Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [22]
I wrote it all down. “Were you satisfied with the police investigation?” I asked. “What about the ‘fourth man?’”
“‘The fourth man’ was bullshit. The killers, Magruder, Smith and Sanchez, were buddies—painters. They were in the Utopia earlier that night. Drunk. They got fresh with some women and were bounced by the bartender. They came back just before midnight. Magruder opened the door and threw a three-gallon pail of gasoline into the bar. Sanchez followed it with a lighted book of matches. Six people fried to death. Smith was out in the car sleeping. Several survivors of the fire saw Magruder and Sanchez do it. Two men who survived had worked with Magruder and knew his address. He and Sanchez were arrested later that night in the driveway of his apartment building. They were both passed out from their drunk. They got Smith at his house later that morning. The ‘fourth man’ routine was just a dodge to beat the death penalty. It didn’t work. They all went to the gas chamber.”
I pressed on. “The arresting officer was named Cathcart, right?”
“Right. Haywood Cathcart. A choice asshole. When I got to the scene, right in the middle of the whole commotion, fire trucks, police cars, reporters, I saw a group of plainclothes cops talking. I tell them I represent Prudential as an investigator, and would they mind talking to me. Cathcart won’t even let me finish. He yells at me that this is police business, that he doesn’t want any insurance bimbo fucking things up. Then he has a harness bull escort me to my car. A choice shithead.”
“Let’s talk about the victims,” I said. “Did you pay out any money to their next of kin?” I was fishing now, hoping to luck onto something that would start my wheels turning. McNamara consulted his memory and his martini.
“Yeah, we did,” he said. “Ten thou apiece to the next of kin of four of the victims. The other two victims were elderly transients with no known next of kin.”
“Did any relative or friend of the victims sue? Either your company or Edwards? Or make any trouble?”
McNamara laughed. “No one sued, but one loco made a lot of trouble. Anthony Gonzalez’s kid brother, Omar. Tony Gonzalez was a Golden-Glover back in the 50’s. Omar worshipped him. He was about sixteen when his brother got French fried, and to say that he took it hard would be an understatement. He was probably the only one in L.A. who believed the fourth man existed, and Jesus Christ, did he make a stink about it. He pestered the cops, found out I was investigating the case for the insurance company, and then pestered me. He bugged the newspapers. It was insane. You remember the Joe Pyne Show? Every week he’d be in the audience. They had this thing called the Beef Box, where people from the audience could get up and air their gripes. Every fucking week Omar would be up there, running off at the mouth about the Utopia case and how the fuzz let the mastermind get away. He said the mastermind, that was what he called him, had a grudge against one of the victims and so he bombed the bar just to kill that one person. That way the cops wouldn’t check that one person’s enemies out. Kill six to get one. He said that Sanchez, Magruder, and Smith were just dupes. When they were executed, he took out a black-bordered ad in the L.A. Times. A full page. ‘When will the mastermind responsible for the death of my brother be brought to justice?’ etc. He used to hang out at 77th Street and buttonhole Cathcart, give him a hard time, expound on his latest theory. He bugged me a lot too, but I never resented it. Omar was a very bright kid, but his brother was strictly a punk. A barfly reliving his days of fistic glory. You remember a book—they made a movie out of it—Magnificent Obsession? That’s what it was for Omar.” McNamara’s eyes were clouding over with