I ripped open the second carton and almost died on the spot. The box was filled with pornographic photos, identical in theme and backdrop to the ones I had seen on the walls of Fat Dog’s arson shack: the same women, the same sleazy rooms, the same cheap bordertown souvenirs. Oh Omar, you crazy motherfucker, I kept thinking, what have you wrought! But I wasn’t prepared for what came next: all the blood in my body jammed to my head and my lungs expanded and contracted like an accordion gone mad. I was looking at glossy color photos of Jane Baker, cellist, nude with her legs wide open, her mouth and eyes set in an attitude of sexual challenge: “Take me if you can. If you perform, I’ll make it well worth your while.” She had a beautiful, lithe body and her lust seemed genuine: her pubis was wet and her nipples were swollen.
My mind raced in a thousand different directions, and every variation of the Baker-Kupferman case that I came up with went haywire in the light of this new evidence. All I knew for certain was that I had two cases now.
I ran back to my car, got a crowbar out of my back seat and returned to the Plymouth and pried open the trunk. It was empty. I hauled the two boxes over to my car and locked them in my trunk.
The attendant was sitting in the office drinking a Coke, sullen and dejected. He looked up when I walked in, backing off like I was going to hit him. I controlled my excitement and spoke to him gently: “I’m sorry I yelled at you, but this is very important stuff I’m involved in. I’ve got to get in touch with Omar Gonzalez. It’s urgent. I need his home address and the phone number of that drug rehab place where he hangs out.”
He waited a moment, then flipped through a Rolodex next to the telephone. He called out a number and I grabbed the phone and dialed it. A woman answered on the third ring. I told her it was urgent that I speak to Omar Gonzalez. She said that Omar hadn’t been at the center in over three weeks. She told me that he was an unpaid drug counselor who conducted group therapy sessions with Chicano youngsters, and that he came and went as he pleased. In a condescending voice she said that Omar was a passionate and mercurial young man, given to disappearing for weeks at a time, but a gifted counselor who had real rapport with young people. The woman started to embark on a discourse about the drug problem, but I cut her short and hung up.
The attendant was staring at me, slack-jawed and awe-inspired.
“What’s Omar’s address?” I asked.
He consulted the Rolodex again. “It’s 1983 Vendome. That’s in Silverlake. Tacoland.”
I gave the kid one of my business cards. It had my home number as well as the office one on it. “If Omar shows up, you tell him to call me. Tell him it’s very important. Tell him I know who killed his brother.” I patted him on the shoulder and winked at him. He gave me a smile that tried hard to be conspiratorial. I got in my car and jammed for Silverlake.
Silverlake is a beautiful hilly enclave of middle and lower middle-class dwellings east of Hollywood. The hills are steep and the roads circuitous. Houses and apartment buildings are set back from the street and often hung with heavy shrubbery, so it’s easy to get lost.
I turned off Sunset onto Silverlake Boulevard and went under the bridge that marks the informal border of the area. I expected it to take a while to find Vendome, but I blundered onto it, about half-a-mile north of Sunset. 1983 was a court of small bungalows separated by knee-high white picket fences. I parked half a block away and walked breezily into the courtyard. There was a bank of locked metal mailboxes next to the first bungalow on the left, where I learned that Omar Gonzalez lived in number 12. His box was crammed full of mail, so it was fair to assume Omar hadn’t been around for awhile.
Bungalow 12 was at the back end of the court, on the right. Like all the others, it was white clapboard, weather-beaten and musty. I rang the bell and got no answer, then tried the flimsy wooden door. It was locked. I walked around to the side of the bungalow and tried the windows. They were locked, and dust-covered Venetian blinds kept me from peering in.
I went looking for the manager. The mailbox directed me to number 3. I rang the bell and an aging slattern in a housecoat opened the door suspiciously, keeping the screen door shut. When I told her I had a telegram for Omar Gonzalez in number 12, she jumped back as if buzzed by a swarm of bees. “Is something wrong, ma’am?” I asked.
“Omar ain’t been around for weeks,” she said, opening the door a crack and reaching for the nonexistent piece of paper with one hand.
“I can’t do that, I have to give it to the addressee himself. Thank you, ma’am.”
She gave me a frightened look and slammed the door. Something was wrong.
I walked to a liquor store at the end of the block and bought a ginger ale. Drinking it and eyeballing the pretty Chicanas passing by consumed twenty minutes. That seemed like a safe interval.
I walked back to the court. No one was around and the manager’s door was closed and all the shutters drawn. On the porch of number 12, I gave a quick look in both directions, drew my gun and kicked the door open. Crouching in the combat stance, I went into the dark apartment, gently closing the door behind me.
It was dead quiet and I stood there a long moment until my eyes became accustomed to the dark. Gradually the outlines of a turned-over sofa, an upended bookshelf, and mound of books became visible. Several potted plants had been knocked off a windowsill, spreading broken plaster and dirt on the floor, and a large carpet had been pulled up and wadded ceiling-high into a corner. I moved cautiously, gun first, into the other rooms. The small kitchen off to the right was similarly devastated: the cupboards had been ransacked, dishes lay in heaps on the floor, and the refrigerator had been knocked over, its rancid contents fouling the air. The bathroom was a shambles, but the bedroom had been hit the worst: broken glass from wall mirrors was everywhere, the bed had been torn apart and the mattress ripped to shreds, clothes had been torn out of the closet and lay strewn on top of the other rubble. An old gas heater had been ripped out of the wall and now lay among the pile of mattress stuffing.
The trashers had done a good job: there was nothing personal to be found belonging to Omar Gonzalez. No papers, journals, or memorabilia of any sort, just the detritus of a young man’s life. I poked about in the rubble some more, this time with the lights on. I was looking for bloodstains. There was none. I put my gun back in its holster, went into the bathroom, found a large towel and wiped every plane and surface I could have possibly touched.
The sunlight and hot summer air were jarring as I walked outside. I was troubled. For the first time since the onset of my case, I didn’t know what to do.
Still troubled, I drove to the bank and withdrew two thousand in twenties for operating expenses, then went home and spent a long evening listening to Bruckner. Before I went to bed I laid out my light blue seersucker suit, yellow buttondown shirt, and navy blue print tie. I wanted to look good for Jane Baker.
At 7:45 A.M., I was stationed across the street from Kup-ferman’s house. At eight-thirty Jane Baker walked out the front door, carrying her cello in a black leather case to her car and driving off down Elevado. I was close behind. She led me to the large park across the street from the Beverly Hills Hotel, where she parked and lugged her cello to a bench and set it up on its collapsible pod. I parked down the street. As I approached she was assembling her sheet music on its stand, and the first movement main theme of the Dvôrák “Concerto” followed. I stepped into Jane Baker’s life: “That concerto was Dvôrák’s best shot,” I said. “Nothing else he did came close to it. Have you been playing long?”
Jane Baker gave me a long, slow look and a slow smile, tinged with the slightest bit of resentment. “I’ve been playing for ten years,” she said.