Brown's Requiem

1

Business was good. It was the same thing every summer. The smog and heat rolled in, blanketing the basin; people succumbed to torpor and malaise; old resolves died; old commitments went unheeded. And I profited: my desk was covered with repo orders, ranging in make and model from Datsun sedan to Eldorado rag-top, and in territory from Watts to Pacoima. Sitting at my desk, listening to the Beethoven Violin Concerto and drinking my third cup of coffee, I calculated my fees, less expenses. I sighed and blessed Cal Myers and his paranoia and greed. Our association dates back to my days with Hollywood Vice, when we were both in trouble and I did him a big favor. Now, years later, his guilty noblesse oblige supports me in something like middle-class splendor, tax free.

Our arrangement is simple, and a splendid hedge against inflation: Cal’s down payments are the lowest in L.A., and his monthly payments the highest. My fee for a repossession is the sum of the owner’s monthly whip-out. For this Cal gets the dubious satisfaction of having a licensed private investigator do his ripoffs, and implicit silence on my part regarding all his past activities. He shouldn’t worry. I would never rat on him for anything, under any circumstances. Still, he does. We never talk about these things; our relationship is largely elliptical. When I was on the sauce, he felt he had the upper hand, but now that I’m sober he accords me more intelligence and cunningness than I possess.

I surveyed the figures on my scratch pad: 11 cars, a total of $1,881.00 in monthlies, less 20 percent or $376.20 for my driver. $1,504.80 for me. Things looked good. I took the record off the turntable, dusted it carefully, and replaced it in its sleeve. I looked at the Joseph Karl Stieler print on my living room wall: Beethoven, the greatest musician of all time, scowling, pen in hand, composing the Missa Solemnis, his face alight with inword heroism.

I called Irwin, my driver, and told him to meet me at my place in an hour and to bring coffee — there was work on the line. He was grumpy until I mentioned money. I hung up and looked out my window. It was getting light. Hollywood, below me, was filling up with hazy sunshine. I felt a slight tremor: part caffeine, part Beethoven, part a last passage of night air. I felt my life was going to change.

It took Irwin forty minutes to make the run from Kosher Canyon. Irwin is Jewish, I’m a second generation German-American, and we get along splendidly; we agree on all important matters: Christianity is vulgar, capitalism is here to stay, rock and roll is evil, and Germany and judaica, as antithetical as they may be, have produced history’s greatest musicians. He beeped the horn, and I clipped on my holster and went outside.

Irwin handed me a large cup of Winchell’s black and a bag of donuts as I got in the car beside him. I thanked him, and dug in. “Business first,” I said. “We’ve got eleven delinquents. Mostly in South Central L.A. and the East Valley. I’ve got credit reports on all of them and the people all have jobs. I think we can hit one a day, early mornings at the home addresses. That will get you to work on time. What we don’t snatch there, I’ll work on myself. Your cut comes to three hundred seventy-six dollars and twenty cents, payable next time I see Cal. Today we visit Leotis McCarver at 6318 South Mariposa.”

As Irwin swung his old Buick onto the Hollywood Freeway southbound, I caught him looking at me out of the corner of his eye and I knew he was going to say something serious. I was right. “Have you been all right, Fritz?” he asked. “Can you sleep? Are you eating properly?”

I answered, somewhat curtly, “I feel better in general, the sleep comes and goes, and I eat like a horse or not at all.”

“How long’s it been, now? Eight, nine months?”

“It’s been exactly nine months and six days, and I feel terrific. Now let’s change the subject.” I hated to cut Irwin off, but I feel more comfortable with people who talk obliquely.

We got off the freeway around Vermont and Manchester and headed west to the Mariposa address. I checked the repo order: a 1978 Chrysler Cordoba, loaded. $185 a month. License number CTL 412. Irwin turned north on Mariposa, and in a few minutes we were at the 6300 block, I fished out my master keys and detached the ’78 Chrysler’s. 6318 was a two-story pink stucco multi-unit dump, ultra-modern twenty years ago, with side entrances, and an ugly schematic flamingo in black metal on the wall facing the street. The garage was subterranean, running back the whole length of the building.

Irwin parked in front. I handed him the original of the repo order and tucked the carbon into my back pocket. “You know the drill, Irwin. Stand by your car, whistle once if anyone enters the garage, twice if the fuzz show up. Be prepared to explain what I’m doing. Hold on to the repo order.” Irwin knows the procedure as well as I do, but even after five years of legalized ripoffs, the whole deal still makes me nervous, and I repeat the instructions for luck. Strange things can happen, have happened, and the L.A.P.D. is notoriously trigger-happy. Having been one of them, I know.

I dropped down into the garage. I expected it to be dark, but the morning sunshine reflecting off the windows of the adjacent apartments provided plenty of light. When I spotted CTL 412, the third car from the end, I started to laugh. Cal Myers was going to shit. Leotis McCarver was undoubtedly black, but his car was a full dress taco wagon: chopped, channeled, lowered, with a candy apple, lime-green paint job with orange and yellow flames covering the hood and sweeping halfway back over the sides of the vehicle. Black enamel script over the rear wheel wells announced that this was the “Dragon Wagon.” I got out my master key and opened it. The interior was just as esoteric: fuzzy black and white zebra-striped upholstery, pink velveteen dice hanging from the rear-view mirror, and a furry orange accelerator pedal in the shape of a naked foot. The customizing must have cost old Leotis a fortune.

I was still laughing when I heard the scrape of a footstep off to my left near the back end of the garage. I turned and saw a black man almost as big as I am striding toward me. There was no time to avoid a confrontation. When he was ten feet away, he screamed “Motherfucker” and charged me. I was in the walkway now, and just before he made contact I sidestepped and tripped him with a kick at his knee. As he struggled to get to his feet I kicked him once in the face, once in the neck, and once in the groin. He was moaning and spitting out teeth.

I dragged him over between two cars near the back of the garage and patted him down for weapons. Nothing. I left him there, got into his chariot, and pulled out onto Mariposa. Irwin was still standing there by his car, as if nothing had happened. “He tried to jump me, and I waxed him. Get out of here. Tomorrow, same time, my place.” Irwin turned pale. This was the first time anything like this had happened. “Didn’t you hear anything?” I yelled. I jammed on the gas, peeling rubber.

I looked in the fur-bordered rear-view mirror. Irwin was just starting to get into his car. He looked like he was trembling. I hoped he wouldn’t quit me.

I turned left on Slauson and right on Western, half a mile later. I had been driving for five minutes or so when I discovered that I was trembling. It got worse, so bad that I could hardly hold the wheel steady. Then I felt my stomach start to churn and turn over. I pulled into the parking lot of a liquor store, got out, and vomited on the pavement until my stomach and lungs ached. My vomit tasted like coffee and sugar and fear. After a few minutes I started to calm down. A group of gangly black youths lounging against the liquor store wall and passing around a bottle of cheap wine had watched the whole scene, laughing at me like I was some rare breed of alien from outer space. I took several deep breaths, got back into the car and headed out to the Valley to see Cal Myers.

By the time I hit the freeway, my adrenalin rush had subsided. In five years as a repo-man I had had a dozen or so such encounters, been shot at twice, and beat up badly once. But this was my first confrontation since getting sober, and I was pleased that the old instincts and tricks were still there. I don’t like hurting people, no sane man does, but there had been no alternative this time. My six years with the fuzz had taught me to read people for signs of violence, and that man had meant to fuck me up.

I recalled another repo from about three years back: a memo had come in from the bank stating that a woman had stiffed Cal with a rubber check for two months’ delinquent payments and three months in advance. I checked out her home address and learned from her neighbors that she was a honcho at the local Scientology Center, a lesbian, and a welfare recipient. No one at the Scientology joint or her apartment building had seen her for several days, so I broke in late that night and discovered she had moved out completely. When I told Cal what had happened and described the woman’s lifestyle, he went nuts. Cal is a big right-winger and took the ditch-out as a personal affront. He told me to find the woman and repo the VW bus regardless of the time and expense involved, promising me a fat bonus if I succeeded.

Through coercion and bribery I got the Scientologists to relinquish the woman’s new address in Berkeley. I flew up there, getting drunk on the plane. After sleeping off the booze in a rented room, I took a cab to the address I had been given. No VW bus, no one at home. I had the cabbie run me by the Scientology Celebrity Center. XLB 841 was not in the lot, or on any of the surrounding blocks. I told him that we had some waiting to do, promising him fifty dollars plus the meter if he kept me company. He agreed.

