Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [56]
I picked up an empty tin can and threw it at the rat. It scurried out the door, flesh hanging from its teeth. I surveyed the room: walls of the cheapest grade building material, floors of rough wood, a formica coffee table with a case of dog food underneath it, a duffel bag containing golf balls and nothing else. No furnishings, plumbing, or lighting. Nothing but the corpse of Frederick “Fat Dog” Baker, caddy and arsonist, and my would-be gravy train.
I walked outside to the far corner of the pathetic little yard, away from the dead puppies, in order to get away from the smell of the dead looper and collect my thoughts. I felt composed and detached as I thought about the last stand of this psychotic dreamer. I felt absolute pity that anyone should have to live as Fat Dog did and die as terribly; tortured for hours or maybe longer. For his money? For the roll he may have been flashing in T.J.? I went back into the charnel house to look for clues. I was right the first time. There was nothing. When I walked back outside, my memory jogged: Fat Dog never lived indoors. He was a notorious hobo and pack rat. I charged into the wooded area behind the shack. It was about one hundred-fifty yards deep and thick with desert pines that allowed almost no light to enter.
It took me three hours of poking in bushes and checking out the bases of tree trunks to find what I was looking for. It was behind an uprooted scrub bush, nestled in a hollow tree trunk and wrapped in three giant plastic bags: a sleeping bag, two books on the care of greyhounds, a wallet containing $1,600 and no identification, the May issue of Penthouse, a 6-iron, and a pebble-grained leather ledger, almost identical to the ones Omar Gonzalez had found in Richard Ralston’s house in Encino.
I opened the ledger, which was wrapped in its own smaller bag. It was set up in five columns, the first two containing lists of Latin and Anglo surnames followed by initials, the two columns separated by dashes in red ink. The third column held dates in no particular order. The fourth column listed amounts of money, ranging from $198.00 to $244.89. The fifth column was allotted the largest space: it held comments written in a minute hand in Spanish. The ledger had thirty-two pages set up this way and it spelled one thing: extortion, somehow featuring Richard Ralston.
I transferred the money from Fat Dog’s wallet to my own and tucked the ledger under my arm. I walked back to my car, skirting the death house, feeling certain that Fat Dog had been attempting to blackmail Richard Ralston, or someone, and had paid for the crime with his life; that somehow Sol Kupferman and the Club Utopia firebombing were also connected. What nagged at me was the missing link: Omar Gonzalez’s anonymous caller.
When I got back to the car I locked my shotgun and new evidence in the trunk and drove back to T.J. to find someone who could read Spanish.
It was almost six o’clock when I got back to Tijuana. The traffic was impossible, so I parked in the first space available in the downtown area. Street peddlers were out in force, hawking firecrackers and elaborate sets of fireworks: Roman candles, pin-wheels, “atom bombs,” and “houses on fire,” selling them out of large open boxes leaned up against parked cars. T.J. was going to rock with the antics of swinging expatriates tonight.
My first stop was at an Army-Navy store, where I purchased a sturdy-looking shovel. Fat Dog deserved a decent burial and I was the only one to see that he got it. His golf balls would accompany him. I returned to the car and locked the grave-digging tool in the front seat, then went looking for an educated Mexican who looked like he could keep his mouth shut.
As I walked, I kept pushing thoughts of Jane out of my mind. I was likely to be down in Mexico longer than expected. Fat Dog had mentioned a “rich friend” with a “big castle.” It would bear checking out. There was also the matter of Fat