Clandestine

The girls all rushed to their father and hugged at his legs and pulled his suit coat. He blew them kisses and shooed them gently inside as he shut the door behind us. Walking across the lawn to my car, Dudley Smith said matter-of-factly, "Now do you know why I hate woman-killers worse than Satan, lad?"

"Drive, lad, and listen," Dudley was saying. "Yesterday I sent out some queries on handsome Eddie. Edward Thomas Engels, born April 19, 1919, Seattle, Washington. No criminal record, I checked with the feds. Navy service in the war, '42—'46. Good record. Honorable discharge. Our friend was a pharmacist's mate. I called the L.A. Credit Bureau. He financed two cars with a finance company, and they checked him out. He listed two credit references. That's who we're going to see now, lad, known intimates of handsome Eddie."

We pulled up to the light at Pico and Bundy. I looked to Dudley for some clue to our destination.

"Venice, lad," he said. "California, not Italy. Keep driving due west."

"Why the light suit, Dudley?" I tried again.

"Symbolism, lad. We're going to play good guy-bad guy. This fellow we're going to see, Lawrence Brubaker, is an old chum of handsome Eddie's. He owns a bar in Venice. A queer joint. He's a known homo with a lifetime of lewd-conduct arrests. A surefire degenerate. We'll play with him like an accordion, lad. I'll browbeat him, you come to his rescue. Just follow my lead, Freddy lad. I trust your instincts."

I turned left on Lincoln then right on Venice Boulevard, headed for the beach and my first real interrogation. Dudley Smith smoked and stared out the window in abstracted silence. "Pull up to the curb at Windward and Main," he said finally as we came in view of the ocean. "We'll walk to the bar, give us time to talk."

I pulled up and parked in the lot of an American Legion meeting hall, got out, stretched my legs and gulped in the bracing sea air. Dudley got out and clapped me on the back.

"Now listen, lad. I've been checking the files for unsolved murders of women that fit handsome Eddie's MO. I found three, lad, all choke jobs, as far back as March, 1948. One was found three blocks from here, strangled and beaten to death in an alley off Twenty-seventh and Pacific. She was twenty-two, lad. Keep that in mind when we brace this degenerate Brubaker."

Dudley Smith smiled slowly, a blank-faced, emotionless carnivore smile, and I knew that this was the real man, devoid of all his actor's conceit. I nodded. "Right, partner," I said, feeling myself go cold all over.

Larry's Little Log Cabin was a block from the beach, a pink stucco building with phony redwood swinging doors and a sign over them posting its hours—6:00 A.M, to 2:00 A.M., the maximum allowed by law.

Dudley nudged me as we entered. "It's only a queer joint at night, lad. In the daytime it's strictly a hangout for local riffraff. Follow my lead, lad, and don't upset the locals."

The room was very narrow, and very dimly lit. There were hunting scenes on the walls and sawdust on the floor. Dudley nudged me again. "Brubaker changes the decor at night, lad, muscle-boy paintings all over the walls. A sergeant from Venice Vice told me."

There were a half-dozen elderly juiceheads sitting at the logshaped bar, slopping up brew. They looked dejected and meditative at the same time. The bartender was dozing behind the counter. He looked like countermen everywhere—jaded even in sleep. Dudley walked over to the bar and slammed two huge hands down on the wooden surface. The bar reverberated and the early morning drinkers snapped out of their reverie. The bartender's head jerked back abruptly and he started to stutter: "Y-y-yess, s-s-s-sir?"

"Good morning!" Dudley bellowed musically. "Could you direct me to the proprietor of this fine establishment, Mr. Lawrence Brubaker?"

The barkeep began a stuttering sentence, then thought better of it and pointed to a doorway at the back of the bar. Dudley bowed to the bartender, then propelled me before him in that direction, whispering, "We're cop antagonists, lad. I'm the pragmatist, you're the idealist. Brubaker's a homo and you're a fine-looking young man. He'll go for you. If I have to get rough with him, you touch him gently. We have to go about this in a roundabout way. We can't let him know this is a murder investigation."

I nodded my head and twisted free of Dudley's grasp. I felt myself getting very keyed up.

Dudley knocked softly on the door and spoke in an effete American voice, the last syllables strained and upward intoned. "Larry, open up, baby!" A moment later the door was opened by an almost totally bald, blue-eyed, very skinny mulatto who stood there staring at us for a brief instant before cowering backward almost reflexively.

"Knock, knock," Dudley bellowed in his brogue. "Who's there? Dudley Smith, so queers beware. Ha-ha-ha! Police officers, Brubaker, here to assure our constituency that we are on the job, ever vigilant!"

Lawrence Brubaker stood in the middle of the office, his thin body trembling.