by James Ellroy
* * *
—
I attacked the next day.
Primping formed my prelude to courtship: I gave Basko a flea dip, brushed his coat and dressed him in his best spiked collar; I put on a spiffy Bendish ensemble: navy blazer, gray flannels, pink shirt and penny loafers. Thus armed, we stood at Sunset and Linden and waited for the Labrador woman to show.
She showed right on time; the canine contingent sniffed each other hello. The woman deadpanned the action; I eyeballed her while Basko tugged at his leash.
She had the freckled look of a rare jungle cat—maybe a leopard/snow tiger hybrid indigenous to some jungleland of love. Her red hair reflected sunlight and glistened gold—a lioness’s mane. Her shape was both curvy and svelte; I remembered that some female felines actually stalked for mates. She said, “Are you a professional dog walker?”
I checked my new persona for dents. My slacks were a tad too short; the ends of my necktie hung off kilter. I felt myself blushing and heard Basko’s paws scrabbling on the sidewalk. “No, I’m what you might want to call an entrepreneur. Why do you ask?”
“Because I used to see an older man walking this dog. I think he’s some sort of organized crime figure.”
Basko and the Lab were into a mating dance—sniffing, licking, nipping, I got the feeling Cat Woman was stalking me—and not for love. I said, “He’s dead. I’m handling his estate.”
One eyebrow twitched and flickered. “Oh? Are you an attorney?”
“No, I’m working for the man’s attorney.”
“Sol Bendish was the man’s name, wasn’t it?”
My shit detector clicked into high gear—this bimbo was pumping me. “That’s right, Miss?”
“It’s Ms. Gail Curtiz, that’s with a T, I, Z. And it’s Mr.?”
“Klein with an E, I, N. My dog likes your dog, don’t you think?”
“Yes, a disposition of the glands.”
“I empathize. Want to have dinner some time?”
“I think not.”
“I’ll try again then.”
“The answer won’t change. Do you do other work for the Bendish estate? Besides walk the man’s dog, I mean.”
“I look after the house. Come over some time. Bring your Lab, we’ll double.”
“Do you thrive on rejections, Mr. Klein?”
Basko was trying to hump the Lab—but no go. “Yeah, I do.”
“Well, until the next one, then. Good day.”
* * *
—
The brief encounter was Weirdsville, U.S.A.—especially Cat Woman’s Strangeville take on Sol Bendish. I dropped Basko off at the pad, drove to the Beverly Hills library and had a clerk run my dead benefactor through their information computer. Half an hour later I was reading a lapful of scoop on the man.
An interesting dude emerged.
Bendish ran loan-sharking and union protection rackets inherited from Mickey Cohen; he was a gold star contributor to Israel bonds and the U.J.A. He threw parties for underprivileged kids and operated his bail bond business at a loss. He lost a bundle on a homicide bond forfeiture: Richie “Sicko” Sicora and Chick Ottens, the 7-11 slayers, Splitsvilled for Far Gonesville, sticking him with a two million dollar tab. Strange: the L.A. Times had Bendish waxing philosophical on the bug-out, like two mill down the toilet was everyday stuff to him.
On the personal front, Bendish seemed to love broads, and eschew birth control: no less than six paternity suits were filed against him. If the suit-filing mothers were to be believed, Sol had three grown sons and three grown daughters—and the complainants were bought off with chump change settlements—weird for a man so given to charity for appearance’s sake. The last clippings I scanned held another anomaly: Miller Waxman said Bendish’s estate came to twenty-five mill, while the papers placed it at a cool forty. My scamster’s brain kicked into very low overdrive….
* * *
—
I went back to my routine with Basko and settled into days of domestic bliss undercut with just the slightest touch of wariness. Wax paid my salary on time; Basko and I slept entwined and woke up simultaneously, in some kind of cross-species psychic sync. Gail Curtiz continued to give me the brush; I got her address from Information and walked Basko by every night, curious: a woman short of twenty-five living in a Beverly Hills mansion—a rental by all accounts—a sign on the lawn underlining it: “For Sale. Contact Realtor. Please Do Not Disturb Renting Tenant.” One night the bimbo spotted me snooping; the next night I spotted her strolling by the Bendish/Klein residence. On impulse, I checked my horoscope in the paper: a bust, no mention of romance or intrigue coming my way.
