by James Ellroy
Brubaker helped me up. I checked Harris’s pulse, which was normal, then rounded up the two handguns from their resting place. Harris had a .32 Colt revolver. I put it in my back pocket, and reloaded my own .38 and placed it in my waistband. Brubaker was kneeling over Harris, gently stroking his thick gray hair and staring at him with a look that was equal parts longing and amazement.
I walked up to him. “Get the syringe from the glove compartment, Larry. There’s a paper bag on the front seat with a bottle of water, a spoon, some matches and a little vial. Bring it to me.”
Brubaker nodded and went to the car.
I dragged Doc Harris over to a large tree and propped his back up against it. I could barely manage the pulling: my arms were numb from tension and exertion, and my head slammed from the shot that had grazed me. Brubaker returned with the paper bag.
“You know where the stuff is buried,” I said.
Brubaker said, “Yes, baby,” very softly.
“Go get a handful of it. A big handful. Then come back here. I want you to cook Doc up a little cocktail.”
Harris came awake a moment after Brubaker departed. When his eyelids started to flutter, I reached for my .38 and trained it on him. “Hello, Doc,” I said.
Harris smiled. “Hello, Underhill. Where’s Larry?”
“He went to fetch you a little surprise.”
“Poor Larry. What will he do now? Who will he follow? He’s never had anyone else.”
“He’ll survive. So will Michael.”
“Michael likes you, Underhill.”
“I like Michael.”
“Like attracts like. You and I are Renaissance men. Michael is attracted to Renaissance men.”
“What have you done to him?”
“I’ve told him stories. I taught him to read at three. He’s got an amazing I.Q. and an astounding sense of narrative, so I’ve been giving him parables since he was old enough to listen. I was going to write my memoirs for him, when he was a few years older and capable of understanding them. Of course, now that will never be. But he has had enough of me to form his character, I think.”
“You lost, Harris. Your life, your moral heir, your ‘philosophy,’ all of it. How does that feel?”
“Sad. But I’ve been to mountaintops that you and the rest of the world don’t know exist. There’s a certain solace in that.”
“How did you know I’d be here?”
“I didn’t. But I knew you knew about me. I’ve had a feeling since I read about you and poor Eddie in the papers back in ’51 that you’d be coming for me someday. When you showed up at my door I wasn’t surprised. I figured you might use Larry as wedge, so I showed up here early without my car as a precaution.”
Brubaker returned with both hands overflowing with white powder. I tasted the most minute amount I could put on a finger. It was very, very pure.
“I was going to shoot you up, Doc,” I said. “But I haven’t got the heart for it.”
Still holding my gun, I scooped a handful of morphine from Brubaker’s outstretched palms and dug the water bottle out of the paper bag. I uncapped it, and walked up to Harris.
“Eat it,” I said, shoving the morphine at his mouth.
Harris opened his mouth and stoically took death’s communion. I tilted the water bottle to his lips as one last act of mercy. Doc shuddered and smiled. “I don’t want to die like this, Underhill.”
“Tough shit. You’ve got five minutes or so until your heart bursts and you suffocate. Any last words? Any last requests?”
“Just one.” Harris pointed to the ground in back of me. “Will you hand me my knife?” he asked.
I nodded and Brubaker got the knife and handed it to him.
Harris smiled at us. “Goodbye, Larry. Be gracious in victory, Underhill. It’s not your style, but do it anyway. Be as gracious in victory as I am in defeat.”
Harris unbuttoned his shirt and slowly removed it, then took the knife in both hands and slammed it into his abdomen and yanked it upward to his rib cage. He shuddered as blood spurted from his stomach and burst forth from his mouth and nostrils. Then he pitched forward onto the ground, his hands still gripping the knife handle.
* * *
—
We buried him in the spot where he had stored his morphine, jamming him into the deep narrow space he had originally created to hold a huge steamer trunk full of death. We covered him over with rock-strewn dirt and covered the dirt with a spray of dried leaves.
I hauled the trunk over to Brubaker’s car, siphoned gas from his tank, and drove the car off to a safe distance. Then I lit a match and set the trunk on fire. Brubaker, who had remained silent since the moment of Doc’s death, stared at the flames musingly.
