“Baby, baby, baby, baby,” he said. “Baby, baby, baby.”
“You ever kill anyone, Larry?” I asked.
“No,” Brubaker said.
“Do you have any idea how many people Doc Harris has killed?”
“Lots and lots,” Brubaker said.
“You’re a sarcastic bastard. You feel like surviving this thing, or going down with Doc?”
“I went down on Doc in 1944, baby. So did Eddie, so did Johnny DeVries. Just to seal our pact, you understand. I didn’t mind: Doc was a gorgeous hunk. Eddie didn’t mind, he was a switch-hitter. But it ate Johnny up, no pun intended. He liked it, and he hated himself for it till the day he died.”
“Who killed him?”
“Doc. Doc loved him, too. But Johnny was talking too much. He never turned his share of the stuff over. He was giving it away to all the hopheads on Milwaukee skid. Then he started talking about kicking. We were friends. He called me and told me he wanted me to hold his stuff until he got out of the hospital. He wanted to kick, but he didn’t want to lose the money he could get by pushing the stuff, you dig?”
“I dig. So you were afraid that if he got clean he’d blab and implicate you, and you told Doc.”
“That’s right, I told Big Daddy, and Big Daddy took care of it.”
Brubaker managed to keep his pride, though he was clearly accepting of his subservience and self-hatred. I honestly didn’t know if he wanted to go on living or die with his past. All I could do was go on asking my questions and hope that his detachment held.
“What happened to the rest of the dope, Larry?”
“Doc and I are turning it over, a little at a time. Have been, for years.”
“He’s blackmailing you?”
“He’s got pictures of me and a city councilman in what you might call a compromising position,” Brubaker laughed. “I fixed the councilman up with Eddie. Eddie was a status fiend, the guy was in love with status and horses, and that councilman had both. Doc took some pictures of them, too, but the councilman never knew it. Eddie did, though–that’s how Doc got him to take the fall for Maggie.”
I started to tremble. “Doc killed Maggie?”
“Yes, baby, he did. You got the wrong man when you popped Eddie. But you paid, baby. It’s funny, baby, you don’t look like a Commie.” Brubaker laughed, this time directly at me.
“Why?” I asked. “Why did he do it?”
“Why? Well, Maggie was living here in L.A., unknown to all us sailor-boys. Her mother wrote to her about Johnny being sliced in Milwaukee. She ran into Eddie, accidentally someplace, and started shooting off her mouth. Eddie told Doc, and Doc told him to sweet-talk her and fuek her and keep an eye on her. Then Doc started getting nervous. He borrowed Eddie’s ear one night and went to Maggie’s apartment and choked her. It was a setup–Doc knew he could always trust me, but he wasn’t sure about Eddie. He knew Eddie was insane about anyone knowing he was gay; that he’d rather die than have his family find out, so he showed Eddie the pictures of him and the councilman and that sealed it. Either the cops would never find out who choked Maggie, which would be hunky-doiy, or Eddie would buy the ticket. Which he did, baby, and you were the ticket taker.” I was jolted back to that night in ’51 when I had first tailed Engels–he had had a violent confrontation with an older man in a homosexual bar in West Hollywood. My faulty memory sprang back to life–that man had been Doc Harris. Feeling self-revulsion start to creep in like a cancer, I changed the subject. “Did Marcella Harris know Maggie? Know that Doc was going to kill her?”
“I think she knew. I think she guessed. She had always liked Maggie–and she knew that Maggie was really Michael’s mother. Doc told Marcella to stay away from Maggie. Doc and Marcella were divorced, but still friendly. Marcella took off on a trip somewhere; she left Michael with some boyfriends of hers. See, baby, she always knew Doc was a little cold. When she found out Maggie was dead, she knew how cold, but it wasn’t until later that year that she found out Doc was the night train to Cold City.”