Brown's Requiem Read online

  Walter shuffled out five minutes later, wearing cut-off jeans and a Mahler sweatshirt. He is about 5'11" with curly light-brown hair and extremely light-blue eyes. Though not fat, he tends to waddle.

  “Welcome, Fritz. You did bear gifts. How thoughtful.” He sat down beside me, grabbed a short dog, and drained it in one gulp. Color came into his face, his eyes seemed to expand and his whole body gave a slight twitch. He was on his way. He pulled out a pack of Marlboros, lit one, and inhaled deeply. I wondered what direction our conversation would take. “You look pensive, Fritz. Troubled also, somewhat. Thinking about your future again? You look like you could use a drink. I know you won’t go for it though; only half of you wants it. Whether or not it’s your better half, I can’t say. I only know you better than anyone, including yourself.”

  “Fuck you. You’re right, though, I have had my future on my mind. It’s been a strange day so far. A crazy caddy is paying me a hundred twenty-five dollars a day plus to dig up dirt on some rich guy his sister is living with. He looks like a bum, but he carries a six-thousand dollar roll. Crazy, Daddy-O!”

  “You’ll do a good job. You’re a born dirt-digger. You have no morality whatsoever. A boyish-looking shark. We are the same age, and you look twenty-five while I look forty. This I attribute to your refusal, even at your most desperate, to drink cheap wine. Fritz, who do you really think killed the Black Dahlia?”

  I groaned at the mention of this mutual obsession from our boyhood drinking days. “I don’t know. And you know what? I don’t care. Change the subject, will you?”

  “Okay, for now. Toss me another dog, will you? I’m thirsty.” He downed this one in two gulps. His face was downright florid now. His eyes were getting maniacal, and I knew he was going to start talking either science-fiction or his mother. The two are more or less synonymous.

  “The old girl has finally reached her zenith, Fritz. She’s senile but cagey, and still a master game player. She intends to live forever and is on the lookout for new victims. My father, God rest his soul, and I were just the beginning. She’s been prowling these senior citizen’s dances and she’s picked up this fruit vendor, a dago, kind of semi-rich—he owns about a dozen produce stands out in the Valley. And I think the old girl is going to marry him! Seventy years old, hasn’t fucked since I was conceived, and now this. I can’t believe it. He can hardly talk, he just grunts. He’s got emphysema, he carries around a little oxygen shooter—it looks like a raygun. Jesus! She’s set financially; she doesn’t need his dough. I’ve told her that within five years the antimatter credit card will be in operation, that all she’ll have to do is walk up to any bank, lay her rap into the loudspeaker, insert her card and get all the bread she needs. Within eight years we’ll all be transported to the sublunar void, where the controlled environment will enable us to live for centuries in perfect health. The dumb cunt can’t see it coming, and she’s going to throw it all away for some wop fruit vendor. She’s afraid to be alone. You know that, don’t you, Fritz? When she’s got the wop sewed up, she’ll give me the boot, like she did my old man, and I’ll have to get a job. I still can’t believe it.” He reached for the last bottle, but I grabbed it first.

  “Not yet. You’ll be into your ‘moon to earth, moon to earth’ routine in a minute. I’ve got to split. I’ve got this case I’m working on and a big load of repo’s, so I probably won’t see you for a week or so. Right now, I want to go home and listen to some music. Remember the Hollywood Bowl Season starts next week, and I’ve got us a box. Don’t worry about the dago—if he gives you any shit just rip off his oxygen gun. I’ve got to go.”

  “Okay. If anything drastic comes up, anything you think I can clarify for you, give me a call.”

  “Okay, Walter. You take care. I’ll see you.”

  On the way home I tried not to worry about Walter. It had been a bad session today. I hadn’t gotten what I needed from him, or imparted what I felt he needed. His ongoing suicide was painful to watch. I stopped at a pay phone and called Irwin at work.

  He wasn’t as upset by the violence yesterday as I had thought. He agreed to stay with me; and his loyalty was so touching that I offered him an extra 5 percent of my action for no extra work. Then I dropped my bomb: I told him that I had a case, and that the ten delinquents were all his. He didn’t believe me at first, but finally it sank in. I told him to get his hot-headed Israeli nephew to do the actual ripping-off for him. After thanking me effusively, he hung up.