Another week passed, business as usual, two late-night sightings of Gail Curtiz sniffing my turf. I reciprocated: late-night prowls by her place, looking for window lights to clarify my take on the woman. Basko accompanied me; the missions brought to mind my youth: heady nights as a burglar/panty raider. I was peeping with abandon, crouched with Basko behind a eucalyptus tree, when the shit hit the fan—a crap-o, non-Beverly Hills car pulled up.
Three shifty-looking shvartzes got out, burglar’s tools gleamed in the moonlight. The unholy trio tiptoed up to Gail Curtiz’s driveway.
I pulled a non-existant gun and stepped out from hiding; I yelled, “Police Officer! Freeze!” and expected them to run. They froze instead; I got the shakes; Basko yanked at his leash and broke away from me. Then pandemonium.
Basko attacked; the schmucks ran for their car; one of them whipped out a cylindrical object and held it out to the hot pursuing hound. A streetlamp illuminated the offering: a bucket of Kentucky Colonel ribs.
Basko hit the bucket and started snouting; I yelled “No!” and chased. The boogies grabbed my beloved comrade and tossed him in the back seat of their car. The car took off—just as I made a last leap and hit the pavement memorizing plate numbers, a partial read: P-L-blank-0016. BASKO BASKO BASKO NO NO—
* * *
—
The next hour went by in a delirium. I called Liz Trent, had her shake down an ex-cop boyfriend for a DMV run-through on the plate and got a total of fourteen possible combinations. None of the cars were reported stolen; eleven were registered to caucasians, three to southside blacks. I got a list of addresses, drove to Hollywood and bought a .45 automatic off a fruit hustler known to deal good iron—then hit darktown with a vengeance.
My first two addresses were losers: staid sedans that couldn’t have been the kidnap car. Adrenaline scorched my blood vessels; I kept seeing Basko maimed, Basko’s beady browns gazing at me. I pulled up to the last address seeing double: silhouettes in the pistol range of my mind. My trigger finger itched to dispense .45 caliber justice.
I saw the address, then smelled it: a wood-framed shack in the shadow of a freeway embankment, a big rear yard, the whole package reeking of dog. I parked and sneaked back to the driveway gun first.
Snarls, growls, howls, barks, yips—flood-lights on the yard and two pit bulls circling each other in a ring enclosed by fence pickets. Spectators yipping, yelling, howling, growling and laying down bets—and off to the side of the action my beloved Basko being primed for battle.
Two burly shvartzes were fitting black leather gloves fitted with razor blades to his paws; Basko was wearing a muzzle embroidered with swastikas. I padded back and got ready to kill; Basko sniffed the air and leaped at his closest defiler. A hot second for the gutting: Basko lashed out with his paws and disemboweled him clean. The other punk screamed; I ran up and bashed his face in with the butt of my roscoe. Basko applied the coup de grace: left-right paw shots that severed his throat down to the windpipe. Punk number two managed a death gurgle; the spectators by the ring heard the hubbub and ran over. I grabbed Basko and hauled ass.
We made it to my sled and peeled rubber; out of nowhere a car broadsided us, fender to fender. I saw a white face behind the wh
eel, downshifted, brodied, fishtailed and hit the freeway doing eighty. The attack car was gone—back to the nowhere it came from. I whipped off Basko’s muzzle and paw weapons and threw them out the window; Basko licked my face all the way to Beverly Hills.
* * *
—
More destruction greeted us: the Bendish/Klein/Basko pad had been ransacked, the downstairs thoroughly trashed: shelves overturned, sections of the satellite dish ripped loose, velvet flocked Elvis paintings torn from the walls. I grabbed Basko again; we hotfooted it to Gail Curtiz’s crib.
Lights were burning inside; the Lab was lounging on the lawn chomping on a nylabone. She noticed Basko and started demurely wagging her tail; I sensed romance in the air and unhooked my sidekick’s leash. Basko ran to the Lab; the scene dissolved into horizontal nuzzling. I gave the lovebirds some privacy, sneaked around to the rear of the house and started peeping.
Va Va Va Voom through a back window. Gail Curtiz, nude, was writhing with another woman on a tigerskin rug. The gorgeous brunette seemed reluctant: her face spelled shame and you could tell the perversity was getting to her. My beady eyes almost popped out of my skull; in the distance I could hear Basko and the Lab rutting like cougars. The brunette faked an orgasm and made her hips buckle—I could tell she was faking from twenty feet away. The window was cracked at the bottom; I put an ear to the sill and listened.
