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.
Larry Brubaker and I drove north, toward the farm country east of Ventura. I was armed with a 10-gauge shotgun, a .38, and a hypodermic syringe; Brubaker with a masochistic delight at the predicament he was in. He knew I was armed for bear—he had supplied me with the syringe and he knew what I had to do. Brubaker was driving, but he knew only the barest outline of my plan; he knew only the territory where the game was to be played.
I stared at him out of the corner of my eye. He was a skillful driver, deftly weaving through traffic like a rider jockeying for post position, and even with his head bandaged from the result of my outrage he maintained an icy calm.
He had supplied the details, and he had agreed to sign a confession to all his knowledge of Doc Harris's malfeasance and his own part in the drug robbery. He was an accessory to murder and much more. That confession was now, four days later, lying in my Bank of America safe-deposit box. After signing his name with a flourish to the twenty-three-page indictment I had drawn up in his cluttered back room, Brubaker had said: 'There's only one way to play this game and win. Doc owns a plot of land east of Ventura. Just a nasty little good-for-nothing pile of dirt. It's his tax sting; he's got no visible means of support, being a respectable middle-class dope pusher like he is. So he writes off his rockpile and pays a C-note a year in income tax. That's where he hides his stuff. He gives it to me and I turn it over for him. We meet there once a month, on the fifteenth, to make the trade: I give Doc the month's take, he gives me the stuff. That's the place to take him. You dig, baby?'
I dug, and I wanted to make sure Brubaker reciprocated. 'Yeah, I dig. You dig that if this thing doesn't come off, I'm going to kill you right there?'
'Of course, baby. It's the only game in town.'
I saw a clock as we passed Oxnard—8:42 A.M., and I noted the time and place—Saturday, July 15, 1955, and I thought of what I wanted from Doc Harris on the biggest day of my life and the last day of his: I wanted a dialogue before the strychnine-laced morphine entered his veins. Remorse was beyond his capability, but I wanted a crumbling, or at least an expression of grief, as my personal revenge. And more importantly, I wanted information on the state of mind of his 'moral heir.' How far had he gone in perverting Michael's mind? How conscious and subtle were his methods of brainwashing? And I wanted him to die knowing that Michael would live free and sane because of his death.
We passed the Ventura County line and headed east. I felt like I was going to vomit, and reflexively looked at the cold mien of Larry Brubaker for signs of stress. I was rewarded: he had tightened his hands on the steering wheel until his pale brown knuckles had turned a throbbing white.
'You want to hear a joke, Larry?' I said.
'Sure, baby.'
'It's my definition of a sadist. Are you ready? Someone who's kind to a masochist.'
Brubaker laughed, first uproariously, then obscenely. 'That's the story of my life, baby! Only I was playing both parts. It's too bad you ain't gonna get the chance to know Doc. He would have dug your act.'
'Tell me about the setup. How do you and Doc work it?'
'He drives up alone; I do likewise. He's got the stuff buried in a watertight chest in this little grove of trees next to this little shed. We make the trade and we have a drink or two and talk politics or sports or old times, and that's it.'
'Would Doc's car fit in this shed?'
'Probably. How do you expect to get Doc to sit still while you hot-shot him? That's what you're planning to do, ain't it, baby?'
'Don't you worry about it. And your meeting time is always ten, and Doc is never early?'
'Right, baby. Now you don't worry. You can see Doc coming from half a mile away. I always come early, to observe nature. You dig?'
'I dig.'
Ten minutes later we were there.
We turned off the shoulder and drove for a quarter mile over a dusty road. When we came up to the site it was just as Brubaker described it: soft brown dirt strewn with rocks, dust, and a white clapboard shack on the edge of an expanse of dead-looking eucalyptus trees.
We parked next to the shack. Brubaker set the brake and smiled at me. I didn't know what the smile meant, and suddenly I was terrified.
Brubaker looked at his watch. 'It's nine-fifteen,' he said. 'We've got forty-five minutes, but you better get out of sight to be safe. I'll stand outside my car like I usually do. Hot, ain't it? But pretty. God, do I love the country!'
I got my shotgun out of the backseat, wishing it were an automatic, and walked into the grove of trees. I placed it at the back of the tree closest to Brubaker's car, where it could be grabbed quickly when Doc Harris arrived. I got out my .38 and checked the safety, then stuck it back in my waistband and walked toward a dark patch of shade at the middle of the little forest.
'I'll whistle once when he shows,' Brubaker called to me. For the first time I noticed tension in his voice.
'Right,' I called back, noting my own voice was stretched thin.
I leaned up against a tree trunk that afforded me a view of Brubaker and his car as well as the road. I was so light-headed from nervous tension that it was easy not to think. My mind was totally blank, and I caught myself slipping into a state of complete nervous exhaustion. I cleared my throat repeatedly and started to scratch and pick at myself, almost as if to prove that I was still there.
I heard a rustle of dried leaves in back of me, and whirled around, my hand on the butt of my gun. It was nothing—probably just a scurrying rodent. I heard the rustle again and didn't turn around, and then suddenly I heard the ka-raack! of a shot and the tree trunk splintered above my head. I pitched to the ground and rolled in the direction of a large mound of fallen branches. I pulled my .38 from my waistband and flipped off the safety and held my breath. I dug in behind the branches, burrowing through dried leaves for a place to aim. Finding a small spot of daylight that provided aiming room and protection, I dug deeper and scanned the direction from which the shot had come.
There was nothing: no movement of any kind, no noise but the frantic slamming of my own heart and the sharp wheeze of my breath. I risked sticking my head above the mound of branches and quickly scanned the grove of trees. Still nothing. Was the sniper Brubaker?
'Brubaker,' I called. There was no response.
I glanced over to my left. The shotgun was still resting against the tree trunk. I crawled over to where I could see Brubaker's car and the little shack. No Brubaker and no movement. I was starting to calm down a little, and starting to get angry. As I crawled back toward my hiding place I caught a glimpse of trouser legs off to my left