  When I got home I put Schubert on the turntable to try to put Walter out of my mind. It worked for a while, until I remembered that Schubert was about Walter’s age when he died.

  I began my surveillance of Jane Baker the next day. Sol Kupfer-man was a more logical place to begin, since he was supposedly the villain of this triangle, but I had visions of tailing him to his office in the morning, to some swank Beverly Hills eatery for lunch, and back to his pad at the end of the day. A big drag. Jane Baker was probably more mobile. And she was certainly better looking.

  I arrived at my post across the street from Kupferman’s around 8:00 A.M. No one in Beverly Hills gets up before then, except butlers and maids. I had my own car, a ’69 Camaro ra;gtop, and I was all set for a day of sleuthing, wearing a sports jacket and tie, shined shoes, and carrying an assortment of official-looking badges, from “Special Deputy” to “International Investigator.” I had bought them at a novelty shop on Hollywood Boulevard. No repo-man should be without them.

  Jane Baker walked out the door at nine forty-five. She more than did her photograph justice. Dressed in a russet cotton-linen pantsuit, her hair tied into a bun, she looked like the prototype of a confident young career woman. As she walked past Kupferman’s Eldorado to the older de Ville, I trained my binoculars on her face. It was hard to picture this slender, efficient-looking woman as the sister of the grubby Fat Dog, yet the resemblance was there: the full cheeks, the widely-spaced eyes, and a certain determined set to the mouth that was sensual on Jane and ugly on her brother.

  There was a fair amount of traffic heading south toward the Beverly Hills shopping district—women in Cadillacs and Mercedes on their morning shopping pilgrimages to the boutiques of Fat City—but Jane was easy to follow. We went south on Beverly Drive to Big Santa Monica, then east all the way into Hollywood. It was a pleasant drive. The sky was smogless and the Hollywood Hills were alive with greenery. Jane Baker turned left on Highland and pulled into the parking lot of a Bank of America branch.

  I parked three spaces away, gave her two minutes and then followed her into the bank. It was busy, the height of the early morning rush, so it was a few minutes before she got to see a teller. I passed by her on the opposite side of the velveteen waiting ropes and observed the transaction. The teller was counting out a large number of fifties. There appeared to be close to a grand on the counter. Jane stuffed the bills into her purse.

  I hotfooted it outside and back to my car, wondering why a Beverly Hills woman would travel all the way to Hollywood to do her banking. And where would Jane Baker be going with a grand in her purse?

  She didn’t leave me hanging for long. A minute later she was behind the wheel and gunning it north on Highland. She was harder to tail this time, deftly weaving in and around the morning traffic. North of the Hollywood Bowl she turned onto the Hollywood Freeway. Soon we were spinning over the Valley, its northern horizon freighted with smog.

  I almost lost her a couple of times, but when she hit the Victory Boulevard offramp, I was right behind her. She led me into the poorer residential areas of Van Nuys. No sidewalks. Ugly eight-and ten-unit apartment buildings and small houses painted in depressing pastel shades. I had done a lot of repo-ing around here; people trapped with dead-end jobs often neglect their car payments. Jane pulled over abruptly against the dirt shoulder of a particularly seedy street. I passed on by her and stopped at the corner. Out of my rear-view mirror I watched her walk up a gravel driveway and enter a tiny yellow wood frame house.

  Jane show
ed five minutes later and within a few minutes we were back on the Ventura Freeway, this time southbound. She was driving smoothly now, and I stayed several cars back, my eyes half-glued to the road, and half-glued to her long car aerial. I followed her onto Hollywood Freeway, headed east. Ten minutes later Jane signalled her departure from Freeway Land and I followed her north on Vermont and East on Indent Avenue, a rundown street of apartment buildings which house students from nearby L.A. City College. When she parked I was right behind her.

  My stomach was growling and I was losing patience. It hit me that Fat Dog might try to duck me for my bill. He was riding high now, but he had the air of a horseplayer who hit it big and was flashing the roll he was certain to lose. The idea of being stiffed by a golf course flunky pissed me off.

  Jane had trotted across the street and into an old four flat. This time I could see that it was an elderly man who admitted her. I wrote down the address. She returned just seconds later, practically running to her Cadillac. She tore out, and I was all set for hot pursuit, but my car wouldn’t turn over. Shit! It was the capper to a frustrating morning. I watched Jane Baker turn right and zoom out of sight.

