“The following year, 1954, I got a telegram from Baker’s brother. There had been a fire at the Baker house. Baker and his wife were dead, but Freddy and Jane had survived. I flew up there. I stayed away from the children, I was too ashamed to see them, but I bribed the child-care officers into placing Freddy and Jane with friends of mine in Los Angeles. I knew the woman, we had had an affair, and her husband was a decent sort, so I knew the children would have a good home. After I had arranged that, I asked around Monterey about Baker and his wife. Somehow I felt guilty about them, too. Then I found out the truth about Stas Baker: that he was a sadist, a bully who tortured his wife mentally and Freddy physically. When I knew him in the 30’s, he was just another mob stooge — a courier runner/sometime accountant. A quiet, decent sort. A man who seemed grieved by the fact that he and his wife couldn’t have children. But I was wrong. He was a monster and he begat another monster. My son.”
Kupferman’s voice during his monologue had taken on qualities of feeling and resonance I had never before heard. The deeper he reached into his past, the deeper his voice became, until it had subsided into a hoarse whisper that was more grieving than any amount of sobbing or wailing could ever be. I could tell that he didn’t want to continue his story. He sat down on the dirt path, depleted in every way, unmindful of his expensive suit. I sat down beside him. He stared at the ground, lost in his own guilty history.
“Let me finish for you,” I said, placing an arm around his shoulders. “Freddy and Jane went to live with the Hansens. Freddy grew up crazy, Jane grew up to be the Jane we both love. You wanted to be close to your children, without breaking your own anonymity, so you had Richard Ralston bring Freddy out to Hillcrest. Jane followed. Freddy was unreachable, but you became Jane’s mentor and dear friend. Freddy bombed the Club Utopia. Cathcart knew of your link to Freddy, through Ralston, and instigated an extortion scheme. He’s been sucking you dry ever since. Is that right?”
Sol Kupferman shrugged free of my protective arm. “Yes, you’ve got it all,” he said.
I decided to spare him the knowledge of his son’s extended career of arson and murder.
“Have you been sending money to the relatives of the Utopia victims?” I asked.
“Yes,” he answered softly.
“Does Jane deliver the money?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have much personal contact with Cathcart?”
“Hardly any. Ralston is his liaison man.”
“How so?”
“How much do you know about the Welfare operation?”
“I know that you sign all the phony documents, including the checks themselves, and that they’re cashed at your liquor stores, and that Cathcart has the thing monitored from inside the Department of Public Social Services from every angle.”
“That’s about it. But Ralston is the liaison on every level involving me and the inside people. Cathcart just pulls the strings, holding the fear over everyone.”
“So Ralston would have all the records on the inside people?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That fits. Ralston and I recently became acquainted. I got a confession out of him. He’s more afraid of me than he is of Cathcart.”
Sol gave me a strange, inquisitive look, tinged with awe. “What exactly do you want out of this? I don’t understand your motives at all,” he said. “Jane told me Freddy hired you in the first place, but that doesn’t fit. What do you want?”
I stood up. Sol did, too, brushing dirt from his pants. I pointed south toward the smoggy L.A. Basin. “I want a little piece of that, a little piece of the mystery, the insanity, the life. I want revenge, for you. I want to see Cathcart fall. And I want your daughter. I want to marry her. I love her. I think she’s in the process of learning to love me. Has she told you how she feels about me?”
Sol smiled, for the first time in our brief acquaintance. “She told me she feels very drawn to you emotionally, but is slightly afraid of you. She called you ‘walking ambivalence.’”
I smiled back at Sol and laughed. “An astute remark. She’s a very intelligent woman. I understand this ambivalence she sees in me. She caught me at the tail end of my old life and the beginning of my new one. This case is the dividing point. But very shortly it’ll be over and we can court in earnest. Then she’ll see the more stable, beauty-loving side of me.”
“This case will never be over, Fritz.”
“What do you mean?”
“Cathcart has me. I have to serve him. If I don’t, Jane will learn everything, and I’ll be ruined. With Freddy dead, no one else will foul things up or get hurt. The violence is over, thank God. But Cathcart is too protected, too insulated. He’s beyond the law. He is the law.”
I looked out over my city. All I could see were the tops of buildings jutting out of a brown haze. I looked back at Sol. “I’m going to kill him,” I said.
I waited a long moment for his response. He was staring at the ground as if he were trying to dig a way out of his life with his eyes. “Don’t do it, Fritz,” he said. “Cathcart deserves it, but it’s wrong. I killed men, forty years ago, and I’ve had to live a terrible guilt-ridden life. If you kill Carthcart, even if you get away with it, you’ll never stop paying the price. Just let it go. If you care about Jane, don’t do it. She deserves better than a killer.” Sol’s eyes, face, and whole soul were imploring me with the force of his experience.
I believed what he said, absolutely, but he was morally wrong. Cathcart’s death was the only right denouement to this tragedy. “No, Sol,” I said finally, surveying the city again, “he dies. And a lot of people will live free as a result. That’s undeniable.”
Sol was shaking his head frantically, denying the truth. He looked like an Old Testament sage rebuking a young zealot. “No, no, no,” he said, “it’s wrong. Can’t you see that? How in the world do you expect to get away with it? Cathcart’s a shark and you’re a minnow. It won’t work.”
Suddenly I was angry. I grabbed both his trembling shoulders and pulled him toward me. “Don’t fuck with me, Sol! I can be just as bad as Cathcart. He dies. Maybe you’ve been on such a guilt trip for so long that you need Cathcart to punish you for your sins. That phony karma shit won’t wash. He dies, and if you try to warn him or fuck with me in any way, I’ll go public. I’ll blow the whole thing to the media, including the facts of your children’s births. I mean that, I’ve got a fail-safe operation going. If I don’t survive this case then it all goes public!” I released him, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze in the process. I felt guilty myself, now. Sol Kupferman was an almost saintly man, but he carried guilt around with him like a contagion. He was very pale again.
I tried to lighten things up. “A couple of years from now, we’ll be laughing about this. Jane will wonder at our secret rapport, but she’ll never know. I’ll be your unannounced goy son-in-law.”
Sol didn’t even hear me. “I have to go,” he said, moving toward the downhill path.
We walked down to the parking lot in silence. When we got there, I said, “Tell Jane I’ll call her after this is all over, which should be soon. Tell her we spoke on the phone. I don’t want anyone to know I’m in L.A. And of course don’t tell her what we discussed.” Sol nodded, funereally pale. “Cheer up,” I continued, “soon this thing will be nothing but a giant evil memory, like a cancer successfully removed. Try to think of it that way.”
Sol said, “I will” and forced the beginning of a weak smile, but I didn’t believe him. He got into his Cadillac and drove away, his whole spirit conveying centuries of Jewish pessimism.
I drove back to my seaside motel and checked out, taking my traveling roadshow — tape deck, bankbooks, clothes, and hardware — north to Ventura, where I found another beachfront hideaway, a slightly nicer, more modern motel room.