by James Ellroy
“ ‘ “But what things!” Underhill has said, “I have never wanted to be anything but a cop. It’s the only life I have ever considered.”
“ ‘And we, the citizens of Los Angeles, are the lucky benefactors of Fred Underhill’s boyhood decision to seek the selfless life of a police officer. Item: while working as a patrolman in the Wilshire Division, Fred Underhill had more felony arrests to his credit than any officer at the station. Item: Fred Underhill had one of the highest academic averages ever to come out of the Police Academy. Item: Captain William Beckworth, Underhill’s former watch commander at Wilshire called him “The greatest natural policeman I have ever encountered.” Heady praise indeed, but backed up by fact: in February of this year, Officer Fred Underhill shot and killed the two armed robbers who had just robbed a market. His partner died in the shootout. Now the cracking of the baffling Margaret Cadwallader case, both within one year.
“ ‘The Korean War rages on. Overseas we are at a standstill with the communist enemy. On the home front, the war against crime wages on. It is a war that will regrettably always be with us. Thank God men like Detective Fred Underhill will always be with us.’ ”
Lorna finished with a flourish and swooned in a parody of lovestruck awe. “Well, Officer Fred?” she said.
“They forgot to say I was tall, handsome, intelligent, and charming. That would have been the truth. However, they opted for horseshit—it reads better. They couldn’t very well have said that I was an atheist draft dodger and, before you, a pussy chaser on the prowl…”
“Freddy!”
“It’s the truth. Oh, shit, Lorna, I’m so goddamned tired of this thing.”
“Are you really, dear?”
“Yes.”
“Then will you do me two favors?”
“Name them.”
“Don’t mention the case for the rest of the weekend.”
“Okay. And?”
“And make love to me.”
“Double okay.” I reached for Lorna, and we fell laughing onto the bed.
* * *
—
Sometime later, we called room service for two trout dinners that arrived on a linen-covered pushcart, delivered by a bellboy who rapped discreetly on the door and called out softly, “Supper, folks!”
After eating, Lorna lit a cigarette and eyed me with warmth and much humor. Somehow it brought forth in me a huge rush of curiosity, and I said, “Turnabout, Lorna?”
“Turnabout?”
“Right. You wanted to know about the missing hours in my life…”
“All right, darling, turnabout. After the accident, much self-pity: feeling trapped, a saintly dead mother, a fat sister, a buffoon for a father, and all the goddamned operations—and false hopes and speculations and guilt and self-hatred and anger. And the detachment. That was the worst of all. Knowing I was not of this time and place—or any time and place. Then learning to walk all over again, and feeling joyous until the doctor told me I could never have children. Then awful, awful bitterness and the little lessons in acceptance.”
“What do you mean, Lor?”
“I mean never knowing when my bad leg would go out completely, and I’d fall on my ass. It always seemed to happen when I was wearing a white dress. Learning to take stairs. Having to leave early for class when I knew there would be stairs to climb. The awful, gentle people who wanted to help. The men who thought I’d be an easy lay because I was crippled. They were right, you know. I was an easy lay.”
“So was I, Lor.”
“Anyway, then college, and law school, and books and painting and music and a few men and some kind of reconciliation with my family, and finally the D.A.’s office.”
“And?”
“And what, Freddy?” Lorna’s voice rose in exasperation. “You are so goddamned persistent! I know you want me to talk about the ‘wonder’—whatever the hell it is—but I just don’t feel it.”
“Easy, sweetheart. I wasn’t prying.”
“You were and you weren’t. I know you want to know everything about me, but give it time. I’m not the wonder.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not! You want to control the wonder. That’s why you’re a cop. Freddy, I want to be with you, but you can never control me. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand that you’re still afraid of things. I’m not anymore.”
“Don’t be oblique, goddamnit!”
“Shit,” I said, feeling suddenly the weight of my carefully thought-out life collapse from three weeks of tension and expectation. “Wonder, justice, horseshit. I just don’t know anymore.”
“Yes, you do,” Lorna said. “There’s me. I’m not wonder or justice.”
“What are you?”
“I’m your Lorna.”
* * *
—
That night and early morning we didn’t go sight-seeing on State Street or take a romantic walk on the beach, or tour historic Santa Barbara Mission. We went dancing—in our lemon-colored room—to the music, on the radio, of the Four Lads, the McGuire Sisters, Teresa Brewer, and the immortal big band of the late Glenn Miller.
We found a station that played requests, and I called in and importuned them to play a host of old standards that were suddenly dear to me in the light of Lorna. The disc jockey obliged, and Lorna and I held each other close and moved slowly across the room to the soft beat of “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Blue Moon,” “Perfidia,” “Blueberry Hill,” “Moments to Remember,” “Good Night, Irene” and, of course, Patti Page singing “The Tennessee Waltz.”
* * *
—
At dawn on Monday morning, we got up and reluctantly drove back to L.A. and the administration of justice.