  I got out of the car, my stomach turning over like a hungry dog’s, and opened the hood. I’m no mechanic, but I spotted the trouble immediately. A distributor wire had come loose. The repair job took one second, but of course, Jane Baker was long gone. I walked around the corner to Vermont and found a Mom and Pop market crowded with students on lunch break. I bought a quart of milk and two refrigerated pastrami sandwiches. I found an alley around the corner and took a long overdue leak behind some trashcans. A black couple strolled by hand in hand as I was doing this and snickered at me. I was getting a bad play from blacks lately, probably karmic revenge for my years with the L.A.P.D.

  I ate my lunch outside my car and reviewed my options. I decided to concentrate on Sol Kupferman. He was probably just a nice old fart with a hard-on for a beautiful young cellist, but it was Fat Dog’s C-note-and-a-quarter a day.

  Driving away, I remembered yesterday’s phone call to R&I. I found a pay phone on 3rd and Vermont and buzzed my old buddy Jensen. It took him a few minutes to get to the phone, “Yo, Jensen,” I said, “this is Fritz Brown. You got that information for me?”

  “Hold on, Brownie. You got a pencil?”

  “Yeah, shoot it.”

  “Okay, on Jane Baker, no criminal record. We got a whole shitload of Jane Bakers here, but none of them could possibly be her, according to the age and description you gave me. I checked D.M.V. and they gave me this: Jane Margaret Baker, D.O.B. 3–11–52, L.A., brown and blue, 5'9", 130. The usual numbers of the usual citations, except for two reckless-driving citations, no booze or dope involved. Does that sound like her?”

  “That’s her. Shoot me the other two.”

  “Okay. On Frederick ‘Fat Dog’ Baker, we got some interesting shit. Three vandalism beefs as a juvie, all three times the judge recommended counseling. That figures. Two weenie wagger convictions as an adult: 8–14–59 and 2–9–64. Not registered as a sex offender, probably drunk, just got the urge to whip out his cock and take a piss. Under employment, we got him down as a caddy, and believe me, for a caddy that’s par for the course, no pun intended. They’re the low-lifers of the world. Give the asshole his due, though, he ain’t been in no trouble for sixteen years. He …”

  I butted in. Jensen was a loudmouth and this could go on all day. “We have to speed this up, Daddy-O, I’m parked in the red and there’s a metermaid checking out my Doctor On Call sign suspiciously. I don’t want a ticket, I’ve got no way to fix them anymore.”

  “You’re still a crazy fucker. Okay, Sol Kupferman. D.O.B. 5–13–15. No criminal record, per se. Twice a material witness for the grand jury. Both times they were investigating bookmaking. This was in ’52 and ’55. That’s it.”

  That was enough. I thanked Jensen and hung up. Nothing surprised me, except the dope on Kupferman. Jane Baker’s two reckless driving convictions indicated nothing but youthful verve. That Fat Dog was an exhibitionist was no shocking revelation. He was a disturbed man. But Solly K existing on the edge of, or in, the vice game twenty years ago was interesting, doubly so when coupled with my knowledge of his presence at the Club Utopia in ’68. Small bars like that were often fronts for bookie operations.

  It was time to go and talk to the one person I know who is profoundly knowledgeable of the dark secrets of Los Angeles. I headed toward the Sunset Strip to see Jack Skolnick. In honor of Jane Baker I played the Dvorak “Cello Concerto” on the way.

  Jack Skolnick has had a checkered past. For over forty years he has maneuvered on the fringes of L.A.’s high society, entertainment monolith, and underworld with the finesse and discernment of some sort of rare animal. Like a pig snorting truffles, he knows just where to look, and dig. Under his euphemistic title of “agent” he has pimped, supplied rigged game shows with “contestants,” served as a tour guide for visiting dignitaries (showing them the “real” L.A.), sold information to the cops, run mail order scams, solicited funds for political candidates of all persuasions, pushed gourmet marijuana brownies, and operated a canine obedience school. His knowledge of Los Angeles and the eccentricities of its moneyed people is astounding. I had a feeling he could tell me something about Sol Kupferman.

