THE DEADLY DOOWOP
A Red Trevorak Mystery
By Charles Deemer
1/
Tues, 8 June 54: Lionel's great line in the Army, "Fashion is the first refuge of a scoundrel." Get this in a play!
I
found the address on a shady, pine-lined lane in the foothills north of
Pasadena. It was one of those new
upper-crust neighborhoods I'd never heard of, called - surprise of surprises -
Foothills. All the homes were lean and
long, on huge, shady lots.
I
was about half an hour late, having under-estimated the time it would take to
negotiate all the new freeway construction going on between the office in
Venice and the suburban glitz of east Los Angeles County. The trip had been one detour after another,
crisscrossing back and forth over the deep gullies that were the transportation
arteries of the future. It was hard to
see the future in all the dust and racket of construction.
I
pulled Bad-Ass the Buick into the driveway, turned the key and waited until the
engine sputtered still. Adjusting the
rearview mirror, I buttoned my shirt collar and pulled up my tie. Then I got
out.
On
a lesser scale, digging in the earth was going on here, too, right next
door. A gray-haired man in a red
baseball cap was chest-deep in a hole alongside his house. Bad-Ass had attracted his attention, so I
acknowledged his stare with a wave and he nodded before going back to his
shovel. I guessed he was digging
himself a fallout shelter. Freeways and
fallout shelters were all the rage, both granted the Good Housekeeping Seal of
Approval.
I
walked up the brick walk to the front porch and rang the doorbell. A young Negro woman answered, and I probably
did a double-take, forgetting for a moment where I was. But her presence made sense: in the lily-white glitz of Foothills, having
a Negro housekeeper would be as prestigious as having a fallout shelter.
When
I told her who I was, she invited me in and led me to the den, not the living
room.
"Mrs.
Davies will be here directly, Mr. Trevorak," she said.
She
was tan and pretty but somehow looked out of place in her starched white
uniform. I got the idea she didn't like
her job.
The
den didn't look lived in, which made me wonder what the living room was
like. I'm a big man, almost three
hundred pounds, and all the chairs in the room looked too expensive and frail
to sit on. For a moment I stood in the middle of the room, admiring the view
out the large bay windows. It looked
like a golf course back there. Finally I sat down on the divan and picked up a
magazine off the adjacent coffee table.
There was a framed photograph there, too, and I wondered if the
tired-looking guy at the barbecue was her husband.
I
was lingering over an underwear ad when a woman entered the room. As I closed
the magazine and made a move to rise, she said, "Keep your seat."
I
relaxed and heard the cushion under me groan.
"You're
late," she said.
"I
forgot about all the construction going on."
She
just looked at me, as if I'd said something in a foreign language. Then she stepped to the divan with her hand
out, saying, "I'm Joan Davies.
You're not the one I talked to on the phone."
I
shook her hand and tried to rise a gentlemanly distance up off the cushion,
which was no easy task at my weight.
"Red
Trevorak. You talked to my dad. We're a family agency."
"I
see. And he sent you."
Though
it was late in the morning, she was dressed for cocktails and dinner, in a
black dress that looked expensive. She was a pretty woman, slender, tall, with
jet black hair to match the dress. I put her at not quite thirty. She didn't seem thrilled that Dad had sent
me and, to tell the truth, I wasn't so thrilled to be there either.
"I
suppose you'll do fine," she said.
"I want you to hear something."
She
went to a radio console in the room and turned it on. She stayed there, looking
out of place without a martini in her hand, staring down at the radio.
Then
the radio came to life and said, Yes,
indeedy! It's Lovin' Dan the
Sixty-Minute Man, approaching the hour of high noon. Oo-ee, and we been having
fun this morning! I love you cats out
there, you know I do! And we'll be
right back with more of the best in rhythm-n-blues, on radio KRB, your station
for top Negro entertainment - after this message.
A commercial jingle started,
One little, two little, three little
sparkplugs; four little, five little, six little sparkplugs; seven little,
eight little, worn-out sparkplugs . . .
Joan Davies said, "I
want you to listen carefully and answer some questions about the disc
jockey."
Who was soon back on the
air: Oo-ee, baby! We got a great one
for you now, going all the way back to 1948.
Last year they had Crying in the Chapel but this was their first big
one, and it's one sweet side. Lovin' Dan playing for you: It's Too Soon To
Know!
The song started and Mrs.
Davies turned off the radio.
"Well?," she
said. "What can you tell me about
the disc jockey?"
I had no idea what she was
getting at. I said, "It sounds
like he loves his job."
"What race is he?"
Though the question came
from left field, I threw back a quick answer.
"Negro, I assume."
"Exactly," she
said.
She moved back across the
room and sat in one of the frail wooden chairs across from the divan. She was so thin the chair didn't even squeak
under her.
"That was my husband on
the radio," she said, "and he's white. Or at least, I assume he is." xxx
She
paused, letting this sink in, but I was still looking for her
drift. Then she came from left
field again.
"Did you read the paper a few weeks ago, about the little scandal
we had
here in Foothills?"
I
tried to remember a story about Foothills and couldn't. Lately
the
papers were dominated by what reporters called the Rat Murders, a
bizarre
series of killings with a weird m.o.: the murderer left a dead
rat with
each of his victims, as well as a short chapter in an on-going
treatise
he called "The History of Rats."
"I don't recall," I said.
"I was up in the Bay area for a few
days,
maybe I missed it."
"Flo Albertson, who lives in the neighborhood, not far from here,
as a
matter of fact - I used to play bridge with her regularly -
anyway,
she gave birth to a son recently. The
baby is a Negro."
Again
she paused for effect before going on.
"Flo is white, or so we thought.
So her husband thought. As it
turns
out, she's a Negro who was passing for white.
Hence, her dark
baby. You can imagine how
upsetting this is to everyone, not to
mention
her husband."
I
thought I was beginning to see her drift but it was too bizarre
to take a
wild guess about. Better she told me
herself.
"What are you trying to tell me,
Mrs. Davies?"
"Dan, my husband, hasn't been himself lately. Ever since Flo was
discovered. And I'll never
understand why he took the job at that
horrible
station, he used to work in Pasadena, playing Montavani and
wonderful
music. He says he actually enjoys Negro
music. I just need
to be
sure."
My
hunch was right but I still wanted her to say it herself.
"Sure about what?"
"Well, you heard yourself that he sounds just like a Negro on the
air. Under the circumstances . . . well, I was
one of Flo's best
friends,
I thought I was, and never for a minute suspected she was a
Negro."
I
just looked at her.
"I want a family myself some day," she said. "Your father said you
can do
background checks."
"We do that," I said.
"Well, then?"
"I'm still not sure what you want," I lied.
"I want to know if my husband has Negro ancestry."
It
pained her to say it, and suddenly I felt sorry for making her.
She stood
up and said, "Your father quoted me a fee over the phone.
I'll get
it."
She
fetched an envelope from a shelf filled with knick-knacks. I
managed
to struggle to my feet by the time she got back with it.
"How long will this take?," she asked, handing me the
envelope.
"Depends. It would help if
I knew the name of his
parents,
grandparents, as far back as you can go."
"I thought you'd want that.
I wrote down everything I know - it's
all in
the envelope."
"Shouldn't be a problem then."
"Call me as soon as you find out anything."
We
turned to leave the den and found the housekeeper standing in
the
doorway. I wondered how much she had heard.
"I'm through now, Mrs. Davies," she said.
"Very good, Ruth."
Ruth
didn't budge from the doorway.
"Is there something else?," Mrs. Davies asked.
"Today's payday, ma'am."
"I'm sorry, I forgot. I'll
write you a check."
I
told Mrs. Davies I could find my own way out.
She offered her
hand, and
I shook it. Her hand seemed colder than
before.
"I want to hear the minute you find out anything," she
repeated. I
nodded
and got the hell out of there.
On
the porch I pulled loose my tie and snapped my collar open. I
started
toward Bad-Ass and heard a voice calling to me.
"Excuse me! Can you give me
a hand over here?"
It
was the neighbor digging the hole for the fallout shelter. "I
can't
quite reach my ladder," he said.
"Apparently I've dug myself
into a
hole!"
He
laughed like hell at this while I walked over and got his ladder
for
him. I lowered it into the hole.
"Thank you," he said and climbed up to ground level. He took off
his
baseball cap, which I saw now was a Phillies cap, and wiped his
brow with
a forearm. He drew one hand over his
thinning gray hair and
put the
cap back on.
"How about an iced tea for your trouble?," he asked.
His
name was Jeff Berger. I waited in the
den while he fetched
drinks
and, unlike the den next door, this one was lived in
considerably. A sports shirt was
draped over a rocking chair.
Newspapers and magazines were cluttered about. A dirty dish was on the
coffee
table. One wall was dominated by a
large record collection and
phonograph console, another by framed color photographs of various
nuclear
bomb explosions. Returning with iced
tea, he caught me staring
at the
photographs.
"Incredible, aren't they?," he said. "Beautiful and frightening at
the same
time. I'll put them on the wall down in
the shelter when I'm
done."
He
handed me my glass and went to the phonograph, playing the
record
that was already on the turnstile. It
was classical, some
symphony
or other. He kept the volume low.
"Sit down," he gestured.
The chairs in the room looked sturdy
enough. Jeff took the rocker,
and I took a stuffed chair adjacent to
it.
"Forgive me for being nosy," he said, "but I'm guessing
you're the
detective
that Joanie has been threatening to hire."
When
I admitted I was, he told me what he thought about the matter.
He
thought Dan Davies was as white as he was but was having an affair.
That's
the difference in him that Joanie was reacting to.
"Not that I understand it," he went on. "Joanie's the catch, not
Dan. She has family money, and Dan married up.
Personally, I think
he's a
fool to jeopardize that but I'll bet it's the story. I've
learned
to read human nature pretty well by now, if I say so myself."
He
rocked in his chair, looking very pleased with himself.
"Then there's nothing to this Negro business?"
"You have to understand that Joanie was pretty close to Flo, they
were
bridge partners. My wife Edna was in
the same bridge club. When
you spend
that much time with someone, only to find out that they
aren't at
all the person you thought they were, well, it's very
disturbing."
He
had as much hair on his eyebrows as on his head, and he raised
them now,
in case I missed the seriousness of the matter.
"If Negroes have anything at all to do with this . . .," he
continued. The eyebrows jumped
again.
"Yes?"
"Well, maybe Dan's girlfriend, mistress, whatever, is a Negro. He
does seem
to have an affinity for them. You
should hear how he carries
on the
radio, you'd think he was a Negro himself.
I don't mean that
literally. I mean it - well,
spiritually, does that make sense?"
The
question hung in the air as he got up and moved to a desk in
the room.
"Do you build things?," he asked.
The
desktop was covered with blueprints, all of which he insisted
on
showing me, pointing out the various features he was incorporating
into his
own original design for a fallout shelter. He would be able to
lay in
enough canned food and water to last three months. There would
be
sleeping facilities for four - himself, his wife, his daughter and
granddaughter. There'd be a
small library, a phonograph and the best
of his
records. When he was done, I lied that
I had another
appointment to make and thanked him for the refreshment.
He
walked me to Bad-Ass. I started the
engine, and a cloud of blue
smoke
bellowed out from the exhaust pipes.
Grinning, I waved as he
shook his
head in dismay and got the hell out of there.
On the drive to the office, I found KRB on
the dial. The radio
said,
Shoo-doot-n-shoo-be-do . . .
2/
Between the foothills of east county and the ocean, smog was rising
over the
city like bad breath. The newspapers
liked to write about all
the
beatniks living in Venice but at least here we could breathe
relatively fresh air.
I
parked Bad-Ass in front of the vacant storefront and hiked up the
stairs to
the office. The glass window in the
door needed a paint job:
the final
s is Trevorak Private Investigations was almost gone, looking
like a
foreign language's curly accent line; below it, the
disintegrating paint read Henry Trevorak, Sr., Henry Trevorak, Jr. and
yours
truly at the bottom, Clyde Trevorak. No one called me Clyde, and
I hated
the name. I'd been Red for as long as I
can remember, homage
to a body
full of freckles and orange hair.
I
walked in. The office was barely large
enough for three desks.
Dad was
alone, feet up on his desk, reading the paper.
"Read the front page," he said at once, tossing me the Times.
"Tell me she's not a hooker."
The
reference was to another Rat Murder, announced in a bold
front-page headline, Rat Murderer Strikes Again. Real original, these
headline
writers. I poured a cup of coffee and
took the paper to my
desk. I preferred the evening
paper to the morning, which made me feel
like I
was always behind on the news.
"You read the story and tell me I'm not right," Dad said. He
went
back to
reading the Sports section.
Dad
had spent almost twenty years on the LAPD before a stray bullet
during a
foiled robbery put him on disability.
Now he let Hank run the
agency
while he concentrated on solving the major crimes of the city.
It
was Dad's theory that the rat murderer was a prostitute. All the
victims
to date had been male, all murdered by a .22 caliber pistol at
close
range. Each victim had been found in
his car, two in
compromising positions suggesting sexual activity. But I thought there
were
holes in Dad's theory, the main one being that it didn't explain
the dead
rat motif, nor the on-going history of rats, which was written
with some
intelligence, I thought.
This
victim fit the pattern: Franklin Cowley was 32, an attorney in
his
father's firm. His Chrysler was found
parked in the Hollywood
Hills
overlooking the city, Cowley slumped over the steering wheel (two
other
victims had been found partially nude in the back seat) with a
.22
bullet hole in his neck. The rat and
new installment were on the
front
seat beside him. As always, the
installment had been neatly
typed on
blue-lined school paper by a Remington Standard typewriter.
This one
read:
Rats
are very good swimmers. A rat can stay
under water for three
minutes. Rats are good climbers
and can jump about two feet. The rat
can breed
all year. However, it likes to breed
best in the spring or
fall. A female rat will have
five or more litters in a year. The
average
litter is eight baby rats. The baby
rats are born 21 days
after
mating. A few hours after the litter is
born the mother can mate
again.
There
was a photograph of the installment and also of the car, taken
from an
angle that showed the lights of the city below. The reporter
was
buying Dad's theory and speculated that the murderer was "a deadly
lady of
the night."
"They were parked in Lover's Lane," Dad said when he saw me
put
down the
paper.
"But no unzipped fly," I retorted.
"So no blow job this time, big deal. You want to cut it out and
put it on
the wall?"
I
fetched scissors from the desk drawer and cut out the new
installment. Dad was saving
them, like episodes in a serial. I took
this one
to the wall and pinned it up with the others. Together, they
gave an
on-going history of rats.
The
first installment read:
A rat is very different from a mouse.
This was probably said for
the first
time in the writings of Giraldus Cambrensis, who lived from
1167 to
1223. For one thing, a rat is much
bigger than a mouse.
There
are many famous stories about rats. One
is about the rats
carrying
away a whole hen's egg. One rat grabbed
the egg with all four
paws, and
three other rats pulled the egg away with their tails. This
story was
told in Persia in 1291.
Another story about rats is from 1284.
The pied piper played on
his pipe
and led all the rats into the river named Weser. But the city
would not
pay him, so he played his pipe again and led all the children
into a
hollow mountain. The pied piper is also
called Rattenganger von
Hamelin.
The
second installment read:
A rat
belongs to the Genus Rattus and the Order Rodentia and the
Family
Muridae. Rats make up the most varied
genus of mammals. For
example,
over 550 species and varieties of rats have been noticed and
described. Some examples of the species and varieties of rats are brown
rats,
house rats, wander rats, gray rats, Norway rats, cotton rats,
wood
rats, kangaroo rats, barn rats, sewer rats, roof rats, black rats,
pack rats
and Alexandrine rats, to name just a few.
However, there are only two main kinds of rats. These are Rattus
norvegicus and Rattus rattus.
Rattus norvegicus is also called the
Norway,
house, brown, wander, gray, barn and sewer rat. Rattus rattus
is also
called the roof, black, climbing and Alexandrine rat.
The
third installment read:
Rattus rattus is the smallest rat and the oldest. Old fossils were
found in
Europe. Then the rat disappeared but
returned to Europe
between
400 and 1000 A.D. It came to Europe from somewhere in the East,
probably
Chinese Mongolia. It probably came to
Europe on a ship.
Rattus
norvegicus didn't arrive in Europe until the 18th century. It
was in
England by 1728. It came to the United
States in 1775. Then it
went west
on the wagon trains.
And
now a fourth installment. Dad joined me
at the wall, limping
from the
old injury that had made him a temporary hero and a permanent
retiree.
"A pretty intelligent whore," I
said. "She writes different from,
not
different than. She knows how to use
the encyclopedia."
"So she's intelligent.
Unzipped flies, Lover's Lane, male victims,
a weapon
only a woman would use. The facts speak
for themselves."
Dad
started rereading the history top to bottom, and I returned to
my desk
with the Sports section. I was reading
about the Angels
blowing a
five-run lead to the Stars when Hank walked in from lunch.
"You get the gig?," he asked me.
"I got it."
Hank
took after Dad. Both were big boned but
able to keep their
weight
down, which made their appearance more athletic than their
habits. Both wore trim
moustaches in the manner of leading men of
Dad's
generation. Dad's moustache was almost
fully gray, Hank's dark
brown.
"Dad, don't you have that memorized by now?," Hank asked.
"She got another early this morning," Dad said from the
wall. He
turned
and began limping toward Hank.
"If the killer's a she," Hank said.
"Course she's a she, even the reporter's calling her a deadly lady
of the
night now. You wait and see if I'm not
right."
I
sympathized with Dad's interest in the major crimes of the city.
When he
was on the force, he'd been involved with the real thing, not
the petty
business of Trevorak Private Investigations. Most of the time
we were
the Peeping Tom Patrol, scurrying about with our cameras,
hoping to
add the documentation of an adulterous embrace to a client's
suspicions. Dad had never been
able to stoop to the level of the
agency's
bread and butter, letting Hank run everything, and when I came
back from
Korea with no worse damage than a missing toe and a bad
attitude,
Dad had put me on the payroll. As near as I could figure, the
only
reason Dad kept coming to the office was to have someone to talk
to and to
listen to his theories about whatever crime was in the
headlines.
Hank
asked about my morning meeting, and I told him about Joan
Davies
and Lovin' Dan the Sixty-Minute Man.
The gig was a little
bizarre,
which perked Dad's interest considerably.
"She doesn't even know the race of her own husband?," he asked.
"Her neighbor was passing for white," I said. "She's a little
paranoid
about it."
"It's different anyway," said Hank.
"He's a deejay and sounds like a Negro on the radio, actually. He
works for
a station that plays only Negro music."
Dad
said, "She pay you?"
"Sure did."
I
told them about Jeff-the-neighbor's theory that her husband was
having an
affair.
"As long as she pays her bill," Dad said. He started limping
toward
the door. "You had lunch yet,
Red? Hank can hold down the
fort."
"I grabbed a sandwich on the way back," I said. It was a figure of
speech:
actually I'd grabbed three Bob's Big Boy Hamburgers, a double
order of
fries, and a vanilla malt.
"See you when I see you, then."
Dad
limped out of the office.
I
waited until Hank left before phoning Butch, a buddy from the
Army. Hank was always nosing
into my gigs, not in a helpful way but to
declare
his superiority and establish my ineptitude for investigative
work. I'd been a linguist in the
Army but somehow this didn't count,
he
couldn't trust me to do anything right.
To be sure, the day I sold
a play to
Broadway I'd be long gone from the Peeping Tom Patrol - but
not even
I expected that to happen soon, if at all, any more. In the
meantime,
I kept my gigs to myself as much as possible and tried to
stay out
of big brother's way. Butch was the
only Negro friend I had,
and I
wanted to pick his brain about a few things without Hank looking
over my
shoulder.
"You're buying me breakfast?," Butch said on the phone,
pretending
to be
shocked. "What'd you do, man,
finally hit the big time?"
"Been a while since we touched bases, is all."
"You usually call when you want to bitch about work or need
information. But that's cool,
man, a free meal is a free meal. So when
and
where?"
We
set a time and place, and hung up.
I got
up and went to the radio on Dad's desk, turning it on. When
nothing
happened, I pounded on it until it came to life. I found
station
KRB.
The
radio said, We sizzle! We sparkle! We fire!
Hot Wire Wally's
got all
the best in Negro music for you - from blues to ballads, from
bebop to
boogie! Yes, indeedy!
It
wasn't Lovin' Dan the Sixty-Minute Man but this deejay sounded
Negro,
too, I thought. I looked up KRB in the
phone book, waited for a
station
break, and dialed the request line.
"It's your nickel, baby!," someone
answered, in the same frantic
voice of
the deejay.
I
said, "Do you take requests?"
"That's what we're here for."
"Anything by Perry Como."
There
was a silence. Then, in a totally different
voice, a voice I
took to
be clearly white, the man on the other end of the line said,
"Don't I wish, man, don't I wish." He hung up.
I
listened to KRB for the rest of the afternoon, background music
to
beginning the paperwork and phonework of tracing the lineage of
Lovin'
Dan the Sixty-Minute Man.
3/
Wed, 9
June 54. A play about illusion and
reality, people
pretending to be something they are not. This is what politicians do
all the
time! A political play, then? A political farce?
I
continued listening to KRB at home at night and also the next
morning
while writing in my journal. All the
deejays sounded Negro to
me, all
had the same frantic style, all had nicknames like Lovin' Dan,
Hot Wire
Wally, Rockin' Ronnie, Brian the Bopper.
The music selection
varied
greatly: a sweet ballad by Nat King Cole could be heard after a
lowdown
blues by Lightnin' Hopkins, music with nothing in common except
that it
was performed by a Negro. The emphasis,
however, seemed to be
on
singing groups with names like The Crows, The Robins, The Orioles
and The
Clovers. In fact, KRB was in the midst
of a local teenage
doo-wop
singing contest, "doo-wop" apparently being the label given to
the group
style of singing, in which nonsense but rhythmic sounds wove
in and
out of the melody line. Though my own
tastes tended toward The
Weavers,
Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, the music on KRB was catching. I
wondered
if Butch listened to the station.
When
I went to the office in the morning, there was a note in
Hank's
handwriting to call Dad. There was also
a snotty p.s.: Where
are the
blowups you promised me? Our office was
so small because half
the space
we rented had been converted into a dark room.
I
phoned Dad.
"Where's this deejay guy from?," he asked.
"Chicago. Why?"
"It will take you forever to put together his family tree by mail.
Let me
check around and see who's in Chicago who can help us. I'll
call you
later in the morning."
Dad
had former colleagues and connections all over the country.
While
they were no help in peeping into a bedroom window, they could be
a real
time-saver in looking for a missing person or doing a background
check. Within the hour Dad
called back and gave me the name of Stan
McNaughton, who was a friend of a friend of his. Fifteen minutes
later, I
had McNaughton on the job in Chicago. I
figured I might have
Dan's
family tree by next week.
I
spent the next hour in the darkroom, enlarging and cropping
photographs of a well-known TV personality doing nasty things to a girl
who
couldn't have been fourteen. At least I
think that's what he was
doing. It was hard to say, the
quality of the photographs was poor and
enlarging
them didn't help. The action had taken
place on the deck of
his
yacht, and I was shooting with a zoom lens from a rowboat a good
distance
away. What I remembered most about the gig was worrying about
falling
into the harbor. A three-hundred pound
man standing up in a
rowboat
is not the definition of stability.
The
radio said, Doot-doodle-loot doodle-loot doodle-lootle- loot,
doot-doodle-loot
doodle-loot doodle-lootle-loot . . .
I
found radio station KRB in a small Negro business district
southeast
of downtown L.A., called South City.
I'm not sure what it
was south
of, except the new Pomona Freeway, which was noisily, dustily
under
construction less than a mile north of the dilapidated building
that bore
the address of the station. It was a
rundown neighborhood,
far past
its prime, with more boarded-up storefronts than operating
businesses.
I parked
Bad-Ass across the street from the station, turned off the
radio,
turned off the ignition, and unwrapped the first of three Bob's
Big Boy
Hamburgers while waiting for the engine to sputter into
silence. I was going to wait for
the tired-looking guy at the barbecue
to leave
the building.
I
could have let McNaughton in Chicago trace the lineage without
staking
out Dan Davies, of course, but the adultery business made more
sense to
me than the other. Besides, this was a
solo gig, and I wanted
to make
the most of the opportunity to work without taking orders from
Hank. If McNaughton gave Dan a
white slate, so to speak, I'd be that
much
farther ahead if I knew he was engaged in extra-curricular
diddling.
It was getting warm past noon, and with
the heat came the smog. In
the
distance I could hear all the digging, scraping, shoving of
progress. Were all these new
freeways under construction supposed to
take
people into L.A. or give them a quick way out?
It was too warm to
roll up
the window, so I got all the noise and the thickening smog
together,
as I finished the first two hamburgers and started on the
third.
I
almost didn't recognize him. In the
photograph in his den, he
looked
thinner, perhaps because of the weary expression he showed the
camera. He didn't exactly bounce
out of the building with a happy,
carefree
gait but he was halfway down the block before it registered
that this
fellow looked a lot like the guy at the barbecue. I started
the
engine, adding bellowing blue smoke to the smog, but turned it
quickly
off when I saw Dan enter the corner building.
I got out and
hurried
down the street, stuffing the last of the burger into my mouth
and
throwing the wrapper in the gutter.
A
hand-painted sign said Caviar's Market, though it looked like the
last
place in the world to purchase gourmet foodstuffs, even though a
1950 pink
Cadillac was parked out front. Unlike the
store, which was
in a
building as dilapidated as the others in the neighborhood, the car
was
immaculate, its pink body gleaming in the dismal afternoon.
I
waited on the corner across the street.
If I smoked, it would've
been a
great time to light up and think about what to do next. What
the hell,
I didn't need a cigarette to know that the journey begins
with a
single step. I pulled up my tie and
crossed the street.
We
almost ran into one another at the doorway.
Dan - and from
close now
I knew it was the guy at the barbecue - mumbled something I
couldn't
make out, perhaps an apology, and turned the corner, leaving
me
outside the door.
A
voice in the market yelled, "If you're coming in, close the door!
If you
ain't, close the door anyway!"
I
closed the door and turned the corner in time to see Dan going up
a back
stairway. I heard the voice of an old
man calling down to him
from
above, "You're ten minutes late!"
What
now? I went into the market.
"Hey, close the door behind you!," the same voice yelled. I found
its
source at the counter, a large Negro who was sitting in front of an
electric
fan, going over something or other in a ledger book.
"I'll be with you in a minute," he said. "You after the special on
Russian
Caviar, we're all sold out, man, and I don't expect nothing
more in a
long time. We ain't getting along too
hot with the Russians
these
days."
He
couldn't be serious, I thought - he sold Russian Caviar in a
joint
like this? Moving down an aisle, with
one eye on the filthy
front
window, watching for Dan, I began to change my mind. There was no
rhyme nor
reason to the items on the shelves but many were indeed
foodstuffs common to a gourmet market.
I found canned froglegs,
pickled
dwarf corn, escargot complete with a package of shells, dried
Chinese
mushrooms. Scattered among these
delicacies were flashlight
batteries, cans of motor oil, various Negro cosmetics, a huge box of
rubber
bands. I didn't know what to make of
the place.
"What can I do for you, man?"
On
his feet, he was even larger than I had realized, towering
perhaps
six-seven above me, with the build of a lineman for the Rams.
Even at
my size, I felt dwarfed. He was
grinning broadly as he shoved
a huge
hand at me. When I took it, he was kind
and no bones were
broken.
"I'm Tank," he said.
I
wondered if this were Tank Younger, who played with the Rams.
Apparently it was a common question.
"Not the Tank Younger," he laughed. "I had the nickname longer
than he
do."
"I'm Red," I said.
"You need help?"
"Just browsing."
"That's fine. If you're
here to ask about that apartment for rent
upstairs,
the deejay cat already beat you to it. Unless he don't take
it, of
course. He's up there talking to Mr.
Romanowitz right now.
Tell you
the truth, I think he's taking it. He
been walking up and
down the
street, looking up at it, all damn week, man.
I wish he be
making up
his mind."
"You know him?," I asked.
"He come in a couple times a week.
He works at the station up the
street,
playing that goddamn doo-wop for the kids."
Tank
was still grinning, staring down at me.
If this was his way
of
intimidating a customer, it worked. I
decided to buy something and
get the
hell out of there.
"You have pop?"
"A whole big cooler full, man.
Back there."
There
was no Dr. Pepper, so I purchased a bottle of coke and didn't
object
when Tank rang up fifty cents for it.
He even had an
explanation.
"That's vintage 1949 Coca Cola, man, they ain't never had a year
better than that."
I
went back onto the street to discover that, once again, I'd
almost
lost Dan. He was heading back toward
the radio station. Coming
around
the corner at the same time was the old man from upstairs, Mr.
Romanowitz, the landlord.
"Excuse me," I said.
"I understand you have an apartment for
rent."
"Just rented it," he said.
He was much older than Dad, perhaps
seventy,
with full white hair and bad teeth. He
grunted and rasped as
he went
on. "Been trying to rent it for
six months, now I get two
interested parties the same day.
Two white men, the same day.
What
you want
to live around here for is beyond me.
Neighborhood full of
winos and
dope fiends. You interested in Buena Park? I got property
in Buena
Park."
"Is the guy moving in right away?"
"He paid a month's rent, he might as well."
The
old man started up the street, walking slowly, and I followed
along.
"He says he works right in the neighborhood. How about Arcadia? I
got
property in Arcadia. You want to live
in Arcadia?"
When
we were halfway up the street, Dan drove by in a recent model
Mercury. I left the landlord
stewing in his offers and ran up the
street to
Bad-Ass. After raising the usual cloud
of smoke, I was
accelerating behind the Mercury when Dan got through a yellow light
that was
red for me. Bad-Ass was no friend of
heat and, in my anxiety,
I let the
engine stall waiting for the light to change, then flooded it
trying to
restart. By the time I was going again,
Dan was long gone,
and I
just drove on back to Venice.
No
one was in the office but I could tell that Hank had been at my
desk,
snooping around. He also had left a
note to call Joan Davies.
"Hello?," she answered.
"Mrs. Davies?"
"Yes."
"This is Red Trevorak."
"Thank you for returning my call so promptly."
"No problem."
"I was talking to Jeff Berger, my neighbor. He said he gave you
his
theory about Dan having a mistress."
"Something like that."
"That may or may not be true, but I insist that you make that
background check. I'm paying
your salary, after all."
"Already started it," I said.
"I may have something to show you as
early as
next week."
"That's wonderful. I was
afraid you might think my request was,
well, too
bizarre, is the term Jeff uses. He's
positive it's the
other,
and maybe it is, Lord knows Dan's been interested in something
besides
me lately. But I do need peace of mind
about the other.
That's
the first priority."
"Like I said, the investigation has begun."
"If you knew what a shock it was, to have your own bridge partner
turn out
to be a Negro!"
"I can imagine," I said.
But I couldn't.
"Well, that's all I wanted to say."
"Mrs. Davies?"
"You can call me Joan, Mr. Trevorak."
"That neighbor who was passing for white, I forget her name . .
."
"Flo Albertson."
"Right. So what's the story
with her? I mean, did she move out of
the
neighborhood or what?"
"The house is up for sale but it's poor Gregory who moved out. I
think
he's staying with his mother."
"That's her husband?"
"Yes."
I
brought the conversation to an end and hung up. I didn't intend
to tell
her about the apartment until I knew more about it, and why Dan
had
rented it, myself. But one possibility
was immediately obvious: an
apartment
close to work would be damn convenient for messing around.
Maybe the
neighbor Jeff could read human nature as well as he bragged.
I
scribbled a note to the effect that my desk was off limits and put
it on
Hank's calendar, then locked up the office.
I spent the rest of
the day
walking along the beach, barefoot and carrying my shoes, making
four-toed
prints in the sand and glorying in the sea breezes and the
lithe and
not-so-lithe female bodies baking in the sun, white skin
sweating
under oil to turn brown, thinking about brown-skinned bodies
trying to
pass for white.
4/
Fri, 11
June 54. Something along the lines of
Gogol's Inspector
General. A reasonably common
political event carried to extremes, to
farce. Set it in a foreign
country?
I met
Butch for a late breakfast in Westwood, near the campus of
UCLA,
where he was taking classes on the G.I. Bill.
We got together
every two
or three months, usually for breakfast at Connie's in
Westwood,
sometimes for beers and a few games of pool after he was done
with
classes. Butch liked to bug me about
taking classes myself but
sitting
around with a bunch of budding Eugene O'Neills and Tennessee
Williamses was not my idea of a good time.
Butch
was an artist, a painter who worked with gigantic canvases
that
captured the worklife and streetlife of his neighborhood in Watts,
the
largest Negro community in the county. He was studying to be a
teacher,
more interested in bringing something back to his community
than in
building an independent reputation. I
didn't know anything
about
visual art but the sheer accomplishment of his huge canvases,
which
cluttered the warehouse he called both studio and home, impressed
the hell
out of me.
This
morning, like always, Butch wore paint-splattered coveralls
and a cap
(today a new beret) that hid a premature bald spot. As if
making up
for early loss of hair, he sported a Van Dyke beard, which he
habitually stroked during conversation.
In deference to the warm
weather,
he wore no shirt under the broad shoulder straps.
Waiting to be seated, I teased him about his outfit and he teased
me about
my floundering career as a playwright.
I hadn't written a new
play in
six months but I was taking notes in my journal about a new
idea for
one.
The
waitress seated us far back in the rear corner of the
restaurant, and we both were hungry enough to order from memory.
"Take off that goddamn beret," I said when the waitress was
gone.
Usually
he wore an Angels baseball cap. We were
both diehard Angel
fans but,
somehow, had never taken in a game together.
"Picasso eats with his beret
on," Butch replied.
"Now how in hell do you know that?"
"I saw his picture in Life Magazine, eating breakfast in a Spanish
cafe with
his beret on."
"They don't eat breakfast in Spain."
"Not ham and eggs, man. He
was eating a roll and drinking red
wine."
I
smiled, conceding the point. Every time
Butch and I got
together,
I wondered why we didn't do it more often.
We'd met and
become
fast friends in the Army hospital, both put there by Korean
frostbite. Like myself, Butch
was in the Army Security Agency; I was a
linguist
and Butch a traffic analyst, the Army's term for keeping track
of what
the North Korean and Chinese military units were up to. In the
hospital we discussed books and played gin
rummy and exchanged war
stories. We talked about our
very different lives growing up in Los
Angeles
County. By the time the doctors let us
go, each with a missing
toe, we'd
compared fantasies we shared with no one else, about bringing
an art
center to Watts or taking a play to New York.
Now, a couple
years
after discharge, we were still getting together, but more
casually
now. We'd weathered since Korea and
kept our fantasies to
ourselves.
Small
talk continued through breakfast. When
I kept ordering
coffee
after the waitress had cleared our table, Butch guessed that
something
was bothering me.
"What's on your mind, man?
You look like you're sitting on a hot
potato."
"I'm not sure where to begin."
"You got a problem at work?"
I
told him about my gig with Joan Davies, about the neighbor woman
who had
been passing for white until she had her dark baby, about
Joan's
anxiety that her own husband might be a Negro, about Lovin'
Dan's
radio show and renting an apartment in South City. When I was
done,
Butch just looked at me.
Finally he said, "So where do I come in?"
"Everything strikes me as so bizarre. I thought maybe you could
shed some
light on it for me."
"What's so bizarre?"
"A Negro woman pretending she's white. A white man sounding like a
Negro on
the radio. His wife wanting to check
his lineage."
"Come on, man, you're pulling my leg. What's so difficult to
figure
out about that? If you're a Negro light
enough to pass for
white,
and you want to climb up the social ladder, you got no choice
but to
pass for white. You think they're gonna
let Negroes move into
Foothills, man? Get
serious. And what is she, probably one
part in
sixteen
or some damn thing?"
