by James Ellroy
Marguerita Hansen’s trailer was one of the nicer ones, a chromium “air-stream” of the type popular in the early 50’s. It looked well kept-up, the chrome carrying a minimum of dust. It had an electric buzzer next to the door that went off resoundingly when I pushed it. A woman of about fifty came to the door a minute later.
My first thought upon seeing her was that twenty years ago she must have been a real beauty. She was a honey blonde, tall and plump. Her face was blotched from crying. She held on to the door for support and looked down at me. “Yes?” she said. “Are you from the police? They said I could wait for a few days before making my statement.”
“I’m not with the police, Mrs. Hansen,” I said. “My name is Brown, I’m a private investigator. I’m investigating the murders here in Palm Springs and some other things that may be related. Could I speak to you for a minute?”
When she hesitated, I handed her my billfold, open to the photostat of my license. She took it, checked it briefly, and handed it back. “All right,” she said, “come in.”
The interior of the trailer was spotlessly clean. There was a couch, a coffee table, and two chairs arranged neatly. Up against one wall were boxes full of men’s clothes. Standing next to them were three golf bags, filled with clubs. Marguerita Hansen caught my gaze. “Those were George’s things,” she said. “I don’t want them around anymore.”
I nodded as I took a seat on the couch. “I’ll try to make this brief. First, I don’t think the deaths of your husband, Marchion and Gaither had anything to do with drugs, as the police have been suggesting.” She sat down in a chair across from me. I continued: “I think their deaths can be traced directly to two men—Richard Ralston and Frederick ‘Fat Dog’ Baker. I …” I stopped. Marguerita Hansen came alive at the mention of the two names. “Do you know these two men, Mrs. Hansen?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. George and I have known Dick Ralston for years. He and George used to play minor league baseball together when they were teenagers. He got George his start as a caddy. And George and I were foster parents to Freddy Baker and his sister when they were little children.”
“What?” Suddenly I was shaking.
“I said Dick Ralston and George were old friends and that we were foster parents to Freddy Baker and his sister. My God, why are you staring at me that way?!” She began to sob. I let her cry while I tried to clear the gathering storm clouds in my own mind. After a minute she controlled herself. She looked at me guiltily, as if ashamed for her show of emotion.
“Mrs. Hansen,” I said, “I understand your connection to Richard Ralston. But you tell me that you and your husband were foster parents to Fat Dog Baker and his sister?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“His sister, Jane Baker?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s about twenty-eight years old now?”
“Yes, that’s about right.”
“My God. When was this?”
“In 1955. Freddy was twelve and Jane was three.”
“How did this come about?”
“A man I knew arranged it. Why I’ll never know. He was a wonderful man, an old friend, and he knew George and I wanted children, but couldn’t have any. He paid us very well to take care of them. We loved them so much. They were orphans. We were their second foster parents. Their first died in a fire the year before.” A fire. Jesus God.
“What was this man’s name, Mrs. Hansen? It’s very important.”
She hesitated. “Sol Kupferman,” she said.
Oh, God. Oh, shit, “And this was in 1955?” I almost screamed it.
“Yes. Why are you getting so upset?”
“I’m sorry, but what you’ve told me—and I believe you—contradicts most of the evidence I’ve gathered so far. How did you know Kupferman?”
“My brother introduced us. Sol was a very rich, glamorous, considerate man. He was supposed to be in the rackets, but I didn’t care. He had just lost the woman he had been living with for years. She committed suicide. He was heartbroken. We comforted each other. Why he was interested in the Baker kids, I’ll never know. He was always doing nice things for people. Anonymously. He told George and I that we must never mention him to the children.”
“And he arranged the adoption through an adoption agency?”
“Yes. The County Agency.”
“And what happened? Finally you gave up the children?”
“We had to. George was drinking heavily and Freddy became a wild, terrible boy. The adoption people took them away from us.”
“And that was the last you saw of the children? Or of Kupferman?”
“No. Sol and Dick Ralston fixed George up with a job cad-dying at Hillcrest. He sent us money at Christmastime. He still does. But I haven’t seen him for over ten years.”
