THE DEADLY DOOWOP

A Red Trevorak Mystery

By Charles Deemer

 

Chapters 1-9

 

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!

    The proud Mortician refuses to display the body in such a condition, he

    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</