Clandestine

"Your 'case'? I think that as of this moment you have nothing but a strong suspect and an incredible gift of intuition. This man Engels is so far nothing but a gambler and a womanizer, neither of which is criminal behavior. He's also probably a homo, which doesn't make him a murderer. You have no hard evidence. I don't think much of your 'case.'"

"And my intuition, Captain?"

"I trust your intuition, Underhill, or I would have suspended you from duty half an hour ago."

"And, sir?"

"And . . . what do you want, Underhill?"

"I want to be part of the investigation, and I want to go to the Detective Bureau when I pass the sergeant's exam later this year."

Jurgensen laughed bitterly. He reached into his desk, pulled out a scratch pad, and wrote something on it, ripping the page free and handing it to me. "This is my home address, in Glendale. Be there tonight at eight-thirty. I want you to tell your story to Dudley Smith. He'll decide the course of this investigation. Now leave me alone."

When he said the words "Dudley Smith," Jurgensen's cold blue eyes had bored into me like poison darts, waiting for me to show fear or apprehension. I didn't.

"Yes, sir," I said, then got up and walked out the door without saluting.

Dudley Smith was a lieutenant in the homicide bureau, a fearsome personage and legendary cop who had killed five men in the line of duty. Irish-born and Los Angeles-raised, he still clung tenaciously to his high-pitched, musical brogue, which was as finely tuned as a Stradivarius. He often lectured at the academy on interrogation techniques, and I remembered how that brogue could be alternately soothing or brutal, inquisitive or dumbfounded, sympathetic or filled with pious rage.

He was over six feet tall and broad as a ceiling beam. He was an immense brownness—brown hair cut close, small brown eyes, and always dressed in a baggy brown vested suit. There was a frightening set to his face, regardless of the interrogation technique he was explaining. He was a master actor with a huge ego who was adept at changing roles at the drop of a hat, yet who always managed to impart purity of personality to the part he was currently playing.

I was at the academy when the Black Dahlia investigation was going on. Smith was in charge of rounding up all known sex criminals in Los Angeles. After finishing his lecture, applause-loving actor that he was, he told us about the kind of "human scum" with which he was dealing. He told us that he had heard things and seen things and done things in his search for the killer "of that tragic, thrill-seeking colleen, Elizabeth Short" that he hoped we, the "cream of Los Angeles manhood," about to enter "the grandest calling on God's earth" would never have to hear or see or do. It was brilliantly elliptical. Speculation on the sternness of Smith's measures was the number one topic of conversation at the academy for weeks. I asked one of my instructors, Sergeant Clark, about him.

"He's a brutal son of a bitch who gets the job done," he said.

Elizabeth Short's killer was never found—which meant that Dudley Smith was human, and fallible. I pumped myself up with logic as I drove out Los Feliz to Glendale that evening. I went over my story from all possible angles, knowing I could not betray any personal knowledge of Maggie Cadwallader. I was prepared for a master performance myself, prepared to kiss the big Irishman's ass, to butt heads with him, to run profane, run subservient, run any way but stupid with him in my effort to be part of the investigation that brought down Eddie Engels.

Captain Jurgensen lived in a small wood-framed house on a treeless side street off of Brand Avenue near downtown Glendale. As I walked up the steps a dog started barking and I heard Jurgensen shush him: "Friend, Colonel, friend. Now, hush." The dog whimpered and trotted over to greet me, going straight for my crotch.

Jurgensen was sitting inside the screened porch on a lawn chair. "Hello, Underhill," he said, "sit down." He pointed to the wicker armchair next to him. I sat down.

"About this afternoon, Captain—" I started to say.

Jurgensen shushed me as he had the dog. "Forget it, Fred. Enough said. As of now you are temporarily attached to the detective bureau. Lieutenant Smith will tell you about it. He'll be here in a few minutes. Would you like iced tea? Or a beer?"

"Beer would be fine, sir."

The captain brought it, in a coffee cup, just as I saw an old prewar Dodge pull up to the curb. I watched as Dudley Smith carefully locked the car, hitched up his trousers and walked across the front lawn toward us.

"Don't be scared, Fred," Jurgensen said, "he's only human."

I laughed and sipped my beer as Dudley Smith knocked loudly on the flimsy wooden frame of the porch. "Knock, knock," he said broadly in his musical, high-pitched brogue. "Who's there? Dudley Smith, so crooks beware." He laughed at his own poetry, then walked in and stuck out a huge hand to Captain Jurgensen. "Hello, John. How are you?"