I waited nervously for the post office to open its doors at seventhirty, fully aware that my plan would work to psychological perfection only if the postal messenger roused Brubaker early enough so that he was alone at his bar. His joint was no longer open the maximum hours–the current hours posted on the door were a more demure 10:00 AM. to midnight. It could work only to my benefit–I would come down on Brubaker under any conditions, but I wanted him and his Little Log Cabin to myself if possible. So I lounged in front of the liquor store, knowing I might be in for a long day.
I thought mostly of Lorna. I hadn’t phoned her when I returned to Los Angeles. I wanted to recapture a parity I thought I had lost on the night I called her, sobbing. The two days I had spent at my apartment trying not to think about her had been days of complete defeat; I thought of little else, and pictured every possible resolution between us in the light of what I knew had to happen before we could be together again. I had to will myself, there on seedy “Wineward” Avenue, wearing a seedy windbreaker to cover my gun, not to think about what I wanted most, and not to think about dead women, dead unborn children and my own past that wouldn’t die.
My trying not to think was interrupted at eight-twenty, when a postal clerk in uniform trotted across the street toward Larry’s Little Log Cabin. I watched as the man consulted a slip of paper in his hand and knocked loudly on the front door. A moment later the door opened and a pale-skinned Negro in a silk robe was standing there, blinking against the brightness of the day. Brubaker and the postman talked, and from half a block away I could tell that old Larry’s curiosity was whetted.
Brubaker came back out the door five minutes later, dressed in slacks and a sport shirt. He jaywalked directly across the street to the post office while my body started to go alternately hot and cold all over.
I figured on another five minutes. I was wrong: three minutes later Brubaker was running back across the street, my carton in his arms, his face the picture of absolute panic. He didn’t run for his front door–he bypassed it and ran for the parking lot adjacent to his building. I was right behind him, and as he plopped the carton down on the trunk of a Pontiac roadster and groped in his pocket for the keys, I came up behind him and jammed my gun into his spine.
“No, Larry,” I said as he cut loose with a sound that was half wail and half shriek, “not now. You understand?” I cocked the hammer and dug the barrel into the fleshy part of his back. Brubaker nodded his head very slightly.
“Good,” I said. “Eddie is in hell, but I’m not, and if you play your cards right you won’t be either. Do you dig me, Larry?” Brubaker nodded again. “Good. Do you know who I am?”
Brubaker twisted slightly to see my face. When recognition flashed into his pale blue eyes he whimpered, then covered his mouth with his hands and bit at his knuckles.
I motioned him toward the back door of his cocktail lounge. “Pick up the box, Larry. We have some reading and talking to do.”
Brubaker complied, and in a few moments we were seated in his modest living quarters at the rear of the bar. Brubaker was quivering, but holding onto his dignity, much as he had on the day Smith and I had questioned him. I pointed with my gun barrel to the carton that lay between us.
“Open it up and read the first ten pages or so,” I said.
Brubaker hesitated, then tore into it, obviously anxious to get it over with. I watched as he hurriedly read through the sheets I had annotated, setting each one aside with trembling hands as he continued reading. After ten minutes or so he had gotten the picture and started to laugh hysterically, but with what seemed like an underlying sense of irony.