Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [40]
“That sounds fine.”
“In the meantime, please be careful and try not to worry okay?”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Good. Try to find those letters for me, will you? They might be important. I have to go now, I have errands to run. I know it sounds stupid, but everything is going to be all right. You can trust me.” Jane looked at me, unsmiling. I stuck my hand out to her and we shook gently. “Tonight at seven,” I said as I got up to leave.
Jane smiled. “I take it you already know the address,” she said.
“Of course. I’m a big-time detective.”
When I got home I did some telephoning: I called the starters’ desks at Bel-Air, Wilshire, Brentwood, Los Angeles, and Lakeside Country Clubs and inquired after Fat Dog Baker. I told the caddy masters that I was an insurance adjuster who had a juicy check for Fat Dog from a rich old man he had caddied for years ago. The old man had croaked and left Fat Dog a bundle for improving his putting stroke. Amazingly, they all believed me. Not amazingly, none of them had seen Fat Dog recently. That was good. I had my heart set on pursuit south of the border.
After my sojourn on the telephone, I ran my errands. At an electronics store in Hollywood I bought a high quality reel-to-reel tape recorder, a supply of blank tape, and a state-of-the-art condenser microphone. From Hollywood I drove to the Pico and Robertson area and leaned on Larry Willis. Larry Willis is a small-time black shoplifter, dope dealer, pimp, and food stamp recipient. He used to hang out at the Gold Cup on the Boulevard in the early ’70s when I was working Hollywood Vice and I rousted him regularly. Once he called me a pig and I kicked his ass soundly. He fears me, for good reason, and thinks I still carry a badge. Fearing the worst when I came in his front door unannounced, he was only too happy to furnish me with what I needed: a dozen one-and-a-half-grain Seconal capsules.
My last stop was at a gun shop on La Brea, where I purchased a Browning 12-gauge pump shotgun and a box of shells. I had everything I needed for Mexico.
On the way to pick up Jane I reviewed the women in my life. There weren’t many. There was Susan, a hard line San Francisco leftist eight years my senior, who I shacked up with when I was twenty-three. We met when I ticketed her for an illegal left-hand turn on Melrose and Wilton. I ran a warrant check on her and she came up dirty: a slew of unpaid traffic citations. But I couldn’t bring myself to arrest her. She was too handsome and intelligent-looking. So I cited her and showed up at her apartment two days later with a bottle of Scotch, flowers, and a smile. She ditched the flowers in the toilet bowl and we killed the Scotch and became lovers. She could drink me under the table.
Our relationship lasted a hectic eight months. I met a lot of interesting people—old time San Francisco unionists, superannuated beatniks, and dopers of all stripes. I was Susan’s live-in curio: an outsized, crewcut cop who got drunk all the time and listened to Beethoven. Gradually, our cultural differences came to the fore and it was no go. Susan’s idea of a lover’s endearment was to call me her “sociopath with a gun.”
Christine was my next inamorata: a car hop at Stan’s Drive-in, catty-corner from Hollywood High. Christine wrote incomprehensible poetry and talked in riddles and metaphors. She was insane, a profound piece of passion pie one moment, a willful shrew the next. What a body! The last I heard she was a topless showgirl in Vegas.
It was a beautiful L.A. summer evening, ideal for the Bowl. Cruising west on Sunset with the top down my mind took flight with bits and fragments of the passing scene: the Strip gearing up for another go at nightlife, the giant lighted signs proclaiming rock groups and other coming attractions, the callow idolators of electric music cliquing up in front of the Whisky A Go Go. And punk rock was out in force, well represented by skinny teenagers in ’50s garb sporting green and blue hair and wrap-around sunglasses. One distaff