“Freddy, lad, welcome,” Dudley said, bending over and lowering the little girl to floor level. “Bridget, darling, this grand-looking young gentleman is Officer Fred Underhill. Say hello to Officer Fred, darling.”
“Hello, Officer Fred,” Bridget said, and curtsied.
“Hello, fair Bridget,” I said, bowing.
Dudley was laughing loudly. It almost seemed genuine. “Oh, lad, you’re a heartbreaker, you are. Bridget, get your sisters. They’ll be wanting to meet the young gentleman.”
Bridget scampered off. I felt the momentary loss I sometimes do around big families, then pushed it aside. Dudley seemed to notice my slight change in mood. “A family is something to cherish, lad. You’ll have yours in time, I expect.”
“Maybe,” I said, glancing around at the warmly appointed living room. “Why the light-colored suit, Dudley?”
“Symbolism, lad. You’ll see. Let’s not talk about it here. You’ll find out soon enough.”
Bridget returned with her sisters in tow, all four of them. The girls ranged in age from six to about fourteen. They all wore identical pink cotton dresses and they all looked like soft, pretty versions of Dudley. The Smith girls lined up behind Bridget, the youngest.
Dudley Smith announced proudly, “My daughters, Fred. Bridget, Mary, Margaret, Maureen, and Maidred.”
The girls all curtsied and giggled. I bowed exaggeratedly.
Dudley threw a rough arm around my shoulders. “You mark my words, lassies, this young man will be chief of police someday.” He tightened his grip and my shoulder started to numb. “Now, say goodbye to your old dad and Officer Fred, and wake up your mother, she’s slept long enough.”
“Bye, Daddy. Bye, Officer Fred.”
“Bye-bye, Mr. Officer.”
“Bye-bye.”
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 clamped 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.