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