Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [103]
I took Myers into the kitchen and read him off. When he realized I wasn’t going to bust him he genuflected wildly before me. I told him never, ever, to fuck around on my beat again. I collected the snapshots and put them in my pocket. This scared him, but he was so relieved at being spared the law that anything short of castration would have seemed merciful. He asked me my name several times and I told him. Dimly, my reptile mind was beginning to perceive that he might want to show his gratitude for my mercy. So I told him: Officer Fritz Brown, L.A.P.D., Hollywood Division, Badge number 1193. He committed it to memory and rushed out the door.
I dropped the two girls off on the Boulevard, near The Gold Cup. The evening was young and they had plenty of time to look for other action.
I got a call at the station about a month later. An unidentified caller had left his number. I called it and it was Cal Myers. He suggested we get together. We did. He wanted to give me a car. I said forget it, I didn’t begrudge or condemn him for his interest in young girls. He insisted. I relented, but I told him I would rather have a good stereo system. I also told him that I had ripped up the photos and had no intention of ever blackmailing him, but if he wanted to lay some goodies on me out of gratitude, then, what the hell, I would be gracious and accept. He smiled, but I could tell he didn’t believe me.
A week later he called me at home and told me I had carte blanche at a prestigious stereo equipment store in the Valley. I went there with Walter and ordered my dream system, which arrived at my pad two days later, along with a technician to set it up.
I called Cal to thank him and assure him that his secret was safe with me. I could tell he still didn’t believe me. I desperately wanted him to, and thereafter I would call him up, drunk, and offer my assurances, which were never really accepted. Gradually, we became friends, although I knew he harbored a deep fear of me and we met every few weeks or so and got drunk together. Our relationship was a strange mixture of mutual respect and attributing qualities to each other that we didn’t possess: Cal thought I was cold, hard, intelligent, and impenetrable, which was horseshit. I convinced myself that he was deeply sensitive beneath his businessman’s exterior and a potential aesthete, which was also pure horseshit. All we both wanted to do was get by, which meant markedly different things to each of us.
When I got kicked off the police department in ’75, there was never any question what I would do for a living. As soon as I was out of work, Cal’s paranoia regarding me was given full rein. I went to work repossessing for him to assuage that fear, as well as for the money.
It had been a good relationship in some respects, but now it was dead. And Cal had been mistaken from the beginning. I had destroyed the snapshots, almost immediately.
When Cal came to the phone bluff-hearty, I knew he was upset. Augie Dougall and the thousand dollar kick-out, perhaps. “Well, well,” he said. “Man about town Fritz Brown. Where the hell have you been?”
“Around,” I said. “Has Augie Dougall been in touch with you?”
“He sure has. Fucking beanpole Abraham Lincoln. That was dirty pool, Fritz, mentioning that thing to him. Fucking unworthy