Destination: Morgue!: L.A. Tales

by James Ellroy

  I LOVED WILLFULLY. I stole inhalers and flew every third or fourth day. I loved, crashed, boozed, and slept.

  Rains disrupted me. I prowled for dry shelter. I found an empty house two miles southeast.

  No inside lights and no running water. One piece of furniture.

  A moldy couch. My launch pad and bed.

  I moved in. I stashed my blankets and spare clothes in a closet. I loved, crashed, boozed, and slept for two weeks. I came and went by night. I thought I was coooool.

  11/30/68:

  Four cops kicked my door in. They packed shotguns. They proned me out and cuffed me and popped me for Burglary.

  THEY BROKE IT DOWN to Trespassing. I saw a judge and pled guilty. She thought I was a draft dodger. She ordered a probation report and imposed a no-bail decree. I spent three weeks at the Hall of Justice Jail.

  It was spooky and instructive. I picked up B&E tips. I learned about Romilar CF—the cough syrup supreme. The other inmates laughed at me and called me “the Nutty Professor.” I jived with some renaissance lowlifes. Armed robbers and career junkies. I said I shacked up with June Harding. Kaya Christian craved my ass.

  Nobody believed me.

  The judge released me two days before Christmas. My sentence: three years formal probation.

  I walked back to Burns Park. I stole inhalers en route. Jail taught me jackshit. I was the Energizer Battery Bunny writ tall. I kept banging that drum. You couldn’t touch my ruthless and impotent heart.

  3.

  The Versailles Apartments. A 6th floor room for 80 a month. Women abundant.

  Lloyd got me the pad. My aunt shot me the coin. She warned me: My insurance dole was dwindling.

  I liked the pad. Chipped moulding and a north view. My new PO liked me. Short hair and a wholesome demeanor.

  He told me to avoid drugs and keep my snout clean. I said I would. He pegged me as low-maintenance and cut me a long lead. I signed up with a temp agency. They got me some office gigs.

  The Versailles was a block off Wilshire and due east of Hancock Park. Wilshire was white-collar central. I walked to my gigs. I killed a half-pint of scotch for breakfast and tailed women from the Versailles.

  They walked to work. I bird-dogged them. I screened impromptu fantasies and expanded them on inhaler trips. I honed my sex aesthetic.

  I grooved on solitary women. Solitary meant lonely. Lonely meant hungry. Hungry meant horny and estranged and thus accessible. I grooved on outdated hairstyles and clothes. Stylelessness meant psychic weight. Heedlessness to current trends meant spirit. Their fashion statement enhanced my creed: Fuck the mass-market revolt of this era.

  I stole a supply of Romilar CF. I drank whole bottles on consecutive nights and went on a B&E run.

  The shit turned things psychedelic. I hit Kathy’s house, Kay’s house, and Missy’s house. I hit the bathrooms and popped pills with abandon. I blacked out and came to on my bed two shots out of three.

  Shot #3 was killer. I hit Missy’s pad boooold.

  I entered just after dusk. I picked the latch on the service-porch door and crawled through the kitchen window. Romilar made things surreal. The house looked all new. Missy’s bedroom was wild. Weird colors blipped out of the darkness.

  I found a soiled bra in the upstairs hamper. It was sweated up from tennis or badminton. I brain-screened some pictures. Missy and her freckles. Freckled breasts and chafed nipples.

  I stole some speckled capsules. I didn’t know how they’d mix with the Romilar. I popped them anyway.

  Goodnight, Sweet Prince.

  I hit a work slump. I rented a cheap flop in Hollywood and got a gig at KCOP-TV. The mailroom was a gold mine.

  The station advertised record albums. Stupes sent cash in. I slit incoming envelopes and stole it. I raked in lots of extra bread and moved to a better crib.

  6th and Cloverdale. Wilshire meets Kosher Kanyon. Old Jews and office slaves. Women abundant.

  My insurance dole ran out. My mailroom scam covered the loss. I smashed up the company van and got fired. I got some short-term gigs and lived cheap. I broke into Missy’s house and stole all the cash in a purse.

  The act blew my shot at reentry. I burned that bridge deliberately. I felt the odds narrowing down. Some night I’d get caught. They caught me in the empty house. They broke the charge down. That wouldn’t happen again. All my instincts said STOP IT.

