a knife man; he had scores of arrests for knife fighting. I handed him a butcher knife and made him slice the corpse. He could hardly do it. He didn’t have it in him. Another filth was a child molester, recently paroled from Atascadero. His M.O. was asking little girls if he could kiss their private parts. I made him kiss the dead girl’s private parts, smell that dead sex flesh up close. He couldn’t do it. And on and on. I was looking for a reaction so vile, so unspeakable that I would know that this was the scum that killed Beth Short.”
I was stunned. Speechless. I felt my hands gripping the steering wheel so hard that I thought I would push it through the front of the car. My voice was breaking when I finally got it out: “And?”
“And, lad, I kept them there through the night, making them look at the corpse. I hit them, and Dick hit them, and we made them kiss the dead girl and fondle her while we questioned them.”
“And?”
“And, lad, none of them killed lovely Beth.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“Ahhh, yes. Jesus Christ. I didn’t get the fiend who killed the Dahlia, lad. I know in my heart of hearts that no one ever will. I took the young dead woman back to the morgue to be cremated. She was a lonely Jane Doe, who unknowingly served justice by her death. I went to confession the next morning. I told the father what I had done and asked for absolution. I got it. Then I went home and prayed to God and to Jesus and to the Blessed Virgin to let me have the strength to do it again and again, if I had to, in the name of justice and the church.”
We were coming down into Hollywood. I pulled over to the curb at Crescent Heights and Sunset. I stared at Dudley’s florid, demonic face. He stared back.
“And, lad?” he said, mimicking my tone.
“And what, Dudley?” I managed to get out, my voice steady.
“And
do you think Dudley’s a lunatic, lad?”
“No, I think you’re a master actor.”
“Ha-ha-ha! Well said. Is ‘actor’ a euphemism for ‘madman,’ lad?”
“No, I just think sometimes you’re not sure what role you’re playing.”
Tiny brown predator eyes bored into me. “Lad, all my roles are in the name of justice and all my roles are me. Don’t you forget that.”
“Sure, Dudley.”
“And, lad, don’t think I don’t know you. Don’t think I don’t know how smart you think you are. Don’t think I didn’t notice how you relished giving me guff in front of Brubaker. Don’t think I don’t know what a son of a bitch you think I am. Ha-ha-ha! Enough sorrow and contention, lad. Drive me downtown and take the rest of the day off.”
I dropped Dudley downtown in front of Central Division headquarters on Los Angeles Street. He stuck his big hand out and we shook. “Tomorrow, lad. Eight a.m. at the hotel. We’ll go over our evidence and decide when we’ll snatch handsome Eddie.”
“Right, Dudley.”
He squeezed my hand until I rewarded him with a wince, then he winked and left me to contemplate madness and salvation.
* * *
—
I had over four hours to kill before my date with Lorna. I drove home and wrote out a detailed report on my involvement in the Margaret Cadwallader case. I put it in a large manila envelope and sealed it shut. I fed Night Train, changed clothes, and shaved again.
On my way downtown I stopped at a florist’s shop, where I bought Lorna a dozen long-stemmed red roses. Somehow they made me think of the dead girl whose eternal sleep Dudley Smith had so viciously interrupted. I started to get a little scared, but the thought of Lorna kiboshed my fear and turned it into some strange symbioses of hope and the odd amenities of justice.
I waited impatiently, red roses in hand, outside the Spring Street entrance to city hall until six thirty.
