THE BLACK DAHLIA by James Ellroy

“Then, that Sunday night, Betty called, out of the blue. She’d been drinking, and she called me Mary or something like that. She said she’d been calling all the friends in her little black book trying to get a loan. I put Daddy on, and he offered Betty money to date a nice man he knew. You see, we thought Georgie just wanted Betty for . . . sex.”

I said, “After all you knew about him, you believed that?”

Emmett shouted, “He liked to touch dead things! He was passive! I didn’t think he was a goddamned killer!”

I eased them into the rest. “And you told them Georgie had a medical background?”

“Because Betty respected doctors,” Madeleine said. “Because we didn’t want her to feel like a whore.”

I almost laughed. “Then?”

“Then I think you know the rest.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Madeleine delivered, hate oozing out of her. “Betty took the bus out here. She and Georgie left. We thought they’d go someplace decent to be together.”

“Like the Red Arrow Motel?”

“No! Like one of Daddy’s old houses that Georgie took care of! Betty forgot her purse, so we thought she’d be back for it, but she never came back and neither did Georgie, and then the papers came out and we knew what must have happened.”

If Madeleine thought her confession was over, she was wrong. “Tell me what you did then. How you covered things up.”

Madeleine caressed Emmett while she spoke. “I went looking for Linda Martin, and I found her at a motel in the Valley. I gave her money and told her that if the police picked her up and asked her about the movie she was to say it was filmed in Tijuana with a Mexican crew. She kept her part of the bargain when you captured her, and she only mentioned the movie because she had the print in her purse. I tried to find Duke Wellington, but I couldn’t. That worried me, then he sent in his alibi to the _Herald-Express_, and it didn’t mention where the movie was shot. So we were safe. Then–”

“Then I came along. And you pumped me for dope on the case, and you threw me little tidbits about Georgie to see if I bit.”

Madeleine quit stroking Daddy and studied her manicure. “Yes.”

“What about the alibi you gave me? Laguna Beach, check with the servants?”

“We gave them money in case you actually did check. They don’t speak English too well, and of course you believed me.”

Madeleine was smiling now. I said, “Who mailed Betty’s pictures and little black book in? There were envelopes sent, and you said Betty left her purse here.”

Madeleine laughed. “That was genius sister Martha. She knew I knew Betty, but she wasn’t home that night Betty and Georgie were here. She didn’t know Georgie was blackmailing Daddy or that he killed Betty. She ripped the page with our number on it out of the book, and she scratched the faces off the men in the pictures as her way of saying, ‘Look for a lesbian,’ namely me. She just wanted me smeared, implicated. She also called the police and gave them a tip on La Verne’s. The scratched faces were très genius Martha–she always scratches like a cat when she’s mad.”

Something in her statement hit me as wrong, but I couldn’t pin it down. “Martha told you this?”

Madeleine buffed her red claws. “When the little black book stuff made the papers, I knew it had to be Martha. I scratched a confession out of her.”

I turned to Emmett “Where’s Georgie?”

The old man stirred. “He’s probably staying at one of my vacant houses. I’ll bring you a list.”

“Bring me all four of your passports, too.”

Emmett walked out of the battlefield bedroom. Madeleine said, “I really did like you, Bucky. I really did.”

“Save it for Daddy. You’re wearing the pants now, so save the sugar for him.”

“What are you going to do?”

“First I’m going home and putting all of this on paper, attached to material witness warrants for you and Daddy. Then I’m leaving them with another officer in case Daddy goes to his friend Mickey Cohen with an offer for my head. Then I’m going after Georgie.”