Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [13]
“I know that back in the 50’s the grand jury was convened every time someone laid a fart. It was the McCarthy era. If the grand jury called up Kupferman, it was probably because he knew somebody who knew somebody. That kind of thing.”
“What else can you tell me about him?”
Jack smiled again. “That he had a lot of heart and a lot of class. A real mensch. I bought my daughter a mink stole from him a few years ago. He remembered me and gave me a good deal. He’s a mensch.”
“You remember the Club Utopia firebombing?”
“Yeah. A bunch of people got fried, then the State fried the fryers. What about it?”
“I heard Kupferman used to frequent the place. I thought it was a funny coincidence. Can you put a handle on that?”
“Yeah, I can. Life is filled with funny coincidences.” I was digging for more questions when the phone on Jack’s desk rang. He picked it up and bellowed into it: “Liz, baby! How did it go?!” I got up and we shook hands across his desk. He placed a free hand over the receiver. “Let’s get together soon, Fritz. Dinner, what say?”
“Sounds good, Jack. I’ll call you.”
He nodded goodbye. As I walked out his door I could hear him exclaiming gleefully, “A congressman? And he wanted to do that with you?”
When I got down to street level, the city was cooling off. I decided to drive home, and then go looking for Fat Dog. The case was turning into an exercise in futility, and I would feel better about it with some of Fat Dog’s money in my pocket. I put the top on my car down and cruised east on Sunset. Knots of young hookers were starting to appear, sitting on bus benches and giving male motorists the eye. I toyed with the idea of picking one up, but only briefly; they looked too sad.
At home, I watched the sunset from my balcony. The nicest thing about nighttime is the clarity, and in L.A. that means shadows and neon. The night was alive now. I went looking for my client.
Santa Monica Boulevard and Sawtelle Avenue, one-half mile south of the Veteran’s Administration complex, is the nadir of West Los Angeles. It’s a strange bottom, not too dangerous unless you’re waxing profane about the masses of wetbacks who live in the fleabag hotels there. Chilled short dogs dominate the refrigerated sections of the half dozen liquor stores on this compact skid row, and the doomed old men from the V.A. who scarf them up are the saddest things I’ve ever seen. But “Graveyard West” has its positive side: the Nuart Theatre is a great revival house and the Papa Back Bookstore is a mecca for counter-culture literati. All in all, despair wins out by a nod, and the neighborhood is the ideal place for a thirty-five-year-old hippie on the sauce.
I parked my car at a gas station across the street from the Nuart and went looking for the Tap & Cap. I found it around the corner from the theatre? on Sawtelle. It was a dumpy beer bar with a neon sign advertising its hours: 6 A.M. to 2 A.M., the maximum the law allows. When I entered I was struck with a thousand deja vu’s. This place had been described by Fat Dog as a caddy hang-out, and the two dozen or so men sitting at the bar and hanging around the pool tables had to be caddies. They were dressed more or less alike: beat up golf-type slacks that had originally cost good money, knit shirts—most of them bearing mascots or symbols on the pockets—and hats—a wide variety of them, from sunvisors to baseball caps to Tyrolean pork pies. I had seen scores of men dressed like this over the years, sunburned and middle-aged, dressed too distinctly to be bums, yet not quite looking like indent citizens. Caddies.
I took a stool at the end of the bar. Behind the bar, above the shelves of beer glasses, was a giant photographic collage of blown-up photos of leading jockeys and their mounts interspersed with Polaroids of bar regulars playing softball and guzzling brew. I couldn’t pick out Fat Dog. I got the bartender’s attention. “I’m looking for Fat Dog Baker,” I said. “He told me I could get a line