"I mean, I know we live in a prejudiced society but--"
"Prejudiced society, shit.
Racist, Red. Racist to a
conspiratorial degree."
I'd
heard this theory two or three times before, usually when Butch
had had
too much to drink, but I'd dismissed it as the anger and
frustration of a victim of prejudice.
Butch
said, "If she wants to live in the best neighborhoods, man,
the lady
got no choice but to pass for white.
Nobody's gonna let
Negroes
move around at will. Why the hell do
you think they're
building
all these new freeways? Think about
it."
"I don't see what this has to do with freeways."
"Come on, Red, open your eyes!"
He
pulled a ballpoint pen out from a pocket and began drawing on a
napkin,
all the while continuing with greater excitement.
"What do the white City Fathers fear most of all? The expansion of
Negro
neighborhoods, man. The darkies
infiltrating good white
neighborhoods. I'm not
jiving. Looky here."
His
diction was changing as he spoke, so that now he was sounding
more like
Lovin' Dan the Sixty-Minute Man, with his hip vernacular,
than like
the cultured Butch I knew. He turned
the napkin around so I
could see
what he'd drawn so quickly, a pattern of lines with a circle
in the
middle.
"This is the Freeway Grand Plan, okay? They even published it in
the newspaper. Now this here is Watts, man.
So more Negroes have been
moving
into Watts, so it's expanding to the west, right? Oo-ee, we got
to head
off them niggers at the pass! And so we start building this
here
Harbor Freeway to block them off, and this here Santa Monica
Freeway
to catch and trap all the ones that slip over the boundary
before we
can finish up the Harbor. But now Watts
is expanding east,
man,
cause it's got to go somewhere, and so we got to head off them
damn
niggers again, oo-ee, baby, let's build ourselves the Santa Ana
Freeway,
only this time a whole mess of niggers got so far east we got
to come
down with another one, too, the Pomona Freeway -- look at it,
Red. All these freeways ain't nothing but fences
to keep the niggers
from
getting too close to good white neighborhoods.
You mentioned
South
City. Well, what's South City,
man? A town because people want
it to be
a town? Hell, no. It's nothing but the part of Watts that
got over
the Santa Ana but got cut off with the Pomona.
It ain't a
freeway
system, Red, it's the walls of a prison!"
I
stared at the napkin.
"You're saying," I began slowly, "that the purpose of the
freeway
system is
to contain Watts?"
Butch
laughed. "Shit, man, I think I'd
better pay the check, you
so
dumb."
He
started to get up.
"Wait a minute," I said. "Sit down."
Butch
gave me a sad little grin, shaking his head and stroking his
Van Dyke.
"What about the traffic problem?," I asked. "Freeways are being
built to
solve the traffic problem."
"Course they need freeways for the traffic, man. I'm talking about
where
they decide to build them."
"To get back to what started this - you're saying it's not unusual
for a
light Negro to pass for white. It is,
in fact, the only way a
Negro can
get beyond the freeway walls. Something
like that?"
"I'm saying if somebody is so dumb to want to move into your better
neighborhoods, which are white, then they got to be white themselves -
and if
they can pass white, then somebody's going to try it."
"Would you try and pass for white if you were lighter?"
"Get serious. I generally
don't even like white folks, Red. I ever
tell you
that? I make an exception of you. You got so many freckles,
man, you
don't even look like a white man. Dig
this: if I'm the monkey
in the
zoo, you're the leopard, boy!"
Butch
laughed, and I had to smile. I liked
Butch, I really did.
I
said, "Do you realize the way you talk has changed over the past
few
minutes?"
Butch
howled and slapped the table. Then he
replied in what was
meant to
be a cultured New England accent.
"In a society such as ours," he said, "a wise man
assesses the
rules of
the game before he deigns to engage the competition." And
then he
switched to vernacular, more outrageous than ever: "Shee,
baby, I
don' think them UCLA pro-fessors dig what be happenin' in the
world,
man, in the world!"
He
roared with laughter.
"Come on," he said, wiping tears from his eyes. "Let's get out of
here."
He
had a class, and I walked toward campus with him. Along the way
I asked
him why Dan would want to sound like a Negro on the radio.
"What you really mean," said Butch, "is he's talking
jive. He does
that
because it's cool, man, it's part of the job.
He's playing hip
music for
the kids, so he wants to sound hip."
"I don't know anything about the music," I admitted. "I like what
I've
heard."
"You're still listening to folk music, right?"
I
nodded.
"The craze for the kids is doo-wop. It's just all that moon and
spoon
shit put in a new package."
We
walked the rest of the way in silence, and at the edge of campus
I thanked
him.
"For what?"
"I think I've got a little better handle on things."
"If you say so."
"Not that I can understand why a woman would want to check the
lineage
of her own husband."
"Never under-estimate paranoia when matters of race are
concerned,"
said
Butch.
We
shook hands and went our separate ways.
I
spent the rest of the morning listening to KRB on the car radio
and
cruising the streets of Watts. To my
amazement, Butch had a point,
you
couldn't drive in any direction out of Watts without being cut off
by a new
freeway under construction. It was like
being caught in a
maze.
It
was past noon by the time I found a way over construction on the
Santa
Ana, too late to get to South City in time to tail Dan after his
show. I decided to drive to
Foothills and look up Flo Albertson.
The
playwright, more than the investigator, was
fascinated with what made a
woman
like her tick. In the odd event that
Dan had Negroes in his own
background, understanding her psychology would help me understand Dan's
-- this,
at any rate, was the rationalization I needed to stay away
from the
office and to avoid any boring footwork Hank might have for
me.
So I
drove north toward the central city, heading Bad-Ass into the
worst
soup of the smog. I rolled up the
windows, preferring sweat to
stinging
eyes. I cranked up the music. The radio said, wah-wah-oh
wah-oh .
. .
5/
After
pulling off the Pasadena freeway, I discovered that a gas
war had
developed almost overnight. I chose a
Standard station offering
four
gallons for a dollar. While the gas
jockey filled the tank, I
walked to
the phone booth and looked up the Albertson address in
Foothills.
A
thin gray mist washed over the San Gabriel mountains to the north
but it
was difficult to know if it was smog creeping out of the city or
the
smokey residue from the morning burning of hundreds of family
backyard
incinerators. A movement had started to
ban home incinerators
in east
county and a counter-movement had risen to protect the
Constitutional guarantees of burning one's own garbage at home.
The
Albertson home was like others in the neighborhood, a long lean
ranchstyle set under the tall pines.
Going up the brick walk to the
front
door, I saw a woman come out of the house and when we passed I
recognized Ruth, the housekeeper for Joan Davies.
"Afternoon," I greeted her.
She
nodded and passed. She was in the same
white outfit, her black
hair
hanging in bangs in front, short and straight in back. It made
sense
that she had as many gigs in the neighborhood as she could get,
and I
liked her for not dropping Flo Albertson after what had happened.
I also
liked Mrs. Albertson for keeping her on.
I wondered, since they
both were
Negro, if they talked about what had happened.
When
Mrs. Albertson answered the door, it was clear that she had
been
crying. Her eyes were puffy and red but
even this fact did not
hide that
she was stunningly attractive, movie star attractive. Face
to face
with her, I never would have imagined that she was a Negro.
She had a
face like Audrey Hepburn, full of wonderful sweeps and
angles.
"May I help you?," she asked.
"My name's Red Trevorak.
I'm a private investigator and wonder if
you have
time to answer a few questions."
"About what?"
"Your neighbor, Dan Davies."
"Do you have identification?"
When
I showed her, she invited me in. In
this home, strangers were
led to
the living room. She offered me a seat
in a wooden chair that
could
have been an antique but to be on the safe side I sat down
instead
on one end of the divan. As she sat
down on the other end, I
noticed
that she was wearing an apron. She was so lovely that an apron
had just
disappeared on her.
"What do you want to know?," she asked.
I got
right to the point, explaining about the gig with Joan and
asking if
she had any opinion one way or the other about Dan's race.
"Do you drink in the afternoon, Mr. Trevorak?," she asked,
ignoring
my
question. "I'm having a gin and
tonic and you're welcome to join
me."
Though a gin and tonic sounded good, I declined. It wasn't that I
was against
drinking on the job, booze often loosened up an interview
and let
information surface that wouldn't come out sober. But I was
too
attracted to her to drink. I didn't
trust myself to avoid acting
like a
fool.
She
got up and went to a liquor cabinet across the room.
"I hardly know Dan Davies at all," she said. "I do enjoy
his radio
program. And I play bridge -
used to play bridge with his wife. Of
course,
I'm ostracized up here now." She
turned from the business of
making
her drink and faced me. "You do
know what happened, of course."
"Just what Joan told me."
"I'm sure she told you everything."
Turning back to mix her drink, Mrs. Albertson said, "What we have
here, Mr.
Trevorak, is a case of classic white paranoia. Since I am not
who I
appeared to be, everyone is suspect. Especially poor Dan, who
plays
Negro records on the radio. Did Joan
send you here?"
"She doesn't know I'm here," I said.
"She'll find out. If she
hasn't found out already."
She
came back to the divan with her drink, moving across the room
with the
grace of a ballet dancer. It was all I
could do not to tell
her she
was beautiful and that I thought she was getting a raw deal.
"But to answer your question," she said, "the notion that
Dan
Davies
may have Negro ancestors is ridiculous."
"A neighbor thinks he may be having an affair."
"That would be Jeff Berger, I bet."
I
felt like telling her that her insight was incredible and let's
have
dinner tonight.
"And what does Jeff Berger say about me?," she asked. She smiled.
"That I'm a loose woman. Am
I right?"
"The person involved did not mention you," I said.
"Once you're a nigger, Mr. Trevorak, and a woman, it's a short step
to
becoming a whore."
She
raised her glass in a sad toast and drank.
I
couldn't hold it in any longer and said, "I think it's very
unfair
the way you've been treated."
"Oh come on now," she laughed in an outburst that surprised
me.
"Let
me tell you something, Mr. Trevorak."
"Please call me Red."
"Mr. Trevorak. My mother
was white, and my grandmother was white.
I never
knew my grandfather and my father left us when I was two. I've
always
considered myself white. At least until
I applied for college,
when I
found out that legally I am a Negro. It was on my birth records.
It was on
my school records. The college I wanted
to attend didn't
accept
Negroes. That information threw me into
a tailspin, and for
more
years than I care to recall I was not doing myself or anyone else
any good.
When I finally got back on my feet, I decided that since I
looked
white, and since I had thought of myself as white for most of my
life,
there was no reason that I shouldn't be white.
With such a
positive
outlook, it only took me five years to move into Foothills."
She
finished her drink and moved across the room to fix another. I
struggled
to my feet and followed her.
"Straight tonic would be nice," I said.
"Surely."
"You said you enjoy Dan's radio show."
"I do."
"Don't you think it's strange that a white man tries to sound like
a Negro
on the radio?"
"Heavens," she burst out again, "he's not sounding like a
Negro!
Maybe
like what he thinks a Negro should sound like. He's trying to be
hip for
the kids. All the deejays do it. To be honest, it seems to be
the
direction the radio station is going in, appealing more and more to
kids. I prefer the way it used
to be."
"How was that?"
"Playing more Nat Cole and Louis Jordan, and less of these new
doo-wop
groups."
She
handed me my drink. I raised the glass,
offering a toast, and
she
touched her own glass against mine.
"Mrs. Albertson," I said, "we have no control over the
color of our
skin. Look at me: I'm an
orange-spotted mistake."
"And what makes you so liberal?"
"I call it common sense."
"My husband is a liberal. A
liberal Democrat. Not that he flaunts
it
around, especially in Foothills. Well,
do you know his reaction to
all
this? He's divorcing me. He thinks I married him for his money."
She
smiled sadly and said, "And all the time I was pregnant, he was
having an
affair."
From
a distant room, a baby started crying.
"Please excuse me a minute," she said. She set her drink on the
counter
of the liquor cabinet and headed in the direction of the
crying.
I
looked around the room, which reeked of money.
There were
abstract
paintings on the wall. A small sculptor
on a wooden stand
stood in
one corner of the room. There were
crystal glasses in the
liquor
cabinet and the brands of booze were the best.
This was one
cultured
lady but culture and money were going down the drain because
the baby
crying now in a distant room had the wrong color skin.
The
phone began to ring. I located it on a
table in the adjacent
hallway. As it continued to
ring, Mrs. Albertson called from down the
hallway,
"Would you answer that and take a message, please?"
I
picked up the phone.
"Hello?"
"Is
that you, Mr. Trevorak? This is Joan
Davies."
"This is Trevorak."
"The housekeeper just came in and said she saw you."
"I saw her, too."
"Please don't be cute. What
in hell are you doing there?"
Coming from Joan, hell sounded like a first rate expletive.
"I don't have to answer that," I said.
"As long as you're in my employ, you do."
"I'm in the employ of many people." Didn't I wish. "The
way I do
my job is
my business."
"I think I deserve an explanation at least. Everyone in the
neighborhood knows I hired you by now.
Obviously you're not hiding the
fact that
you're over there. No one can miss your
car, even if they
miss
you."
I
said, "Mrs. Davies, I'm here in your best interests, believe me."
"I don't see what she has to do with Dan. Unless you think . . .?"
There
it was, right on cue, first a nigger woman and then a whore.
I could
feel the flush of anger rising in my face.
"I'm
only going to say this once," I said.
"Flo Albertson was
passing
for white. You think your husband may
be doing the same.
Ergo,
they may have this in common. Ergo,
they may have shared their
common
anxieties. That's why I'm here."
It was a pretty good job for thinking on
my feet, delivered with
the right
balance of formality and phony jargon.
What I really wanted
to do was
teach her a few real expletives.
"I see," she said.
There
was a silence.
"I'll be by when I'm done," I said.
"Yes, I think that would be good."
The
comment almost made me change my mind.
"How long will you be?," she asked.
I
said, "As long as it takes" and hung up.
I
turned to find Mrs. Albertson in the hallway, watching me. She
was
holding her baby, rocking it gently, only dark hair visible above
the
blanket the baby was wrapped in.
"You didn't realize the risk of coming here, did you?"
"No risk," I said.
"In fact, you've been helpful.
I appreciate
your
time."
I
didn't want to be talking this way, making remarks prefatory to
leaving. I wanted to ask her
what she was doing tonight.
"Do you have a card?," she asked.
I
fumbled through my wallet for one, feeling ridiculous, feeling
like a
high school snake in the presence of the prom queen, looking for
something
with two left thumbs.
"Trevorak Private Investigations," she read when I finally
handed
her the
card. "There are three of you, all
Trevoraks."
"We're a family agency."
"How nice that you have family."
She
walked me to the door. I felt more
awkward than ever and moved
forward
and out without turning to say a word.
It wasn't until I
opened
the door to get into Bad-Ass that I realized I had an erection.
6/
Ruth,
the housekeeper, seemed surprised to see me.
Finally she
said,
"Hello again."
"You didn't say hello the first time," I said, stepping inside.
"The
boss lady's expecting me."
"I see. Mrs. Davies is in
the den."
"I know where it is."
Ruth
still led the way, as if house rules demanded it. Just before
we
reached the doorway into the den, she stopped and did a little bow,
gesturing
with one arm for me to go ahead and enter. I smiled but she
didn't
smile back.
"Come in, Mr. Trevorak."
Joan
Davies was standing near the radio console, looking like a
bored
party-goer waiting for the tray of drinks to pass by. I couldn't
tell if
her pink silk robe was morning or evening wear. She moved away
from the
radio to the coffee table, on which I saw a ceramic pitcher
and
glasses.
"Would you like a glass of iced tea?," she asked.
Apparently iced tea was the neighborhood drink of fashion.
"Sure, thanks."
She
poured drinks, and we sat on opposite ends of the divan. I
noticed
that the framed photograph of Dan was no longer on the coffee
table.
"I
should apologize for the phone call," she said.
"No problem, as long as we're straight that I do the job my
way."
"Of course. I'm pleased
that you're being so thorough. It never
would
have occurred to me to make a connection between Dan and Flo."
"I doubt if there is one.
But you have to check everything."
"I thought you said they might be good friends - considering their
- well,
their common mask."
Common mask came out sounding lowlife and ordinary, like ordering
beer in a
fine restaurant. I was sure she only
went to fine
restaurants.
I
said, "Frankly, Mrs. Davies--"
"Joan."
"I seriously doubt if your husband has any Negroes in the closet.
I think
the difference in him you've noticed probably has another
explanation."
"Oh? And what explanation
is that?"
"He rented an apartment near the radio station."
She
considered this a moment, then said, "That would be in a Negro
neighborhood."
"Yes, it is."
"Then perhaps he plans to admit it before he's discovered."
There
was no way a stranger over-hearing this would have known she
was
talking about her own husband. She was
distant and clinical,
sitting
in her pink silk robe with every hair in place and her makeup
fresh and
perfect.
"There's another, more logical explanation," I said.
What
was worse to her, I wondered, that Dan might be a Negro or
that he
might be cheating on her? I couldn't tell. Maybe she was
trying to
figure out the same thing.
"And what explanation is that?," she asked.
I
didn't reply, giving her time to figure it out herself.
She
said, "You think Jeff is right and Dan is having an affair."
"It would explain arranging a home
away from home, so to speak."
"Perhaps."
For
an instant, I saw a hint of emotion, a passing flash of pain in
her
expression before she abruptly rose from the divan and moved across
the
room. I grabbed the arm rest and pushed
myself to my feet.
"I'm glad you told me," she said. "I want to think about what it
means. You said you might have
his family tree by next week?"
"Or the week after."
"The sooner all this is resolved, the better. In the meantime, Mr.
Trevorak,
do whatever you think is best.
Obviously you know what
you're
doing."
Driving down the hill from the Davies home, I saw Ruth walking
along the
sidewalk. I pulled Bad-Ass to the curb and
opened the
passenger
door.
"You need a ride?," I asked.
"No thanks, the bus stop is just at the corner."
"Where are you headed?"
"South City."
"I'll take you."
"No need to go out of your way."
"I've got business there anyway."
She
still hesitated to get in. I said,
"I've got an appointment at
KRB."
It
wasn't true but it did the trick. She
climbed in, and we
continued
down the hill out of Foothills into Pasadena.
She wasn't much for small talk. Her bus came every hour, I
learned,
and yes, the smog was real bad this summer.
I gave up on
conversation and turned on the radio.
The
radio said, Bah bah-oh, bah-oh, bah-oh, bah-oh . . .
After
pulling off the Pasadena Freeway, we drove the string of
detours
over construction into South City. I
asked her where she
wanted to
be let off.
"Anywhere's fine," she said.
"At the corner."
"This cab gives doorstep service."
"Turn right at the light, then."
She
directed me to a house at the very edge of construction on the
new
Pomona Freeway. It was a woodframe
house with a small backyard
that
suddenly dropped off into a deep gully of noise and dust. I
couldn't
imagine anyone living in such a place but the neighborhood
seemed to
ignore, or at least was used to, its unusual setting: kids
were
playing baseball in the street and, on the front porch of Ruth's
house,
four teenagers were gathered in a loose circle, singing. At
least
they appeared to be singing, with their arms gesturing
rhythmically and their fingers snapping. I couldn't hear them for all
the clank
and boom of machinery coming up from the backyard gully.
"Thanks for the ride," Ruth said, opening the door.
"My pleasure." Before
she slid out, I added, "Are they singing on
the
porch?"
"That's Artie's doo-wop group.
They're practicing for a contest."
"The one on KRB?"
"You know about that?"
"I've been listening to Lovin' Dan the Sixty-Minute Man."
"Have you?" She was
studying me, as if trying to decide whether or
not she
believed me.
"Your employer," I added.
Ruth
smiled and said, "He's a character, isn't he?"
I
couldn't tell if the remark was sincere or guarded.
"What do you think about Dan?," I asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Do you know why I was hired?"
"I don't even know what you do."
"I'm a private investigator."
"Really? What are you
investigating?"
"Whether or not Dan is a Negro."
"You're kidding me."
"The Flo Albertson business has Mrs. Davies a little
paranoid."
"Well, I guess so."
"Actually I think he has a girlfriend on the side."
Sometimes insight comes all at once or not at all. The remark had
just come
out but her expression after hearing it told me I'd made a
wild toss
of the dart and hit a bull's-eye. Ruth
was the girlfriend.
Dan was
messing with the housekeeper. It made
perfect sense.
Ruth
said, "Thanks again for the ride," and quickly slid out.
Since
I was in the neighborhood, I drove to Caviar's Market and
parked
behind the pink Caddy. Either it hadn't
been moved or had the
parking
place right in front of the market reserved.
It definitely
looked
out of place.
I
entered the market and found Tank creeping down an aisle with a
broom
raised over his head. I stopped,
wondering what was going on.
He swung
the broom but apparently missed whatever he was swinging at
because
he began swearing. Turning, he saw me
and grinned.
"Well, looky here," he said, "the man like my vintage
coke so much
he come
back for more."
"I was wondering if that fellow moved into his apartment yet."
"I don't hear nothing up there today. You still looking for a
pad?"
"No, I was just wondering if he'd moved in."
"I think it's just a party pad anyway."
"What do you mean?"
"A place where he can take his trem, man. You can't tell me no
white
man's moving into the neighborhood permanent or nothing like
that. Like I told you before, he
works up at the radio station. He
probably
needs a place to take the secretary during lunch hour."
"You've seen him with the secretary?"
"He come in with different ladies at different times, man."
"Does one of them wear her hair in bangs in front? Short, black, a
pretty
woman."
"White woman?"
"No, a Negro."
"Yeah, that fits one. I
only seen him with black women."
The
pieces were fitting together. It seemed
very likely that he'd
been in
the market with Ruth herself and that I'd catch them together
in the
upstairs apartment soon enough. I was
feeling pleased as punch
with
myself and bought an over-priced "vintage" coke to celebrate.
It
also was Friday, which meant it was time to check in with my
girlfriend Carla. Instead of
returning to the office, I began the
chain of
detours to Santa Monica and Carla's apartment, where I often
spent the
weekend. Carla was an American gypsy,
dark and bohemian, who
managed
to scratch out a living as a freelance astrologer. She also
was a
hedonist, and we had a stable relationship based on too much
food,
liquor and sex, and I was in the mood for all three. Maybe we
didn't
have what the movies called true love but at least our charts
were
compatible.
7/
I
awoke out of a dream with my mind racing.
For a minute I didn't
know
where I was: I reached for my journal but it wasn't there, there
wasn't
even a bedside table for it to be on.
Then I heard Carla
snoring
beside me. I scooted to the edge of the
mattress and dropped
one leg
to the floor, then the other, and got out of bed.
The
room was barely lit by a streetlight two stories down. I found
an empty
grocery sack on the kitchen counter and took it to the small
breakfast
table. I found a pencil on top of an
astrology chart Carla
had been
working on just before we went to bed.
I began to scribble
furiously
in the near-dark:
Sat, 12
June 54. A political farce set in a
fictitious foreign
country: the President of the country has
fallen in love with an exotic
dancer
and wants to run off with her. He is a
student of Eastern arts,
ala some
of the stuff I saw in Japan. He fakes his own death, able to
will his
blood pressure, breathing, etc., to realms too low to measure.
(Not as
far fetched as many would think.) His
corpse is being prepared
for
public viewing by a very proud State Mortician. Then the
President's mask is betrayed: he's been thinking about his exotic
dancer and gets an involuntary
erection. The corpse has an erection!
has his
reputation to think of. Add the usual
twists and turns of a
broadly
played farce. A one-act play, working
title "The Stiff."
It was
not much to write but afterwards I felt exhausted. I left
the
grocery sack on the table and stumbled back to bed. Carla was still
snoring
beside me. I fell quickly and deeply
asleep.
Carla
was walking around naked, digging through the cluttered chaos
of her
studio apartment for a clean pair of panties.
She was as big
for a
woman as I was for a man, and as she stooped to root through the
pile of
clothes in the corner near her dresser, her white belly folded
into
endless ripples. Now and again I imagined the Peeping Tom Patrol
catching
Carla and me in the heat of lovemaking, a near-300-pound man
sweating
and groping for pleasure with a near-200-pound woman. It gave
a whole
new image to romantic love, which was perhaps why Carla and I
were
unromantically down to earth. We were
both admitted hedonists and
sex and
other bodily pleasures were the kingpin of our relationship.
"Mutual use for mutual self-abuse," was the way Carla
sometimes
described
our relationship but when she said this, there was always
laughter
in her voice.
I was
up on one elbow, watching her, when Carla said, "Piss on it."
She
stepped into a pair of panties that would have to do. Leaning
forward,
she dropped her large breasts into an awaiting bra, adjusted
it, stood
up and adjusted the fit some more, then reached back and
snapped
it on.
She
noticed me watching her.
"You horny or something?," she asked.
I
shook my head, no.
"I'll make some coffee," she said. As she passed the small table
off the
kitchen, she picked up the grocery sack.
"Can you actually read this?"
"Don't throw that away," I said.
She tossed it to me. She was right, I could barely make out my
own
handwriting. What I read sounded
like a pretty stupid idea for a play.
A phony
corpse with an erection? That's what I
got for drinking most
of a
fifth of Jameson's Irish Whiskey last night.
When
the coffee began gurgling, Carla finished getting dressed and
went to
the front door. Her parting shot before
leaving was, "Get your
ass in
gear and make breakfast or something."
I was
dressed and bacon was sizzling by the time she returned with
the
morning paper. I was at the table
sipping coffee and staring at
what I
had written on the grocery sack. Maybe the idea had
possibilities after all. You
could get away with a lot in a farce.
As
my favorite drama critic, Jiminy Cricket,
liked to sing, "It ain't what
you do,
it's the way that you do it."
Carla
always got the sports section first.
She dropped the rest of
the paper
on the table in front of me and went to the stove to pour
coffee,
the sports section folded under her arm.
The
headline on the front page announced another rat murder, and I
began to
read the story. Before Carla returned
to the table, I was
choking
on my coffee and getting to my feet.
"You all right?," Carla asked.
"I just talked to her yesterday!"
I
grabbed the front section of the paper and headed for the door.
"Talked to who? Where are
you going?"
I
mumbled, "I've got to get to the office."
"Red!," Carla yelled.
I
turned in the doorway and said, "I know the woman who was
killed."
"Let me see," Carla said.
I
tossed her the paper and turned to leave.
As the door closed
behind
me, I could hear her yelling, "I thought we were going to spend
the day
together!"
I
picked up another paper on the way to the office and tried to
finish
the story while I was driving. Flo
Albertson had been
discovered in her home Friday evening by the paperboy and his friends,
the paper
said. The paperboy was out collecting
in the neighborhood
and his
friends were along because Mrs. Albertson was a controversial
figure. There were rumors that
she was a witch from some Caribbean
island,
according to the paperboy. At any rate,
when no one answered
the door,
the boys got brave enough to begin peeking into windows, and
they
found her body on the floor of the kitchen.
The police weren't
called
until several hours later, when the paperboy told his parents.
The
usual m.o. was at work: she had been shot at close range by a
small
caliber weapon. On the kitchen counter,
close to the body, were
a dead
rat and another installment of "The History of Rats."
Dad
was upset because a woman victim compromised his pet theory
that the
rat murderer was a prostitute.
"Unless this one was a prostitute herself," he said, grabbing
at
straws.
"Dad," I said, "I told you I saw her yesterday. She's a very
articulate
and intelligent and cultured woman."
"Was."
"Was," I agreed.
Hank
said, "I hope you two get all this resolved by the time I get
back in
an hour or so. I have some things to
run by you on the
Zimmerman
case."
Ted
Zimmerman was the star of a children's television program. His
wife had
hired the firm to prove that he was messing around with the
show's
puppeteer.
"In an hour," Hank said again before leaving.
Dad
had cut out the front-page article from his own copy of the
paper and
took it to add to the others. The new
installment of "The
History
of Rats" read:
There
is only one helpful rat. This is the
white rat. The white
rat is
very helpful in experiments. It is used
in the laboratory to
experiment with human diseases, nutritional studies, and anatomical
research. The white rat is a
good rat for dissection. It is also
helpful
to psychologists.
The
white rat can make a very interesting pet.
"A woman victim just doesn't make
any sense," Dad said. "It
could've
been set up to look like the rat murderer.
I mean, the m.o.
has been
splashed across the front page for weeks.
All the kooks out
there,
somebody's bound to pick up on it and try it himself."
I
went back to my desk and picked up the phone.
Dad
said, "It's a phony goddamn rat murder, is what I think. The
rat
episode doesn't even sound the same."
"What do you mean?"
"Sounds less scientific or something."
I let
him ramble on and dialed Joan Davies' number.
I hung up
after
fifteen rings.
There
was something else missing in the story about the murder: no
mention
was made of Flo Albertson's Negro baby.
"I'm going to Foothills," I said.
"You going to be back for that meeting Hank wants?"
"I doubt it."
Dad
let it ride, as I knew he would. He
didn't like to get caught
in the
middle.
I
didn't know what I expected to accomplish in Foothills. Flo
Albertson
had been ostracized and perhaps few mourned her murder there.
I was
going on instinct, feeling I wanted to be close to where I had
talked to
her, where I had been vaguely attracted to her.
I
turned to an all-news station on the drive to Foothills, wanting
to hear
any voice but the one in my head. Mayor
Poulsen had ordered
the
immediate desegregation of the Fire Department, the last city
service
closed to Negroes, but the City Council was raising such a
stink
that the mayor's proposal seemed certain to be defeated. City
Hall also
had reaffirmed its 1952 decision regarding the official
pronunciation of Los Angeles, which was "loss an' juh less,"
and not
"loss an' juh leez."
A new Gallup poll had 64 percent of the American
public
believing that war with the Soviet Union was likely in their
lifetimes. Finally came the real
news, as inevitable as it was, the
Angels
had blown a four-run lead on the road to lose in the bottom of
the
ninth.
The
reason Joan Davies hadn't answered the phone was that she
wasn't
home. She didn't answer the door
either. I cussed under my
breath
and was about to climb back into Bad-Ass when Jeff Berger, the
neighbor,
called to me.
"Can I speak to you a minute?," he asked.
I
went to the front porch, and we shook hands.
I noticed he was
wearing a
Dodgers cap this time. I didn't like
fickle baseball fans.
"It's terrible news about Flo Albertson," I said.
"Oh, that," he said, dismissing the murder in two syllables
before
continuing. "We've had
nothing but problems this morning, first Dan
and Joan
at the crack of dawn, then my daughter calling about Harriet -
well, why
don't we talk about it inside?"
In
the den he poured iced tea and was in no hurry to get to the
point,
and I could tell he liked having the power to tell everything
his way,
in his own sweet time. When he finally
began, I was too
fascinated by his meandering calm delivery, despite a murder having
happened
a few blocks up the street, to interrupt.
This guy had acting
talent he
probably didn't even know he had.
Dan
had moved out this morning, Jeff reported, or at least it
appeared
that he had. Dan and Joan had held an
outdoor screaming match
at seven
in the morning. Since Dan was carrying
a couple of suitcases,
Jeff put
two and two together.
But
the real news was - no, not a murder in the neighborhood - the
real news
was that his granddaughter Harriet had run away. He feared
the worst
because she listened to KRB every day.
"I've kept my opinion to myself in the past," Jeff went on,
"because Dan, a neighbor, works at the station, after all. No use
going out
of your way to find an argument, even when it's obvious we
have
little in common. He may even be a
Democrat for all I know. But
that
radio station has been changing in recent weeks in ways I don't
approve
of at all. It's started focusing on
music for teenagers. I
wouldn't
have found out if Harriet didn't listen to it when she comes
to spend
the night. The music on that station -
now I'm not saying Dan
plays it,
because I'm talking about evening and night programming, and
he's on
in the daytime and deserves the benefit of the doubt - but the
music
I've heard Harriet listen to, Mr. Trevorak, is no music anyone,
any
decent parent, would want their children listening to. It's filth.
Unexpurgated trash. I can't even
explain how bad it is, you'd have to
hear
these records yourself to believe that they can actually play them
on the
air. Don't think I'm alone in this
judgment, there's already
been a
couple organizational meetings to do something about it. You
have to
get your facts in order first, of course, so a watchdog
committee's been set up, for about three weeks now. In the meantime, I
told
Candy, my daughter, to forbid Harriet to listen to the radio.
Which I
assume she did. Well, I should've acted
sooner, I'm afraid,
because
the music has done its harm and she's gone.
She's run away. I
hate to
think of the crowd she may have gotten involved with because of
that
Negro music."
He
stopped. It had been an impressive
monologue, theatrically
speaking,
but personally I felt like getting up and getting the hell
out of
there. Before I had a chance to make a
move, however, he was
starting
again.
"To get to the point," he said, "I want to hire you to
find her."
I'm
probably a coward at heart because I heard myself sounding more
polite
than I felt.
"Runaways aren't our gig," I said, though this wasn't true.
"I haven't told you everything," he said. "I think Dan may have
had
something to do with this."
He
was clever, I had to give him that. In
a single turn of phrase,
he had me
hooked. Immediately he was trying to
reel me in.
"Harriet worships him. That
name he goes by on the radio, I forget
what it
is--"
"Lovin' Dan the Sixty-Minute Man."
"Right. She worships Lovin'
Dan. Well, I can't prove it, but I
have this
gut feeling she's with him. You've
listened to him on the
air,
haven't you?"
I
nodded.
"Then you know how he develops a personal relationship with the
kids
listening. Saying how much he loves
them and all, to keep phoning
in
requests and all. These are just junior
high and high school kids
he's
talking to. It's not natural. But the terrible thing is, this
approach
works. Harriet is crazy about him. She may even, well, have
a kind of
crush on him, a puppy love sort of thing, you know how girls
her age
are. Why, I've made sure she never knew
that he lives right
next
door, or did, for fear that Harriet might throw herself at him."
"You never told me how old she is," I said.
"Didn't I? Fourteen. Or maybe fifteen. She had a birthday a few
months
ago, as I recall. It must be . . . well,
she's at that age, is
the
point."
He
smiled and said, "So what do you think?"
"We don't chase runaways."
"Since you're investigating Dan anyway, it wouldn't hurt to snoop
around
for Harriet, would it? I have this gut
feeling Dan has
something
to do with this."
"If she shows up, I'll let you know. Now I have a request."
"What is it?"
"Tell me why the hell you're not upset about a murder happening
right up
the street."
He
turned on the smile and let it flow into a chuckle, the kind one
saves for
moments of superiority.
"You have to understand," he said, "that that woman has
already put
us
through as much suffering as we can muster."
"It doesn't bother you that the rat murderer struck up here?"
"I don't for a minute believe that this has anything to do with the
rat
murders. This has marital argument
written all over it."
"You think her husband did it?"
"Yes. And set it up to look
like the rat murders, I suppose. Poor
Gregory. I hardly know him but
just imagine what that woman has put
him
through. If he'd turn himself in, I
think the jury would
understand and be lenient."
This
stopped me. It wasn't that he thought
he had everything
figured
out. I just didn't like Dad and this
asshole sharing the same
hypothesis.
"One more question," I said.
"Do you know where Joan went after
Dan
walked out on her? She doesn't answer
her phone, and she doesn't
answer
the door."
"Why didn't you ask? The
poor woman was so upset all morning over
the scene
Dan caused, that Edna finally had to drag her off to get her
hair
done."
"To get her hair done?"
"So she would calm down.
They're at Pierre's."
I
nodded and lifted my glass to finish the iced tea, wishing to
hell it
was straight Jameson's.
8/
Pierre's, I learned, was where anyone who was anyone got her hair
done, and
it was located smack dab in the middle of the small Foothills
business
district at the bottom of the hill.
I
parked Bad-Ass, pulled up my tie and entered the shop. The smell
got me
first, as overwhelming as embalming fluid, and then the morbid
sight of
a long line of ladies with their heads under wired silver
helmets,
like victims in a mass execution at a woman's prison. Then I
remembered that they were there to become beautiful. I told the
receptionist I was looking for Joan Davies and that I'd wait.