Berkeley gave me the creeps: the people passing by looked aesthetic and angry, driven inward by forces they couldn’t comprehend and rendered sickly by their refusal to eat meat. A lot of people passed through the center, but I didn’t notice any celebrities.

Finally the VW bus pulled in. Suddenly I was pissed. I had tickets for the L.A. Philharmonic that night, and here I was, four hundred miles away, putting the arm on some counter-culture bimbo for her sleazy bus. Rather than waiting until she entered the building and pulling a simple ripoff, I ran across the street and intercepted her. Flashing my repo order in her face, I yelled, “I’m a private investigator and I have a repossession order for this vehicle. You have five minutes to remove your things, then she goes.”

The pretty young woman nodded along with me, but when I went for the driver’s side, she attacked. I had the key in the door when I felt a sharp kick in my leg. I turned around, the door half open, and caught her purse full in the face. I had never hit a woman, but I swung around and cocked my right arm. Then I hesitated. The heavy leather purse was arcing toward me again, and I grabbed it with both hands, wrenched it free, and hurled it across the parking lot. She was at me now, shrieking and clawing at my face. Her shrieks alerted the Scientologists within the building and I could see them goggling through the plate glass window. I grabbed the woman and flung her to the ground.

Luckily, the bus started easily. People were pouring into the parking lot. I swung out into the alley behind the lot. The woman was on her knees hurling invectives. Her best shot was “urban barracuda.” The cabbie was nowhere to be seen. I found the address of the cab company in the phone book, drove over, and left the dispatcher with an envelope containing fifty scoots. He told me Manny, the hackie, would get it when he clocked out.

I went back to Berkeley to move out my things. I sorted out my observations of the woman, her lifestyle, and her reaction when I presented her with the price of her culpability. I came to one conclusion: if life was to be a game of give and take, with a rational morality deciding who gives and who takes, I would have to watch my personal morality, but stay on the side of the takers. I drove over the Bay Bridge and got a room at the Fairmont, a magnum of Mumms and a call girl. L.A. looked good the next afternoon.

I left the freeway and turned onto Ventura Boulevard, where you can buy anything you want, and anything you don’t want. The storefronts on this smoggy expressway feature manifestations of every scheme, dream, and hustle the jaded American mind can conceive. It is beyond tragedy, beyond vulgarity, beyond satire. It is supreme guilelessness. There are approximately eight billion of these storefronts — and three billion new and used car lots. Cal Myers has three: Cal’s Casa de Cairo, Myers’ Ford, and Cal’s Imports. He makes big bucks. He could sign a contract with a credit agency for his repossessions and save money, but we go back a long time, and he likes as well as fears me.

I ditched the bean-mobile at the Ford lot and dropped the keys and repo order with the sales manager. He told me Cal was across the street at Casa de Cairo filming a commercial.

Cal comes from the same ethnic background I do and we both have blunt, ruddy faces, dark hair, and brown eyes. Black German. There the resemblance ends: he’s much smaller and far more dynamic-looking. The TV cameras were panning as Cal walked down a line of parked cars, stopping in front of each one and extolling its merits. When he got to the last one, he introduced his dog Barko, a senile German Shepherd, to the TV audience. Barko is a nice enough dog, although he smells. He’s been with Cal since before he hit it big. When he was younger, Barko would make on-camera running leaps onto the hoods of cars, turn around, and bark repeatedly at the camera while subtitles were run across the bottom of the TV screen detailing all the wonderful facts about the car he was sitting on. Ingenious. Now that he’s decrepit, Barko has been kicked upstairs to a supporting role: a three-second introduction and a pat on the head from Cal.

Rather than stand around watching dreary retakes of Cal’s spiel, I walked over to his office and let myself in. The large room was out of another era, and I liked it: knotty pine walls with lush, dark-green Persian carpets over an oak floor, bookshelves crammed with texts and picture books on World War II, knotty pine beams studded with ornamental horseshoes. The largest beam, directly over Cal’s giant oak desk, held the Myers Coat of Arms; a vulgar configuration of crosses, flowers, and trumpets around a wounded boar’s head. The walls were festooned with framed photographs of Cal in the embrace of various politicians who had welcomed his campaign contributions. There was Cal with Ronnie Reagan, Cal with Sam Yorty, Cal solemnly shaking hands with Tricky Dick Nixon before his fall.

Cal came in, grinning. “Jesus, Fritz,” he said, “what a work of fucking art! That guy, what’s-his-name? McCoover? We should hire that fucker to redo all our waiting rooms, sales managers’ offices, even redesign our magazine ads. Dragon Wagon! Ha! Ha! Ha! You know what it is, don’t you, Fritz? It’s those goddamned Ricardo Montalban Cordoba ads, ‘I am a man, and I know what I want. I want Cordoba!’ Old Ricardo is a Mexican, this guy McCoover has gotta be a nigger, he sees the ad on TV, decides he wants to be a Mexican, and fucks up a beautiful car designed for white people! Jesus! Fucking Madison Avenue will fuck you every time.” Cal shook his head. “Two good things came out of the deal, though. One, we got old Dragon Baby back, and two, Larry found a bag of weed in the glove compartment. I told him to take it to Reuben and the guys at the car wash. Sparkle up their day.”

I forgot to mention that Cal is also the owner of Cal’s Car Wash, a tax dodge that he operates at a loss to “give my customers the best of... total service for their cars.” He hires nothing but wetbacks, and pays them the minimum wage, naturally. Little goodies, such as the weed and the occasional cases of beer he sends over, keep them from seeking more profitable work, like dishwashing. I decided not to tell him about my fight with McCarver. It would only prompt another racist tirade, undoubtedly not as amusing.

“We’ve got one down, ten to go. I’ll get them all provided they haven’t skipped town with no leads,” I said. “One a day, something like that. All the people are working.”

“Good, good. I have faith in you. You’ll do your usual superb job.” Cal looked at me seriously. “Any plans for your future? It’s been a while now; I think you’ll make it.”

“No real plans, as yet. Europe this fall, though. Work will slack off here, and I can catch the great orchestras of Germany and Austria at the beginning of their concert seasons.”

“You speak the language, too.”

“Enough to get by. I want to hear great music in its birthplace. That’s the main thing. Check out Beethoven House in Bonn, the Vienna Opera, Salzburg. Take a boat ride up the Rhine. I have a feeling that there are all kinds of hot chamber ensembles, unsung, playing in little country inns all over Germany. I’ve got the money, the weather is good in the fall, and I’m going.”

“Before you leave, we’ll talk. I’ll give you a list of good hotels and restaurants. The food can be great over there — or lousy. Right now, though, I have to split. I’m due on the tee in half an hour. Do you need any money?”

“Not for myself, but I need three hundred seventy-six dollars and twenty cents for my driver.” Cal went to the wall safe, extracted the amount, and handed it to me.

“You take care, Fritz,” he said, leading me outside, grabbing a twenty-pound bag of dried dog food as he locked the door behind him. He called to his secretary, “Feed Barko, will you, honey? I think he’s hungry.” The attractive, bespectacled blonde smiled and went for Barko’s dish.

I looked at Cal and shook my head. “All the money that dog has made for you, you cheap fuck, and you still feed him that dried shit?”

“He likes it. It’s good for his teeth.”

“He doesn’t have any teeth.”

“Then I must be a cheap fuck. I’ll see you, Fritz.”

“Take care, Cal.”

Larry, the sales manager at Casa, fixed me up with an old Cutlass demo, loaded. I told him I’d hang onto it for a week or so and return it gassed up. Rather than check out the places where my repo’ee’s worked, I decided to take the day off, maybe see my friend Walter. I headed down Ventura toward Coldwater. It was ten-thirty, and hot and smoggy already. Driving over the hill I felt good; relaxed and even a little hungry. Coming down into Beverly Hills, I felt again that my life was going to change.

