All the lights in the courtyard were off. I stood there a few moments, savoring the wonder of the night and what I had just discovered, then walked behind the bungalows. There was a corrugated overhang that sheltered the tenants’ cars. The car on the end, shiny in the moonlight, was a bright red ’49 Ford with a white ragtop. A foxtail dangled from the radio antenna. I flicked it with my finger.
“You killed Maggie Cadwallader and God knows who else, you degenerate son of a bitch,” I said, “and I’m going to see that you pay.”
9
My case. My suspect. My revenge? My collar? My glory and gravy train? All these thoughts went through my head the following day as I walked my beat on sun-beaten Central Avenue.
A decision was due, and I would have to act either rationally or quixotically. I gave my options more thought, and as my tour ended I made a decision–a humbling, but safe one. I changed back into my civvies and knocked on Captain Jurgensen’s door.
“Enter,” he called through it. I walked in and saluted. Jurgensen dog-eared his paperback _Othello_ and looked at me. “Yes, Underhill?” he said.
“Sir,” I said, “I know who killed that woman who was found strangled in Hollywood last week. He may have killed others. I can’t make the collar myself. I need to turn my evidence over to someone who can formalize an investigation, so I came to you.”
“Perdition, catch my soul,” Jurgensen said, then sighed and drew a pipe and pouch from his desk drawer. I stood at parade rest while he took his time packing the pipe and lighting it. He seemed to have forgotten I was there. I was about to clear my throat when he said, “For Christ’s sake, Underhill, sit down and tell me about it.”
It took me twenty minutes, by the electric clock on the captain’s wall.
I covered everything, except my coupling with Maggie Cadwallader. I told him of the similarities between the two killings. I told him of my noticing the matches in Leona Jensen’s apartment last February, and how that was the link that drew me to the Silver Star. I omitted my knowledge of the diamond brooch.
During the course of telling my story, I watched Jurgensen’s normally stoic expression veer between curiosity, anger, and some kind of bitter amusement. When I finished he stared at me in silence. I stared back, sensing that phony contrition for the liberties I had taken wouldn’t be believed. We stared at each other some more.
The captain looked very grave. He started to tamp his pipe bowl into his palm very slowly and deliberately. “Underhill,” he said, “you are a supremely arrogant young man. In the course of what you arrogantly call your ‘investigation,’ you have committed infractions of departmental regulations that could end your career; you have committed two felonies that could send you to San Quentin; and implicitly you have held the detectives of two divisions and the Homicide Bureau up to ridicule–”
“Sir, I–”
“Don’t interrupt, Underhill! I am a captain and you are a patrolman, and don’t forget it.” Jurgensen’s face was very red, and there was an angry blue vein throbbing in his neck.
“Sir, I apologize.”
“Very well. I could crucify you for your arrogance, but I won’t.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me yet, Officer. You are a very gifted young man, but your arrogance supersedes your gifts. Arrogance cannot be tolerated in police officers; to tolerate it would be to promote anarchy. The Los Angeles Police Department is a superbly structured bureaucracy, one you have sworn allegiance to. Your actions have reviled the department. Know that, Underhill. Know that your ambition is threatening to kill you as a policeman. Do you understand me?”
I cleared my throat. “Sir, I do believe I acted rashly, and I apologize to you–and to the department–for that. But I think my motives were sound. I wanted justice.”
Jurgensen snorted and shook his head. “No, Underhill, you didn’t. I would accept that from many young officers, but not from you. Beyond self-aggrandizement, I’m not sure that even you know what you want, but it certainly isn’t justice. You laugh at the penal code of this state, and tell me you want justice? Don’t insult my intelligence.”