“What are you talking about? Didn’t she know Doc killed Johnny?”
Brubaker shook his head and gave me an ironic hipster’s smile. “Negative, baby. If she’d known, she would have killed him or herself. That woman loved that crazy brother of hers, and did she have a will! I was Doc’s alibi, baby. He was with me on a three-day poker-drunk when he was really in Milwaukee slicing Big John.”
I shuddered because I already had an idea about the answer to my next question. “Then what did Marcella find out later that year?”
“Well, baby, to give old iceberg Doc his due, he does love his ‘moral heir,’ as he calls him. When Marcella went gallivanting all over hell in ’51 and left Michael with her partying pals, Doc was frantic, not knowing where his boy was. When he and Michael got together, and Michael told him he was with some nice fellas in Hollywood, Doc got real upset. He went up there with a butcher knife and did some cutting. He got three of them. It was in all the papers, but you probably didn’t read about it–you was recently on the headlines yourself and probably hiding out. What’s the matter, baby? You’re a little bit pale.”
Brubaker went to the sink and drew me a glass of water. He handed it to me and I sipped, then realized what I was doing and hurled it at the wall.
“Easy, baby,” Brubaker said. “You’re learning things you don’t want to?”
I almost choked on the words, but I got them out, in part: “Why did Doc . . .”
“Kill Marcella? For the boy, baby. He knew Marcella knew of all the shit that had hit the fan; maybe she even suspected he killed Johnny. But if she ever went to the cops she knew she’d never see her little boy. That ate at her. She started hitting the juice and popping pills harder than ever. She started sleeping around harder than ever. Doc had this sleazy private detective checking her out. He told Doc that Marcella had more rubber burned in her than the Pomona Freeway. That private eye disappeared shortly thereafter, baby. So did Marcella.”
Brubaker drew a silent finger across his throat, indicating the end of Marcella’s potentially splendid life. I was outraged beyond outrage, but not at Brubaker.
“But Michael was with Doc when Marcella was strangled,” I said calmly.
“That’s correct,” Brubaker said, equally calmly. “He was. Doc drove out to El Monte. He knew that Marcella usually stumbled home from Hank’s Hot Spot down Peck Road by the high school. He knew she never took her car. He was parked by the school. He picked her up and talked to her for a couple of hours, then strangled her. Michael was asleep in the backseat. Doc had fed him three Seconals. When he woke up at home the next day he never knew where he spent the night. Ain’t parental love a kick, baby?”
I jumped up, and with a trembling hand held my gun inches from Brubaker’s smiling face, the hammer cocked, my finger on the trigger.
“Shoot me, man,” Brubaker said. “I don’t care, it ain’t gonna hurt for long. Shoot me.”
I held my ground.
“Shoot me, goddamnit! Ain’t you got the guts? You afraid of a nigger queer? Shoot me!”
I raised the gun barrel into the air and brought it down full force onto Brubaker’s head. He screamed, and blood burst from a vein over his nose. I raised my gun again, then screamed myself and threw it against the wall. I stared at Brubaker, who wiped his bloody face with his sleeve and returned my stare.
“Are you with me or with Doc?” I said finally.
“I’m with you, baby,” Brubaker said. “You’ve got all the aces in this hand. In fact, you’re the only game in town.”
24
It was the only game in town, I knew that, but I didn’t feel I’d been dealt aces. I felt like I was holding a dead man’s hand, and that even after it was over Doc Harris would be laughing at me from wherever he went, secure in the knowledge that I could never again lead a normal life, if indeed I ever had.