“Cathcart. I told him my house had been burglarized and my ledgers swiped. He dusted the place for prints and came up with Omar Gonzalez’s. He knew Omar from the Utopia investigation. He had some guy go after him with a shotgun, but the guy blew it.”
“How did Fat Dog steal your ledger in Spanish?”
“I don’t fucking know! Fat Dog could do things you wouldn’t believe!”
“Who killed the three caddies in Palm Springs?”’
“Cathcart had some professionals do it. He knew Fat Dog had the scrapbook. I was sure Fat Dog would never entrust it to Augie Dougall and I had had his cousin’s place in Cathedral City checked out. Cathcart figured Hansen or Marchion had it. I checked out Hansen’s trailer myself. It wasn’t there. His old lady wasn’t the type to get involved and Marchion was a transient. I told Cathcart all this, but he still ordered the hit.”
Warily, I asked my next question: “Who told you I was involved in this case?”
“Jane Baker. We’ve been friends for years. She’s not involved in any of this. She calls me up when she gets worried about things. She...”
I arced my right hand and slammed Ralston hard in the neck. The teeth of the brass knuckles made small puncture wounds that shot little streams of blood. Ralston screamed. I shut off the tape machine. “You never mention her to me, scumbag,” I said, “not ever. You understand?” Ralston nodded, cowering against another blow. “Now tell me this,” I demanded, “does Cathcart know me?”
“Yes,” he whimpered.
“Does he plan on having me hit?”
“Yes. He’s got a guy out looking for you. Staking out your place.”
“Has he checked out my record with the police department?”
“Yeah,” Ralston said, rubbing his bloody neck. “He thinks you’re holed up somewhere drunk. And afraid.”
“You and Cathcart are good buddies, aren’t you?”
“He trusts me. He knows I’m afraid of him.”
“Right now your survival depends on two things: doing what I tell you and maintaining Cathcart’s trust. This case is never going to go before the cops or the law. This is my case. Cathcart is mine. This tape is going somewhere safe. If I don’t check in at regular intervals at certain places, the media gets my whole file, which includes a complete report of your complicity in the Welfare scam, your accessory to murder, your knowledge of the Utopia fire and your bookmaking racket. If I stay healthy, you stay safe. I want you to call Cathcart and tell him that someone called you and told you I was seen asking questions in Palm Springs. Drunk.” Ralston nodded, almost eagerly.
“Now. I have a load of bankbooks with Fat Dog’s name on them,” I said, “but the signatures aren’t his. Do you know anything about them?” When he shook his head, I knew he was lying. “That’s a pity,” I said, “because there’s a fortune in cash waiting to be had. Just for the hell of it, why don’t you sign ‘Frederick R. Baker’ a few times for me.”
I dug a notepad and pen out of my pocket and handed them to Ralston. He wrote the name three times, then backed off, fearing a blow. I took out one of the bankbooks and compared the signature to Ralston’s; a perfect match. “Don’t worry, Hot Rod,” I said, “I won’t hit you again. You managed Fat Dog’s money for him, is that it?” He nodded. “Where did he get the money?” I asked.
“He played the horses. He was a good handicapper. He got money from Cathcart. He looped. He never spent a dime. He was a cheap, stingy fuck.”
“I believe it. On Monday we’re going to withdraw the bulk of the money. I’m going to keep most of it, but I’ll lay a substantial sum on you. I’ll be at your pad at ten Monday morning. Right now I’ll drive you to that little hospital down the street. They’ll fix you up real nice. You might have to call in sick, but what the hell, you’ve been on the job twenty-two years, you can afford to take a day off now and then.”
I found a towel on the nightstand and handed it to Ralston, who wiped his face. I gathered up my tape deck, turned off the light in the little room and we left, walking all the way to my car on Century Park East. I dropped Ralston at the L.A. New Hospital on Pico and Beverly Drive. He didn’t say a word the whole time. I didn’t blame him. He was in the deadliest of limbos.
