by James Ellroy
From the Times, January 29, 1964:
TWO DIE AS CAR EXPLODES ON FREEWAY
A young married couple met their death on the San Bernardino Freeway yesterday in a freak accident when a leaky gas tank and sparks from an overheated engine combined to send the car exploding into flames near an offramp in Arcadia. The couple, recently married, were Mr. and Mrs. Willard D. Jamison of Santa Monica. A passing motorist saw the blazing car and flagged down a nearby Highway Patrolman, but by then it was too late. Fire engines arrived on the scene minutes later and put out the fire. Funeral services for the Jamisons will be held at Gates, Kingsley and Gates Mortuary, Forest Lawn, on February 2.
Below were Fat Dog’s comments: “The Fat Dog is everywhere! I can see everywhere!!! I roast ’em, toast ’em and make the most of ’em!!!!!”
On and on it went. The scrapbook contained clippings in chronological order of fires up until last year. Fires that took lives, fires that destroyed homes, cars, industrial property. All flawlessly executed. Sol Kupferman and Louisa Jane Hall had spawned a genius: malignant, clever beyond belief, and evil beyond comprehension.
I had reached the year 1972, and had counted 16 deaths, when I couldn’t go on. I was as still as a leaf, but inside I was screaming. Tears of anger and disbelief began to stain the yellow pages. The evil was staggering, the brilliance behind it unfathomable. Given enough time, Fat Dog Baker would have burned Los Angeles County to the ground. And he had chosen me, Fritz Brown, “detective in name only,” to help implement his plan of revenge, blackmail, and God knows what else, directed at Kupferman, Ralston, and God knows who else. God. That was funny. There was no God. But for the first time I found myself wishing there were. I took deep breaths for a minute or so. They actually helped; I felt slightly calmed as I went on to the blue pages.
The first several were devoted to newspaper clippings of the Club Utopia firebombing. I pored over them, looking for something I didn’t already know. There was nothing, just the initial accounts of the tragedy, the apprehension of the bombers, their “fourth man” story, their trial, appeals, and eventual execution. Lt. Haywood Cathcart was highly praised for “almost singlehand-edly bringing the culprits to justice”—Mayor Sam Yorty. Cathcart called the “fourth man” story “pure hogwash. A cheap ploy to avoid the green room at San Quentin that isn’t going to work.”
Cathcart’s involvement in the Baker-Ralston-Kupferman mess had to date from the bombing; it was only logical. He had to be the lever, the buffer, the balance between Fat Dog and Solly K. I turned the page and found out just how monstrous his culpability was. Following the Utopia clippings were notes on Cathcart:
“Something bad happened, but it’s going to be okay. Cop—H.C., hassled me today. Says he thinks he can pin me to 4th man in Utopia torch. Says he remembers seeing me in area. Said I’m hard to forget. True—there is only one Fat Dog!!!! Says he don’t care—guys who threw bomb will fry. Asks me—You know about book at Utopia? All caddies bet the horses. I tell him I don’t book action with no Jews. Says he don’t like Jews, either. Why? Why, why, why, did you torch the joint? he says. So I figure it out. He wants something. He’s got something in mind. He hates Jews (big blond German-looking guy!!!) and he knows about Solly Kike being in mob. So I tell him about Solly Kike. I hate him!!!! He smiles. You going to be my watchdog, he says. We’ll do real good together. Then he says—you firebug? I try to say no, but he hits me. I can read your mind, he says. Don’t fuck with me and you’ll be able to do whatever you want in peace. Just keep your mouth shut and you’ll make money!!!! He scares me. He can read my mind. He knows. After I did toy store in Valley, he gives Hot Rod letter to give me: ‘You got a thing about toy stores, Fat Dog?’ it says. ‘Remember, I know you. Your buddy.’ He does know me.”
I waded through twenty-five pages of anti-Semitic and racist drivel before there was more mention of Cathcart:
“The Big Man is everywhere. He knows my M.O.!!!! He sends me notes after my jobs, calls me his genius little boy. Good watchdog! He says! He’s everywhere. A tree on Bel-Air front nine. A big dog on L.A. South. An evil squirrel on Wilshire 8th. Won’t let me have Jane! Lots of money. But no Jane. Money don’t mean shit with no family. H.C. has X-ray eyes, like Superman. He can see at night, too. Like a cat. A big mean cat.”