2

I’ve got my own tax shelter, the Brown Detective Agency. It’s a detective agency in name only. As far as the IRS knows, I’m a starving gumshoe, declaring nine grand in total income and paying $275 in income tax. I save about eighty bucks a year by claiming myself as a deduction. I used to advertise in the Yellow Pages, before the repo racket got lucrative, and actually handled a few cases, mostly runaway kids who had dropped into the drug culture; but that was two years ago, when I had more illusions about myself as an urban manipulator. I still retain my office, an $85 write-off, in a crummy office building on Pico in Rancho Park. I keep my library there and go there when I want to read. It’s a dump, but it’s air-conditioned.

I decided to head for the office now, since Walter was probably still passed out from last night’s bout with T-Bird and TV. I parked in the lot, crossed the alley to the Apple Pan, and returned with three cheeseburgers and two coffees to go. I had wolfed down two of the burgers by the time I opened my office door. It was musty inside. I hit the air-conditioning immediately and settled into my chair.

It’s not much of an office; just a small, square room with Venetian blinds over a rear window facing an alley, a big, imitation-walnut desk with a naugahyde swivel recliner behind it for myself, a cheesy Bentwood rattan chair for clients, and an official-looking file cabinet that contains no files. There are two photographs of me on the wall, both designed to inspire confidence: Fritz Brown, circa 1968, my Police Academy graduation picture; and one of me in uniform taken three years later. I was drunk when that one was taken and, if you look closely, you can tell.

I scarfed my last burger, flipped on KUSC and sat back. The music was early baroque, a harpsichord trio; nice, but without passion. I listened anyway. Baroque can send you off on a nice little cloud, conducive to quiet thoughts, and I was off on one of them when the doorbell rang. It couldn’t be the landlord, since I paid by the year. Probably a salesman. I got up and opened the door. The man standing there didn’t look like a salesman, he looked like a refugee from the Lincoln Heights drunk tank. “May I help you” I said.

“Probably,” the man replied, “if you’re a private detective and this is your office.”

“I am, and it is.” I pointed to the visitor’s chair. “Why don’t you have a seat and tell me how I can help you.”

He sat, grudgingly, after checking out the furnishings. He was close to forty, and fat, maybe 5'6" or 7" and about 220. He was wearing ridiculous soiled madras slacks three inches too short in the leg, a tight alligator golf shirt that encased his blubbery torso like a sausage skin, and black and white saddle golfshoes with the cleats removed. He looked like a wino golfer out of hell.

“I thought private eyes was older guys, retired from the police force,” he said.

“I retired early,” I said. “They wouldn’t make me chief of police at twenty-five, so I told them to kiss my ass.” He got a bang out of that and started to laugh, kind of hysterically. “My name is Fritz Brown, by the way. What’s yours?”

“I’m Freddy Baker. You got the same initials as me. You can call me Fat Dog. It ain’t no insult, everybody calls me that. I like it.”

Fat Dog. Jesus. “Okay, Fat Dog. You can call me Fritz, or Mr. Brown, or Daddy-O. Now, why do you need a private investigator? Incidentally, the fee for my services is one hundred twenty-five dollars a day, plus expenses. Can you afford that?”

“I can afford that, and more. I may not look like no millionaire, but I’m holding heavy. I’ll whip some bread on you today, after I tell you what I want.” Fat Dog Baker bored into me with wild blue eyes, and said “It’s like this. I got this sister, my kid sister, Jane. She’s the only family I got. Our folks is dead. For a long time now she’s been staying with this rich guy. A Jewish guy. He’s old; he don’t try no sex stuff with her — it ain’t like that — he just supports her and I never see her no more. This guy, he don’t want her to have nothing to do with me. He pays for her music lessons, and Janey, my own sister, shines me on like I’m a piece of shit!” His voice had risen to a shout. He was sweating in the air-conditioned room and had clamped his hands around his thighs until his knuckles were white.

“What do you want me to do? Is your sister over eighteen?”

“Yeah, she’s twenty-eight. I wasn’t thinking about hanging no morals rap on him, I just know he’s not right somehow! Somewhere, somehow, he’s using my sister for something. She won’t believe me, she won’t even talk to me! You could follow her, couldn’t you? Follow him, tail him around town, check out what he’s into? He’s fucking her around somehow, and I want to know what’s happening.”

I decided not to pass it up. I could work it in on my offtime from the repo’s. I liked the idea of a surveillance job. It sounded like an interesting change of pace.

“Okay, Fat Dog, I’ll do it. I’ll tail your sister and this nameless bad guy. We’ll give it a week. I’ll dig up all I can. But first, I need some more information.” I got out a pen and a notebook. “Your sister’s name is Jane Baker and she’s twenty-eight years old, right?”

“Right.”

“Have you got a photograph of her?” Fat Dog got out an old hand-tooled wallet and handed me a snapshot. Jane Baker was a good-looking woman. There was humor in her mouth and intelligence in her eyes. She looked like the antithesis of her fat brother. When I put the photo in my desk drawer, Fat Dog looked at me suspiciously, like he had just handed me an ikon and was afraid I would break it. “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ll take good care of the picture and get it back to you.”

“You do that. It’s the only one I got.”

“Now tell me about this guy. Anything and everything you know.”

“His name’s Sol Kupferman. He owns Solly K’s Furriers. His address is 8914 Elevado. That’s in Beverly Hills up north of Sunset, near the Beverly Hills Hotel.”

“Describe him.”

“He’s about sixty-five, skinny, curly gray hair. Big nose. A typical Hebe.”

I wrote down the information, such as it was. “What can you tell me about Kupferman? I take it your plan is to confront your sister with whatever dirt I can dig up on him.”

“You got the picture. That’s my plan. I heard lots of things about Solly K. All bad, but all rumors. Caddy yard stuff, you got to consider the source. It’s feelings I got about him. Like intuition, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah. How did your sister meet Kupferman?”

“I was loopin’ Hillcrest, maybe ten, twelve years ago. That’s right down the street where all the Hebes play golf. She used to visit me in the caddy shack; sometimes she worked the lunch-counter there. But I didn’t like her to. Loopers got dirty mouths. Anyway, that’s where she met Solly K. He’s a member there. He met her out on the golf course. She used to take walks out there. He got her interested in music, got her to start taking lessons. She’s been living with him ever since. She says he’s her best friend and her benefactor. She hates me now. That Jew bastard made her hate me!”

Fat Dog was close to losing control, close to tears or some sort of outburst. His anti-Semitism was repulsive, but I wanted to know more about him. Somehow his insane rage grabbed and held me.

I tried to calm him down. “I’ll give this my best shot, Fat Dog. I’m going to stick close to both of them and find out everything I can on Kupferman. You hang loose and don’t worry.”

“Okay. You want some bread now?”

The iconoclast in me trusted there was some kind of logic in his lunacy. “No, if you’re holding as heavy as you say you are, I’ve got nothing to worry about. I’m going to give this thing a week or so. You can pay me then.”

Fat Dog whipped out the fat old Mexican wallet again, and this time pulled out his roll. He fanned it in front of me. There must have been sixty or seventy C-notes. I wasn’t surprised. A lifetime in Los Angeles had taught me never to take anything at face value, except money. Fat Dog wanted me to be impressed. I hated to disappoint him, so I tossed him a bone. After all, he was tossing me a big one. “Woo! Woo!” I said. “I’m ditching this racket and becoming a caddy! Get me a hot-looking mama with a nice swing who likes to fuck. I’ll give her the old nine-iron on the course and off. Woo! Woo!” Fat Dog was laughing like a hyena, threatening to fall off his chair. I had delivered. I hoped he didn’t want more. Acting like a buffoon tires me quickly.

After a minute or so, he regained his composure and got serious again. “I know you’ll do me good, man. The Fat Dog can judge people, and you’re okay.”

“Thanks. What’s your phone number and address? I’ll be needing to get in touch with you.”

“I move around a lot, and in the summertime I sleep outside. I’m hard to find. L.A.’s full of fucking psychos, and you never know if one of ’em has your number. You can leave messages for me at the Tap and Cap — that’s a beer bar at Santa Monica and Sawtelle. I’ll get them.”

“Okay, one last thing. You said your sister is a musician. What instrument does she play?”

“One of those big wooden things that stand up on a pole.” The cello. That was interesting. As Fat Dog waved and walked out my office door, I found myself wondering if she could be any good.

