by James Ellroy
She started to cry, and I made no effort to stop her. “Who are you?” she finally got out between sobs.
“My name is Brown. I’m a private investigator,” I said. “The people I mentioned are all involved in a case I’m working on. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Are Henry and Reyes all right?”
“I don’t know. Is this your apartment?”
“Yes.”
“I followed you here from the cannery. I could tell you were scared. What is it? What’s frightening you?”
“Henry and Reyes are gone. They’ve been gone for a week. I know they’re in trouble.”
“How do you know?”
“I know. They were supposed to do this job for this rich man. This guy Henry used to play baseball with fixed it up. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was dangerous. I told Henry that, but he wouldn’t believe me. He wanted the stuff too bad.”
“What stuff?”
“You know. Stuff. Smack. This rich guy was going to give Henry a lifetime supply. Because the job was dangerous.”
“Was Henry a dealer?”
“What do you mean ‘was’? Is Henry all right? Tell me!”
I hesitated.
“He’s all right as far as I know. Is he strung out?”
“Yeah. Bad.”
“Was this guy Henry used to play baseball with named Richard Ralston?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of job was he supposed to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Okay. Look, what’s your name?”
“Dorcas. I mean Dori. Dorcas is a shitty name. It sounds like dork, so I use Dori.”
“Dori, I know Reyes Sandoval is a burglar, and you tell me Henry is strung out. I don’t care. I don’t want to bust anyone. This case I’m involved in is too complicated to explain to you. I need the man who hired Henry to do this job. Then maybe I can find out if Henry is all right. We both know that this man wanted Henry to kill somebody, right? That’s the only thing it could be.”
Dori collapsed in sobs, her body quaking. “I know, I know, I know! Now this guy Ralston is after me. He says Henry is gone, Reyes is gone, and the dope is gone. He thinks I know where Henry is. I told him I know where the dope is—he can have it back—but Henry is gone and Reyes is gone and I just know they’re dead!”
“Sssh. Maybe they’re not. Ralston wouldn’t be bothering you if he knew they were dead, right?”
“Maybe.”
“Better than maybe. Probably. Can you tell me who hired Henry and Reyes to do this job?”
“I don’t know his name. Ralston set it up. He’s a rich American, I know that. He’s got a huge house down the coast. Henry told me about it, and I remembered passing by there once.”
“Can you take me there?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Has Ralston been hassling Sandoval’s wife? I know you know her. I followed you there.”
“Yes. Tina’s scared, too. She sent her kids to T.J. to live with her parents.”
“I think you and Tina should lay low for a while. I’ll make you a deal. Show me this rich guy’s place tonight, and I’ll give you and Tina Sandoval some money to hide out on. I’ll even drive you to the border.”
“How much money?”
“A thousand dollars.”
“Really?” Dori smiled for the first time.
“Really. I’ve got it right here.” I patted my wallet.
“What about my things?”
“Forget them. You’re probably in danger. Forget your job, too. You can always come back to it. If you can take me to this place, then I’ll drop you with the Sandoval woman. We’ll ditch Mexico tomorrow.
“But Tina’s Mexican. She don’t have a green card.”
“Let me worry about that. Now pack a bag so we can split.”
She went into the adjoining room and I surveyed the apartment: it was cheap plush, an unschooled person’s idea of high class. Dori came back, suitcase in hand, surprisingly fast. She was pulling together nicely. The hardness I had discerned in her at the cannery was real. “One thing before we leave,” I said, “where’s this supply of dope Henry received?”
She nodded toward the bedroom. We walked in. She opened up a dresser. Hidden underneath some men’s shirts were six plastic baggies of white powder. A fortune in heroin if the stuff was pure. I opened a baggie and tasted: the blood rushed to my head and my body shook for a brief instant. It was very pure. If I hadn’t killed Henry Cruz he would have died of an overdose before too long. I looked at Dori.
“It’s good stuff, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Extremely,” I said. “Stuff like this doesn’t deserve to live. We’re going to hold a funeral service for it.”
“But it’s worth a lot of money.”