The rest of the blue pages contained more anti-Semitism. I turned back to the yellow section to look for mention of a toy store fire. I found it. It occurred on October 14, 1973, in Sherman Oaks. Cause of blaze undetermined. The proprietor and his son were seriously burned. That was the final indicator.
I drove to my bank on Hollywood and LaBrea and withdrew $500 in twenties from my safety deposit box, then drove to a storage garage on Melrose and paid to have my Camaro stored for two weeks. I got my expensive reel-to-reel tape machine out of the trunk before I left, then took a cab to a car rental agency on Wilshire and Normandie, where I rented a two-year-old Ford L.T.D.
Next I went looking for interim housing. Feeling the need for an injection of beauty, I opted for the beach and found a quiet court-style motel on Pacific Coast Highway, north of Sunset. My room was clean and afforded a view of the ocean. I paid for a week in advance.
Then I dictated into my never-before-used tape deck for three hours, using up four reels of tape. I spoke of the case, starting at the beginning, running in chronological order, with frequent digressions. I covered everything, including my killing of Henry Cruz and Reyes Sandoval. When I finished I sat back and thought of Haywood Cathcart, and of myself. Both cops. Both cops gone bad, to different degrees. I wondered at his motives for joining the police department, then examined my own.
I had wanted a way to express my sense of fair play and my love of beauty. I had wanted to crack wise and kick ass on those who deserved it. I had wanted to express a cynical, world-weary ethos tempered with compassion that women would eat up. I wanted low-level, uncomplicated power over other people’s lives. To be 6'3", 200 pounds, with a blue uniform, a badge, and a gun seemed like a wonderful ego boost. The streets by day; Beethoven, booze, Walter, and women by night.
But I was a terrible policeman and an abuser of power. My dispensing of justice was arbitrary and dictated by mood. I ripped off dope dealers for their weed, smoked it myself, and congratulated myself on my enlightened stance in not busting them. I shook down prostitutes for quicky blow jobs in the back seats of squad cars. Whatever I touched in my search to assert, to be, turned bad.
But Cathcart, assuming he became a cop for similar reasons, went beyond me in his desire for power. Real power. Money power. He was obviously the Big Man in the Welfare ripoff, holding Sol Kupferman moral hostage in the process—first through Fat Dog, now through God knows what lever. And he remained anonymous, like a Republican fund raiser, savoring the real influence of power. No need to grandstand in a blue suit for Haywood Cathcart, he knew where the real goodies lay. And his complicity by silence was overpowering: he let Fat Dog burn and kill and sent him notes calling him my “genius little boy.” I thought my capacity for moral outrage was long dead, but it was attacking me now like a jungle carnivore. No, no, no, no, I said. Yes, yes, I said a dozen times in succession.
I walked down to a liquor store on Sunset and P.C.H., bought a fifth of Scotch and returned to my room. I put it up on the bookcase and stared at it. I said no a dozen more times. Then yes a dozen more. Then it rose up from the bottom of my soul with a screaming finality. Yes. Yes. I couldn’t run from it. I took the fifth of Scotch outside and smashed it to pieces on the pavement of Pacific Coast Highway. Yes. Yes. Yes. It was locked in a moral imperative: Cathcart had to die.
I rose the next morning from a troubled sleep populated by my old patrol partner Deverson, a mad collector of Fab 40 records and women’s pubic hair. The songs were all there in my dreams: “Runaway” by Del Shannon, “Chanson D’Amour” by Art and Doddie Todd, “Blue Moon” by the Marcells. I took three Exedrin to knock them out, and drove to a clothing store on Santa Monica Mall and bought four changes of
clothing—short-sleeved shirts, pants and socks, and shaving gear. At a phone booth I dialed Information and got Richard Ralston’s address: 8173 Hildebrand Street, Encino.
Then I thought: brace him at his pad? Too risky. At Hillcrest? Too many people around. Surveillance—wait and pick my shot? Also too risky. Ralston was on edge and would spot me sooner or later. I needed an “in,” someone who knew Ralston and his modus operandi. After a moment I remembered the resentful old looper I had talked to at the Hillcrest caddy shack two days ago.
