Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [82]
“Will you do a few things for me, sweetheart?” I asked.
“I guess so.”
“Good. One: stay away from Ralston, and two: tell Kupferman I’ll be calling him, probably tomorrow. Tell him who I am and what I’ve been doing. Tell him it’s very important.”
“All right.”
“Good. Will you have dinner with me tonight? At my place?”
“I can’t. I have to study and practice. And I want to be near Sol and have time to think.”
“All right. I’ll drive you home.”
“No. I want to be alone. A walk home carrying my cello will clear my head. You understand, don’t you?”
“Of course. I’ll call you soon.”
I leaned over and we kissed. Jane’s lips brushed distractedly against mine. She maneuvered her cello out the car door. “Be careful,” she said.
I nodded and watched through the rear-view mirror as She lugged her cello up Beverly Drive and out of sight. When she was gone I realized I had forgotten to give her the armadillo purse I had bought in Tijuana.
I was tired. My encounter with Jane had diffused my anger into a vague hope that was enervating in itself. Sleep was what I needed, but I was too tired for that. My only recourse was the tried-and-true run to Walter’s place. I wanted to commit an act of symbolic liberation and his back yard was the place for it.
It was sweltering when I pulled into his driveway. His mother’s Mustang was gone, thank God, and I found Walter sitting on a lawn chair in his back yard, his feet immersed in a kiddies’ wading pool. He was reading a science fiction novel and sucking on a short dog. Several more short dogs were cooling in the pool. He looked about half-bombed. “Moon to earth, moon to earth,” he said as he saw me coming. “The noble private eye returneth from his search for the Holy Grail in Mexico. Chastened, methinks.” Leave it to Walter to throw in one solid perception in his line of horseshit. “Was it fruitful, Fritz? Did you see the mule act? Did you ‘eat out’ at the Blue Fox? Did you score me some dope so I can get off the sauce?”
“Negative to all that rebop. I did learn one interesting thing, though. I found out who killed The Black Dahlia.”
“Oh, yeah? Who was it? The Ayatollah? It has to be him. That clown looks exactly like a fag who tried to grab my dick in the swimming pool at the Hollywood Y when I was twelve. It has to be him.”
“Wrong. It’s you, you bastard, because all that mystical Buddhist shit you’ve been whipping on me for all these years about everything being connected is true. I congratulate you. The twenty-five or thirty I.Q. points you have on me has never been more evident. Since everything is connected, the concept of karma must be valid, too. Ergo, it’s time to clean up my act and get out of the repo racket. After I clean up a big mess I’m involved in. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet. Maybe get Cal to set me up in my own classical record store, something like that. There’s a woman in my life now that I have to consider. And since karma is a valid concept there’s probably some nigger who’s looking for me right now with a Saturday Night Special for ripping off his Cadillac. I can’t risk that. Jane needs me. So you were right. I salute you, reluctantly.
“But there’s no victory without pain. You have to pay the price. The one thing that I resent most about you, as much as I love you, is your insane addiction to television. The booze, the music, the sci-fi are all understandable. But the T.V. shit is beneath you. It’s even beneath me. So your T.V. set has to die. Today. Right here in your back yard. I will perform the execution. You will be compensated. I have over six hundred dollars in dirty money that I have to get rid of before I begin my new life. So we do it. Now.”
I had expected high-flying resistance from Walter, but he just smiled. He fished out a short dog from the pool and drained it in one gulp. He shuddered and smiled again. “Let’s do it,” he said. “I’m resigned. Six hundred