“Have you got a valedictory, Larry?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, and quoted Cole Porter: “ ‘Goodbye now and amen, here’s hoping we meet now and then, it was great fun, but it was just one of those things!’ You like that, baby?”
“No, you’re too hep for me, Larry,” I said, throwing dirt on the charred remains of the trunk. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll drive.”
I took Pacific Coast Highway back. Brubaker was silent, and it troubled me.
“You saved my life,” I said. “Thanks.”
“He was going to kill me, baby. I knew it. He swooped down on me and took me aside and told me you were dead meat, and then things would be copacetic. But I knew he was going to kill me.” Brubaker turned in his seat to face me. “I would have let you die otherwise,” he said.
“I know. You were in love with him, weren’t you?”
“From the moment I met him, baby. From that very moment.” Brubaker started to sob quietly, sticking his head out the window to avoid my watching him. Finally he turned to face me. “But I cared, too, baby. When you and that big Irish cop rousted me years ago I knew you were an okay guy. You just didn’t have too good an idea about what was going on. You dig?”
“I guess so. If it’s any consolation, I used to have a friend, a drunk who was sort of way ahead of his time, who used to say there was a city of the dead, existing right here where we are, but invisible to us. He said that when people go there they carry on exactly the way they did on earth. That’s not much consolation to me, but I think it may be true.”
Brubaker didn’t answer. He just sobbed out the window, his head wedged tightly against the doorjamb. He was still sobbing when I left him at his bar in Venice.
25
I staked out the apartment building on Beverly Boulevard for three days. Huddled low in the seat of my car, I watched Michael read comic books on his front lawn, noting that he wore thick glasses to read. I watched him throw a tennis ball against the wall of the building and usually blow the catch when it returned to him. I watched him pick at his acne, and I watched him thrash at the tennis ball with an old rusted putter. I watched him lie on the dead grass and dream. I noted that the other kids in the neighborhood avoided him like the plague. I noted that by the time he was twelve he would be far taller than I am.
At the end of those three days I knew that I loved him.
He just stared at me when he flung the door open in answer to my knock. I stared back for a moment, then broke the silence.
“Hi, Mike. May I come in?”
“Sure.”
I moved my way through the modest little apartment, looking for something to give me something to say. “Where’s your puppy?” I asked finally.
“She ran away,” Michael said.
It was obviously my cue. “Your father is dead, Mike.”
Michael said, “I figured he was,” then looked out the window to the stream of cars moving along Beverly Boulevard. “I knew he had to die—because of the stories. He thought I was a smart kid, but he didn’t know how smart. He used to think he was fooling me. He used to th
ink I didn’t know that the stories were real.”
“What stories, Mike?”
Michael turned his gaze from the street to me. “I won’t tell you. Not ever. Okay?”
“Okay. Do you miss your dog?”
“Yes, she was my friend.”
“I’ve got a dog. A hell of a good dog.”
“What kind?”
“A big black Labrador. He loves people, but he hates cats.”
“I don’t like cats either. They’re slimy. What’s going to happen, Fred?”
“You’re going to come and live with me. Do you want to?”
“Are you married?”
“I don’t know. I think so.”
“What’s your wife like?”
“She’s very smart and strong and very beautiful.”
“Will the Lab be my dog, too?”
“Yes.”
“Then okay.”
“Pack your stuff. Leave your father’s things, I’ll get rid of them later.”
Ten minutes later the back seat of my car was packed with a meager collection of clothes and assorted other stuff—and a huge collection of books. I drove to a pay phone and called Big Sid at home and told him I had a guest for him to look after for a few days. The monster mogul was bewildered, but ecstatic when I told him it was a bright young boy who loved horror movies.
Sid was there on the front lawn of the huge house on Canon Drive waiting for us when we pulled up. I introduced Michael to him, and Sid double-taked on the huge youngster and offered him a cigar. Michael fell on the lawn in his laughter, then got up and hugged me before running off in the direction of the house.
