I called Ralston Tuesday morning and gave him the good news.
“Cathcart’s dead,” I said into the phone, “it’s over.”
Ralston just said, “Thank God.” And let the line go dead.
On Tuesday night I dumped all the evidence of the killing into the Pacific Ocean: the gun, my bloody clothes, Cathcart’s clothes I had stolen, the tape deck, and the portraits of Anton Bruckner. I felt an impulse to keep the likenesses of lonely Anton, to give them a good, sane home, but they had become ghastly objects. I tore them into small pieces and fed them to the sea.
The next day, armed with a pocketful of dimes, I called the Welfare contacts on the list Ralston had given me. At the first sound of a voice on the other end of the line, I said “Cathcart is dead. The scam is dead. I have evidence linking you to fraud and extortion. Stop all payments now.” Before the listener could respond, I hung up. I connected with all but three of the people on the list. It was good enough. Ralston would take the brunt of their fear and grief, as well he should. He had gotten off easy.
News of Cathcart’s death hit the media Wednesday night. It was attributed to suicide. I was watching T.V. with Walter when I got the word: Haywood Cathcart, 56, Captain, Los Angeles Police Department, had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound sometime over the weekend at his “fishing retreat” in Del Mar. He had been a twenty-eight-year veteran of the L.A.P.D., was considered an exemplary officer, and was famous for “single-handedly cracking the famous Club Utopia firebombing case in 1968 that sent the slayers of six bar patrons to the gas chamber.” His superiors said that he had left no suicide note, but had been distraught recently over family matters.
As the somber-voiced newsman concluded his report, I started to weep. The fix was in. The L.A.P.D. had some inkling of what was up and had stonewalled it. If Cathcart had left no records. I was free.
Walter was dumbfounded at my tears. He had never seen me cry and had no idea of their origin. But he did his best to comfort me, embracing me and clumsily pawing my head. “What is it, Fritz?” he asked. “Did you know that cop who shot himself? Was he your buddy?”
I didn’t answer him, I just let myself be comforted. It was over. That night I went home to my pad, expecting to find it ransacked. It wasn’t. It was intact, waiting for me like an old friend. I looked at the calendar above my desk. On the space for June 30, I had marked, “Fred Baker — one week at one hundred twenty-five dollars per day.” It was now August 1. I had been in limbo for five weeks, had killed three men, had learned truths that few would know. I had been correct on the morning it all started. My life had been about to change, irrevocably.
The next morning I took a cab to the storage garage and got my old Camaro. I was reunited with another old friend, who had been washed and polished during my absence.
I called the Kupferman residence. It was time for the only reunion that mattered. The maid answered, distraught. “Mr. Kupferman had a heart attack last night. He’s in the hospital. He be real sick maybe gonna die.”
She started to ramble, but I cut her off: “What hospital?” I yelled.
“Cedars Sinai,” she said.
I hung up and tore out. The hospital was in West Hollywood, on Beverly near La Cienega, and by running lights and taking side streets I was there in fifteen minutes. I parked illegally and ran inside, flashing some absurd piece of fake I.D. at the reception lady and demanding to know where Sol Kupferman was. Cowed, she told me room 583, West Wing.
I jammed for an elevator and ran wildly down the corridors until I saw Jane sitting on a chair outside the room that had to be Sol’s. “Darling,” I called as I ran toward her, “is Sol all right?!”
Jane rushed toward me, screaming “Killer, killer, rapist, dissension center! Murderer, killer!”
We collided and she flung her fists and arms out at me with hysterical fury, scratching, clawing at my face, her eyes full of tears. I tried to control her, but it was no use. I had no will to be assertive, so I just let myself be pummelled. But she didn’t stop, and her screaming “killer, killer, killer!” was drawing a crowd of hospital people.
“I hate you, I hate the day I let you fuck me!” she screamed, then lunged inside my sportcoat and grabbed my gun out of its holster and leveled it at me. We both froze, and for long seconds there was silence in the corridor. Then she screamed “Murderer!” one last time, threw my gun against the corridor wall and ran away from me.
I retrieved the gun and made for the elevator, thinking— Oh God, oh God, oh God, was it all for nothing? Was Sol dead?
A large young doctor caught up with me outside the elevator. He was scared, but he wanted to know what was going on. I showed him my P.I.’s photostat and told him I was on a case and was licensed to carry a gun. He seemed satisfied. Then I asked him, “Is Sol Kupferman dead?”
“No,” he said, “he’s going to make it.”
I don’t remember what I felt as I left the hospital, except that there was nothing left for me in Los Angeles. Even though Sol was going to live, Jane’s hatred of me held a brutal finality. Our last moments together had been so ugly that I could never surmount them. I got in my car and drove to San Francisco.
15
I spent a week in San Francisco, waiting for my passport to come through, getting immunized and buying clothes and other provisions for a trip to Europe. I left the night of August 10, flying to New York with two suitcases and twenty-five thousand dollars in cash and traveler’s checks. Before I left, I sent Mark Swirkal five thousand dollars in traveler’s checks and told him to destroy the tapes.
I got moderately drunk on the plane and full-out drunk in my hotel room near Kennedy International.
The following day I caught a Lufthansa flight to Munich. I was in Germany for two months, drunk and sober. I took a steamer up the Rhine. I caught the Berlin Philharmonic under Karajan. They were magnificent, but only part of me was there for the performance. I visited Beethoven House in Bonn and Beethoven’s grave. I didn’t feel what I thought I would. I made love to a lot of very beautiful, high-priced German prostitutes. At the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth I got drunk and beat up two British students who seemed to be bothering a young Fraulein. In Stuttgart I broke down sobbing in a beer garden and was hospitalized with incipient d.t.’s.
At the end of October I flew back to America and settled in San Francisco. I rented an apartment in Pacific Heights and looked around for investments, something creative. I couldn’t find anything, and Frisco began to pall. It was too beautiful, too ethnic, too counter-culture. The people I passed on the street seemed to be congratulating themselves on their good taste in living there.
In May of the following year I returned to L.A. Repatriated to my smogbound hometown, I started to get on with the business of my life. I bought a house in the Hollywood Hills, near the Yamashiro Skyroom. I invested badly. First I set myself up as a sandwich entrepreneur with a small restaurant near the Music Center. It was a lunch and after-concert place that featured jumbo sandwiches named after composers. I was hoping the place would turn into a hangout for musicians from the Philharmonic, but it never happened. Finally, after an investment of eleven months and eighty grand, the joint folded. My next investment was safer and turned into a resounding success: I bought a liquor store on 3rd and Western in the heart of the old neighborhood. I’ve got a smart black guy who runs it for a grand a month and ten percent of the action, and a smart tax lawyer to help me hold onto my money. All I do is sit back and rake it in. As of this writing, I am worth seven hundred fifty-six thousand.