An
hour later, we were sipping coffee in the Foothills Cafe. Our
table for
two was graced with a blue-checkered tablecloth and fresh
flowers.
"This day has been a nightmare," Joan told me. Her new perm
glistened
like a plastic wig. "And it's not
even noon yet."
I
said, "I wish you could be more specific about what Dan said to
you."
I'd
told her what Jeff Berger had related to me.
I hadn't brought
up Flo
Albertson's murder, and I was morbidly wondering if she would
even
bring it up herself.
"We were yelling at each other," Joan said, "not
listening. I can't
tell you
what he said word-for-word."
"He didn't give you a reason for leaving?"
"Just that he needed time to be alone."
"And he didn't mention another woman?"
"No."
"Did he say he'd be back?"
"No."
"Where he was going?"
"No. To that apartment he
rented, don't you think?"
"Probably. I'll check it
out."
She nodded. She had brought some of the odor of embalming fluid
with her,
an odor more subtle and less offensive, as if someone had
just
sanitized the restrooms and left the doors open.
I
said, "What about last night? Did
you have a fight or anything?"
"No."
"Nothing happened out of the ordinary?"
"Not really."
"Do you still sleep in the same bed?"
She
seemed offended by the question.
"I'm looking for a motive, Joan," I said.
"Yes, we still sleep in the same bed. I mean, we did last night."
"Do you still make love?"
"I won't answer that."
She took a deep breath.
"Can't you see
this has
been hell for me? We must've woken up
the whole neighborhood.
I'm so
embarrassed."
Flo
Albertson getting murdered was nothing in comparison to waking
up a
neighbor with a marital fight.
I
said, "It takes two to tango, Joan."
She
glared at me. "What's that
supposed to mean?"
"I'm sure you both were very upset."
"Of course, I'm upset! I
have every right to be. He tried to
sneak
away without even telling me."
An
uncomfortable silence settled between us.
I didn't know what
else to
ask her. I didn't want to bring up Ruth
until I had proof.
Finally Joan said, "Is there anything else? I have things to do at
home."
"Just one more thing," I said. "How come it doesn't bother you
that a
serial killer came to the neighborhood?"
"No one believes the rat murderer killed Flo."
"What'd you have, a town meeting on the matter?"
"Word gets around very quickly here."
"And what's the consensus?"
When
she hesitated to tell me, I said, "Jeff thinks it was her
husband."
"If it was, well . . ."
She
stopped and shrugged.
I
said, "Who can blame him?"
"I don't condone murder," she said. "But it's certainly a
tragedy,
any way you look at it."
"Yes, I suppose it is."
"Is that all, Mr. Trevorak?"
"For the moment, Mrs. Davies."
She
got up without taking the bill, and I let her go. When she was
out the
door, the waitress came by to see if I wanted anything else. I
asked for
a refill of coffee.
"Terrible thing to happen," I told
the waitress when she returned
with the
pot.
"It's creepy," she said.
She
was probably still in high school, blonde and innocent, with
the
bouncy cute looks of a cheerleader. I
liked her for knowing what I
was
talking about and thinking murder was creepy.
"Did you know her?," I asked.
"Not very well. Sometimes
they all came in for dessert after their
afternoon
bridge game."
"Did you like her?"
"Well, I didn't know her, really.
And she did turn out to be a
liar."
"Terrible thing to happen, all the same."
"Well, it's her own fault.
No one made her lie about it."
"Murder's still creepy, just as you said."
"Murder?"
I
could tell she didn't know what I was talking about.
"Flo Albertson was murdered yesterday."
"She was?"
"It's in the morning paper."
"I don't read the paper," she said.
"You said it was creepy."
"I thought you were talking about the way she tried to pretend she
was
white. What can be more creepy than
that?"
I
paid the check and got the hell out of there.
9/
I
parked Bad-Ass on the side street around from Caviar's Market.
As I climbed the stairway, I could hear loud
music playing in the
apartment, and at the top I recognized the high falsetto of a doo-wop
singer,
under which voices wove nonsense lyrics in counterpoint, be-doe
be-do-be-do-be or something. I
tapped on the door. When there was no
answer, I
knocked. Then I banged.
When
the door opened, I found myself face to face with one of the
saddest
looking humans beings I've ever seen.
He looked like a
caricature, as if he were auditioning for the role of Sad Sack in some
dramatic
adaptation of the comic strip. Dan
Davies looked ready to
break
into tears at any moment.
"Excuse me," he said, apparently acknowledging his appearance.
"It's just so beautiful."
It took
me a moment to realize that he was referring to the music.
A
teenager was wailing in falsetto about unrequited love, in the
baroque
doo-wop style, with backup voices weaving nonsense sounds into
a layered
pattern of melancholy, and Dan, an adult, was responding by
looking
close to an emotional nervous breakdown.
I
took out my identification and said, "Can we talk?"
He
nodded without checking my credentials and stepped out of the
doorway. I walked into the
apartment.
The
song, I saw, was on a 78-record being played on a portable
phonograph on the coffee table.
The table itself was pock-marked with
cigarette
burns, which pretty much summarized the decor of the place.
Cheap
Motel, all the way.
We both stood silently in the middle of the
room, listening to the
doo-wop
song. I felt as awkward as a teenager
at a dance. When the
record
finally ended, as Dan made a quick move to put on another one, I
made a
quicker move to get down to business.
"Your wife hired me, Dan.
We have to talk."
He
stopped, turned and stared at me. He
was slightly built, with a
paler
complexion than is common in Southern California, and somehow
this
added to the aura of melancholy that surrounded him. I traded the
image of
Sad Sack for Salinger's character Seymour Glass in "A Perfect
Day for
Bananafish," and the switch was a little frightening.
"Do you mind?," I asked, gesturing that we sit.
We
took lumpy stuffed chairs across the room from one another. On
the arm
of his was an ashtray stuffed with cigarette butts. Dan was
the first
to speak.
"I'm not having an affair," he said.
"I never said you were."
"You said my wife hired you."
There
was something about his manner that put me on guard, choosing
indirection now instead of getting right to the point. I said,
"Have
you read
today's paper?"
"I seldom read the paper."
"Flo Albertson was murdered."
I tried to read his reaction. He stared at me, as if waiting for
me to say
more, and if this was a contest, I won.
He got up and went
to the
phonograph, taking off the record and slipping it into a paper
jacket. I expected him to put on
another but he didn't. He plopped
back down
onto the mangy stuffed chair. The
stories that chair could
tell:
stains and cigarette burns suggested arguments, shouting matches.
I
wouldn't have paid a nickel for it at a garage sale.
"The m.o. belonged to the Rat Murderer," I said.
He
just looked at me. I couldn't believe
that he hadn't heard of
the rat
murders, whether he read the paper or not.
I
said, "Unless it was someone else, trying to throw off the cops
by using
the same m.o."
"But who would want to kill Flo?," he asked, with obvious pain
in
his
voice.
"You sound like she's a good friend of yours."
"She's my wife's bridge partner.
Was."
"Did you know her husband?"
"Gregory and I didn't get along at
all."
"Why not?"
"He's arrogant. A social
climber."
"Having the kid must've shocked the pants off him."
"It shocked many people."
"Including yourself?"
"I was surprised, too, of course.
But . . ."
He
stopped and abruptly got up. He took a
few steps toward the
door
before turning. He seemed surprised
that I was still sitting and
not
following him on my way out.
"I told you," he said, "I'm not having an affair."
It
seemed much too defensive. I was sure
he was - and with Ruth,
the
housekeeper.
"Happens all the time," I said.
"What does?"
"Hanky panky. Getting a
little on the side."
"Not with me, it doesn't."
"Right. You just happen to
prefer this crumby neighborhood."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Why did you rent this apartment, Dan?"
"I happen to work just up the street."
"You moved out this morning.
You woke up your neighbors doing it."
"You've only heard her side of the story," he said.
"So tell me yours."
"I took the apartment so I could have time alone."
"Come on, Dan, we're big boys.
You can tell me the real reason."
"I just told you the real reason."
"You're leaving your wife, is that it?"
"She told you that?"
"You walk out with suitcases in your hand, you wake everybody up
playing
kick the can, what the hell is she supposed to think?"
He
shook his head, turning on the melancholy again, and said, "You
don't
understand."
"So tell me."
I
decided that his melancholy stare, behind deep-set eyes, might
get
anything they wanted in the right time and place. Sad eyes,
begging
to be understood, they might get any woman he desired.
"Can we go somewhere for a drink?," he asked.
"Why not?"
He
suggested a bar in my own stomping grounds of Venice, called The
Oar
House. I went there often but didn't
remember ever seeing him in
the place
before. We drove to Venice in separate
cars, Dan leading the
way.
The
Oar House was huge, a converted warehouse, and usually packed
since the
drinks were cheaper than anywhere along the beach. We took a
weather-worn picnic table in the back and waited for one of the amazons
in Daisy
Mae briefs to deliver our drinks. The
Oar House didn't hire a
barmaid
under six feet tall. There were women
at The Oar House whose
breasts
weighed more than the frail Dan Davies.
When
the drinks came, I took the offensive.
"Let's cut the crap, Dan."
He
lit up a cigarette and said, "Well, I was shocked actually."
I
wasn't sure what he was talking about and waited for more.
"I never would have guessed something like that about her."
"About who?"
"Flo. I never would have
guessed she was a Negro."
"She told me she was a fan of yours."
"She did?"
"Listened to you often," I said.
"Yes, she did phone in a request now and then. She liked the older
stuff. The Clovers, B.B.
King. She liked the blues."
"She said the station is changing."
"You must have had quite a long talk with her."
I let this slide. We sipped our drinks in the silence, until I
countered
from a different direction.
"Your neighbor Jeff told me Harriet's missing."
"So she finally ran away," Dan said. He blew smoke at the ceiling.
"You expected her to?"
"She's not a happy girl."
"You know Harriet well?"
"She's more than a fan - she's a fanatic. She must request six or
eight
songs every show. Other deejays would
tell you the same."
"Do you know where she is?"
"Of course not. Why do you
ask that?"
"Jeff thinks she might have run to you. Being a fanatic and all."
"Jeff Berger is . . ."
He
didn't have to finish to let me know what he thought of Jeff
Berger.
I took
advantage of the moment to go for the jugular.
I
said, "It's Ruth, isn't it?"
He
looked up from his drink, staring at me, as if trying to
determine
if he had heard right. He stabbed out
the cigarette and
immediately lit another.
"The guy in the market told me," I said. "Tank.
He's seen you two
together."
He
weighed his words before saying, "He's a liar."
"You've never been in the market with a Negro woman?"
"Of course I have. With the
secretary at the station many times.
Sometimes
we buy lunch there, you know, something to go."
"Yeah, it's a great neighborhood for a picnic," I said.
"I've never been there, or anywhere else, with Ruth."
"Why don't I believe you?"
"Look, Joan hired you because she thinks I'm having an affair - but
I'm
not. If you don't believe me, well, you
won't be able to prove
anything
because I am not having an affair."
I
thought I had him hooked now. It was
time to reel him in.
"Actually, she hired me to check out your background."
"My background? I'm not
sure what you mean."
"Your lineage."
"You lost me."
"Your racial purity."
He
looked genuinely confused. He wanted it
spelled out, fine, I'd
spell it
out.
"Look, Dan, that business about Flo Albertson's kid made her
nervous
and paranoid. She hired me to trace
your lineage to make sure
you don't
have any Negro ancestors."
"You can't be serious."
"That's the gig."
"Joan did that?"
I let
him squirm a moment, then said, "Which is ridiculous, right?
She was
just picking up on certain changes in your behavior. Changes
which
have other origins. I know that, and
you know that. So why
don't we
cut the crap?"
"I don't follow. What do
you want from me anyway?"
"Dan, I figure you have two basic choices. You fess up to the
mistress,
Ruth or whoever, and prepare for divorce.
Or you fess up,
repent,
and go home to your wife. Why don't we
start with the fessing
up
part?"
"I swear to God, I'm not having an affair! Jesus . . ." He put
out the
cigarette.
We
sipped our drinks in silence again. Not
quite jockeying for
position,
more like neither one wanting to make the first move.
Finally Dan said, "I rented the place because I've been very
depressed
lately. I have reason to be."
"Want to talk about it?"
"It has nothing to do with Joan or my marriage."
"Tell me about your marriage."
"I made a mistake."
"Can I tell her that?"
"I'll tell her myself."
"Will you, Dan?"
He
shook his head in dismay, and I understood that the usual
melancholy was turning to anger.
"Look," he said, leaning across the table, "there's a
conspiracy. I
am very
upset about it."
The
guy had more left fields than the Stars on a hitting streak.
"Now I'm lost," I said.
"With the music."
"A conspiracy with the music?"
"I don't know if I should do this but . . . well, someone has to
know. Once you understand, maybe
you'll get off my back. But you
can't
tell Joan. You have to promise me
that. If I show you, you
can't
tell Joan."
"I'm in your wife's employ," I reminded him.
"Then I can't trust you."
"Does this have anything to do with your marriage?"
"Not at all."
"Then you can trust me."
I was
angry for almost blowing it by bringing up his wife. I had no
idea
where he was going but I wanted to find out.
I
said, "I was hired to trace your lineage.
I have no other
professional obligations to your wife."
After
a moment, he said, "Okay. Can you
meet me at the station at
three in
the morning?"
"Three?"
"We're off the air then. We
can be alone."
"I'll be there."
He
stood up, leaving a half-filled drink on the table.
"I'll meet you at the back door."
"And this is about the conspiracy?"
"At three, you'll know more than you ever wanted to know."
I
stayed at The Oar House for over an hour after he'd gone. I
finished
my drink, and then his, and chased these with two more. By the
time I
left I decided a nap was in order, particularly with a
rendezvous at three in the a.m.
I didn't have the slightest idea what
kind of
conspiracy he was worried about but surely it was bonded to his
own
paranoia. I found myself thinking that
Joan would be doing herself
a favor
by dumping this weirdo, adultery or not.
Not that I would
suggest
such a thing to her. You make your own
bed in this world.
I
decided to nap at Carla's. On the drive
to Santa Monica, I
listened to
KRB. The radio said,
dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit-dit- dit...
10/
Sometimes my plays come to me in
dreams. Entire scenes are
performed in my head, on a nebulous stage
before which I sit passively,
watching and editing and revising along
the way, and when I awake, if
I'm lucky, I'll remember enough to race to
my note pad to scribble
notes of the production.
But now the play was being interrupted
and for a moment I didn't
realize why, I didn't realize what was
happening, and then I opened my
eyes and found the bulk of Carla at the
end of the bed in the dark
room, her long black hair on my stomach,
her head rising and falling in
a steady rhythm over my crotch, making
what she sometimes called her
contribution to the arts.
I'd come over only for a nap. Now, in my last clear thought before
orgasm, I wondered if I'd overslept. I wondered what the hell the play
had been about. I vaguely remembered thinking it was quite brilliant.
They usually were, in dreams.
"You getting some on the
side?," Carla asked me later, as I
dressed.
She was pulling open the curtains she
had drawn for my nap, and the
glow of evening swept into the room.
"What the hell's that supposed to
mean?"
"Or have you been jacking off
more than usual? You're not your
usual gushing self."
"Carla, for Christ's sake, I
stayed over last night, remember? We
wallowed around like alley cats for hours. You may have your best
years ahead of you but I'm already on the
downhill side. I need time
to recover."
"On the downhill side? You're only twenty-four."
"Which is over eighteen. Read your biology."
We decided to have dinner at Angelo's,
an Italian Cafe not far from
Carla's apartment. We walked through the evening hand in hand,
silent
and relaxed. The sun was dropping into the ocean, a cool breeze erased
all memories of smog, and the streets were
filled with people happy to
be where they were. In the distance I could hear bongos playing,
probably as some ecstatic beatnik
celebrated the sun sinking into the
sea.
Our usual table near the front window
was taken, so we settled for
one in the back corner of the small
cafe. Carla was a professional
people watcher, one of the best around,
but tonight she'd have to
settle for the dinner crowd instead of the
larger crowd strolling past
the front window.
We were having our first glass of
chianti when Butch walked in with
Ruth.
Our usual table near the window had just vacated and they took
it, which kept them far enough away to
miss us, I hoped. Seeing Butch
and Ruth together was such a shock, I
didn't know if I wanted them to
know I was there or not.
Carla had seen Butch as well.
"Isn't that your friend-,"
she began before I cut her off. I put a
finger to her lips.
"I don't want him to see
me," I said. "The lady he's
with is
involved in the case I'm working on."
"You never tell me
anything."
"I'm telling you now, let's just
lay low and hope they miss us."
"What case?"
"This is not the time."
"It's never the time. Like the way you ran off this morning. You
can be so rude. You're lucky I forgot about it long enough to give you
a blow job."
"Carla, can we talk about it
later? This may be important."
"I'm not important at all, am
I?"
"Of course you are."
"You're lucky your goddamn
planets are aligned right."
She began to sulk, which at least kept
her quiet. Butch and Ruth,
I noticed, were not laying low at all,
they were practically climbing
all over one another, Butch having moved
his chair around to her side
of the table to simplify the maneuvers.
They were behaving like lovers,
which threw me. If Ruth was hanging out with Butch, then she probably
wasn't hanging out with Dan. Or was this a moral judgment without
logic?
Our dinners came and Carla inhaled
hers, then began to squirm the
signal that she was ready to go.
"You're not any fun when you're
working on a case," she finally
said.
"I didn't know they'd be here, believe me."
"You could at least tell me
what's going on."
"Later. It's too complicated."
"Later," she said mockingly.
She made a move to get up and I
grabbed her.
"I'm ready to go," she said.
"If we go now, we'll have to pass
their table."
"If you think I'm waiting here
til they get up enough nerve to
screw under the table and get it over with
. . ."
She pulled free and was off. I grabbed the check and hurried after
her.
As we passed the front table, Butch
said, "Well, looky here!"
I didn't stop and almost made it past
the table before Butch
grabbed my arm.
"Hey, man," he said,
"what's the matter with you? You drink
too
much dago red? It's me."
I stopped, turned and smiled. I continued grinning during the
introductions. I didn't let on that I knew Ruth, and she didn't let on
that she knew me. Which surprised me. Carla, for her part, was off
again as soon as the introductions were
over, which gave me an exit
line.
"Sorry, she just started her, you
know, period and we got to, ah,
get some Kotex." This said, I got the hell out of there.
I walked Carla back to her apartment
and tried to give her a kiss
at the door but she swerved away, saying,
"You owe me one, Red." Then
she closed the door in my face.
11/
Dan came out of the dark shadows like
Bogart. His collar was up, a
cigarette was hanging from his mouth, all
that was missing were the
trench coat and hat. Without a word he unlocked the back door of
the
station.
I followed him in.
The radio station wouldn't have won
any honors from the health
department. Or maybe it was just too early for the janitor to have
made the daily rounds. Following Dan down a hallway, I ran into a
cobweb and continued along brushing
invisible insects out of my face.
We entered a small studio, and Dan
turned on the light. Immediately
I heard a scurrying sound, like an animal
racing into hiding. I'd let
out an involuntary gasp at the sound, and
Dan said, "Rats. They'll
leave you alone if you leave them
alone."
The studio was cluttered with more
records and tapes than I'd ever
seen in my life. Dan went to a shelf where records were lined up like
books, pulled out a 78 and put it on one
of two adjacent turnstiles.
He sat down in front of a control panel
and started twisting dials.
"Exhibit one," he said.
The cigarette still dangled and
dropped an ash onto the record as
he leaned forward to cue it up. He blew the ash away.
"Cut the dramatics, Dan," I
said. "What the hell is this about?"
He stabbed the cigarette out in a
large golden ashtray shaped like
a record.
"Let me do it my way," he
said.
The record began to play. As far as I could tell, it was a typical
doo-wop song, forlorn and yet lyrical,
with its intricate weaving of
voices.
Before the song finished, Dan picked up the needle and said,
"Keep the song in your mind."
He put a second record on the
turnstile.
"Exhibit two."
This, to my surprise, was the same
song performed by a different
group.
To my greater surprise, the singing group sounded white to me.
Gone were the intricate weaving and
blending of voices in the doo-wop
pattern, though many nonsense background
lyrics were retained. Somehow
this version had less energy, and I
preferred the first.
Dan lifted up the needle and said,
"Need I say more?"
"Frankly, yes."
"You heard two versions of the
same song, right?"
"Right."
"Which do you prefer?"
"Dan, I hope you didn't drag me
here at three in the morning to
evaluate my musical tastes."
"Which best?"
"The first, I guess."
"You're not sure."
"The first. I'm sure."
"The first is the original, by an
obscure group of Chicago
teenagers on a label no one ever heard
of. The second is by
The Crewcuts, a nationally known group,
and it's a smash hit."
I just looked at him.
"The Crewcuts are white, of
course," he said.
"Dan, will you get to the point,
please?"
"What you heard is happening
throughout the industry. Listen."
He played more records, and in each
case a doo-wop song, recorded
by Negro teenagers, was rerecorded in a
more traditional, less
energetic way by a white group. According to Dan, the white records
were selling nationally but the Negro
originals, recorded on small
regional record labels, were not even
distributed nationally.
When I finally got the idea of what he
was getting at, I said,
"You're telling me that this is
happening because of some kind of
conspiracy, is that it?"
His eyes positively sparkled.
Dan said, "Now you know enough to
get to the real heart of the
matter.
Listen to this."
He put on another record. This song was different entirely,
recorded not by a doo-wop group but by an
individual, singing an
uptempo tune that was bluesy in feeling
and yet different somehow from
the traditional blues of Lightnin' Hopkins
or B.B. King that I'd heard
on KRB.
I rather liked it, and when the song was over I expected Dan
to put on the white version of it.
"What do you think?," Dan
asked.
"I'm sure I'll like it better
than the white version. Dan, I get
your point but-"
"You're wrong," he
interrupted.
"You haven't even heard what I
was going to say."
"You think the singer is a
Negro."
"You're telling me he
isn't?"
"His name is Elvis Presley, and he's white."
Dan spat out the name as if he were
mentioning Hitler or Attila the
Hun.
"I take it you don't like the
song," I said.
"I don't like what it
implies."
"Which is?"
"Sam Phillips, who owns the Sun label this was done on,
said that
he could get rich if he could find a white
singer who sounded like a
Negro.
I'm afraid he's found him."
I didn't know what to say and so said
nothing, which only managed
to crank up Dan's anxiety level a notch.
"Damn it," he said,
"don't you see? White people are
stealing
Negro music! At least up until now, they managed to castrate it. At
least one could get the satisfaction of
knowing the Negro versions were
superior.
But if white people begin to sound like Negroes, and the
mass white audience responds - well, it's
the end."
To look at him, one would have thought
it was the end of the world.
Dan brushed aside a strand of hair that
had dropped to his forehead.
"And there's more," he
said. "There's an organization
that wants
to ban Negro music and the white
imitations altogether. They think
it's music from the devil. Don't you see what can happen?"
"Frankly, no," I said.
He moved toward the door.
"I don't know what else I can
tell you," he said. "If you
don't
understand . . . well, we might as well
go."
"Wait a minute," I
said. "I don't get it. I don't know why the
hell you dragged me out here to tell me
this."
He took a deep breath before saying,
"Because I want you to
understand how upset I am about this. Then maybe you'll get off my
back."
Following him outside, I decided he
was a lousy actor. Sure, he
wanted me off his back, but not because of
any presumed musical
conspiracy.
He was about to get into his car when
I said, "It's Ruth, isn't
it?"
He stopped and turned.
"Let's cut the crap, Dan. I don't understand why you're so upset
about this music business unless, for some
reason, you're taking it too
damn personally. I ask myself, why should a white man give a hoot
about the fate of Negro music unless he's
somehow personally involved?"
"What's this got to do with
Ruth?"
"She's your mistress, isn't
she?"
"I don't have a mistress."
"Right, Dan."
"I have nothing more to say on
the subject."
"You know, when I got this gig, I
thought it was pretty weird, I
mean, you'd think a wife would know what
race her husband is, for
Christ's sake. But maybe she's on to something.
Are you a Negro,
Dan?"
He mumbled something which, I swear to
God, sounded like, "Don't I
wish."
"What's that?," I asked.
"I have nothing more to
say."
I watched him get into his Mercury and
drive away. I took my time
leaving, sitting for a long while in
Bad-Ass, trying to make sense out
of what had just transpired. Sometimes, in Korea, trying to make sense
of garbled language on tape, I'd take off
my earphones and try to
repeat what I'd been hearing over and over
again in my mind, with
different rhythms, different emphases,
looking for a key that would get
me into the meaning. I was doing something similar now, rehearing
the
records he'd played, the Negro doo-wop and
the white copies, and the
energetic bluesy Elvis Presley, who was
white himself. But I was
getting nowhere. Dan was strange, and finally I wondered why he had
shared such a bizarre theory with me. A theory, I reminded myself,
which was as bizarre as Butch's theory of
freeway construction.
In the end, after I'd driven home and
was drifting off to sleep,
only one tentative conclusion managed to
stay on the surface of
thought: Dan may or may not be a Negro but
I felt sure that he had a
Negro mistress and this mistress was Ruth.
12/
I hadn't been to Butch's warehouse
digs in a long while. He was
three floors up, in a building in Watts
where rents were cheap and
amenities non-existent, a great brick
building filled with artist
studios and cobwebs. Butch rented an entire floor, which he
filled
with his huge murals and canvases, saving
only a clean corner for his
mattress and sleeping bag.
I found him in front of a
half-finished painting of four teenagers
standing on a street corner, singing
doo-wop, I guessed. At least they
looked like they were in song, fingers
snapping, mouths open. They
also looked vaguely familiar. The canvas had Butch's usual scope, the
figures towering more than twice life
size. He was up on a stepladder,
working on a corner street sign, as I let
myself in through the
unlocked door. I cleared my throat to let him know he had company.
"Just a minute, man," he
said. "Help yourself to
coffee."
He kept a pot and toaster on a small
table near the mattress. I
poured a cup and sat down carefully on a
wooden folding chair, which
creaked under my weight.
"I've been expecting you,"
he said, finally joining me to pour the
last cup of coffee from the pot. "Ruth told me about your gig with her
employer.
Same gig you were telling me about, right?"
"What else did she tell
you?"
"How fucked up things are in
Foothills. You find any niggers in
that deejay's closet?"
"Not yet."
He sat down on a folding chair and
stretched his legs out in front
of him.
He crossed his hands behind his head and grinned.
"White folks never cease to amaze
me," he said. "You're lucky
you're one of the spotted hybrids,
man. So what's on your mind, Red?
You come over to check up on my love life
or what?"
"Well, I was surprised to find
you two together."
"Hey, let's not beat around the
bush, okay?"
Butch was always up-front and
direct. It was one of the things I
liked about him.
"You may have ruined a hypothesis
I've been working on," I said.
I told him how I had concluded that
Dan was having an affair. This
was the difference in him that his wife
had noticed. I told him I'd
concluded that Dan's mistress was Ruth.
Butch laughed and said, "You
think she's balling that deejay?
Shit."
"Are you telling me you two have
an exclusive relationship?"
"Exclusive relationship? Man!
The ofay profs at the University
don't even come up with jargon like
that. What the hell have you been
reading?"
"I'm trying to determine if Ruth
is the type who would see Dan at
the same time she's seeing you."
"She may be," Butch
said. It didn't seem to bother
him. "But I
doubt it.
He's not her type."
"What type is that?"
"He's white, for one thing. This chick has more race hatred than I
do, man.
Best thing about her."
He was grinning again, which softened
the remark a little. Butch
loved to try and upset me. I didn't take the bait.
"If she hates white men," I
said, "what better revenge than to
break up Dan's home?"
"You're grabbing at straws."
"Standard m.o. in this biz."
"She told me about that neighbor
getting killed. The same one you
were telling me about, right? Who was passing for white?"
"Same one."
"You think it was that rat
murderer?"
"No."
I said this without thinking. Hearing it, I decided I hadn't
really made up my mind one way or the
other.
"Ruth thinks it was her
husband," Butch said.
"She's not the only one."
"But you're not officially on the
case, right?"
"My only gig at the moment is to
find out Dan's lineage."
"So lineage is what you call
it." He shook his head. "Man, every
ofay in America got a rapist way back in
the closet somewhere. How
else you get all those spots you got,
man? You're just one of the
visible ones, carrying around a hundred
little scarlet letters to
remind you of your ancestry. Excuse me, your lineage."
To change the subject, I asked,
"How long have you been seeing
Ruth?"
"A couple months. I met her when I was making sketches for the
painting I'm working on. That's her little brother's doo-wop
group."
Of course, these were the kids whom
I'd seen singing on the porch
when I dropped her off.
"I talked to Dan yesterday,"
I said.
"Then why didn't you ask him
about Ruth yourself?"
"I did, and he denies it."
"But you can't accept that,
right?"
"I don't know. He's a real strange case, Butch. He has this
theory about a musical conspiracy, how
white singing groups are
remaking all the Negro doo-wop
songs."
"The cat say that?"
"Something like that."
"He's on to something, man. That's exactly what's coming down."
"Then you think there's a music
conspiracy, too?"
"No different from the freeways,
man. A black man makes progress,
shit, the powers that be got to do
something to head him off at the
pass.
With music, it's the white teenagers making their parents
nervous by listening to nigger music. Been happening a couple years
now, ofay kids digging rhythm-n-blues,
doo-wop, giving up their parents
music, all that mares-eat-oats shit, all
that up- a-lazy-river shit.
Man, you can't have white kids digging nigger
music, don't you see
that?
They listen to nigger music, next thing you know they'll
discover their bodies, man, they'll
discover sex. They'll want to get
it while the gettin' is good, man. So what's the alternative for white
parents?
Make a safe white copy of the music, man, dilute it so it's
fit for white teenage consumption. And
that's exactly what's been
happening. If that deejay understands this, man, he's the smartest
ofay in L.A."
"Well, he's quite a fanatic on
the subject."
Butch stood up.
"So what else you need to know
before I go back to work?"
"You don't think Ruth is seeing
Dan?"
"She hates white men."
"Not even to break up his
home?"
"Maybe. Why don't you ask her?"
I didn't reply, and Butch said he had
to get back to work.
"Thanks for giving me some
time," I said.
Grinning, Butch said, "Say hello
to Ruth for me." Then he climbed
back up on his stepladder.
At Ruth's house, a pack of dogs was
ransacking the garbage cans
along the side of the house. Seeing me, they took off like burglars
caught in the act. I stepped up on the front porch, went to the
door
and knocked.
The day was turning very smoggy. From the huge gully behind the
house, I could hear the racket of
construction, the jolting percussion
of progress. How in hell did Ruth and whoever else lived here get a
moment's peace?
I knocked again, less timidly, but
obviously no one was home - or
at least no one was going to answer the
door. What the hell, I decided
at least I could do a good deed before I
left and stepped off the porch
to put the garbage back into the cans.
The dead rat was under a torn garbage
sack and, seeing it, I
jumped.
It was huge, much larger than any mouse I'd ever seen. Using
the torn brown paper for protection, I
carefully picked it up and
dropped it into the can.
Then I went back to cleaning up the
rest of the mess and almost
missed it: a single sheet of lined school paper was on the ground,
wadded but loosely enough that I could
make out a couple lines of
handwriting at the bottom of the page, and
what I read stopped me in my
tracks.
I quickly unfolded the paper to read the rest:
Rattus norvegicus is bigger and can
chase off Rattus rattus
whenever they come together. But sometimes Rattus rattus can be in the
roof while Rattus norvegicus is down in
the basement. In a fight
Rattus norvegicus would win and this is
why it is mostly what we mean
when we say rats.
The name at the top of the page was
Artie Brownman and below it was
written, Period 4. A paper for school? Perhaps, but this bit of the
history of rats sent a chill down my
spine. I didn't recall the
passage from anything that had been
printed in the newspaper. I
carefully folded the sheet of paper and
put it in my pocket.
On the drive back to the office, I
listened to Dan on the radio -
or I should say, to Lovin' Dan the
Sixty-Minute Man because
there was
no resemblance between the frantic energy
I heard on the radio and the
sad-eyed melancholy of the man who had
taken me into his confidence to
relate news of a strange conspiracy.
Mint Julep! Were you having fun in fifty-one? Well, don't mess with
the radio dial, cats, because Lovin' Dan's
still got more in
fifty-four! It's LA's own group now, The Jewels, with their new one -
Hearts of Stone! Yes, indeedy!
Hank was the only one in the office,
and when I dropped the sheet
of school paper onto the desk in front of
him, he frowned before
saying, "Where the hell have you
been? Half of L.A. is trying to find
you."
"Read that," I said.
Dad, I was sure, would have understood
its significance
immediately. Hank was the skeptic in the family.
Hank browsed the sheet of paper and
said, "So some school kid is
playing games. So what?"
I grabbed the paper back.
"So who's trying to find
me?," I asked.
"There's a stack of messages on
your desk."
Joan, Ruth, Jeff Berger, even Lovin' Dan the Sixty-Minute Man
(but
not Dan Davies, I noted) - I hardly knew
which call to return first.
Hank came over to my desk. I could tell by his manner that he had
some shit work for me to do.
"You got nothing going,
right?," he said.
"I've got the gig with
Joan," I replied, not hiding the self-
defense in my tone. As far as I was concerned, being big
brother's
flunky was not in my contract.
"I got a stakeout for you
tonight," he said.
"Fuck your stakeout."
He stared at me a moment before
saying, in his most haughty manner,
"Well, excuse me, Mr. Playwright, I
didn't realize you had a play in
rehearsal."
That was a low blow and he knew it.
"I have messages to return,"
I said, trying to hide my anger.
"The Zimmerman case. The details are here," he said. He dropped a
paper onto my desk. "Dad made the assignment, so spew your
venom at
him, not me."
As if wanting to avoid further
confrontation himself, Hank walked
straight out the door without another
word. I glanced at the stakeout
sheet, seeing Dad's note at the bottom of
the page, Thanks for handling
this one for me, son! Dad. Shit, there
went the night.
I picked up the phone and began to
dial.
13/
Joan wanted to talk to me
immediately. In person. Jeff Berger
wanted to see me right away. In person.
Dan was already gone from the
station but I didn't leave a message. I'd try and catch him at the
apartment later. Ruth hadn't left a number, saying merely that she'd
call back. With luck, I would find her at Joan's.
The night stakeout started after
dinner, so I phoned Carla before
leaving the office. I wanted more nap time.
"What's in it for me?," she
asked.
I told her I'd try to be there by four
and hung up.
I pulled Bad-Ass into Joan's
driveway. As I got out and headed for
the front door, I was distracted by a
knocking sound: it was Jeff
Berger at his kitchen window, pounding and
waving at me, then gesturing
for me to come over. I gestured back, hoping to communicate that
I'd
come over later, then continued to the
porch.
Ruth answered the door. She seemed cold and distant, not even
giving me a sign that she'd been trying to
get hold of me. She said
that Mrs. Davies was waiting for me in the
den and this time let me
walk there alone.
Joan was dressed to kill. She
sported not only the cocktail dress
but the martini that I'd looked for in
earlier meetings. I almost
expected her to make a pass at me but she
quickly let me know she had
something else in mind.
"I want evidence that my husband is having an affair,"
she said.
"Photographs. You do that, don't you?"
I nodded.
"Then do it."
"And if he's not having an
affair?"
"You said he was."
"I think I'm changing my
mind."
"Really? I've decided you were perfectly right."
I was no longer sure what I thought
but I could tell Joan would be
easier to get along with if I agreed with
her.
"I'll see what I can do," I
said.
"Of course you will. That's what I'm paying you to do."
"Not exactly."
"I see," she said. "You want more money."
I gave her the usual Peeping Tom
estimate, and without missing a
beat she fetched her purse to write me a
check.
"Why have you changed your
mind?," she asked as she wrote.