“And Freddy and Jane were sent to other foster homes?”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen them since?”
“Not Jane. Freddy once in a while throughout the years. Not recently. He turned into a terrible, vicious-minded man, and I wanted nothing to do with him. He and George used to caddy at the same tournaments and sometimes he brought Freddy home, but I told him not to. Freddy scares me.”
“So you haven’t seen him recently?”
“No, but I knew he and George still saw each other. They even did ‘business’ together, if you can call it that. About ten days ago Bobby Marchion came by. He dropped off some keys for George from Freddy to his golf ball business. Freddy had sold George thousands of golf balls for four hundred dollars. They were in this cheap hotel room in L.A.”
“Do you still have the keys?”
“Yes.”
“Could I have them? I’ll gladly pay for them.”
“You can have them for free. I’ve had enough of golf bums, golf, and golf balls. I’ve been sober for three years in A.A.; I’ve got a Higher Power in my life, and George, as much as I loved him, was a terrible burden. It’s God’s will now that I move away from my old acquaintances. With George gone, I can do that. So you take the keys, with my best wishes.” She went to a drawer and handed them to me, three of them on a rabbit’s foot chain.
“What’s the name of the hotel?” I asked.
“It’s the Westwood Hotel in West L.A. The room number is on the big key.”
I thanked her and pocketed my prize. “One thing before I go,” I said. “Do you know of a scrapbook that Freddy Baker had?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You’ve been a tremendous help.” We shook hands. I walked out the trailer door.
“God bless you,” she called out after me.
I didn’t take the blessing to heart. I couldn’t. I was flying high on my own omnipotence. I got a cheap motel room in Indio. It was dirty, but air-conditioned, and in the morning I got up and drove back to L.A.
V
Concerto for Orchestra
Back in L.A., ray first stop was the Hall of Records on North Broadway. I was armed with two dates of birth and was hunting for big game: birth certificates to prove a theory that was forming in a dark corner of my brain. I explained to the harried, underpaid black woman working the records counter that I was Frederick Baker, born in L.A. on 7–14–43 and I needed my birth certificate because all my I.D. had been ripped off. While I was here, I said, I wanted to get a copy of my sister’s birth certificate also. She was going to Europe soon and needed the copy to get a passport. Would it be possible? I asked. It would be.
I gave the girl Jane Baker’s D.O.B., 3–11–52, and sat down to wait. The expected results came fifteen minutes later. No Frederick Bakers or Jane Bakers were born in Los Angeles on the dates I had given. So far, my theory was bearing out. I trusted that the birthdates given to me by Jensen at L.A.P.D. R&I were accurate. If my next gambit didn’t pay off I would have to make a computer check of all births on those dates, which might prove difficult and futile; for if Jane and Fat Dog were born outside L.A. County, I was screwed.
I pu
lled off my next ploy. I found another busy clerk and told him the same story, this time substituting the name Kupferman for Baker. I hung out nervously for twenty minutes in the crowded waiting room until the clerk called out “Kupferman!” Though I was expecting it, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I paid the man his Xeroxing fee with shaking hands, then took the copies to a corner of the room and read them, suppressing shivers all the while.
Frederick Richard Kupferman was born in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital on July 14, 1943. He. weighed nine pounds six ounces. A Fat Dog from the start. His parents were listed as Solomon Kupferman of Los Angeles and Louisa Jane Hall of Pasadena. Jane Elizabeth Kupferman was born in the same hospital, of the same parents, on March 11, 1952. Everything is connected. The anti-Semite is a Jew. The beloved cellist is a daughter. Which explained Kupferman’s interest from the start in the Baker siblings, which explained his overpowering fatherly love for Jane and his reluctance to deal with Fat Dog’s psychoses. And they were born out of wedlock, by the same woman, nine years apart. Unmarried parents were frowned upon in those days. Why no marriage? And the nine-year gap between births. Who did little Freddy live with during those years?
Marguerita Hansen had said that Sol Kupferman’s long-time paramour had committed suicide. Why? She had also told me the first foster parents were killed in a fire. Started by Freddy? Was he psychotic that young? Only Kupferman could answer those questions, and I wasn’t ready to talk to him yet.