As I pulled up at the emergency entrance, I said: “You call Cathcart tomorrow. Tell him what I told you to. Make it convincing. I’ll be by your place at ten Monday. Be ready.”
He just nodded as he got out of the car. He was very pale.
13
I spent the next morning engaged in some soul searching. I did it during a long walk on the beach, the ideal, most cinematic locale for soul searchers. The beast kept rearing its ugly head, but I fought it off. I was entirely justified in what I did to Ralston; he wouldn’t have broken otherwise and I needed him to get at Cathcart. Still, it was my most vicious episode of violence since breaking Blow Job Anderson’s legs, and unsettling because Richard Ralston would never be the same. The hard-voiced manipulator who had seemed so formidable during his interrogation of Augie Dougall had broken fast under physical duress. If he had a well-developed image of himself as a stoic pragmatist, it was now leaking water.
But these things were secondary to the crucial point: in order to survive, Richard Ralston was now going to be my ally, not Haywood Cathcart’s. He would help me bring down Cathcart’s well-constructed house of Welfare checks forgery, extortion, and murder, and that was all that mattered.
While on my journey of soul searching, I decided to quit working for Cal Myers. I bore him no rancor for his low opinion of me, which, expressed to Fat Dog, had set the incredible events of the past month into motion. In a strange sense, I was gratefuclass="underline" he had been the catalyst that put Jane Baker in my life and awakened in me a power to deal with horrendous happenings that I didn’t know I possessed. The knowledge of that power and the viability of the moral decisions I had recently been forced to make convinced me of one thing: I was too good to be a repo rip-off man. Besides, I would soon be rich from Fat Dog’s ill-gotten gains, which I deserved as a tribute to my good work that would regretfully have to remain anonymous.
So I dug the loaner out of the motel lot, found a pay phone on P.C.H. and gave old Cal a buzz. His secretary told me he was out on the lot and had him paged. He was very anxious and bluff-hearty when he picked up the phone. He always expected in the back of his mind a blackmail attempt by me, based on the events I witnessed in January of ’71. That was when I was working Hollywood Vice, drinking heavily, and taking uppers to cut the edge off the booze. A call came in to the desk one night from an outraged landlady who was convinced that an “evil man” was using an apartment he had recently rented, but didn’t live in, as a love nest to seduce little girls. She wanted us to check it out.
It was a typical, busy Hollywood Saturday night, so the desk officer routed the call to Vice, rather than to patrol, who indently would have handled it; and the Vice Sergeant, who thought the call was a waste of time, and who thought I was a shithead, handed it to his most expendable officer: Officer Brown. I thought it sounded like a fluke, too, so I checked out an unmarked car, drove to the apartment of an informant and got blown away on hash before driving to the address on Sycamore near Fountain.
The landlady was suspicious of me at first, since I wasn’t in uniform and was slightly tottering from the dope I had smoked, but the sight of my badge calmed her down. She told me the “evil man” was in apartment 12, with two young girls. I told her to go back to the Lawrence Welk Show, that I would take care of it.
As I approached the door of number 12, I heard the giggling of a young girl and a man’s sexual grunting. The door looked flimsy, so I drew my gun and kicked it in. I recognized him immediately: Cal Myers of Cal Myers Pontiac, Ford, etc. He was on the floor, nude, being fellated by a pre-pubescent chubby blonde girl, who promptly stopped blowing him and started to scream. There was another girl, about the same age, brunette, also nude, holding a camera. She started to scream, too. I started to get an erection and she dropped the camera while Cal Myers reached for his pants. After a few minutes I got them calmed down. The girls put on robes. My erection continued, unabated in the least by all the tension. I checked the apartment out and came up with dozens of snapshots of Myers and the two girls fucking and sucking. It was a heavy bust for Myers, but I didn’t want to do it. I couldn’t do it; it went against the aesthetics of my lifetime of horniness.