The Black Dahlia

“Lad, I know you’ve killed two men, which is more than I can brag. So I know you know what it is to hurt. Maddy was eleven when I realized she was the stark spitting image of Georgie. I found him and played tic-tac-toe on his face with a nigger shiv. When I thought he’d die I took him to the hospital and bribed the administrators into putting ‘car crash victim’ on their records. When Georgie got out of the hospital he was a pitiful disfigured wreck. I begged him to forgive me, and I gave him money and I got him work tending my property and hauling rubbish for the city.”

I recalled thinking that Madeleine resembled neither of her parents; I remembered Jane Chambers mentioning Georgie’s car crash and descent to stumblebum. So far, I believed Emmett’s story. “What about Georgie himself? Did you ever think he was crazy? Dangerous?”

Emmett tapped my knee, man-to-man empathy. “Georgie’s father was Redmond Tilden, quite a celebrated doctor in Scotland. He was an anatomist. The Kirk was still strong in Aberdeen back then, and Doc Redmond could only legally dissect the corpses of executed criminals and the child molesters the villagers caught and stoned. Georgie liked to touch the organs his dad threw out. I heard a tale when we were boys, and I credit it. It seems that Doc Redmond bought a stiff from some body snatchers. He cut into the heart, and it was still beating. Georgie saw it, and it thrilled him. I credit the tale because in the Argo

I saw an opening, a stab in the dark that might hit home. Jane Chambers had mentioned Georgie and Ramona filming pageants that centered on Emmett’s World War I adventures, and two years ago at di

Emmett said, “You’ve been idolized in your time, lad. You know how it is when a weak man needs you to look after him. It’s a special bond, like having a daft little brother.”

I said, “I had a daft big brother once. I looked up to him.”

Emmett laughed—fraudulently. “That’s a side of the fence I’ve never been on.”

“Oh yeah? Eldridge Chambers says otherwise. He left a brief with the City Council before he died. It seems that he witnessed some of Ramona and Georgie’s pageants back in the thirties. Little girls with soldier kilts and toy muskets, Georgie holding off the Germans, you turning tail and ru

Emmett flushed and tried to dredge up a smirk; his mouth twitched spastically with the effort. I shouted, “Coward!” and slapped him full force—and the hardcase Scotchman son of a bitch sobbed like a child. Madeleine came out of the bathroom, fresh makeup, clean clothes. She moved to the bed and embraced her “Daddy,” holding him the way he’d held her just a few minutes before.

I said, “Tell me, Emmett.”

The man wept on the shoulder of his ersatz daughter; she stroked him with ten times more tenderness than she’d ever given me. Finally he got out a shell-shocked whisper: “I couldn’t let Georgie go because he saved my life. We got separated from our company, all alone in a big field of stiffs. A German patrol was reco

Emmett’s whisper died out. Madeleine caressed his shoulders, ruffled his hair. I said, “I know that the stag film with Betty and Linda Martin wasn’t shot in TJ. Did Georgie have anything to do with it?”

Madeleine’s voice had the timbre Emmet’s had earlier, when he was the one holding up the front. “No. Linda and I were talking at La Verne’s Hideaway. She told me she needed a place to make a little movie. I knew what she meant, and I wanted to be with Betty again, so I let them use one of my daddy’s vacant houses, one that had an old set in the living room. Betty and Linda and Duke Wellington shot the movie, and Georgie saw them doing it. He was always sneaking around Daddy’s empty houses, and he got crazy over Betty. Probably because she looked like me… his daughter.”

I turned away to make it easier for her to spill the rest. “Then?”

“Then, around Thanksgiving, Georgie came to Daddy and said, ‘Give me that girl.’ He said he’d tell the whole world that Daddy wasn’t my daddy, and he’d lie about what we did together, like it was incest. I looked around for Betty, but I couldn’t find her. Later I found out she was in San Diego then. Daddy was letting Georgie stay in the garage, because he was making more and more demands. He gave him money to keep him quiet, but he was still acting nasty and awful.

“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.”