"Hard to explain."
"Do I get a refund if he's not
having an affair?"
"You save on expenses."
"I see."
She came forward and handed me the
check, saying, "I assume you'll
start on this tonight."
I nodded a lie. The stakeout was a more solid case of
adultery:
Zimmerman, the children's TV star, was
diddling the show's puppeteer,
at least according to Hank's notes on the
case. Hollywood clientele
usually meant good bucks for easily
gathered evidence. They got too
wrapped up in their own romantic images to
cover tracks.
Joan asked, "Can you find the
door or should I escort you?"
I told her I could find it. I was hoping she'd ask if I wanted a
drink.
Ruth was waiting for me at the front
door.
"I have to talk to you," she
said. "Can you stop by the house
later this afternoon? Say around four?"
It interfered with nap time at Carla's
but I told her I'd be there.
Before I could ask her what was up, she
was hurrying off.
Approaching Bad-Ass, I worried that
Joan might be watching from a
window and so decided not to go straight
next door. I got in, started
the car with its usual belch, and backed
out the driveway. By the time
I'd swung around to park across the
street, Jeff was on the porch
waving at me. I liked the idea that he was waiting for me for a
change.
In the den, pouring two iced teas, he
came right to the point.
"Harriet called. I was right. She's with Dan."
"She told you that?"
"She's at his new
apartment."
I wondered if this was why Dan had
phoned me. Benefit of the doubt
and all that.
"She told me she was fine,"
Jeff went on. "But of course she'd
say
that.
I was hoping you could go over there and bring her back."
"I can try."
"I'd rather not have the police
involved."
He handed me a glass of iced tea.
"What if she doesn't want to come
voluntarily?," I asked.
"Don't you have methods or
something?"
Right, I'd slip a mickey in her cherry
coke and carry her out over
my shoulder.
I said, "All I can do is
try."
"Phone me if she resists. I'm closer to her than her mother. She
thought she was doing us all a favor by
calling in."
"What exactly did she say?"
"That she's okay and staying at
Lovin' Dan's. She said she's
sleeping on the couch but, frankly, I'm
very concerned about where she
really is sleeping."
"You think she's sleeping with
Dan?"
The question upset him enough to
ignore it. He finished his tea in
a long gulp and without a word started
toward the door to let me out.
On the porch he said, "Just bill
me your usual rates."
"Well, let's see if I'm any help
first."
I could see Hank cringing at the
remark, ever on my case that I
wasn't hard-boiled and ruthless enough
with clients. From my point of
view, lack of a contract was lack of
responsibility. If Harriet told
me to fly a kite, I could leave without a
sense of guilt or failure.
"Be sure to call me right away if
she's a problem," Jeff called
across the lawn. He stood on the porch until Bad-Ass had exhaled its
roaring blue smoke, and I was on my way
out of there.
The same loud doo-wop music came from
behind Dan's door. As
before, I had to bang louder and louder
again before anyone responded.
In the open doorway stood a teenaged girl
with a complexion problem,
popping gum at me. Harriet.
"Is Dan here?"
She shook her head. More gum popping.
"I'm a friend of his," I
said, almost shouting. "Can I come
in and
wait?"
Her stare was vacant. The only life in her was in her mouth. Pop,
pop.
"He's down in the market,"
she said.
"Pardon me?"
"In the market!"
"Thanks!"
Dan was at the counter, buying two
cokes and a bag of potato chips.
Treats for the guest.
"Hey, looky here," said
Tank. "The man is back."
Dan gave me a quick We can't talk here
look and scooped up his
change from the counter. As Dan turned to go, Tank said, "I
introduce
you two but I forget your names."
"We've met," Dan mumbled and
moved off, his eyes telling me to
follow quickly.
To our departing backs Tank said,
"You two up to something sexy and
evil, am I right?" Then he roared like a man who knew something
that I
didn't.
"I've been trying to get hold of
you all day," Dan told me at the
foot of the stairs. "Harriet's up there."
I thought I saw fear in his eyes. "Did she just show up or what?"
"What's that supposed to
mean? Of course she just showed
up."
"Why do you get the honor?"
"She listens to me all the
time. She's always phoning in
requests."
"You don't seem too thrilled by
her appearance."
"I've got to get rid of her, for
Christ's sake." He looked
frightened.
I said, "I happen to know her
grandfather. I'll talk to her."
We were at the top of the stairs by
now, and I led the way inside
without replying. Harriet was still helping herself to Dan's
doo-wop
records, playing them loud and popping her
gum.
Dan put the cokes and chips on the
coffee table. He glanced at me
while lighting up a cigarette, letting me
know I could start talking to
her at any time. I wasn't sure how to begin.
The family agency didn't
often mess around with runaway teenagers.
Harriet put on another record and came
forward to fetch her coke.
Dan took a chair in the corner of the room
and stared vacantly into
space, his old melancholy self. I stood just inside the doorway,
wondering what the hell I was doing there.
Finally I said, loudly, "I talked
to your granddad."
Harriet stopping popping gum long
enough to say, "He told you I was
here?"
"That's right."
"Well, I'm not going home."
"He wants to talk to you."
"I already talked to him."
"He was thinking you might like
to stay with him for a while."
"I have a place to stay."
I looked at Dan, who looked miserable.
I asked, "And where is
that?"
"Right here," said Harriet.
Dan didn't budge or say a word. Real courage, this guy.
"Dan," I said, "she
says she's staying here."
He mumbled something and blew smoke.
"What?," I asked.
He said, "She can sleep on the
couch."
Christ. I told Harriet, "I think you should go stay with your
grandparents."
"Well, I don't. I'm going for a walk."
Dan didn't make a move to stop
her. When she was gone, he looked
at me for - what? Understanding? Sympathy?
"Do you know what you're getting
into?," I asked.
When he didn't answer, I walked to the
phonograph and lifted up the
needle.
"What was I supposed to
do?," Dan asked. "She doesn't
have a place
to stay."
"She has parents. She has grandparents. I suggest you call the
police and tell them you have a
runaway."
"I can't do that. She's unhappy."
"You're flirting with real
trouble, Dan."
"I think she'll go home in a few
days. Don't you?"
"She shouldn't be your
problem."
"She's a fan. A true believer."
Christ, another true believer. She understood the music conspiracy
or something. She's on our side.
"Call the cops," I
said. I stared at him, hoping to
communicate
that this was my parting shot. Then I got the hell out of there.
Outside I looked up and down the
street for Harriet. I was
standing next to the pink Caddy and
evidently Tank thought I was
admiring it. He came out of the market to say, "It ain't for sale,
man.
That's my baby."
"Beautiful," I said.
"Class all the way," said
Tank.
I nodded.
He winked and said, "You looking
for that young quiff, she went
thataway." His head gestured up the street, toward the station.
"Thanks."
I cruised by the radio station, then around the block, checking
side streets. She was gone. Disappeared
as quickly as an Angel rally.
I found a phone booth and told Carla
I'd take a rain check on the
nap, I still had work to do.
"All you do is stand me up," she said.
"Honey, something came up."
"Don't you honey me!"
I stepped out of the phone booth and
into the smog and clamor of
the afternoon. I realized that my eyes stung, my ears ached. When
Bad-Ass coughed to life in a cloud of blue
smoke, my contribution to
the rising pollution and noise was just a
drop in the bucket.
14/
At Ruth's, an older Negro woman
answered the door, her graying hair
up in a bun under a red bandanna. She smiled as if we were old
friends.
"You must be the one coming to
see Ruth," she said. She opened
the
door and gestured for me to enter. "She called to say she'll be a
little late. Why don't we wait in the kitchen?"
She introduced herself as Ella Mae,
Ruth's mother. As we walked to
the kitchen, we passed through the living
room where the teenagers I'd
seen on the porch, and on Butch's huge
canvas, were sprawled across
ragged pieces of furniture. They were staring at me. Ella Mae didn't
stop to make any introductions, which was
a relief. I felt vague
resentment from the kids.
"They're practicing for the song
contest," Ella Mae explained
later.
We were seated at the small kitchen table, and a doo-wop record
was now playing from the living room.
"They probably won't sing while
you're here," she said. "Just
listen."
She laughed at this, a mother's wise
observation, and her laughter
filled the small kitchen.
Outside I could hear the roar of distant
construction coming up from the gully of
their back yard.
Ella Mae got up from the table,
saying, "I hope you like apricot
pie.
I picked the apricots yesterday.
They only left one tree in the
yard."
She didn't give me time to get a word
in. She talked constantly
and aimlessly, telling me about her trip
to Farmer's Market and how
terrible the smog was lately and how hard
Ruth worked, a rush of words
united only by the perpetual cheeriness of
her tone.
Ruth walked in. She looked ill at ease, turning down her
mother's
offer of pie and giving me another one of
those looks I'd been getting
lately, Let's go somewhere we can talk. I wondered why she'd asked me
to meet her there in the first place.
Following Ruth to the door, I heard a
baby crying. Ella Mae told
us to have a good time and headed off in
the direction of the crying.
"Mother was supposed to be
visiting Aunt Martha this afternoon,"
she explained as we drove away.
"Where to then?"
"Anywhere but South City."
"You got some time?"
"Yes."
"I know a spot in Venice."
"Fine."
I was eager to hear what was on her
mind but there was something
about cars that clammed Ruth up. Just as when I'd given her a lift,
she quietly stared out the window, failing
to bite at any of my
attempts to start a conversation.
I drove to the Oar House, and we found
a picnic table near the
entrance.
We were lucky to find a table at all but were just a beat
ahead of the crowd coming in for happy
hour revelry. I liked noisy
joints for important conversation: it was like static to defend
against eavesdropping. I didn't know what was on Ruth's mind but
had a
gut feeling it would be worth listening
to.
But it took two Scotches for Ruth to
loosen up and then she became
suddenly defensive.
"I'm not having an affair with Dan," she told me.
"Did you think I thought you
were?"
"I think you think someone
is. Obviously his marriage is in
trouble."
"But it's not you."
"No. It was Flo."
Dan and Flo? A Negro baby from the liaison?
"She's not here to defend
herself," I said.
What if Dan, not Flo, had the Negro
lineage and was passing for
white?
Ruth said, "I was very close to
Flo. We've known each other for
years."
"Did you know she was passing for
white?"
"Yes."
"And could Dan be as well?"
"I don't think so."
"Could Dan have killed
her?," I asked.
The question had just popped out but
Ruth's reaction was
interesting. She quickly looked
away. I recalled that Butch had said
she believed the husband had done it.
"Or her husband?," I
asked. "Jealousy and all
that."
Ruth said, "I suppose it could be
jealousy."
She didn't sound very convincing, and
she had nothing more to add.
After a silence I said, "Do you know
what happened to the baby? It
wasn't mentioned in the newspaper."
"I don't know. I suppose Gregory put it up for
adoption."
There was something too glib and easy
about this. And about the
rest as well. My gut feeling was that she was hiding something.
"Have you been following the rat
murders?," I asked.
"Who hasn't?"
"Why would Flo be one of the
victims?"
After a hesitation, she said, "I
don't know."
"The murderer may have set it up
to look like the Rat Murderer."
"Yes, I thought of that,
too."
"Did you know that Artie is
writing a history of rats?"
This time she looked down into her
drink.
"I found an episode in the
trash," I said.
She looked up and said, "You've
been through our trash?"
She didn't seem angry, merely
surprised.
I said, "I cleaned up after the
dogs." I told her the rest, about
first finding the rat, then the paper
about rats and how it looked like
a school assignment.
"I guess something so gruesome is
exotic to a boy his age," she
said.
"Maybe. What about the rat?"
"What do you mean, what about
it?"
"Where'd it come from?"
"We poison rats all the time, Mr.
Trevorak. South City is full of
rats.
L.A. must have millions of them.
The city certainly won't do
anything about it in our neighborhood, of
course." After a pause she
added, "Surely you don't think my
brother is . . .?"
"Of course not." As a matter of fact, I didn't know what I
thought.
The Daisy Mae amazon came by, and we
ordered another round.
"Have you talked to Gregory since
the murder?," I asked.
"Why should I talk to him?"
"I thought you might have run
into him while cleaning house or
something."
"I haven't seen him."
"Where would I find him?"
"I have no idea."
"How'd you meet Butch?," I
asked without preface.
She took the question in strike,
without missing a beat. "He's
doing a painting of Artie's singing
group. We just, well, hit it off
from the start. I was as surprised as you were in the restaurant."
"Small world," I said.
"Yes, it appears to be."
She let out a sigh that told me she
was ready to change the
subject.
"If I talk to Gregory," I
said, "do you mind if I mention you?"
"Why would you want to mention
me?"
"You said Dan was having an
affair with his wife."
"Mr. Trevorak, I only wanted to
see you to let you know that Dan
wasn't having an affair with me. I don't even know if Gregory knew
about it."
I said, "Dan denies having an
affair."
"Wouldn't you, considering the
fact that someone murdered her?"
She had a point. All the same, something wasn't settling
right.
"So the reason you called me was to
clear your good name."
The question surprised her. I saw her searching for words before
saying, carefully, "I thought you
would link me with Dan. I didn't want
this to get back to Butch."
"This meeting is for Butch's
sake?"
"I don't want rumors about me to
get to him. I like him very much.
More than I've liked a man in quite a
while."
I don't know why I didn't believe her
but I didn't. Everything
about her was too orchestrated.
"What about white people?,"
I asked, remembering what Butch had
told me.
"Do you like white people?"
Again I caught her off guard but she
recovered quickly.
"Since you ask," she said
calmly, "not particularly."
Ruth and I ended quickly after that,
and I drove her back to South
City in silence. There wasn't time to swing by Carla's, and when I
phoned she didn't answer.
For the stakeout I bought a half-dozen
Bob's Big Boy Hamburgers,
two large vanilla ice cream sodas, a
couple bags of potato chips and
filled my thermos with coffee. I fetched the camera gear from
Bad-Ass's trunk. Then I drove into Hollywood, found the address in a
fancy residential section and settled in
for the adultery to begin.
15/
Stake-outs are a drag. The Army must have invented them, it's
hurry up and wait, all the way. For a playwright who couldn't make a
living at his craft, however, it wasn't a
bad gig. When half of the
Big Boys were gone, I took out my journal
and, being a sink- or-swim
writer, started right out on the idea that
had been bugging me
recently.
Sun., 13 June 54
Scene: a back room in the Public Hall,
with the casket containing
the President's body inside. An unnamed Eastern European country. Dr.
Alberts is there with the State Mortician,
Neck, and his assistant,
Charles.
The President's Wife, Mrs. Jones, also is there.
NECK:
Well, doctor?
DR. ALBERTS: Your suspicions are correct.
I find the organ to be
tumescent.
(Mrs. Jones breaks into tears.)
CHARLES: Please, Mrs. Jones.
MRS. JONES (struggling): It's sca-- . . . scan-- . . . it's
scanda-- . . .
CHARLES: Now, now.
NECK:
Perhaps you could give her something.
DR. ALBERTS: Come, Mrs. Jones. You
must try to relax.
(The doctor and Mrs. Jones start out.)
NECK:
Thank you, doctor.
DR. ALBERTS: I feel like I should be the one thanking you. In my
long career, I've never seen anything like
this before.
MRS. JONES (sobbing): It's scandalous . . .
DR. ALBERTS: Come with me, Mrs. Jones.
I'll administer a
sedative.
(The doctor escorts her off.)
Car headlights approached through the
darkening evening, and I
looked up from my notebook. But the car passed by without turning into
Zimmerman's driveway. I read over what I'd written and continued.
CHARLES: What do we do now?
NECK:
I'm not sure.
CHARLES: You could display only half the body. The upper
half.
NECK:
And compromise my reputation? I
didn't get where I am by
displaying only half the body. People expect a full deck.
CHARLES: They've been waiting out there for hours. The lines
are--
NECK:
I know how long the lines are.
Let them wait. We can't
display the body as it is.
CHARLES: Of course not.
NECK:
We've got to get rid of it.
CHARLES: Perhaps if . . .
NECK:
If what?
CHARLES: If we dismembered . . . it was just a thought.
NECK:
I do not mutilate bodies. The
entire body will be viewed
intact or not at all. I have my reputation to think of.
CHARLES: It was just a suggestion.
(A pause.)
CHARLES: Perhaps it will go away.
NECK:
Perhaps.
CHARLES: We can wait and hope. We
can pray.
NECK:
Yes, we can pray.
(They pray. Then they
approach the casket and look at the body.)
NECK:
No luck.
CHARLES: They must be getting impatient out there. The lines
started forming as soon as his death was
announced.
NECK:
I know, I know.
CHARLES: He certainly
is popular. Even dead. I suppose because
he was so average. According to the polls, there was never a
more
average man.
NECK:
We have to think of something!
CHARLES: At least Mrs. Jones noticed the erection before the doors
were opened. If the people had been let in before anyone noticed . . .
NECK:
I must have done something wrong.
CHARLES: Do you think so?
NECK:
Perhaps I was nervous without knowing it. I've never
prepared a President before. Something inconsequential could have
slipped my notice, and consequently have
become -- consequential. If I
had somehow erred in draining all the
blood, for example. Perhaps such
an error would explain it.
CHARLES: That might be an explanation.
Another car passed in false
alarm. I took out my small pen- sized
flashlight to work by and wrote on.
NECK:
On the other hand, the blood measured (check the figure)
quarts, which is average.
CHARLES: Then that must not be it.
NECK:
Perhaps it has happened before.
I'm much too busy to read
all of the literature. New findings are always popping up. A
premature
ossification of the penis, for
example. I've heard rumors of such a
thing.
CHARLES: That might be an explanation.
NECK:
On the other hand, then one would presume that the organ
would ossify in its normal state.
CHARLES: Then that must not be it.
NECK:
Unless, of course, he died while the organ was . . .?
CHARLES: You don't think he died in the saddle, do you?
NECK:
Suppose he did. Followed by
premature ossification . . .
CHARLES: Sounds unlikely to me.
NECK:
There's only one way to find out.
I'll question his wife.
CHARLES: About THAT?
NECK:
It's a delicate matter, I know.
But we must find out. It
could be the explanation. Get Mrs. Jones.
CHARLES: But the doctor was going to give her a sedative. She'll
be resting.
NECK:
A sedative will make the matter less delicate. Get Mrs.
Jones.
Another car approached and swung to
turn into the driveway. I
cussed at the bad timing, threw the
notebook into the back seat,
grabbed the camera gear and got out of the
car.
16/
The puppeteer and the kiddy host were
not imaginative about
covering their tracks: hiding behind bushes in the backyard, I got
photos of them swimming nude together,
later the guy getting a blow job
while sitting on the end of the diving
board, and finally the whole
ball of wax taking place in the shallow
end of the pool, though the
latter shots might prove hard to decipher
since most of the hard
evidence was happening under water. Hank hadn't provided me with
snorkeling gear.
I wondered where the hell the wife
was. Probably visiting her
mother or something. Maybe on purpose, so we could get the evidence.
Satisfied that I'd collected all the
dirt she would need, I got the
hell out of there before the bars
closed. I put down three shots of
Jameson's before last call, thinking about
what Ruth had told me. Were
her feelings for Butch real or just
manufactured to throw me off the
scent?
When the bar closed, I drove to
Butch's loft in Watts. Sometimes he
worked late into the night and early
morning, and if the light was on
upstairs, what the hell, I'd steal some of
his bourbon and maybe
clarify a few things about Ruth.
The light was on but, as it turned
out, Butch wasn't alone. As I
approached the door, I could hear sounds
inside, the unmistakable
moaning of a female in sexual heat. Curiosity got the best of me, and
I kneeled and put my eye to the
keyhole. The woman I saw riding Butch
in great frenzy was not Ruth.
The long night had brought too much
peeping, not enough
participation. I drove Bad-Ass straight to Carla's, let myself in with
my key, and was naked and going down on
her before she woke up. She
mumbled a complaint, said something about
a dream, realized it was me,
swore a general complaint about the
universe and a particular one about
my place in it, then finally relaxed and
began to enjoy herself.
"You should call first,"
Carla said over morning coffee.
I'd awoken first and dressed and made
the coffee, delivering a cup
to Carla in bed. She sat up sipping now, naked, the single sheet
dropping around her waist. I sat at the nearby table.
"I didn't want you to say fuck
off."
"I would have, too."
"That's why I didn't call."
"You can be so rude."
"Right, you had a lousy
time. You only came a dozen
times."
It was only a slight
exaggeration. Carla's sexual appetite
matched
her size.
"That's not the point. You are rude and crude."
"I spent the entire night
watching other people suck and fuck. Give
me a break."
"Sometimes you can be such an
animal."
"Right, you come like proper
royalty, no screaming and clawing at
all."
"You're just lucky I like
sex."
"No, I'm lucky you like me."
"You're lucky you have the chart you have."
It was her turn to lead the
parade. Afterwards we napped and when
I woke up with a start, in the crisis of
some forgotten theatrical
dream, Carla's clock read eleven a.m. I bounded out of bed and began
to dress for the second time that morning.
"You're always in such a goddamn
rush when you leave," Carla said,
rising up on one elbow.
I thought she was beautiful in the
morning, her long black hair a
mess, her eyes puffy, her ample flesh
wrinkled and splotched by the
sheets.
What you saw is what you got, which is as good as it gets.
"Hank's going to kill me," I
said.
"What?"
I started toward the door.
"See you," I said.
"I shouldn't even let you in the
goddamn bed next time."
"You know you love
surprises."
I blew her a kiss and was gone.
Back at the office, I managed to get
the photos developed and
printed before Hank, who wasn't there when
I arrived, began wondering
where they were. He was pounding on the darkroom door just as I was
finishing up.
"Out in a minute!," I
yelled.
The photos were clear and sleazy, and
while Hank was drooling over
them I slipped out of the office before he
remembered that they were
being delivered four hours late. Dad wasn't in this morning, which
would have cleared the way for Hank to
lambaste me with more venom than
usual if I stuck around. Who needed it?
I remembered Joan Davies saying that
Gregory Albertson might be
staying with his mother. Fortunately, the lady also played bridge and
Joan knew her well. She lived in Sierra Madre, which was
adjacent to
Foothills.
Driving to Sierra Madre, I listened to
KRB. The teenage doo- wop
contest was starting next week, I
noted. The deejay who followed Dan,
Hot Wire Wally, plugged it four times by
the time I maneuvered the
detours into the civilization of east L.A.
County, drove into the
foothills of Sierra Madre and found the
address.
I didn't expect to find Gregory
Albertson at home. I assumed he'd
be at work. My plan was to get the address of his office from his
mother, posing as a former business
associate from out of state.
But a gentleman answered the door,
wearing a silk robe, no less. A
man of leisure or something. I wondered where the cigarette holder
was.
"I'm looking for Gregory
Albertson," I said.
"I'm Albertson."
He was good-looking in a Rock Hudson
sort of way. Clean, probably
freshly, shaven, the aroma of after-shave
still clinging to him. I
would have suspected he had a sweet young
thing waiting in his bed
except that mother probably didn't allow
it.
I showed him my identification and
asked if we could talk.
"Yes, but not here. Mother would ask questions. Does this have
something to do with my wife?"
I nodded.
"There's a bar in the restaurant
at the bottom of the hill," he
said.
"The Pink Penguin. You must
have passed it."
I told him I'd be there. But instead of driving to the restaurant,
I parked Bad-Ass around the corner and
waited. Sure enough, ten
minutes later he cruised by in a black
Chrysler. I kept a safe
distance behind and followed him into
nearby Foothills, then watched
through binoculars as he waited in front
of Joan Davies' house until
Ruth came out in her white uniform and got
into the car.
They drove to Santa Monica. I expected a stroll on the beach but
the rendezvous proved to be more intimate
than that, and much more
interesting. They pulled into The Sea Breeze Motel. For a long
moment, no one got out of the car, and
then finally Albertson went
into the office alone. He was in white shorts and a tan polo shirt,
cool and casual. A few minutes later he was back, dangling a key, and
they pulled in front of their room.
But something was wrong, this wasn't a
quick afternoon delight.
Ruth didn't want to get out of the
car. Albertson had gotten out and
gone around the car to open her door, a
real gentleman, but she
wouldn't get out. He was bending down, apparently trying to
convince
her.
It took him a full five minutes before she followed him into the
room.
I've never held much stock in
protocol. "Fashion is the first
refuge of a scoundrel," an Army buddy
used to say. I didn't even give
them ten or fifteen minutes to make
up. I pulled Bad-Ass next to the
arrogant, shiny Chrysler and began banging
on their door.
I didn't respond to Gregory's
"Who's there?" He had to open
the
door to find out. He stood staring at me, in his shorts and
polo shirt
and great tan, looking like a magazine ad.
I grinned and waved at Ruth, who was
sitting on the bed, looking
more angry than guilty.
Gregory was at a loss for words. I worried that he might let his
fists be the dictionary.
"We need to talk, friends,"
I said, trying to sound pleasant and
unthreatening. Who wants to trade blows with a magazine ad?
Ruth said, "Let him
in." Gregory moved out of the
doorway and went
to the bed.
"He's a private
investigator," he said, bending forward to speak
softly into Ruth's ear.
"I know who he is. Let me handle it."
Gregory moved slowly away from the
bed, watching me carefully, like
a
man who is never comfortable unless he knows exactly what is going
on.
He'd be butting in, I knew, which was fine. I wanted to play them
against one another.
"Well, are you going to ask
him?," Ruth asked. "That's
what you're
here for, isn't it?"
I smiled at her. I looked at Gregory. He looked like he had to
pee.
"Ask what?," Gregory wanted
to know.
"Well?," Ruth repeated.
"I work for Joan Davies," I
said for Gregory's benefit.
"He's investigating Dan," Ruth added.
"You want to ask him?," I
said to Ruth. She glared at me.
I said to Gregory, "I understand
your wife, your late wife, was
having an affair with Dan."
Once again he just stared at me, without
showing any visible
emotion.
Certainly no visible grief for his wife, which is what I was
looking for. But maybe the tan was a mask, he was too goddamn photo
perfect to show grief.
"Could he have murdered
her?," I asked.
"I'll tell you the same thing I
told the police: I have no idea who
murdered her."
"Could you have?"
This made him angry.
"If you're making
accusations," he said, "I prefer you make them to
my lawyer. Ruth, let's get out of here."
But Ruth stayed on the bed, watching
me, waiting for my next move.
"How do you know your wife is,
was, a Negro?," I asked Gregory.
"What if Dan is responsible for the
baby?"
He turned to me - at me, is better -
more angry than ever. How dare
you ask that!, was written all over his
tan.
I went on, "How can you be sure
Dan didn't dish out the Negro blood
and your wife is as white as you are? And where is the baby, anyway?"
I could tell that Ruth was confused by
this line of questioning,
since she'd already told me Flo was a
Negro, but I was pleased as punch
to be confusing both of them at once.
Gregory said, "I told you to
speak to my lawyer."
Ruth decided to be the
peacemaker. She got up and went to him.
"Joan is worried that Dan may
have Negro blood."
Poor Gregory looked more confused than
ever. If he was on the
beach, I could've kicked sand in his face.
Ruth turned to me.
"You found out what you came here
for, Dan and Flo had an affair.
Why don't you leave?"
"I'm trying to find out if Dan is
a Negro," I said.
Ruth began, "I wouldn't--,"
before Gregory cut her off with, "Don't
answer.
He can talk to my lawyer."
"Who killed Flo Albertson?,"
I wondered aloud.
And then, for the first time, I
thought I saw something like grief
cross Gregory's countenance. But I didn't know if it was grief for his
wife or for himself, because I'd invaded
his secure world with too many
unanswered questions.
"The police think it's the Rat
Murderer," he said softly.
So he did have emotions. He was disobeying his own orders to clam
up.
"What do you think?," I
asked.
Before he could reply, Ruth put in,
"Are you trying to solve the
rat murders, too?" She made no attempt to hide her sarcasm.
"Nope. Just here in inquire about Dan.
He had an affair with your
wife, he may or may not be a Negro, he may
or may not be a murderer.
Sorry for the interruption."
On my way out I turned back in the
doorway and caught Ruth's stare.
I said, "Don't worry, Butch isn't
faithful either."
Pulling out of the motel parking lot,
I wondered if Gregory was
still interested in his afternoon
delight. I hoped I'd ruined it for
him.
I hoped his tan was starting to peel.
I pulled into traffic and pointed
Bad-Ass back toward the smog of
the city.
17/
For once there was no loud music
coming from inside Dan's
apartment. I put my ear to the door and still heard nothing. I tried
the handle; the door was locked. I tapped and waited. Nothing. I
knocked louder. And louder again.
I took out my key chain, selected the
proper tool and picked the
lock.
There was a stale odor in the front
room like old cigarette smoke
and stale beer. Drawn venetian blinds added to the dismal atmosphere.
Stained and dirty, the blinds looked like
a primitive attempt at
cartography. I wondered what he was paying for rent. Two digits would
be highway robbery.
There were four rooms: the front living room, a small adjacent
kitchen, a smaller bathroom and, in the
rear, a small bedroom. The
apartment was rented furnished and all the
rooms had the same Cheap
Motel decor, pieces of furniture that had
witnessed neglect and abuse.
I went into the bedroom.
An open suitcase was on the
floor. I knelt and began going through
it.
Under a pile of underwear I found some newspaper clippings.
They were the same Rat Murder articles
that were on the wall at the
office, only these were annotated. The names of the victims had been
underlined in ink and in the margin next
to them Dan, or someone, had
scrawled notes to himself. Next to each victim "RCA?" had
been
scrawled.
I put away the clippings and went to the chest of drawers.
All the drawers but the top one were
empty. There, under folded
dress shirts, I found two nudist
magazines, the kind that have all the
genitals smudged out. Although the magazines attempted to
represent
nudist family life, most of the
photographs were of teenage girls, high
school nymphets playing volleyball and
golf and softball. I recalled
Jeff Berger's fear that Dan might be
interested in Harriet for reasons
beyond her interest in doo- wop.
I was about to move out of the room
when I heard a commotion up
front.
Several people had entered, a record was quickly put on the
phonograph and began to play. Over the music I heard Harriet's voice
and laughter, and the voices of boys, kids
like herself. A party was
about to start or something. I didn't hear Dan's voice.
There was a bedroom window but it was
a long jump. There was a bed
but at my size I doubted if I could
squeeze under it. I had no
alternative but to face them.
What the hell, when in doubt go the
whole hog.
I barged into the front room, yelling,
"What the hell's going on?
I was trying to get some sleep. Harriet, is this your idea? Dan's not
going to put up with this shit and neither
am I!"
I thought it was a stellar performance. My entrance, and perhaps
my size as well, had intimidated Harriet
and her two friends, Negro
boys who looked her own age. I kept trying to look as mean as possible
while continuing.
"What the hell's this about,
Harriet? You boys better get the hell
out of here. Harriet, I demand a full explanation!"
It might have worked if Dan hadn't
walked in.
"How'd you get in here?," he
asked me right off.
"He was in the bedroom,"
Harried added quickly.
All of a sudden I didn't feel like a
threat any longer.
"Let's talk outside," said
Dan.
Passing the kids, I could tell they'd
be smirking as soon as I got
out the door. Then they'd be snapping fingers and listening to
doo-wop, quickly back into their party.
The porch wouldn't do, Dan led me down
the stairs. Then he turned
and said, "You broke into my
apartment. I could get your license for
that."
These were heavy stakes, so I led my
strong suit.
"I found your magazines. You like them young."
I thought I saw the hint of red on his
cheeks. No time to letup now.
"Flo Albertson was what? A diversion with a contemporary?"
"Let's go somewhere and
talk," he said softly.
"Yeah, let's do that."
"I have to tell the kids I'm
going."
We drove in Bad-Ass to The Oar
House. I drove an intimidating car,
no one liked to open up in it and Dan,
like Ruth before him, sat
huddled against the door, silently staring
out the window.
As soon as our drinks were on the
picnic table inside, I said, "You
were having an affair with Flo."
"I'm not having an affair with
anyone!"
"That's not what Ruth told
me," I said.
He studied me carefully. "What did she tell you?"
"I just told you."
He quickly lit up a cigarette and blew
smoke. He was fidgeting, as
if trying to decide what to say. I just sipped my Jameson's and
watched him squirm.
"Okay," he said at last,
"Flo and I had a brief affair. But
I
didn't kill her, if that's what you
think."
"I didn't think that," I
said. But it was something to wonder
about.
"Why did you break into my
apartment?"
I didn't tell him the truth, that when
in doubt in this business,
start snooping around. I didn't respond to the question at
all. I
wanted to be asking the questions here.
"What about the kid, Dan?"
"Harriet? What about her?"
Actually, I'd meant something
else. We'd talk about teenage girls
later.
"No," I said, "I mean
Flo's baby. Could it be yours?"
I guessed from the old look of
melancholy that he'd thought about
this himself and the answer was yes, it
could be his.
"Dan, are you a Negro?," I
asked.
"No, I told you before."
"But you had an affair with
Flo."
"It was a mistake. It's been over for months."
"And you're not having an affair now?"
"No."
"Not even with Harriet."
"No!"
Did he protest too much? He quickly tried to convince me that
he hadn't.
"I got those magazines from a guy
at work," he said. "They
don't
mean anything."
"Well, they don't show
anything."
Right after Korea, I'd had a false
start on a play about a guy who
made his living smudging out the genitals
in nudist magazines. My
working title had been "The Latent
Gynecologist" and the play was
supposed to have been a comedy. When I realized it was going nowhere,
a one-joke play, I dropped it. But it was still a hell of a strange
job.
I said, "I also found the
clippings."
"You really went through the place."
"Why did you scribble RCA in the
margins?"
He sipped his drink and said, "I
don't understand why you find me
so interesting. I told you I'm not a Negro.
That's what you were
hired to find out."
"You have clippings for all the
rat murders except Flo," I said.
"I don't think the Rat Murderer
killed her. It doesn't fit the
pattern."
"And what pattern is that?"
"You wouldn't understand."
"Try me."
"You don't understand about the
music," he said.
"Is RCA the record
company?," I asked.
He just looked at me.
I said, "What if I was a true
believer? What then?"
"But you're not."
The music. Did he think he'd found a connection between the rat
murders and the music? Ruth's little brother sang doo-wop and was
reporting on the history of rats. Was all this just coincidental?
"Why doesn't Flo fit the
pattern?," I asked.
I saw immediately that he wasn't going to tell me. He was turning
haughty, holier-than-thou, a true believer
who knew Truth that was
invisible to me, who heard music I did not
understand. In other words,
he was a real fruit cake.
I said, "The police would be
interested in knowing you had an
affair with Flo Albertson."
"And they'd be interested that
you broke into my apartment," he
said.
"And that you're contributing to
the delinquency of minors. Don't
tell me they don't drink beer up in your apartment."
And my daddy's bigger than your daddy,
too. We were at a stalemate
and silent. Then Dan stood up.
"I think I've told you all you
need to know," he said.
"For the moment."
"My wife hired you, and now you
know what you wanted to know.
Obviously we'll be getting a
divorce."
"If you say so."
He shook his head and said,
"You'll never understand."
"Lay off the sermon, okay?"
"The world is crumbling all
around you and you don't even see it.
If you did, you wouldn't even know why
it's happening."
And he was out of there. It didn't bother him that he was without
wheels, it didn't bother him that I'd seen
some of his dirty underwear.
All that mattered was that he was a True
Believer and I wasn't.
Hallelujah.
I had another drink and left. I wanted to talk to Butch. He
wasn't a true believer but at least he was
sympathetic to Dan's music
theory.
Besides, I still had some things to ask him about Ruth.
18/
"Dan had an affair with Flo
Albertson," I said.
Butch studied me, then said,
"What do you think, man, that maybe he
murdered her?"
"I don't know what to think. The guy is definitely weird. This
music conspiracy, or whatever it is,
colors everything in his life."
Butch smiled and shook his head. I didn't know if he was amused by
Dan or by me.
