Clandestine

It was turning dusk when I got to Dago. A drunken sailor gave me directions to the El Cortez, a pink Spanish-style building with an outside elevator enclosed in glass.

I ditched my car in the parking lot and tore through the lobby to the front desk. The clerk told me that the guests who were here for the American Bar Association convention were at the banquet in the Galleon Room. He pointed to a large banquet hall off to his left. I ran in, catching glimpses of a stern-looking man at the podium, who was speaking ambiguously about something called justice.

I walked quietly along four walls, scanning every rapt and bored face at every table. There was no Lorna. There was an exit at the rear of the room, and I went for it, hoping it would provide access to an elevator to the hotel proper.

I opened the door into a hallway just as Lorna limped out of the ladies' room, talking to another woman. "I only come for the food, Helen," she was saying. Helen noticed me first, and must have known something was up, because she nudged Lorna, who turned around and saw me and dropped her purse and cane and said, "Freddy, what—"

Helen said, "Excuse me, Lorna," and darted out of sight.

I smiled and said, "I never liked phones, Lor."

"You lunatic. What's happened to you? You look different."

"I think I am different."

I bent down and handed Lorna her cane and purse. Impulsively I threw my arms around her and said, "It's over, Lor. It's over." I grabbed her waist and lifted her off the floor and held her way over my head until she shrieked, "Freddy, goddamnit, put me down!"

I held her higher still, tossing her up to where her head almost banged the ceiling.

"Freddy, goddamnit, please!"

I lowered my wife to the lushly carpeted floor, She retained her hold around my neck and looked into my eyes sternly and said, "So it's over. And now?"

"There's us, Lor. There's a great big little boy who needs us. He's with your father now."

"What great big—"

"He's Maggie Cadwallader's son. That's all I'll tell you. I want you back, but it's no good without him."

"Oh, Jesus, Freddy."

"You can teach him justice, and I can teach him whatever I know."

"He's an orphan?"

"Yes."

"There are legalities, Freddy."

"Fuck the legalities; he needs us."

"I don't know."

"I do. I want you back."

"Why? You think it will be different this time?"

"I know it will be."

"Oh, God, Freddy!"

"We'll never know unless we try."

"That's true, but I just don't know! Besides, I've got two more days down here at the convention."

"We'll never know unless we try."

"It's a standoff, Freddy."

"It always has been, Lor."

Lorna dug into her purse and pulled out her keys. She detached the ones for the house in Laurel Canyon and handed them to me. She smiled, and brushed tears out of her eyes. "We'll never know unless we try," she said.

We held each other tightly for several minutes, until we heard applause coming from the banquet room.

"I have to go now," Lorna said. "I'm on in a few minutes."

"I'll see you at home."

"Yes."

We kissed, and Lorna composed herself, opened the door and moved into the banquet room to the sound of dying applause for the last speaker.

As she limped to the dais, I thought of Wacky Walker and wonder and the constituency of the dead and mad Dudley Smith and poor Larry Brubaker and orphanhood and the strictures of my once inviolate heart. Then I thought of redemption, and got my car and caught the freeway back to L.A.

About the author

JAMES ELLROY was born in 1948 in Los Angeles, the city that serves as backdrop for his acclaimed crime fiction. His novels include L.A. Confidential (which was made into an Academy Award-winning motion picture in 1997), Because the Night, Brown's Requiem, The Big Nowhere, White Jazz, The Black Dahlia, and American Tabloid.