Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [76]
I pulled into T.J. at 2:00 A.M. I bought Jane a handbag made out of armadillo’s skin. I laughed when I paid for it. Its claws unlocked makeup compartments and it had beady rhinestone eyes. I fingered it for luck as I crossed the border back into California.
IV
Shotgun
I had changed during my stay South of the Border and expected to find L.A. changed when I returned. I was wrong. As I passed through the far-flung Southern suburbs of L.A. proper around dawn on the 405, it was as familiar as the sigh of an old lover: the same hazy sunshine, smog, billboards, blacktop, and boredom. Even the Santa Monica Freeway eastbound, with its view of West L.A. as a green plateau and the Wilshire Boulevard skyscrapers and the Santa Monica Mountains in the distance, yielded nothing but a dull verisimilitude. But it was good to be back.
It was too early to call the DMV to check out the license numbers of the cars at La Casa Grande, so I took a shower and fell into bed to wait for nine o’clock. It was noon when I woke up, frightened. I didn’t know where I was. I looked around for the wake-up bottle I kept by the bed when I was drinking, then realized I had been sober for four days. Then it hit me: I was back in L.A. and the case was active. But I hesitated in reaching for the phone. I thought of Jane and couldn’t picture her face, just her body as it looked our one night together.
I went into the kitchen and made coffee. That helped. My head was clearing. Midway through my first cup, I dialed the DMV. I was reaching out to the top of my case and I was scared. For perhaps the fourth time since Fat Dog hired me, I impersonated a police officer. It worked again. I read the numbers off to an abrupt woman and she came back with the registration information after only a moment’s wait.
When I got the news my head started to crackle and I began to laugh. It was too perfect; beyond poetic justice, beyond logic and reason. All three cars belonged to Haywood Cathcart, 11417 Saticoy Street, Van Nuys. Cathcart. The L.A.P.D. lieutenant who “cracked” the Club Utopia firebombing case in record time in 1968. I felt calm, but my hands were shaking. I had to hold my coffee cup with both hands to take a sip.
I dug out my old Academy yearbook from the bedroom and looked for mention of Cathcart. He was posed with several other officers listed as “guest lecturers,” and his lecture was given as, Crowd Control—Techniques of Containment and Disbursement. I didn’t recall the lecture. Cathcart was a tall, stern-looking, sandy-haired man of about forty-five.
I got on the phone again, this time to Parker Center. I wanted to find out if Cathcart was still with the department. I gave the information officer I spoke to a line of shit about media revival of the Utopia firebombing case, with emphasis on the fine work of Lieutenant Haywood Cathcart. Was Lieutenant Cathcart still with the department? The desk dummy bought it. Cops love to have their asses kissed in print.
“Yes,” he said, “Lieutenant Cathcart is now Captain Cathcart, stationed right here at Parker Center with the Narcotics Division.”
I thanked the cop and hung up. Cathcart. Cathcart. Haywood Cathcart. Captain Haywood Cathcart. I liked the euphonious ring of the name. It would look good in print when his world came tumbling down at his feet. Cathcart was not only veteran L.A.P.D. brass, but a murderer, heroin dealer, evidence suppressor, and—given the size of his pad in Baja—a tax-evader. He had to be the top man in this upward spiral of arson, murder, drugs, and dirty money.
I was right. One look at his cold face in the yearbook photograph taken a scant eight months before the Utopia blast told me that. Logic told me that the bombing was the genesis of his involvement. He was linked to Ralston, Ralston had set him up with Sandoval and Cruz; and the only possible motives that could tie this disparate, far-reaching case together were blackmail and money, something beyond the chickenshit bookie operations of Kupferman and Ralston.
As adrenalin and irony coursed through my bloodstream, I gloated