“You have, Augie. You’ve done something very few people could have done.”
“You really think so, Fritz?”
“I know so, Augie.” I pulled up in front of his cousin’s house and handed him one of my business cards. “Here’s my card, Augie. Call me in two weeks and I’ll tell you how this thing came out. In the meantime, get out of town and be careful.”
We shook hands solemnly, then Augie broke into a big loving grin and extricated his Abraham Lincoln frame from my Camaro. I waited until he was safely inside the house, then split.
The Desert Flower Trailer Park was in Section 14, Palm Springs’ poverty pocket. I had been hearing about Section 14 for years. Middle-class elitist cops, connoisseurs of low-life, spoke with awe of the tawdry, unpaved collection of tarpaper shacks, trailer parks, and abandoned cars that existed just half a mile off of Palm Canyon Drive. Every commercial center has to have a slum to house its destitute, and Palm Springs was no exception. Only here the dichotomy was more obvious and the center of desolation more isolated: two minutes from downtown Palm Springs in the middle of a gigantic sand flat, Section 14 stood, not quite visible from the broad streets that formed its perimeter, lest it ruin some tourist’s vacation with intimations of reality. Dog packs were rumored to roam through it at night, searching out cats and desert rodents for food. Most of its population — drunks, Welfare recipients, car washers and restaurant workers at two dollars an hour — sought air-conditioned refuge during the summer days and returned to swelter at night.
As I pulled off Ramon Road and drove north on Section 14’s garbage-strewn dirt access road, I felt timeless, like a Steinbeckian capitalist exploiter. The Desert Flower Trailer Park was on the south border of Section 14, saving me a trip into its dark inner sanctum. There were no flowers to be seen, desert or otherwise; only a permanently-grounded fleet of beat up, tarnished, small traders, most of them sans cars. I looked at my watch. It was 7:04 and getting dark. There was no one around. I parked my car and locked it, surveying it in the process. It was nine model years old and dusty. It blended right in. If I was lucky no one would deface it out of envy or resentment.
At the head of the two long lines of trailers was a shack marked “Office.” I banged on the door. An elderly woman in a robe answered, smelling of gin. I inquired after Marguerita Hansen. The old woman perused me from head to toe. “Cop?” she said. I nodded affirmatively. “At the very end on the left, number twenty-three.” She slammed her door, blowing dust on my trouser leg.
Marguerita Hansen’s trailer was one of the nicer ones, a chromium “air-stream” of the type popular in the early 50’s. It looked well kept-up, the chrome carrying a minimum of dust. It had an electric buzzer next to the door that went off resoundingly when I pushed it. A woman of about fifty came to the door a minute later.
My first thought upon seeing her was that twenty years ago she must have been a real beauty. She was a honey blonde, tall and plump. Her face was blotched from crying. She held on to the door for support and looked down at me. “Yes?” she said. “Are you from the police? They said I could wait for a few days before making my statement.”
“I’m not with the police, Mrs. Hansen,” I said. “My name is Brown, I’m a private investigator. I’m investigating the murders here in Palm Springs and some other things that may be related. Could I speak to you for a minute?”
When she hesitated, I handed her my billfold, open to the photostat of my license. She took it, checked it briefly, and handed it back. “All right,” she said, “come in.”
The interior of the trailer was spotlessly clean. There was a couch, a coffee table, and two chairs arranged neatly. Up against one wall were boxes full of men’s clothes. Standing next to them were three golf bags, filled with clubs. Marguerita Hansen caught my gaze. “Those were George’s things,” she said. “I don’t want them around anymore.”
I nodded as I took a seat on the couch. “I’ll try to make this brief. First, I don’t think the deaths of your husband, Marchion and Gaither had anything to do with drugs, as the police have been suggesting.” She sat down in a chair across from me. I continued: “I think their deaths can be traced directly to two men — Richard Ralston and Frederick ‘Fat Dog’ Baker. I...” I stopped. Marguerita Hansen came alive at the mention of the two names. “Do you know these two men, Mrs. Hansen?”
“Yes. Yes, I do. George and I have known Dick Ralston for years. He and George used to play minor league baseball together when they were teenagers. He got George his start as a caddy. And George and I were foster parents to Freddy Baker and his sister when they were little children.”
“What?” Suddenly I was shaking.
“I said Dick Ralston and George were old friends and that we were foster parents to Freddy Baker and his sister. My God, why are you staring at me that way?!” She began to sob. I let her cry while I tried to clear the gathering storm clouds in my own mind. After a minute she controlled herself. She looked at me guiltily, as if ashamed for her show of emotion.
“Mrs. Hansen,” I said, “I understand your connection to Richard Ralston. But you tell me that you and your husband were foster parents to Fat Dog Baker and his sister?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“His sister, Jane Baker?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s about twenty-eight years old now?”
“Yes, that’s about right.”
“My God. When was this?”
“In 1955. Freddy was twelve and Jane was three.”
“How did this come about?”
“A man I knew arranged it. Why I’ll never know. He was a wonderful man, an old friend, and he knew George and I wanted children, but couldn’t have any. He paid us very well to take care of them. We loved them so much. They were orphans. We were their second foster parents. Their first died in a fire the year before.” A fire. Jesus God.
“What was this man’s name, Mrs. Hansen? It’s very important.”
She hesitated. “Sol Kupferman,” she said.
Oh, God. Oh, shit, “And this was in 1955?” I almost screamed it.
“Yes. Why are you getting so upset?”
“I’m sorry, but what you’ve told me — and I believe you — contradicts most of the evidence I’ve gathered so far. How did you know Kupferman?”
“My brother introduced us. Sol was a very rich, glamorous, considerate man. He was supposed to be in the rackets, but I didn’t care. He had just lost the woman he had been living with for years. She committed suicide. He was heartbroken. We comforted each other. Why he was interested in the Baker kids, I’ll never know. He was always doing nice things for people. Anonymously. He told George and I that we must never mention him to the children.”
“And he arranged the adoption through an adoption agency?”
“Yes. The County Agency.”
“And what happened? Finally you gave up the children?”
“We had to. George was drinking heavily and Freddy became a wild, terrible boy. The adoption people took them away from us.”
“And that was the last you saw of the children? Or of Kupferman?”
“No. Sol and Dick Ralston fixed George up with a job cad-dying at Hillcrest. He sent us money at Christmastime. He still does. But I haven’t seen him for over ten years.”