I got on the phone again, this time to Parker Center. I wanted to find out if Cathcart was still with the department. I gave the information officer I spoke to a line of shit about media revival of the Utopia firebombing case, with emphasis on the fine work of Lieutenant Haywood Cathcart. Was Lieutenant Cathcart still with the department? The desk dummy bought it. Cops love to have their asses kissed in print.
“Yes,” he said, “Lieutenant Cathcart is now Captain Cathcart, stationed right here at Parker Center with the Narcotics Division.”
I thanked the cop and hung up. Cathcart. Cathcart. Haywood Cathcart. Captain Haywood Cathcart. I liked the euphonious ring of the name. It would look good in print when his world came tumbling down at his feet. Cathcart was not only veteran L.A.P.D. brass, but a murderer, heroin dealer, evidence suppressor, and — given the size of his pad in Baja — a tax-evader. He had to be the top man in this upward spiral of arson, murder, drugs, and dirty money.
I was right. One look at his cold face in the yearbook photograph taken a scant eight months before the Utopia blast told me that. Logic told me that the bombing was the genesis of his involvement. He was linked to Ralston, Ralston had set him up with Sandoval and Cruz; and the only possible motives that could tie this disparate, far-reaching case together were blackmail and money, something beyond the chickenshit bookie operations of Kupferman and Ralston.
As adrenalin and irony coursed through my bloodstream, I gloated on the moral perfection of a high-ranking L.A.P.D. bimbo being brought to justice by a former L.A.P.D. minion out of moral limbo. I was getting restless. I dressed and got out the car. Driving would kill my vengeful fantasies and bring me back to earth. I headed west, toward Jane’s.
She wasn’t there. Neither Cadillac was in the driveway, but I knocked anyway. There was no answer, which was surprising. I had expected someone to answer, a maid, perhaps. I went back to the car to wait. I had a lot to tell her — mixed tidings about her brother’s death and the other things that transpired in Mexico. She deserved to know the whole story, and be kept up to date on my progress.
And I wanted to be close to her gentleness and beauty. I decided to tell her about the two men I killed. She deserved to know that, too, and wouldn’t condemn me for it. She was a clearheaded, practical woman. One night doesn’t lay claim to a person’s life, but our one night was a promise of a commitment and a future together in more stable times. And I wanted another loving night with her before the unpleasant, possibly violent job of bracing Hot Rod Ralston.
A car pulled into the circular driveway — a full pig Chrysler convertible — and a large solidly built man in his middle forties got out and rang the bell. It was a quiet afternoon and I could hear the chimes from my post across the street. The man had a hard-edged look about him, like a cop or an insurance investigator. Maybe he was a business associate of Kupferman.
I was thunderstruck when Jane Baker opened the door and walked outside, carrying her cello case. She locked the door behind her, greeted the man with a warm smile and walked with him to his car. Whatever he was, he wasn’t any cello teacher.
When they pulled out. I decided to follow. I found myself getting jealous. Jane knew my car, so I had to stay behind for at least a full minute, then head after them on the route they would most likely take — Beverly Drive South. I waited, trying to quash a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. Walter Curran: everything is connected. The man Jane drove off with had the mien of a cold, manipulative ex-athlete, like Richard Ralston. I didn’t want it to be.
I picked up their trail on Beverly Drive and Burton Way, inside the Beverly Hills shopping district. I came up right behind them, watching them huddle in conversation. The man pulled up to the curb on Beverly just south of Wilshire and Jane got out, lugging her cello. She didn’t notice me as I drove by, continuing to follow the man in the Chrysler. He turned right on Pico, heading in the direction of Hillcrest Country Club. I started to pray for it not to be, but when we came up on Century City and Hillcrest and he flashed his left-hand directional, I knew, and was resigned.
There was a uniformed guard in the parking lot who admitted Ralston, so I had no chance of following him directly in. I turned right on the corner of Century Park East and parked in a No Parking Zone. I locked the car, placed a “Physician On Call” notice under my windshield wipers and ran across Pico toward a small gate off to the right of the parking entrance. A group of four scruffy-looking caddies were entering the gate, two of them sharing a pint of vodka. I walked in right behind them, staying a few yards back, hoping they would lead me to the caddy shack. They did. It was off to the left of a concrete walkway that bordered a large putting green.
There weren’t too many golfers about; Tuesday afternoon was probably a dead time for golf. The shack was slightly below ground level, a white clapboard job with a green tar-papered roof, built on a slope that led downhill to what looked like an oil drilling site.
I walked inside and was greeted by a shrieking cacophony of noise: there were half-a-dozen card games going on at wooden picnic tables, and the players — for the most part poorly dressed, sunburned, middle-aged men — were gesturing frantically, throwing cards and shouting good-natured obscenities. The concrete floor was littered with trash, cigarette butts, and empty beer cans. Rows of lockers lined the walls; a T.V. blasting out a game show at full volume went unnoticed.
I walked through a smaller room that held nothing but lockers and dressing benches and found the can, passing along the way Scarecrow Augie Dougall, all six foot six of him, reading a comic book as intently as if his soul depended on it. The bathroom was filthy beyond description, with a row of showers that looked as if they hadn’t been used in years. The floor was carpeted with urine-soaked copies of the Daily Racing Form and the walls were adorned with beaver photos of outrageously large breasted women.
I splashed some water on my face and recombed the part in my hair. I walked back through the shack and out onto a back service porch overlooking the oil digs. There was an old man sitting on an overturned trash can reading a Louis L’Amour novel and smoking a pipe. I walked to the railing of the porch and watched the oilmen working, checking out Pops out of the corner of my eye. He seemed to have trouble concentrating on his book. The noise of the card play distracted him. He looked like a lonely, opinionated old coot, so I asked: “Does that oil property belong to the club?”
He gave me a disgusted look. “Of course it does,” he said, “providing more money for people who already got too much fucking money. They say it helps defer the cost of membership, but shit, when you got the moolah these Hebes got, who gives a rat’s ass for a few chickenshit million a year divided by five hundred fucking members? Can you tell me that?”
I said it was a mystery to me. I could see a windy monologue coming on, so I started popping questions, simple ones. “Do you loop here?”
Pops gave me another disgusted snort. “You could say that,” he said, “but I’d rather not. I’m on Hot Rod’s shit list, so I’m lucky to pick up a nine-hole single once in a while. Are you a caddy? You don’t look like one. Too healthy.”
“I’m a traveling caddy. They call me Coast-to-Coast Johnny. I’m in town checking out the accommodations of the various caddy shacks for an article I’m writing for Golf Digest. How come you’re on Hot Rod’s shit list?”
“I don’t bet with the cocksucker. I don’t drink at the cocksucker’s bar, or live at his cocksucking fleabag hotel. Does that answer your question?”
“Vividly. I take it you don’t like Hot Rod.”