"His conspiracy theory made sense
to you," I reminded him.
"Hey, all I'm saying is that if
the cat sees that white music is
covering R&B and doo-wop, then he's on
to something. To tell you the
truth, I think it's the major direction
music is going to head. You
wait a couple years and see if I'm not
right."
"But what does that have to do
with the rest?"
"The rest of what? Be specific, man."
"With the rat murders. Flo's murder."
"You're the detective, Red, don't
ask me. I don't see that there's
any connection at all. But I can see you're sure worrying about
one.
So you tell me what the connection
is."
I didn't know what to say. What the hell did I know? I wasn't Sam
Spade, I was a playwright.
We were sitting at his table, drinking
coffee. Butch, as always,
was in his paint-splattered coveralls and,
this morning, a dirty white
T-shirt.
"You want more coffee,
man?," he asked.
"No thanks. I've got to get back to the office."
When I didn't make a move to leave, he
said, "Well, if you're
leaving, then I'll get back to work."
"Ruth says she really cares about
you," I said.
"You talk to her?"
I nodded.
"Come on," he said, "I
can see you're dying to talk about it."
I told him about our meeting at The
Oar House. I didn't tell him
about following Ruth and Gregory to the
motel.
When I was done, Butch said, "I'm
not sure I like you spending so
much think-time on my love life.
You dig what I'm saying? Or do
you
think she's involved in your case,
too?"
"I'm not sure."
"But you're thinking she might
be."
"Hell, Butch, I don't know what
I'm thinking."
"You mind if I get back to
work?"
"How much do you care for
her?," I asked.
"Ruth is somebody I ball now and
again, okay? You got a problem
with that?"
"No, I don't care who you sleep
with."
But I did. I didn't want him to be in love with Ruth. I stood up.
"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to pry."
"Right."
"You're angry."
"Forget it, man. Get the fuck out of here so I can get some
work
done."
At the doorway I turned and said,
"Let's have lunch soon."
"You got it."
Dad was alone in the office. When I entered he smiled and said,
"Hank's pleased as punch with your
photos. Good work, son."
"If I'd had snorkeling gear,
I'd've really given him something."
"Snorkeling gear?"
"Private joke."
I went to the coffee pot, filled a cup
and took it to my desk.
There were no messages.
"Dad," I said, "the guy
whose background I'm checking out is saving
the
clippings like we are. Only he's making
marginal notes. He writes
RCA next to each victim."
"The record company?"
"Maybe."
"Check it out," Dad
suggested.
I looked up the local division of RCA
in the phone book, dialed and
asked for Franklin Cowley, one of the
victims. The secretary had never
heard of him. I mumbled something and hung up.
When Dad saw that I was off the phone,
he said, "You're like me."
I swung around my chair to face him
across the small room.
"You want to solve this thing so
bad you can taste it," Dad said.
"You're a born cop and don't even
know it."
"Hank's the born cop."
"Hank's steady. You're creative."
He got up and limped the few steps to
my desk, putting his hand on
my shoulder.
"Sometimes the best thing to do
on a case is to get it out of your
mind for a while," he said.
"Dad, I'm not assigned to the rat
murders."
"Of course not," he
grinned. "So let's catch the
Angels tonight,
what do you say?"
I smiled back.
"Why not?"
"You pick me up at seven? That give us time?"
"Plenty of time."
"Want to wager? I'll give you the Beavers and a run."
"I never bet against the
Angels."
"What'd I tell you?" He was still grinning. "Like father, like
son."
When Dad was gone, I poured the last
cup of coffee and set up a pot
to be plugged in in the morning. He was right, I was spending a hell
of a lot of time thinking about the rat
murders. Flo's murder had
something to do with it. And Dan, too, though it was hard to believe
he could be the serial killer. But he was sure a strange one. And all
the
coincidences were there: Dan and Flo's
affair, Flo's murder and
the rat m.o., the possible connections
between the victims and RCA, a
music company, a conspiracy theory that
Butch bought as well as Dan.
Even Artie and his history of rats. What did it all mean?
I took a bottle from my bottom drawer
and poured Jameson's into the
empty coffee cup. For a long while I just sat there staring
across the
room.
Then suddenly I was flipping through the phone book, where I
found Franklin Cowley listed. If he had a widow, maybe she'd know why
someone would write RCA beside the name of
her husband. I made a note
to call her and looked at the time.
A quarter to seven. Time to play ball. A shot for the road, and I
was out of there.
19/
I never think of my childhood as the
good old days. I was a plump,
shy, freckled towhead who was every other
kid's favorite scapegoat.
When the divvies before a game on the
playground were almost over, I
was still waiting to be chosen.
An exception to this misery were the
wondrous afternoons when Dad
would take me to an Angels game. We always sat as close to third base
as possible, so Dad could decipher all the
coaching signals. We'd eat
hot dogs and drink cokes and yell at the
umpires, the opposing players
and coaches and sometimes at other
fans. I'd leave the game feeling
like I'd just finished participating in a
grand athletic event. Hank
seldom came along on these outings, which made them even more
special.
We didn't go to games too often any
more, though I listened to the
Angels on the radio as often as I
could. In recent years, night games
had taken precedence over afternoon games,
and the Peeping Tom Patrol
occupied too many of my nights. Tonight, then, was special.
It was a good game, as Angels games
had been going lately. It was
close until the seventh, when three Angel
errors let in four runs.
Most of the fans left after that but we
stayed until the bitter end,
even managing to find something to scream
hopefully about when the
Angels leadoff batter in the bottom of the
ninth walked. The next
batter grounded into a double-play on the
first pitch. The final score
was seven to two.
"Hey, they scored two runs,"
Dad said as we followed along behind a
trickle of diehards across the parking
lot.
"Half of what they scored all
last week," I said.
"So we're off to a good
start," Dad laughed.
We were in good spirits. It'd been too long since we'd gone to a
game together.
"How about a drink before I take
you home?," I asked.
"Why the hell not?"
We were at the car, and Dad waited
behind for me to unlock the
door.
Instead I tossed my keys into the air, a spontaneous gesture of
good spirits - and this act probably saved
my life. Because I missed
them on the descent and as I bent down to
retrieve them, the shot rang
out.
I heard Dad yell in pain as he fell to the ground.
I also hit the pavement and rolled
close to Dad, who was bleeding
from the shoulder.
"I'm okay," he said.
I didn't carry a gun and asked Dad if he
had his. He shook his
head.
I looked up. About thirty yards away, a car was laying rubber in
its escape but my view was blocked by the
crowd of people who seemed to
appear out of nowhere. Where were they during the ballgame?
Hank found me in the waiting room at
the hospital.
"He's all right," I
said. "Just a flesh wound. They're keeping
him overnight."
"No complications?"
"In and out, clean as a
whistle."
"Can he see anyone?"
"He's sleeping. Why don't you stop by in the morning?"
"He checking out then?,"
Hank asked.
"Late morning, maybe."
"I'll take him home."
I nodded. There was an awkward pause.
Hank and I weren't close
but it's not everyday your father gets
shot.
I said, "Want to get a
drink?"
"Sure."
"Just don't keep me up."
"Very funny."
We went into a bar across the street
from the hospital. It felt
like a morgue in there, with too many
customers passing time while
their loved ones went under the knife.
When he had our drinks, Hank said,
"You thought about who might
have done it?"
I was still wondering if the shot had
been meant for me. I
shrugged.
"I figure it's somebody he put
away when he was on the force," said
Hank.
"Unless the bullet was meant for
me."
Hank just looked at me.
I said, "I know, it's hard to
imagine I'd be worth that much to
someone."
"Red, you said that, I
didn't."
"Must be my perverse sense of
humor."
I regretted turning surly. But I was confused and upset.
After a silence Hank said, "So
what's the deal?"
"Dad doesn't have an enemy in the
world and as far as a con getting
out - well, it's a longshot. This case I've been working on has become
very bizarre."
"You think someone's after you
because of the case?"
I told him about Dan's music
conspiracy and the possible connection
to the rat murders. Hearing myself, I knew it must sound
farfetched,
even paranoid. I didn't even know if I believed it myself. But I
could feel myself shaking as I spoke.
"Want an honest opinion?,"
Hank said when I was done.
"No, I want you to lie to
me."
He ignored this and said, "I
think you're wrong."
"If I hadn't dropped my keys, it
would've been me."
"That's just speculation."
"From the gut."
"Why you? Because you're checking the lineage of a
cheating
husband who sounds like a weirdo, to say
the least? Because white
teenagers are listening to nigger
music? Come on, Red."
I felt a twitch in my stomach when he
said nigger music but let it
ride.
I sipped my Jameson's.
Hank said, "It makes much more
sense to me that someone Dad put
away is out and after revenge. Think about it."
After another silence Hank finished
his drink and stood up.
"Thank God he's a bad shot,"
he said.
"Right."
"So I'll see you in the
morning."
"Yep."
He walked off several steps, then
stopped and turned.
"Oh, the photos were great,"
he said. "Good work."
I nodded and he was gone.
I ended up closing down the
joint. I thought of phoning Carla but
finally dismissed the idea. If I told her about Dad, she'd pour on
more sympathy than I needed; if I didn't
tell her, she'd notice I was
keeping something from her and we'd end up
in a fight. Nice thing
about Carla, we knew one another like we
knew the worst about
ourselves.
Outside, I wondered if I was sober
enough to drive home. Beside me
a man said, "Hell of a goddamn time
in the morning to operate on an old
man's heart."
Neither of us said more, and he
crossed the street toward the
hospital.
I followed behind, on my way to Bad-Ass.
20/
Tues, 15 June 54: Fuck it, I'm too hungover to write.
I awoke with a bad hangover. Stumbling into the bathroom, and
later from the bathroom into the small
kitchen, I found evidence that I
had finished off a bottle of Jameson's at
home before falling into bed.
The kitchen clock read ten-thirty. I phoned the hospital. Dad was
waiting for Hank to get him out of there.
"There was no goddamn reason to
keep me over night," he grumbled.
"Better safe than sorry,
Dad."
I couldn't recognize my own
voice. I cleared my throat.
"You at the office?," Dad
asked.
I lied that I was.
"I'll see you soon then," he
said.
"I think you should go
home."
"I got some calls to make."
"Make them at home."
"Business calls."
"Can't they wait?" I didn't know what he was talking about.
"Hell, they can. I want to find out who's been let out of the
can
who's got a score to settle with me. I don't like being shot at."
So Dad agreed with Hank's theory.
I said, "We'll talk about that
later."
"See you soon."
"Maybe, maybe not. I've got some running around to do."
"You sound like you're coming
down with a cold," Dad said. "Or are
you just hungover?"
"See you later, Dad."
I poured a shot of vodka into my
orange juice before going to the
office.
Hank had left a nasty note on my desk:
Where have you been
all morning? Was expecting you to hold down the fort.
I made fresh coffee and spiked my
first cup with a liberal shot of
Jameson's. That was it for the dog hair, I promised myself. It wasn't
a day for getting drunk, it was a day for
finding out what the hell was
going on.
I knew in my gut that the bullet had been meant for me.
To hell with holding down the
fort. I wasn't going to find out
anything by sitting around sipping spiked
coffee.
Where to begin? As Bad-Ass idled in front of a rising cloud
of
blue smoke, I made a decision. Dan and the music conspiracy theory
were the jokers in the deck. I put Bad-Ass in gear.
Earth Angel by The Penguins!,
said Lovin' Dan the Sixty- Minute Man
on the radio. And what a fine tune it is!
Maybe your doo-wop group
has a fine tune as well, and maybe you'll
win the grand prize of a
record contract with KRB's own new record
label, Teenbird. That's
right, KRB is having a talent search and
you still have a few more days
to register your very own doo-wop singing
group . . . .
I continued to marvel how little
Lovin' Dan resembled the
melancholy Dan who saw a conspiracy in the
same industry he worked in.
He was off the air before I navigated the
new detours to South City,
and Hot Wire Wally came on with the same
bravado. It made no
difference, it wasn't Dan I was after but
information.
I parked Bad-Ass in the station
parking lot and walked around the
building to enter through the front
door. A young Negro woman with
shiny straight hair was filing her nails
at the receptionist's desk.
She looked up and, without breaking
rhythm, asked, "Help you?"
I pulled out my identification. Professional demeanor, all the
way.
"You a cop?"
"Private investigator," I
said. I always sounded silly to myself
saying that but the few times I said
playwright, I just got stared at.
"I'd like to ask you a few questions
about Lovin' Dan the Sixty-Minute
Man."
There was an office off the
receptionist's desk, and through the
open door I saw the man inside move to
come out.
"What do you want to-," the
secretary began. She was interrupted
by the man moving quickly forward,
"Can I help you with anything?"
He was gray-haired and had the rumpled
look of a busy middle
manager.
When I showed him my identification, he invited me into his
office.
He closed the door behind us.
"I'm Buzz Taylor, the station
manager," he said, moving behind his
desk.
"Sit down. What can I do
for you?"
It was one of those small wooden
chairs with armrests, and I barely
squeezed down between them. If I stood without pushing down on the
armrests, I was sure the damn chair would
rise up on my ass.
"I'm investigating Dan
Davies," I began.
"I hope he's not in
trouble."
"It's a personal matter. I'm working for his wife."
"Oh, I see. Well, what do you want to know?"
"For starters, what kind of a guy
is he?"
I realized that I really didn't know
what I was doing there. All I
knew was, I had to keep moving, I had to
find out what the hell was
going on to motivate someone to remove one
lovable over- weight
playwright from the stage for good.
"Dan is very professional."
"I'm interested in his
character."
"His character. Well, I like Dan. He's one of our most popular
deejays.
He's hard-working, reliable, dedicated."
"He having an affair with the
secretary out there?"
"Well," Buzz said,
"maybe you should ask her."
"I plan to."
He stood up.
"I don't think I can help you,
Mr. . . .?"
I didn't stand up. I wasn't worried about bringing up the chair
on
my
ass, I just wasn't ready to go yet.
"From another source," I
began, "I learned that Dan believes there
is a conspiracy in the music
business. What do you know about
that?"
"I have no idea what you are
talking about." Staring down at me
over the desk, he added clear hostility to
his tone. "I am a busy man,
sir, if you don't mind. I have nothing more to tell you."
"White record companies are
making copies of Negro songs."
"I don't want to have to call security."
Security, what a joke. I doubted if they had a janitor, let alone
an armed guard. The building was infested with rats. By the looks of
the place, it was hard to imagine how they
met payroll.
"Good day," he said.
I pushed down the armrests and got to my feet.
"Thank you for your time," I
said. I offered my hand but he
ignored it.
He didn't follow me outside, which
gave me the opportunity to drop
my card in front of the secretary. She was still filing her nails.
"Call me sometime," I
said. "I'll buy dinner and
drinks."
She smiled. I smiled back. It was fun
being misunderstood.
Since I was in the neighborhood, I
stopped by Caviar's Market. I
was still trying to keep moving because I
knew I'd start thinking when
I stopped and when I began thinking I'd
remember how close I was to
being a dead man.
"Well, looky here!," Tank
greeted me. "The vintage coke
man! Maybe
one day we get in a new shipment for
you."
"You don't know if Dan is
upstairs, do you?"
"Hey, man, it's been a scene up
there this morning. You already
too late."
"What happened?"
"I never hear such screaming and
hollering. There's this white
chick, just a high school thing, man,
sweet little sixteen, I guess
that deejay likes them young-"
"What happened!"
"Man, I be getting to it. Here comes her mama and this older dude,
who the mama later calls dad so that makes
him the young chick's
granddaddy, right? Anyway, they had to carry her out of there,
man,
yelling and screaming the whole damn
way."
"Was Dan there?"
"I don't see him. Maybe he be at work because later he come in
with this other chick, a black one, with
the bangs in front like you
asked about that time. How that man get any sleep, is what I wants
to
know!
He doing it to young and old, black and white, goddamn that man
chases trem!"
"Dan was here with the woman with
bangs?"
"They only left a little while
ago."
"They left together?"
"Took off in his car
together."
Dan and Ruth? Now we were getting somewhere. I thanked Tank for
the information, bought an over-priced
coke and left.
The smog was beginning to
thicken. I decided to drive to
Foothills. I wanted to talk to Joan.
And to Jeff Berger. And to
Harriet.
And most of all to Dan and Ruth, though this would have to
wait.
The point was, it was over-kill time.
It was time to kick rocks
wherever I found them. Somewhere in the avalanche of information,
pieces of the puzzle were going to fall
into place. They had to. A
dead man writes no plays.
21/
I walked from the market back to the
station parking lot. On the
corner diagonally across the street was a
phone booth, and in it was
the secretary at the front desk. Her back was to me.
I crossed the street and waited for
her to hang up. She must have
sensed my presence because she suddenly
turned and, seeing me, hung up
and quickly moved out of the booth. I grabbed her.
"I'll yell rape 'less you let
go!," she threatened.
"I just want to talk."
"I don't know nothin' 'bout
Dan. Besides, I got to get back to
work."
"You can get away long enough to
make a phone call. Why didn't you
make it at your desk?"
"I'm on my break, okay? I was callin' my boyfriend."
"Then why suddenly hang up when
you saw me?"
"It was private. We're havin' problems."
"So am I."
"Looky here, Mr. Taylor gonna be
lookin' for me if'n I don't get
right back."
"What time do you get off?"
When she didn't reply, I said,
"Five?"
She nodded.
"I'll be waiting for you out
front," I said. "We'll go
somewhere
and talk.
Drinks on me."
"I told you, I don't know nothin'
'bout Dan."
"Then you don't even have to earn
your drinks."
She trotted across the street and back
into the building. In her
tight pink dress and what I now figured
must be a shiny black wig, she
looked more like a hooker than a
secretary. I didn't know if she'd be
outside at five or not. I tried to picture her and Dan taking lunch
together and couldn't. Maybe I was forcing my tastes on him and he
didn't mind sleazy at all.
Driving to Foothills, I listened to Hot
Wire Wally on the radio:
The response to KRB's doo-wop
contest has been phenomenal! Yes,
indeedy!
And you still have time to register your group for the
opening round of competition next
week. Hot Wire will be giving you
all the details right after this new side
by The Clovers, and oh what a
fine tune this be! It's The Clovers answer to the big hit by
Clyde
McPhatter and the Drifters, you know the
one I mean - Money Honey!
Yes, indeedy! Well, as far as The Clovers are concerned . . . Your
Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash!
As I drove the detours over the
ubiquitous construction, my mind
played with scenarios in a way that was
not unlike the thought
processes that preceded writing a
play. Why would anyone want to kill
me?
Because I was threatening them.
What was I doing to threaten
anyone?
What was I doing, period? I was
investigating Dan. Then was
I close to discovering something about Dan
that was dangerous to
someone?
He had had an affair with Flo, who had been murdered. Was
this the connection? Or did it have something to do with Dan's
possible connection between the rat
murders and a music conspiracy? Or
perhaps about the possibility that he was,
in fact, a Negro? Or was
he?
The connection between Dan and Flo
Albertson was most haunting.
She, after all, had been murdered. And I was supposed to have been.
The questions came easily. Perhaps too easily, too many questions
and none with answers. Was I just being paranoid? Dad, for a fact,
had put some mean characters behind bars
during his time with the LAPD.
Surely one might seek revenge when he was
released.
I pulled into Joan's driveway. As soon as I was out of the car,
Jeff Berger was calling to me.
"We're all over here," he
said.
There appeared to be a neighborhood
meeting going on in the den.
Besides Jeff were his wife, Joan and a
half-dozen others I didn't know.
And sitting in the corner, looking like a
trapped animal, was Harriet.
Her face was swollen from crying. She wasn't even chewing gum.
Jeff introduced me. All were neighbors except a pretty woman in
matching red peddle-pushers and blouse,
who was Jeff's daughter and
Harriet's mother, Candy. She sat on a pillow on the floor, beside an
ashtray filled with cigarettes.
After the introductions, Jeff said,
"As I said, Red is a private
investigator. Joan hired him concerning another matter, and I hired
him to try and get Harriet back before
Candy and I decided to take the
matter into our own hands."
He shot me a glance of reprimand, as if
I had broken a pledge. I
grinned back.
"Then how can he help us
now?," a woman asked. I'd already
forgotten her name. Like all the other women in the room, she
wore too
much makeup and was overdressed.
"We don't know that he can,"
said Jeff.
I didn't like this sudden scrutiny and
said, "Look, I came by
looking for Ruth. Joan, is she next door?"
"Ruth is no longer in my
employ," she replied.
I wondered why not but this wasn't the
time or place to find out.
"Let me tell you our
situation," said Jeff, "and you can tell us if
you can be of service."
I nodded. I wanted to get Joan alone after the meeting and find
out about Ruth.
"We need proof that Dan raped
Harriet," said Jeff.
Harriet started crying. Her mother used a half-smoked cigarette to
light another, and for a moment she held a
live cigarette in each hand,
before stabbing out the older.
"The girl says that's what
happened?," I asked. I didn't look
at
Harriet.
She was miserable enough.
"Of course she denies it,"
Candy blurted out. She stared at me as
if the question had come from an idiot.
I said, "Proof that will hold up
in court is hard to come by. This
is true even when the victim is
cooperative."
"My idea," said Jeff,
"is that we send her back as a decoy."
"I'm not sure I follow."
"We let her go back to Dan. With you, or someone, following, of
course, so proper evidence can be
gathered. She'd also be wired."
The Peeping Tom Patrol had had some
strange gigs but this would be
one of the strangest. Jeff was beaming at the possibility of using
his
own granddaughter as a decoy. I figured he'd been watching too much
Dragnet on television.
"This thing is much bigger than
just Harriet, believe me," Jeff
went on.
"It's what he's doing to teenagers with that music. I'm sure
the poor girl is not the only victim. That's why we have to catch him
in the act. Evidence that will hold up in court, like you say.
Harriet can be a hero."
Jeff tried to look sympathetically at
Harriet but this only
increased the heaving motion of her sobs.
I tried to picture Dan as a molester
of teenage girls. I
remembered the nudist magazines, all the
happy young girls playing
volleyball with their smeared
genitals. Still, the fit wasn't easy,
there was something about Dan that kept me
giving him the benefit of
the doubt.
"Tell him more about the
music," Joan said.
"I've talked about this before," Jeff said. "What it amounts to is
brain-washing, right on the public
airways. We aim to put a stop to
it."
Another version of the music
conspiracy.
"It's filth," said Joan.
"Negro music?," I asked.
Jeff quickly said, "Not all of
it, mind you. But increasingly,
particularly with songs aimed at the
teenage market, the white teenage
market, Negro songs are displaying a
sensuality and vulgarity that far
exceeds common decency. And again, these songs are being played on
the
public airways."
"And Dan is guilty because he
plays those records?"
"Teenagers worship the deejays on
KRB. I'm not saying all of them
take advantage of the situation - but,
yes, I think Dan has. But it's
the music that is at the root of the
problem because it's the music
that defines the aura of sensuality that
lets this happen in the first
place."
Everyone was looking at me, waiting
for a response.
"Couple questions," I said.
"Surely," said Jeff.
"Back to Dan. Where's the evidence that he raped the
girl?"
Jeff gave me his smug grin of
superiority and said, "Well, I'd love
to be wrong, of course. But that wouldn't change the issue
here."
I looked at Harriet. I hated her being there, shaking in her
sobs,
her arms wrapped around her body in a vain
effort to control herself,
to comfort herself.
"Will Harriet cooperate?," I
asked softly.
"Yes," Candy said, blowing
smoke. I was glad Harriet didn't see
the look on her face when she said it.
"Since you've been investigating
Dan anyway," said Jeff, "I thought
you'd be the logical one to get the evidence
we need."
My gut feeling was that they were all
crazy. But I also knew that
a man can get in trouble when his gut
feelings fail, and this worried
me.
"When do we start?," I said.
Jeff turned to Candy. Miracle of miracles, she stabbed out her
cigarette without lighting another.
"When do you want to
start?," Candy asked her father.
"I think the sooner, the
better," he said.
For a terrible moment, Harriet became
the focus of the room. She
looked in no shape to cooperate as a
decoy.
Jeff said, "But I think we'd
better play it by ear for a few days.
Obviously Harriet's in shock at what
happened."
Candy got to her feet and, like
trained seals, everyone stood up.
There were hand-shakes and goodbyes and
even two or three hugs, but the
mood was properly somber. I told Joan I wanted to talk to her, and she
waited behind as the others left. I noted that Candy left without her
daughter, who apparently was staying with
the grandparents.
"I'd like to talk to Harriet
sometime," I told Jeff.
"No time like the present."
I couldn't do that to her. The poor girl needed privacy above all
else.
"Maybe tomorrow," I said.
Jeff walked Joan and me to the side
door. Edna stayed behind with
Harriet, sitting across the den from
her. Edna hadn't said a word the
whole time. She looked like a woman who should be knitting, who was
lost without a pile of yarn in her
lap. Across the room, Harriet was
still sobbing softly, her arms wrapped
around herself. At least the
heaving and shaking were gone, she seemed
a little more relaxed now
that her tormentors had disappeared.
22/
We were having an early cocktail hour. We were sitting in stuffed
chairs on opposite sides of the den,
toasting martinis at one another
as if we didn't have a care in the world.
"Cheers," said Joan.
She drank. I didn't.
I said, "Let's cut the crap."
"Pardon me?"
"Do you think Dan could rape a
teenager?"
"That's just Jeff being
melodramatic."
"You went along," I reminded
her.
"Because he's right about the
music part. It's a real problem, and
Dan's involved. Apparently he loves that filth."
She got up to make another drink,
saying, "You ready?"
I hadn't even touched mine yet. I shook my head.
"No, I don't think Dan molested
the girl," she said at the liquor
cabinet.
Apparently she, too, had a propensity for giving Dan the
benefit of the doubt.
"If you think Dan is
innocent," I said, "why didn't you speak up
over there?"
"I'm hardly of a mind to defend
him."
She brought the fresh martini and sat
down again.
"The girl was put through a hell
of a lot," I said.
"That's not my concern."
She sipped. She lifted the tooth pick out of the glass and took
the olive.
"Mr. Trevorak," she said,
"let me remind you that I'm the one who's
the victim here. My husband has betrayed me.
Not with Harriet, I
assume.
With my own housekeeper. With a
Negro. Do you have any idea
how devastating that is?"
"Is that why you fired
Ruth?"
"Jesus." She glared at me before continuing. "What do you think?"
"I'm not sure he's having an
affair, let alone with Ruth."
"Well, I am. He called her here."
"When?"
"Yesterday. I was taking a bath, so Ruth probably
thought it was
safe to talk. I heard her and picked up the extension in the bedroom.
When I confronted her later, she denied
everything, of course. But I
heard enough."
Dan had phoned Ruth, and later Tank
had seen them together. My
first hunch may have been right, after
all.
"I don't know if your husband is
having an affair with Ruth or
not," I said. "But he had an affair with Flo
Albertson."
She turned on the glare again.
"Dan told you so?," she
finally asked.
"Yes."
"Then why didn't you tell me
before? What am I paying you for?"
She got up and hurried to mix a new
drink.
"I've been trying to make sense
out of it," I explained from across
the room.
"I repeat, what am I paying you
for, Mr. Trevorak?"
"First, to find out if your
husband has any Negroes in the closet.
I should know in a few days. Second, if he's having an affair. He
was.
With Flo Albertson. And maybe
now with Ruth."
She mixed me a drink as well and
brought it to me. When she was
back in her chair, she said, "Perhaps
Dan is a Negro, after all."
"It's possible," I
admitted. "We'll know soon."
"I can't believe he'd call Ruth here. That's reckless enough to
suggest . . ."
When she didn't finish, I said,
"Passion?"
"Something like that."
The word seemed to sadden her, like
the memory of a feeling she
once experienced herself.
"There might be other reasons for
them to communicate," I said.
"Are you keeping something else
from me?"
"I don't have answers yet. Just some very intriguing questions."
She sipped her drink, thinking. Then she asked, "Could Dan have
murdered Flo?"
"My gut feeling is that he didn't
but I've been wrong before. What
do you think?"
Instead of replying, she finished her
drink in one gulp and stood
up.
The way she looked at me, I got the idea it was time for me to go.
"Flo was a Negro, Ruth is a
Negro," she said. "The
humiliation is
the same."
She went to the bar again. I used the armrest and struggled up out
of the stuffed chair, leaving a swooshing
sound beneath me.
"No more for me," I said.
She turned and said, "You don't
understand one goddamn thing about
what I'm going through, do you? Have you ever been married, Mr.
Trevorak?"
"You used to call me Red."
"I don't feel like calling you
Red. I see how you look at me. You
think I'm, I don't know what, some kind of
rich bitch, I suppose. You
don't have an ounce of sympathy in your
bones."
"It's not my job to give you
sympathy."
"Good day, Mr. Trevorak."
"To answer an old question,"
I said, "you're paying me to get facts
and proof. Which you're getting as quickly as I can deliver them. You
want to terminate the contract,
fine."
I heard her say Jesus under her breath
as I turned to leave. Before
I reached the doorway, she said,
"Just a minute. Red. Please."
I thought she was going to cry, which
surprised me.
"I've been very upset," she
said softly. "I know you're doing your
job.
Please continue to do so."
"You sure?"
"Yes."
"Dan mentioned the possibility of
divorce."
She tried to smile. "I sure am finding out a lot
today. I should
give you martinis more often."
"Everything will be in my
report," I said. "It's not
our policy to
spell out every little detail along the
way."
"I see. Well, I've never hired a detective before. I'm allowed a
few mistakes."
Amazingly enough, I found myself almost
feeling sorry for her. I
didn't particularly like her, but I had to
admit that she was getting
her share of pain without deserving much
of it. She was married to a
weirdo.
"I'll be talking to Ruth," I
said.
"Do whatever you think
best."
"I may be able to wrap everything
up by the end of the week."
She smiled and gave me a farewell
toast.
I got back to South City by four, just
in time to find the
secretary coming out of the station. I got out and surprised her at
the corner.
"A little early, aren't we?"
"I'll yell for the police,"
she said.
"I have a witness who saw you
with Dan," I said, stretching the
truth.
"Who happens to be a suspect for murder. Which means the
police would love to talk to you. Shall we yell for them together?"
It worked, and I could see she was
frightened.
"Is there somewhere we can
talk?," I asked.
"There's a bar down the
street."
"Lead the way."
"You still buyin'?"
"A man of honor."
We started down the street. Along the way she said, "We gonna get
stared at. Honkies-, I mean white folks, they don't never come into
this place."
"Then we're making history,"
I said.
"You tryin' to be funny?"
"Beats taking the world
seriously."
We continued down the street in
silence.
23/
The bar was called The Texas
Playhouse, and it was the darkest bar
I'd ever entered. As soon as the door closed behind us, I
couldn't see
a thing.
Loud music came from a distant jukebox and under it I heard
the buzz of customers - but only for a
moment, because suddenly the
buzzing stopped and just as suddenly I was
nervous, standing still in
utter darkness and hearing only the
jukebox. A male voice was moaning,
Let's get it while the gettin' is good, a
chorus followed with, so good
so good so good, and I could feel the
sweat of fear forming on my brow.
The secretary, who had entered first,
had wandered ahead and my
mouth opened to call to her. Then I realized I didn't know her name.
As if on cue, her voice came out of
the darkness, "You comin' or
what?"
I took a tentative step in the
direction of the secretary's voice.
The buzz of customers picked up
immediately, as if the secretary's
question and my subsequent movement
amounted to passing a test. I
remembered that she'd said white people
didn't come in here.
"Come on," she said again,
impatiently.
I kept moving slowly forward in the
direction of her voice. When I
bumped into a body, I mumbled an
apology. Suddenly an arm touched me,
and I jumped.
"You don' have to be
nervous," she said. "We be
sittin'
right here."
So good so good so good the chorus
sang on the jukebox, as she
pulled me to a table. I felt the chair with my leg and sat
down. I
was beginning to see shapes in the dark
bar.
"We want a bottle of
champagne," she told a waitress who had come
to our table. The woman made a sound of surprise and moved away.
Shapes came into relief as my eyes
adjusted to the dark. Across the
table, the secretary was grinning at me.
"I'm Brenda," she said.
"Red Trevorak."
"I know. You gave me your card, remember?"
"It's so dark in here," I
said.
"We darkies, so what do you
expect?"
Laughter filled the bar. Apparently everyone was listening to us.
The waitress came with the champagne
and two water glasses. The
bill was fifteen dollars, which was
outrageous but which I paid without
making a fuss. I felt out of place and nervous, not knowing enough of
what the Romans do to follow suit.
I leaned over the table and said
softly, "This isn't very conducive
to a frank discussion."
"You want more privacy?"
"That's the general idea."
"Come on, we get a table way in
back," said Brenda. "But no
funny
business, understand? I got friends in here."
She had made her point but just to be
sure I got it, she said
loudly, "Do I have friends in
here?"
From all around the bar, voices rose
in exclamation of friendship,
followed by great laughter. I had the vague feeling that I was a
guinea pig without really knowing what the
joke was about.
We got up and moved to a table in a
back corner of the bar. It was
more private, though the bar still buzzed
noisily and the jukebox still
played loudly, work with me, Annie, ah-oom
ah-oom . . .
"Tell me about Dan," I said
after we were seated.
"I don't know all that much about
him."
"The guy who runs Caviar's
Market, Tank, has seen you two in there
together."
"You know Tank?"
I nodded.
"I never been in there with Dan
'cept maybe to buy pop at lunch or
some damn thing."
"Then you must have an opinion
about him," I said.
Brenda shrugged and said, "Well,
he's a little nutty, to tell the
truth."
"In what way?"
"I don't know. He just act strange sometime."
She helped herself to the bottle and
poured more champagne into the
water glass.
"You gonna buy another one of
these?," she asked.
"You have expensive tastes."
"What you expect? You said you were buyin'."
"But I was hoping I'd find out
something for my investment."
"Well, I told you he acts
strange," said Brenda. "I
love
champagne. You don't want to know about anything else besides Dan?"
As a matter of fact, I did. "Tell me about the singing
contest," I
said.
"We gettin' another bottle?"
I nodded, and she called out the
order. I heard someone whistle,
as if to say, She's got a live one this
time.
"The contest," I prompted.
"Well, it's a doo-wop
contest. Different groups are singin'
and
everything."
"What does the winner get?"
"They gonna make a record. The station is makin' it on their own
label."
"And after that what
happens?"
"What do you mean?"
"Does the record get played on
the radio or what?"
"'Course it get played. Why else they make it?"
"And will a white group record a
cover record?"
Before she answered, the bottle of
champagne arrived. No new water
glasses, just the bubbly. I went along with the highway robbery again,
which earned me a big grin from the
waitress.
An idea was forming in my mind. I said, "The winning group cuts a
record, right?"
She nodded, filling her glass with
champagne.
"How many groups are entering the
contest?," I asked.
"A whole damn bunch," she
said. "There's doo-wop groups all
over
the place."
"Are all the songs taped or
anything?"
"'Course they tape them. How they listen to them later and decide
a winner if they don't tape 'em?"
"Then the station is going to
have a whole lot of songs on its
hands, right?"
She shrugged, not following me.
"And from what I understand, most
of these songs are written by the
kids themselves," I said.
She drank.
"So the station could sell these
songs to bigger record companies,
couldn't they?"
"Is that all you want to
know?," she laughed. "Shit,
why didn't
you say so in the first place. 'Course they gonna sell everything they
can, how else they make money?"
"You know that's what the station
plans to do?"
"I type the letters myself,"
said Brenda.
Now we were getting somewhere. I filled her glass.
"I'd like to ask another favor of
you," I said.
"What favor?"
"I'd like to see some of those
letters you're talking about. You
keep carbons of everything, don't
you?"
"What the hell kind of secretary
doesn't keep carbons," she said,
giggling.
She was beginning to feel the champagne.