“The money you’d get from selling it wouldn’t deserve to live, either. Where’s the bathroom?” It was adjacent to the kitchen. I carried the baggies in, and emptied them, one by one, into the toilet. It made me feel pure and very moral. When I flushed, it was almost like an act of penance for my old sins. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.
We drove south in my car and we talked, or mostly Dori did. She was nervous, worried, but excited over the prospect of my thousand dollars. She had had a long, hard relationship with Henry Cruz. She was an L.A. girl, and Cruz had taken her virginity when she was fifteen. They had been together ever since. He had turned her on to sex, which she loved, and to the L.A. doper ripoff underworld, whose intrigue she found fascinating, and to drugs, which she hated and never used more than nominally, to placate Henry.
They had had their ups and downs. Henry had gone to jail and she had hustled to keep him on dope while he was inside. He had made her pose for specially photographed “Deluxe Collectors Item” pornography books that he had given his friends. He had fixed her up with the owner of the cannery, where she worked as a combination typist/party girl. The cannery mogul paid for her apartment and gave her a grand a month in exchange for frequent nighttime visits.
Henry was a rat, she admitted, but she loved him, and that was that. To my dismay, she was turning me on. My mind was reverberating away from the case toward various sleazy ploys to bed her. Her sexual power was overwhelming. To keep it at bay, I opened up a new line of questioning. “Tell me about Richard Ralston.”
“What about him?”
“Everything. Think about it for a minute.” While Dori thought, I concentrated on my driving. The terrain was unspectacular at night, dark hills on my left and the dark Pacific on my right. I was concerned about Dori’s reliability. Would she be able to find the place?
She read my mind: “Don’t worry, I’m not conning you,” she said. “Henry showed me the place. He was in fucking awe of it. It’s some crib.”
“You’re a mind-reader, Dori. Tell me about Ralston.”
“Ralston is kind of a low-level manipulator. A ladies’ man, too. He’s known as ‘Hot Rod’ because he’s hung like a barracuda. I know, because Henry made me fuck him once. He and Henry used to play baseball together, minor league. Back in the fifties. He’s into a lot of shit, gambling, bookmaking, all that. He’s got this golf course job that’s really a front, and he’s got this hotel and bar that he owns. Really a sleazo racket. He’s got all these poor old guys on pensions and Welfare living there, all boozehounds. They live in his fleabag hotel and drink in his bar. It’s their whole fucking life. Hot Rod collects their checks each month, subtracts their bar tab and rent, sells them cigarettes that he gets from a fence dirt cheap, and gives them a few bucks spending money. No shit! He told me about it once. Most of the old fuckers at the hotel are caddies too old to carry bags. Hot Rod says he’s keeping them alive, if you can call it living. Personally, he’s got a lot of style; you know, he’s sexy and charming and all that. But basically he’s a shit. That’s okay, though. I like shits. I relate to them. Henry’s a shit and we’ve been together a long time. You’re a kind of a shit, too. I can tell.”
“Thanks.
”
“No, really. I meant it as a compliment.”
“Thanks.”
We drove in silence, I was keyed up. My case was moving upward, in power, property and prestige from the depths of caddy despair to the seaside casas of the rich, and I was furiously anxious to unravel it, conclude it, mete out whatever justice I could, and return to Jane and Walter and some kind of peace. I checked my watch. We had been driving for fifty minutes. Dori started getting nervous, muttering to herself.
“Now?” I asked.
“Soon,” she replied, sticking her head out the window to look for landmarks. “Okay, now,” she said. “There’s a road just beyond the next bend. Slow down and turn when I tell you.”
I did and my headlights caught a wide, well-traveled dirt road leading straight up toward what looked like a pass between two large mountains. As we approached, the terrain flattened out and the mountains became hills. We passed between them, going inland toward a dark, cold, nothingness. It was very silent. Far in the distance coyotes bayed. The road meandered up and down among a series of small hills. It was utterly dark, my high beams the only light.
Gradually the road widened and off to my right a large white shape began to emerge and take form.
“There,” Dori said, pointing toward it, “that’s the place.”
