Clandestine

"The woman looked like an old girlfriend of mine. Finding her dead got me, I guess." I lowered my head, feigning disbelief at the awesomeness of death.

DiCenzo bought it. "You'll get over these things," he said. Lowering his voice, he added, "You'll have to, if you wanna stay on the job."

I got up to go. "Thanks, Sergeant," I said.

"Anytime, kid. Be good. Take care of yourself." DiCenzo smiled heartily and went back to devouring his lunch.

I drove up to Hollywood Station on Wilcox just south of Sunset and lucked out, walking brazenly through the entrance hall, nodding at the desk sergeant and walking straight upstairs to the detective squad room, where a briefing on Maggie Cadwallader's murder had just begun.

The small room was packed with at least twenty dicks standing and sitting at desks, listening as a portly older cop explained what he wanted done. I stood in the doorway, trying to blend in like just another off-duty officer. No one seemed to notice me.

"I think we got burglary," the older cop was saying. "The woman's apartment was ransacked but good. No prints—the only prints we got belong to the victim and her landlady she used to play cards with. The man from downstairs who found the body left some, too. They've been questioned and are not suspects. We got no recent murders on the books that match this. Now here's what I want: I want every burglar known to use violence brought in and questioned. There was no rape, but I want all burglars with sex offenses on their rap sheets brought in anyway. I want all burglary reports in the Hollywood area for the past six months that resulted in arrest and dismissal checked out. Phone the D.A.'s office for disposition of all cases. I want to know how many of these shitheads we caught are back out on the street, then I want all of them brought in and questioned.

"I've got two men talking to neighbors. I want to know about what valuables this Cadwallader dame owned. From there we can lean on fences and check out the pawnshops. I want all the dope addicts on the boulevard brought in and leaned on hard. This is probably a panic killing, and a hophead looking for a fix might strangle a dame and then leave without taking anything. I've got two men questioning people in the neighborhood about that night. If anyone saw or heard anything, we'll know about it. That's it for now. Let's break it up."

That was my cue to leave. I checked my watch. It was two-forty. I had three hours before I had to report to duty.

I walked out to my car amidst a tangle of grumbling detectives. I lowered the top and sat in the front seat and thought. No, not burglary, I kept saying to myself; not this time. Maybe the Jensen woman, maybe the matches were coincidental, but Maggie Cadwallader had a strangeness about her, almost an aura of impending doom, and when she saw my gun she had screamed, "Please, no! I won't let you hurt me! I know who sent you! I knew he would." She had been a strange woman, one who had wrapped her small world tightly about herself, yet let frequent strangers in.

The Silver Star bar was the place to start, but it was useless to hit it in the daytime, so I drove to a phone booth and got the address of the Small World Import-Export Company: 615 North Virgil. I drove there, exhilarated—and feeling slightly guilty about it.

The Small World Import-Export Company was in a large warehouse in the middle of a residential block specializing in rooming houses for students at L.A. City College a few blocks away. Every house on the block advertised "Student Housing," and "Low Rates for Students." There were a lot of "students" sitting on their front porches, drinking beer and playing catch on their beat-up front lawns. They were about my age, and had the superior look of G.I. Bill recipients. Two wars, Underhill, I thought, and you avoided them both and got what you wanted. Now here you are, a patrolman in Watts imitating a detective in Hollywood. Be careful.

I was. I entered the warehouse through its ratty front door stenciled with a ratty-looking globe by a guy who obviously didn't know his geography very well. But the receptionist knew a cop and a badge when she saw them, and when I inquired about friends of Maggie Cadwallader she said, "Oh, that's easy." She dialed a number on her desk phone, saying, "Mrs. Grover, our head bookkeeper, was a good friend of Maggie's. They had lunch together almost every day." Into the phone she said, "Mrs. Grover, there's a policeman here to talk to you about Maggie." The receptionist put down the phone and said, "She'll be out in a minute." She smiled. I smiled back.

We were exchanging about our eighth and ninth smiles when an efficient-looking woman of about forty came into the waiting room. "Officer?" she asked.

"Mrs. Grover," I answered, "I'm Officer Underhill, Los Angeles Police Department. Could I talk with you?"

"Certainly," she said, very businesslike. "Would you like to come to my office?"