Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [45]
It was about what I had expected, grammatically and thematically, yet none of Fat Dog’s surprising intelligence and cunning shone through. I quickly read the other two letters. They were simply repetitions of the first, but they reinforced my hunch that Fat Dog was now in Mexico, and that his rich friend might not be a figment of his imagination and might be a possible lead. I was itching to get started. But I had to see Walter first to check on his well-being and say au revoir. There was a fear on the back burner of my mind that I might never see him again. I quashed it and stuck Fat Dog’s letters in my pocket and hotfooted it to the old neighborhood.
Walter didn’t answer my ring and there was no response when I knocked loudly on the window of his room. This was surprising; maybe he was making the run to the liquor store. I walked back to the front steps to wait.
After five minutes his mother pulled up in her senile Mustang. She hates to spend money, unless it’s on spiritual artifacts of the Christian Science Church, like her Wedgwood bone china plates inlaid with drawings of the Mother Church. Over the years Walter has sailed a number of them off the twelfth floor of the Franklin Life Building at Wilshire and Western, but she keeps replacing them. She’ll withstand the greatest indignities with a stoic resolve to keep him under her thumb. Once Walter boiled her eighty-five dollar morocco-bound copy of “Science and Health—A Key To The Scriptures” in a pot that was equal parts water and Thunder-bird. He presented it to her on a silver chafing dish embossed with the likeness of Mary Baker Eddy—in front of her Wednesday night Bible Study class.
She saw me as she was locking her car and dredged up a smile from the dark recesses of the cold city that she lives in. “Well, Officer Brown, how nice to see you,” she said.
“I quit the police department a long time ago, Mrs. Curran,” I said, “you know that.”
“Yes, and such a pity, too. You were so handsome in your uniform.”
“No doubt. Where’s Walter?”
“Chief Davis is such a fine man. I was hoping you would follow in his footsteps and make the police force your career.”
“You would dig Davis. He’s as crazy as you are. Where’s Walter?”
“Walter? I think he’s on hiatus somewhere. He left last night. He’d gone to one of those terrible A.A. meetings where everyone smokes cigarettes and takes the Lord’s name in vain. You know how those meetings upset him. I’ll give you your due, Officer Brown, you are not a nice man and you have an evil tongue, but you do know my boy. Although not as well as I do.”
“Yeah, I do know old Walt pretty well. Do you know what I like most about him? His restraint.”
“His restraint?”
“Yeah, his restraint at not having strangled you in your fucking bed a long time ago. Good day, Mrs. Curran.”
I walked back to my car leaving Walter’s madre to catalogue my indignity for future use against him. I was worried now. I had been unavailable to my friend for several days and he was in one of his periodic descents into reality, with all the terror that brings. When Walter takes off on what he terms his “periodicals,” anything can happen. Once he bought two hundred tennis balls and hurled them at passing cars from the bus stop at Beverly and Van Ness. Another time he barricaded himself in a motel in Hollywood with a bag of weed and a supply of dexedrine and porno books, convinced he could kick booze that way. Both times I was able to effect some sort of reconciliation between Walter and the world before he was locked