by James Ellroy
“Michael, we have to talk about your mother,” I said.
“Okay,” Michael said.
“Tell me about your mother’s friends,” I said.
Michael grimaced. “She didn’t have any,” he said. “She was a bar floozy.”
I grimaced, and Michael looked to Doc for confirmation. Doc nodded grimly.
“Who told you that, Michael?” I asked.
“Nobody. I’m no dummy, I knew that Uncle Jim and Uncle George and Uncle Bob and Uncle What’s-his-face were just pickups.”
“What about women friends?”
“She didn’t have any.”
“Ever heard of a woman named Alma Jacobsen?”
“No.”
“Was your mother friendly with the parents of any of your friends?”
Michael hesitated. “I don’t have any friends.”
“None at all?”
Michael shrugged. “The books I read are my friends. Minna is my friend.” He pointed to the puppy, tethered to a phone pole outside the plate glass window.
I kicked this sad information around in my head. Michael leaned his shoulder against me and gazed longingly at my half-finished root beer float.
“Kill it,” I said.
He did, in one gulp.
I opened up another line of questioning: “Michael, you were with your dad when your mother was killed, right?”
“Right. We were playing duckball.”
“What’s duckball?”
“It’s catch. If you miss the ball, you have to get down on your knees and quack like a duck.”
I laughed. “Sounds like fun. How did you feel about your mother, Michael? Did you love her?”
Michael went red all over. His long skinny arms went red, his neck went red, and his face went red all the way up to his soft brown crew cut. He started to tremble, then swept an arm across the tabletop and knocked all the glassware and utensils onto the floor. He pushed his way across me and ran outside in the direction of his beagle pup.
Doc stared at me, letting an alarmed waitress pick up the detritus of our root beer floats.
“Does that happen often?” I asked.
Doc nodded. “My son is a volatile boy.”
“He takes after his dad.” It was both a challenge and a compliment. Doc understood that.
“In some ways,” he said.
“I think he’s a wonderful boy,” I added.
Doc smiled. “So do I.”
I laid a five-dollar bill on the table. Doc and I got up and walked outside. Michael was playing tug-of-war with his dog. The dog held the leather leash in her jaws and strained happily against the pull of Michael’s skinny arms.
“Come on, Colonel,” Doc called. “Time to go home.”
Michael and the dog ran ahead of us across Western Avenue and they remained a good forty yards in front as we walked west in the hot afternoon sun. Doc and I didn’t talk. I thought about the boy and wondered what Doc was thinking. When we got to the apartment building on Beverly and Irving, I stuck out my hand.
“Thanks for your cooperation, Doc,” I said.
“It was a pleasure, Fred.”
“I think you’ve been a big help. I think you’ve proven conclusively that this Jacobsen woman’s claim is a phony.”
“I didn’t know Marcella had a policy with Prudential. I’m surprised she didn’t tell me about it.”
“People do surprising things.”
“What year did she take out the policy?”
“In ’51.”
“We were divorced in ’50.”
I shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”
Doc shrugged too. “How true,” he said. He reached inside his pants pocket and pulled out the business card I had given him earlier. He handed it to me. The ink on it was smudged. Doc shook his head. “A smart young insurance bulldog like you should get his cards printed at a better place.”
We shook hands again. I felt myself start to go red. “So long, Doc,” I said.
“You take care, Fred,” Doc returned.
I walked to my car. I had the key in the door when suddenly Michael ran to me and grabbed me in a fierce hug. Before I could respond, he shoved a wadded-up piece of paper into my hand and ran away. I opened up the paper. “You are my friend” was all it said.
* * *
—
I drove home, moved by the boy and puzzled by the man. I had a strange sensation that Doc Harris knew who I was and somehow welcomed my intrusion. I had another feeling, equally strange, that there was a bond building between Michael and me.
