Джеймс Эллрой - Clandestine

I moved to the grandmother of Michael Harris and tentatively placed an arm around her quaking shoulders. “Mrs. Cadwallader, what happened to Maggie’s child? Where was he born? Who did Maggie and Johnny give him up to?”

She shrugged herself free of my grasp. “My grandson was born in Milwaukee. Some unlicensed doctor delivered him. I took care of Maggie after the birth. I lost my husband the year before, and I lost Maggie and I never even saw my grandson.”

I held the old woman tightly. “Ssshh,” I whispered, “Ssshh. What happened to the baby?”

Between body-wrenching dry sobs, Mrs. Cadwallader got it out: “Johnny took him to some orphanage near Fond du Lac — some religious sect he believed in — and I never saw him.”

“Maybe someday you will,” I said quietly.

“No! Only half of him is my Maggie! The dead half! The other half is that big, dirty, Dutch drug addict, and that’s the part that’s still alive.”

I couldn’t argue with her logic, it was beyond my province. I found a pen on the coffee table and wrote my real phone number in L.A. on the back of my bogus business card. I stuck it in Mrs. Cadwallader’s hand.

“You call me at home in a month or so,” I said. “I’ll introduce you to your grandson.”

Mrs. Marshall Cadwallader stared unbelievingly at the card. I smiled at her and she didn’t respond.

“Believe me,” I said. I could tell she didn’t. I left her staring mutely at her living room carpet, trying to dig a way out of her past.

“My baby. My love.”

“Where is he?”

“His father took him.”

“Are you divorced?”

“He wasn’t my husband, he was my lover. He died of his love for me.”

“How, Maggie?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“What happened to the baby?”

“He’s in an orphanage back east.”

“Why, Maggie? Orphanages are terrible places.”

“Don’t say that! I can’t! I can’t keep him!”

I ran through Cutler Park searching for a pay phone. I found one and checked my watch: ten-fifteen, making it eight-fifteen in Los Angeles. A fifty-fifty chance: Either Doc or Michael would answer the phone.

I dialed the operator, and she told me to deposit ninety cents. I fed the machine the coins and got a ringing on the other end of the line.

“Hello?” It was unmistakably Michael’s voice. My whole soul crashed in relief.

“Mike, this is Fred.”

“Hi, Fred!”

“Mike, are you okay?”

“Sure.”

“Where’s your father?”

“He’s asleep in the bedroom.”

“Then talk quietly.”

“Fred, what’s wrong?”

“Ssshh. Mike, where were you born?”

“Wha-what? In L.A. Why?”

“What hospital?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s your birthday?”

“August 29.”

“1945?”

“Yes. Fred—”

“Mike, what happened in the house on Scenic Avenue?”

“The house—”

“You know, Mike; the friends you stayed with while your mother went on her trip four years ago—”

“Fred, I...”

“Tell me, Mike!”

“Da-dad hurt the guys. Dad said that they were never going to hurt any other little boys.”

“But they didn’t hurt you, did they?”

“No! They were nice to me! I told Dad that—” Michael’s voice had risen into a shrill wail. I was afraid he would wake Doc.

“Mike, I have to go now. Will you promise not to tell your father I called?”

“Yes, I promise.”

“I love you, Mike,” I said, not believing my own ears and hanging up before Michael could respond.

This time it took me a scant twenty-five minutes to make the run back to Milwaukee. Blue Mound Road had become an old friend in the course of three harried hours.

Back within the city limits where Blue Mound Road turned into Wisconsin Avenue, I stopped at a filling station and inquired with the attendant about the whereabouts of Marquette University and Milwaukee’s skid row.

“The two are within shouting distance,” the youth said. “Take Wisconsin Avenue to Twenty-seventh Street, turn left until you hit State Street. Don’t hold your breath, but hold your nose.”

Marquette University extended a solid ten blocks on the periphery of a skid row that rivaled L.A.’s Fifth Street for squalor and sheer despair — bars, package liquor stores, blood banks, and religious save-your-soul missions representing every faith and sect imaginable. I parked my car at Twenty-seventh and State and went walking, dodging and sidestepping knots of winos and ragpickers who were passing around short-dogs and gesticulating wildly at one another, babbling in a booze language compounded of loneliness and resentment.

I took my eyes off the street for five seconds and went crashing to the pavement; I had tripped over an old man, naked from the waist up, his lower body wrapped in a gasoline-soaked tweed overcoat. I got to my feet and brushed myself off, then attempted to help the old man up. I reached for his arms, then saw the sores on them and hesitated. The old man noticed this and began to cackle. I reached instead for a hunk of his overcoat, but he rolled himself away from me like a dervish until he was lying in the gutter in a sea of sewer water and cigarette butts. He cursed me and feebly flipped me the finger.

I left him and continued walking. After three blocks, I realized I had no real destination, and moreover that the denizens of the row had taken me for a cop: my size and crisp summer suit got me looks of fear and hatred, and if I played it right I could use this to my advantage without hurting anyone.

I recalled what Kraus and Lutz had told me: George “The Professor” Melveny, George “The Gluebird” Melveny, former Marquette chemistry teacher, last seen sucking on a rag in front of the Jesus Saves Mission. It was almost noon, and the temperature was soaring. I felt like shedding my suit coat, but that wouldn’t work: the skid row inhabitants would then know I wasn’t packing a gun and was therefore not the heat. I stopped in my tracks and surveyed the row in all directions: no sign of the Jesus Saves Mission. On impulse I ducked into a liquor store and purchased twenty short-dogs of Golden Lake muscatel. My liver shuddered as I paid, and the proprietor gave me the strangest look I have ever encountered as he loaded the poison into a large paper bag. I asked him for directions to the Jesus Saves Mission, and he snickered and pointed east, where the skid row dead-ended at the Milwaukee River.

There was a line of hungry-looking indigents extending halfway around the block as I approached the mission, obviously waiting for their noon meal. Some of them noticed my arrival and jabbed at one another, signaling the onslaught of bad news. They were wrong; it was Christmas in July.

“Santa Claus is here!” I shouted. “He’s made a list and he’s checked it twice, and he’s decided that all of you folks deserve a drink!”

When all I got was puzzled looks, I dug into my paper bag and pulled out a short-dog. “Free wine for all!” I yelled. “Free cash to anyone who can tell me where to find George The Gluebird’ Melveny!”

There was a virtual stampede to my side. The Jesus Saves Mission and its lackluster luncheon were forgotten. I was the man with the real goodies, and scores of winos and winettes started reaching fawningly toward me, poking tremulous hands in the direction of the brown paper bag I rested out of their reach on my shoulder. Information was screeched at me, tidbits and non sequiturs and epithets:

“Fuck, man.”

“Glueman, Gluebird!”

“Sister Ramona!”

“Wetbrain!”

“Gimme, gimme, gimme!”