From a pay phone I called Lorna’s office. Her secretary told me she was down in San Diego for a convention. She was staying at the El Cortez Hotel and would be returning in two or three days. I couldn’t wait. I got a tank of gas and highballed it south on the San Diego Freeway.
It was turning dusk when I got to Dago. A drunken sailor gave me directions to the El Cortez, a pink Spanish-style building with an outside elevator enclosed in glass.
I ditched my car in the parking lot and tore through the lobby to the front desk. The clerk told me that the guests who were here for the American Bar Association convention were at the banquet in the Galleon Room. He pointed to a large banquet hall off to his left. I ran in, catching glimpses of a stern-looking man at the podium, who was speaking ambiguously about something called justice.
I walked quietly along four walls, scanning every rapt and bored face at every table. There was no Lorna. There was an exit at the rear of the room, and I went for it, hoping it would provide access to an elevator to the hotel proper.
I opened the door into a hallway just as Lorna limped out of the ladies’ room, talking to another woman. “I only come for the food, Helen,” she was saying. Helen noticed me first, and must have known something was up, because she nudged Lorna, who turned around and saw me and dropped her purse and cane and said, “Freddy, what—”
Helen said, “Excuse me, Lorna,” and darted out of sight.
I smiled and said, “I never liked phones, Lor.”
“You lunatic. What’s happened to you? You look different.”
“I think I am different.”
I bent down and handed Lorna her cane and purse. Impulsively I threw my arms around her and said, “It’s over, Lor. It’s over.” I grabbed her waist and lifted her off the floor and held her way over my head until she shrieked, “Freddy, goddamnit, put me down!”
I held her higher still, tossing her up to where her head almost banged the ceiling.
“Freddy, goddamnit, please!”
I lowered my wife to the lushly carpeted floor. She retained her hold around my neck and looked into my eyes sternly and said, “So it’s over. And now?”
“There’s us, Lor. There’s a great big little boy who needs us. He’s with your father now.”
“What great big—”
“He’s Maggie Cadwallader’s son. That’s all I’ll tell you. I want you back, but it’s no good without him.”
“Oh, Jesus, Freddy.”
“You can teach him justice, and I can teach him whatever I know.”
“He’s an orphan?”
“Yes.”
“There are legalities, Freddy.”
“Fuck the legalities; he needs us.”
“I don’t know.”
“I do. I want you back.”
“Why? You think it will be different this time?”
“I know it will be.”
“Oh, God, Freddy!”
“We’ll never know unless we try.”
“That’s true, but I just don’t know! Besides, I’ve got two more days down here at the convention.”
“We’ll never know unless we try.”
“It’s a standoff, Freddy.”
“It always has been, Lor.”
Lorna dug into her purse and pulled out her keys. She detached the ones for the house in Laurel Canyon and handed them to me. She smiled, and brushed tears out of her eyes. “We’ll never know unless we try,” she said.
We held each other tightly for several minutes, until we heard applause coming from the banquet room.
“I have to go now,” Lorna said. “I’m on in a few minutes.”
“I’ll see you at home.”
“Yes.”
We kissed, and Lorna composed herself, opened the door and moved into the banquet room to the sound of dying applause for the last speaker.
As she limped to the dais, I thought of Wacky Walker and wonder and the constituency of the dead and mad Dudley Smith and poor Larry Brubaker and orphanhood and the strictures of my once inviolate heart. Then I thought of redemption, and got my car and caught the freeway back to L.A.
ALSO BY
JAMES ELLROY
BROWN’S REQUIEM
In this enthralling debut, James Ellroy, one of crime fiction’s greatest writers, introduces the hyperreal L.A. we’ve come to know from his later work—a land of vice, corruption, and, in this case, golf. Fritz Brown is an ex-alcoholic PI with a taste for classical music who gets by as a repo-man. But he finds himself in the rough when he takes the case of a trigger-happy golf caddy who wants to destroy the older man who stole his sister’s affection. As he tries to unravel this complex case, Brown plunges into L.A.’s seedy underbelly, where the hazards include arson, incest, and murder.
Crime Fiction
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