Medford was a factory town, smoke-belching foundry stacks forming its perimeter. I rolled up my window to hold off the sulfur stink; the industrial area dwindled into blocks of narrow red-brick houses crammed together with less than a foot between them. Every block had at least two gin mills, and when I saw Swasey Boulevard—the street the movie theater was on—I opened my wind wing to see if the foundry stench was dissipating. It wasn’t—and the windshield was already bearing a film of greasy soot.

I found the Majestic a few blocks down, a typical Medford red-brick building, the marquee heralding Criss Cross with Burt Lancaster and Duel in the Sun—”All Star Cast.” The ticket booth was empty, so I walked straight into the theater and up to the snack stand. The man behind it said, “Anything wrong, officer?” I groaned that the locals had my number—three thousand miles from home.

“No, nothing’s wrong. Are you the manager?”

“The owner. Ted Carmody. You BPD?”

I reluctantly displayed my shield. “Los Angeles Police Department. It’s about Beth Short.”

Ted Carmody crossed himself. “Poor Lizzie. You got some hot leads? That why you’re here?”

I put a nickel on the counter, grabbed a Snickers bar and unwrapped it. “Let’s just say I owe Betty one, and I’ve got a few questions.”

“Ask on.”

“First off, I’ve seen the Boston Police background check file, and your name wasn’t listed on the interview sheet. Didn’t they talk to you?”

Carmody handed me back my nickel. “On the house, and I didn’t talk to the Boston cops because they talked Lizzie up like she was some sort of tramp. I don’t cooperate with badmouthers.”

“That’s admirable, Mr. Carmody. But what would you have told them?”

“Nothing dirty, that’s for damn sure. Lizzie was all aces to me. If the cops had been properly respectful of the dead, I’d have told ‘em that.”

The man was exhausting me. “I’m a respectful guy. Pretend that it’s two years ago and tell me.”

Carmody couldn’t quite peg my style, so I chomped the candy bar to ease him into some slack. “I’d have told ‘em Lizzie was a bad worker,” he said finally. “And I’d have told ‘em I didn’t care. She brought the boys in like a magnet, and if she kept sneaking in to watch the picture, so what? For fifty cents an hour I didn’t expect her to slave for me.”

I said, “What about her boyfriends?”

Carmody slammed the counter; Jujubees and Milk Duds toppled over. “Lizzie wasn’t no roundheels! The only boyfriend I knew she had was this blind guy, and I knew it was just palship. Listen, you want to know what kind of kid Lizzie was? I’ll tell you. I used to let the blind guy in for free, so he could listen to the picture, and Lizzie kept sneaking into tell him what was on the screen. You know, describe it to him. That sound like tramp behavior to you?”

It felt like a punch to the heart. “No, it doesn’t. Do you remember the guy’s name?”

“Tommy something. He’s got a room over the VFW Hall down the block, and if he’s a killer I’ll flap my arms and fly to Nantucket.”

I stuck out my hand. “Thanks for the candy bar, Mr. Carmody.”

We shook. Carmody said, “You get the guy who killed Lizzie, I’ll buy you the factory that makes the goddamn things.”

As I said the words, I knew it was one of the finest moments of my life:

“I will.”

The VFW Hall was across the street and down from the Majestic, yet another red-brick structure streaked with soot. I walked there thinking of blind Tommy as a big washout, someone I had to talk to soften up Betty, make her live more easily in me.

Side steps took me upstairs, past a mailbox labeled T. GILFOYLE. Ringing the bell, I heard music; looking in the one window I saw pitch darkness. Then a soft male voice came from the other side of the door. “Yes? Who is it?”

“Los Angeles Police, Mr. Gilfoyle. It’s about Elizabeth Short.”

Light hit the window, the music died. The door opened, and a tall pudgy man wearing dark glasses pointed me inside. He was immaculate in striped sportshirt and slacks, but the room was a pigsty, dust and grime everywhere, an army of bugs scattering from the unaccustomed blast of brightness.

Tommy Gilfoyle said, “My Braille teacher read me the LA papers. Why did they say such nasty things about Beth?”

I tried diplomacy. “Because they didn’t know her like you did.”

Tommy smiled and plopped into a ratty chair. “Is the apartment really disreputable?”

The couch was littered with phonograph records; I scooped a handful aside and sat down. “It could use a lick and a promise.”

“I get slothful sometimes. Is Beth’s investigation active again? Priority stuff?”

“No, I’m here on my own. Where did you pick up the cop lingo?”

“I have a policeman friend.”

I brushed a fat bug off my sleeve. “Tommy, tell me about you and Beth. Give me something that didn’t make the papers. Something good.”

“Is this personal with you? Like a vendetta?”

“It’s more than that.”

“My friend said policemen who take their work personally get in trouble.”

I stomped a cockroach exploring my shoe. “I just want to get the bastard.”

“You don’t have to yell. I’m blind, not deaf, and I wasn’t blind to Beth’s little faults, either.”

“How so?”

Tommy fingered the cane by his chair. “Well, I won’t dwell on it, but Beth was promiscuous, just like the newspapers implied. I knew the reason, but I kept still because I didn’t want to disgrace her memory, and I knew that it wouldn’t help the police find her killer.”

The man was wheedling now, caught between wanting to kick loose and keep secrets. I said, “You let me judge that. I’m an experienced detective.”

“At your age? I can tell by your voice that you’re young. My friend said that to make detective you have to serve at least ten years on the force.”

“Goddamn it, don’t dick me around. I came here on my own and I didn’t come to-”

I stopped when I saw that the man was frightened, one hand going for the telephone. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s been a long day, and I’m a long way from home.”

Tommy surprised me by smiling. “I’m sorry, too. I was just being coy to prolong the company, and that’s rude. So I’ll tell you about Beth, her little foibles and all.

“You probably know she was star-struck, and that’s true. You probably guessed that she didn’t have much talent, and that’s true, too. Beth read plays to me—acting all the parts, and she was a terrible ham—just awful. I understand the spoken word, so believe me, I know.

“What Beth was good at was writing. I used to sit in on movies at the Majestic, and Beth used to describe things so I’d have something to go with the dialogue. She was brilliant, and I encouraged her to write for the movies, but she just wanted to be an actress like every other silly girl who wanted to get out of Medford.”

I would have committed mass murder to get out. “Tommy, you said you know the reason Beth was promiscuous.”

Tommy sighed. “When Beth was sixteen or seventeen, these two thugs assaulted her, somewhere in Boston. One actually raped her, and the other was going to, but a sailor and a marine came by and chased them away.

“Beth thought the man might have made her pregnant, so she went to a doctor for an examination. He told her she had benign ovarian cysts, that she’d never be able to have children. Beth went crazy, because she’d always wanted lots of babies. She looked up the sailor and marine who’d saved her, and she begged them to father her child. The marine turned her down, and the sailor… he used Beth until he was shipped overseas.”

I thought immediately of Frenchman Joe Dulange—his account of the Dahlia hipped on being pregnant, how he fixed her up with a “doctor buddy” and a bogus exam. That part of Dulange’s story obviously wasn’t as booze-addled as Russ Millard and I had originally thought—it was now a solid lead on Betty’s missing days, the “doctor buddy” at least a major witness, maybe a major suspect. I said, “Tommy, do you know the names of the sailor and marine? The doctor?”