“He’s been conferring with Sol a lot, driving him places, cheering him up.”
“You don’t believe me about Ralston, do you? Would you believe me if I told you he was responsible for your brother’s death?”
“No, I don’t, and no I wouldn’t! Look, you admitted you were a lousy cop and maybe you’re a lousy detective. Richard is a good man. He loves Sol. If they were both involved in bookmaking, I don’t care. It doesn’t hurt anyone. And listen to me, Fritz: If you hurt Richard in any way, I will never speak to you, ever again. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I understand. I understand that you aren’t capable of accepting reality. Richard Ralston is a thieving, fucking, low-life predator. Your brother was just murdered, your former lover is responsible, your best friend is probably being blackmailed and all you can think about is your fucking insulated Beverly Hills lifestyle.”
Jane turned red and swung at me clumsily with her closed fist. I let her hit me. “Do it again,” I screamed. She hit me again and again, each time harder, then collapsed into tears. I pulled her to me and stroked her head. “Good, darling, good. Get it out. I understand, really. Just try to understand me. I’ve been waiting for this thing for a long time. It’s mine and I’m not going to blow it. But it’s no good without you. Ten people have been killed since this thing started and I’m the only one who can end it. But there’s got to be some kind of decency and kindness waiting for me when it’s over.”
Jane looked up at me. Her tears had stopped and she looked strangely composed. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“I mean that I love you. We can have a good life together when this is over.”
“But I don’t know you.”
“Do you care about me?”
“I don’t know you!”
“Ssshh. We’ll have time to court properly when all this is over.”
“Oh, God, don’t you …” Jane started to sob again, and again I held her, very gently. We stayed that way for a minute, then I tucked a hand under her chin and lifted her head toward me. Her face was mottled and her eye makeup was streaked. I pulled out a handkerchief and wiped it off.
“Will you do a few things for me, sweetheart?” I asked.
“I guess so.”
“Good. One: stay away from Ralston, and two: tell Kupferman I’ll be calling him, probably tomorrow. Tell him who I am and what I’ve been doing. Tell him it’s very important.”
“All right.”
“Good. Will you have dinner with me tonight? At my place?”
“I can’t. I have to study and practice. And I want to be near Sol and have time to think.”
“All right. I’ll drive you home.”
“No. I want to be alone. A walk home carrying my cello will clear my head. You understand, don’t you?”
“Of course. I’ll call you soon.”
I leaned over and we kissed. Jane’s lips brushed distractedly against mine. She maneuvered her cello out the car door. “Be careful,” she said.
I nodded and watched through the rear-view mirror as She lugged her cello up Beverly Drive and out of sight. When she was gone I realized I had forgotten to give her the armadillo purse I had bought in Tijuana.
I was tired. My encounter with Jane had diffused my anger into a vague hope that was enervating in itself. Sleep was what I needed, but I was too tired for that. My only recourse was the tried-and-true run to Walter’s place. I wanted to commit an act of symbolic liberation and his back yard was the place for it.
It was sweltering when I pulled into his driveway. His mother’s Mustang was gone, thank God, and I found Walter sitting on a lawn chair in his back yard, his feet immersed in a kiddies’ wading pool. He was reading a science fiction novel and sucking on a short dog. Several more short dogs were cooling in the pool. He looked about half-bombed. “Moon to earth, moon to earth,” he said as he saw me coming. “The noble private eye returneth from his search for the Holy Grail in Mexico. Chastened, methinks.” Leave it to Walter to throw in one solid perception in his line of horseshit. “Was it fruitful, Fritz? Did you see the mule act? Did you ‘eat out’ at the Blue Fox? Did you score me some dope so I can get off the sauce?”
“Negative to all that rebop. I did learn one interesting thing, though. I found out who killed The Black Dahlia.”
“Oh, yeah? Who was it? The Ayatollah? It has to be him. That clown looks exactly like a fag who tried to grab my dick in the swimming pool at the Hollywood Y when I was twelve. It has to be him.”
“Wrong. It’s you, you bastard, because all that mystical Buddhist shit you’ve been whipping on me for all these years about everything being connected is true. I congratulate you. The twenty-five or thirty I.Q. points you have on me has never been more evident. Since everything is connected, the concept of karma must be valid, too. Ergo, it’s time to clean up my act and get out of the repo racket. After I clean up a big mess I’m involved in. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet. Maybe get Cal to set me up in my own classical record store, something like that. There’s a woman in my life now that I have to consider. And since karma is a valid concept there’s probably some nigger who’s looking for me right now with a Saturday Night Special for ripping off his Cadillac. I can’t risk that. Jane needs me. So you were right. I salute you, reluctantly.
