Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [58]
Omar read fast, his eyes skimming the pages, showing no emotion. He read page by page for several minutes, then closed the book and stared at me. “It’s not a bookie ledger like the ones I found at Ralston’s house,” he said. “The first four columns are the same thing. Names, some Latino, some Anglo, some that sound kind of black, followed by initials—R.R., that would have to be Ralston, J.L., H.H., D.D., G.V. Don’t ask me what that means. The next column is odd amounts of money, with a dash, then a date, no particular order. The dates go back eight years to ’72. After the dates, there’s all these really odd amounts of dough—211.83, 367.00, 411.10. Like that. Funny. With no dollar signs, just the decimal points. Weird. In the next column there’s another name, most of the time matching the one in the first column. Then, there’s comments—spooky stuff. For instance—‘Cousin, dead ten years,’ ‘Uncle, born here, valid D.O.B., died Mexico, ’55,’ ‘Played ball with R.R., died 6–21–59.’ Every line in this last column seems to refer to some dead person, or one of their relatives. Spooky. What do you think, repo?”
Another loose end seemed to be tying itself up. “I think maybe this ledger details some kind of welfare scam. Remember those blank checks stuck in the ledgers you ripped off of Ralston? Everything in this new ledger seems to bear it out—the names, the amounts of money—all small and within the range of a monthly Welfare payment, and the comments in the last column—died such and such a date. I think that Ralston is working a Welfare ripoff, and that Fat Dog was involved somehow, or found out about it, and tried to blackmail Ralston, and was killed.”
Omar was nodding his head, taking in the information and kicking it around. “What do we do now?” he said.
“Let’s bury Fat Dog and head back to L.A. Ralston is the key to this case, I’m sure of that. When we get back I’m going to brace him.”
We got up and left the cantina, my coffee and his beer practically untouched. We walked to the car, then headed for the En-senada Toll Road.
It was almost dark and cooling off. We drove south on the toll road, skirting the ocean. As we pulled out of Tijuana I could see bonfires being lit in the shanty towns that filled the canyons on the land side of the road. The people who lived in the makeshift communities had no electricity, but their fires provided light and a glow that swept all the way across the highway to illuminate the Pacific with strands of gold. Given the corruption of Tijuana, where most of them probably worked, I wondered if they were jaded beyond redemption, as I was, or innocent enough to fill their lives with the simple beauty that surrounded them. Omar was evidently thinking along parallel lines.
“So much fucking beauty, and so much fucking poverty. But it’s the poverty that finally gets you. So you come to America, meaning L.A., and you find some kind of chickenshit job and raise a big family, and stay poor. And you know what kills me, repo? There’s not a goddamned thing I can do about it. Except to help the kids who rebel at the poverty and look for the answer in dope. You win one, and you lose twenty. But you know, it’s worth the effort.”
“Yeah. One thing you haven’t mentioned: How the hell did you find me? How did you know to come to T.J.?”
“Easy. There was no place else to go. The only lead I had was those porno pictures, which spelled T.J. Also, you shanghaied me north, in the opposite direction. I cut through the rope about three in the morning and hitched into Santa Barbara. I caught the six o’clock bus to Dago and walked across the border. I been looking all over town for your car since eleven o’clock. Finally, I spotted it. Then I found you.
“You’re a smart, resourceful guy, Omar. I have no doubt you’ll go far in life, now that you’re free of your obsession.”
“But it’s not over, repo. This puto Fat Dog is dead, but there’s a lot more going on, you said so yourself. I want to know all of it.”
“You will. But you’re strictly a noncombatant.