  August ’69.

  The Tate-LaBianca snuffs rock L.A. They ramify in Hancock Park. Magnetic window tape. Rent-a-cop patrols.

  I stopped it. I never did it again. I held my memories close and sniffed the winds of change.

  Porno bookstores were popping up citywide. I figured some law was struck down. Smut was street-legal.

  Fuck-suck books. Beaver books. Glossy color pix. Unretouched detail. Low-rent backdrops. Less-than-perfect women with their legs spread wide.

  Hippie girls sans hippie trappings. No tie-dye threads to mark fatuous statements. No love beads or peace signs. Guileless smiles. This is not degrading.

  I understood the aesthetic. It dovetailed with my own. I understood the bottom line.

  Exploitation sold as freedom. Inclusion for desperate men.

  The books were pricey and hard to steal. I sidestepped the dilemma and got a job at a bookstore. I worked midnight to 8:00 a.m.

  I worked alone. I rang up sales and stocked merchandise. You paid to browse. Fifty-cent tokens applied to your purchase. Horndogs browsed all night. It was cheap entertainment.

  The store sold beaver books, fuck-suck books, homo books, novels, films, slides, playing cards, dildoes, cock rings, S&M gear, and French ticklers. Strategically placed mirrors deterred same-sex assignations. The clientele was all male and all loser. Bombed-out hippies, drag queens, and the great male unwashed.

  Middle-aged closet queens with wedding rings and sheepish expressions. Devotees of Cock It to Me and For Those Who Think Hung. The underhung devotees of the Donkey Dan Dick Extender. The Beaver Patrol—USC frat boys fresh from late keggers.

  The store was a waste spill. I belonged there.

  I unpacked beaver books. I excised the most compelling women. We shared inhaler trips. I prayed for them. I played both ends against the moral middle.

  Their debasement and potential redemption. No center ground. A faulty dilemma. My brief prayers and extended exploitation.

  You thrill me. I love you. Don’t do this anymore. I’m sure glad you went this far.

  I tore out pictures and stole books. I tapped the till. I went to a beaver bar and watched beaver flicks. I zorched out on 50-cent drinks.

  The bar sold beaver T-shirts and beaver caps with mock-beaver tails. I demurred. I had my mock-Christian agenda. I beaver-patrolled the bar and the store. A revelation hit: You’re looking for one special woman.

  I found her. She adorned a page of Beaveroo or Beaverama.

  She was thirty-one or -two. She had pale skin and brown eyes. Long hair—straight and center-parted. Early gray throughout.

  A long nose. A bump on the bridge. A pointed chin and underarm stubble. Long legs. Wide hips. A starkly untoned stomach. The biggest hands and feet I’d ever seen on a woman.

  She claimed me. She felt like something wondrous and all new. I pledged monogamy. I sustained it. My inhaler trips followed that line.

  She did not look cheap, shallow, or in any way worthy of pity or censure. She didn’t smile. She didn’t mock her blunt pose. Her intent baffled me. I ruled out titillation and financial poverty. She looked forthright and altogether kind.

  I prayed for insight and answers. I talked to her at the store. Customers heard me. They rolled their eyes and snickered.

  The owner wised up to my thefts. He canned me and withheld my last paycheck. I got some temp gigs and built up a roll. I went on a two-month bender.

  It was epic. I stockpiled food, booze, and inhalers and went at it hard. I holed up for two weeks at a clip. I popped inhalers and stared at her picture and jacked off monogamously. I drank an
d puked up cotton wads. I lost weight. I gorged on steaks and gained it back. I slept and woke up dry-mouthed and dizzy. I lost track of time.

  I blew my rent allotment. The landlord started talking eviction. I had the coin to nail a cheap pad outside Kosher Kanyon. I knew a place by the Paramount Studios. The Green Gables Apartments—flats for $60 a month.

  Lloyd moved me out and in. We pulled the dodge on the Q.T. The bender left me weak and frazzled. I slept for two days.

  The Green Gables sucked. It was full of hypes and elderly rumdums. I squared myself away and looked for a job.

  I was fried. I was cumulatively exhausted. I wanted to find a cushy gig and decompress. I wanted to stabilize during the week and FLY on weekends.

  I tanked. The no-skill market was soft. I gave up and went on a mission.

  Beaver Patrol as redemption.