“But there’s no victory without pain. You have to pay the price. The one thing that I resent most about you, as much as I love you, is your insane addiction to television. The booze, the music, the sci-fi are all understandable. But the T.V. shit is beneath you. It’s even beneath me. So your T.V. set has to die. Today. Right here in your back yard. I will perform the execution. You will be compensated. I have over six hundred dollars in dirty money that I have to get rid of before I begin my new life. So we do it. Now.”
I had expected high-flying resistance from Walter, but he just smiled. He fished out a short dog from the pool and drained it in one gulp. He shuddered and smiled again. “Let’s do it,” he said. “I’m resigned. Six hundred scoots will get me a half-pound of Columbian and that hooker you told me about. It’s time I got back into the mainstream myself. Let’s do it.”
We went into the house and lugged the old G.E. console back out into the yard. We placed it in a preeminent spot next to old lady Curran’s rose garden. Then I got the Browning pump and a box of shells out of my trunk. Walter was practically jumping up and down in anticipation, “three shots,” I said, “then we get the hell out of here before the fuzz shows up. Stand in back of me. Glass is going to fly.” I paced off twenty yards from the T.V. to Walter’s back porch. Walter sat on the steps behind me, sipping T-Bird in silent glee. I slipped a shell into the breach and pumped it into the chamber, took aim, and fired. The TV. screen imploded with a huge, reverberating kawhoosh! Glass, wood, and metal fragments flew out the back and filled the air before coming to rest in the smoke-filled back yard. The air smelled like burning technology. I squeezed off another shot at the wooden carcass and blew it in half.
People were coming to their windows now in the apartment building across the alley and Walter was whooping and yelling like some new alcoholic species of loon. I pumped another shell into the chamber and handed it to him. “Your turn,” I said, “anywhere but in my direction.”
He nodded and tore throughout the yard, searching for a target. He ended up settling for the garage wall and blew a hole in it the size of a Volkswagen, the recoil knocking him to the ground. I helped him up and we tore for my car, through a driveway littered with T.V. detritus and smelling of cordite.
When we got to my place I made espresso and sent out for a giant anchovy pizza and a fifth of vodka and mixer for Walter. When it arrived we scarfed the pizza in two minutes flat and sat back and talked, and it was the best, the sanest talk we had had in a long time.
Around midnight I gave Walter his six hundred clams and sent him off in a cab. He was going to get a motel room on the Strip until his mother cooled off and I concluded my case. Then it would be sobriety. I believed him t
his time. There were distinct flashes of the old Walter and flashes of remorse for what he had become.
Before I went to bed a dire thought crossed my mind. Ralston knew about me and probably wanted to silence me. He knew where I lived and had the wherewithal to have me killed. But I quashed the thought. I knew now: I was going to do more than hold in life. I was going to win.
I woke up the next morning feeling hung over. Drifting in and out of sleep, I felt a dull persistent banging somewhere, like blows muffled by acoustical padding. I tried to think of Jane’s face. Forming the image was easy this time. Gradually, I realized that the banging wasn’t inside my own head, but was a loud rapping at my front door. I threw on a T-shirt and a pair of Levis and went to greet my caller.
When I opened the door I knew immediately that they were cops: their size, stern demeanor, and eighty-dollar suits were as good as a neon sign proclaiming “officious city flunkies on a power trip.” I greeted them warmly. “Good morning,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“Are you Fritz Brown?” the taller and more forceful-looking of the two asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Sergeant Larkin, Riverside County Sheriffs Department. This is Sergeant Cavanaugh, L.A.P.D.” They both flashed badges at me. “Could we talk to you? Inside?”
“Sure. Come in.”
They entered and gave my living room a quick perusing. Cavan-augh’s eyes fell on my holstered .28 lying on a lamp table. “Do you have a permit for that weapon, Mr. Brown?” he asked.
“Yes, I do. And I have a permit to carry it concealed. I’m a licensed private investigator.”
“I see,” Larkin said, as they both sat down on my couch, uninvited. “Do you own any other weapons?”
