I laughed. “Fair enough. What should I call you?”
“Call me Alex.”
“Okay, Alex, call me Jack. What’s the matter? No loop today?”
“Fuck no. That punk Rudy puts all the duck loopers out before me. He wouldn’t know a good caddy from a rhinoceros. Dirty cocksucker.”
“You hurting for cash?”
“I’m always hurting for cash.”
“Want to make a quick loop with me? The fastest loop of your life? Maybe ten minutes for twenty-five scoots?”
“You’re talking my language, Jackie-Boy. What do I got to do?”
“Just talk to me. Let’s go out on the porch.” Alex followed me, licking his lips. “You hate Ralston, don’t you, Alex?” I said.
“I hate the cocksucker’s guts. Why?”
“I don’t like him myself. He ripped me off on a bet. I want to get even. I’ve got to get him alone to do this. I need to find out something about his routine, so I’ll know when to make my move.”
Alex looked at me fearfully, nodding his head slowly. “And you’ll pay me for providing you with this info?”
“Right.”
“And Hot Rod ain’t gonna find out about me tellin’ you this?”
“You have my word.”
“You got anything against trespassin’ late at night?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll tell you. I know the time and I know the place. But I need thirty-five clams. My rent’s due.”
“You’ve got it. Talk to me.”
“Tonight’s the night, big fella. Hot Rod plays poker every Friday night, here in the shack with all his pet goats. The game usually lasts until about two in the morning. The loopers go home and Hot Rod stays here ’cause he lives way out in the Valley and he’s gotta be on the first tee at six-thirty Saturday morning for all the heavy play. So he sleeps in the maintenance shed off of the eighth hole. He’s got a little room there with a cot. There’s no one around. No one shows up until six in the morning. You can have him all to yourself.”
It sounded good, so Alex took me on a little tour. When we were about two hundred yards from what I assumed was our destination, Alex halted and grabbed my arm. “That’s it,” he said, “that’s the maintenance shed. Hot Rod’s gotta come this way. You see that first little door? That’s where he craps out. I don’t wanna go no further. I don’t want nobody to see me showing you around. Okay?”
“Okay.” I got out my wallet and handed Alex two twenties. “Thanks, you’ve been a big help. Take care.”
Alex grinned toothlessly. “You too, big fella, and if you’ve gotta get rough, kick him once in the balls for me, only don’t tell him where it came from.” He smiled again and took off running in the direction of the caddy shack.
I stayed behind and watched a twosome of women play the first hole. It seemed timeless, yet completely foreign to me. There was one caddy in the group, a tall blond kid in his early twenties. I wondered if he would wind up as a career looper. I hoped not. If looping was sadness, it was also the line of least resistance to many things — from income tax to the credit society. But the balance was unequal. In the end, looping was more what you ran from than the small freedoms it allowed you.
I drove to an electronics store in Century City and purchased three hours worth of blank tape, then drove to my motel. I dug through the shopping bag that contained Fat Dog’s horror journal and bankbooks, then burned the contents of the journal in the bathroom sink, watching a history of unsung malfeasance go up, appropriately, in flames. When the evil words were obliterated, I doused the pages with water and carried the sodden mess outside to a dumpster. I put two of the bankbooks in my pocket and stashed the rest under the mattress.
I called the manager and told him to buzz my room at ten that evening. Then I lay down and slept dreamlessly.
At eleven-thirty that night I was sitting on the cool grass of the first hole at Hillcrest Country Club, waiting for Hot Rod Ralston and armed for bear. The night was warm, but the wet grass brought the temperature down a good ten degrees. I felt solidly good, confident that my case was winding down, armed now with facts as well as weaponry. And my motives had changed. What had begun as self-aggrandizement would have to end as anonymous moral victory, for I had no intention of publicizing my involvement in the case, or paying for the killing of Cathcart.
I waited over three hours. At two-forty by the dial on my watch I heard a man coughing, coming toward me from the direction of the caddy shack. He was whistling and turning toward my resting place in the trees. It was obvious he couldn’t see or hear me, but I backed into the woods, giving him a wide berth, then swooped silently up on him as he entered the ninth fairway, jamming my gun into his back and reaching a containing arm across his chest. He bolted reflexively, but stopped when he realized it was hardware digging into his backside. He said “What the fu...” then stopped.
We stood still a moment, him bewildered, but catching on and me high on adrenalin. “That’s right, Ralston,” I said, “It’s a gun. It’s loaded, but I’m not. We’re going to do some walking and talking. Next stop the maintenance shack. Move.” I grabbed his belt with my left hand, keeping my gun in my right, pointed at spine level. We walked.
“I want you to know that I only have sixty-five dollars on me,” Ralston said. “I lost tonight. You would have done better to catch some of the other guys in the parking lot. I’m almost flat, buddy.”
I didn’t like the remark. It was condescending and indicated a lack of respect for my intelligence. I didn’t answer him until we were on the paved roadway leading to the shed. Then I yanked his belt back hard, sending him down to the concrete head first. While he was down, stunned and squirming to get up, I kicked him in the head, back, and ribs. He stifled his cries. He was trying very hard to maintain his composure. I squatted next to him, the barrel of my gun resting on his now bloody nose. “Resign yourself to two things, Ralston. One, that tonight you are going to pay for some past sins, and two, that you are going to tell me everything you know about Haywood Cathcart, Fat Dog Baker, Omar Gonzalez, Sol Kupferman, Welfare rip-offs, and arson. And Ralston — if you don’t talk, you die. Now let’s have a seat in your little room. Get up.”
He got to his feet. I grabbed his belt again and he moved forward, then fumbled in his pockets as we reached the door. As his key entered the lock and the door opened, I released his belt and kicked him full-force in the small of the back with the flat of my foot, thrusting him airborne into the dark room. He crashed into something wooden. This time he screamed. I found a light switch and flicked it on. I looked at Ralston’s handsome, bloodied face. He was scared, huddled on the floor next to an overturned nightstand.
The room was dank and sparsely furnished: a cot, a water cooler, the nightstand, and a deck chair. I told Ralston to get up and sit on the edge of the cot. He did, slowly. I shut the door behind me and drew a paper cup of water from the dispenser. I handed it to Ralston, who gulped it down. I removed my tape deck from where it was jammed into my pants, located an outlet next to the nightstand and plugged it in. I took a seat in the deck chair and eyed Ralston. I hardly knew where to begin. There was so much I needed to know.
Ralston broke the silence. “Look,” he said, his voice under control, “hurting me won’t help you. Fat Dog is dead. The men who killed him are dead. He was an arsonist. He started a lot of fires. He burned down Kupferman’s warehouse. I know that Fat Dog hired you, why I don’t know, but all this trouble began about that time. Sol Kupferman is a generous man. He’d be grateful to you. I could put in a word for you.”
It was the wrong thing to say. I dug brass knuckles out of my pocket as Ralston maintained eye contact with me and rambled on with his plea bargaining. “Solly K has been known to set people up in business, the whole shot,” he was saying as I leaped on top of him and slammed my iron clad fist twice into the fleshy part of his back. He started to scream, then thought better of it and began to whimper.