Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [28]
We walked back to the car. A heavy fog was rolling in, clinging to the greenery and creating deep oceans of mist. There was a silence in the maintenance shack as we passed it. I drove Stan to his hotel in Culver City. We shook hands. He thanked me effusively, and promised to consider my offer. As I drove back to my pad all I could think of was one phrase: “Looping is sadness.”
The following day it seemed like a good idea to let sleeping Fat Dogs lie, at least for the moment. There were other angles to check out. My case was turning into a splendid example of inductive logic: searching for evidence a decade old to convict a killer whose identity I already knew. Since I was seeking to link Sol Kupferman to the Club Utopia, it seemed logical to start with the owner, Wilson Edwards.
Remembering that McNamara told me Edwards had a criminal record, I called Jensen at R&I for an address. He came through: Edwards had been busted the year before for possession of heroin. His address at that time was the Hotel Rector on Western Avenue just south of Hollywood Boulevard. I put on my intimidation outfit; a checked cotton sportcoat, tie, and contrasting slacks, and drove there.
The Hotel Rector was a thousand years old, and bespoke a despair that was uniquely Hollywood: the lobby was crowded with elderly pensioners awaiting their monthly stipends, black prostitutes, and low riders drinking beer. It smelled of urine and liniment. The loneliness there was almost tangible.
The old man at the desk told me that Wilson Edwards was still at the Rector and staying in room 311. I took the stairs. The hallways didn’t smell any better than the lobby and hadn’t been swept recently.
I knocked on 311. No answer. I knocked again. This time I heard the rumbling of a voice aroused from sleep. I knocked again, louder. Footsteps approached the door. “Eddie?” a voice called tentatively. “Is that you?”
Not wanting to disappoint anyone, I answered, “Yeah, it’s me. Open up.”
The man who opened the door was truly horrific. He looked like one of the concentration camp victims on the walls of Fat Dog’s shack: his gray skin hung slackly from prominent cheekbones, his eyes were sunken and filmy and the T-shirt and boxer shorts he was wearing encased his shrunken torso like a tent. He was shaking, and it took him several moments to realize I wasn’t Eddie. “You’re not Eddie,” he said finally.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m not. Are you Wilson Edwards?”
“Yeah, are you fuzz?”
“No, I’m a private investigator. May I come in? I’d like to talk to you.”
His eyes turned shrewd, and as he sized me up he grabbed the door jambs with both hands for support. The veins in both arms were nearly obliterated. He was a long time junkie. I grabbed his left wrist. He tried to pull away, but I held on. Some of the tracks were recent.
“Is Eddie your connection?” I asked. “Are you sick now? You can tell me.” I tried to soothe him. “I won’t hurt you, I just want to ask you a few questions. It won’t take long.”
Seeing that he had no choice, Edwards motioned me inside. “I’m not sick yet, but I will be soon,” he said as I shut the door behind us. Then he started to laugh. “Man, that’s funny. I’m dying of cancer but I’m not sick yet. That’s funny.” He pointed to a beat-up armchair. “You have a seat. I’m gonna geez. I can’t talk to you till I get over these shakes.”
I sat down and Edwards went into the bathroom and shut the door. I checked out the room: it reeked of body odors, but was clean. Edwards was evidently something of a jazz buff. There were dozens of albums arranged neatly on a wall shelf, mostly be-bop and modern jazz. There was no phonograph in sight. Edwards returned to the room. He looked relieved, but no healthier. His eyes were dilated and his shakes had stopped.
His voice was somewhat calmer. “Dilaudid used to be delightful, but now I’ve got to be smacked-back for all the pain to go. Let’s make this fast. I don’t