* * *
—
When I got home I called Reuben Ramos and begged for some favors. Reluctantly, he did what I wanted: he ran Doc Harris through R&I. No record in California. Next he came up with the addresses Marcella Harris had given at the time of her many arrests: in 1946, nine years ago, she lived at 618 North Sweetzer, Los Angeles. In 1947 and ’48, 17901 Terra Cotta, Pasadena. In 1949, 1811 Howard Street, Glendale. At the time of her last drunk arrest in 1950, she was living at 9619 Hibiscus Canyon, Sherman Oaks.
I wrote it all down and spent a long time staring at the information before going to bed. I slept fitfully, waking up repeatedly, expecting to find my bedroom inhabited by ghosts of murdered women.
* * *
—
The following day, Friday, I went out to retrace the past of Marcella DeVries Harris. I went first to shady, tree-lined Sweetzer Avenue in West Hollywood, and got the results I expected: no one at the 618 address, a Spanish-style walk-up apartment building, recalled the redheaded nurse or her then-infant son. I inquired with people in the neighboring houses and got puzzled shakes of the head. Marcella the cipher.
At Terra Cotta Avenue in Pasadena the results were the same. There Marcella had rented a house, and the current tenant told me that the previous owner of the house had died two years ago. The people on the surrounding blocks had no recollection of Marcella or her little boy.
From Pasadena I drove to nearby Glendale. It was hot and smoggy. I took care of 1949 in short order: the bungalow court Marcella had lived in that year had been recently demolished to make way for a modern apartment complex. “Marcella Harris, good-looking red-haired nurse in her late thirties with a three-year-old son?” I asked two dozen Howard Street residents. Nothing. Marcella, the phantom.
I took the Hollywood Freeway to Sherman Oaks. A gas station attendant near the freeway off-ramp directed me to Hibiscus Canyon. It took me five minutes to find it; nestled in a cul-de-sac at the end of a winding street, lined, appropriately, with towering hibiscus bushes. Number 9619 was a four-story walk-up, in the style of a miniature Moorish castle.
I parked the car, and was walking across the street toward 9619 when my eyes were riveted to a sign stuck into the front lawn of the house next to it. “For Sale. Contact Janet Valupeyk, Valupeyk Realty, 18369 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks.”
Janet Valupeyk. Former lover of Eddie Engels. The woman Dudley Smith and I had questioned about Engels back in ’51. I felt myself go prickly all over. I forgot all about 9619 Hibiscus Canyon and drove to Ventura Boulevard instead.
* * *
—
I remembered Janet Valupeyk well. She had been nearly comatose when Smith and I had interviewed her four years ago.
She had changed; I could tell that immediately as I looked at her through the plate glass window of her real estate office. She was seated at a metal desk near the window, shuffling papers and nervously smoking a cigarette. During the four years since I had last seen her she had aged ten. Her face had gone gaunt and her skin had turned a pasty white. One eyebrow twitched dramatically as she fumbled with her paperwork.
I could see no one else within the office. I walked through a glass door that set off little chimes as I entered. Janet
Valupeyk nearly jumped out of her skin at the noise. She dropped her pen and fumbled her cigarette.
I pretended not to notice. “Miss Valupeyk?” I asked innocently.
“Yes. Oh, God, that goddamned chime! I don’t know why I put it in. Can I help you?”
“I’m interested in the house on Hibiscus Canyon.”
Janet Valupeyk smiled nervously, put out her cigarette and immediately lit another one. “That’s a dandy property,” she said. “Let me get you the statistics on it.”
She moved from her desk to a bank of metal filing cabinets, opening the top drawer and rummaging through the manila folders. I joined her, watching her nervous fingers dig through files that were arranged by street name and subheaded by street address. She found Hibiscus Canyon and started muttering, “9621, 9621, where the hell is that little devil?”
My eyes were glued to the street numbers, and when 9619 came up I reached my hand into the cabinet and yanked out the file.
Janet Valupeyk said, “Hey, what the hell!”
