Джеймс Эллрой - Brown's Requiem

“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.

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?”