I placed another phone call, this time to Hillcrest, and learned that Ralston would not be in today, that Friday was his day off, and that his assistant, Rudy, would be acting as starter. Divine providence. I drove to Hillcrest, parking on a side street off Pico.
Pops was easy to find—he was the only caddy left in the shack, an indication of his low status. He saw me approach and grimaced. “Hi, Pops. Remember me?”
“I remember you,” he said, “I’m not senile. And don’t call me Pops or I’ll call you Sonny Boy.”
I laughed. “Fair enough. What should I call you?”
“Call me Alex.”
“Okay, Alex, call me Jack. What’s the matter? No loop today?”
“Fuck no. That punk Rudy puts all the duck loopers out before me. He wouldn’t know a good caddy from a rhinoceros. Dirty cocksucker.”
“You hurting for cash?”
“I’m always hurting for cash.”
“Want to make a quick loop with me? The fastest loop of your life? Maybe ten minutes for twenty-five scoots?”
“You’re talking my language, Jackie-Boy. What do I got to do?”
“Just talk to me. Let’s go out on the porch.” Alex followed me, licking his lips. “You hate Ralston, don’t you, Alex?” I said.
“I hate the cocksucker’s guts. Why?”
“I don’t like him myself. He ripped me off on a bet. I want to get even. I’ve got to get him alone to do this. I need to find out something about his routine, so I’ll know when to make my move.”
Alex looked at me fearfully, nodding his head slowly. “And you’ll pay me for providing you with this info?”
“Right.”
“And Hot Rod ain’t gonna find out about me tellin’ you this?”
“You have my word.”
“You got anything against trespassin’ late at night?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll tell you. I know the time and I know the place. But I need thirty-five clams. My rent’s due.”
“You’ve got it. Talk to me.”
“Tonight’s the night, big fella. Hot Rod plays poker every Friday night, here in the shack with all his pet goats. The game usually lasts until about two in the morning. The loopers go home and Hot Rod stays here ’cause he lives way out in the Valley and he’s gotta be on the first tee at six-thirty Saturday morning for all the heavy play. So he sleeps in the maintenance shed off of the eighth hole. He’s got a little room there with a cot. There’s no one around. No one shows up until six in the morning. You can have him all to yourself.”
It sounded good, so Alex took me on a little tour. When we were about two hundred yards from what I assumed was our destination, Alex halted and grabbed my arm. “That’s it,” he said, “that’s the maintenance shed. Hot Rod’s gotta come this way. You see that first little door? That’s where he craps out. I don’t wanna go no further. I don’t want nobody to see me showing you around. Okay?”
“Okay.” I got out my wallet and handed Alex two twenties. “Thanks, you’ve been a big help. Take care.”
Alex grinned toothlessly. “You too, big fella, and if you’ve gotta get rough, kick him once in the balls for me, only don’t tell him where it came from.” He smiled again and took off running in the direction of the caddy shack.
I stayed behind and watched a twosome of women play the first hole. It seemed timeless, yet completely foreign to me. There was one caddy in the group, a tall blond kid in his early twenties. I wondered if he would wind up as a career looper. I hoped not. If looping was sadness, it was also the line of least resistance to many things—from income tax to the credit society. But the balance was unequal. In the end, looping was more what you ran from than the small freedoms it allowed you.
I drove to an electronics store in Century City and purchased three hours worth of blank tape, then drove to my motel. I dug through the shopping bag that contained Fat Dog’s horror journal and bankbooks, then burned the contents of the journal in the bathroom sink, watching a history of unsung malfeasance go up, appropriately, in flames. When the evil words were obliterated, I doused the pages with water and carried the sodden mess outside to a dumpster. I put two of the bankbooks in my pocket and stashed the rest under the mattress.
I called the manager and told him to buzz my room at ten that evening. Then I lay down and slept dreamlessly.
At eleven-thirty that night I was sitting on the cool grass of the first hole at Hillcrest Country Club, waiting for Hot Rod Ralston and armed for bear. The night was warm, but the wet grass brought the temperature down a good ten degrees. I felt solidly good, confident that my case was winding down, armed now with facts as well as weaponry. And my motives had changed. What had begun as self-aggrandizement would have to end as anonymous moral victory, for I had no intention of publicizing my involvement in the case, or paying for the killing of Cathcart.
