Los Angeles Stories. Ry Cooder

eleven and eleven fifteen. But by the time you arrive, he’s been murdered, his blood smeared on the wall down by the floor. I suggest he named the killer with his own blood, then crawled into the kitchen and died. What did the blood spell?”

      Then I saw it. “It spelled ‘Book.’ ” Finchley picked up the telephone and dialed.

      “Homicide,” he said into the receiver. He waited. Then he said, “They’re putting me through.”

      After what seemed like days and days, a big man in a suit came into the room and sat down at the desk. I was handcuffed to a chair. He shuffled some papers around and looked over at me.

      “So, Mr. St. Claire. Frank St. Claire. I wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t waste my time, but there’s too many connections.”

      My mouth was dry and my tongue felt like an ironing board, but I had to say something. “What do you mean, connections?”

      “A suicide on Bunker Hill, a dead musician in hock to the bookies, and a spic dismemberment down in the Flats. And Frank St. Claire knew them all.”

      “I meet people in my job, I don’t know them. Except for Mr. John.”

      “John Casaroli jumps off the roof and you inherit. Why? Tell me that. Make it sound good.”

      “I really don’t know.”

      “A couple of bright boys were seen hanging around there. Friends of yours?”

      “I don’t have any friends since Mr. John died.”

      “You create a disturbance at the Clark home while a service is going on. No respect for the dead, it seems. Why’s that?”

      “I was doing my job, how could I know?”

      “The widow says you told her to hand over the clarinet. Says you threatened her.”

      “She’s lying. She gave it to me.”

      “Why would she lie?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “All right, Utah Street. Some character slices this guy’s arm off and beats him with it. There’s blood on the walls. Maybe it spells ‘book,’ maybe he was overdue at the library, I wouldn’t know. But, here’s Frank St. Claire at the scene, within minutes, and that’s just one too many times in my book.”

      “The supervisor makes all the decisions. I think he was punishing me for the trouble with Howdy Clark. Nobody wants to work the Flats.”

      The detective got up. “Nobody’s as dumb as you act,” he said. He left the room. After a while, an officer in uniform came and took me down the hall to another room. A man in a white coat was seated behind a desk. He told me to sit down and relax. Relax! How could I?

      “I’m Dr. Sonderborg,” the man said. “I’m going to ask you some questions.”

      “I’ve done nothing,” I said.

      “Begin, if you will, by telling me about yourself. Anything that comes to mind.”

      “Nothing comes to mind.”

      “I see you’re a single man, living alone. Do you have a girlfriend?”

      “I know a girl. I know three girls altogether, but I recently met one in particular.”

      “Tell me about her. What’s her name?”

      “Rene. She runs a beauty parlor on Olive and Fifth.”

      “Is she kind to you, is she affectionate? Responsive?”

      “She says I might be a mad dog from hell. ‘The jury’s out,’ is how she puts it.”

      “And that makes you angry.”

      “No.”

      “Would you say her behavior towards you is cruel? Belittling?”

      “Oh, no. She’s really a nice person.”

      “Do you ever ask her to hurt you, to punish you?”

      “What? What is this, who are you?” Maybe the police are crazy, I thought.

      “Do you hate the police?”

      “No.”

      “Are you plotting against the government of the United States?”

      “No.”

      “Are you a Communist?”

      “What’s that?” I said. The doctor pushed a button on the desk and the detective came in the room.

      “What do we got?” he asked.

      “Why do you waste my time? Get him out of my office. Drop him off in Griffith Park. I went to medical school for eight years, Spangler. Eight goddamn years.”

      “And you got a very tough job here, Sonderborg,” Spangler said with obvious distaste.

      Detective Spangler gave me back my briefcase and told me not to leave town. I left the police building and walked up the Hill. The police believe everything is a pattern. Once they see a pattern, they think they know it all, and they think they got you. That’s not the way life is. Take it from me, life is random and inscrutable, like the City Directory. Or my name isn’t St. Claire, Frank, chkr, Alta Vista Apts 255 Alta Vista Ave., Ls Angls.

      Who do you know that I don't?

      1949

      THE STREETCAR STOPPED on the corner to pick up a load of early risers on their way to the little piece of job. A solitary rider got out and walked south on Berendo, a dusty street in a dingy neighborhood just west of downtown. He unlocked the front door at number 39, a two-­story brick building in need of paint since elephants roamed the La Brea Tar Pits.

      “Jazz Man Records” read the sign in the front window, unwashed since Joaquin Murietta shot up Laurel Canyon. The man stooped to pick up the circulars from the scarred linoleum floor and then closed and locked the door behind him. Shelves lined the walls. On the shelves were paper sleeves, one-­foot square, and in the sleeves were ancient 78­-speed records, thousands of them. There was a small desk covered with dust, a desk lamp designed by Abraham Lincoln, and a black telephone. The man pulled a curtain aside and walked back to another room lined with shelves. 78s, thousands more. A portable record player sat on a small table next to an over­stuffed chair salvaged from the Edwin Hotel fire of 1910. The man took a disc over to the table. “Clarinet Marmalade” with Johnny Dodds, on the Okeh label, recorded in 1927. He sat back in the chair, lit his pipe, and closed his eyes. The scratchy old record played, and the little tune got moving — an unsolved riddle from the past: 4/4 time on the bass drum by brother Baby Dodds, top melody from the clarinet, suggestive interplay on trumpet and trombone. Chank­chank­chank went the banjo. The man’s face settled into an uncon­scious mask. In four minutes the record was done, and the steel needle in the heavy stylus arm began to drag across the center grooves, making a sshh, sshh, sshh sound that went on and on.

      Nobody wants to get measured for a suit on Friday. Our people believe that the mortician dresses you on Friday for the last time. But still, in he came — Johnny “The Ace of Spades” Mumford. And he says, “Ray, I want the one-­piece back! I want the French shoulders! Three­-pleat pants all the way up, and I need my trick waistband, you hear me, Ray? Purple gabardine and cocoa brown, and I want ’em in two weeks!”

      “Who do you know that I don’t, Johnny?” I laughed.

      “Look, man, I got the number one rhythm-­and-­blues record right now. I’m so hot, I’m burnin’ up, and money don’t mean a thing,” said Johnny, a good looking, chocolate-­colored man, five-feet­-seven and rangy. I made