“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.