I called an old friend who worked L.A.P.D. Records and Information and gave him three names, descriptions, and approximate years of birth: Solomon “Solly K” Kupferman, Frederick “Fat Dog” Baker, and Jane Baker. I told him I would call later for whatever info he had dredged up.

I got my Cutlass demo out of the lot. It looked prosperous enough for surveillance in Beverly Hills. I drove east on Pico and turned left on Beverly Drive, traveling up through the heart of the Beverly Hills business district, passing by shops catering to every taste in fashion, trinketry, and affluent boredom. North of Santa Monica the ritzy business facades gave way to ritzy personal ones: large, beautifully-tended lawns fronting Tudor mansions, Spanish villas, and pseudo-modern chateaus. When I crossed Sunset, the homes became larger still. This was the “pheasant under glass” district.

Sol Kupferman’s house was two blocks north of Sunset, off of Coldwater. It was some pad: a Moorish estate, immaculate white with twin turrets flying the California Bear flag. The house was set back at least forty yards from the street. A family of stone bears foraged on the broad front lawn, and there were two Cadillacs parked in the circular driveway: a one-year-old Eldorado convertible and a four- or five-year-old Coupe de Ville.

I parked directly across the street and decided to wait only one hour, not wanting to risk a confrontation with the ubiquitous Beverly Hills fuzz. I got out my binoculars and checked the license numbers on the two Cadillacs. The Eldorado bore a personalized plate: SOL K. The Coupe de Ville had one, too: CELLO-1. So, far, my case was working out. I switched on the radio just in time to catch Luncheon At The Music Center on KFAC. Thomas Cassidy was interviewing some French bimbo on the state of current French opera. The guy had lousy manners. You could hear him dropping his fork.

I turned off the radio and reached again for my binoculars. I was training them on Kupferman’s front door when it opened and a man in a business suit came down the steps carrying a briefcase. I had seen him before, I knew that immediately, but it took a few seconds for my formidable memory to supply the time and place: the Club Utopia, late 1968, just before the place burned itself into immortality. The man — who fit Fat Dog’s description of Kupferman perfectly — got into the Eldorado and backed out of the driveway and onto the street, passing me in the opposite direction.

I pulled into his driveway, and backed out to follow him. I caught him at the corner just before he turned right on Coldwater. I let a car get between us as Coldwater turned into Beverly Drive, and we headed south into Beverly Hills. It was a short trip. He turned right on Little Santa Monica and parked on the street half-a-block down. I drove on. He had parked in front of Solly K’s Furriers. From my rearview mirror I could see him enter the building. He had to be Kupferman.

In December of 1968, the Club Utopia, a sleazy neighborhood cocktail lounge located on Normandie near Slauson, was fire-bombed. Six patrons of the bar fried to death. Surviving eyewitnesses described how three men who had been ejected from the bar earlier that evening had returned just before closing and tossed a Molotov cocktail into the crowded one-room lounge, turning it into an inferno. The three men were apprehended by L.A.P.D. detectives a few hours later. They admitted their culpability, but denied it was “their idea.” They claimed the existence of a “fourth man” who met them outside the bar after they were thrown out and who “instigated the whole thing.” No one believed them. The men, who worked as painters and possessed long criminal records, were tried and convicted of murder. They were among the last people to be executed in the gas chamber at San Quentin.

I remember the case well, although I had nothing to do with it. At the time I was a twenty-two-year-old rookie working Wilshire Patrol. To unwind after work, I would go with patrolmen friends to bars to booze and trade war stories. One night after Thanksgiving ’68 I was riding around with another rookie named Milner. Somehow, we ended up at the soon-to-be-famous Club Utopia. We were sitting at the bar, and the man sitting next to me got up suddenly and spilled whiskey all over my expensive, newly-purchased white cashmere sweater. He was a thin, Semitic-looking man in his fifties, and he apologized effusively, even offering to buy me a new sweater. I good-naturedly shrugged it off, although I was pissed. The man left after several more apologies.

I have something close to total recall. I never forget a face. It had been over a decade, but I was certain: the man at the bar that night was Sol Kupferman. He had barely aged. A strange coincidence that probably meant nothing. If I ever got to speak to Solly K, I would ask him “What were you doing in a crummy bar on the south side in the fall of ’68?” And he would very rightfully look at me like I was insane and say, “I don’t know” or “Was I?” or “I don’t remember.”

I considered my options. I could wait around and tail Kupferman after he left his office, or I could take off and resume my surveillance the next day. I decided to head toward the old neighborhood to see my friend Walter.

3

Western Avenue between Beverly and Wilshire and the blocks surrounding it constitute the old neighborhood. Situated two miles west of downtown L.A. and a mile south of Hollywood, there is nothing exceptional about it. The prosaic thrust of the ordinary lives lived there produced nothing during my formative years but an inordinate amount of male children, a good portion of whom assumed roles emblematic of the tortured 60’s: Vietnam veteran, drug addict, college activist, burned-out corpse. The neighborhood has changed slightly, topographically: Ralph’s Market is now a Korean church, old gas stations and parking lots have been replaced by ugly pocket shopping centers. The human core of the neighborhood, the people who were in early middle-age when I was a child, are elderly now, with resentments and fears borne out of twenty years of incomprehensible history.

And that makes the difference. The library on Council and St. Andrews still has the same librarian, and the bars on Western still supply Wilshire Station with an extraordinary amount of drunk drivers. But it’s different now; it’s a middle-American graveyard inhabited by the malaise of my past, and I feel chills of doom whenever I drive through it, which I do frequently.

I got out shortly after my parents died, as did most of the guys I grew up with. But my friend Walter is still there, ensconced at the old house on 5th and Serrano, with his lunatic Christian Scientist mother, his TV set, his science-fiction books, his records, and his Thunderbird wine. He is thirty-two years old, and we have been friends for twenty-five. He is the one person in my life I have loved unequivocally. I do not judge his inertia, his self-destructiveness, his complex relationship with his mother, or his incipient psychoses. I accept his oblique love, his self-hatred, and anger. Our relationship is twenty-five years of shared experience: together and in our separate solitudes; books, music, films, women, my work, and his fantasy. Here Walter has the upper hand: he is far more intelligent than I, and in the fifteen years since high school his sedentary lifestyle has afforded him time to read thousands of books, from the profound to the trivial, to assimilate great music into the bedrock of his consciousness, and to see every movie ever to pass the way of the TV screen.

This is an extraordinary frame of reference for an agile mind, and Walter has taken fantasy into the dimension of genius. His is pure verbal fantasy: Walter has never written, filmed, or composed anything. Nonetheless, in his perpetual T-Bird haze he can transform his wino fantasies into insights and parables that touch at the quick of life. On his good days, that is. On his bad ones, he can sound like a high school kid wired up on bad speed. I hoped he was on today, for I was exhilarated myself, and felt the need of his stimulus: the power of a Walter epigram can clarify the most puzzling day.

I stopped at the Mayfair Market to pick up three chilled short dogs. Walter works best when inspired by the right amount of T-Bird. Too little invites peevishness, too much, incoherent rambling. T-Bird is Walter’s drink of choice because it is cheap and easily obtained by threatening his mother, ripping off her purse, or mowing the lawn for a few bucks.

I went around to the back yard, where Walter’s room jutted out from the house proper onto the dead brown grass. Walter is a lousy gardener. I could hear the TV going inside. I rapped on his window. “Yo, wino Walt,” I said. “I’m here. I brought gifts. Come on out.” I walked back into the yard, pulled up a lawn-chair, popped a can of ginger ale for myself, and arranged the three short dogs symmetrically on the old metal table beside me.

Walter shuffled out five minutes later, wearing cut-off jeans and a Mahler sweatshirt. He is about 5'11‘ with curly light-brown hair and extremely light-blue eyes. Though not fat, he tends to waddle.

“Welcome, Fritz. You did bear gifts. How thoughtful.” He sat down beside me, grabbed a short dog, and drained it in one gulp. Color came into his face, his eyes seemed to expand and his whole body gave a slight twitch. He was on his way. He pulled out a pack of Marlboros, lit one, and inhaled deeply. I wondered what direction our conversation would take. “You look pensive, Fritz. Troubled also, somewhat. Thinking about your future again? You look like you could use a drink. I know you won’t go for it though; only half of you wants it. Whether or not it’s your better half, I can’t say. I only know you better than anyone, including yourself.”

