I was tired. My encounter with Jane had diffused my anger into a vague hope that was enervating in itself. Sleep was what I needed, but I was too tired for that. My only recourse was the tried-and-true run to Walter’s place. I wanted to commit an act of symbolic liberation and his back yard was the place for it.
It was sweltering when I pulled into his driveway. His mother’s Mustang was gone, thank God, and I found Walter sitting on a lawn chair in his back yard, his feet immersed in a kiddies’ wading pool. He was reading a science fiction novel and sucking on a short dog. Several more short dogs were cooling in the pool. He looked about half-bombed. “Moon to earth, moon to earth,” he said as he saw me coming. “The noble private eye returneth from his search for the Holy Grail in Mexico. Chastened, methinks.” Leave it to Walter to throw in one solid perception in his line of horseshit. “Was it fruitful, Fritz? Did you see the mule act? Did you ‘eat out’ at the Blue Fox? Did you score me some dope so I can get off the sauce?”
“Negative to all that rebop. I did learn one interesting thing, though. I found out who killed The Black Dahlia.”
“Oh, yeah? Who was it? The Ayatollah? It has to be him. That clown looks exactly like a fag who tried to grab my dick in the swimming pool at the Hollywood Y when I was twelve. It has to be him.”
“Wrong. It’s you, you bastard, because all that mystical Buddhist shit you’ve been whipping on me for all these years about everything being connected is true. I congratulate you. The twenty-five or thirty I.Q. points you have on me has never been more evident. Since everything is connected, the concept of karma must be valid, too. Ergo, it’s time to clean up my act and get out of the repo racket. After I clean up a big mess I’m involved in. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet. Maybe get Cal to set me up in my own classical record store, something like that. There’s a woman in my life now that I have to consider. And since karma is a valid concept there’s probably some nigger who’s looking for me right now with a Saturday Night Special for ripping off his Cadillac. I can’t risk that. Jane needs me. So you were right. I salute you, reluctantly.
“But there’s no victory without pain. You have to pay the price. The one thing that I resent most about you, as much as I love you, is your insane addiction to television. The booze, the music, the sci-fi are all understandable. But the T.V. shit is beneath you. It’s even beneath me. So your T.V. set has to die. Today. Right here in your back yard. I will perform the execution. You will be compensated. I have over six hundred dollars in dirty money that I have to get rid of before I begin my new life. So we do it. Now.”
I had expected high-flying resistance from Walter, but he just smiled. He fished out a short dog from the pool and drained it in one gulp. He shuddered and smiled again. “Let’s do it,” he said. “I’m resigned. Six hundred scoots will get me a half-pound of Columbian and that hooker you told me about. It’s time I got back into the mainstream myself. Let’s do it.”
We went into the house and lugged the old G.E. console back out into the yard. We placed it in a preeminent spot next to old lady Curran’s rose garden. Then I got the Browning pump and a box of shells out of my trunk. Walter was practically jumping up and down in anticipation, “three shots,” I said, “then we get the hell out of here before the fuzz shows up. Stand in back of me. Glass is going to fly.” I paced off twenty yards from the T.V. to Walter’s back porch. Walter sat on the steps behind me, sipping T-Bird in silent glee. I slipped a shell into the breach and pumped it into the chamber, took aim, and fired. The TV. screen imploded with a huge, reverberating kawhoosh! Glass, wood, and metal fragments flew out the back and filled the air before coming to rest in the smoke-filled back yard. The air smelled like burning technology. I squeezed off another shot at the wooden carcass and blew it in half.
People were coming to their windows now in the apartment building across the alley and Walter was whooping and yelling like some new alcoholic species of loon. I pumped another shell into the chamber and handed it to him. “Your turn,” I said, “anywhere but in my direction.”
He nodded and tore throughout the yard, searching for a target. He ended up settling for the garage wall and blew a hole in it the size of a Volkswagen, the recoil knocking him to the ground. I helped him up and we tore for my car, through a driveway littered with T.V. detritus and smelling of cordite.
When we got to my place I made espresso and sent out for a giant anchovy pizza and a fifth of vodka and mixer for Walter. When it arrived we scarfed the pizza in two minutes flat and sat back and talked, and it was the best, the sanest talk we had had in a long time.
Around midnight I gave Walter his six hundred clams and sent him off in a cab. He was going to get a motel room on the Strip until his mother cooled off and I concluded my case. Then it would be sobriety. I believed him this time. There were distinct flashes of the old Walter and flashes of remorse for what he had become.
Before I went to bed a dire thought crossed my mind. Ralston knew about me and probably wanted to silence me. He knew where I lived and had the wherewithal to have me killed. But I quashed the thought. I knew now: I was going to do more than hold in life. I was going to win.
11
I woke up the next morning feeling hung over. Drifting in and out of sleep, I felt a dull persistent banging somewhere, like blows muffled by acoustical padding. I tried to think of Jane’s face. Forming the image was easy this time. Gradually, I realized that the banging wasn’t inside my own head, but was a loud rapping at my front door. I threw on a T-shirt and a pair of Levis and went to greet my caller.
When I opened the door I knew immediately that they were cops: their size, stern demeanor, and eighty-dollar suits were as good as a neon sign proclaiming “officious city flunkies on a power trip.” I greeted them warmly. “Good morning,” I said. “What can I do for you?”
“Are you Fritz Brown?” the taller and more forceful-looking of the two asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Sergeant Larkin, Riverside County Sheriffs Department. This is Sergeant Cavanaugh, L.A.P.D.” They both flashed badges at me. “Could we talk to you? Inside?”
“Sure. Come in.”
They entered and gave my living room a quick perusing. Cavanaugh’s eyes fell on my holstered.28 lying on a lamp table. “Do you have a permit for that weapon, Mr. Brown?” he asked.
“Yes, I do. And I have a permit to carry it concealed. I’m a licensed private investigator.”
“I see,” Larkin said, as they both sat down on my couch, uninvited. “Do you own any other weapons?”
So that was it. Old lady Curran had blown the whistle on me. But why was a Riverside County dick involved? “Yes, I own a Browning 12-gauge pump shotgun.”
“Could we see it?” Cavanaugh asked.
“Sure. One minute.” I walked into my bedroom. Maybe the jig was up, and I was going to get popped for discharging a firearm within the city limits. But I didn’t think so. These guys were too reserved and ominous. I brought the shotgun into the living room and handed it, butt first, to Larkin.
He slid open the breech and chamber and took a healthy sniff. “This gun has been fired recently,” he said.
“Last night,” I answered. “I assassinated a T.V. set. With the owner’s permission. If you want to bust me for shooting off a gun in the city, let’s do it now so I can bail out.”
“That’s not what we’re here for, Brown,” Cavanaugh said.
“I didn’t think so. Riverside County doesn’t give a rat’s ass what I do with my shotgun in L.A. What is it then?” I sat down in my easy chair across from them.