"Can you get me some carbons to
look at?"
She turned suspicious. "What's this got to do with Dan?"
It was time to think on my feet. I said, "Let me put it this way.
Dan may be trying to swindle the
station. I think he's trying to steal
those songs himself, for his own record
label. I'm trying to stop
him."
"Why you think that?,"
Brenda asked.
"I'm a private investigator, as
you know. I've been hired by the
owner of the station."
I was assuming she didn't know who
owned the station, and I was
right.
Brenda said, "The owner hire you to investigate Dan?"
"Right. And to find out about the big record companies interested
in the songs. That's why I need to look at some letters. Unless it's
too late," I added gravely.
I filled her glass again, saying,
"Or maybe you can't picture Dan
being a crook."
"I can sure picture him being a
crook."
"Then you'll help me?"
"What you want me to do, bring
the letters in here?"
"That would work."
"How many you need?"
"Only a few. Enough to give me an idea what's going on,
how the
deal is coming down."
"What if I took them during my
lunch break and you read them then?"
"Perfect. How about tomorrow?"
"Another bottle of champagne now
- and two more tomorrow on credit,
so I can drink them after work."
"That sounds expensive just to
read some letters."
"Why don't you go to Buzz for
them letters anyway?"
"Well," I said, thinking on
my feet again, "I shouldn't tell you
but he's also under suspicion."
She considered this and repeated,
"Three bottles, and I'll bring
the whole file at lunch tomorrow."
"How about in the parking
lot," I said. "It's pretty
dark to read
in here."
"I ain't gonna be seen in no
parking lot. Bring a damn flashlight
or something. How can you be a detective without a flashlight?"
"I'll bring a flashlight," I
said. "Then it's a deal?"
"I get one bottle now."
"You got it."
She offered a hand across the table
and we shook on it. I put
another fifteen dollars on the table.
"It's a pleasure working with
you," I said. "Don't drink it
all in
one place."
As I headed for the door, I heard
Brenda yell, "Hey, you all, we
gonna get down and party!" Shouts and laughter filled the bar. The
jukebox sang, way you wear those
dresses, sun come shinin' through.
I
opened the door and stepped forward and
was slapped in the face with
sudden, blinding sunlight.
24/
I walked up the street toward Bad-Ass,
squinting through the late
afternoon smog. Since I was in South City, I might as well stop by
Ruth's.
I was attacking the jigsaw puzzle by working at one end, then
running around the table to work at the
other. You hoped that somehow
the two sides would come together to a
clean fit in the middle.
The construction workers were
busy. A din of digging, scraping,
crushing machinery rose from the deep
gully behind the house as I
walked to the front porch.
Despite the noise, I could make out
doo-wop singing through the
screen door. I knocked loudly on the door.
At my third knock, the singing
stopped. One of the teenage boys in
the singing group came to the door.
"Hi, is Ruth home?," I
asked.
"She ain't here."
I wondered if this was her brother,
the one fascinated by the
history of rats. One way to find out.
"Are you her brother?"
He offered a tentative nod.
"Well," I smiled,
"you're the one I'm actually looking for. I'm
with, ah, Doo-Wop Records."
It was Hurricane Hugh McElhenny all
the way now, trying to hit the
holes wherever they appeared. The boy surely remembered me but, what
the hell, he probably didn't know who I
was or what I did. I saw
quickly that the ploy was working.
The boy's eyes brightened, and I went
on.
"You must be, ah . . ."
"I'm Artie," he said. "I'm her brother."
He looked like a good enough kid,
maybe thirteen, with closely
cropped hair and skin darker than
Ruth's. He was in the teenage
uniform of the day, jeans and sneakers and
a heliotrope T-shirt.
"Then you have the singing
group," I said.
"Artie and the Rainbows."
"Beautiful. Can I come in?"
"You with a record company?"
"Doo-Wop Records," I
repeated.
He moved aside. As soon as I stepped through the door, he
was
running into the living room, and I
followed.
A spontaneous buzz of excitement stopped
as I entered the room.
The eyes of four teenage boys were on me,
and though they were all
slightly built and looking more in wonder
than in suspicion, I felt
like Hurricane Hugh facing four beefy
linebackers eager to crush him to
the
turf.
"Well," I began, "I'm
glad I caught you at home. I thought I
was
going to have to negotiate through your
sister."
"Her and mom are shopping,"
said Artie.
I nodded and smiled.
"Well, then," I said,
"let's get to the point. I'm
Sidney Sullivan
with Doo-Wop Records. We heard about the contest at KRB and are
very
interested in making connections with the
better groups that come out
of the competition. We'll be putting out some records ourselves."
"You heard about us?," one
of the boys asked with excitement.
"Word on the street gets
around."
They were looking at me with wide
eyes. I put out my hand and
stepped forward.
"You can call me Sidney," I
said and went from boy to boy, shaking
hands.
The others were named Mike, Jerry and
Jackie Love. Only the
latter, the tallest of the quartet, gave
his last name, announcing it
like a manifesto, Jackie LOVE. A vague attempt at a moustache roamed
across his upper lip.
"Nice to meet you all," I
said. "I've already talked to
Artie's
mother, of course, and his sister, but I
thought I'd come by to make
contact again. Didn't mean to interrupt your rehearsal."
"We're done," Artie said quickly.
I looked at my watch.
"Well, I do have a bit of time to
kill. Tell you what. I was
going to get something to eat before an
appointment I have - how about
your leader come along and I can tell you
what kind of material we're
after, things like that. Are you the leader, Artie?"
I figured he was by the name of the
group.
"I guess so," the boy said.
"Would you have a little
time?"
The way the other boys looked at him,
if he didn't his ass was
grass.
"Yeah, I guess so," he said.
"Good. Shall we?"
Artie suggested a chain burger joint a
few miles outside the city
limits.
My cash was almost down to change after splurging on the
champagne but the burgers were cheap. We ordered two with fries and
cherry cokes and took our trays to a
table.
I was winging it all the way. Improv, an actor would call it. I
hated it when an actor forgot my own lines
and started improvising but
in this case I didn't even have a script
to forget.
"I wonder if I might speak
frankly with you, Artie," I said.
Artie nodded, his mouth full. The way he was putting down the
burger, it had been a while.
"We've heard a rumor that
Teenbird, the record company the station
is starting, isn't on the square. You know anything about that?"
He shook his head, chewing.
"Well, I'll level with you. We heard that the whole purpose of the
contest is to market the songs they tape
elsewhere, to a bigger label.
More established groups, white groups
mainly, will then record the
songs.
Of course, that's something that's beginning to happen
throughout the industry. I'm sure you know all about it."
He nodded but didn't seem to have the
slightest interest in what I
was saying.
"Be careful, is what I'm
saying. Are you going to enter the
contest with your own material?"
"We write our own songs," he
said.
"Then don't sign your rights
away."
I was talking about a scam I wasn't
even sure existed. But the
puzzle was beginning to go together this
way: there was a trend of
white singing groups making versions of Negro
doo-wop songs. The radio
station planned to take advantage of this
trend by collecting songs of
Negro teenagers, which they then could
sell to larger record companies.
I wondered how much money there was in all
this. It seemed like a lot
of trouble to go to for peanuts.
"In fact," I continued,
"if Teenbird makes you an offer, come to me
first.
I may be able to give you a better deal."
"How do I find you?," Artie
asked.
Good question.
I said, "I know where you live,
so I'll keep in touch, how's that?"
"How you know my sister?"
I grinned and said, "Hey, you
don't know how famous you guys are
out on the street. I always try to contact the parents and
relatives
first."
"How many records you gonna
make?"
"We're still studying the
market."
His hamburger was gone, and I knew
he'd accept another. At
nineteen cents each, I could keep him
there a little longer, I figured.
When I made the offer, he nodded
enthusiastically.
As he began the second burger, I said,
"This is my first time in
L.A.
I was shocked to hear about these rat murders. How long have
they been going on?"
He looked at me and shrugged. I wasn't sure what to make of it.
"You have heard about the rat
murders, haven't you? I know boys
your age don't really read the
paper."
He shook his head, yes, and popped
another bite into his mouth,
chasing it with cherry coke. While chewing he said, "I'm doing a
school report on rats."
"Oh?"
"My teacher said if you afraid of
something, learn about it."
"Smart teacher," I said.
Artie changed the subject without
missing a beat, asking, "When you
gonna cut a record?"
"We're still working out the
details. So how's the school report
on rats coming? Sounds interesting."
He shrugged. A school report, that was it, and though I had no
reason to believe there was more to it
than this, in my gut I felt I
was only hearing the tip of the iceberg.
Artie finished the hamburger and said,
"I better get back home so
we can practice."
I dropped him off and turned Bad-Ass
for home. Two blocks later I
saw Ruth and her mother halfway down the
block of a cross-street. Each
carried a large sack of groceries, and it
would have been the
gentlemanly thing to do to give them a
lift. But Sidney Sullivan didn't
think that was a good idea. I didn't think Ruth saw Bad-Ass go through
the intersection, so I let them continue
on alone.
On a whim I parked across the street
from Tank's pink Cadillac,
which was still parked in the same
place. I wondered if he ever drove
it.
I walked around to the stairway and
was knocking on Dan's door when
Tank shouted at me from the bottom of the
stairs.
"He's not home, man! Took off maybe ten, fifteen minutes
ago."
I came down the stairs.
"He looked like he was in an
awful hurry," said Tank.
"You know where he was
going?"
"No way."
"Well, thanks," I said and
started away.
Tank grabbed my arm.
"Looky here, man," he
said. "Seems to me I'm doing a lot
of shit
work in your behalf."
"I appreciate it."
"I mean, you usually have to pay
someone for all this snooping,
right?
I'm beginning to think you a cop or something."
If I'd've had it, I would have slipped
him a dollar on the
spot.
Instead I gave him my you've got to be out
of your mind look and
started away again.
"I heard the way you buy
champagne for information," he said to my
back.
Not even two hours later and the news
was all over the
neighborhood. I kept walking.
Tank followed me, saying, "You a
mark for every hustling jiveass
pussy in the neighborhood, man. I hates to see you throw your money
away that way, especially when I'm trying
to help you myself. I don't
think you know who your real friend is,
man. They say you was just
throwing money at Brenda at that Texas
Playhouse, and for what, I be
asking?
I begin to feel unappreciated, man.
And you in trouble
besides, when her boyfriend finds out
about you, man, you be in deep
fucking shit!"
I reached Bad-Ass and got in. As I started the engine with a
smoke-filled roar, I could see that Tank's
lips were still moving.
Bad-Ass and I paid our blue-smoked
pittance to the smog and laid rubber
getting the hell out of there.
25/
I didn't expect to find anyone still
at the office but Dad was
there and he tossed me the paper before I
had a chance to tell him he
should be home in bed.
"They arrested a suspect!," he announced.
I hadn't seen a paper all day. The front page headline read Rat
Murders Suspect Arrested.
Before I read more, Dad said,
"He's the husband of that woman who
was killed. The one you talked to."
I found the name in the first
paragraph, just like a journalism
class said it should be, Gregory
Albertson.
Dad continued, "They say
that-"
"Would you let me read it, for
Christ's sake?," I shot back. Then I
put down the paper.
"I'm sorry, Dad. This is just a goddamn shock."
"No, you're right, I should let
you read it for yourself."
I let him sulk at his desk as I read
the article. The LAPD thought
they had a strong case but were not
releasing the evidence while the
investigation continued. Albertson had been arrested at the airport,
on his way to a small town in southern
Oregon.
When I put down the paper again, Dad
said, "So what do you think?"
"I'm not sure."
"You ever meet the guy?"
I hadn't told him about the motel
confrontation and didn't want to
get into it right now. I wanted to be in a dark corner of a bar,
alone
with Jameson's, letting the mind dwell on
all this.
"Shouldn't you be in bed?,"
I asked, eager to change the subject.
"I feel fine, feel great."
"Don't overdue it."
"I got a good lead, too," he
said.
"What do you mean?"
"On who took a pot shot at
me."
Dad explained that a con named Walter
Moran was out after fifteen
years on a murder rap. Dad's testimony had been crucial in putting
him
away.
Moran had been released in Texas, where he'd purchased a train
ticket to Los Angeles and had not been
heard of since.
"He was a mean bastard," Dad
said.
I still thought the bullet had been
meant for me but didn't want to
get into that either.
I said, "Maybe you need
protection."
"I already called Andy at the
precinct, and he's alerting
everybody."
I wasn't worried about Dad's
safety. I was sure the bullet had
been meant for me. Through a process more unconscious than
rational, I
was becoming a believer in the music
conspiracy theory, which somehow
was tied up with the rat murders. Too many coincidences had surfaced.
And in my gut I didn't believe that
Gregory Albertson was the rat
murderer, which meant that someone was
framing him.
I got up from my desk and said,
"I'm history. See you in the
morning."
"You know what?," Dad said.
"What?"
"I think they got the wrong
man. I still think it's a hooker and
the woman you talked to was set up with
the same m.o. Maybe he did it
himself.
Maybe he killed his wife but I don't think he killed the
others."
"You tell your friends at the
precinct?"
"I'll give them time to go over
him first."
I had to smile. Dad, in his way, had never left the force.
"Don't get yourself all worked
up," I said. "You need lots
of
rest."
"That's what your mother used to
say."
I smiled, turned and left.
Carla opened the door. She looked surprised to see me.
"I can't believe you actually
knocked," she said.
"I wasn't sure how welcome I'd
be. I need a refuge."
She hesitated a moment, then stepped
aside to let me in.
I'd picked up a copy of the paper and
told her the news. I told
her what happened at the motel, how Ruth
and Gregory appeared to be
having an affair, about the music
conspiracy and what I'd learned from
Brenda, the radio station's secretary,
about Dan and about Artie's
school paper on rats. It was a long rambling monologue that found
its
way as it went along, and when I was done
we had managed to kill off
two bottles of Diego red.
Carla was wonderful. She shut up during the whole long story, and
when I was done she let me spend the night.
The room was dark. I lay awake in bed, thinking I heard
something
I shouldn't be hearing, a sound apart from
the usual vibrations of
Carla's apartment. I could hear her breathing heavily beside me
but I
sensed another presence in the room, an
intruder.
Which meant that the intruder was
practically in my lap because
Carla's studio was small. The couch pulled out into a bed, which was
only a few steps from the door. I tried to take a deep breath without
moving or making a sound.
My instincts told me to do something and do
it quick.
I slowly reached for the lamp on the
table at the head of the bed.
As I turned it on, my leg shot out, hoping
to find the floor but
hitting the coffee table instead,
overturning it. I hit the floor with
a thud as the room filled with light. There was no one else there.
"What the fuck are you
doing?," said Carla, sitting up and
squinting.
I struggled to my feet. I felt myself shaking.
"Sorry," I mumbled.
"You having a nightmare or
something?"
"I guess so."
"You okay now?"
"I don't know. Maybe I'd better go home."
"You sure?"
"My nerves are shot. I think I'll take a drive and go home."
"If you think that's best. Give me a kiss."
At home I couldn't sleep either. My own studio was even smaller
than Carla's and tonight it felt
oppressive.
The Jameson's was gone, and there were
only two beers in the
refrigerator. When they were gone, I got the hell out of there.
Bad-Ass drove me to South City. I didn't remember telling the
beast to take me there. I was parked across from the steps leading
up
to Dan's apartment. The porch light was off but, though it was
past
midnight, there were lights on
inside. Below, Caviar's Market was
dark.
I took a deep breath and got out of the car.
The neighborhood was ominously silent,
in dark reprieve from the
usual clamor of construction. I went up the stairs as quietly as I
could.
I put my ear to the door but heard nothing.
I stood in front of the door,
wondering what to do. Wondering what
had brought me there in the first place, except
restlessness and a bad
dream.
"Are you looking for me?"
It was Dan, standing with Ruth at the
bottom of the stairs.
I waited as they came up. Dan unlocked the door, and we went in.
No one spoke until we were seated around
the formica table off the
kitchen.
Ruth said, "They arrested Gregory
this afternoon."
"I read about it," I said.
"So that should answer one of
your questions."
"Should it?"
"You were working on the rat
murders," she said.
"It doesn't upset you that
Gregory was arrested?"
She paused before saying, "Of
course it upsets me."
She didn't look or sound upset to me,
not even now when her facial
muscles tightened. One would have thought that having a serial
killer
for a lover was no big deal.
I said, "Maybe he's not
guilty."
"Of course he's guilty,"
said Ruth. Such loyalty. "The police
said they have strong evidence."
"We'll see."
"Don't you think he's guilty?," Dan asked softly.
"Of course he's guilty,"
Ruth repeated. She stared at Dan until
he
looked down at the table. Then she looked at me. "You have no reason
to keep snooping around here, do
you?"
"Have I been snooping around?"
She just stared at me.
"May I ask a question?," I
said.
"I already know what it is,"
said Ruth. "No, we're not sleeping
together.
No, we've never had an affair, and the only reason we got
together was to compare notes about you,
who seem determined to make
our lives as miserable as possible."
It was time to level with Dan.
I said, "I'm beginning to
understand what you were talking about,
Dan.
About the music conspiracy.
Brenda's going to show me the
Teenbird file."
He looked quickly up.
"You talked to Brenda?"
I nodded.
"I could've shown you the
file," he said.
Without missing a beat, I said,
"Somebody tried to kill me."
I looked quickly from Dan to Ruth and
back again, trying to measure
the meaning of their reaction. They didn't give me much to work with.
I went on. "In the parking lot after an Angels game. Which means
somebody has been following me. Why?, I ask myself. Because I'm
snooping around where I shouldn't be. But the only snooping I'm doing
is about you, Dan. So where does that leave me?"
"I don't even own a gun," he
said.
"I'm not accusing you."
After a silence I said, "I've
been thinking there might be a
connection between the conspiracy and the
rat murders."
Before Dan could reply, Ruth quickly
put in, "But they've found
their man."
I looked straight at Dan and said,
"Do you think they found their
man?" Dan stared at the table.
"Why did you write RCA by the victims'
names?
Is RCA the record company?"
"Of course it's a record
company," said Ruth.
Dan looked quickly at Ruth, then back
down to the table. I was
sure he felt inhibited with Ruth sitting
beside him. I decided I'd do
better to get him one-on-one. Ruth was shrewd and fickle, too, with
her quick turning against Gregory.
I stood up.
"Anyway, I think you're on to something," I told the
top of Dan's
head.
He looked up without saying
anything. He seemed to be deciding if
I meant this or not.
"Well," I said, "I
don't want to keep you two up."
"Mr. Trevorak," said Ruth,
"is it too much to ask that you leave us
alone?"
I smiled and got the hell out of
there.
She was standing on the porch,
watching me, as I got into Bad- Ass.
I resisted the urge to wave. I knew that I wasn't done with her yet,
and I knew that she knew that I knew.
26/
The phone was ringing. I was in bed listening to it, only half
awake, still partially emerged in a vague
dream in which phone calls
came from New York theater producers. I rolled over and reached for
the phone and knocked it to the floor.
It was ringing again soon enough. Sitting on the edge of the bed,
with enough belly resting on my thighs
that I could have set the phone
on it, I picked up the receiver.
"Hello?"
"Mr. Trevorak?"
"This is Trevorak."
My free arm rested on my belly. Somewhere under there were the
family jewels.
"My name's Judson Bailey, Mr.
Trevorak. I'm an attorney
representing Gregory Albertson.
I was wondering if you have time to
stop by my office this afternoon."
Why would Albertson's lawyer want to
see me?
I said, "Have to be after
two. What's up?"
"I'd rather not discuss the matter
on the phone."
"Tell me where and I'll be there
as close to two as I can."
As soon as he hung up, I called the
office.
"How nice for you to call,"
Hank said sarcastically. "Does
this
mean you might be in today?"
Christ, it wasn't even eleven yet.
I said, "I love you, too. Is Dad there?"
Dad was quickly on the line.
"What's up, son?"
"You going to be in all
morning?"
"What's left of it."
I paused, then decided he hadn't meant
anything by it.
"How about this afternoon? I have something to talk to you about."
"If I'm not here, I'll be at
home."
"I have appointments at noon and
two. I'll check in after that."
I pulled Bad-Ass into the parking lot
beside the Texas Playhouse.
This time I was prepared for the jolt of
darkness inside and waited in
the open doorway, squinting for bearings
before letting the door swing
closed behind me.
Brenda was at the same table in
back. With her was a Negro man
wearing dark glasses and a sporty hat with
a small feather in its band.
His sportcoat was bright red. He made me nervous.
"I didn't think you was
coming," said Brenda.
I was only fifteen minutes late.
"You got the file?," I
asked.
The dark glasses stared at me as she
brought out the file from a
large purse. I remembered that I hadn't brought in my flashlight.
"Can I read these in my car
outside?," I asked.
"You still owe me
champagne."
I turned around to look for the
waitress, and Brenda said, "I can't
drink til after work. You can just give me the money."
I hadn't stopped at the bank either.
"Can I write you a check?,"
I asked.
"This check gonna bounce?"
"A good check. Or if there's a Bank of Cal around here, I
can get
you cash."
"A check, if it don't
bounce."
"My checkbook's in the glove
compartment. Can we go outside?"
"Albert will go with you,"
she said.
I tried smiling at Albert. The dark glasses didn't move.
"Shall we?," I said, getting
up. I held out my hand for the file
but she gave it to Albert. He followed me outside.
I slid in behind the wheel and Albert
rode shotgun. The file was
in his lap. Finally I said, "The agreement is, I get to read the
letters in the file."
He handed it to me. In daylight, I saw that he had an athlete's
body, a weight lifter's body, that under
the bright sportcoat were
muscles carved out of black marble. Here was a body a sane man didn't
mess with.
I opened the file. That's when I felt something pressing
against
my ribs and looked down to see the barrel
of a pistol.
"We gonna go for a ride,"
said Albert.
"You're the boss," I said.
The remark would have been cute coming
from Sam Spade but my own
voice was shaking.
Buzz Taylor leaned back in his chair
and said, "Mr. Trevorak, I
want to explain myself as clearly as
possible."
We were alone in his office at the
station. Albert the Shades had
delivered me and left. Now I sat across the desk from Taylor,
wondering when the preface would end and
the explanation begin.
"Yesterday," he continued,
"you come barging in here with a
cock-and-bull story about investigating
Dan Davies, while in reality--"
"I am investi--"
"--let me finish, please. While in reality you came here to try
and bribe our secretary into showing you
private business
correspondence. Fortunately, Brenda is a very loyal employee. She
came to me immediately. Now what I want to know, Mr. Trevorak, is
who
hired you to snoop into our files? Who's interested in our business
here?"
I looked at him as sincerely as
possible, trying to appear
surprised. He didn't buy it.
"Don't pretend you don't know
what I'm talking about. You met
Albert, who delivered you. Albert has a way of getting information
from people who don't want to
cooperate. Do you understand me, Mr.
Trevorak?"
"I get the drift."
"Do I have to get him?"
"Mr. Taylor, I'm employed by Dan
Davies' wife. You can phone her
and find out for yourself."
"I'm sure you've covered your
tracks."
He took a cigar from a box on the
desk. He lit up and blew smoke
at me.
"Once again, Mr. Trevorak,"
he said, "I'm asking you who hired you
to snoop through our files?"
When I didn't immediately reply, he
stood up, saying, "I told
Albert to wait outside."
"That won't be necessary," I
said. I cleared my throat. "I wanted
to see the correspondence because I'm
trying to make sense out of a
theory Dan has about a music
conspiracy. It may have something to do
with other things I'm working on."
"What conspiracy? And what other things?"
"Someone tried to kill me, Mr.
Taylor. Now I'm wondering if it
wasn't your goon Albert. I think the police would be interested in
talking to him."
I could see he was weighing the bluff,
so I added more before he
made up his mind.
"My Dad got wounded instead of
me. He's a former cop himself. If
you want to call central precinct to check
this out, please do. I know
the number by heart. Lots of cops there are friends of the
family."
He put his cigar into an ashtray and
got up from the desk. He was
thinking, deciding on his next move.
Finally he said, "It's the
Regiment for Christian Authority, isn't
it?"
I hadn't the slightest idea what he
was talking about but
definitely wanted to find out.
"I'm working for Dan's
wife," I said. "And for
myself, to find out
who tried to kill me. I think I was getting close to finding out
about
the conspiracy."
"The conspiracy is a term the
Regiment uses," said Taylor.
"I'm afraid I haven't heard about
the Regiment."
"I doubt that. But for the record, they believe there's a
conspiracy to lead American youth into sin
by selling them the Devil's
music.
Something like that. I always
thought they were more blow than
go -- but if they've hired you to snoop
around in our files . . . have
they, Mr. Trevorak?"
Devil's music. If Taylor was telling me the truth, this was
a
different conspiracy than Dan's -- in
fact, almost the mirror image of
his.
I said, "I don't know anything about them. I didn't even know they
existed until now."
He got up and moved to the
doorway. He opened the door and said,
"Albert."
Before Albert entered, I was on my
feet, trying to do the
improvisational act of my life.
"Okay," I said, "you
win. I do have a client interested in
your
business affairs."
Albert filled the doorway, and I
raised my hands to chest level in
a suggestion of surrender.
"I represent the California
Council of Churches," I continued.
"They're not as fanatical as the
Regiment but they also are concerned
about these new developments in music for
teenagers. They hired me to
find out what was going on."
Albert took a step toward me but was
stopped by Taylor.
Taylor said, "You tell the
Council of Churches that station KRB has
nothing to be ashamed of. We are engaged in an open and legitimate
business venture to record and promote
local musical talent. And if
it's not the Council you're working for,
tell whoever writes your
checks the same thing. If I catch you snooping around here again,
or
harassing my employees, Mr. Trevorak, I'll
refer your indiscretions to
Albert here. Do I make myself clear?"
I nodded. I could've used a good curtain line but my mind was
distracted by Albert, who looked
disappointed that he couldn't tear me
apart on the spot.
"Get the hell out of here,"
said Taylor.
I took two steps toward the doorway and stopped.
"Albert," said Taylor, and
Albert moved aside. I got the hell out
of there.
No one was at the front desk. Outside I looked at my watch. Just
enough time to navigate the detours and
make the appointment with
Gregory Albertson's lawyer.
Bad-Ass needed gas. I filled the tank and wrote a check. While
the
gas jockey was doing his job, I walked to
the phone booth and looked
for an address and phone number for The
Regiment for Christian
Authority. No listing.
I was starving and stopped in transit
long enough to get three
Bob's Big Boys to go. I was in the middle of the last burger when
it
occurred to me that RCA might stand for the
Regiment for Christian
Authority. I let out a whoop and leaned on Bad-Ass' horn.
27/
"We want to hire you, Mr.
Trevorak."
Judson Bailey looked the part. Gray hair, a trimmed Errol Flynn
moustache, an athletic build, wearing a
black suit and vest. He even
had his suit coat on. He wasn't even perspiring. Smog probably didn't
bother him either.
His office was in the heart of
downtown L.A., up on the twentieth
floor of a skyscraper. He got a great view of the smog from up
there.
Great view of the distant chaos of freeway
construction. The office
probably cost him a bundle.
"I'm not sure what you want to
hire me for," I said.
"Mr. Albertson is not the rat
murderer. Which means someone is
trying to frame him. He did, by the way, kill his wife."
"He admits it?"
"It was an accident. He panicked and left the house. Whoever came
in behind him set the scene to look like
the rat murderer. And left
clues that would lead directly to my
client."
I asked, "What clues?"
"Before I reveal that
information, I'd like to be sure that we're
in the same camp. Is it time to discuss your fee?"
I gave him our usual rates, and he
tried to hide a satisfied smug
that they were less than he expected. If Albertson hadn't admitted to
killing his wife, I'm not sure I'd have
taken the case. I wanted to
know who had set it up to look like a rat
murder.
The clues were nothing to shake a
stick at. The police had
Albertson's prints, which would be in the
house anyway, and a button
that apparently had been torn off a suit
coat, presumably during a
struggle.
Anyone could've gone to the closet, ripped off a button,
dropped it by the body and walked off with
the coat. There was an
unfinished glass of bourbon, with
Albertson's prints all over it. Only
a stupid man would have left it, and I
didn't think Albertson was
stupid.
Albertson's story, as Judson Bailey told it, was that when he
returned to the house to pick up the rest
of his clothes, his wife was
very drunk. She kept swinging at him, he kept dodging. Finally, out of
drunken frustration, she came at him with
a small caliber pistol which
was kept in the bedroom, which Albertson
himself had given her for
protection on a happier occasion. They wrestled for the weapon, it
went off and Flo fell to the floor.
Albertson panicked, thinking no one
would believe that it was an
accident. He took the pistol and left,
later throwing the weapon into a garbage
dispenser somewhere in
Pasadena, he couldn't recall where. He was very upset, then and still.
Unfortunately, it wasn't a story the
cops would be ready to
believe, especially with so much pressure
on them to find a suspect for
the rat murders. It was the same caliber weapon.
The installment of
the history of rats was there. I thought Albertson was in real
trouble.
"When can I speak to him?,"
I asked.
"I'm not sure you can or have
to. We want you to find out who
framed him."
I said, "I'll give it a
shot."
"I suggest you start with Dan
Davies."
"Really? Why?"
"He might have been having an
affair with the woman. I understand
you've been investigating him
anyway."
"I'll check it out," I said.
The office was deserted but Dad had
left a note on my desk to phone
him at home. It was time to run the emerging truth by him, to convince
him that he wasn't the intended victim of
the parking lot ambush. I
didn't like him worrying that he was. I also had an idea about how he
could help me find out more about the
music conspiracy.
There was also a note to call
Joan. Since Dad might be napping,
and hopefully was, I pushed him to the
back burner.
"I was just leaving," Joan
said after I called. "I'm going to
a
meeting I thought you might be interested
in."
The meeting was being held at a church
in Pasadena. A deejay was
going to speak on decaying values in the
popular music industry.
"He's the one who comes on the
radio after Dan," Joan said.
Hot Wire Wally, usually.
"I have to go," Joan
continued. "Can you make it? It starts at
five but I expect they'll be lots of
discussion afterwards."
The church was Modern Medieval and
covered with enough ivy to look
more like a college administration
building than a church. The
denomination was Baptist. A marque outside announced a stirring Sunday
sermon, "Sin on the Air
Waves!" The lettering was in black
and the
exclamation point in red.
Maybe a hundred people were seated
inside, many more than I
expected.
I was late and the speaker, who I presumed was Hot Wire
Wally, was already taking questions from
the audience.
I found Joan. Seated next to her was Jeff Berger and
beside him
Edna, his wife. Women outnumbered men by almost ten to one. But it
wasn't a great place to go looking for a
hot date, there was too much
anger and solemnity in the air.
A woman in purple peddle-pushers and
matching poka-dot blouse stood
up to ask, "Mr. Filmore, I appreciate
the fact that you've had the
courage to come off the air and talk to us
today--"
The question was interrupted by a
burst of spontaneous applause.
"but!--," the woman
continued loudly, "how can you possibly
continue to work at a radio station that
plays such obscene records?"
Hot Wire Wally, if that's who it was,
smiled to let us know that
the question wasn't difficult to answer.
"If I didn't have the job I
do," he said, "then I wouldn't be able
to come here to urge you all to take
action. Think of me as an ally
behind enemy lines."
There was more thunderous applause and
another half-hour of
questions before it was over. I listened attentively but still wasn't
convinced, on the meeting's evidence
alone, that there was a musical
conspiracy to ruin the morals of
youth. I got the idea that a bunch of
housewives were bored and needed a
cause. Maybe I was being unfair.
I'd come late, perhaps I'd missed the real
evidence. I'd heard some
risque songs at the Texas Playhouse, if
not often on KRB, but I didn't
think they'd drive kids to do anything
that kids wouldn't be doing
anyway.
The first time I played doctor with a girl, Gene Autry was on
the radio.
The deejay was replaced by an elderly
woman in black, who announced
that another meeting would be held next
week. Then I joined others to
move forward toward the pulpit, hoping to
meet the speaker. I saw Joan
and Jeff ahead of me and elbowed my way
through the crowd, using my
size as intimidation, until I was just
behind them.
"I made it," I said.
"Good, good," said Jeff
Berger.
We continued to move forward until we
reached the pulpit, where
Joan and Jeff quickly shook the speaker's
hand, offered words of
congratulation and admiration, and
followed the sweep of the crowd to a
side exit. I asked Joan to wait for me outside before the force of the
crowd pushed me face-to-face with the
deejay.
"Hot Wire Wally?," I asked.
He nodded. I fought the bodies crowding behind me and took out my
wallet, handing him a card.
"I'm Red Trevorak, a private
investigator. Can you give me a call
tomorrow?
I'd like to ask you some questions about Dan Davies."
"You've been snooping around at
the station," he said softly.
I grinned and nodded, as the force of
the crowd began to sweep
around me like ocean around a great rock.
"I'll be in the office by
nine," I said, moving without choice
toward the side exit.
There are advantages to having a car
that everyone recognizes: I
found Joan and Jeff waiting for me in the
parking lot, standing beside
Bad-Ass.
Edna was some distance way, talking with a group of women.
"Harriet's gone again," said
Jeff right off.
He did most of the talking but I
hardly listened, I'd heard it all
before.
Moreover, my attention was drawn to a spot across the parking
lot, where a Negro teenage boy was peeking
at us from behind a '50
Ford.
He looked vaguely familiar.
"We want to look for her at Dan's
apartment," said Jeff. "We
need
you to tell us where it is. Perhaps you'd like to come along."
"I don't think I'd be any
help," I said, looking away from the boy
across the lot. "But sure, I can tell you how to get there."
"I asked Joanie to come,"
said Jeff, "in case Dan is there. He
might be less aggressive with her
there."
Or more aggressive.
Jeff said, "And, of course, she
may witness first hand something
she can use in the divorce suit."
"And if Harriet isn't
there?," I said.
Jeff's look told me he didn't
appreciate the question.
I said to Joan, "I wanted to talk
to you about Gregory Albertson's
arrest."
"The poor man," she said.
"Listen, maybe I will follow you
to Dan's. I have to stop for some
gas first, don't do anything until I get
there. I should be right
behind you."
I scribbled directions, and for the
moment this satisfied them. I
waited until they were gone before walking
toward the boy behind the
Ford.
He didn't run but he didn't come out from behind the car either.
Maybe he thought he was invisible.
When I was close enough to recognize
that he was one of the boys in
Artie's singing group, I said, "You
want to talk to me, son?"
He came around the rear end of the
Ford.
"You're in Artie's group," I
said. "I'm sorry, I forget your
name."
"Jackie Love."
"Of course. What can I do for you?"
He shrugged before asking, quietly,
"You really a record producer?"
"Yes, I am," I lied.
But he wasn't there to ask me
that. He couldn't have known that I
would be there.
"What's on your mind,
Jackie?," I tried again.
When he didn't reply, I said,
"How about a burger and coke? I'm
starving myself."
He nodded.
I said, "Come on, we can go in my
car."
He didn't say anything until we pulled
into the parking lot at
Bob's Big Boy. Then he said, "I never been to Pasadena before."
28/
Jackie Love was nervous, and it took me a moment to realize that
he
felt out of place in Pasadena. It was more than a strange city, it was
the fact that he was the only Negro on the
streets or in the
restaurant. That's when I suggested we order our food to go.
He'd taken the bus from South City, as
it turned out, so I offered
him a ride back. Unlike other passengers, he didn't mind talking in a
car.
In fact, as soon as we left Pasadena, he began to open up.
"What brought you to Pasadena,
Jackie?," I asked. Bad-Ass was in
the slow lane of the Pasadena
Freeway. I didn't know if the boy had
anything to tell me but I planned to take
my time until I found out.
Jackie Love took a crumpled piece of
paper out of a jeans pocket,
saying, "I found this."
