Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [4]
“We’ve got one down, ten to go. I’ll get them all provided they haven’t skipped town with no leads,” I said. “One a day, something like that. All the people are working.”
“Good, good. I have faith in you. You’ll do your usual superb job.” Cal looked at me seriously. “Any plans for your future? It’s been a while now; I think you’ll make it.”
“No real plans, as yet. Europe this fall, though. Work will slack off here, and I can catch the great orchestras of Germany and Austria at the beginning of their concert seasons.”
“You speak the language, too.”
“Enough to get by. I want to hear great music in its birthplace. That’s the main thing. Check out Beethoven House in Bonn, the Vienna Opera, Salzburg. Take a boat ride up the Rhine. I have a feeling that there are all kinds of hot chamber ensembles, unsung, playing in little country inns all over Germany. I’ve got the money, the weather is good in the fall, and I’m going.”
“Before you leave, we’ll talk. I’ll give you a list of good hotels and restaurants. The food can be great over there—or lousy. Right now, though, I have to split. I’m due on the tee in half an hour. Do you need any money?”
“Not for myself, but I need three hundred seventy-six dollars and twenty cents for my driver.” Cal went to the wall safe, extracted the amount, and handed it to me.
“You take care, Fritz,” he said, leading me outside, grabbing a twenty-pound bag of dried dog food as he locked the door behind him. He called to his secretary, “Feed Barko, will you, honey? I think he’s hungry.” The attractive, bespectacled blonde smiled and went for Barko’s dish.
I looked at Cal and shook my head. “All the money that dog has made for you, you cheap fuck, and you still feed him that dried shit?”
“He likes it. It’s good for his teeth.”
“He doesn’t have any teeth.”
“Then I must be a cheap fuck. I’ll see you, Fritz.”
“Take care, Cal.”
Larry, the sales manager at Casa, fixed me up with an old Cutlass demo, loaded. I told him I’d hang onto it for a week or so and return it gassed up. Rather than check out the places where my repo’ee’s worked, I decided to take the day off, maybe see my friend Walter. I headed down Ventura toward Coldwater. It was ten-thirty, and hot and smoggy already. Driving over the hill I felt good; relaxed and even a little hungry. Coming down into Beverly Hills, I felt again that my life was going to change.
I’ve got my own tax shelter, the Brown Detective Agency. It’s a detective agency in name only. As far as the IRS knows, I’m a starving gumshoe, declaring nine grand in total income and paying $275 in income tax. I save about eighty bucks a year by claiming myself as a deduction. I used to advertise in the Yellow Pages, before the repo racket got lucrative, and actually handled a few cases, mostly runaway kids who had dropped into the drug culture; but that was two years ago, when I had more illusions about myself as an urban manipulator. I still retain my office, an $85 write-off, in a crummy office building on Pico in Rancho Park. I keep my library there and go there when I want to read. It’s a dump, but it’s air-conditioned.
I decided to head for the office now, since Walter was probably still passed out from last night’s bout with T-Bird and TV. I parked in the lot, crossed the alley to the Apple Pan, and returned with three cheeseburgers and two coffees to go. I had wolfed down two of the burgers by the time I opened my office door. It was musty inside. I hit the air-conditioning immediately and settled into my chair.
It’s not much of an office; just a small, square room with Venetian blinds over a rear window facing an alley, a big, imitation-walnut desk with a naugahyde swivel recliner behind it for myself, a cheesy Bentwood rattan chair for clients, and an official-looking file cabinet that contains no files. There are two photographs of me on the wall, both