“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That he loves you. That your mother loves you, that Lillian loves you most of all.”
“Oh, God . . .” Engels started to sob.
Dudley spoke up. “All righty, _Mr_. Engels. Does the name Margaret Cadwallader mean anything to you?”
Eddie’s whole face started to spasm. He brought his voice down to baritone and said, “No,” tremulously.
“No? We have a dozen eyewitnesses who placed the two of you together at the racetrack and at nightclubs on the Sunset Strip.”
Engels shook his head frantically.
“The truth, Eddie,” I said. “For your family’s sake.”
“We da-dated,” Engels said.
“But you broke up?” I continued for him.
“Y-yes.”
“Why, killer?” Dudley bellowed. “Because she wouldn’t let you hit her?”
“I never killed anybody!”
“Nobody said you killed her, homo! Did you hit her?”
“I didn’t wa–she wasn’t . . .”
“You didn’t what? You fucking degenerate!” Dudley reached his arm back and swung it at Engels in slow motion.
I caught it in mid-swing, grabbing Dudley’s wrist and holding it above my head. “I told you no more of that, Smith!”
“Goddamnit, Inspector, this punk is guilty and I know it!”
“I’m not so sure. Eddie, one thing troubles me. Your Ford convertible was seen parked on Margaret Cadwallader’s street on the night she was strangled.”
Engels moaned, “Oh, God.”
I continued: “What was it doing there?”
“I … lent it to her.”
“How did you get it back?” Dudley interjected.
“I … I…”
“Did you ever fuck her at her apartment, lover-boy?” Dudley bellowed.
“No!”
“That’s funny, we got your fingerprints from her bedroom.”
“That’s a lie! I never been fingerprinted!”
“You’re the liar, lover-boy. You were fingerprinted when the Ventura cops raided a homo hangout you were drinking at.”
“_That’s_ a lie!”
Dudley went into a laughing attack. Perfectly modulated, his musical laughter rose and fell, diminuendoed and crescendoed like a Stradivarills in the hands of a master. “Ho-ho-ho! Ha-ha-ha!” Tears were streaming down his red face. It went on and on while Engels, Breuning, and I stared at him, dumbstruck. Finally, Dudley’s laughter metamorphosed into a huge, expansive yawn. He looked at Breuning. “Mike, lad, I think it’s time to set lover-boy straight, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do, Lieutenant.”
With all eyes on him, Dudley Smith dug into his coat pocket and pulled out Maggie Cadwallader’s diamond brooch. There was absolute stillness in the sordid little room. Dudley smiled demonically and Eddie Engels’s face broke out into a network of throbbing blue veins. He placed his head in his hands and sat very still.
“Do you know where we got that, Eddie?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, his voice gone high.
“Did you get it from Margaret Cadwallader?”
“Yes.”
“Did you pay for it?”
Engels started to laugh–high, feminine laughter. “Baby, did I pay for it! Oh, baby! Pay and pay and pay!” he shrieked.
Dudley butted in: “I’d say Margaret paid for it, lover-boy–with her life. You beat ’em, you kill ’em–and now you steal from ’em. Do you desecrate their corpses, lover-boy?”
“No!”
“You just kill them?”
“Ye– No!”
“What were you going to do with that brooch, you filth? Give it to your lezbo sister?”
“Aaarrugh!” Engels screeched.
“Did your unholy sister teach you to eat cunt, lover-boy? Did you hate her for it? Is that why you hate women? Did she piss on you? Did she make you lap her on your knees? Is that why you kill women?”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” Engels screamed, his voice a shrieking, cacophonous soprano. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”
Dudley threw himself on Engels, lifted him from the bed and slammed his back repeatedly into the wall. “Tell me how you did it, killer! Tell me how you croaked lovely Margaret and we won’t tell your mommy and daddy about the others. Tell me!”
Engels went limp as a rag doll in Dudley’s hands. When Dudley finally released him he crumpled to the bed and moaned hideously.
Dudley pointed to the bathroom. I followed him in. There was a giant cockroach crawling out of the filthy bathtub. “Cock-sucking cockroaches,” he said. “They sneak into your bed at night and suck your blood. Dirty cocksuckers.” He bent down and let the bug crawl onto his hand, then he closed his fist around it and squashed it into a greenish-yellow pulp. He rubbed the oozy remains on his trouser leg and said to me: “He’s about to crack, lad.”