I shouted at her, “Shut up! Or I’ll have Narcotics detectives here within fifteen minutes!” It was a stab in the dark, but it worked: Janet Valupeyk collapsed in her chair, her face buried in her hands. I let her sob and tore through the file.
The tenants were listed in chronological order, along with the amount of rent they had paid. The tenant list went back to 1944, and as I thumbed through it the blood rushed to my head and the periphery of my vision blackened.
“Who are you?” Janet Valupeyk choked.
“Shut up!” I screamed again.
Finally I found it. Marcella Harris had rented apartment number 102 at 9619 Hibiscus Canyon from June 1950 to September 1951. She had been a resident there at the time of Maggie Cadwallader’s murder. Next to the listing there were comments in a minute hand: “Mrs. Groberg’s bro. to sublet 7/2/51–?” Next to that, a check mark in a different color ink and the letters “O.K.–J.V.”
I put down the file and knelt beside the quaking Janet Valupeyk. Stabbing again, I asked, “Who told you to rent to Marcella Harris, Janet?” She shook her head violently. I raised my hand to hit her, then hesitated and shook her shoulders instead. “Tell me, goddamnit, or I’ll get the heat!”
Janet Valupeyk began to tremble from head to toe. “Eddie,” she said. “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.” Her voice was very soft.
So was mine as I said, “Eddie who?”
Janet looked at me carefully for the first time. “I…I know you,” she said.
“Eddie who?” I screamed, shaking her by her shoulders again.
“Eddie Engels. I…I know you. You—”
“But you broke up with him.”
“He still had me. Oh, God, he still had me!”
“Who’s Mrs. Groberg?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember—”
“Don’t lie to me. Marcella Harris is dead! Who killed her?”
“I don’t know! You killed Eddie!”
“Shut up! Who’s Mrs. Groberg?”
“She lives at 9619. She’s a good tenant. She wouldn’t hurt any—”
I didn’t hear her finish. I left her sobbing for her past as I ran to my car and rushed headlong back into mine.
* * *
—
Five minutes later I was parked crossways at the end of the Hibiscus Canyon cul-de-sac. I ran down the street to the Moorish apartment house, flung open the leaded glass door, and scanned the mailboxes in the foyer. Mrs. John Groberg lived in number 419. I took the stairs two at a time to the fourth floor. I listened through the door to a TV blasting out a game program. I knocked. There was no answer. I knocked again, this time louder, and heard mild cursing and the volume on the TV diminished.
Through the door a cranky voice called out, “Who is it?”
“Police officer, ma’am,” I called out, consciously imitating Jack Webb of “Dragnet” fame.
Giggles answered my announcement. The door was flung open a moment later, and I was confronted by the adoring gaze of a gasbag matron. I quickly sized her up as a crime buff and took my act from there.
Before the woman could ask me for my nonexistent badge I said forcefully, “Ma’am, I need your help.”
She fidgeted with her housecoat and the curlers in her hair. She was on the far side of fifty. “Y-yes, Officer,” she said.
“Ma’am, a former tenant here was murdered recently. Maybe you’ve heard about it; you look like a woman who keeps abreast of the news.”
“Well, I—”
“Her name was Marcella Harris.”
The woman’s hands flew up to her throat. She was shaken, and I compounded her fear: “That’s right, Mrs. Groberg, she was strangled.”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes, ma’am.”
“Well, I—”
“Ma’am, could I come in?”
“Oh, yes, Officer.”
The apartment was hot, stuffy, and overfurnished. I took a seat on the couch next to Mrs. Groberg, the better to bore in quickly.
“Poor Marcella,” she said.
“Yes, indeed, ma’am. Did you know her well?”
“No. To tell you the truth, I didn’t like her, really. I think she drank. But I doted on her little boy. He was such a sweetheart.”
I tossed her a ray of hope: “The boy is doing fine, Mrs. Groberg. He’s living with his father.”
“Thank God for that.”