He held a flier toward me. I saw that it announced the meeting at
the church. Two things were curious about it: Wallace Filmore was
identified as the deejay without reference
to Hot Wire Wally or KRB;
and at the bottom of the flier was a large
logo, a sponsor's logo,
reading RCA.
"Where'd you get this?," I
asked.
"It was just blowin' down the
street."
"And you came to Pasadena to
check it out?"
"I guess so."
I didn't believe him. Something else was on his mind.
We drove several miles in silence
before I asked on a whim,
"Jackie, do you know where Harriet
might be? She ran away from home
again."
"I don't know where she is."
Bingo. He'd answered too quickly and too, well, painfully. Not
only did he know Harriet, he might also
know where she was.
"Actually," I went on,
"I was going to check to see if she's at
Lovin' Dan's apartment." I decided to go the whole hog and added,
"Some people think he may have, well,
raped her."
He looked at me with wide eyes, which
turned away when our gazes
met.
"Do you think Dan raped
her?"
"He ain't no rapist."
"I don't think so either. That's why I want to help him."
"You helpin' Lovin' Dan?"
"Hey, we're practically in the
same business."
After another silence I asked, "I
bet you know lots of the
deejays."
No bite.
"Do you know Hot Wire
Wally?"
I'd struck another nerve. Mention of Harriet and Hot Wire could
put him on edge.
"That's what surprised me about
the meeting," I went on, "Hot Wire
getting up there and saying all that crap
about doo-wop."
"What you mean?"
"How it's the devil's music and
all. Or didn't you know that
Hot
Wire's real name is Wallace Filmore? He was the featured speaker at
the meeting. Talk about being a hypocrite."
Jackie seemed to be digesting
this. After a moment he said, "You
think it's the devil's music?"
I passed the buck. "What do you think?"
"My daddy thinks so."
Something in the boy's tone told me to
tread carefully now.
"Oh?," I prompted.
"He's a preacher."
"Really?"
"Doo-wop ain't no devil's
music," the boy spurted out.
"It's just
singing, man. People are always singing.
It got nothing to do with
the devil. I even heard him sing in the shower, and he says music is
from the devil."
I didn't reply.
"You lookin' for Harriet?,"
the boy asked after a silence.
"That's right."
"She ain't at Lovin' Dan's. He got nothin' to do with it."
"Do you know where she is,
Jackie?"
He stared out the window without
replying.
"I've met Harriet's mother,"
I said. "No wonder she keeps
running
away from home."
When he turned to look at me, I went
on.
"I mean, I don't blame her, with a mother like that. I bet her
dad's just as bad."
"She ain't go no dad," said
Jackie. "He's dead."
I asked, as gently as possible,
"Is Harriet your girlfriend,
Jackie?"
It was another wild guess but it hit
home. I gave him time to tell
me the story his way. We were off the freeway and running the
detours
by the time he started.
"She got no place to stay,"
he finally said.
"Is that why she's crashing at Lovin'
Dan's?"
"It's just temporary, til I find
her something else. He didn't
rape her or nothin' like that."
His voice, though, sounded worried.
"Is she there now?," I
asked.
"I thought she be at that
meetin', they make her talk shit or
something."
So that was it. Harriet was his girlfriend. She'd been dragged
off, out of Dan's apartment. When he heard about the meeting regarding
the music, he put two and two together and
took a bus to Pasadena,
going there for the first time in his
life, in some vague but
well-meaning attempt to find her. Maybe he thought he could rescue
her.
"She may have gone back to
Dan's," I said.
But if this were true, Jeff and Joan might
get to her first.
"Maybe," said Jackie Love.
"Her grandfather's looking for
her, too, Jackie," I said. "He's
probably at Dan's right now."
"What's her grandfather got to do
with it?"
"It's a little complicated."
"She ain't goin' home," said
Jackie Love.
We were silent the rest of the way to
South City. When we were a
few blocks from Dan's apartment, I pulled
Bad-Ass to the curb.
"I'm letting you off here,
okay?," I said. "I think your
presence
will upset the grandfather."
"She ain't at Dan's," the
boy said. As I pulled away, I wondered
if he knew something I didn't.
I found Jeff's car parked across the
street from Dan's. Remarkably
enough, considering how late I was, they
were still in the car, waiting
for me.
Jeff and Joan sat in the front seat, Edna in the back. Edna
still looked like someone who'd forgotten
her knitting.
I pulled behind them, got out and
walked to the driver's window.
"We were almost ready to go up
without you," said Jeff.
Somehow I doubted it. Jeff and Joan looked frightened, strangers
in a Negro neighborhood just the way
Jackie Love had been a fearful
stranger in Pasadena. I figured Joan must be especially upset,
comparing the run-down neighborhood that
was Dan's new home to the
glitzy Foothills he'd abandoned.
"Shall we go up?," I asked.
I led the way, followed by Jeff, then
Joan. Edna stayed behind,
missing her knitting.
At the top of the stairs we could hear
music playing inside. I
knocked loudly on the door.
It took a moment for Dan to
answer. He looked like he hadn't had
any sleep since the last time I saw him.
Before I could say anything, Jeff
barged into the room, shouting
Harriet's name and heading for the
bedroom. Dan went after him,
followed quickly by myself.
When Jeff was satisfied that Harriet
wasn't in the bedroom, we
returned to the living room, where Joan
was standing in visible shock.
The neighborhood must have been bad enough
for her to take, a small
apartment furnished in Seedy Motel was the
icing on the cake.
"Where is she?," Jeff
demanded.
"You have no right to barge in here," said Dan.
Joan turned and moved quickly toward
the door. Good riddance, I
thought, until she stopped at the doorway
and turned. At first I
thought she was going to say
something. She looked like she was
getting ready to throw up.
I moved forward, saying, "Why
don't you wait in the car?"
She nodded, turned again, and was
gone.
Dan watched her go. But the old melancholy wasn't there, he
looked
angry as hell.
"I won't ask you again,"
said Jeff.
"Look," said Dan, "you
dragged her away once, you don't think she'd
come back, do you? I don't know where she is."
I believed him but for the record, and
Jeff's benefit, said, "Dan,
if you know where the girl is, it'd be
best to say so now before the
cops get involved."
"I have no idea where she
is."
"I didn't check under the
bed," said Jeff, and he was gone to do
this very thing.
I moved close to Dan. "I talked to Jackie Love," I said
softly.
"I think he knows where she is."
"What's going on?," he
asked.
"Do you know where she is?"
"For God's sake, no."
I saw Jeff coming back and said
quickly, "We'll talk later," then
moved across the room.
Jeff entered with a roar. "I'm not finished with you, understand?
I'm not letting you get away with
this."
He moved to the doorway and I followed
without turning back to Dan.
In the car, Joan was crying.
Jeff said, "That's it. I'm going straight to the police."
"Give me a day or two to work on
it," I said. "I have a couple
ideas where she may be."
"Where?"
When I didn't reply, Jeff said,
"All right. Two days."
He got in and started the car. I leaned down to talk through the
open window, across Jeff's lap to Joan.
"You take it easy, okay? I'll give you a call."
She nodded, sobbing. I couldn't believe that I was actually
feeling sorry for her.
29/
I was back in Dan's apartment.
"I just want to be left
alone," he said softly.
"It's a little late for
that."
"Why did you have to bring Joan
here?"
"You got it wrong, Dan," I
said. "I came with them. This was all
their idea."
A doo-wop song was playing on the
phonograph, a mushy ballad, and
somehow it evoked images of Harriet and
Jackie Love together, dancing,
making out, cuddling together against a
hostile world.
"What do you want from me?,"
Dan asked. There was desperation in
his voice, and I wondered if the
desperation was associated with guilt.
"How's this for starters: tell me
about the Regiment for Christian
Authority. The RCA."
"So you finally found out about
them."
"They think doo-wop is the
devil's music."
"They're fanatics."
"Why did you scribble RCA next to
the rat murder victims?" When he
didn't reply, I said, "Are the
victims members of the RCA?"
"No," he quickly said. Perhaps too quickly.
"If they were, and if they
thought doo-wop is the devil's music,
then a doo-wop fanatic might have reason
to kill them. Does that make
sense?"
"No, it doesn't, and I think you
should leave. It's bad enough you
dragged Joan up here. You had no reason to do that."
"Like I said, it was their
idea. In South City, the consensus is
that you've taken Harriet to bed."
"That's vulgar."
"Yes, it is."
"If you believe that, get the
hell out of here."
"I didn't say I believed
it."
He moved to the phonograph to turn
over the record. The flip side
was uptempo and happy.
"Change of subject, Dan.
Okay? Before you kick me
out?"
He shrugged and moved across the room,
plopping down on one end of
the worn divan.
"You didn't seem all that
convinced that Gregory Albertson is the
rat murderer," I said.
"Of course, he isn't. Jesus.
Ruth just said that for your
benefit."
"She doesn't believe it
either?"
"She said it so you'd leave us
alone. Can't you understand that
all we want is privacy?"
"We?"
He was glaring at me again.
"I know," I said, "you
and Ruth aren't lovers."
"You're right, it's time for me
to kick you out."
"I was hoping you'd play me the
dirty stuff."
"What dirty stuff?"
"The records. The ones that have the Regiment for
Christian
Authority so upset."
"Some other time," he said
sarcastically.
"I heard a fragment of one at The
Texas Playhouse."
"You went into The Texas
Playhouse?"
At least someone in the neighborhood
hadn't heard about it.
I said, "The chorus kept
repeating, work with me, Annie, over and
over.
I got the idea working meant screwing."
"It's a song by The
Midnighters," he said, getting up. "It's time
for you to go."
"Does working mean
screwing?"
"Out," he said.
I started toward the door, saying,
"If it does, is this something
for teenagers to be listening to?"
"Goodbye, Mr. Trevorak."
"Why did you scribble RCA beside
the names of the victims? How is
the RCA connected to the rat
murders?"
"I was not referring to the
Regiment, and I'm saying goodbye."
"It might be easier to talk to me
than the police," I said. "Think
about it."
He stood on the porch, watching me
descend the stairs. He waited
until I was pulling away from the curb in
Bad-Ass before turning to go
back inside.
I drove to the nearest pay phone and
called Dad. He liked my idea
of coming over with pizza and beer.
After dinner we sat in lawn chairs in
the patio behind the family
home in Santa Monica. The sea breezes had blown away the smog, and
the
freeway construction happening elsewhere
hadn't invaded much of the
coastline yet.
Dad hadn't moved out after mother
died, which had surprised me. It
had been her house in every way, her
presence had dictated the feel and
rhythm of living in it, but three years
later Dad was still here and
the house had changed accordingly, clutter
and male odors replacing
mother's sweet tidiness. A year ago mother's clothes were still in
the
closet, and if Hank and I hadn't convinced
Dad to give them to the Good
Will, they might still be there.
I was there to ask a favor and when the time seemed right, I
began
the slow approach to asking it.
"You ever listen to
rhythm-and-blues?," I asked Dad.
"To what?"
I explained about Negro music and the
doo-wop ballads teenagers
were listening to, about the growing
market and the growing controversy
over the music, about how white singing
groups were covering records by
Negro entertainers.
"You seem to know a lot about
it," said Dad.
"I may know too much. Dad, that bullet wasn't meant for you, it
was meant for me. Someone doesn't like me snooping around
about the
music."
"You didn't tell me you thought
it was meant for you."
"I'm telling you now."
"I think you're wrong. Walter Moran is out, I found that out for a
fact, and this is something right up his
alley."
"There's more," I said.
I told him about being fetched at
gunpoint by Buzz Taylor. I told
him about the Regiment for Christian
Authority and their meetings, that
this was probably the RCA Dan had
scribbled on the clippings, not the
initials of the record company.
"The guy is your basic
schitzo," I said. "On the
radio, he's an
entirely different personality. Vibrant, full of energy. In person
he's paranoid and melancholy."
"Are you telling me he's the rat
murderer?"
"It's a possibility. He's a doo-wop fanatic, and the RCA calls it
the devil's music."
"If you think so," said Dad,
"maybe you'd better talk to the
police."
"They'll be talking to him soon
enough. He was having an affair
with Flo Albertson."
Dad whistled. "Now that may be
something."
"Somehow the rat murders and the
music are mixed together," I said.
"But I don't know if Dan's the guy or
not. He's definitely weird but,
I don't know, I just have a gut feeling
he's not the one. He's too
disorganized or something, to pull off
something like the rat murders.
Hell, I don't know what I think."
"Wouldn't hurt to let the police
know about him. In case they miss
the connection with the lady."
"I still have more prying around
to do. I was hoping you could
help me."
"Help you how?"
"How would you like to
impersonate a minister?"
"Do what?"
"You're a ham at heart," I
said. "I'm a playwright, I should
know.
How would you like to play a member of the
California Council of
Churches and pay a visit to the radio
station?"
"Wired?"
"Of course, wired. I still have questions to ask, direct
questions, and I'm persona non
gratis. Besides, I can't image Buzz
Taylor waving a gun at a clergyman."
Dad chuckled, which was a good sign.
"What do you say?"
"Ask me when I'm sober."
"I'm asking you now."
"Sounds interesting, I'll say
that."
"Say yes now, and I'll give you
an escape clause."
"When do you want me to do
this?"
"Next day or two."
"Your old man a clergyman!"
"Chance of a lifetime," I
said.
"If your mother could see me
now."
We both sipped from our bottles of
Falstaff.
"Where do you come up with this
stuff?," Dad asked.
"It's my real profession."
"You put crazy stuff like this in
your plays?"
"Now and again."
"A phony clergyman!"
"Do we have a deal?"
"You're catching me in a weak
moment."
"You have an escape clause."
He laughed and shook his head. Then he raised a shot glass in one
hand and the bottle of beer in another.
"Then what the hell," he
said.
We clinked bottles and drank.
30/
Hangovers attract phone calls. As bad mornings went, this was a
gem, and I was lying with a pillow over my
head while the phone rang.
And rang.
And rang.
I threw the pillow across the
room. The phone kept ringing. I
reached for it.
"Yeah?"
"I don't know what you have in
mind, Mr. Trevorak-", Ruth began.
"Wait," I said. "Wait, wait a minute."
"I will not wait."
"I've got to make yellow
water."
It was the truth but it didn't set me
free. She was still on the
line when I got back.
"So what's the problem?," I
asked.
"You leave my little brother
alone, or I'm going to the police."
"I don't know what you're talking
about."
"You most certainly do. He told me all about Sidney Sullivan, the
big record producer. You should know better. You stick out in a
crowd, Mr. Trevorak. So does your car. As soon as he mentioned a fat
man with freckles, I knew it had to be
you."
I wasn't about to admit that she had a
point.
"L.A.'s big enough for two fat
men with freckles," I grumbled.
"I don't know what you're up to
but I want you to stop. If you
invade the privacy of this family again,
I'm going straight to the
police."
She hung up then, just like in the
movies. I showered and got
dressed.
While the coffee perked, I stared at a blank page in my
journal before saying to hell with
it. Then I put together a mental
outline of my day.
First, I phoned Jeff Berger.
"As a matter of fact, I have
heard of the RCA," he said.
"Why do
you ask?"
"Do you belong?"
"No, I don't. They're a little too fanatical for me."
"How fanatical?"
"They worry too much about Satan
and not enough about our
children."
"They sponsored the
meeting," I said.
"No, that's not quite
accurate. I heard that they passed
around
fliers with their logo on it but the
meeting actually grew out of our
neighborhood concerns. What is this about, Mr. Trevorak? I thought
you'd be calling with news about
Harriet."
"I'm working on it," I said.
"I should hope so."
"Do you know anyone who belongs
to the RCA?"
"Not closely."
"Do you think there might be a
connection between the RCA and the
rat murders?"
"Are you serious? What could they possibly have in
common?"
"Just shooting in the dark."
"I don't see what any of this has
to do with finding Harriet."
"I'll be back to you soon,"
I said and hung up.
I poured another cup of coffee and
resisted the temptation to spike
it with Jameson's. Hair of the dog had a way of delaying the
recovery,
not assisting it. What I needed was a chore that didn't take
too much
thought, like finding a clergyman's
costume for Dad.
Hours later, Butch was pouring me a
cup of coffee and shaking his
head, laughing. I'd spent most of the morning making the rounds of
costume shops, looking for the
outfit. Apparently it was easier to
dress up as a gorilla than as a
preacher. I'd finally found the
costume at a shop on the outskirts of
Watts, and so stopped by Butch's
with the true excuse that I was in the
area.
"I've been trying to tell
you," said Butch, "never under- estimate
the emotions that can surface over racial
matters." I'd been telling
him about the Regiment for Christian
Authority. "Man, racial hatred is
at the very root of this country. You got an education, didn't you
ever read history? Not just racial hatred of Negroes - Indians,
Chinese, just look at the facts, man.
Indians are savages and nigger
music comes from the devil - ain't no
difference, man, the same
mentality comes up with that shit."
"I've been wondering why Dan
would scribble RCA next to the names
of the victims."
"And what did you come up
with?"
"Maybe each victim was a member
of the RCA."
"And what's the significance of
that?"
"I'm not sure."
"You're sure worrying a lot about
these rat murders."
"Too many coincidences connect
them to what I've been working on."
"You want more coffee?"
"I'd better let you get back to
work."
The huge canvas was nearing
completion, and I knew that Butch
hadn't really welcomed my unannounced
visit.
"You can sit and watch if you
want," Butch said.
"I'd better get to the
office."
I phoned in first. Dad answered the phone.
"That deejay wants to see you
right away," he said.
"Dan?"
"Right. He said to meet him at his apartment, the sooner the
better."
"Thanks."
"Everything okay?"
"Fine. I've got your costume, I'll be by later to have you try it
on."
"Oh my God, I did agree to that,
didn't I?"
"You want to back out?"
"Not necessarily."
"See you after I see Dan."
I drove to South City, wondering what
was up. Maybe Dan had more
to tell me about why he'd scribbled RCA
next to the rat victims.
When I knocked on the door, I
discovered it was unlocked. I pushed
it open the rest of the way and stepped
inside.
Dan was on the divan and looked very
dead. He'd been shot in the
chest at close range, and a small caliber
pistol was on the floor
beside him. The suggestion was suicide, of course, but somehow the
setup didn't ring true. Who ever shot themselves in the chest?
Dan didn't have a phone, so I'd have
to call the police from the
pay phone down the street. First I wanted to find out something.
I went into the bedroom. The suitcase in which I'd found the
clippings had been emptied onto the bed,
and the clippings were gone.
The nudist magazines were still in the
chest of drawers but I'd
chosen a bad time to find them. I was still holding one when two
policemen barged into the bedroom with
pistols drawn, telling me I was
under arrest.
31/
Lt. Grimes was young and
ambitious. He was blond and had rugged
Tab-Hunter-in-the-Marines good looks. In the movies it would've gone
this way:
Grimes wanted a promotion and I was the fall guy who was
going to help him get it. In reality, I'd been caught in the wrong
place at the wrong time and Grimes wanted
to know why. Naturally I
had no choice but to sit there and listen
to him until Dad arrived,
whom I'd phoned instead of a lawyer.
"What do you think,
Trevorak?," Grimes rambled on, "you get special
treatment cause your old man was on the
force? I never met the man, by
the way.
His reputation followed him but I don't know the guy from
Adam, okay? In other words, you get no Brownie points. All I know is,
we get a call that there's been a fight at
a certain address and the
boys find you there, looking at naked
girls with a corpse in the front
room. And all I hear from
you is that you're a p.i. working on a case.
You say you're working for the corpse's
wife but won't say more, it's
privileged information. Well, hot shot,
I'll drag the lady down here if
I have to and straighten this shit
out. You understand me? I suggest
you be a little more cooperative. And what do you expect your old man
to accomplish down here? He become a lawyer all of a sudden? You need
a lawyer, hot shot. Real bad."
We were in a small interrogation room,
and I was facing the door
and window. It could've been worse. I
could've been sitting under a
single bare lightbulb, like in the movies.
I saw Dad coming down the hallway with
his old buddy,
Capt.
Hammond. I must have smiled
because suddenly Grimes was
bellowing, "What the fuck's so
goddamn funny, Trevorak?" I
shrugged.
"I've had it with you, wise ass. You understand me?"
Then Capt. Hammond came through the
doorway, saying, "I'll take
over, lieutenant."
Grimes started to say something but
didn't.
The captain said, "This is Hank
Trevorak, who used to be one of
us."
Dad and Grimes shook hands.
"You can go," Hammond told
Grimes.
The lieutenant gave me a good glare
before walking out. As curtain
gestures go, it wasn't bad.
"Long time," said the
captain, offering his hand. I was
delighted
to shake it.
Dad said, "I told the captain
here as much about the case you're on
as I could remember. He probably has questions he wants to ask
you."
"Just a few," said Capt.
Hammond.
He wanted to know why I'd been in the
apartment, and I told him
that Dan had left me a message to meet him
there. I also told him I
had no idea what the meeting was about,
unless Dan had more to tell me
about his background, which was the case
I'd been working on. I didn't
mention the RCA. Yes, I planned to phone the police myself, I'd just
arrived when the officers barged in. No, I had not killed Dan. I told
the captain that my prints wouldn't be on
the pistol. Then did I think
it was suicide? I lied that it sure looked that way to me.
Now that Grimes was gone, there was
nothing to it, and Dad and I
were back on the street within half an
hour.
"Give me a lift to my car?,"
I asked Dad.
"I'll buy you a beer first."
He wanted to hear what was really
going on, I knew, but he didn't
want to drink close to the station for
fear of running into some old
colleagues. We drove toward South City and then found a tavern.
Over drinks I told Dad everything I
knew, which wasn't much. It
didn't look like suicide to me.
"You said he was unstable,"
Dad said.
"He was. But the setup just didn't look right. You ever hear of
anyone shooting themselves in the
chest?"
"It can happen," said Dad.
"I have a gut feeling it wasn't
suicide."
I was running on pure instinct, as
always. Someone wanted me at
Dan's just before the police arrived,
probably because they were stupid
enough, or desperate enough, to think this
would be enough to make me a
suspect.
Or was I being too paranoid?
Maybe it wasn't a setup. Maybe
it was a coincidence, that Dan really had
wanted to talk to me. But
about what? Our last meeting hadn't suggested sudden cooperation.
After a beer, we were ready to
go. In South City I thanked Dad for
putting in a good word for me with the
captain.
"If it wasn't suicide," said
Dad, "do you think it's wise to go
through with the preacher charade?"
"I hadn't made a connection
between the two."
"One never knows."
"Let me think about it."
"I don't have cold feet,
understand. I just think we should be
careful."
"You're right."
He nodded, and I watched him drive
away. Then I drove Bad- Ass to
Caviar's Market.
I found Tank behind the counter,
reading a comic book.
"Well, I be damn glad you
innocent," he said. "I didn't
think you
do a cold thing like that."
"You know who was up there with
him?"
"You asking the same thing the
cops ask. Man, those stairs are
around to the side, I ain't got no x-ray
vision to see who be tramping
up and down the stairs all day. I didn't see shit, and I didn't hear
shit, and I don't know shit."
"You seen the lady with the bangs
lately?"
"Yeah, she came in and got two
cokes this morning."
"What time?"
"Shit, I don't know. Nine in the a.m., maybe."
What time had Ruth called me? Somewhere around nine, I thought.
I thanked Tank and stood outside on
the corner, alongside the pink
Cadillac, planning my next move. I got into Bad-Ass and gave the
neighborhood more blue smoke than it
needed.
As I approached Ruth's house, I saw
that Artie, Jackie Love and
Harriet were sitting on the front
porch. Unfortunately they saw me,
too, and took off, heading behind the
house. I swung Bad- Ass to the
curb, got out and took off after them.
A big man like myself is no match for
teenagers. I made it as far
as the big gully, where I stood on the
edge and watched them scamper
down a path into the noisy, dusty center
of freeway construction. I'd
only run about forty or fifty yards but
was perspiring and breathing
heavily.
I turned to find myself face-to-face
with Ruth.
"I was just going to look for
you," I said.
"You stay away from my
brother," she said. "I'll
call the police,
I mean it."
"That's pretty funny since
they'll be wanting to talk to you, too."
"What do you mean?"
"I have a witness that you were
at Dan's this morning. Which makes
you one of the last ones to have seen him
alive."
Ruth inhaled a quick audible breath
before stepping forward to grab
me, as if to hold herself up from falling
in a faint. If she was
acting, it was a hell of a job. I helped her back to the house and sat
her on the sofa.
She began weeping. She wouldn't stop, though she seemed to be
trying to stop, her sobs more inhaled than
exhaled as she held both
hands over her face. It was either a great performance or the
moving
truth, I wasn't sure which.
Apparently we were alone in the
house. After a while, as the
sobbing finally began to subside, I said,
"When the police get enough
pieces together, they're going to want to
talk to you."
She managed to say, "Yes."
"Is there anything you want to
tell me first?"
"I-- . . . I just can't believe
it."
"You saw him this morning,
right?"
She nodded.
"He give any indication that
something was wrong?"
"You were the only trouble we
had," she said.
I didn't believe this. I thought her performance was slipping.
"Did he say he wanted to see
me?"
"Why would he want to see
you? He wanted you to leave him
alone."
"You're sure?"
"Mr. Trevorak, we both just
wanted to be left alone. That's the
truth."
"Did Dan get you involved in the
music conspiracy?"
She started to say something but
stopped. Damn it. I had a gut
feeling I was getting close to something.
I said, "I'm easier to talk to
than the police."
"I'm not sure that's true,"
she said softly.
"To them, you're a suspect."
"They think I killed Dan?"
"It's a possibility they'll be
looking at, once they connect you
two."
"You had more to do with it than
I did!"
The change in her manner was
instantaneous. It was frightening to
watch.
"You're the one snooping around
about the music." She got to her
feet.
"No one was paying any attention to Dan before you came around.
I had him settled again. He was calmed down again. Then you show up
and
get him all excited about this conspiracy stuff-"
She rushed out of the room. I followed in time to see her slam the
bathroom door behind her. I could hear her bawling in there.
I waited in the living room. Maybe I should have phoned the police
right then but I didn't. Then I regretted not calling them because
she
came back into the room sporting a small
caliber pistol. 22-calibre, I
guessed.
"Get out of my house," she
hissed.
"On my way."
"As far as I'm concerned, you killed Dan."
I moved slowly toward the door. She looked unstable, even crazed,
there was no telling how little it would
take for her trigger finger to
twitch.
I didn't think this was an Oscar performance, I thought she
meant it.
"Get out!"
I stepped quickly to the door and out,
half-expecting to feel a jab
of pain in my back, to hear the echo of
pain in my ear. As soon as I
reached the porch, I started running.
I got into Bad-Ass, planning to lay rubber getting the hell out
of
there.
That's what Sam Spade would've done.
But Bad-Ass wouldn't
start.
It was embarrassing. Not the
first time, not the second.
Fortunately, Ruth had stayed in the house.
When I finally got the engine going, I
drove off in a cloud of blue
smoke with something less than Hollywood
daring-do. But what the hell.
The style may have stunk but fashion is
the first refuge of a
scoundrel, and I was still very much
alive.
32/
After a restless night, I went to the
office early the next
morning.
But not early enough. Hank was
there, alone, and by the way
he shook his head as I entered, I knew it
was lecture time.
But I made him work at it. I went to my desk, where I saw a note
in Hank's handwriting that Hot Wire Wally
had called. I shuffled
through papers, trying to look busy, as
Hank told me how incompetent I
was.
"You're not paid to solve the rat
murders, if that's what you're up
to," he said. "I don't care if Dad is trying to solve
them or not,
he's more or less retired, and you're on
the payroll to work for the
agency, in case you've forgotten. And I run the shop. You work for
me.
Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"You read the paper?," I
asked.
"Of course. Your deejay is dead. What I'm telling you is, that's
no concern of yours. I have a stakeout for you. Tomorrow or the next
day."
I wanted to call Hot Wire but not from the office, with Hank
hovering around my desk like a hungry
vulture. I picked up the note
and headed for the door.
"Where do you think you're
going?," Hank asked.
"Out."
"I want to brief you on the
stakeout."
"It can wait."
"It cannot wait!"
"Look, I've got something I've
got to do, okay? I'll do
your fucking stakeout tomorrow or the next
day, just like you want,
just like I always do. Get off my back."
Outside, I went to the nearest pay
phone and dialed the number on
the note.
Wally answered and we arranged to meet in an hour at The Oar
House.
I drove there straight-away and chased
Jameson's with black coffee.
I had a little buzz on by the time Wally
arrived. He was in a suit and
carried a brief case, looking more like an
insurance salesman than
someone who screamed on the radio, We
fire, we sizzle!
"Thank you for returning my call
so promptly," he said, sitting
down.
"Terrible thing that
happened," I said.
"What thing is that?"
He looked serious.
"You mean, you don't know?,"
I said.
"Apparently not."
"It's on the front page of the
morning paper," I said.
"I'm generally too busy to pay
attention to the news. What
happened?"
"I thought that's why you wanted
to talk to me. Your colleague,
Dan, was murdered yesterday."
He studied me, then said, "You're
not serious."
"Read the morning paper for
yourself."
"I'm, well, at a loss for
words. Was it his wife?"
I wondered why this possibility
occurred to him so readily. Did he
know more about the marriage than I did?
"Perhaps," I said, playing
it safe. "What do you think?"
"Well, there were serious marital
problems."
"Dan told you about them?"
"A bit. He was a loner. I barely
knew him, really. Never saw him
away from the studio."
"Then you didn't know he'd taken
an apartment down the street from
the station?"
"No. But it doesn't surprise me.
Nothing about that man surprises
me.
He's the reason I wanted to talk to you. Only what I have to say
is
irrelevant now."
"Maybe yes, maybe no. What's on your mind?"
"When I learned that you were
investigating Dan--"
"How did you learn that?"
"Talk in the office. I think Brenda, the secretary, told me.
Anyway, I have reason to believe that he
is, or was, the rat murderer."
I pursed my lips and waited for him to
go on.
Wally put the briefcase on the table,
unsnapped it and took out
some papers. There were some business cards stuck neatly in a little
pocket, and he took one out and handed it
to me.
The Regiment for Christian Authority
was blazoned across the top of
the small card. Under it, I read Wallace Filmore, Vice- Pastor.
"We've been concerned about the
influence of Negro music on popular
music listened to by our Anglo-Saxon
American teenagers. We've managed
to infiltrate the industry to a degree, to
learn first-hand what has
been going on."
"What's this got to do with
Dan?"
"I suspected him from the
beginning. He's a fanatic about the
devil's music. I suspect he has Negro blood in his veins himself. Or
did.
We've been watching him for months, you see. Here, look at the
evidence for yourself."
He handed me a sheet of paper. On it were the names of the rat
murder victims. Minus Flo Albertson.
"This list is in Dan's
handwriting," Wally said. "I
found it in
his desk several weeks ago, when some of
these people were still
alive."
"You're telling me he had a list
of victims?"
"I think that's what this list
suggests."
"But the victims usually were
killed in Lovers' Lane," I said.
"We think a woman was working
with him. We have a suspect, a Negro
woman who lives near the station."
Ruth, I assumed.
I said, "Why didn't you take this
to the police?"
"When I learned you were
investigating Dan, I thought I should talk
to you first."
This didn't sound right to me. I asked, "Was Dan on to you?"
"I don't think so. We barely had dealings with one
another."
"Any ideas who wanted him
dead?"
"Out of the music business, yes,
because we did. But dead, no."
"What exactly bothers you about
the devil's music?," I asked.
"Are you serious?"
"Afraid so."
"Have you listened to songs like
Work With Me, Annie, Mr. Trevorak?
And its sequel, Annie Had A Baby. Or Big Ten Inch? One Mint Julep?
These songs are explicitly sexual,
explicitly pornographic. If you'd
heard them, you'd know exactly what I was
talking about. And we fear
music is only the beginning. Once the work of the devil controls the
popular music industry, what's next? We think
the Mafia may be
involved, or an organization as large and
as underground. This music
breeds pornography, prostitution, drugs,
gambling, every sin you can
name, Mr. Trevorak. The music is background to it all. Why, look what
the communistic Supreme Court decided last
month, decreeing to mix the
races in our public schools. Where will it end?"
I tried to imagine Jackie Love and
Harriet, cuddled together
listening to doo-wop, being victims of a
plot by the Mafia and a
communistic Supreme Court. It didn't wash.
I handed him the sheet of paper and
said, "I think you should give
this to the police."
"Of course. And what did you learn about Dan, Mr.
Trevorak?"
"That he was a loner, like you
say."
"And a dangerous man."
He closed the briefcase. We both stood up.
"Don't you go on the air
today?," I asked.
"My day off. Have you heard my show?"
"Sure have."
"I'm quite the actor, aren't
I? Dan was a good role model. He was
a fanatic about the devil's music."
He offered his hand and I shook
it. I watched him go, then ordered
another Jameson's.
I drove to Carla's but she wasn't
home, which surprised me. I hung
around her apartment most of the day,
expecting her to return but she
never did. I didn't get anything done, not even a nap. I tried
working on the play for a while but my
mind was too full of new facts
and confused theories to concentrate. Around four I gave up on Carla
and drove home to Venice.
At home I was no more constructive
then I'd been at Carla's. My
mind kept coming back to Dan. Lovin' Dan the Sixty-Minute Man. The rat
murderer.
Could it be?
And what about Ruth? She owned a smart-caliber weapon, I'd
learned
that.
She had a relationship with Dan that wasn't clear to me yet.
But then Gregory had admitted killing his
wife, according to his
lawyer.
Then who set up the murder to look like the rat murders?
I made an egg salad sandwich for
dinner and called Carla. No one
answered.
I stared at the script of my new play for an hour before
throwing it aside, without a word of new
dialogue. I went to bed but
couldn't get to sleep.
Sometime after midnight, I couldn't
stand it any more. I got up,
dressed and drove back to Carla's. But she still wasn't home. What
the hell was going on? I tried to picture Carla in bed with someone
else, staying over at a new boyfriend's,
and the possibility hung in
the pit of my stomach like indigestion.
I climbed into her bed. Sometime before sunrise I managed to doze
off into a restless sleep. Sometime later my mind finally shut itself
off and slipped into beautiful silence.
33/
I awoke and looked at my watch. Ten-thirty.
I was still alone in
the bed.
I got up, dressed and looked in
Carla's refrigerator. Some bacon,
no eggs, no bread there or in the
cupboard. I scrounged until I found
a pencil and paper, then wrote her a note:
You had a visitor! Me.
Sorry to miss you. You're
keeping new
hours or what? I'll phone later today.
Red.
It wasn't like Carla to spend a night
away, not even at my place.
She was territorial, liked to be where she
made the house rules. I was
worried about her.
As soon as I walked into the office,
Dad held up the morning paper
so I could see the large headline: Murdered DJ linked to rat murders.
I wondered if Wally had taken his evidence
to the police after leaving
me.
"Read it and tell me what you
think," Dad said. He tossed me the
paper.
There was no mention of Wally. The police had been investigating
Dan on their own, the story said, and were
close to making an arrest
when he was murdered. They could not reveal any more information
at
this time. Gregory Albertson, who had confessed to killing his wife
but claimed self-defense, had been
released on bail.
I went to Dad's desk with the paper
and pulled up a chair. Hank
wasn't in the office yet, which meant Dad
and I could bullshit as long
as we wanted.
Dad said, "So what do you
think?"
I told him about my meeting with
Wally, the list of victims in
Dan's handwriting and the activities of
the Regiment for Christian
Authority. There was no mention of RCA in the story either.
"I wish to hell I knew what their
evidence was," said Dad. "Maybe
I'll have lunch with Hammond and pick his
brain."
"Good idea."
"Maybe the guy went to the police
and made a deal to keep out of
the limelight."
"Maybe."
"Or maybe there's no link to the
music at all."
"I think there is," I said.
"Am I still going to the station
to play preacher?"
"It's worth a try."
"When do you want to do it?"
The minister's costume was in Bad-Ass'
trunk.
