Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [77]
She wasn’t there. Neither Cadillac was in the driveway, but I knocked anyway. There was no answer, which was surprising. I had expected someone to answer, a maid, perhaps. I went back to the car to wait. I had a lot to tell her—mixed tidings about her brother’s death and the other things that transpired in Mexico. She deserved to know the whole story, and be kept up to date on my progress.
And I wanted to be close to her gentleness and beauty. I decided to tell her about the two men I killed. She deserved to know that, too, and wouldn’t condemn me for it. She was a clearheaded, practical woman. One night doesn’t lay claim to a person’s life, but our one night was a promise of a commitment and a future together in more stable times. And I wanted another loving night with her before the unpleasant, possibly violent job of bracing Hot Rod Ralston.
A car pulled into the circular driveway—a full pig Chrysler convertible—and a large solidly built man in his middle forties got out and rang the bell. It was a quiet afternoon and I could hear the chimes from my post across the street. The man had a hard-edged look about him, like a cop or an insurance investigator. Maybe he was a business associate of Kupferman.
I was thunderstruck when Jane Baker opened the door and walked outside, carrying her cello case. She locked the door behind her, greeted the man with a warm smile and walked with him to his car. Whatever he was, he wasn’t any cello teacher.
When they pulled out. I decided to follow. I found myself getting jealous. Jane knew my car, so I had to stay behind for at least a full minute, then head after them on the route they would most likely take—Beverly Drive South. I waited, trying to quash a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. Walter Curran: everything is connected. The man Jane drove off with had the mien of a cold, manipulative ex-athlete, like Richard Ralston. I didn’t want it to be.
I picked up their trail on Beverly Drive and Burton Way, inside the Beverly Hills shopping district. I came up right behind them, watching them huddle in conversation. The man pulled up to the curb on Beverly just south of Wilshire and Jane got out, lugging her cello. She didn’t notice me as I drove by, continuing to follow the man in the Chrysler. He turned right on Pico, heading in the direction of Hillcrest Country Club. I started to pray for it not to be, but when we came up on Century City and Hillcrest and he flashed his left-hand directional, I knew, and was resigned.
There was a uniformed guard in the parking lot who admitted Ralston, so I had no chance of following him directly in. I turned right on the corner of Century Park East and parked in a No Parking Zone. I locked the car, placed a “Physician On Call” notice under my windshield wipers and ran across Pico toward a small gate off to the right of the parking entrance. A group of four scruffy-looking caddies were entering the gate, two of them sharing a pint of vodka. I walked in right behind them, staying a few yards back, hoping they would lead me to the caddy shack. They did. It was off to the left of a concrete walkway that bordered a large putting green.
There weren’t too many golfers about; Tuesday afternoon was probably a dead time for golf. The shack was slightly below ground level, a white clapboard job with a green tar-papered roof, built on a slope that led downhill to what looked like an oil drilling site.
I walked inside and was greeted by a shrieking cacophony of noise: there were half-a-dozen card games going on at wooden picnic tables, and the players—for the most part poorly dressed, sunburned, middle-aged men—were gesturing frantically, throwing cards and shouting good-natured obscenities. The concrete floor was littered with trash, cigarette butts, and empty beer