So that was it. Old lady Curran had blown the whistle on me. But why was a Riverside County dick involved? “Yes, I own a Browning 12-gauge pump shotgun.”
“Could we see it?” Cavanaugh asked.
“Sure. One minute.” I walked into my bedroom. Maybe the jig was up, and I was going to get popped for discharging a firearm within the city limits. But I didn’t think so. These guys were too reserved and ominous. I brought the shotgun into the living room and handed it, butt first, to Larkin.
He slid open the breech and chamber and took a healthy sniff. “This gun has been fired recently,” he said.
“Last night,” I answered. “I assassinated a T.V. set. With the owner’s permission. If you want to bust me for shooting off a gun in the city, let’s do it now so I can bail out.”
“That’s not what we’re here for, Brown,” Cavanaugh said.
“I didn’t think so. Riverside County doesn’t give a rat’s ass what I do with my shotgun in L.A. What is it then?” I sat down in my easy chair across from them.
“Where were you last night between 10:00 P.M. and 2:00 A.M.?” Larkin asked. He was wearing an offensive and shiny yellow dress shirt that must have set him back all of $2.98. It was giving me a headache.
“I was here. In bed. Why?”
Cavanaugh took over. “Were you ever a police officer, Mr. Brown?”
“Yes, I was. I was with the L.A.P.D. for six years.”
Cavanaugh gave me a wide smile. Its phoniness told me he already knew the answer to his question. “So we were old colleagues,” he said. “What divisions did you work?”
“Wilshire Patrol, Hollywood Patrol, and Hollywood Vice.”
Cavanaugh and Larkin gave me identical half-smiles and nods of the head. They were a smooth pair, like Abbott and Costello. Larkin leaned forward confidingly. “Do you know a man named Stanley Gaither? AKA ‘Stan The Man?’” he asked.
“I met him once, briefly, a short while ago. Why?”
“We found your business card on his body.”
“Jesus Fucking Christo. Was he murdered?”
“Yes, last night in palm Springs. Along with two other men. Caddies. They were found shot to death under a freeway overpass.”
“Oh, shit. Shotgun?”
“Yes. Six expended shells from a 10-gauge were found. The three guys were blown to shit. How did you meet Gaither? What was the basis of your relationship with him?”
“What ‘relationship’? I met him in a bar. He bought me a drink and told me about himself, how he was a compulsive car thief, and how he was in therapy to learn to control his compulsion. I told him I was in the repo business and I might be able to help him get started ripping off cars legally. He took my card. I haven’t seen him since.”
Larkin and Cavanaugh stared at me impassively. I couldn’t tell if they believed me. “Have you ever met a George Hansen, AKA ’Hamburger’ or a Robert ‘Bobby’ Marchion?” Larkin asked.
“No. Are they the other two stiffs?”
“That’s right. Do you know any other caddies?”
“No, I don’t play golf. It’s not my idea of kicks.”
“What is your idea of kicks?”
“Great music and beautiful women. What’s yours?”
“Have you got a problem, Brown?” Cavanaugh interjected. “Indent people don’t go around shooting T.V. sets.”
“What’s normal? I have an aesthetic soul. I’m the hit man for an international cartel of aesthetic souls who hate T.V. I get paid ten thou a hit. That’s how I’m able to live in luxury in the Hollywood Hills.”
“Don’t fuck with us, Brown,” Cavanaugh said. “I checked your personnel file this morning. You were a fuck-up and a disgrace to the department. We’re investigating a multiple homicide and we don’t have to take shit from some repo asshole. You watch yourself. The State Board of Vocational Standards doesn’t like P.I.’s to go around shooting off shotguns. You could lose your license.”
“If that’s all you have to say to me, why don’t you leave?”
Cavanaugh couldn’t resist a parting shot. “You watch your step, Brown. We’ll probably check you out again.”
“I wait with bated breath,” I said as they walked out the door.
Ralston. Cathcart. Fat Dog. Augie Dougall. Now three dead loop-ers in Palm Springs. There are no coincidences. Caddies do not get knocked off Mafia-style. Augie Dougall was the place to start.
When I arrived at Hillcrest, Augie Dougall was not in the caddy shack. The fry cook at the lunch counter told me he hadn’t shown up today. Try the Tap & Cap, he said. I took him up on it and split. As I walked out of the shack, the place was afire with talk about the looper killings, which had made the morning papers.
