Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [107]
Kupferman’s voice during his monologue had taken on qualities of feeling and resonance I had never before heard. The deeper he reached into his past, the deeper his voice became, until it had subsided into a hoarse whisper that was more grieving than any amount of sobbing or wailing could ever be. I could tell that he didn’t want to continue his story. He sat down on the dirt path, depleted in every way, unmindful of his expensive suit. I sat down beside him. He stared at the ground, lost in his own guilty history.
“Let me finish for you,” I said, placing an arm around his shoulders. “Freddy and Jane went to live with the Hansens. Freddy grew up crazy, Jane grew up to be the Jane we both love. You wanted to be close to your children, without breaking your own anonymity, so you had Richard Ralston bring Freddy out to Hillcrest. Jane followed. Freddy was unreachable, but you became Jane’s mentor and dear friend. Freddy bombed the Club Utopia. Cathcart knew of your link to Freddy, through Ralston, and instigated an extortion scheme. He’s been sucking you dry ever since. Is that right?”
Sol Kupferman shrugged free of my protective arm. “Yes, you’ve got it all,” he said.
I decided to spare him the knowledge of his son’s extended career of arson and murder.
“Have you been sending money to the relatives of the Utopia victims?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered softly.
“Does Jane deliver the money?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have much personal contact with Cathcart?”
“Hardly any. Ralston is his liaison man.”
“How so?”
“How much do you know about the Welfare operation?”
“I know that you sign all the phony documents, including the checks themselves, and that they’re cashed at your liquor stores, and that Cathcart has the thing monitored from inside the Department of Public Social Services from every angle.”
“That’s about it. But Ralston is the liaison on every level involving me and the inside people. Cathcart just pulls the strings, holding the fear over everyone.”
“So Ralston would have all the records on the inside people?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That fits. Ralston and I recently became acquainted. I got a confession out of him. He’s more afraid of me than he is of Cathcart.”
Sol gave me a strange, inquisitive look, tinged with awe. “What exactly do you want out of this? I don’t understand your motives at all,” he said. “Jane told me Freddy hired you in the first place, but that doesn’t fit. What do you want?”
I stood up. Sol did, too, brushing dirt from his pants. I pointed south toward the smoggy L.A. Basin. “I want a little piece of that, a little piece of the mystery, the insanity, the life. I want revenge, for you. I want to see Cathcart fall. And I want your daughter. I want to marry her. I love her. I think she’s in the process of learning to love me. Has she told you how she feels about me?”
Sol smiled, for the first time in our brief acquaintance. “She told me she feels very drawn to you emotionally, but is slightly afraid of you. She called you ‘walking ambivalence.’”
I smiled back at Sol and laughed. “An astute remark. She’s a very intelligent woman. I understand this ambivalence she sees in me. She caught me at the tail end of my old life and the beginning of my new one. This case is the dividing point. But very shortly it’ll be over and we can court in earnest. Then she’ll see the more stable, beauty-loving side of me.”
“This case will never be over, Fritz.”
“What do you mean?”
“Cathcart has me. I have to serve him. If I don’t, Jane will learn everything, and I’ll be ruined. With Freddy dead, no one else will foul things up or get hurt. The violence is over, thank God. But Cathcart is too protected, too insulated. He’s beyond the law. He is the law.”
I looked out over my city. All I could see were the tops of buildings jutting out of a brown haze. I looked back at Sol. “I’m going to kill him,” I said.
I waited a long moment for his response. He was staring at the ground as if he were trying to dig a way out of his life with his eyes. “Don’t do it, Fritz,