“Fuck you. You’re right, though, I have had my future on my mind. It’s been a strange day so far. A crazy caddy is paying me a hundred twenty-five dollars a day plus to dig up dirt on some rich guy his sister is living with. He looks like a bum, but he carries a six-thousand dollar roll. Crazy, Daddy-O!”

“You’ll do a good job. You’re a born dirt-digger. You have no morality whatsoever. A boyish-looking shark. We are the same age, and you look twenty-five while I look forty. This I attribute to your refusal, even at your most desperate, to drink cheap wine. Fritz, who do you really think killed the Black Dahlia?”

I groaned at the mention of this mutual obsession from our boyhood drinking days. “I don’t know. And you know what? I don’t care. Change the subject, will you?”

“Okay, for now. Toss me another dog, will you? I’m thirsty.” He downed this one in two gulps. His face was downright florid now. His eyes were getting maniacal, and I knew he was going to start talking either science-fiction or his mother. The two are more or less synonymous.

“The old girl has finally reached her zenith, Fritz. She’s senile but cagey, and still a master game player. She intends to live forever and is on the lookout for new victims. My father, God rest his soul, and I were just the beginning. She’s been prowling these senior citizen’s dances and she’s picked up this fruit vendor, a dago, kind of semi-rich — he owns about a dozen produce stands out in the Valley. And I think the old girl is going to marry him! Seventy years old, hasn’t fucked since I was conceived, and now this. I can’t believe it. He can hardly talk, he just grunts. He’s got emphysema, he carries around a little oxygen shooter — it looks like a raygun. Jesus! She’s set financially; she doesn’t need his dough. I’ve told her that within five years the antimatter credit card will be in operation, that all she’ll have to do is walk up to any bank, lay her rap into the loudspeaker, insert her card and get all the bread she needs. Within eight years we’ll all be transported to the sublunar void, where the controlled environment will enable us to live for centuries in perfect health. The dumb cunt can’t see it coming, and she’s going to throw it all away for some wop fruit vendor. She’s afraid to be alone. You know that, don’t you, Fritz? When she’s got the wop sewed up, she’ll give me the boot, like she did my old man, and I’ll have to get a job. I still can’t believe it.” He reached for the last bottle, but I grabbed it first.

“Not yet. You’ll be into your ‘moon to earth, moon to earth’ routine in a minute. I’ve got to split. I’ve got this case I’m working on and a big load of repo’s, so I probably won’t see you for a week or so. Right now, I want to go home and listen to some music. Remember the Hollywood Bowl Season starts next week, and I’ve got us a box. Don’t worry about the dago — if he gives you any shit just rip off his oxygen gun. I’ve got to go.”

“Okay. If anything drastic comes up, anything you think I can clarify for you, give me a call.”

“Okay, Walter. You take care. I’ll see you.”

On the way home I tried not to worry about Walter. It had been a bad session today. I hadn’t gotten what I needed from him, or imparted what I felt he needed. His ongoing suicide was painful to watch. I stopped at a pay phone and called Irwin at work.

He wasn’t as upset by the violence yesterday as I had thought. He agreed to stay with me; and his loyalty was so touching that I offered him an extra 5 percent of my action for no extra work. Then I dropped my bomb: I told him that I had a case, and that the ten delinquents were all his. He didn’t believe me at first, but finally it sank in. I told him to get his hot-headed Israeli nephew to do the actual ripping-off for him. After thanking me effusively, he hung up.

When I got home I put Schubert on the turntable to try to put Walter out of my mind. It worked for a while, until I remembered that Schubert was about Walter’s age when he died.

4

I began my surveillance of Jane Baker the next day. Sol Kupferman was a more logical place to begin, since he was supposedly the villain of this triangle, but I had visions of tailing him to his office in the morning, to some swank Beverly Hills eatery for lunch, and back to his pad at the end of the day. A big drag. Jane Baker was probably more mobile. And she was certainly better looking.

I arrived at my post across the street from Kupferman’s around 8:00 A.M. No one in Beverly Hills gets up before then, except butlers and maids. I had my own car, a ’69 Camaro Ragtop, and I was all set for a day of sleuthing, wearing a sports jacket and tie, shined shoes, and carrying an assortment of official-looking badges, from “Special Deputy” to “International Investigator.” I had bought them at a novelty shop on Hollywood Boulevard. No repo-man should be without them.

Jane Baker walked out the door at nine forty-five. She more than did her photograph justice. Dressed in a russet cotton-linen pantsuit, her hair tied into a bun, she looked like the prototype of a confident young career woman. As she walked past Kupferman’s Eldorado to the older de Ville, I trained my binoculars on her face. It was hard to picture this slender, efficient-looking woman as the sister of the grubby Fat Dog, yet the resemblance was there: the full cheeks, the widely-spaced eyes, and a certain determined set to the mouth that was sensual on Jane and ugly on her brother.

There was a fair amount of traffic heading south toward the Beverly Hills shopping district — women in Cadillacs and Mercedes on their morning shopping pilgrimages to the boutiques of Fat City — but Jane was easy to follow. We went south on Beverly Drive to Big Santa Monica, then east all the way into Hollywood. It was a pleasant drive. The sky was smogless and the Hollywood Hills were alive with greenery. Jane Baker turned left on Highland and pulled into the parking lot of a Bank of America branch.

I parked three spaces away, gave her two minutes and then followed her into the bank. It was busy, the height of the early morning rush, so it was a few minutes before she got to see a teller. I passed by her on the opposite side of the velveteen waiting ropes and observed the transaction. The teller was counting out a large number of fifties. There appeared to be close to a grand on the counter. Jane stuffed the bills into her purse.

I hotfooted it outside and back to my car, wondering why a Beverly Hills woman would travel all the way to Hollywood to do her banking. And where would Jane Baker be going with a grand in her purse?

She didn’t leave me hanging for long. A minute later she was behind the wheel and gunning it north on Highland. She was harder to tail this time, deftly weaving in and around the morning traffic. North of the Hollywood Bowl she turned onto the Hollywood Freeway. Soon we were spinning over the Valley, its northern horizon freighted with smog.

I almost lost her a couple of times, but when she hit the Victory Boulevard offramp, I was right behind her. She led me into the poorer residential areas of Van Nuys. No sidewalks. Ugly eight-and ten-unit apartment buildings and small houses painted in depressing pastel shades. I had done a lot of repo-ing around here; people trapped with dead-end jobs often neglect their car payments. Jane pulled over abruptly against the dirt shoulder of a particularly seedy street. I passed on by her and stopped at the corner. Out of my rear-view mirror I watched her walk up a gravel driveway and enter a tiny yellow wood frame house.

Jane showed five minutes later and within a few minutes we were back on the Ventura Freeway, this time southbound. She was driving smoothly now, and I stayed several cars back, my eyes half-glued to the road, and half-glued to her long car aerial. I followed her onto Hollywood Freeway, headed east. Ten minutes later Jane signalled her departure from Freeway Land and I followed her north on Vermont and East on Indent Avenue, a rundown street of apartment buildings which house students from nearby L.A. City College. When she parked I was right behind her.

My stomach was growling and I was losing patience. It hit me that Fat Dog might try to duck me for my bill. He was riding high now, but he had the air of a horseplayer who hit it big and was flashing the roll he was certain to lose. The idea of being stiffed by a golf course flunky pissed me off.

Jane had trotted across the street and into an old four flat. This time I could see that it was an elderly man who admitted her. I wrote down the address. She returned just seconds later, practically running to her Cadillac. She tore out, and I was all set for hot pursuit, but my car wouldn’t turn over. Shit! It was the capper to a frustrating morning. I watched Jane Baker turn right and zoom out of sight.

I got out of the car, my stomach turning over like a hungry dog’s, and opened the hood. I’m no mechanic, but I spotted the trouble immediately. A distributor wire had come loose. The repair job took one second, but of course, Jane Baker was long gone. I walked around the corner to Vermont and found a Mom and Pop market crowded with students on lunch break. I bought a quart of milk and two refrigerated pastrami sandwiches. I found an alley around the corner and took a long overdue leak behind some trashcans. A black couple strolled by hand in hand as I was doing this and snickered at me. I was getting a bad play from blacks lately, probably karmic revenge for my years with the L.A.P.D.

