Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [63]
At 10:45 A.M., it was already reaching one hundred degrees. There was a sea breeze that did its best to help, but failed. I decided to leave the car and walked into town—a 502 in a foreign country was all I needed. I walked through the streets of the housing development, a blatant ripoff of American values that nonetheless carried the essence of the Mexican ethos: women and toddlers sunning themselves on the steps of the plain one-story stucco dwellings, dogs cavorting happily and chickens squawking in their low, fenced enclosures. I waved to several groups of children and they waved back. I was never a child. I came out of my mother’s womb full-grown, clutching a biography of Beethoven and an empty glass. My first words were “Where’s the booze?”
I walked down to the road that paralleled the ocean. There were fewer turistas out now. Most of the people I saw driving were Mexicans with Baja license plates. The Coast Highway took me north into Ensenada proper, past scores of signs advertising fishing, lobster dinners, and Jai alai. I passed an impressive monument similar to the American one at Mount Rushmore, this one heralding three great Mexican patriots, their heads in striking bas relief.
I was drenched with sweat now, the alcohol spreading out through my pores. I found a bar that looked like a good place to replenish my liquid content and stepped inside, but the loud Mexican disco music that blared from the jukebox drove me straight back out the door. I tried a few other dives, but the “music” was the same. Finally, I found a quiet bar on a side street. I needed a drink now, and as I sat down at the bar I arranged a stack of one dollar bills in front of me. The bartender understood and when I said “Scotch” he brought it to me wordlessly, taking a single dollar bill as payment.
I was starting to feel nervous: Armando, who I was certain had nothing to do with Fat Dog’s murder, might discover the destruction of his property and finger me to the cops. The fire I started might have spread. I was at a disadvantage not knowing Spanish—I could have checked the newspapers for mention of it. The tire marks I had left at the scene could be traced to my Camaro. My passage through the toll booths might have been noted. Fear breeds fear, and booze quells fear, temporarily.
I drank a toast to fear, draining my glass. The bar Scotch was good, so I set out on a regular procession of toasts: to Herbert Von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic, to Vladimir Horowitz, to Richard Wagner, and to the guy who designed the Hollywood Bowl. Since each of these toasts was a solid two ounces of juice, my fears were soon pretty well under wraps and I started feeling good, humming along with my fantasies again. I wasn’t hungry, but I forced myself to eat a greasy plate of eggs and sausage that the barman’s wife served me with a fetching smile.
After I had had about six drinks, a rational train of thought began to emerge, along with a syllogism: I am in a bad way. I am in a bad way because there are big pieces missing in the puzzle I am trying to solve. There are big pieces in the puzzle I am trying to solve because my mind is closed to new concepts in general, and new concepts in music in specific. Wino Walter Cur-ran, my best friend, had been warning me for years of the danger of o.d.’ing on German Romanticism. Since music frees the mind, new music would free my old mind to fit together the big pieces in the puzzle I was trying to solve.
Brilliant. Booze does it again. It was time to hunt down some new music to play Greek chorus to the new mind of Fritz Brown. Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Haydn, et al. had had their day, and would have it again, in a better time, a time of reminiscence, shared with Jane. Now it was time for Bartok, Stravinsky, Debussy, and Ravel—all those dissonant guys Walter had been fruitlessly urging on me for so long—to come to my aid.
I left a three dollar tip on the bar and walked outside. The afternoon sun hit like a blow from a sledgehammer. I adjusted my cave dweller