I drove west toward the Tap & Cap, stopping first on Pico and Veteran to buy the L.A. Times. It was on the second page:
THREE DEAD IN PALM SPRINGS SHOTGUN KILLINGS
(A.P., U.P.I.) July 16–Palm Springs Police and Riverside County Sheriff’s spokesmen announced today that there are no clues in last night’s brutal slaying of three men, found shotgunned to death under a freeway embankment on Interstate 6 near the Palm Springs-Cathedral City border. Sheriff’s Department spokesman Sgt. A.D. Larkin said that the three men, all of whom were employed as caddies, were drinking and taking drugs at their campsite under the embankment.
“We found several empty whisky bottles and a cache of quaalude capsules,” Larkin said. “Right now we’re thinking that the killings are tied in to a drug rip off. The killer came back for the drugs and panicked after he did the killing. We’re checking out all known intimates of the deceased and expect a break at any time.”
The dead men are Stanley Gaither, 41, of West Los Angeles, Robert Marchion, a transient, and George Hansen of the Desert Flower Trailer Park, Palm Springs. The bodies were discovered by a group of Boy Scouts and their leader returning to Cathedral City from an overnight camping trip.
Not much. But the address of one George Hansen might be worth something. I ripped the article out of the paper and put it in my shirt pocket.
The Tap & Cap was almost deserted when I got there. The bartender and a crippled old black news vendor were reading the Times article aloud at the bar as I walked in. “Po’ motherfuckas,” the old newsy was s
aying, “po’ fuckin’ ‘Burger’ Hansen. Hungriest fuckin’ goat I ever did see. I remember when …”
I interrupted him with a stern look and an abrupt gesture. “Excuse me, gentlemen,” I said, “I’m with Amalgamated Insurance and I’m looking for a Mr. Augie Dougall on a matter of urgent importance. I was told he frequents your establishment.”
The old news vendor started to say something, but the barman cut him off. “You got that all wrong, mister. Augie Dougall lives here. He gets a free room for cleaning the place up.”
“Excellent. Is Mr. Dougall here now?”
“No. He left early this morning. He said he was going up to Palm Springs on the bus. He got real shook up about those three caddies who got killed up there. He knew ’em. He said he’s gonna crack the case. He’s cracked himself. He ain’t gonna crack nothin’.”
“I see. How terrible. I have a sizeable check from a dead uncle for Mr. Dougall. Very sizeable. Do you know where Mr. Dougall will be staying in Palm Springs?”
“I don’t know, but he’s got a cousin up there, in Cat City. In fact, Augie’s got a letter from him that he forgot to pick up this morning, he was in such a hurry.” The barman rummaged beneath the bar and came up with an envelope.
I grabbed it out of his hand and tore out the door, adding theft of government property to my list of crimes. A moment later I saw the crippled newsy hobbling after me. He didn’t have a chance. When I got to my car, I tore open the envelope and read:
Dear Augie,
I hope you are doing good. I am, but it is too dam hot in Cat City. My air conditioner went on the bum and now I am roasting. Is it hot in L.A.? I bet it is. No releef for the wicked, ha! ha! Hows caddying? Do people play golf in hot weather? You wouldn’t catch me on a golf course without a six pak of cold ones and a fan. Ha! Ha! Listen. Something funny happened yesterday. This guy came by the house and said he was looking for some things that crazy fat buddy of yours might of left here. Fat Dog, the guy who wouldn’t use the spare room, who slept in the yard? The guy offered me 50 clams to let him look for the stuff. He said Fat Dog stole some valuable stuff with sentimental value from him and he wanted it back. I told him forget it!!!!! Fat Dog didn’t leave nothing here. It was real suspicious. He told me he used to caddy with you and Fat Dog, but he wouldn’t tell me his name. I went out later and when I got back, my house had been gone through. It wasn’t tore up, but I could tell that someone had searched the place. But it ain’t going to happen again!!!!! Jerry Plunkett is going out of town, and I’m going to borrow his mean old doberman!!!! Anyone tries to mess with my house and Rudolf will chew his ass off!!!!! Ha! Ha! What kind of crazy people are you hanging out with anyway? What was this joker looking for? Solid gold golf balls!!!! Ha! Ha! Next time you go on a toot come on up. I know a barmaid who likes tall guys. She’s about 6'2" herself. Ha! Ha!