“No, Captain, I don’t. I’d say you are.”
“I checked your personnel file, Brown. You were the worst scumbag ever to con his way into the department.”
“I’d say that’s relative, Captain. I’d say I was a bush league pinch hitter compared to you.”
“Comparing low-life scumbags doesn’t concern me. What exactly do you want?”
“You mean as the price for my silence?”
“Yes.”
“A million-dollar Welfare check. To be presented to me by you on national T.V. After the ceremony, you can make a little speech on your theory of nigger containment. You can retire from the department and begin a new career in politics.”
“Brown, literal-minded people like you often make good policemen, but you weren’t even that. How does it feel to know that what you’ve done with me will ultimately be judged as the biggest fuck-up of your fucked-up life?”
“I’d say that’s relative too, Captain, I’d say what I’ve done with you is the one saving grace of my fucked-up life. I’d say I’ve fucked over a lot of people in my life. Hurt a lot of people. Caused a lot of pain. But compared to you? Unleashing Fat Dog Baker on the world? That you can even compare the two of us is beyond comprehension. Can’t you see what you are?”
Cathcart smiled and spit out some more blood. “We all have saving graces, Fritz,” he said, “even you. I was struck by one of your fitness reports. One of your superiors wrote: ‘This officer seems to be interested in only two things: getting drunk and listening to classical music.’ I felt a strange affection for you when I read that. I love great music, too.”
“So did Hitler,” I said.
Cathcart nodded. “What exactly do you want, Brown? Revenge for your life?”
“I want to wipe you off the face of the earth.”
“I see. Will you take me into my den? There’s something I want to show you.”
I considered it for a second, then decided to do it. One final act of mercy. I helped him to his feet, my gun in his side. He reeled, but managed to limp the twenty feet or so to the den. I went in first, keeping him covered, and flicked on the light. It was a wood-paneled room, with an ornate walnut desk and two overstuffed leather chairs. I shoved Cathcart into one of them. He winced. I looked around the room. The walls were covered with framed photographs of police groups: groups of smiling patrolmen in uniform standing next to early 50’s vintage black-and-whites, groups of stern-looking plain-clothesmen in front of station houses, candid shots of cops at their desks writing reports. A wave of nostalgia hit me. This had been my life once. I pointed to the walls. “Is this what you wanted to show me?” I asked.
“No,” Cathcart said.
“That’s good,” I said, “because I’ve been there. Although there is one photograph I’d love to see.”
“What’s that?”
“You and Fat Dog with your arms around each other outside of a burning house. You and your ‘genius little boy.’ Tell me one thing: how did you nail him for the Utopia torch?”
“Very easy. I am a good police officer, unlike you. I had been seeing Freddy in the neighborhood for weeks. From his garb I knew he had to be a caddy. When the three men I caught described the ‘fourth man,’ I knew immediately who it had to be. I hung out at the various country clubs in L.A. until I found him. Then I extricated a confession, and that got me to thinking.”
“You filthy cocksucker,” I said.
Cathcart smiled. “Open the top drawer of my desk, will you, Brown?”
I opened it gingerly and found a velveteen book-style photo holder, the kind that wedding pictures are kept in. I opened it and gasped. Inside were two lovingly mounted likenesses of Anton Bruckner. “Do you know who that man is?” Cathcart asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s a friend of mine.”
“And of mine. But he’s more than that. Do you like his music?”
“I love it.”
“Good. You love Bruckner. But you don’t understand him. What his music meant. It’s about containment. Refined emotions. Sacrifice. Purity. Control. Duty. The muted melancholy throughout his symphonies! A call to arms. A policeman who loves Bruckner and you can’t feel his essence. He never wed, Brown. He never fucked women. He wouldn’t expend one ounce of his creative energy on anything but his vision. I have been Anton Bruckner, Brown. You can be, too. You come from good stock, you’re a big strong man. You can be of service, it’s just a question of reeducation. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll...”
I had had enough. The blood was pounding in my head so hard that I felt about to explode. I aimed my gun at Cathcart and shot him four times in the face.
I went into the living room and lay down on the couch. I fell asleep. I woke up four hours later, feeling hallucinogenic. A shower helped. I put on a pair of Cathcart’s pants and one of his shirts. I combed my hair. I collected my tape deck from the back yard and put it in a paper bag I found in the kitchen, along with my silencer fitted .38. I dumped the dope I had ripped off of Larry Willis all over Cathcart’s living room. I found the keys to the Landcruiser on the coffee table. I put them in my pocket. My hands were going numb from hours of wearing rubber gloves, but I kept them on.
I gave Cathcart one last look before I left. His face was obliterated, a gaping hole on top of his neck. Skull and brain fragments were stuck to the wall. His body and the chair he was sprawled in were a mass of drying blood. Rigor mortis was setting in and his arms were stuck in their last pose of reaching out to me.
I took the pictures of lonely Anton and put them in my paper bag, too. I left the death house, locking the door behind me, then drove to the motel and got my suitcase.
It was dawn when I got back to L.A. I was woozy from shock and lack of blood. I left Cathcart’s car on a side street in Santa Monica, then took a bus all the way out Wilshire to the Ambassador Hotel, which was within walking distance of Walter’s. My shoulder was numb, but aside from that and shock-induced fatigue, I felt all right.
After I ditched the rubber gloves, circulation slowly returned to my hands. It was a symbolic, life-enhancing feeling. Five seconds after croaking “Crazy, Daddy-O” to the girl at Mark Swirkal’s service I passed out on my freshly made-up hotel bed.
The next several days run together in my mind. I know that when I woke up at the Ambassador, I was in great pain from my shoulder wound and knew I had to do something about it. I remember taking a taxi to Irwin’s apartment off Melrose and Fairfax. He had a doctor brother I had been hearing about for years and now was the time to summon him. I remember that he came, along with Irwin’s nephew Uri, and that he immediately gave me a shot of something that sent me into the Twilight Zone. I remember Uri embracing me, delighted with his new position as Cal Myers’s repo man, waving his master keys in front of my face and calling me the “only good German in history.”
“I’m an American, you stupid fuck,” I retorted. “Brown is an American name.”
Irwin’s brother poked around and cleansed my wound, bandaged it and gave me some pain pills. They had a subtle effect. I thought my continued disorientation was due to shock and the trauma of murder, but I was wrong. It was due to a system full of codeine. I discontinued their use after two days. I couldn’t afford to be zoned out. I still had things to do before I could officially say “it’s over.”
Feeling returned to my shoulder. By Monday I could move it without too much pain. That morning I started to sweat out news of Cathcart’s death, buying all the local papers and hanging out in front of Walter’s newly-purchased T.V. set. There was nothing, just the usual rebop — Jimmy Carter had announced that he planned to campaign on “his record,” Reagan announced that he would run on “the issues,” and Walter offered a running commentary that kept me laughing until my shoulder ached.