Clandestine

'Ahhh, yes. You said 'knew.' You haven't seen him recently, then?'

'No, I haven't. Why?' Her voice was steady, but her composure seemed to be faltering.

'Miss Valupeyk, are you all right?' I asked.

'Shut up,' Dudley snapped.

I went on, 'Miss Valupeyk, the purpose of our—'

'I said, shut up!' Dudley roared, his high-pitched brogue almost breaking.

Janet Valupeyk looked like she was about to break into tears.

Dudley whispered, 'Wait for me in the car. I won't be long.'

I walked outside and waited, sitting on the hood of my car and wondering what I had done to irk Dudley.

He came out half an hour later. His tone was conciliatory, but firm; his voice very low and patient, as if explaining something to an idiot child. 'Lad, when I tell you to shut up, do it. Follow my lead. I had to play that woman very slowly. She was on dope, lad, and too confused to follow the questions of two men.'

'All right, Dudley,' I said, letting the slightest edge of pride go into my voice. 'It won't happen again.'

'Good, lad. I got more confirmation, lad. She lived with handsome Eddie for two years. She paid the bills for that no-good gigolo. He used to beat her up. Once he tried to choke her, but came to his senses. He's a longtime cunt-hound, lad. He used to pick up girls even when he was living with lonely Janet. She was in love with him, lad, and he treated her like dirt. He bought whores and paid them to stand abuse. And he's queer, lad. Queer as a three-dollar bill. Boys are his passion, and women his victims.'

I was amazed. 'How did you get that out of her?'

Dudley laughed. 'When I realized she was on dope, rather than booze, I checked out her medicine cabinet. There was a doctor's prescription bottle of codeine pills. A hophead, lad, but a legal one. So I played on her fear of losing that prescription, and it all came out: Eddie jilted her for some muscle boy. She loves Eddie and she hates him and she loves codeine most of all. A tragedy, lad.'

Without being told, I took the long way back to downtown L.A. Laurel Canyon Boulevard, with its rustic, twisting streets would give me plenty of time to probe the man who was growing before my eyes in several different directions.

Dudley Smith was a wonder broker, but a brutal one, and I felt a very strange ambivalence about him. He was too sharp for elliptical games, so I came right out with it: 'Tell me about the Dahlia,' I said.

Dudley feigned surprise. 'The Dahlia? What Dahlia?'

'Very funny. The Dahlia.'

'Oh. Ahhh, yes. The Dahlia. What precisely was it you wanted to know, lad?'

'How far you had to go in your investigation, what you saw, what you had to do.' I turned to give Dudley a look that I hope conveyed equal parts interest and tight-lipped allegiance. He smiled demonically and I felt another little chill go through me.

'Watch the road, lad, and I'll tell you. You've heard tales, have you?'

'Not really.'

'Then hear one now, from the horse's mouth: I have seen many, many crimes on women, lad, and the crime on Elizabeth Short exceeded them all by a country mile—the atrocities committed on her defied even Satan's logic. She was systematically tortured for days, and then sawed in half while she was still alive.'

'Jesus Christ,' I said.

'Jesus Christ, indeed, lad. The investigation was three weeks old when I was called in. I was given a special assignment: check out all the psycho confessors that were being held without bail as material witnesses; the ones the dicks thought could actually have done it. There were thirty of them, lad, and they were the scum of the earth —degenerate mother-haters and baby-rapers and animal fuckers. I eliminated twenty-two of them right away. Breaking an arm here and a jaw there, I confronted them with intimate facts about lovely Beth's wounds. I gauged their reactions as I hit them and made them fear me more than Satan himself. None of them did it; they were guilty, filthy degenerates who wanted to be punished, and I obliged them. But none of them were guilty of the crime against lovely Beth.'

Dudley paused dramatically and stretched, waiting for me to ask him to continue.

I obliged: 'And the other eight?'

'Ahhh, yes. My hard suspects; the ones whose reactions old Dudley wasn't quite astute enough to gauge. Well, lad, I was astute enough to know that those eight had one thing in common: they were stark raving insane, slobbering, frothing-at-the-mouth lunatics capable of anything, which made them rather difficult to deal with. I was sure their insanity was of such an intensity that they could withstand any degree of physical duress. Besides, they thought they actually had croaked lovely Beth; they'd confessed to it, hadn't they?

'The dicks I'd talked to told me they figured the killer had hung lovely Beth from a ceiling beam; there were rope burns on her ankles. That got me to thinking. I needed to shock these degenerate lunatics. I needed to break through their insanity. First I rented a friend's warehouse. A big, grand, deserted place it was. Then I procured a fine-looking young female stiff from a pathologist at the morgue who owed old Dudley a favor. A big one, lad—old Dudley looked the other way for this fellow, and he belonged to old Dudley for life.

'Dick Carlisle and I snuck the stiff over to the warehouse late one night. I dyed her hair jet black, like the Dahlia's. I stripped her nude, and tied her ankles with a rope, and Dick and I hoisted her up feet first and hung her from a low ceiling beam. Then Dick went and got our eight degenerates from the Hall of Justice jail. We let them view her, one at a time, lad, with appropriate props. One scum was a knife man; he had scores of arrests for knife fighting. I handed him a butcher knife and made him slice the corpse. He could hardly do it. He didn't have it in him. Another filth was a child molester, recently paroled from Atascadero. His M.O. was asking little girls if he could kiss their private parts. I made him kiss the dead girl's private parts, smell that dead sex flesh up close. He couldn't do it. And on and on. I was looking for a reaction so vile, so unspeakable that I would know that this was the scum that killed Beth Short.'

I was stunned. Speechless. I felt my hands gripping the steering wheel so hard that I thought I would push it through the front of the car. My voice was breaking when I finally got it out: 'And?'

'And, lad, I kept them there through the night, making them look at the corpse. I hit them, and Dick hit them, and we made them kiss the dead girl and fondle her while we questioned them.'

'And?'

'And, lad, none of them killed lovely Beth.'

'Jesus Christ,' I said.

'Ahhh, yes. Jesus Christ. I didn't get the fiend who killed the Dahlia, lad. I know in my heart of hearts that no one ever will. I took the young dead woman back to the morgue to be cremated. She was a lonely Jane Doe, who unknowingly served justice by her death. I went to confession the next morning. I told the father what I had done and asked for absolution. I got it. Then I went home and prayed to God and to Jesus and to the Blessed Virgin to let me have the strength to do it again and again, if I had to, in the name of justice and the church.'

We were coming down into Hollywood. I pulled over to the curb at Crescent Heights and Sunset. I stared at Dudley's florid, demonic face. He stared back.

'And, lad?' he said, mimicking my tone.

'And what, Dudley?' I managed to get out, my voice steady.

'And do you think Dudley's a lunatic, lad?'

'No, I think you're a master actor.'

'Ha-ha-ha! Well said. Is 'actor' a euphemism for 'madman,' lad?'

'No, I just think sometimes you're not sure what role you're playing.'

Tiny brown predator eyes bored into me. 'Lad, all my roles are in the name of justice and all my roles are me. Don't you forget that.'

'Sure, Dudley.'

'And, lad, don't think I don't know you. Don't think I don't know how smart you think you are. Don't think I didn't notice how you relished giving me guff in front of Brubaker. Don't think I don't know what a son of a bitch you think I am. Ha-ha-ha! Enough sorrow and contention, lad. Drive me downtown and take the rest of the day off.'

I dropped Dudley downtown in front of Central Division headquarters on Los Angeles Street. He stuck his big hand out and we shook. 'Tomorrow, lad. Eight A.M. at the hotel. We'll go over our evidence and decide when we'll