Clandestine

"Turnabout?"

"Right. You wanted to know about the missing hours in my life . . ."

"All right, darling, turnabout. After the accident, much self-pity: feeling trapped, a saintly dead mother, a fat sister, a buffoon for a father, and all the goddamned operations—and false hopes and speculations and guilt and self-hatred and anger. And the detachment. That was the worst of all. Knowing I was not of this time and place—or any time and place. Then learning to walk all over again, and feeling joyous until the doctor told me I could never have children. Then awful, awful bitterness and the little lessons in acceptance."

"What do you mean, Lor?"

"I mean never knowing when my bad leg would go out completely, and I'd fall on my ass. It always seemed to happen when I was wearing a white dress. Learning to take stairs. Having to leave early for class when I knew there would be stairs to climb. The awful, gentle people who wanted to help. The men who thought I'd be an easy lay because I was crippled. They were right, you know. I was an easy lay."

"So was I, Lor."

"Anyway, then college, and law school, and books and painting and music and a few men and some kind of reconciliation with my family, and finally the D.A.'s office."

"And?"

"And what, Freddy?" Lorna's voice rose in exasperation. "You are so goddamned persistent! I know you want me to talk about the 'wonder'—whatever the hell it is—but I just don't feel it."

"Easy, sweetheart. I wasn't prying."

"You were and you weren't. I know you want to know everything about me, but give it time. I'm not the wonder."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not! You want to control the wonder. That's why you're a cop. Freddy, I want to be with you, but you can never control me. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand that you're still afraid of things. I'm not anymore."

"Don't be oblique, goddamnit!"

"Shit," I said, feeling suddenly the weight of my carefully thought-out life collapse from three weeks of tension and expectation. "Wonder, justice, horseshit. I just don't know anymore."

"Yes, you do," Lorna said. "There's me. I'm not wonder or justice."

"What are you?"

"I'm your Lorna."

That night and early morning we didn't go sight-seeing on State Street or take a romantic walk on the beach, or tour historic Santa Barbara Mission. We went dancing—in our lemon-colored room—to the music, on the radio, of the Four Lads, the McGuire Sisters, Teresa Brewer, and the immortal big band of the late Glenn Miller.

We found a station that played requests, and I called in and importuned them to play a host of old standards that were suddenly dear to me in the light of Lorna. The disc jockey obliged, and Lorna and I held each other close and moved slowly across the room to the soft beat of "The Way You Look Tonight," "Blue Moon," "Perfidia," "Blueberry Hill," "Moments to Remember," "Good Night, Irene" and, of course, Patti Page singing "The Tennessee Waltz."

At dawn on Monday morning, we got up and reluctantly drove back to L.A. and the administration of justice.

13

I was sound asleep in my apartment when the telephone rang. It was two o'clock Monday afternoon. I had been asleep a scant three hours.

It was Lorna. "Freddy, I have to see you right away. It's urgent."

"What is it, Lor?"

She sounded gravely worried. There was a timbre to her voice I had never heard before. "I can't talk about it on the phone."

"Did they arraign Engels?"

"Yes. He pleaded not guilty. Dudley Smith was there with the assistant D.A. and Engels started screaming. The bailiffs had to restrain him."

"Jesus. Are you at your office?"

"Yes."

"I'll be there in forty-five minutes."

It took me fifty-five, dressing hurriedly and highballing my Buick at ten miles over the speed limit. I flashed my badge at the parking attendant at the lot on Temple and he nodded crisply, placing an official-looking piece of paper under my windshield wiper. Two minutes later I was barging through the door of Lorna's office.

Lorna had company, and they looked grave. Both were smartly tailored men in their early forties. One of them, the more impressive-looking of the two, seemed familiar. He was sitting on Lorna's green leather couch with his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. He fingered a leather briefcase stationed next to him on the floor. He was intimidating even in this casual posture. The other man was sandy-haired and plump, and wearing an ascot and a cashmere sweater on a day when the temperature promised to reach ninety-five. He was licking his lips repeatedly and moving his eyes back and forth from the briefcase man to me.

Lorna made the introductions as I pulled up a wooden chair next to her desk. "Detective Fred Underhill, this is Walter Canfield." She pointed to the man with the briefcase. "And this is Mr. Clark Winton." She nodded in the direction of the man with the ascot. Both men acknowledged my presence with stares—Canfield's hostile, Winton's nervous.

"What can I do for you, gentlemen?" I said.