Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [87]
“Robert Marchion, George Hansen, Stanley Gaither, the heart of every golfer in America mourns for you and prays for a swift, merciless justice for your killer. We thank you from the bottom of our collective heart for your service—greens read well, good yardage calls, traps raked and heavy bags cheerfully toted. God bless you in your final resting place. This is Don Castleberry, signing off with Special Report. Have a good day.”
I couldn’t think for my sudden anger. My mind was seized with a boundless hatred for America. America, with its optimism, boosterism, and yahooism that opted for sentiment over truth every time. America, that would turn the truth of the lives and deaths of three men into a cheap advertisement for an infantile game.
After a few moments my anger subsided. I was in the desert now, the smog was behind me. It was sweltering outside, but the arid landscape was beautiful. I was snug in my air-conditioned cocoon, and in the matter of the people versus Haywood Cathcart, Richard Ralston, and Fat Dog Baker, I was the arbiter of justice, not America.
Palm Springs shot up in the distance, a green shimmering oasis in my tinted windshield. Cathedral City, if my memory served me, was to the southeast of the Springs, a working-class community on the edge of the desert mountain range. I got Augie Dou-gall’s letter out of the glove compartment and checked the return address: Charles Dougall, 18319 Eucalyptus Road, Cathedral City.
I passed through Palm Springs on Palm Canyon Drive, the ritzy main drag. The expensive boutiques and gift shops that lined its immaculate sidewalks were closed for the summer. Only a few restaurants, coffee shops, and gas stations seemed to be open. The few people about seemed in a hurry, rushing toward some air-conditioned sanctuary. I took Palm Canyon out of town to where it turned into a desert highway, winding around to Cathedral City and Indio.
Cathedral City was as I remembered it—dusty residential streets crowded with old wood frame and faded stucco houses reaching up toward some scrub-covered mountain too insignificant to name. I bumbled on to Eucalyptus Road, almost missing it, jamming right at the last second. I put my car in low and climbed up slowly, scanning the house numbers.
18319 was midway between highway and mountainside. It was white with aluminum siding, the dream house of a modest dreamer. There were small statues of forest animals guarding both sides of the narrow walkway. They had been pink once, but were now faded almost white by the sun. I parked and alighted from my car, shedding my suitcoat as the sun hit me like a blast furnace. I rang the doorbell and was answered by a dog’s furious barking. Old bad-ass Rudolf, no doubt. I rang again. There was no one but Rudolf at home.
I drove to a gas station, and asked the attendant if he knew where the freeway embankment was where the three guys got shot. I gave him a big ghoulish smile. He returned it and we related, one ghoul to another. Before giving me detailed instructions on how to find it, he elaborated his theory of the killings: the “Mafia” was responsible. The three dead caddies wouldn’t cut them in on their golf course dope action, so they had to be “snuffed.”
I thanked him for his help and took off for the scene of the crime. I was there within five minutes. It was just an innocuous freeway off-ramp, the wide overpass providing shelter from the sun. It looked like a good place to get drunk and shoot the shit. Only today the sand flats on both sides of the roadway were jammed with cars, working-class men in Bermuda shorts, housewives with children in tow and low-rider types in tank tops and cut-offs, spilling forward to see the place where death and drama happened. I joined them and right away found my prey in the middle of the crowd, standing a head taller than everyone else.
I walked