Wilshire Country Club, located midway between downtown and Hollywood, yielded nothing but hostile looks from a particularly motley group of loopers who watched suspiciously as I strode purposefully into their caddy shack, unlocked locker number 71, came up with nothing but more golf balls and promptly split, happy that my theory had been validated.
I drove out to Lakeside, taking the Cahuenga Pass past the Hollywood Bowl and over the hill. I parked my car on a side street leading up to the Lakeside Clubhouse entranceway. The clubhouse was old Spanish, with a low red-tiled roof that seemed to promise warm good times. It was 2:00 P.M., a Thursday, and the clubhouse was nearly deserted. I walked right through. Being reasonably Anglo-Saxon and tastefully dressed, no one stopped me. I could hear pieces of golf anecdotes as I walked through the dining room and out onto a patio with a great view of the flat golf course.
It didn’t take me long to spot the caddy shack; it was the only piece of run-down property on this otherwise splendid preserve, and the carelessly dressed men coming out of it were a dead giveaway. So I strolled over and entered Caddyland once again, my hands stuck in my trouser pockets, my fingers crossed for luck. This caddy shack was relatively clean and the card games that were going on were relatively sedate.
I extracted the key for locker number 16 from the key ring and walked into the locker room in back of the card room. Aside from two loopers asleep on wooden benches I had the dusty room to myself. I stuck the key into the lock, turned it, and stepped back, expecting an onslaught of golf balls that never came. The locker was empty except for one large, double-strength supermarket bag. When I looked inside I knew I was home. There was one large yellow plastic notebook binder and several dozen bankbooks and savings-and-loan passbooks. My heart made a brief, joyous “Ka-thud” and I slammed the locker door shut and walked into the caddy day room.
I couldn’t resist a parting salute to the assembled loopers, so I yelled, “Loop on, you heroic motherfuckers! You have achieved a place in my heart rivaled only by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra! Long live the fine amenities of a well-hit chip shot! Long live Stan The Man, Burger Hansen, and Bobby Marchion! Let the bummer roll! Looping U.S.A.!” I didn’t wait around for their response. I tore out of the caddy shack, my arms tightly encircling what I knew would be a priceless piece of L.A. history.
I couldn’t go home to read it. I couldn’t go home at all, not with Ralston and Cathcart knowing what they did about me, so I drove back over the Cahuenga Pass to the little park across Highland from the Bowl. I found a place on the grass in the shade, took a deep breath, and dug in. The notebook seemed to be in three orderly sections. I could tell even before I opened it: there were three colors of paper — white, yellow, and blue. The white section was in the style of a ledger and I immediately recognized the printing as Fat Dog’s; much neater than in his letter to Jane. The ledger obviously noted racetrack winnings: the first column contained dates going back to ’62, the second the names of the horses, the third the odds, and the fourth the amount of money won. It had to be money won, since each amount was followed by several happy-looking exclamation marks. I drew in a sharp breath as I riffled through the white pages: Fat Dog had won a fortune in the past seventeen years.
I dropped the notebook, reached in the bag, pulled out a handful of bankbooks and gasped: $11,000 in deposits in one bank, $9,600 in another, $8,000 in another, $12,300 in another, $6,000, $14,000, $8,000, $9,900, $13,000, $4,500, $17,000, $11,250 and on and on and on. There were thirty-four bankbooks in all, all to branches in the Greater L.A. area. I did some quick figuring and came up with a rough total of at least three hundred grand. Over a quarter of a million dollars. I checked the signature on each passbook: Frederick R. Baker. But the words were too well-formed to have been written by Fat Dog. Someone else had made the deposits. But who?
I wiped sweat from my face, rolled up my sleeves and went back to the notebook. I felt suddenly nauseated, but I clenched my teeth and started on the second section, which contained newspaper clippings of fires in the Los Angeles area followed by humorous comments in Fat Dog’s inimitable printing. It was the most ghastly reading I have ever done. The clippings were carefully taped to the yellow paper, which was encased in thin plastic to protect it from aging. It took me only a few minutes to conclude that Fat Dog was a lifelong arsonist and a mass murderer unparalleled in modern times:
From the Los Angeles Mirror, April 2, 1961:
A family of three met a blazing death yesterday when their garage-playroom burst into flames. Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Capt. CD. Finan said that Howard Rosenthal, 37, his wife Mona, 34, and their daughter Eleanor, 11, of 9683 Sandhaven, Westchester, were playing ping-pong when their playroom caught fire. They suffocated almost instantly. The cause of the fire was traced to internal combustion, a deadly combination of heat and gas-soaked rags found In the garage. Funeral services for the Rosenthal family are pending at Mali-now Silverman Mortuary, Hollywood.
From the Herald Express, September 10, 1963:
Two heroic supermarket cashiers died last night as they went back into the blazing inferno that was Ralph’s Market on Third and San Vincente in West Los Angeles. The two men, Donald Bedell, 26, and William Jones, 31, were trying to rescue the market’s payroll and were consumed by flames. Cause of the blaze is as yet undetermined and property damage is estimated at close to a half million dollars. There were several shoppers inside the store when the fire broke out, and Bedell and Jones moved them to safety before returning to open the safe. Bedell is survived by his wife Donna. Jones by his parents, Mr. & Mrs. Robert Jones of Long Beach.
From the Times, January 29, 1964:
A young married couple met their death on the San Bernardino Freeway yesterday in a freak accident when a leaky gas tank and sparks from an overheated engine combined to send the car exploding into flames near an offramp in Arcadia. The couple, recently married, were Mr. and Mrs. Willard D. Jamison of Santa Monica. A passing motorist saw the blazing car and flagged down a nearby Highway Patrolman, but by then it was too late. Fire engines arrived on the scene minutes later and put out the fire. Funeral services for the Jamisons will be held at Gates, Kingsley and Gates Mortuary, Forest Lawn, on February 2.
Below were Fat Dog’s comments: “The Fat Dog is everywhere! I can see everywhere!!! I roast ’em, toast ’em and make the most of ’em!!!!!”
On and on it went. The scrapbook contained clippings in chronological order of fires up until last year. Fires that took lives, fires that destroyed homes, cars, industrial property. All flawlessly executed. Sol Kupferman and Louisa Jane Hall had spawned a genius: malignant, clever beyond belief, and evil beyond comprehension.
I had reached the year 1972, and had counted 16 deaths, when I couldn’t go on. I was as still as a leaf, but inside I was screaming. Tears of anger and disbelief began to stain the yellow pages. The evil was staggering, the brilliance behind it unfathomable. Given enough time, Fat Dog Baker would have burned Los Angeles County to the ground. And he had chosen me, Fritz Brown, “detective in name only,” to help implement his plan of revenge, blackmail, and God knows what else, directed at Kupferman, Ralston, and God knows who else. God. That was funny. There was no God. But for the first time I found myself wishing there were. I took deep breaths for a minute or so. They actually helped; I felt slightly calmed as I went on to the blue pages.