“I understand that Marcella sublet her apartment to your brother in the summer of ’51. Do you recall that?”
The Groberg woman laughed. “Yes, I do! I set it up, and what a mistake it was. My brother Morton had a drinking problem, just like Marcella. He came out from Omaha to go to work at Lockheed and dry out. I lent him the money to come out here, and the money to rent the apartment. But he found Marcella’s liquor and drank it all! He was swacked for three weeks.”
“How long was Morton in the apartment?”
“For two months! He was on a bender, and he ended up in the hospital. I—”
“Marcella was gone that long?”
“Yes.”
“Did she tell you where she was going?”
“No, but when she got back she said, ‘You can’t go home again.’ That’s the name of a book, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am. Had Marcella taken her son with her?”
“No…I don’t…no, I know she didn’t. She left the tot with friends. I remember talking with the child when Marcella came back. He didn’t like the people he stayed with.”
“Marcella moved out after that, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where she went?”
“No.”
“Did she seem upset when she returned from her trip?”
“I couldn’t tell. That woman was a mystery to me! Who…who killed her, Officer?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out,” I said by way of farewell.
* * *
—
Barely controlling my exultation, I drove with shaky hands over the Cahuenga Pass into Hollywood. I found a pay phone and called Doc Harris. He answered on the third ring: “Speak, it’s your dime.”
“Doc, this is Fred Walker.”
“Fred, how are you? How’s the insurance game?” The bluff heartiness of his tone told me that he knew the game wasn’t insurance, but that he wanted to play anyway.
“Fifty-fifty. It’s a racket like any other. Listen, how would you and Michael like to go for a ride tomorrow? Out to the country somewhere, just get in my car and go. I’ve got a convertible.”
There was silence on the other end of the line. Finally, Doc said, “Sure, kid. Why don’t you pick us up at noon?”
“Until then,” I said, and hung up.
I drove to Beverly Hi
lls.
Lorna’s office was in a tall building attached to the Stanley-Warner Theater on Wilshire near Beverly Drive. I parked down the street and walked there. I checked out the rear parking area first; I was afraid Lorna had already left for the day, but I was in luck: her ’50 Packard was still in its space. Hardworking Lorna—still on the job at six thirty.
The sky was turning golden, and people were already lining up for the first evening performance of “The Country Girl.” I waited an hour by the parking entrance, until the sky turned a burnished copper and Lorna turned the corner onto Canon Drive, staying close to the building, jamming her heavy wooden cane into the space where the wall met the sidewalk.
When I saw her, I felt the old shakiness grip me. She walked head down, abstracted. Before she could look up and see me, I committed to memory the look on her face, her hunched posture and her light blue summer dress. When she did look up, she must have seen the love-struck Freddy Underhill of old, for her drawn face softened until she realized this was 1955, not 1951, and that walls had been constructed during the interim.
“Hello, Lor,” I said.
“Hello, Freddy,” Lorna said coldly. Her manner stiffened, she sighed and leaned against the marble of the building. “Why, Freddy? It’s over.”
“No, it’s not, Lor. None of it.”
“I won’t argue with you.”
“You look beautiful.”
“No, I don’t. I’m thirty-five and I’m putting on weight. And it’s only been four months.”
“It’s been a lifetime.”
“Don’t do that with me, goddamn you! You don’t mean it, and I don’t care! I don’t care, Freddy! Do you hear that?”
Lorna gave herself a shove and almost toppled over. I moved to steady her and she swatted at me clumsily with her cane. “No, goddamn you,” she hissed. “I won’t be charmed one more time. I won’t let you beat up my friends, and I won’t take you back.”
She hobbled into the parking lot. I stayed behind, wondering if she would believe me, or think me insane, or even care. I let her get all the way to her car. I watched as she fished her keys out of her purse, then ran up and grabbed them out of her hand as she began to unlock the door. She started to resist, then stopped. She smiled patiently and put her weight on her cane. “You never listened, Freddy,” she said.