"What's wrong with this
afternoon?," I said.
I went outside and returned with the
costume, and Dad tried it on.
He looked wonderful. He could've passed for Spencer Tracy in the
movie
about Boy's Town. We were still gloating over his appearance
when Hank
walked in.
"A little early for Halloween,
isn't it?," he said.
I didn't want Hank to know what was
going on and tried to let Dad
know as much by my expression. But he was already a step ahead
of me.
"What do you think, son?,"
he asked Hank. "I'm auditioning
for a
commercial."
It was off the top, and it was
beautiful. I didn't realize Dad had
so much acting talent.
"What the hell are you talking
about?," said Hank.
"A friend of mine works in an
agency, thought I'd be perfect. So
what do you think? Maybe this is the beginning of a whole new
career."
Hank stared at Dad and then at
me. He didn't know what to think.
Hank moved to his desk, saying,
"At least you two can relax about
the rat murders now. They found their man - or at least his
corpse."
Dad said, "Red, can I bribe you
into giving me a lift to the TV
station?
I'd feel conspicuous, driving all dressed up like this."
If was flimsy but it worked.
I said, "Sure thing."
"Don't forget the stakeout,"
Hank told me. "Probably tomorrow
night.
I need to fill you in before then."
"Whenever," I said.
We left. Dad said he wanted to drop by a few of his old haunts
before going to KRB, for the fun of
it. I helped him wire up and then
we went our separate ways, with plans to
meet back at the office around
five.
I hoped Dad didn't get too reckless having fun with the costume.
I didn't think Buzz Taylor would assault a
uniformed member of the
California Council of Churches, but I
thought Dad should be on his
toes.
Driving to Foothills, I listened to
KRB. Not one mention was made
of Dan's death. Someone called Ronny the Rocker was taking Lovin'
Dan's shift, and the program went on as if
nothing out of the ordinary
had happened. The doo-wop contest was beginning next week.
I found Joan next door, where Jeff and
Edna were chaperoning her
wake, if that's what it was. She was already pretty high by the time I
got there just past noon. I took iced tea with the others, while Joan
drank martinis and babbled.
"Is life strange or is life strange? You live with a man for five
years and don't know the first thing about
him. Hell, you play bridge
with someone every week who turns out to
be a Negro! I'll tell you,
I've had enough surprises this summer to
last a lifetime. I need no
more surprises in my life. No surprises."
And so it went. She would be giggling one moment, then look
like
she was ready to burst into tears. I had to admit, she'd had one hell
of a summer.
When Joan excused herself to the
bathroom, Jeff said, "We need to
talk.
Can you hold down the fort?," he asked his wife.
Edna nodded, though she didn't look
too happy about being stuck
alone with Joan.
Jeff led the way outside. We climbed down the ladder into his bomb
shelter.
It wasn't much larger than my studio apartment and smelled
like dirt.
"I'll have her done before
winter," Jeff said, seeing my curiosity.
A concrete floor was in but not the walls,
which were canvas. It was
cool down there, and I figured that even
if the Russians never
attacked, a place like this would be a
decent investment just to escape
from the smog.
There was no place to sit. We stood facing one another.
"Find out anything about
Harriet?," he asked.
"She's got a boyfriend."
"Really?"
"A Negro boy."
"I was afraid of that, to tell
the truth. It doesn't really
surprise me, considering how much Harriet
listens to their music."
"You brought me down here to talk about Harriet?"
"No. I'm worried about Joan.
The way she's reacted to the news
about Dan. Not his murder, the other."
"The police say they have
evidence."
"I think Joan knows more than
she's telling."
I waited for more.
"That fellow who talked at the
meeting, the deejay, Wallace Filmore
I believe his name was. He paid her a visit last night. Very late,
almost midnight. He stayed over an hour. I
was only up because I
haven't been able to sleep. I don't know what to do about Harriet."
He took a deep breath.
"Anyway," he went on,
"I thought it was something you should know
about.
It struck me as a very strange time to visit. And the way
Joanie is carrying on now . . . well,
maybe it's nothing. Maybe he was
offering his sympathies."
"At midnight?"
"That's what I was
thinking."
I said, "I appreciate the
information."
"Harriet really has a Negro
boyfriend?"
"Yes."
"If we went to the police, that
fact would come out, wouldn't it?
It'd be in the newspaper."
"Perhaps."
He led the way, and we climbed back up
into the day. In the den,
Joan was babbling away.
"Joan," I interrupted,
"can I talk to you next door?"
It had taken a full twenty minutes to
get her to move to her own
house.
Jeff Berger helped me, then departed as Joan started mixing a
martini at the liquor cabinet in the
den. He had touched my shoulder
passing by, as if to say, Good luck.
I wanted to get to it before Joan
passed out.
"Tell me about your midnight
visitor," I said.
She looked at me and laughed.
"Mr. Trevorak, do I owe you any
money?"
"No."
"Then since you're no longer in
my employ, we have nothing to talk
about, do we? You know where the door is."
"Midnight's a little late for
company. I didn't know you knew
Wallace Filmore that well."
She glared at me.
"Who told you?"
"I happened to be in the
neighborhood."
"It had to be Jeff."
"I was on a stakeout in the
neighborhood," I lied, "and passed by
just in time to see him arrive."
"A stakeout?"
"Your neighbors aren't immune to
adultery."
In her drunken state, this was enough
to disorient her. She forgot
that she didn't want to talk about it.
"He woke me up, as a matter of
fact," she said. "It took me
forever to get rid of him."
"I didn't know you knew
him."
"Well, I do."
"How well?"
"Christ," she mumbled. She swallowed her drink and started
building another.
"Did you know he's a member of
the Regiment for Christian
Authority?"
"Of course I do. I admire him for it."
"Are you a member?"
I was shooting from the hip, and her
reply surprised me.
"As a matter of fact, I recently
joined. I admire me, too."
She raised the glass, almost losing
her balance. She grabbed the
liquor cabinet, steadied herself and
finished building the new drink.
I took another wild shot. "Joan, are you and Wally having an
affair?"
She sipped the fresh drink.
I said, "How long has it been
going on?"
No answer.
"Did Dan know about it?"
Joan laughed and said, "You think
you're so damn smart, don't you?"
She took her drink across the room to
the large windows looking out
on the back yard. It looked like a golf course back there,
immaculate
diachondra bordered by tall firs.
Joan said, "I never understood
why he left the radio station in
Pasadena.
He played such lovely music.
Dinner music. Of course, I
didn't realize he was a sick
man." She turned to me. "That
Negro music
is like a disease, Mr. Trevorak. Look what it did to Dan. Imagine
what it must be doing to poor
Harriet. And innocent kids like her."
She started moving toward me, slowly,
and I readied myself to grab
her if she lost her balance.
"Have you found Jesus Christ, Mr.
Trevorak?," she asked.
She reached out for the back of the
divan for support.
I said, "I'd like to talk to you
when you're sober."
"I'm sober enough."
I didn't buy it. I left her staggering toward the liquor
cabinet
and got the hell out of there.
I managed to get into Bad-Ass without
being intercepted by Jeff
Berger.
Cruising out of the foothills, I wondered how much of Joan's
babbling to take seriously and how much
was liquor talking. They say
you tell the truth under the influence but
I'd met too many drunken
liars along the way.
In the small business district I
stopped at a pay phone and dialed
the station to see if Hot Wire was
in. I recognized Brenda's voice,
and she told me Hot Wire Wally didn't work
there any more. I wanted to
know why.
"This is Red Trevorak," I
said. "Remember me?"
There was a silence.
"You ready for some more
champagne?"
"I don't know," she said
cautiously.
"No hard feelings about the last
time," I said. "I shouldn't
have
asked you to remove the file."
Again no reply. I added, "The way I figure it, you were
just doing
your job by telling the boss. No hard feelings."
"What you want?," she asked.
"Just to ask you a few more
questions."
"Maybe I got questions to ask you
myself."
"Well, good, maybe we can have an
actual conversation. How about
the Texas Playhouse after you get
off?"
"Okay."
"Four?"
"Five."
"You got it," I said.
I called the office for Dad. When Hank answered the phone, I hung
up and called Dad at home. No answer.
I hoped he wasn't drinking too
much, showing off the minister's costumes
in his various hangouts. I
also hoped he hadn't gone to the station
yet. Before he did, I wanted
to find out why Wally had left and whether
it meant Buzz Taylor might
not respect a clergyman after all.
I phoned the office again.
"Tell Dad we cancel til
tomorrow," I said.
"What the hell's going on between
you two?," Hank asked.
"He'll understand the
message."
"Where the hell are you? I've got to brief you on the stakeout."
"Don't worry, I'll be there
eventually."
"Sometimes I think I'm the only
goddamn one who works here," Hank
said.
"You are."
I hung up. It wasn't the nice thing to do, but I couldn't believe
that if worse came to worse Hank couldn't
put in the stakeout time
himself.
As a last resort, he could hire one of the other gofers who
sometimes worked for us. As long as Dad was interested in what I was
up to, I figured I could get away with
just about anything. And almost
anything beat the boredom of the Peeping
Tom Patrol.
I had some time to kill, and Gregory
Albertson was free on bail. I
decided to pay a visit to his lawyer.
34/
Judson Bailey clearly was upset. From his desk he saw me talking
to his secretary and rushed forward to
invite me behind the closed door
of his office.
"I've been trying to reach
you," he said. "I need you to
go to
Oregon."
My shock at this request must have
shown, for he immediately added,
"I did hire you, didn't I?"
"Yes, but the police think they
have their man. And Albertson just
got out on bail, didn't he?"
"That's the problem. Mr. Albertson has broken the conditions of
bail by leaving the state. I want you to get him back here as soon as
you can."
"Oregon's a big state."
I thought it was. I'd never been to Oregon. I'd never known
anyone who had been to Oregon. It was up north somewhere.
Bailey said, "I had to frighten
his mother to death to find out
that he'd left. His destination is a little north just over the
border.
Here's an address I found in his room.
Of course, she didn't
want to let me search it but once she
realized how much trouble he
could be in, she gave in."
He held a sheet of paper across the
desk, and I took it. I read an
address in a town called Ashland.
"Is a name attached to
this?," I asked.
"The address is all I have. He flew to Medford, which apparently
is the closest town to Ashland with an airport. Can you leave this
afternoon?"
Without waiting for an answer, he got
up from behind the desk, as
if to wish me bon voyage. I didn't budge.
"Mr. Bailey, you are not the only
client I have. I'm tied up for a
couple of days."
"But this is urgent."
"You have no idea why he flew to
Oregon?"
"None whatever."
I remembered something. Gregory Albertson had been arrested at the
airport.
He was getting ready to board a plane for a small town in
Oregon.
Curiosity was threatening the cat again.
"He was on his way to Oregon when
he was arrested," I said.
"Yes, but I don't know why. And now he's breaking bail."
I could reschedule Brenda easily
enough, and I'd already left a
message for Dad to delay the
impersonation. Hank had a stakeout, of
course, but that only made a trip to
Oregon more appealing. I could
get somebody else to fill in for me with a
couple of phonecalls.
"Let me see if I can reschedule a
few things," I said.
"You can use my phone if you
like. I'll be in the library."
He left the office through a side
door. As soon as he was gone, I
moved behind the big executive desk and
sat in the plush executive
chair.
I swung my legs up onto the desk and dialed the office. Hank
answered.
When I told him I was going to Oregon,
he had a fit.
"What about the stakeout?,"
he asked after calming down.
"We got three or four guys who
can do it and need the money. Call
Flanigan.
I heard he's getting divorced, so you know he's looking for
work.
If he's busy, try Zink."
Hank started lecturing me about
responsibility and I interrupted
with, "I shouldn't be gone
long."
It felt good to hang up on him.
I left a message with Brenda, saying I
had to work late, let's do a
raincheck on champagne. I told her I'd call her in a few days.
I looked up travel agents in the
yellow pages. A sexy- sounding
voice at San Gabriel Travel booked me on a
flight to Medford at
seven-thirty that night. I made reservations, with an open return
flight.
So this was how fancy lawyers did
it. Feet up on the desk, pulling
the stops that ran the world from your
office phone.
I walked through the side door into
the library.
"I leave at seven-thirty," I
said.
"Excellent."
Bailey pulled out his wallet.
"I can put everything on the bill,"
I said.
"Let's call this a little bonus,
to inspire you to get him back as
soon as possible. Late tonight if you can."
He handed me a hundred dollar bill.
I let myself into Carla's
apartment. I could hear the shower
running.
If we both could have fit in there at the same time, I would
have disrobed and surprised her. I remembered the huge shower in the
Hearst Castle, a Rube Goldberg affair with
pipes in great spirals
shooting water from every direction. There was a shower that Carla and
I could share. It was probably the only one in the world big enough
for us to share.
I found a Falstaff in the
refrigerator, opened it and waited at the
small table off the kitchen.
I was on my second beer when Carla came plodding into the room,
naked with her hair wrapped in a towel.
"Where the hell have you
been?," she asked right off.
"Didn't you get my note?"
"I got it."
"I've been here, waiting for
you."
She took off the towel and started
rubbing her head with it. As she
did, her large breasts and belly shook.
"I've been in a fucking
nightmare," she said.
"Good."
"What do you mean, good?"
"I was afraid you might like the guy."
"What the fuck are you talking
about?"
She stopped and looked at me. Then she took two steps toward the
bed, walking around in the pile of loose
clothing, tossing pieces this
way and that, picking out her wardrobe by
throwing an occasional piece
onto the bed. I could never understand how she kept track of which
clothes were clean and which dirty. All of them were on the floor.
Her wardrobe chosen, she started
dressing. I went to the
refrigerator and got another beer.
"You fucking floor me," said
Carla.
"How so?"
"You think I was out on a date or
something?"
"You didn't spend the night
here."
"Through no fault of my own."
I could tell she was angry, and I was
sorry to have brought the
matter up. We weren't engaged or anything, for Christ's sake. But I
still wanted to know where the hell she'd
been.
"Butch came by late yesterday
afternoon," she said. "He's
got to
talk to you right away."
I wondered why he hadn't phoned the
office. At least, there had
been no message to return his call.
"He seemed so upset I called the
office myself later, to see if you
were in.
Your brother answered, and he seemed as anxious to find you
as Butch."
"I was here most of
yesterday," I said. "Too bad
you weren't
home."
"Let me finish. Anyway, something about Butch's manner kept
bugging me, so I thought I'd go over and
see what was going on. He
wasn't home. When I went back to my car, the tires were slashed."
"Are you kidding me?"
"All four of them. There was a note on the windshield telling
me
to mind my own business. I mean, it was really creepy! How would
anyone know what I was there for? I was so upset I called Shirley and
spent the night with her."
"Do you have the note?"
"Why would I save the note?"
"So I could check the handwriting."
"Red, what the hell's going
on?"
"I wish I knew."
"Why would anybody slash my
tires?"
I didn't want to think about how
someone knew that Carla was mine,
that whatever they had against me applied
to her as well. I got up and
embraced her.
"I'm scared," she said.
"I am, too. Think you can spend some time with Shirley
while I'm
gone?
I have to go to Oregon for a few days."
"What's in Oregon?"
"I'm not sure."
"This all has something to do with that case you're
working on,
doesn't it?"
"Probably. I'd better see Butch before I go."
I stood up to go.
"I missed you," she said.
"I missed you like hell last
night."
"I tried to get you at home. I thought you were probably on a
stakeout.
It didn't occur to me that you'd spend the night here."
"At least I could smell you on
the sheets a little."
"Maybe we should go to bed before
you go."
"You just got dressed."
But she didn't hear this, she was
already stripping for bed.
When Butch didn't answer his phone, I
drove to South City. I had
time to kill and talking to Ruth promised
to be more interesting than
talking to Brenda.
Her mother answered the door. She looked differently than I
remembered her. The bandanna was gone, and in place of her earlier
bubbling good nature was a glare that
would have melted the ice caps.
"Is Ruth home?," I asked.
"No, she isn't."
"Do you know where she is?"
"I wouldn't tell you, even if I
knew."
I wondered what had happened to change
her mood. Probably Ruth had
told her about Stanley Sullivan. Earlier she'd struck me as the
carefree sort who was Every Man's favorite
grandmother. Now she was
slamming the door in my face.
At the pay phone near the radio
station I tried Butch again. This
time he answered.
"Where the hell you been?,"
he wanted to know.
"Hither and yon. What's up?"
"How about some pool
tonight? I got some things to talk to
you
about."
"I need to talk to you, too, but
I'm flying up to Oregon in a
couple hours."
"Where in Oregon?"
"Small town called Ashland."
There was a pause, and then Butch
said, "What the hell are you
going up there for?"
"You read about Gregory Albertson
getting out on bail? He went to
Oregon, and I'm supposed to bring him
back."
"Where are you now?"
"South City."
"Shit. Get your ass over here as soon as you can."
"I don't have time, man, I've got
a flight to catch."
"Fuck the flight."
"Are you crazy?"
"Trust me, man. I
found out a few things."
"You know who slashed Carla's
tires?"
"I'd rather talk to you face to
face. Come by here, it won't take
thirty minutes."
"Why can't you tell me on the
phone?"
"I'll do a better job convincing
you face to face."
"I don't have time to come by,
man. If you know who did that to
Carla, damn it, tell me."
"Okay, the bar at the airport,
I'll meet you there."
"Come on, Butch. What the hell's going on?"
"Trust me, okay?"
"I don't like somebody going
after Carla, man."
"The airport bar, okay?"
I looked at my watch.
"I'll come by your place but I
can't stay longer than half an
hour."
"When you hear what I have to
say, you'll change your mind."
"I doubt it."
"Just hear me out."
Halfway to Watts, Bad-Ass blew a
tire. The whole circumference
peeled off like a banana, and by the time
I got the spare on, grunting
and
groaning with the frustration of a piss-poor mechanic, I was
running late, and I just managed to get to
the airport before the
flight to Oregon took off without me.
35/
Commercial airlines aren't built for
the convenience of 300-
pound men but it was pleasant enough a
flight under the circumstances.
At least I had a mental distraction from
the physical discomfort of
feeling like I was wearing a suit several
sizes too small: the more I
thought about someone harassing Carla, the
less I liked it.
When we landed in Medford, it was
raining. I hadn't brought an
umbrella, not even a rain coat, and
stepped off the plane to run under
a downpour into the nearby terminal.
I rented a car and asked directions to
Ashland. It was only about
ten miles away. Since I had a new car, I took my time.
If Medford looked like any of hundreds
of towns across America,
with its army of billboards marching in
all directions with proud news
of growth and prosperity, Ashland was
smaller and less ostentatious.
Passing the city limits sign, I even began
to worry that the town was
too small to have a motel. But it had several, and I pulled into one
and got a room.
A flier on the television set told me
that a play festival was
going on.
Three Shakespeare plays were being performed in rotation, an
ambitious venture that struck me as
extraordinary, since it was
happening in a town smaller than my
neighborhood in Venice. I folded
the flier and put it into a pocket, then
left to find the address that
Bailey had given me.
Nothing in Ashland was far from
anything else. As it turned out, I
could have walked to the address, which
was only five or six blocks
from the motel. I parked the car and walked to the front porch.
Seeing a new Chrysler in the driveway, I
buttoned my shirt collar and
pulled up my tie.
The porch light was off but lights
were on inside. Before going to
the door, I walked to a front window and
peeked inside. Finding a sex
orgy in progress would not have surprised
me more than what I saw:
Gregory and Ruth, who were talking to an
old man, who presumably lived
there. Gregory appeared to be doing all of the talking.
I stepped back from the window. Then I went back to the car and
parked it around the corner.
They came out in less than an
hour. The Chrysler in the driveway
belonged to them, a rental like my own,
and when they pulled out of the
driveway and started off, I was behind
them.
They pulled into a motel across the
street from my own. I turned
into the lot of mine and parked, watching
them go into their room.
I looked at my watch.
It probably wasn't the old man's bedtime
yet.
I moved the car in front of my room and locked it. I walked back
to the old man's house.
He answered the door in his
bathrobe. He was thin, almost gaunt,
but clearly had been handsome in his
day. He was carrying a glass of
water, as if I'd interrupted some
nighttime ritual of pill-taking.
"Yes?," he asked.
He was squinting at me, then turned on
the porch light and said,
"What do you want?"
I was winging it, as usual. I heard myself say, "I'm a friend of
Ruth's." Pretty gutsy lead, if I thought so myself.
He looked at me suspiciously before
saying, "Then look for her at
her motel."
"You mean she's in town?"
He just stared at me.
"I had no idea she was in
town," I continued. "I
promised her I'd
look you up when I was in town. And now she's here herself. How about
that?"
"That doesn't sound like my
daughter," he said.
Bingo!
I said, "May I come in?"
He paused before nodding and moving
aside, as if he were as curious
about me as I was about him. I stepped inside.
"I have a little coffee left in
the pot," he said. Again, I got
the idea the offer was more curiosity than
hospitality.
"Perfect."
"Make yourself at home. I won't be a minute."
He hobbled off toward the kitchen as I
took his advice and made
myself at home in the living room. It was a small house and a small
living room. What stood out immediately were the dozens of photographs
on the wall. They were of Negroes mostly, singing groups and musicians
in publicity poses. I wondered if the guy had been a press agent
or
what.
I was still perusing the photos when
he returned with the coffee.
Handing me a mug, he asked,
"Recognize any of them?"
"Nat King Cole."
It was a photograph of the trio, with
a signature and salutation I
couldn't make out. It was
the only photograph in the room I
recognized.
"I knew Nat very well," he
said.
"Really?"
"Was in the business a long, long
time, young fellow." Nostalgia
seemed to be loosening him up a little. "I knew them all."
I was standing in front of a
photograph of a man performing
gyrations with a saxophone, his band
seated behind him. The pose was
exaggerated, almost comic.
"That's Louis Jordan, one of the
best. You've heard of him, of
course."
I nodded, remembering only that I'd
heard the name somewhere. Maybe
they played him on KRB.
"I'm Clyde Fitzgerald," the
man said, offering his hand.
I switched the coffee mug to my left
hand and accepted the
handshake.
"Of course." Great acting, all the way. If he wanted Clyde, he
could have it. I said, "I'm Samuel Spademon."
"You're looking for Ruth?,"
he asked.
"I'm surprised she's in
town. I was just passing through on
business and thought I'd pay my
respects. As I said, Ruth would kill
me if she knew I was this close and didn't
stop by. She talks of you
often."
"I don't believe that," he
said.
I wasn't sure what he meant. I took a breather by studying another
photograph. Then I was winging it again, marveling at myself even as I
piled it on.
"Well, you're right," I
began. "Actually I'm here for more
than
paying respects. I'm well aware of your reputation in the music
industry, of course. I'm thinking of going into a business
venture
relating to the music industry and, well,
since I was in Medford on
another matter, I couldn't resist coming
by to see if you'd let me pick
your brain."
It was Oscar stuff, and I was on a
roll.
"Where are you from?," he
asked.
"Los Angeles."
"Wouldn't know Peter Potter down
there by chance?"
Recognizing the name of the popular
L.A. deejay, I said, "Been to a
couple parties he was at, is all. He wouldn't know me from Adam."
"So you're here to pick my
brain? You could've chosen a more
convenient time."
"Oh, I'm sorry." I glanced at my watch. "I didn't realize how
late it was. I must be keeping you up."
"At my age, sleep is
important. What are you doing for
breakfast?"
"Not a thing."
"You know the hotel on Main
Street? Can't miss it. How
about seven-thirty?"
"Perfect."
"Where do you know Ruth from?"
"She used to clean the office
where I work."
"She told you about me?"
"Well, actually, she has
mentioned you."
"She hates me."
"Yes, I got that idea."
Without further word he walked me to
the door and had the front
porchlight off before I got to the steps.
I started back to the motel. Ruth hated her father but Albertson,
who had not been mentioned, appeared to be
doing all the talking. Why
were they there?
As I reached the motel I glanced
across the street and saw that the
rented Chrysler was gone. I walked over and entered the motel office.
A woman with her hair in curlers was
behind the desk watching
wrestling on one of those old Hoffman
Easy-Vision TV's, with the green
screens.
She looked at me, popped her gum and said, "Want a room?"
"I was wondering what happened to
the couple in room seven," I
said.
"I promised I'd come by tonight but they don't seem to be in."
"Just went out for dinner,"
she said. "The gentleman asked me
to
recommend a place, so I sent them to
Medford. Nothing in Ashland open
this late."
A clock on the wall read almost
ten. They went to bed early in
Oregon.
I thanked her and walked to my
room. From the window I could see
the parking lot across the street, and so
I moved two chairs near the
window, one for me and one for a footrest,
and began my own little
stakeout. The chair under me squeaked every time I squirmed or changed
position.
Finally I got nervous that it would break under my weight
and scooted the bed over against the
window. I turned on the tube and
watched an old movie with Hopalong Cassidy,
sprawled out on the bed and
wishing I had popcorn or at least a
drink. I hadn't noticed a bar in
the whole goddamn town. They had
Shakespeare but no bar. Strange
place.
Sometime or other I dozed off. When I awoke, it was almost
midnight.
The Chrysler was parked across the street.
I put on my shoes and crossed the
street. It was cool, downright
chilly.
I hadn't brought along anything to keep the chill off.
The curtains were closed but there was
a soft light on inside, from
the television, I guessed, since I could
hear the tube's murmuring as
well.
I took a deep breath and tapped on the door.
36/
"Who is it?"
It was Gregory Albertson's voice. I tried disguising my own.
"Manager."
As soon as the door cracked open, I
pushed forward and entered the
room.
Albertson, in boxer shorts and a T-shirt, stared at me with his
mouth open. Ruth wasn't there, unless she was in the bathroom.
"Fancy meeting you here," I said.
Albertson took a deep breath before
speaking. "Did my lawyer send
you?
He told me he'd hired you."
I nodded. I was listening for noise in the bathroom but the TV was
on too loud.
"I'll be returning tomorrow
morning," he said. "So if
you're here
to get me, the trip is wasted."
"Where's Ruth?"
"What have you been doing,
following us?"
When I didn't reply, he said, "I
got her a room in Medford."
"You two have a spiff?"
He looked at me as if the question
surprised him. Then he said, "I
didn't invite her."
There was a bottle of bourbon and a
bucket of ice on the small
desk.
He mixed himself a drink.
"You sharing?," I asked.
He thought about it a moment. "I just have bourbon."
"On the rocks."
We took our drinks to the small table
near the window and sat down.
On the way, Albertson turned down the
sound of the TV but left the
picture on.
"You want to tell me what you're
doing up here?," I asked.
"No, as a matter of fact, I
don't."
He smiled but there was no joy in it.
"You and Ruth fly up
together?"
"As it turned out, we did. Like I told you, she invited herself."
"You had other plans?"
He paused before saying, "She
booked on the same flight. I didn't
have much choice."
"Have you met her father
before?"
"How'd you know her father's up
here?"
"Part of my job."
"I thought you were investigating
Dan."
"Wrong tense. Had been investigating."
He said, "Terrible thing to
happen."
"Any ideas who did it?"
"Christ, no. If he was the rat murderer like they say,
well, who
knows what mental illness he has or what
class of people he hung around
with.
I don't understand people like that."
"And I still don't understand why
you're here."
"On business, how's that?"
"What kind of business?"
He went to the desk and brought the
booze and ice back to
the table. He poured us refills.
"If my lawyer hired you, you
should be on my side," he said.
"Maybe I am."
He didn't look convinced.
"Then why the third degree?"
I said, "You were on your way to
Oregon when you were arrested.
Ruth's father used to be in the music
business. You tell me you're up
here on business and that Ruth wasn't
invited. Maybe you can understand
why I'm confused."
He shook his head and laughed. "You guys never give up, do you?"
"You and Ruth are lovers," I
said.
"Is that what you think?"
"Why else did you take her to a
motel? You seem to be having a
spiff like lovers."
"We are not lovers," he
said. "I barely know the
woman."
"You know her father."
"We share business
interests."
"Musical business
interests?"
"Yes."
I gave him time to go on but he didn't
bite. I said, "I got the
impression from Mr. Fitzgerald that he and
Ruth don't get along."
"Apparently not," said
Albertson.
"You have to qualify it?"
"Mr. Trevorak, I barely know the
woman. I certainly had no idea
that I was doing business with her
father. When she tried to pull her
little . . ."
He stopped and finished his
drink. He topped both our glasses
again.
I said, "You were saying she
tried to pull something?"
"I know my lawyer hired you, but I really don't feel like
getting
into this."
"Who tried to frame you as the
rat murderer?"
"I believe that's why you were
hired, Mr. Trevorak. Why ask me?"
"You didn't do that
yourself?"
"Of course not. I wasn't composed enough to think of it.
What
happened was a terrible accident - and I
ran."
"You put your baby in a safe
place," I said. When he didn't
respond, I added, "That's what you
told me."
"I don't know what happened to
the baby. It was there when I
left."
"You abandoned it?"
"I don't think of it that
way."
I could tell he was getting angry at
this new direction of the
conversation. I wanted him to believe I was in his camp, so to speak,
hired by his lawyer and sympathetic to his
story about killing his wife
in self-defense. I changed the subject.
"I'd like to talk to Ruth,"
I said.
"She's in no condition to talk to
anyone tonight. She drank like a
fish through dinner and passed out as soon
as she hit the bed."
"And you two aren't
lovers?," I asked.
"We've never been lovers."
"And you knew Fitzgerald and had
a business arrangement with him,
before you knew that Ruth was his daughter?"
"Exactly."
"A venture in the music
industry."
"It's getting late, Mr.
Trevorak. I haven't had a very pleasant
day."
"Fine," I said, standing
up. "What time is your flight
tomorrow
morning?"
"A little after ten."
"I'll come over at eight-thirty,
and we'll pick up Ruth."
"You can pick up Ruth. I have nothing to say to her."
I changed the subject again, asking,
"How well did you know Dan
Davies?"
"Please, Mr. Trevorak, it's
late."
"I was wondering if you had any
notions about who killed him."
"With his kind, it could be
anyone. Goodnight, Mr. Trevorak."
I left him staring down into his drink
and went back to my room.
I wanted to phone Carla but didn't
know the number of her
girlfriend. I was worried about her, about getting her involved in all
this.
When I called Butch to find out what was on his mind, he wasn't
in.
I tossed and turned for a long time
before falling asleep, worrying
about Carla and later thinking about what
Albertson had told me, that
he barely knew Ruth and certainly was not
her lover, but yet was in
business with her father. I couldn't decide whether or not I believed
him.
37/
Mon, 21 Jun 54: in Oregon on a wild goose chase. A town called
Ashland is putting on three Shakespeare
plays in repertoire.
Unfortunately I won't have time to see any
but this is worth checking
out.
I haven't worked on my own play for what seems like ages. Well,
let's not dwell on that. Let's write "over and out"
instead.
It was a spectacular morning. The sky was cloudless and pale blue
and seemed to vibrate with life. Tall pine trees surrounded the motel.
The air was crisp and invigorating. I got the idea that no one worried
about smog up here.
I arrived at the hotel dining room
fifteen minutes early and found
Fitzgerald already at a table, reading the
paper. When I joined him he
said, "Good, I like a man who's on
time."
I'd been rehearsing a confession all
morning and tried it out
without preface.
"I have to level with you, Mr.
Fitzgerald. I'm not in the music
business."
He studied me before saying, "Who
are you then?"
"I'm a detective, sir."
I showed him my identification. Unlike most people, he read every
word on my license.
"What's this all about?," he
asked.
"I'm not quite sure. Have you been following the rat murders in
Los Angeles?"
"Who can miss them? It's the main thing selling papers these
days."
"I think there's a connection
somehow between the murders and
what's been happening in the music
industry. Only I don't know enough
about how the industry works to put it all
together."
He said, "How do you know
Ruth?"
"She was the housekeeper for a
woman who employed me to investigate
her husband. He was murdered, and I think he was killed because of a
music conspiracy he overturned."
Over breakfast I tried to explain it
all to him but the more I
rambled on, the more disjointed and
ridiculous everything seemed.
Fitzgerald listened silently, with little
visible reaction. When I was
done, he shocked me by grinning.
"You really get involved in your
work, young fellow," he said. "I
like a man with dedication like
that."
"You have any feelings about a
music conspiracy?"
"Let me tell you how the industry
works, son. During the
depression, and before the war, when the
big bands were starting up,
everything was racially divided. That's what Ella Mae, Ruth's mother,
never understood. She didn't think that was right. She could sing as
well as Peggy Lee, and she knew it, and I
knew it. But she didn't have
the freedom Peggy had, and we both knew
that, too. It finally drove
Ella Mae out of the business. Sure, it wasn't right, but that's the
way it was, it's the way society wanted
it, and you can't change
society overnight. That's what she never understood. So if there's
more mixing of musical style now, racially
speaking, that's a good
thing.
It's long overdue."
"There seem to be two ways of
looking at it," I said. "The
deejay
who was killed thought white people were
ruining Negro music by toning
it down, taking the sensual energy out of
it."
"You haven't told me this
deejay's name. I still know people down
there."
"Dan Davies. He called himself Lovin' Dan the
Sixty-Minute Man on
the air."
Fitzgerald's jaw tightened for a
moment, and I thought he was going
to choke on his bacon. Recovering, he said, "You said there
were two
ways of looking at it."
"On the other hand, there's an
organization called The Regiment for
Christian Authority that sees Negro music
as the work of the devil that
is corrupting the morals of youth."
He put the last bite of bacon into his
mouth. I could tell that
something I'd said was bothering him and
decided to go the whole hog.
"Mr. Fitzgerald, I talked to
Gregory Albertson last night."
My hunch was right. He
looked more unsettled than ever. I went
on.
"He says you two share a business
venture. Something to do with
music."
He glared at me.
"Did Ruth send you here?"
"No, sir."
"She wants my money. That's all she's ever wanted."
He stood up.
"She made her own bed, sir, and
she can damn well sleep in it."
I said, "Please sit down, Mr.
Fitzgerald."
"What do you really want from
me?"
"I'm trying to find out why the
deejay was murdered."
"I don't know a damn thing about
that. Good day."
I watched him go. He'd only eaten half his breakfast.
Gregory Albertson was ready and
waiting when I stopped by the motel
room.
I half-expected him to have disappeared. We exchanged automatic
morning pleasantries before getting into
our separate rental cars. I
followed him into Medford.
I waited in the car while Gregory went
to the door of the motel
room.
He knocked. And again. I got out of the car.
"She must still be
sleeping," he said, knocking again.
I tried the door. It opened, and I led the way inside. No Ruth.
The motel key was on the bed.
The lady at the front desk hadn't seen
her leave. She'd probably
spent most of the morning looking in the
mirror while she put on her
makeup, which was overdone and almost
grotesque. I wondered if she was
one of those smalltown women longing for
the big city. I wondered if
she knew what heat and smog could do to so
much mascara.
When we were back at our cars, I
said, "Okay, what's going
on?"
"I have no idea."
"Come on, we'll leave your car
here."
"Where are we going?"
"Three guesses."
I drove back to Ashland and to
Fitzgerald's house. I pulled into
the driveway.
"Come on," I told Albertson,
getting out.
But no one answered the door here
either. I peeked in the window
and found no signs of life.
Next door a woman in a robe came out
and walked out to the mailbox
on the street. I met her on her way back.
"Excuse me, we're looking for
Clyde Fitzgerald."
"He left fifteen, twenty minutes
ago," she said. She was the
opposite of the clerk at the motel,
scrubbed as clean as a baby, her
skin clear and pale in the morning
sun. "Soon as the new cleaning
lady
arrived, they drove off."
"Cleaning lady?"
"A Negro woman."
"I guess they got tired of
waiting for us," I said. "You
wouldn't
happen to know where they went?"
"No, I don't. To get cleaning supplies at the hardware,
maybe.
They drove off in Clyde's pick-up."
Driving back to the motel, I said,
"You're not telling me