I ate my lunch outside my car and reviewed my options. I decided to concentrate on Sol Kupferman. He was probably just a nice old fart with a hard-on for a beautiful young cellist, but it was Fat Dog’s C-note-and-a-quarter a day.

Driving away, I remembered yesterday’s phone call to R&I. I found a pay phone on 3rd and Vermont and buzzed my old buddy Jensen. It took him a few minutes to get to the phone, “Yo, Jensen,” I said, “this is Fritz Brown. You got that information for me?”

“Hold on, Brownie. You got a pencil?”

“Yeah, shoot it.”

“Okay, on Jane Baker, no criminal record. We got a whole shitload of Jane Bakers here, but none of them could possibly be her, according to the age and description you gave me. I checked D.M.V. and they gave me this: Jane Margaret Baker, D.O.B. 3–11–52, L.A., brown and blue, 5'9‘, 130. The usual numbers of the usual citations, except for two reckless-driving citations, no booze or dope involved. Does that sound like her?”

“That’s her. Shoot me the other two.”

“Okay. On Frederick ‘Fat Dog’ Baker, we got some interesting shit. Three vandalism beefs as a juvie, all three times the judge recommended counseling. That figures. Two weenie wagger convictions as an adult: 8–14–59 and 2–9–64. Not registered as a sex offender, probably drunk, just got the urge to whip out his cock and take a piss. Under employment, we got him down as a caddy, and believe me, for a caddy that’s par for the course, no pun intended. They’re the low-lifers of the world. Give the asshole his due, though, he ain’t been in no trouble for sixteen years. He...”

I butted in. Jensen was a loudmouth and this could go on all day. “We have to speed this up, Daddy-O, I’m parked in the red and there’s a metermaid checking out my Doctor On Call sign suspiciously. I don’t want a ticket, I’ve got no way to fix them anymore.”

“You’re still a crazy fucker. Okay, Sol Kupferman. D.O.B. 5–13–15. No criminal record, per se. Twice a material witness for the grand jury. Both times they were investigating bookmaking. This was in ’52 and ’55. That’s it.”

That was enough. I thanked Jensen and hung up. Nothing surprised me, except the dope on Kupferman. Jane Baker’s two reckless driving convictions indicated nothing but youthful verve. That Fat Dog was an exhibitionist was no shocking revelation. He was a disturbed man. But Solly K existing on the edge of, or in, the vice game twenty years ago was interesting, doubly so when coupled with my knowledge of his presence at the Club Utopia in ’68. Small bars like that were often fronts for bookie operations.

It was time to go and talk to the one person I know who is profoundly knowledgeable of the dark secrets of Los Angeles. I headed toward the Sunset Strip to see Jack Skolnick. In honor of Jane Baker I played the Dvorak “Cello Concerto” on the way.

Jack Skolnick has had a checkered past. For over forty years he has maneuvered on the fringes of L.A.’s high society, entertainment monolith, and underworld with the finesse and discernment of some sort of rare animal. Like a pig snorting truffles, he knows just where to look, and dig. Under his euphemistic title of “agent” he has pimped, supplied rigged game shows with “contestants,” served as a tour guide for visiting dignitaries (showing them the “real” L.A.), sold information to the cops, run mail order scams, solicited funds for political candidates of all persuasions, pushed gourmet marijuana brownies, and operated a canine obedience school. His knowledge of Los Angeles and the eccentricities of its moneyed people is astounding. I had a feeling he could tell me something about Sol Kupferman.

Jack’s office was on the sixth floor of a big apartment building on Sunset, a block east of Fairfax. His home was the apartment next door. The place wasn’t zoned for business, but “Jack Skolnick Enterprises” was so vague he got away with it.

I gave his foxy young secretary my name and she sent me directly in to Jack’s office. Jack was sitting behind his desk, reading the newspaper. He looked good. I told him so.

He was surprised to see me. He put down his paper and stood up to shake my hand. “Fritz, baby, so do you! You’ve put on some weight. Sit down. How’s tricks. Fritzie? Still got the repo gig? Hatchet man for Cal Myers?”

It wasn’t quite a jibe, so I let it pass. “More or less. I’ve still got my P.I.’s license though, and the agency going on the side. Right now I’m on a case. What about you? What’s your latest scam?”

“Currently, I’m in the escort business. I provide businessmen with an attractive, intelligent woman to be seen with at various functions.”

“In other words, you’re pimping.”

Jack shook his head in mock dismay. “Fritz, baby! Would I do a thing like that?”

“Only if it made money.”

“I protest, Fritzie! My girls are all in college!”

“Yeah, majoring in fucking. Enough bullshit. I’ve got a client who’s interested in a man you may know something about. Sol Kupferman. You heard of him?”

Jack gave me a cagey look and nodded his head. “I knew him slightly, maybe twenty years ago when I had my chauffeur gig. I used to fix him up with a limo and a driver. We used to talk sometimes.”

“About what?”

“Just rebop. The weather, that kind of shit. Nothing too heavy. But I heard talk about him.”

“Such as?”

“Such as he was a money man, tax advisor to organized crime in the 40’s. Such as he was a noncombatant, some kind of tax wizard. He made the mob a bundle.”

“That’s it?”

“What are you fishing for, Fritzie?”

“Kupferman was subpoenaed as a material witness to the grand jury, back in the 50’s. They were investigating bookmaking. What do you know about that?”

“I know that back in the 50’s the grand jury was convened every time someone laid a fart. It was the McCarthy era. If the grand jury called up Kupferman, it was probably because he knew somebody who knew somebody. That kind of thing.”

“What else can you tell me about him?”

Jack smiled again. “That he had a lot of heart and a lot of class. A real mensch. I bought my daughter a mink stole from him a few years ago. He remembered me and gave me a good deal. He’s a mensch.”

“You remember the Club Utopia firebombing?”

“Yeah. A bunch of people got fried, then the State fried the fryers. What about it?”

“I heard Kupferman used to frequent the place. I thought it was a funny coincidence. Can you put a handle on that?”

“Yeah, I can. Life is filled with funny coincidences.” I was digging for more questions when the phone on Jack’s desk rang. He picked it up and bellowed into it: “Liz, baby! How did it go?!” I got up and we shook hands across his desk. He placed a free hand over the receiver. “Let’s get together soon, Fritz. Dinner, what say?”

“Sounds good, Jack. I’ll call you.”

He nodded goodbye. As I walked out his door I could hear him exclaiming gleefully, “A congressman? And he wanted to do that with you?”

When I got down to street level, the city was cooling off. I decided to drive home, and then go looking for Fat Dog. The case was turning into an exercise in futility, and I would feel better about it with some of Fat Dog’s money in my pocket. I put the top on my car down and cruised east on Sunset. Knots of young hookers were starting to appear, sitting on bus benches and giving male motorists the eye. I toyed with the idea of picking one up, but only briefly; they looked too sad.

At home, I watched the sunset from my balcony. The nicest thing about nighttime is the clarity, and in L.A. that means shadows and neon. The night was alive now. I went looking for my client.

Santa Monica Boulevard and Sawtelle Avenue, one-half mile south of the Veteran’s Administration complex, is the nadir of West Los Angeles. It’s a strange bottom, not too dangerous unless you’re waxing profane about the masses of wetbacks who live in the fleabag hotels there. Chilled short dogs dominate the refrigerated sections of the half dozen liquor stores on this compact skid row, and the doomed old men from the V.A. who scarf them up are the saddest things I’ve ever seen. But “Graveyard West” has its positive side: the Nuart Theatre is a great revival house and the Papa Back Bookstore is a mecca for counter-culture literati. All in all, despair wins out by a nod, and the neighborhood is the ideal place for a thirty-five-year-old hippie on the sauce.

I parked my car at a gas station across the street from the Nuart and went looking for the Tap & Cap. I found it around the corner from the theatre? on Sawtelle. It was a dumpy beer bar with a neon sign advertising its hours: 6 A.M. to 2 A.M., the maximum the law allows. When I entered I was struck with a thousand deja vu’s. This place had been described by Fat Dog as a caddy hang-out, and the two dozen or so men sitting at the bar and hanging around the pool tables had to be caddies. They were dressed more or less alike: beat up golf-type slacks that had originally cost good money, knit shirts — most of them bearing mascots or symbols on the pockets — and hats — a wide variety of them, from sunvisors to baseball caps to Tyrolean pork pies. I had seen scores of men dressed like this over the years, sunburned and middle-aged, dressed too distinctly to be bums, yet not quite looking like indent citizens. Caddies.