Gail got up and lit a cigarette; the brunette said, “Could you turn off the lights, please?”—a dead giveaway—you could tell she wanted to blot out the dyke’s nudity. Basko and the Lab, looking sated, trotted up and fell asleep at my feet. The room inside went black; I listened extra hard.
Smutty endearments from Gail; two cigarette tips glowing. The brunette, quietly persistent: “But I don’t understand why you spend your life savings renting such an extravagent house. You never spell things out for me, even though we’re…. And just who is this rich man who died?”
Gail, laughing. “My daddy, sweetie. Blood test validated. Momma was a car hop who died of a broken heart. Daddy stiffed her on the paternity suit, among many other stiffs, but he promised to take care of me—three million on my twenty-fifth birthday or his death, whichever came first. Now, dear, would you care to hear the absurdist punch line? Daddy left the bulk of his fortune to his dog, to be overseen by a sharpie lawyer and this creep who looks after the dog. But—there has to be some money hidden somewhere. Daddy’s estate was valued at twenty-five million, while the newspapers placed it as much higher. Oh, shit, isn’t it all absurd?”
A pause, then the brunette. “You know what you said when we got back a little while ago? Remember, you had this feeling the house had been searched?”
Gail: “Yes. What are you getting at?”
“Well, maybe it was just your imagination, or maybe one of the other paternity suit kids has got the same idea, maybe that explains it.”
“Linda, honey, I can’t think of that just now. Right now I’ve got you on my mind.”
Small talk was over—eclipsed by Gail’s ardor, Linda’s phony moans, I hitched Basko to his leash, drove us to a motel safe house and slept the sleep of the righteously pissed.
* * *
—
In the morning I did some brainwork. My conclusions: Gail Curtiz wanted to sink my gravy train and relegate Basko to a real dog’s life. Paternity suit intrigue was at the root of the Bendish house trashing and the “searching” of Gail’s place. The car that tried to broadside me was driven by a white man—a strange anomaly. Linda, in my eyes a non-dyke, seemed to be stringing the lust-blinded Gail along—could she also be a paternity suit kid out for Basko’s swag? Sleazy Miller Waxman was Sol Bendish’s lawyer and a scam artist bent from the crib—how did he fit in? Were the shvoogies who tried to break into Gail’s crib the ones who later searched it—and trashed my place? Were they in the employ of one of the paternity kids? What was going on?
I rented a suite at the Bel-Air Hotel and ensconced Basko there, leaving a grand deposit and detailed instructions on his care and feeding. Next I hit the Beverly Hills Library and re-read Sol Bendish’s clippings. I glommed the names of his paternity suit complainants, called Liz Trent and had her give me DMV addresses. Two of Sol’s playmates were dead; one was address unknown, two—Marguerita Montgomery and Jane Hawkshaw—were alive and living in Los Angeles. The Montgomery woman was out as a lead: a clipping I’d scanned two weeks ago quoted her on the occasion of Sol Bendish’s death—she mentioned that the son he fathered had died in Vietnam. I already knew that Gail Curtiz’s mother had died—and since none of the complainants bore the name Curtiz, I knew Gail was using it as an alias. That left Jane Hawkshaw: last known address 8902 Saticoy Street in Van Nuys.
* * *
—
I knocked on her door an hour later. An old woman holding a stack of Watchtowers opened up. She had the look of religious crackpots everywhere: bad skin, spaced-out eyes. She might have been hot stuff once—around the time man discovered the wheel. I said, “I’m Brother Klein. I’ve been dispatched by the Church to ease your conscience in the Sol Bendish matter.”
The old girl pointed me inside and started babbling repentance. My eyes hit a framed photograph above the fireplace—two familiar faces smiling out. I walked over and squinted.
Ultra-paydirt: Richie “Sicko” Sicora and another familiar-looking dude. I’d seen pics of Sicora before—but in this photo he looked like someone else familiar. The resemblance seemed very vague—but niggling. The other man was easy—he’d tried to broadside me in darktown last night.
The old girl said, “My son Richard is a fugitive. He doesn’t look like that now. He had his face changed when he went on the run. Sol was going to leave Richie money when he turned twenty-five, but Richie and Chuck got in trouble and Sol gave it out in bail money instead. I’ve got no complaint against Sol and I repent my unmarried fornication.”