13
I was sound asleep in my apartment when the telephone rang. It was two o’clock Monday afternoon. I had been asleep a scant three hours.
It was Lorna. “Freddy, I have to see you right away. It’s urgent.”
“What is it, Lor?”
She sounded gravely worried. There was a timbre to her voice I had never heard before. “I can’t talk about it on the phone.”
“Did they arraign Engels?”
“Yes. He pleaded not guilty. Dudley Smith was there with the assistant D.A. and Engels started screaming. The bailiffs had to restrain him.”
“Jesus. Are you at your office?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”
It took me fifty-five, dressing hurriedly and highballing my Buick at ten miles over the speed limit. I flashed my badge at the parking attendant at the lot on Temple and he nodded crisply, placing an official-looking piece of paper under my windshield wiper. Two minutes later I was barging through the door of Lorna’s office.
Lorna had company, and they looked grave. Both were smartly tailored men in their early forties. One of them, the more impressive looking of the two, seemed familiar. He was sitting on Lorna’s green leather couch with his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. He fingered a leather briefcase stationed next to him on the floor. He was intimidating even in this casual posture. The other man was sandy-haired and plump, and wearing an ascot and a cashmere sweater on a day when the temperature promised to reach ninety-five. He was licking his lips repeatedly and moving his eyes back and forth from the briefcase man to me.
Lorna made the introductions as I pulled up a wooden chair next to her desk. “Detective Fred Underhill, this is Walter Canfield.” She pointed to the man with the briefcase. “And this is Mr. Clark Winton.” She nodded in the direction of the man with the ascot. Both men acknowledged my presence with stares—Canfield’s hostile, Winton’s nervous.
“What can I do for you, gentlemen?” I said.
Canfield started to open his mouth, but Lorna spok
e first in a voice that was all business: “Mr. Canfield is an attorney, Fred. He represents Mr. Winton.” She hesitated, then said haltingly, “Mr. Canfield and I have worked together in the past. I trust him.” She looked at Canfield, who smiled grimly.
“I’ll be brief, Officer,” he said. “My client was with Eddie Engels on the night Margaret Cadwallader was murdered.” He waited for my reaction. When all he got was silence he added, “My client was with Engels all night. He remembers the date very well. August 12 is his birthday.”
Canfield looked at me triumphantly. Winton was staring into his lap, kneading his trembling hands.
I felt my whole body go rigid with a pins-and-needles sensation. “Eddie Engels confessed, Mr. Canfield,” I stated carefully.
“My client has informed me that Engels is a disturbed man who carries a great deal of guilt with him for certain events in his past.”
Winton interjected: “Eddie is a troubled man, Officer. He was in love with an older man when he was in the navy. The man made him do awful things, and made Eddie hate himself for being what he was.”
“He confessed,” I repeated.
“Come, Officer. We both know that confession was obtained under physical duress. I saw Engels at his arraignment this morning. He has been severely beaten.”
“He was restrained through force when he tried to resist arrest,” I lied.
Canfield snorted. In different surroundings he would have spat. I met his contemptuous look with one of my own, then transferred it to Clark Winton. “Are you homosexual, Mr. Winton?” I asked, already certain of the answer.
“Freddy, goddamnit!” Lorna blurted.
Winton swallowed and looked to his attorney for support. Canfield started to whisper into his ear, but I interrupted them: “Because if you are, and you are planning to come forth with this information, the police will want signed statements regarding your relationship with Engels and a detailed account of your activities with him on the night of August 12. Are you prepared for that?”
“Eddie and I were lovers,” Winton said calmly, with great resignation.
I gathered my argument and spat it out: “Mr. Winton, we have a signed confession. We also have eyewitnesses who will testify to having seen Engels’s car on Harold Way on the night of the murder. You are opening yourself up to an accessory rap if you go public with your story.”
Canfield eyed me coldly. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lorna sitting rigid, fuming. “My client is a man of courage, Officer,” Canfield said. “Edward Engels’s life is at stake. Thad Green is an old friend of mine, as is the district attorney. Mr. Winton’s affidavit will be delivered this afternoon. Mr. Winton realizes the police will have many questions for him; I will be present at the questioning. Mr. Winton is a prominent man; you will not beat any confession out of him. I came here to talk to you only because Lorna is an old friend and I respect her judgment of people. She told me you were concerned with justice, and I believed her…”
“I am concerned with justice, and…”
I couldn’t finish. My resistance crumbled in a heap, and I felt my vision darken at the corner of my eyes. I picked up a heavy quartz bookend from Lorna’s desk and hurled it at the glass part of her office door. The glass shattered outward and the bookend landed on the corridor floor with a loud bang. My hands were aching to hit something, so I mashed them together and closed my eyes, fighting tears and tremors. I heard Canfield say goodbye to Lorna, and heard footsteps as he ushered his client out the half-destroyed door.
“I believe Winton,” Lorna said finally.
“So do I,” I said.