  I hit a dozen bookstores and prowled the beaver racks. I had to find more pics of that woman. She eluded me. I made do with my mind and one photo.

  I went on a run. Inhalers and her picture. I started hearing Voices.

  They hissed outside my window. They said “Ellroy” and “Pervert.” They raged commensurate with the dope in my system.

  I diagnosed the Voices. They had to be a dope side effect. It was a fleeting assessment. I popped wads and more wads and diagnosed them as real.

  Police sirens hissed at me. The Voices hid in the wheeeee. I heard them. The man next door heard them. He smirked at me in the hallway. He knew my sex dreams. He screened them on his TV set. He knew I killed my mother. He totaled up my thefts. He read my mind. I blared my radio and jacked off in the dark to deceive him.

  I popped wads and heard the Voices. I drank and banished them. I laughed them off and sucked down more cotton. They returned. They cut through all the sweet words I told Her.

  I ran.

  The Voices evicted me. It was mid-trip and peremptory. I stuffed cotton in my ears and left my things behind. I walked three miles east in record time. I saw a For Rent sign in Silver Lake.

  A convenience room. $39 a month. A bed, a sink, and one communal shower.

  I moved in. The building was full of rowdy wetbacks. My room was half the size of a jail cell. It felt like jail. The wetbacks scared me. The pad vibed Hideout or Psych Ward. I drank myself to sleep and popped inhalers the next morning.

  The Voices returned. I covered my ears and hid on the bed. The heat coils in my blanket felt like microphones. I ripped them out and threw them at the wall.

  The floor was mined and covered with bear traps. I hid on the bed and pissed all over the sheets. The Voices persisted. I ripped up my pillow and stuffed foam rubber in my ears.

  I ran.

  Straight to Robert Burns Park. Straight to my spot by the toolshed.

  I passed out on wet grass. Water seeped through my pants and wiped out Her picture.

  4.

  She resurrected. She assumed a startling form.

  My new probation officer.

  Her name was Elizabeth Heath. We met late in ’70. The resemblance staggered me.

  Her face matched point by point. Her body diverged. She wore loose clothing—her contours eluded me.

  I lost and regained a vision. God was responsible. I promised not to plunder Liz in my dreams.

  Liz Heath was 30. She hailed from New York State. I saw her once a month and prolonged our visits.

  Liz was gracious, intelligent, stern-willed, and funny. I groomed and prepared for our confabs. Liz was an occasion. I rose to it. I didn’t know if I was a chameleon or a tight-assed square in waiting.

  I knew that I loved her. My restraint proved it. I excluded her from my sex stories. This fueled more than hindered my love and allowed me to listen.

  Liz told a good tale. She gave commonplace events a pop and a punch line. She gauged my basic weakness against my will and disregard for the world. She understood hollow boys on missions. They rock impervious. They mistake movement for substance.

  Liz figured me out fast. She interceded with a distanced affection. She assessed me as a threat to myself and no great threat to the world. She caught outtakes from the next two years of my slide.

  I lived in parks and empty houses. I shoplifted food and booze and dined-and-dashed at restaurants. I broke into apartment-house laundry rooms and jimmied the coins out of washers and dryers. I slept in Goodwill bins. I sold my blood and blood plasma. I got day-labor gigs and read in libraries. Lloyd assisted. I crashed in his yard and his mother’s car. The LAPD assisted. They popped me for Petty Theft, Drunk, and DUI. I did jail jolts and purged my toxified system. I stole empty pop bottles from reclamation bins and re-reclaimed them for chump change. I snuck into theaters and watched movies.

  I stole inhalers. I popped them. I did not masturbate. The Voices started every time I reached for my dick. They chased me out of parks and empty houses. I stuffed paper in my ears and walked.

  I walked and screened stories. Out Wilshire to the beach. Back again. Obsessive movement. Twenty miles per trip. Kaya, June, and a wide cast of faces.

  I saw them. I couldn’t address them. The Voices drowned out my endearments.

  I walked and trembled. People stepped out of my way. Women cringed and grabbed at their purses.

  Inhalers sparked the Voices. Abstinence muffled them. The Voices punished me for the faces.

  Liz left L.A. in ’73. We said good-bye on the phone. She was warm. I was glib. I willed myself to ride out the hurt.

