I sat down and Edwards went into the bathroom and shut the door. I checked out the room: it reeked of body odors, but was clean. Edwards was evidently something of a jazz buff. There were dozens of albums arranged neatly on a wall shelf, mostly be-bop and modern jazz. There was no phonograph in sight. Edwards returned to the room. He looked relieved, but no healthier. His eyes were dilated and his shakes had stopped.
His voice was somewhat calmer. “Dilaudid used to be delightful, but now I’ve got to be smacked-back for all the pain to go. Let’s make this fast. I don’t want you here when Eddie shows up.”
“How long have you got?” I asked.
“Maybe four, five months.”
“You should be in the hospital.”
“No way, José. That chemotherapy shit is a bum trip. I want to go out walking with my Lucy.” He made a gesture with his hand, indicating shooting up.
“Who supplies your stuff? It doesn’t look like you’ve got much money.”
“You didn’t come here to ask me that, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. I came here to talk to you about the Club Utopia.”
For an instant, surprise flashed into Edwards’s eyes, then he recovered and gave me a death’s head smile. “The Club Utopia burned down on December 10, 1968. The guys who did the job shuffled off this mortal coil two years later. The whole scene is a long-gone dead duck.”
“Perhaps. You owned the place, didn’t you?”
“Right.”
“Where did you get the money to buy it?”
“I saved it.”
“Where did you get the money for the liquor license?”
“I saved that, too.”
“You need juice to get a liquor license. Who did you know at the licensing bureau?”
“I knew a guy. I forget his name. It was a long time ago.”
“I don’t buy it, Edwards. I’ve got you pegged. A smack addict jazz fiend, circa 1950. All those records and you don’t even have a record player. A record player has got to be good for five or six spoons. You’ve never had a pot to piss in, except maybe while you were fronting for the real owner of the Utopia. Those tracks on your arms tell your whole life story.”
“Things were different then. I had my shit together.”
“Don’t shit a shitter,” I said, raising my voice. “I want the truth. It’s important to me. We can do this either of two ways. One, we can wait until Eddie shows up, and I bust both of you for possession. That way you die in the jail ward of the County Hospital. Or, two, you can tell me what I want to know, and make a few bucks for your trouble. The choice is yours.”
Edwards gave it some thought. Fear quashed his hipster act. “If I talk to you and it gets back to certain people, it would be bad for me. I just want to die in peace. You can dig that, can’t you?”
“Sure. I’m a good liar. I can think fast. Wherever your information takes me, you can count on my not revealing my source. I live by the old code.” The old code: never give up your informant unless it can give you access to more and better information.
It didn’t take Edwards long. “What do you want to know?” he asked.
“Who really owned the Utopia, for starters,” I said.
“It was a guy named Sol Kupferman. A rich guy. A furrier.”
“Why was the joint in your name?”
“For tax purposes. Strictly a tax dodge. Kupferman owned half-a-dozen bars and liquor stores under phony names. He used to be in the rackets in the old days, and he couldn’t get any liquor licenses.”
“I heard that Kupferman was a big time bookie, back in the 50’s. Was he running a book at the Utopia?”
“Nothing big. He had a wire going to help defray tax costs and overhead. He was running steady in the black because the wire took care of all that.”
“Did Kupferman run the book himself?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
“He had this guy Ralston, used to be a ballplayer, take care of his action at all his spots. Ralston worked at this country club where he was a member. Kupferman paid him good.”
“How did he work it? Ralston, I mean.”
“He used to come by at odd times to pick up his bets. The bettors would leave their bread with the bartender. Ralston sent a big spade around to pay off. Ralston used to send the bets out to the track with caddies from the club.”
“What else do you know about the operation?”
“Nothing. I don’t know what you’re looking for, or why you’re even interested in all this ancient history. That’s all I know, but I can tell you this: it was just a small potatoes setup.”
Edwards was getting nervous. He was remarkably lucid for a man so close to death, but now the strain was starting to show.
“I can tell you’re starting to hurt. This might take a little longer. Why don’t you go into the can and get straight?”
He took my advice. When he closed the bathroom door, I hopped up from my chair and gave the room a quick toss. I opened drawers and cupboards and checked the contents of shelves. Nothing. Behind his record collection I found a County Disability check and a small prescription bottle of barbiturates. I let them lie. When Edwards came back, he looked no better. A corpse is a corpse. His voice was a little steadier though. He might have been able to handle himself twenty years ago.
“Shake it, daddy, what else do you want to know?” he said. Besides suffering from terminal cancer, he was suffering from terminal hipsterism.
“How did you know Kupferman? Why did he offer you this job?”
“Solly K knew my brother from his racket days. My brother was a punk, but he got around. My brother approached me, told me Solly needed someone to front a bar for him. I’d draw myself a cut each week, keep the books, and show up a couple nights a week to make it look good. For a C-note a week. I took the job, it’s that simple.”
“What kind of man was Kupferman?”
“Solly K is a sweetheart, a truly gentle person. I know for a fact that he’s been helping out a couple of old people whose kids got burned up in the torch. He felt real bad about the bombing. Like he was guilty himself.”
“He’s still taking care of you, isn’t he?”
“What do you mean?”
“Dilaudid is not cheap and heroin is twenty-five dollars a spoon, and you get it delivered. Someone is keeping you from really hurting. You haven’t got any money. Is Kupferman supplying you?”
Edwards began to tremble, and his voice rose to some otherworldly pitch of junkie indignation. “Solly K never hurt anyone! He keeps a lot of people from hurting! You never had a friend like that! Guys like you just know how to hurt people! That’s how you get your rocks off. Guys...” His angry voice trailed off into a coughing attack. I had learned all I was going to. It was enough. I had Fat Dog’s motive for the bombing down pat. I was anxious to be free of Edwards’s death stench. I remembered the money I promised him, but decided against it. Edwards was still coughing as I went out the door. As I looked back at him, he feebly flipped me the finger.
The hot, smoggy air that hit me as I walked out onto the street was a relief. Even the hookers and black pimps lounging in front of the Ail-American Burger looked good.
I walked back to the car, turned on the radio news and went into shock. A wail rose up in my throat as I listened: “A fire last night caused an estimated four million dollars’ damage to the Solly K Fur Salon and warehouse in Beverly Hills. The fire broke out at one-thirty A.M., sweeping through the handsome structure on Santa Monica Boulevard and Bedford Drive. Beverly Hills firemen quelled the blaze before it could spread to other buildings, but not before the fashionable fur showplace burned to the ground. There were no injuries and the cause of the blaze is now being investigated. Meanwhile, on a happier note...”