I found a pay phone down the corridor from the records storage room and called the Los Angeles County Bureau of Adoptions. Impersonating a police officer—again—I demanded information on Frederick and Jane Kupferman. It was going well until I told the clerk their dates of birth. “I’m sorry, officer,” I was told, “our records only go back to 1956.” I hung up, stuffed the two birth certificates into my pocket, retrieved my car from the lot on Temple and headed for the harbor freeway and the Hotel Westwood.
The Westwood was a solidly built, tan concrete building on Westwood Boulevard about a mile south of the Village. It was a one-story walk up, L-shaped, situated above a dry cleaner’s and photography shop.
There was a small parking lot in back of the building. I ditched the car and walked up the rickety back steps. Walking into the hotel was like walking into another era. The flat finished white stucco walls, ratty Persian carpets in the hallway and mahogany doors almost had me convinced it was 1938 and that my fictional predecessor Philip Marlowe was about to confront me with a wisecrack.
I found room 12 at the far end of the tail of the “L.” There was no one in the hallway, but from within the rooms I could hear T.V.’s and radios blaring. I unlocked the door and walked into golf ball heaven. There were crates of golf balls on the floor and shopping bags of golf balls on top of them, piled up to eye level.
There were no furnishings in the room except an old mahogany dresser with three boxes of golf balls on top, and when I opened the four drawers, they were, naturally, filled with golf balls. There was a sink next to a window looking out on the parking lot. It was filled with golf balls. There was a metal trash can below the sink. It, too, was filled with golf balls. Against one wall was a closet door that I could barely glimpse through the maze of golf ball crates. I looked at it with trepidation. There was probably a golf ball junkie sleeping inside who would kill me on the off-chance that my pockets might yield a few golf balls.
I risked it anyway, clearing away a half-dozen crates of the pebbled sporting eggs. They were heavy little fuckers. The closet contained jumbo plastic laundry bags full of golf balls, piled up to a top shelf. I couldn’t see anything on the shelf, but swept my hand across it impulsively and came away with a key ring. There were two keys on it and they were labeled, in the tiniest of print, with the names of country clubs in the L.A. area, followed by numbers: Wilshire 71 and Lakeside 16.
I stopped and thought. Fat Dog’s access to the country club milieu of Los Angeles was profound, but only on the level of caddy. Caddy shacks contained lockers that were probably numbered and these keys were locker size. I could tear this room up looking for the scrapbook and come up with nothing but golf ball jaundice, so I split, locking the door behind me.
Only one thing troubled me. Marguerita Hansen had given me three keys. Keys to what? Then I flashed. The community shower and toilet might require a key to enter. I tried them both and they fit. I felt like a third grade kid who had solved a difficult puzzle.
Wilshire Country Club, located midway between downtown and Hollywood, yielded nothing but hostile looks from a particularly motley group of loopers who watched suspiciously as I strode purposefully into their caddy shack, unlocked locker number 71, came up with nothing but more golf balls and promptly split, happy that my theory had been validated.
I drove out to Lakeside, taking the Cahuenga Pass past the Hollywood Bowl and over the hill. I parked my car on a side street leading up to the Lakeside Clubhouse entranceway. The clubhouse was old Spanish, with a low red-tiled roof that seemed to promise warm good times. It was 2:00 P.M., a Thursday, and the clubhouse was nearly deserted. I walked right through. Being reasonably Anglo-Saxon and tastefully dressed, no one stopped me. I could hear pieces of golf anecdotes as I walked through the dining room and out onto a patio with a great view of the flat golf course.
It didn’t take me long to spot the caddy shack; it was the only piece of run-down property on this otherwise splendid preserve, and the carelessly dressed men coming out of it were a dead giveaway. So I strolled over and entered Caddyland once again, my hands stuck in my trouser pockets, my fingers crossed for luck. This caddy shack was relatively clean and the card games that were going on were relatively sedate.