  Lloyd’s mother kicked him out of the house. He got a cheap hotel room. I rented floor space.

  I had a fixed address. The thought encouraged me. I could do things and say things with impunity. The roof and walls would shut out the Voices.

  Every floor had a bathtub and shower. I popped six inhalers and locked myself in the 3rd floor tub room.

  I stripped and ran a bath. I got in and jacked off to a long line of faces. I ran the water to stay warm and cover the Voices.

  I saw my mother’s face. I made myself see it. I saw her naked. I said, “I love you.” We made love in the last house we lived in.

  The Voices swirled out of the water. I ignored them. I stayed with her all the way up to the crash.

  IT WAS THE most impassioned and loving story I’d ever conceived. It shamed and horrified me.

  It thrilled me. I wanted to screen deeper variations. I couldn’t do it. The Voices said, You fucked your mother and killed her.

  I stiffed Lloyd on my rent cut. The manager evicted me. I moved back to Burns Park.

  The Voices followed me.

  For two more years.

  Inhaler trips. Trembling walks. A fantasy loop everlasting.

  T-Bird. Jail for brief health retreats. Hot meals. No Voices. Good exercise.

  I built up a dope tolerance. I gagged down more and more wads to achieve the same effect. Ten or twelve wads per trip. Three trips a week.

  It fucked up my lungs. I caught pneumonia twice. The County Hospital cured it.

  I trucked on undeterred. I followed my appetites. I missed Liz. I started watching men and women together.

  Sweethearts in movie lines. Kids in parks. Who’s that geek staring at us?

  I read books and shagged epigrams and insights. T.S. Eliot. Highbrow shit. “We only live, only suspire, consumed by either fire or fire.” A classy fuck flick: The Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann.

  Barbara Bourbon in the lead role. A boss blond with a cool overbite. A cut-rate Kaya Christian.

  Pam Mann’s a horndog. She’s a passive punchboard and a seductress. She’s a nympho Candide. She’s the poster girl for ’70s excess. She fucks half of New York City in one day and comes home to fuck her husband. He’s the best. She really loves him. Her day was satire and a goof on inclusion. Sex is everything and nothing.

  I dug Barb and the message in equal measure. I picked up a subtext:

  Sex was a lock for the cute and the glib. Love took balls.

  Insight did not equal power or a will to change. My slide co
ntinued.

  Lloyd had a pad in West L.A. I camped out on the roof. I went on a loooong T-Bird run and got the DTs in his bathroom.

  Fluorescent blobs attacked me. Spiders crawled up my legs. The blobs tried to eat my eyes. Monsters jumped out of the toilet.

  It was 100% real.

  I batted at the bugs. I closed the toilet seat on the monsters. They oozed straight through the lid.

  I drank them away. I passed out and woke up on the roof.

  I was dead fucking scared. I knew the next drink or cotton wad would kill me.

  I hitchhiked to the County Hospital and checked in to the drunk ward. I shared bed space with a dozen winos. A nurse fed me tranks. A doctor signed me up for a kick program.

  Long Beach Hospital. Three hots and a cot. Antabuse—a deterrent drug that made you sick if you drank.

  I spent two days in the drunk ward. I tried to sleep through it. The tranks helped. Other drunks suffered DTs. They saw things and heard things and hit things that weren’t there. I wedged pillows around my head and cut off their jabbers.

  I was young. The winos were old. They were my prophecy foretold.

  A nurse drove me down to Long Beach. I donned khakis and a plastic wristband. I stayed scared.

  I took Antabuse and went to therapy groups. I made up sex stories and directed them to the female drunks. I shacked up with June Harding and Kaya Christian. Barbara Bourbon wanted me for her next flick.

  Nobody believed me.

  My fear subsided. I rationalized it away. The DTs were a non sequitur. That was then. This is now. I could beat booze and dope my way. I was resourceful. I knew I could work out an angle.

  I developed a bad cough. A nurse noticed it. I told her I’d had two pneumonias. She called in a doctor. He sedated me. He stuck a tube with a light attached down my throat and checked out my lungs. He didn’t spot anything wrong.

  I “graduated” the program and stayed on Antabuse. My cough persisted. I bopped back to L.A.—booze and dope free. My fear escalated. I tried to think up an angle. I tapped out. My imagination and will to scheme were shot to fucking shit.