“Freddy, Dudley Smith convinced the D.A. to let him head an investigation into a half dozen unsolved homicides. He wants to pin them on Eddie Engels.”
“Jesus, crazy Dudley. Is this guy Canfield a hotshot? He looks familiar.”
“He’s one of the finest, highest-paid criminal lawyers on the West Coast.”
“And Winton has got money?”
“Yes, he’s very wealthy. He owns two textile plants in Long Beach.”
Still looking for outs, I persisted. “And Canfield is buddies with Thad Green and the D.A.?”
“Yes.”
“Then Engels will go free and Dudley Smith and I will be up shit’s creek without a paddle.”
I looked through the gaping glass hole in the door, searching for something that would stop up the now-gaping hole in my life. “I’m sorry about the door, Lorna,” was all I could think of.
Lorna pushed her swivel chair over to where I was sitting. “Are you sorry for Eddie Engels?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
Lorna kissed me softly on the lips. “Then let justice be done. It’s out of your hands now.”
I pushed Lorna away from me. I didn’t want to believe her. “And what about Maggie Cadwallader?” I shouted. I turned around to look at the hole in the door. Three men in suits were looking in on us.
“You okay, Lorna?” one of them asked.
Lorna nodded. They departed, looking skeptical. I could hear glass being swept up.
“What about Maggie Cadwallader?” Lorna asked. “Did you want revenge for her, or was this whole crusade just an exercise in wonder that went bad?”
Suddenly I wanted to hurt Lorna as I had never wanted to hurt anyone before. “I fucked Maggie Cadwallader on the same day I met you. I picked her up at the Silver Star bar and took her to her apartment and fucked her. That was how I got involved in this thing, how I knew where to look for evidence. I knew if I found the killer my career would skyrocket. I wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I wanted to have you, to fuck you, to make you mine. That was why I involved you in this; it was just another seduction in a whole fucking long line of them.”
I didn’t wait for Lorna to respond. I walked out of her office, not looking back.
* * *
—
I drove aimlessly, the way I had on the night I had met Maggie Cadwallader. I bought a copy of the L.A. Mirror. Engels’s arraignment was on the front page. “ ‘I Am Not A Homo!’ Killer Screams.” Yellow journalism at its best. The account revealed that Engels had had to be restrained and dragged out of the courtroom by three muscular bailiffs after submitting his plea of not guilty.
I threw the paper out the car window and drove east. Near San Bernardino I glimpsed from the freeway a large, well-set-up municipal golf course. I got off at the next exit, found the golf haven, parked in the deserted lot, bought two dozen balls, and rented a set of beat-up clubs from the pro shop. After paying my green fee, I ducked past the starter’s cubicle and walked straight into the heart of the course.
I thought and thought—and thought. I tried not to think. I succeeded and I failed. I sailed a half dozen well-hit two-irons into deep nowhere and felt nothing.
Mea culpa, I said to myself. What went wrong? What really happened? What will happen next? Will the department back me up? Will I go back to patrol in Watts, humbled, singled out as a maverick destined to go nowhere? Logical fallacies. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: after this, therefore because of this. Circumstantial evidence. A guilty man. Guilty not of murder, but of guilt. Poor queer Eddie. Gallant queer Clark Winton. Mea maxima culpa. Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. What father? Eddie Engels? Dudley Smith? Thad Green? Chief Parker? God? There is no God but the wonder. I tried to harden my heart against Lorna, and failed. Lorna, Lorna, Lorna.
I slammed a furious succession of three-irons straight into a grove of trees, hoping they would ricochet back and knock me dead. They didn’t; they just disappeared, never to be seen again, sacrifices to a golf god I had ceased to believe in.
* * *
—
I drove home. I could hear my phone ringing as I pulled into the driveway. Thinking it might be Lorna, I ran for it.
The ringing persisted as I unlocked my front
door. I picked up the receiver. “Hello?” I said warily.
“Underhill?” a familiar voice queried.
“Yes. Captain Jurgensen?”
“Yes. I’ve been calling you since six o’clock.”
“I’ve been out. I drove out to San Berdoo.”
“I see. Then you haven’t heard?”
“Heard what?”
“Eddie Engels is dead. He committed suicide in his cell this afternoon. He was about to be released. Evidence came up to point to his innocence.”
“I…I…”
“Underhill, are you there?”
“Y-yes.”
“The chief himself asked me, as your last commanding officer, to inform you.”
“I…don’t…”
“Underhill, you are to report downtown at eight tomorrow morning. Central Division, room 219. Underhill, did you hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, letting the receiver slip out of my shaking hands and fall to the floor.
14
There were three of us present in room 219. The two cops, my interrogators, were named Milner and Quinn. Both were sergeants from Internal Affairs and both were burly and sunburned and middle-aged. They had both doffed their suit coats as they had ushered me into the crowded little room. I strangely relished their fatuous attempt at intimidation, and was certain I could best them at any form of psychological warfare.