I superimposed the other man’s bone structure against photos I’d seen of Chick Ottens and got a close match. I tried, tried, tried, to place Sicora’s pre-surgery resemblance, but failed. Sicora pre-plastic, Ottens already sliced—a wicked brew that validated non-dyke Linda’s theory straight down the line….
I gave the old woman a buck, grabbed a Watchtower and boogied southside. The radio blared hype on the Watts homicides: the monster dog and his human accomplice. Fortunately for Basko and myself, eyewitnesses’ accounts were dismissed and the deaths were attributed to dope intrigue. I cruised the bad boogaloo streets until I spotted the car that tried to ram me—parked behind a cinderblock dump circled by barbed wire.
I pulled up and jacked a shell into my piece. I heard yips emanating from the back yard, tiptoed around and scoped out the scene.
Pit Bull City: scores of them in pens. A picnic table and Chick Ottens noshing bar-b-q’d chicken with his snazzy new face. I came up behind him; the dogs noticed me and sent out a cacophony of barks. Ottens stood up and wheeled around going for his waistband. I shot off his kneecaps—canine howls covered my gun blasts. Ottens flew backwards and hit the dirt screaming; I poured bar-b-q sauce on his kneeholes and dragged him over to the cage of the baddest looking pit hound of the bunch. The dog snapped at the blood and soul sauce; his teeth tore the pen. I spoke slowly, like I had all the time in the world. “I know you and Sicora got plastic jobs, I know Sol Bendish was Sicora’s daddy and bailed you and Sicko out on the 7-11 job. You had your goons break into Gail Curtiz’s place and the Bendish pad and all this shit relates to you trying to mess with my dog and screw me out of my gravy train. Now I’m beginning to think Wax Waxman set me up. I think you and Sicora have some plan going to get at Bendish’s money, and Wax ties in. You got word that Curtiz was snouting around, so you checked out her crib. I’m a dupe, right? Wax’s patsy? Wrap this up for me or I feed your kneecaps to Godzilla.”
Pit Godzilla snarled an incisor out of the mesh and nipped Ottens where it counts. Ottens screech
ed; going blue, he got out, “Wax wanted…you…to…look after…dog…while him and…Phil…scammed a way to…discredit paternity…claims…I…I…”
Phil.
My old partner—I didn’t know a thing about his life before our partnership.
Phil Turkel was Sicko Sicora, his weird facial scars derived from the plastic surgery that hid his real identity from the world.
“Freeze, suckah.”
I looked up. Three big shines were standing a few yards away, holding Uzis. I opened Godzilla’s cage; Godzilla burst out and went for Chick’s face. Ottens screamed; I tossed the bucket of chicken at the gunmen; shots sprayed the dirt. I ate crabgrass and rolled, rolled, rolled, tripping cage levers, ducking, ducking, ducking. Pit bulls ran helter skelter, then zeroed in: three soul brothers dripping with soul sauce.
The feast wasn’t pretty. I grabbed an Uzi and got out quicksville.
* * *
—
Dusk.
I leadfooted it to Wax’s office, the radio tuned to a classical station—I was hopped up on blood, but found some soothing Mozart to calm me down, and highballed it to Beverly and Alvarado.
Waxman’s office was stone silent; I picked the back door lock, walked in and made straight for the safe behind his playmate calendar—the place where I knew he kept his dope and bribery stash. Left-right-left: an hour of diddling the tumblers and the door creaked open. Four hours of studying memo slips, ledgers and little black book notations and I trusted myself on a reconstruction.
Labyrinthine, but workable:
Private eye reports on Gail Curtiz and Linda Claire Woodruff—the two paternity suit kids Wax considered most likely to contest the Bendish estate. Lists of stooges supplied by Wax contacts in the LAPD: criminal types to be used to file phony claims against the estate, whatever money gleaned to be kicked back to Wax himself. Address book names circled: snuff artists I knew from jail, including the fearsome Angel “Fritz” Trejo. A note from Phil Turkel to Waxman: “Throw Stan a bone—he can babysit the dog until we get the money.” A diagram of the Betty Ford Clinic, followed by an ominous epiphany: Wax was going to have Phil and the real paternity kids clipped. Pages and pages of notes in legalese—levers to get at the extra fifteen million Sol Bendish had stuffed in Swiss bank accounts.
