Clandestine

have been something else, but I knew what it was. I upended the mattress; the bottom of it was soaked through with brownish matter.

I found what I knew to be old blood in the bathtub, in the living room closet, and on the dining room walls. Somehow each new sign of carnage brought forth in me a deeper and deeper sense of calm. Until I walked into the den that adjoined the kitchen and saw the crib, its railings splattered with blood, the matting that lined the inside caked thick with blood, and the teddy bear who lay dead atop it, his cotton guts spilling out and soaked with blood from another time that was reaching out to hold me.

Then I got out, knowing that this was the constituency of the dead that Wacky Walker had written about so many years before.

V

Wisconsin Dutch

19

I watched from my window as the propellers churned their way through a billowy cloud bank over the Pacific. The plane then arced left and headed inland for the long trip to a middle America I had never seen: first Chicago, then a connecting flight to southern Wisconsin, birthplace of Margaret Cadwallader and Marcella DeVries Harris.

As California, Arizona, and Nevada passed below me, I shifted my gaze from that arid landscape to the whirring propellers and became hypnotized by their circuitous motion. After a while a process of synchronization took over: my mind started to run in perfect circles, logically, chronologically, and in thematic unison: Marcella DeVries was born in Tunnel City, Wisconsin, in 1912. Tunnel City was eighty-five miles from Waukesha, where Maggie Cadwallader was born in 1914. Two years and eighty-five miles apart.

'I'm just a Wisconsin farm girl,' Maggie had told me. She had also gotten hysterical when she'd seen my off-duty revolver. 'No, no, no, no!' she had screamed. 'I won't let you hurt me! I know who sent you!'

Six months later she was dead, strangled in the very bedroom where we had made love. The time of her death coincided with Marcella Harris's abrupt journey to parts unknown.

'You can't go home again,' Marcella had told her neighbor, Mrs. Groberg.

'Gooey cheese and smelly sauerkraut,' her son had remembered—ethnic foods from the German/Dutch/Polish-dominated state of Wisconsin.

A comely stewardess brought me coffee but got only a distracted grunt of thanks. I stared at the propeller closest to me, watching it cut the air, feeling a deepening symbiosis of past and present, and a further unfolding of logic. Eddie Engels and Janet Valupeyk had been lovers. Eddie had been intimate with Maggie Cadwallader. Eddie had told Janet in the early summer of '51 to rent Marcella Harris the apartment on Hibiscus Canyon. It had to be related, all of it. It was too perfect not to be.

When the plane landed in Chicago and I hit terra firma again, I decided to change my plans and rent a car to drive the hundred miles or so into Wisconsin. I picked up an efficient-looking Ford at a rental agency and set off. It was near dusk and still very hot. There was a breeze coming from Lake Michigan that did its best to cool things off, but failed.

I drove into the heart of the city, watching the early evening tourists and window-shoppers, not knowing what I was looking for. When I passed a printer's shop on the near north side I knew that it was my destination. I went in and purchased five dollars' worth of protective coloration; two hundred phony insurance investigator business cards, these bearing my real name and a ritzy-sounding Beverly Hills address and phone number.

At a nearby novelty store I purchased three reasonably realistic-looking badges designating me 'Deputy Sheriff,' 'Official Police Stenographer,' and 'International Investigator.' When I scrutinized that last one more closely, I threw it out the window of my car—it had the distinct look of a kiddies' cereal box giveaway. But the others looked real, my business cards looked real, and the .38 automatic in my suitcase was real. I found a hotel room on the north side and went to bed early; I had a hot date with history, and I wanted to be rested for it.

Southern Wisconsin was colored every conceivable shade of green. I crossed the Illinois-Wisconsin border at eight o'clock in the morning and left the wide eight-lane interstate, pushing my '52 Ford sedan north on a narrow strip of blacktop through a succession of dairy farms interrupted every few miles or so by small lakes.

I almost missed Tunnel City, spotting the turn-off sign at the last moment. I swung a sharp right-hand turn and entered a two-lane road that ran straight through the middle of a giant cabbage field. After half a mile a sign announced 'Tunnel City, Wis. Pop. 9,818.' I looked in vain for a tunnel, then realized as I dropped down into a shallow valley that the town was probably named for some kind of underground irrigation system that fed water to the endless fields of cabbage that surrounded it.

The town itself was intact in every respect from fifty years ago: red brick courthouse, red brick grain and feed stores, red brick general store; white brick drugstore, grocery store, and public library. The focal point for the little community seemed to be the two tractor supply stores, glass-fronted, situated directly across the street from each other, their crystal-clear windows jammed with spanking-new farm machinery.

A few sunburned men in coveralls stood in front of each store, talking good-naturedly. I parked my car and joined one group on the sidewalk. It was very hot and very humid, and I immediately shed my suit coat. They spotted me for a city slicker right away, and I saw subtle signals pass between them. I knew I was going to be the butt of some jokes, so I resigned myself to it.

I was about to say 'Good morning' when the largest of the three men immediately in front of me shook his head sadly and said, 'Not a very good morning, young fellow.'

'It is a bit muggy,' I said.

'You from Chicago?' a small beetle-browed man asked. His small blue eyes danced with the knowledge that he had a live one.

I didn't want to disappoint him. 'I'm from Hollywood. You can get anything you want in Hollywood except good sauerkraut juice, so I came to Wisconsin because I couldn't afford a trip to Germany. Take me to your wisest cabbage.'

This got a big laugh all around. I dug into my coat pocket and brought out a handful of my business cards, giving one to each man. 'Fred Underhill,' I said, 'Amalgamated Insurance, Los Angeles.' When the stolid-looking farmers didn't seem impressed, I dropped my bomb: 'You men ever read the L.A. papers?'

'No reason to,' the big man said.

'Why?' the beetle-browed man asked.

'What's it got to do with the price of cheese in Wisconsin?' another asked.

I took that as my cue: 'A Tunnel City girl was murdered in Los Angeles last month. Marcella DeVries. Married name Harris. The killer hasn't been found. I'm investigating a claim and working with the L.A. police. Marcella was here four years ago, and she may have been back even later than that. I need to talk to people who knew her. I want the son of a bitch who killed her. I . . .' I let my voice trail off.

The men were staring at me blankly. Their lack of expression told me they knew Marcella DeVries and weren't surprised about her murder. Their immobile faces also told me that Marcella DeVries was an anomaly to them, far beyond the limits of their smalltown bailiwick.

No one said a word. The other group of tractor worshipers had halted their conversation and were staring at me. I pointed across the street to a white three-story building that bore a sign reading 'Badger Hotel—Always Clean Rooms.'

'Are the rooms there really always clean?' I asked my rapt audience.

No one answered.

'I'll be staying there,' I said. 'If any of you want to talk to me, or know anyone who might, that's where I'll be.'

I locked my car, got my suitcase out of the trunk, and walked to the Badger Hotel.

I lay on my clean bed for four hours, in my skivvies, waiting for an onslaught of farmers bent on detailing