“Now?” I asked.
“Soon,” she replied, sticking her head out the window to look for landmarks. “Okay, now,” she said. “There’s a road just beyond the next bend. Slow down and turn when I tell you.”
I did and my headlights caught a wide, well-traveled dirt road leading straight up toward what looked like a pass between two large mountains. As we approached, the terrain flattened out and the mountains became hills. We passed between them, going inland toward a dark, cold, nothingness. It was very silent. Far in the distance coyotes bayed. The road meandered up and down among a series of small hills. It was utterly dark, my high beams the only light.
Gradually the road widened and off to my right a large white shape began to emerge and take form.
“There,” Dori said, pointing toward it, “that’s the place.”
I pulled off the road. “You stay here,” I said. “I’ll be back within half an hour. Don’t leave the car.”
She nodded nervously. I took my shotgun and flashlight from the trunk and walked toward my objective. As I got within two hundred yards I realized I was looking at a rancho that would have made a Texas land baron proud. It was two stories high, of white stucco, and had three wings running in different directions. It was a stylistic mishmash, a cross between an American prison and a Turkish mosque. Lights burning in a huge picture window in the main front wing cast an orange glow over a carport that held three cars.
Surprisingly, there was no fence or surrounding wall. Whoever owned this palatial rancho evidently believed in the safety of the wide open spaces, so I walked right up to the cars and examined them: A ’76 Ford Ranchero wagon, a four-wheel drive Toyota Landcruiser, and a late model Volvo sedan. All bore California plates, which I committed to memory.
I circled the house at a radius of fifty yards or so, to avoid being seen from the darkened rooms. The rancho was set on a foundation of concrete that extended out into the mesquite land that bordered it. By my watch it took me seven minutes to make a complete circuit of la casa grande. There was nothing out of the ordinary, only an eerie desert stillness. Suddenly music cut the night. It was unmistakable: the Schumann Fourth Symphony, the opening movement, the brass pounding up and down like a drum roll. My adversary was an aesthetic and he possessed a stereo system even better than my own, sending shock waves of German romanticism into mesquite land and canyons for miles around.
Dori was frightened, dropping her cigarette into her lap and burning herself as I opened my car door. I put the shotgun into the back seat and hit the ignition. “What’s that creepy music?” she said. “It scared the shit out of me.”
“That’s the good stuff,” I said, digging into the glove compartment and writing down the license numbers. “Learn to dig it, it’ll set you free. The guy who owns that pad has taste.”
“I think his taste sucks. Give me rock any day.”
“Rock causes cancer, acne, and the creeping crud. Back to Ensenada. I’ll help you move some more of your stuff up to the Sandoval place. Then I’m taking off.”
“What about the money you promised?”
“You’ll get it. A grand for you and a grand for Tina. I’m feeling magnanimous.”
Dori grabbed me, hugged me fiercely and planted a big wet one on my cheek. “You’re really a nice shit. You know that?”
“Thanks.”
I pulled a U-turn and we began our return trip. Walter had indeed been right. Everything was connected. But was it decipherable? For the first time since Fat Dog knocked on my office door over two long weeks ago, I wondered if anything was.
When we got back to Dori’s apartment, I gave her fifteen minutes to move as much of her stuff out as would fit into both our cars. She went about it hurriedly, hauling large armloads of clothes out the door and running down the stairs. I followed suit, not running. I noticed that she left untouched the men’s clothing I had seen earlier. Within twenty minutes, both our cars were packed with feminine goodies and a lurid library of pop writers.
We then headed north, toward Sandoval Bluff. When we arrived at the Sandovals’, I hurried to unload my car, stacking Dori’s things neatly on the ground. No lights were on in the house. That was good; it would be easier to drop my bad news. I dug into my wallet, bloated with other men’s money, pulled out two thousand in fifties and C-notes and placed them in Dori’s hand. She just looked at me. A period in her life was over and she knew it. “Henry’s dead, Dori,” I said. “Reyes Sandoval, too. I saw their bodies. There’s a big time bad scene going on and it’s going to get worse. I’m not sure exactly what’s happening, but you and Tina had better get the hell out of here and don’t come back. Go to San Francisco, or Phoenix, or some place you’ve never seen before. Thanks for helping me.”
She didn’t say anything. When I kissed her cheek, I felt a slow trickle of tears. I got in my car and headed for the border, leaving behind in my room the cheap phonograph and an assortment of soiled clothes.
I pulled into T.J. at 2:00 A.M. I bought Jane a handbag made out of armadillo’s skin. I laughed when I paid for it. Its claws unlocked makeup compartments and it had beady rhinestone eyes. I fingered it for luck as I crossed the border back into California.
IV
Shotgun
10
I had changed during my stay South of the Border and expected to find L.A. changed when I returned. I was wrong. As I passed through the far-flung Southern suburbs of L.A. proper around dawn on the 405, it was as familiar as the sigh of an old lover: the same hazy sunshine, smog, billboards, blacktop, and boredom. Even the Santa Monica Freeway eastbound, with its view of West L.A. as a green plateau and the Wilshire Boulevard skyscrapers and the Santa Monica Mountains in the distance, yielded nothing but a dull verisimilitude. But it was good to be back.
It was too early to call the DMV to check out the license numbers of the cars at La Casa Grande, so I took a shower and fell into bed to wait for nine o’clock. It was noon when I woke up, frightened. I didn’t know where I was. I looked around for the wake-up bottle I kept by the bed when I was drinking, then realized I had been sober for four days. Then it hit me: I was back in L.A. and the case was active. But I hesitated in reaching for the phone. I thought of Jane and couldn’t picture her face, just her body as it looked our one night together.
I went into the kitchen and made coffee. That helped. My head was clearing. Midway through my first cup, I dialed the DMV. I was reaching out to the top of my case and I was scared. For perhaps the fourth time since Fat Dog hired me, I impersonated a police officer. It worked again. I read the numbers off to an abrupt woman and she came back with the registration information after only a moment’s wait.
When I got the news my head started to crackle and I began to laugh. It was too perfect; beyond poetic justice, beyond logic and reason. All three cars belonged to Haywood Cathcart, 11417 Saticoy Street, Van Nuys. Cathcart. The L.A.P.D. lieutenant who “cracked” the Club Utopia firebombing case in record time in 1968. I felt calm, but my hands were shaking. I had to hold my coffee cup with both hands to take a sip.
I dug out my old Academy yearbook from the bedroom and looked for mention of Cathcart. He was posed with several other officers listed as “guest lecturers,” and his lecture was given as, Crowd Control — Techniques of Containment and Disbursement. I didn’t recall the lecture. Cathcart was a tall, stern-looking, sandy-haired man of about forty-five.