I waited over three hours. At two-forty by the dial on my watch I heard a man coughing, coming toward me from the direction of the caddy shack. He was whistling and turning toward my resting place in the trees. It was obvious he couldn’t see or hear me, but I backed into the woods, giving him a wide berth, then swooped silently up on him as he entered the ninth fairway, jamming my gun into his back and reaching a containing arm across his chest. He bolted reflexively, but stopped when he realized it was hardware digging into his backside. He said “What the fu …” then stopped.
We stood still a moment, him bewildered, but catching on and me high on adrenalin. “That’s right, Ralston,” I said, “It’s a gun. It’s loaded, but I’m not. We’re going to do some walking and talking. Next stop the maintenance shack. Move.” I grabbed his belt with my left hand, keeping my gun in my right, pointed at spine level. We walked.
“I want you to know that I only have sixty-five dollars on me,” Ralston said. “I lost tonight. You would have done better to catch some of the other guys in the parking lot. I’m almost flat, buddy.”
I didn’t like the remark. It was condescending and indicated a lack of respect for my intelligence. I didn’t answer him until we were on the paved roadway leading to the shed. Then I yanked his belt back hard, sending him down to the concrete head first. While he was down, stunned and squirming to get up, I kicked him in the head, back, and ribs. He stifled his cries. He was trying very hard to maintain his composure. I squatted next to him, the barrel of my gun resting on his now bloody nose. “Resign yourself to two things, Ralston. One, that tonight you are going to pay for some past sins, and two, that you are going to tell me everything you know about Haywood Cathcart, Fat Dog Baker, Omar Gonzalez, Sol Kupferman, Welfare rip-offs, and arson. And Ralston—if you don’t talk, you die. Now let’s have a seat in your little room. Get up.”
He got to his feet. I grabbed his belt again and he moved forward, then fumbled in his pockets as we reached the door. As his key entered the lock and the door opened, I released his belt and kicked him full-force in the small of the back with the flat of my foot, thrusting him airborne into the dark room. He crashed into something wooden. This time he screamed. I found a light switch and flicked it on. I looked at Ralston’s handsome, bloodied face. He was scared, huddled on the floor next to an overturned nightstand.
The room was dank and sparsely furnished: a cot, a water cooler, the nightstand, and a deck chair. I told Ralston to get up and sit on the edge of the cot. He did, slowly. I shut the door behind me and drew a paper cup of water from the dispenser. I handed it to Ralston, who gulped it
down. I removed my tape deck from where it was jammed into my pants, located an outlet next to the nightstand and plugged it in. I took a seat in the deck chair and eyed Ralston. I hardly knew where to begin. There was so much I needed to know.
Ralston broke the silence. “Look,” he said, his voice under control, “hurting me won’t help you. Fat Dog is dead. The men who killed him are dead. He was an arsonist. He started a lot of fires. He burned down Kupferman’s warehouse. I know that Fat Dog hired you, why I don’t know, but all this trouble began about that time. Sol Kupferman is a generous man. He’d be grateful to you. I could put in a word for you.”
It was the wrong thing to say. I dug brass knuckles out of my pocket as Ralston maintained eye contact with me and rambled on with his plea bargaining. “Solly K has been known to set people up in business, the whole shot,” he was saying as I leaped on top of him and slammed my iron clad fist twice into the fleshy part of his back. He started to scream, then thought better of it and began to whimper.
He was shivering, and I placed an arm on his shoulder and spoke softly: “Ralston, I know most of it. But you can put together some of the pieces. I need to see how it all works. If you don’t talk to me, now, I’m going to go internal. I’m going to bang your kidneys until it’s all over. If you don’t talk to me, I’ll maim you, then I’ll kill you. Tonight. Is it Cathcart that’s worrying you? Are you afraid he’ll get at you for talking to me? Nod if that’s true.” Ralston nodded, vigorously. “Good, that’s what I figured. I’ve got a handle on Cathcart. I know he’s cold, utterly ruthless, and a killer. But I’m worse. Cathcart might kill you for talking to me, but that’s an unknown factor. If you don’t talk to me, you die. That’s absolute. And Cathcart’s finished. I’ve got Fat Dog’s scrapbook, I’ve checked out Cathcart’s palace in Baja, I know he’s got to be the big man in this Welfare scam. He can’t do you any good now. But if you help me you’ll survive. You gonna talk?” Ralston nodded again.