I extracted the key for locker number 16 from the key ring and walked into the locker room in back of the card room. Aside from two loopers asleep on wooden benches I had the dusty room to myself. I stuck the key into the lock, turned it, and stepped back, expecting an onslaught of golf balls that never came. The locker was empty except for one large, double-strength supermarket bag. When I looked inside I knew I was home. There was one large yellow plastic notebook binder and several dozen bankbooks and savings-and-loan passbooks. My heart made a brief, joyous “Ka-thud” and I slammed the locker door shut and walked into the caddy day room.
I couldn’t resist a parting salute to the assembled loopers, so I yelled, “Loop on, you heroic motherfuckers! You have achieved a place in my heart rivaled only by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra! Long live the fine amenities of a well-hit chip shot! Long live Stan The Man, Burger Hansen, and Bobby Marchion! Let the bummer roll! Looping U.S.A.!” I didn’t wait around for their response. I tore out of the caddy shack, my arms tightly encircling what I knew would be a priceless piece of L.A. history.
I couldn’t go home to read it. I couldn’t go home at all, not with Ralston and Cathcart knowing what they did about me, so I drove back over the Cahuenga Pass to the little park across Highland from the Bowl. I found a place on the grass in the shade, took a deep breath, and dug in. The notebook seemed to be in three orderly sections. I could tell even before I opened it: there were three colors of paper—white, yellow, and blue. The white section was in the style of a ledger and I immediately recognized the printing as Fat Dog’s; much neater than in his letter to Jane. The ledger obviously noted racetrack winnings: the first column contained dates going back to ’62, the second the names of the horses, the third the odds, and the fourth the amount of money won. It had to be money won, since each amount was followed by several happy-looking exclamation marks. I drew in a sharp breath as I riffled through the white pages: Fat Dog had won a fortune in the past seventeen years.
I dropped the notebook, reached in the bag, pulled out a handful of bankbooks and gasped: $11,000 in deposits in one bank, $9,600 in another, $8,000 in another, $12,300 in another, $6,000, $14,000, $8,000, $9,900, $13,000, $4,500, $17,000, $11,250 and on and on and on. There were thirty-four bankbooks in all, all to branches in the Greater L.A. area. I did some quick
figuring and came up with a rough total of at least three hundred grand. Over a quarter of a million dollars. I checked the signature on each passbook: Frederick R. Baker. But the words were too well-formed to have been written by Fat Dog. Someone else had made the deposits. But who?
I wiped sweat from my face, rolled up my sleeves and went back to the notebook. I felt suddenly nauseated, but I clenched my teeth and started on the second section, which contained newspaper clippings of fires in the Los Angeles area followed by humorous comments in Fat Dog’s inimitable printing. It was the most ghastly reading I have ever done. The clippings were carefully taped to the yellow paper, which was encased in thin plastic to protect it from aging. It took me only a few minutes to conclude that Fat Dog was a lifelong arsonist and a mass murderer unparalleled in modern times:
From the Los Angeles Mirror, April 2, 1961:
FAMILY OF THREE DIES IN GARAGE BLAZE
A family of three met a blazing death yesterday when their garage-playroom burst into flames. Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Capt. CD. Finan said that Howard Rosenthal, 37, his wife Mona, 34, and their daughter Eleanor, 11, of 9683 Sandhaven, Westchester, were playing ping-pong when their playroom caught fire. They suffocated almost instantly. The cause of the fire was traced to internal combustion, a deadly combination of heat and gas-soaked rags found In the garage. Funeral services for the Rosenthal family are pending at Mali-now Silverman Mortuary, Hollywood.
From the Herald Express, September 10, 1963:
SUPERMARKET FIRE CLAIMS LIVES OF TWO
Two heroic supermarket cashiers died last night as they went back into the blazing inferno that was Ralph’s Market on Third and San Vincente in West Los Angeles. The two men, Donald Bedell, 26, and William Jones, 31, were trying to rescue the market’s payroll and were consumed by flames. Cause of the blaze is as yet undetermined and property damage is estimated at close to a half million dollars. There were several shoppers inside the store when the fire broke out, and Bedell and Jones moved them to safety before returning to open the safe. Bedell is survived by his wife Donna. Jones by his parents, Mr. & Mrs. Robert Jones of Long Beach.