  Jack’s office was on the sixth floor of a big apartment building on Sunset, a block east of Fairfax. His home was the apartment next door. The place wasn’t zoned for business, but “Jack Skolnick Enterprises” was so vague he got away with it.

  I gave his foxy young secretary my name and she sent me directly in to Jack’s office. Jack was sitting behind his desk, reading the newspaper. He looked good. I told him so.

  He was surprised to see me. He put down his paper and stood up to shake my hand. “Fritz, baby, so do you! You’ve put on some weight. Sit down. How’s tricks. Fritzie? Still got the repo gig? Hatchet man for Cal Myers?”

  It wasn’t quite a jibe, so I let it pass. “More or less. I’ve still got my P.I.’s license though, and the agency going on the side. Right now I’m on a case. What about you? What’s your latest scam?”

  “Currently, I’m in the escort business. I provide businessmen with an attractive, intelligent woman to be seen with at various functions.”

  “In other words, you’re pimping.”

  Jack shook his head in mock dismay. “Fritz, baby! Would I do a thing like that?”

  “Only if it made money.”

  “I protest, Fritzie! My girls are all in college!”

  “Yeah, majoring in fucking. Enough bullshit. I’ve got a client who’s interested in a man you may know something about. Sol Kupferman. You heard of him?”

  Jack gave me a cagey look and nodded his head. “I knew him slightly, maybe twenty years ago when I had my chauffeur gig. I used to fix him up with a limo and a driver. We used to talk sometimes.”

  “About what?”

  “Just rebop. The weather, that kind of shit. Nothing too heavy. But I heard talk about him.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as he was a money man, tax advisor to organized crime in the 40’s. Such as he was a noncombatant, some kind of tax wizard. He made the mob a bundle.”

  “That’s it?”

  “What are you fishing for, Fritzie?”

  “Kupferman was subpoenaed as a material witness to the grand jury, back in the 50’s. They were investigating bookmaking. What do you know about that?”

  “I know that back in the 50’s the grand jury was convened every time someone laid a fart. It was the McCarthy era. If the grand jury called up Kupferman, it was probably because he knew somebody who knew somebody. That kind of thing.”

  “What else can you tell me about him?”

  Jack smiled again. “That he had a lot of heart and a lot of class. A real mensch. I bought my daughter a mink stole from him a few years ago. He remembered me and gave me a good deal. He’s a mensch.”

  “You remember the Club
Utopia firebombing?”

  “Yeah. A bunch of people got fried, then the State fried the fryers. What about it?”

  “I heard Kupferman used to frequent the place. I thought it was a funny coincidence. Can you put a handle on that?”

  “Yeah, I can. Life is filled with funny coincidences.” I was digging for more questions when the phone on Jack’s desk rang. He picked it up and bellowed into it: “Liz, baby! How did it go?!” I got up and we shook hands across his desk. He placed a free hand over the receiver. “Let’s get together soon, Fritz. Dinner, what say?”

  “Sounds good, Jack. I’ll call you.”

  He nodded goodbye. As I walked out his door I could hear him exclaiming gleefully, “A congressman? And he wanted to do that with you?”

  When I got down to street level, the city was cooling off. I decided to drive home, and then go looking for Fat Dog. The case was turning into an exercise in futility, and I would feel better about it with some of Fat Dog’s money in my pocket. I put the top on my car down and cruised east on Sunset. Knots of young hookers were starting to appear, sitting on bus benches and giving male motorists the eye. I toyed with the idea of picking one up, but only briefly; they looked too sad.

  At home, I watched the sunset from my balcony. The nicest thing about nighttime is the clarity, and in L.A. that means shadows and neon. The night was alive now. I went looking for my client.

  Santa Monica Boulevard and Sawtelle Avenue, one-half mile south of the Veteran’s Administration complex, is the nadir of West Los Angeles. It’s a strange bottom, not too dangerous unless you’re waxing profane about the masses of wetbacks who live in the fleabag hotels there. Chilled short dogs dominate the refrigerated sections of the half dozen liquor stores on this compact skid row, and the doomed old men from the V.A. who scarf them up are the saddest things I’ve ever seen. But “Graveyard West” has its positive side: the Nuart Theatre is a great revival house and the Papa Back Bookstore is a mecca for counter-culture literati. All in all, despair wins out by a nod, and the neighborhood is the ideal place for a thirty-five-year-old hippie on the sauce.