Webb - The badge: the fifties crime classic that ripped open the sleazy underbelly of LA

THE WAY IT IS WITH SO MANY women who live alone, life had held back on Karil Graham. She was likable and attractive, still a year on the sunny side of forty, sandy-haired, blue-eyed, trim-figured. But there was no husbanda marriage hadnt worked outno children, no other man in her lonely life.
Karil bravely hid the hurt and filled the emptiness as best she could. Every day she went to work, on time, to her job as receptionist at a downtown Los Angeles art school. Nights, in her quiet apartment, she listened to music and dabbled in painting. She was just a dilettante, she knew resignedly, but records and easel were gracious cover-ups for emptiness.
Sometimes Karil counseled students who attended the art school. Often they were male students, and she took them to her heart in a mothering, protective way. She saw for them something more meaningful and zestful in life, the something that had somehow passed her by.
That year spring came very early, even for Los Angeles; in the third week of February, there was already a sparkle in the air, a premature stirring in all the backyard gardens around town. For women like Karil living alone, it was a bitter-sweet time. She decided to kill the loneliness, at least for a night, by inviting some of the art students to dinner at her new apartment in Westlake.
About ten minutes from downtown Los Angeles, awkwardly straddling a man-made lake, Westlake is the kind of neighborhood that attracts the Karils of the West Coast. Not proud, not shabby, once fashionable, now a little shiny at the elbows, the district includes older homes inhabited by retired couples, apartments, rooming houses.
The younger people who live there, mostly single or divorced, share the camaraderie of transience; and casual neighborliness abounds. They are gregarious, they like to party, and as a rule they are harmless. There isnt a soul in the house they dont trust. They live out of each others coffee pots and share each others lives. Sometimes, when they get home to their one room, they are high and careless, and the door is left unlocked.
Karils apartment-warming went off beautifully. The dinner was good, the conversation about art stimulating, the night warm. About 10 p.m., Karil and a guest put on swim suits and went for a plunge in the big, new pool located in the patio. They splashed about noisily, and in fifteen minutes Eleanor Lipson, who managed the apartments with her husband, rather sharply reminded the new tenant that swimming wasnt allowed after 9 p.m. Karil and her friend went back to the apartment and changed, and the party went on till about 12:30 a.m.
When her guests had left, Karil washed the dishes and tidied up her little place. She made up the studio couch for sleeping, and, though she usually didnt work Saturdays, set the alarm for 7 a.m. This Saturday, she had to be up early to help register a new class of students at the art school.
Then she slipped into a pink nightgown and went to her door and made sure that it was shut tight. The latch was broken, and she couldnt lock it. It really didnt matter much because the locksmith was coming up in a day or two to fix it.
Four hours later, most of Westlake was sleeping. The street lights were still on, and even the birds in MacArthur Park hadnt yet sensed the dawn. Occasionally, an auto streaked along Wilshire Boulevard, and the morning papers were being dropped at the street corners for the newsboys.
But one resident of Westlake, a blond young man with the body of a Greek discus thrower, was abroad. By day, he led the prosaic life of an eight-to-five laborer who mixed paint. Nights, he felt, he really lived; dangerously, excitingly, romantically, you might say. He was a burglar who preyed on women, the younger and the lonelier the better.
Once there had been trouble, bad trouble; and he knew it must not happen again. So he memorized the patchy streets of Westlake, the turnings of the halls in rooming houses and apartment buildings. He watched at the bars and eavesdropped along the lovers paths in MacArthur Park, marking the women who were high or indiscreet. They often forgot to lock their doors, often were too sodden to hear him when he came calling.
In one hand, he carried a flashlight, and in the other, a lead pipe. If the unexpected developed, he would rely first on his personal appeal to discourage an outcry. But he knew he wasnt irresistible, and so he carried the pipe, too. What had happened before, the bad trouble, mustnt happen again.
So far, he hadnt needed to use the lead pipe.
As Karil slept out the last hour of her life, the burglar slipped silently into the backyard of one of the large, old houses not far away. From casing the neighborhood, he knew the back door should open. Confidently, he turned the knob. The door opened.
Inside, he moved quietly to the apartment where three pretty nurses were sleeping off the fun and excitement of an earlier party. He found three purses containing $90. The nurses never stirred. He didnt have to swing the pipe. Outside, he dropped the emptied purses on the porch and drifted up the street to the new apartment building.
First, he checked the mailboxes, looking for the Miss or Mrs. that would identify the spinster, widow, or divorcee, the lonely woman he could charm or threaten if he had to. On the first floor, he tried two or three doors. All were locked. He tiptoed up to the second floor.
At his touch, the first door swung back. It was Karils apartment.
Warily, he probed the darkness with his flashlight, then slipped in. Suddenly, the light picked out a womans body on the couch. He could see that she was pretty, and he held the beam on her longer than was necessary. Pretty women made him feel warm and gentle.
Maybe it was the light or his heavy breathing. Karil stirred, and there was a click as he snapped off the flashlight. Then she awoke. For a moment, she listened. The room seemed black and empty. Then she must have heard the breathing. She gasped.
Whos there!
He froze, hand tightening around the pipe. Karil met the frightening silence boldly, too boldly. She snapped on the lamp beside her couch. Her drowsy blue eyes blinked, then widened, and her hand flew to her mouth. As she started to move, he moved faster.
Once before, five years ago, another woman in another apartment had called out, Whos there! Then she had screamed, and he had run too late. Other tenants in the building had caught him, and he had lost four good, young years of life in San Quentin and Chino, first for burglary and later for escape.
Now he was on parole, and he wouldnt, couldnt go back! As he moved, he swung the iron bar. Not hard, just enough to scare her into silence. But she screamed, and at the sound, loud and eerie, panic seized him.
He swung again, harder. He brought the iron pipe down once more, and then again. At last, she was still and quiet.
He switched off the lamp, and stood trembling in the restful darkness for a few seconds. Then he walked out to the balcony and listened.
One flight above, though he didnt know it, a woman also was listening. Something had wakened her, but now all was quiet. She glanced at her clock, quarter past five, and went back to sleep.
The burglar returned to Karils apartment. His flashlight picked up the bloodied form on the couch, and he didnt like to think that maybe it was watching him. He walked closer and wrapped Karils nightgown around the crushed head, and the pink color deepened into a dirty maroon.
As he did so, her blood saturated the tip of his jacket.
Now his nerve came back, and methodically he ransacked the small apartment. From Karils large straw purse lying on a chair, he extracted $25. Not much. There had to be more around someplace. He shoved the bills into his pocket and threw the purse on the floor. He poked through the bureau and the closet and even pried apart the pictures on the wall.