I pulled off the road. “You stay here,” I said. “I’ll be back within half an hour. Don’t leave the car.”
She nodded nervously. I took my shotgun and flashlight from the trunk and walked toward my objective. As I got within two hundred yards I realized I was looking at a rancho that would have made a Texas land baron proud. It was two stories high, of white stucco, and had three wings running in different directions. It was a stylistic mishmash, a cross between an American prison and a Turkish mosque. Lights burning in a huge picture window in the main front wing cast an orange glow over a carport that held three cars.
Surprisingly, there was no fence or surrounding wall. Whoever owned this palatial rancho evidently believed in the safety of the wide open spaces, so I walked right up to the cars and examined them: A ’76 Ford Ranchero wagon, a four-wheel drive Toyota Landcruiser, and a late model Volvo sedan. All bore California plates, which I committed to memory.
I circled the house at a radius of fifty yards or so, to avoid being seen from the darkened rooms. The rancho was set on a foundation of concrete that extended out into the mesquite land that bordered it. By my watch it took me seven minutes to make a complete circuit of la casa grande. There was nothing out of the ordinary, only an eerie desert stillness. Suddenly music cut the night. It was unmistakable: the Schumann Fourth Symphony, the opening movement, the brass pounding up and down like a drum roll. My adversary was an aesthetic and he possessed a stereo system even better than my own, sending shock waves of German romanticism into mesquite land and canyons for miles around.
Dori was frightened, dropping her cigarette into her lap and burning herself as I opened my car door. I put the shotgun into the back seat and hit the ignition. “What’s that creepy music?” she said. “It scared the shit out of me.”
“That’s the good stuff,” I said, digging into the glove compartment and writing down the license numbers. “Learn to dig it, it’ll set you free. The guy who owns that pad has taste.”
“I think his taste sucks. Give me rock any day.”
“Rock causes cancer, acne, and the creeping crud. Back to Ensenada. I’ll help you move some more of your stuff up to the Sandoval place. Then I’m taking off.”
“What about the money you promised?”
“You’ll get it. A grand for you and a grand for Tina. I’m feeling magnanimous.”
Dori grabbed me, hugged me fiercely and planted a big wet one on my cheek. “You’re really a nice shit. You know that?”
“Thanks.”
I pulled a U-turn and we began our return trip. Walter had indeed been right. Everything was connected. But was it decipherable? For the first time since Fat Dog knocked on my office door over two long weeks ago, I wondered if anything was.
When we got back to Dori’s apartment, I gave her fifteen minutes to move as much of her stuff out as would fit into both our cars. She went about it hurriedly, hauling large armloads of clothes out the door and running down the stairs. I followed suit, not running. I noticed that she left untouched the men’s clothing I had seen earlier. Within twenty minutes, both our cars were packed with feminine goodies and a lurid library of pop writers.
We then headed north, toward Sandoval Bluff. When we arrived at the Sandovals’, I hurried to unload my car, stacking Dori’s things neatly on the ground. No lights were on in the house. That was good; it would be easier to drop my bad news. I dug into my wallet, bloated with other men’s money, pulled out two thousand in fifties and C-notes and placed them in Dori’s hand. She just looked at me. A period in her life was over and she knew it. “Henry’s dead, Dori,” I said. “Reyes Sandoval, too. I saw their bodies. There’s a big time bad scene going on and it’s going to get worse. I’m not sure exactly what’s happening, but you and Tina had better get the hell out of here and don’t come back. Go to San Francisco, or Phoenix, or some place you’ve never seen before. Thanks for helping me.”
She didn’t say anything. When I kissed her cheek, I felt a slow trickle of tears. I got in my car and headed for the border, leaving behind in my room the cheap phonograph and an assortment of soiled clothes.
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 of
ficer 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 on the moral perfection of a high-ranking L.A.P.D. bimbo being brought to justice by a former L.A.P.D. minion out of moral limbo. I was getting restless. I dressed and got out the car. Driving would kill my vengeful fantasies and bring me back to earth. I headed west, toward Jane’s.
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.