Shaken, I locked my room and went for a walk. I needed to be with people who bore a semblance of health. I found a noisy cocktail bar and entered. The room was bathed in an amber light that softened the patrons’ faces–to the good, I thought.
I ordered a double bourbon, then another–and another; a very heavy load for a nondrinker. I ordered yet another double and discovered I was weeping, and that the people at the bar were looking at me in embarrassed silence. I finished my drink and decided I didn’t care. I signaled the bartender for a refill and he shook his head and looked the other way. I threaded my way through a maze of dancing couples toward a pay phone at the back of the room. I gave the operator Lorna’s number in Los Angeles, then started feeding the machine dimes and quarters until the operator cut in and told me I had deposited three times the necessary amount.
When Lorna came on the line I just stammered drunkenly until she said, “Freddy, goddamnit, is that you?”
“Lor-Lorna. Lorna!”
“Are you crying, Freddy? Are you drunk? Where the hell are you?”
I brought myself under control enough to talk: “I’m in Wisconsin, Lot-. I know a lot of things I have to tell you about. There’s this great big little boy that might get hurt like Maggie Cadwallader. Lorna, please, Lor, I need to see you .
“I didn’t know you got drunk, Freddy. It’s not like you. And I’ve never heard you cry.” Lorna’s voice was very soft, and amazed.
“I don’t, goddamnit. You don’t understand, Lor.”
“Yes, I do. I always have. Are you coming back to L.A.?”
“Yes.”
“Then call me then. Don’t tell me anything about great big little boys or the past. Just go to sleep. All right?”
“All right.”
“Good night, Freddy.”
“Good night.” I hung up before Lorna could hear me start to weep again.
Somehow I slept that night. In the morning I put Johnny’s history of terror into the trunk of my car and drove to Chicago.
I stopped at a hardware store in the Loop and bought a reinforced cardboard packing crate, then spent an hour in the parking lot sifting through and annotating the memoirs. From a pay phone I called L.A. Information, and learned that Lawrence Brubaker’s residence address and the address of Larry’s Little Log Cabin were the same. This gave me pause, especially when I recalled that there was a post office directly across the street from the bar when Dudley Smith and I had braced him in ’51.
Before transferring the mass of paper from the musty carton to the new one I checked my work: all references to Brubaker and the drug robbery were underlined. I dug some fresh sheets of stationery out of the glove compartment and wrote a cover letter:
Dear Larry–
It is time to pay your dues. You belong to me now, not Doc
Harris. I will be in touch.
Officer Frederick U. Underhill
1647
Next I drove to a post office, where I borrowed masking tape and sealed up the carton tight as a drum. I addressed it to:
Lawrence Brubaker
Lany’s Little Log Cabin Bar
58 Windward Avenue
Venice, California
For a return address I wrote:
Edward Engels
U.S.S. Appomattox
1 Fire Street, Hades
A nice touch. A just touch, one that would appeal to Lorna and other lovers of justice.
I explained several times what I wanted to the patient postal clerk: insured delivery, to the post office across the street, where the recipient would be required to produce identification and sign a receipt before getting his hands on the package. And I wanted the carton to arrive in three days’ time; no sooner. The clerk understood; he was used to eccentrics.
I left the post office feeling light as air and solid as granite. I drove to O’Hare Field and left off the rented car, then caught an afternoon flight home to Los Angeles and my destiny.
VI
The Game For Shelter
23
Three days later at seven in the morning I was stationed on Windward Avenue in front of a liquor store that afforded me a view of both the Venice Post Office and Larry’s Little Log Cabin.