I took a stool at the end of the bar. Behind the bar, above the shelves of beer glasses, was a giant photographic collage of blown-up photos of leading jockeys and their mounts interspersed with Polaroids of bar regulars playing softball and guzzling brew. I couldn’t pick out Fat Dog. I got the bartender’s attention. “I’m looking for Fat Dog Baker,” I said. “He told me I could get a line on him here.”

“I ain’t seen Fat Dog for a week or so,” the bartender said. “But if you wanna leave a message, I’ll see he gets it when he comes in.”

“No, I have to see him tonight.” I took a five spot out of my wallet and laid it on the bar in front of him. I gestured at the men behind me playing pool. “Do any of these guys know Fat Dog? Know where I could find him?”

He deftly snapped up the fiver and pointed to a scarecrow-like older guy playing around with the jukebox. “That’s Augie Dou-gall,” he said. “He loops with Fat Dog kind of semiregular. Ask him, he might know. Buy him a pitcher. He likes Coors.”

I thanked the bartender, awarding him one of my rare winks, and carried the chilled pitcher and a glass over to the jukebox. I tapped the scarecrow on the shoulder. He turned around and almost knocked the beer out of my hands. “This is for you,” I said and pointed to a small table a few feet away. “I’m a friend of Fat Dog Baker. I’d like to talk to you for a minute.”

We sat down and he dove into his suds. He was about 55, and very tall, maybe 6'6‘. He couldn’t have weighed more than 140. He looked guileless and gentle, so I played it straight with him. “I’m doing a job for Fat Dog,” I said. “I know you’re an old looping buddy of his, so I thought maybe you could tell me where he’s staying.”

“Okay. You’re not a cop, are you?”

“No.”

“You kind of look like one.”

“I traded in my badge for a set of golf clubs. Fat Dog is going to teach me the game.” Augie didn’t laugh or change his expression. His eyes remained locked into mine. He slopped up some more beer. It struck me that he must be closed to retarded, with an idiot savant’s antenna for the heat.

“You picked a good teacher, buddy. Nobody knows golf like the Fat Dog. Nobody can read greens like him neither. You put that putt where he tells you, and whammo, it’s in the cup.”

“Fascinating, but what I’m interested in is where I can find him, tonight.”

Augie Dougall went on, “Fat Dog don’t like to sleep indoors. He says it’s bad for him. He has bad dreams. He’s been loopin’ Bel-Air lately and sleepin’ on the course on this little hill off of the eighth hole near this little lake they got. He...”

I interrupted, “You mean he sleeps on the grounds at Bel-Air Country Club?”

“Yeah. They got this gate off of Sunset near this girls’ school. There’s this big statue of Jesus there. Fat Dog hops the fence. He’s got a nice little place all set up for hisself...”

I didn’t let him finish. I tossed him a hurried thank you and left the bar. I could hear the beginning of an argument as I walked out the door. It had to do with the merits of Arnold Palmer’s swing versus Ben Hogan’s. It was picking up tempo as I strode up Sawtelle toward my car, looper voices trailing hero worship and anger into the night.

I knew the entrance Augie Dougall was talking about. Jesus stood guard over the student parking lot at Marymount Girls’ School.. I parked beside the gate Fat Dog would have to climb over to get to his retreat, and put on some music conducive to forming plans on a warm summer night: Mozart’s Fortieth Symphony, light and graceful, the antithesis of the nervous boredom my case was turning into.

When the music ended I waited in silence for an hour or so, then heard Fat Dog’s loud footsteps coming toward me on the driveway. He was muttering something unintelligible. I called out softly so as not to frighten him. “Yo, Fat Dog. You’ve got a visitor.”

“Who’s that?” he called back nervously. “Friend or foe?”

“It’s Fritz Brown, Fat Dog. I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Fritz baby! My buddy! The private-eye man! You got some good shit for the Fat Dog?”

I opened my passenger door. “I’ve got some information for you. I don’t know how good it is.”

He sat down beside me on the front seat, and gave me a warm handshake. His hand was greasy and he smelled of dry leaves and sweat, the price of outdoor living. “Shoot it to me, Jack,” he said.

“It’s like this,” I said, “I’ve been tailing your sister and Kupferman. Not long enough to establish any routine, but long enough to tell you there’s no hanky-panky going on.” It was a lie, but a kind one. “More importantly, I’ve talked to a former associate of Kupferman’s and checked him out with the fuzz. I can tell you this: a long time ago, Kupferman was a money man for organized crime. An accountant, actually, He was a material witness to the grand jury twice, when they were investigating bookmaking. That was back in the 50’s. I get the distinct impression that he’s been clean for a long time.”

“So where do you go from here? What else are you gonna do?”

“That’s up to you. I can subpoena the grand jury records. That takes time, plus money for an attorney. I can continue my surveillance, which will probably yield no dirt. I can talk to other people who know Kupferman and see what they have to say. That’s about it.”

“You go to it, man. This is important to me.”

“There’s the question of money, if you want me to continue. I’ll give you a flat rate. One week of my time, an even grand. That includes expenses. It’s a good deal. I’ll submit you a written report on all the shit I’ve dug up. One thing, though, I need the money tonight. And another, I’m going on vacation at the end of the week. No business, okay? You got the bread?”

“Yeah, but I’m not holding it. I never do at night. Too many psychos around. You ain’t safe, even sleeping outside. We got to take a ride for the moolah. Okay?”

“Okay. You’ve got it in cash, right?”

“Right.”

“Where do we go?”

“Venice.”

Venice, where the debris meets the sea. It figured my canine friend would do his banking there.

I took surface streets to give me time to converse with my client. He was far more interesting than either of the people I was investigating. Mob minions gone legit and amateur musicians were commonplace, but caddies who slept on golf courses and carried around six or seven thousand dollars were rare, and probably indigenous to only L.A. I decided to do some polite digging in the guise of small talk. “How’s the looping business, Fat Dog? You making any money?”

“I’m doing all right. I’ve got my regulars,” he said.

“When I was a kid, my dad used to drive us by Wilshire Country Club every Saturday on the way to the movies. I used to see these guys carrying golf bags on their shoulders. It looked like a lot of work. Don’t those bags get heavy?”

“Not really. You get used to it. You work Hillcrest or Brent-wood though and you break your balls. Them kikes got cement in their bags. And none of ’em can play golf. They just like to torture their caddy. They pay you a few bucks more, but it’s just so they can feel superior while they torture you.”

“That’s an interesting concept, Fat Dog. Sadism on the golf course. Jewish golfers as sadists. Why do you dislike Jews so much?”

“Dislike ain’t the word. I never met one who kept his word, or could play golf. They rule the country and then complain how they can’t get into good clubs like L.A. or Bel-Air. When I’m rich though, I’m gonna have me a whole caddy shack full of Jewish goats. I’m gonna get me a big fat Spaulding trunk and load it down with umbrellas, golf balls, and extra clubs. The bastard’s gonna weigh about seventy-five pounds. I’m gonna have a nigger caddy pack it on the front nine, and a Hebe on the back. I’ve got a friend, a rich guy who feels like me. He’s gonna have a bag just like mine. We’re gonna make these fuckin’ Jews and niggers pack us double. Ha-ha-ha!” Fat Dog’s laughter rose, then dissolved into a coughing attack. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. He stuck his head out the window to catch some air.

I prodded him a little. “You ever caddy for Kupferman?”

Regaining his breath, Fat Dog gave me a quizzical look. “Are you kidding? He had a coon pack his bag. Jews and niggers are soul brothers.”

We were on Lincoln now, heading south. On Venice Boulevard we turned west, toward the beach. Within a few minutes we were on the edge of the Venice ghetto, known to Venetians as “Ghost Town.” Fat Dog told me to stop on a street named Horizon. It wasn’t much of a horizon, just dirty wood-framed four and eight flats with no front yards. It was trash night and garbage cans lined the sidewalk. Spanish voices and television battled for audial supremacy. There was no place to park, so Fat Dog told me to let him out and come back in ten minutes. I had other ideas.

He hopped out. Through my rear-view mirror, I watched him trot around the corner to my left. As soon as he was out of sight, I jumped out and tore after him, leaving the car double-parked. I slowed to a walk as I reached the corner. Fat Dog was nowhere in sight. I walked to the end of the block, looking in windows and checking out driveways. Nothing. I got back into my car and circled the streets surrounding Horizon at random. When I returned to the spot where I had dropped Fat Dog, he was standing there. He handed me a roll of bills as he got in.

I counted the money. There were twenty fifty-dollar bills. Nice new crisp U.S. Grants. “One week, Fat Dog. No more, no less. After that, it’s farewell.”

“It’s a deal. Fritz is a German name, right?”

“Right.”

“Are you German? Brown ain’t no German name.”

“I’m of German descent. My grandparents were born there. Their name was Brownmuller. When they came to America they shortened it to Brown. It was good they did. There was a lot of discrimination against Germans here during the First World War.”

“Fucking A!” Fat Dog said. I could feel him getting keyed up. “It was the Jews, you know that. The Germans wouldn’t take none of their shit. They owned all the pawnshops in America and Germany, and bled the white Christians dry! They—”

I started the car and pulled away, trying not to listen. I turned right on Main Street and headed north. It was getting to be too much; I was getting a headache. I turned to Fat Dog. “Why don’t you can that shit, and right now,” I said, trying to keep my voice down. “You hired me to get information for you, not to listen to your racist rebop. I like Jews. They’re great violinists and they make a mean pastrami sandwich. I like blacks, too. They sure can dance. I watch Soul Train every week. So please shut the fuck up.” Fat Dog was staring out his window. When he spoke he was surprisingly calm. “I’m sorry, man. You’re my buddy. My friend is always telling me not to sound off on politics so much, that not everybody feels like we do. He’s right. You go around shooting off your mouth and everybody knows your plans. You got no surprises left for nobody. I’m the man with the plan, but I got to cool it for now.”

I was curious about his “plan,” maybe a Utopian vision of unionized caddy fleets, blacks and Jews excluded, but I decided not to ask. My headache was just abating; “Tell me about yourself, Fat Dog. I was a cop for six years and I never met anyone like you.”

“There ain’t much to tell. I’m the king of the caddies, the greatest fucking looper who ever packed a bag. I’m strictly a club caddy, and proud of it. Those tour baggies ain’t nothin’. Carrying single bags for a good player ain’t jack shit. Two on your back and two more on a cart, that’s the real test of a goat. I know every golf course in this city like the back of my hand. I’m a legend in my own time.”

“I believe you. That was a pretty hefty roll you whipped out on me yesterday. With that kind of dough, how come you sleep outside?”

“That’s personal, man, but I’ll tell you if you tell me something. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“How come you quit the police force?”

“They were about to can me. I was drinking heavily, and my fitness reports were shot to hell. I was too sensitive to be a cop.” It was approximately a third of the truth, but my remark about my “sensitivity” was an outright lie.

“I believe you, man,” Fat Dog said. “You got that look, nervous like, of a juicehead on the wagon. I could tell you was by all the coffee you was drinking the other day. Juicers on the wagon are all big coffee fiends.”

“Back to you, Fat Dog,” I said. “Why the outdoor living?”

He was silent for a minute or so. He seemed to be formulating his thoughts. We had made our way up to Sunset, and I was maneuvering eastbound in heavy traffic, around wide curves and abrupt turns. When he spoke his voice was tighter, less boisterous, like someone trying to explain something intrinsic and holy. “Do you dig pussy?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Have you ever wanted to have a broad that could give you everything you’ve ever wanted? That you never had to worry about? I mean, you never had to worry about her fucking no other guys, you just knew she was loyal? And this broad, she’s perfect. Her body is exactly like the one you’ve always dreamed of. And she’s even nice to be around after you’ve fucked her? That’s how I feel about golf courses. They’re beautiful and mysterious. I don’t sleep good inside. Nightmares. Sometimes when it rains, I sleep underneath this overhang next to the caddy shack at Bel-Air. It’s dry, but it’s outside. It’s peaceful on golf courses. Most of the ones in L.A. got nice homes next to them. Big old-fashioned ones. The people leave their lights on sometimes ’cause they think no one’s looking at them. I seen all kinds of strange shit that way. Once when I was camped out on Wilshire South, I saw some dame beat up her dog, just a little puppy, then get it on with another dame, right there on the floor. These rich cocksuckers who belong to these clubs, they think they own their golf courses, but they just play golf on them, and I live on them, all of them! The courses around here are the primo land in L.A., worth billions of bucks, and I’ve got them all for my personal crash pad. So I pack bags and I’m the best, and I know things that none of these rich assholes will never know.”

“What kind of nightmares do you have?”

Fat Dog hesitated before he answered. “Just scary shit,” he said. “Monsters, dragons, and animals out to get me. Never getting to see my sister again.”

“I tailed your sister today. She withdrew some money from a bank, then visited some people in the Valley and around Vermont and Melrose. Do you have any idea of who these people are?”

“No!” Fat Dog screamed. “You’re the private eye, you find out! I’m paying you a grand to find out! You find out about that Jew bloodsucker Kupferman, too! I’m paying you! You find out!”

I turned on to the golf course access road, stopped the car, and looked at Fat Dog. He was red-faced and shaking, his eyes pinpoints of fear and hated. My client was insane. I started to speak, something consoling, but he started screaming again. “You find out, you cocksucker! You’re working for the Fat Dog, don’t you forget that!” He got out of the car and walked up to the fence. He started to scale it, then turned around to give me a parting salvo. “You ain’t no German, you fuck. Nigger lover! Jew lover! You couldn’t even keep a job with the fuzz, you...”

My headache came back, full force, and I got out of the car. I ran to the fence and pulled Fat Dog off by his belt. As he landed, I spun him around and hit him in the stomach, hard. He doubled over, gasping, and I whispered to him, “Listen, you fucking low-life. Nobody talks to me that way, ever. I took a look at your rapsheet today, and I know you’re a weenie-wagger. You’ve got two choices as of now. You can apologize to me for what you said, and I’ll continue to work for you. If you don’t apologize, I’ll throw a citizen’s arrest on you for indecent exposure. With your two priors it means registration as a sex offender, which is not pleasant. What’s it going to be?”

Fat Dog recovered his breath and muttered, “I apologize.”

“Good,” I said. “You’ve got one week of my time. I’ll leave a message at the bar if I need to get in touch with you. You’ll get my best job. At the end of the week I’ll submit a written report.” I gave him a boost and he managed to make it over the fence. I watched him walk into the darkness of his sanctuary, then drove away, my revulsion cut through with the strangest, sickest sense of fascination.

There was no place to go but Walter’s. I drove out Wilshire feeling numbed physically and caught on the horns of a moral dilemma: I had been hired by a vindictive lunatic to disrupt the lives of two decent people. I had the chance to bail out of my case but I didn’t. I couldn’t; I was spellbound by a madman. It seemed an insoluble problem, so I willed myself not to think, which only compounded my numbness.

I couldn’t find a parking space on Walter’s block, so I parked on his front lawn. If his mother saw my tire marks, she would resign me to Christian Science hell, but I decided to risk it. I walked into the back yard. The light in Walter’s bedroom was on, and through it I could see him passed out in his chair in front of the T. V. On the screen a giant reptile was attacking a Japanese metropolis, knocking over skyscrapers with his tail. I toyed with the idea of shooting Godzilla and watching the T.V. implode, but Walter would never forgive me. There were two empty pint bottles of Scotch on the floor beside his chair. That was ominous. Walter was a winehead, and when he couldn’t threaten or cajole his mother into wine money, he would rip off flat pint bottles from the Thrifty Drug Store on Wilshire and Western. Hard liquor was an oblivion trip for my beloved friend, and he was an inept shoplifter. I was afraid that if he were busted, the arresting officers would recognize his lunacy and railroad him to Department 95 and Camarillo.

I pried off the windowscreen and climbed into his room. I lifted Walter onto his bed and stuffed two fifties into his shirt pocket. As I shut off the T.V., Godzilla was getting blasted by some sort of atomic death-ray. “I love you, you crazy bastard, but you break my heart,” I said, turning off the lights, and going out the window. It was getting chilly. I drove home and fell asleep on the couch with my clothes on.