Widespread Panic

by James Ellroy

  I pointed to the pics. “Blue-movie actors, right? They peddle it on the side. You see the movies, you get a yen, you make a phone call.”

  “That’s correct. I went to a screening at Michael Wilding and Liz Taylor’s house. Michael screened Locker Room Lust and Jailhouse Heat, and supplied the referral.”

  “Referral” ripped me. “Could these guys get it up for women?”

  Liberace whooped. “Could, can, and do, sweetheart. And Donkey Don is the eighth wonder of the world, if you follow my drift.”

  I tingled. I thought Parlay. I saw dollar signs and movie-star movement on my Landing Strip.

  “So, Michael Wilding’s a gay caballero?”

  “In spades, love. His house is known as the ‘Fruit Stand,’ which perturbs lovely Liz no end.”

  I yukked. “And Liz wants a divorce, so she can move on to her next husband and break the all-time world record?”

  Liberace slapped his knees. “Yes, and she’s pulling ahead of your girlfriend in that department.”

  I cracked my knuckles. Liberace swooned. The cat almost creamed in his jeans.

  “Tell Liz to meet me at the Beverly Hills Hotel, tomorrow night. Fill her in on my résumé.”

  Liberace re-swooned. The leopard snarled and shooed a toucan up a tree.

  * * *

  —

  Perino’s was high swank and old money. It catered to sterile stiffs and dotty dowagers. I drove over at close-up time and parked by the back kitchen door. It was whipped wide open. Sassy Sanchez was scour-scrubbing pots.

  I slid out of my sled and hunkered low on my haunches. I ran reconnaissance. I noted a line of lockers by a walk-in freezer. I had Salacious Sanchez alone.

  He mambo-minced to his locker and primped. A mirror magnified his mug and tossed it back at me. I squinted and claimed a close-up. Aaaaaaaah—the top locker shelf. There’s a stack of photo sheaths.

  He picked his teeth. He squeezed blackheads. He dewaxed his ears. I walked in and crept up behind him. I pulled my beavertail sap. His neck hairs bristled. He wheeled and pulled a shiv.

  Flick—the blade sliced my Sy Devore blazer. He shrieked shit en español. It ran the your-mama gamut.

  He pirouetted and parried. We were in knife-fight tight. I risked a ripe stab wound and roundhoused him to the head. My sap socked him, full force.

  The seams ripped his face. The business end tore an eyebrow loose and gnashed in his nose. He dropped the knife. I kicked it away. I grabbed his neck and squelched a scream. The deep-fry dipper was four feet away. It was spitting hot grease off spuds lyonnaise.

  I dragged him over. I stuck his knife hand in the grease and frog-fried it. He screamed. I held his hand in the grease and burned it to the bone. Spatters spotted up my London Shop shirt.

  I dropped his hand. I walked to the locker and grabbed the photo sheaths. I flipped through them.

  Ooohhh, Daddy. It’s Liberace Goes Greek—Kodacolor prints and negatives.

  Sanchez screamed and careened through the kitchen. He dumped a dish rack and spasm-smacked the walls. His hand was charbroiled and crackle crisp. Flayed flesh flew off.

  * * *

  —

  The night was young. I was up five thou and blasphemously blasted on blood and aggression. Revelation ripped me. I knew I could mix my own fruit shakes. I pocketed two Liberace negatives.

  I called R&I. They delivered the dish on the smut-film troika. The boys shared a pad in Silver Lake. Plus a bent for the sex-soiled and seditious. Semper fi—they met in the Marine Corps and ran rackets out of a bondage bar down in Dago. They sold forged green cards. They peddled Spanish fly. They led Rotary groups to T.J. for the mule act. They sold dildo dupes of Donkey Don’s sixteen-inch whanger.

  They fell in the shit in ’50. They sold Spanish fly to a nervous nympho and pledged a date with Donkey Don. The Donkster reneged. The nympho impaled herself on the gearshift of a ’46 Buick. San Diego PD filed Felonious Assault. The judge tossed the case. Here’s a ripe rumor: he was Race Rockwell’s regular trick.

  I popped out to their pad. It was a wizened wood-frame job, buried in bougainvillea. I rang the bell at 11:00 p.m. and got no answer. I picked the door lock and let myself in. I crept flashlight-first and inventoried their shit.

  The boys possessed Nazi armbands/Mickey Spillane novels/combat-pinned Marine blues. Plus mucho moviemaking equipment. Plus cheesecake mags going back to ’36. Plus souvenir snapshots from the Klub Satan, Tijuana, New Year’s ’48. El Burro sports spiffy red devil ears.

  I walked out to the porch. I chain-smoked and sucked on my flask. I recognized the ribbons on their uniforms. The boys savaged Saipan and stormed Guadalcanal.

  I sipped bonded bourbon. I got a light load on. A jalopy jammed up at 1:00 a.m. The boys bounced out and made for the door.

  I whipped out my badge and flashlight-lit it. It was deep dark out. I couldn’t catch their capitulation. Call it a cool coup d’état. The dominant dog now rules their pack.

  “My name’s Otash. You’re going into business with me.”

  * * *

  —

  Extortionist. Entrepreneur. Enterprising Enforcer. I ran that roundelay as I licked my lips for Liz.

  I got half looped with the lads and laid down the law. I’m taking 20 percent of your smut biz. You get police protection. You’re now the naughty nucleus of Freddy O.’s stud farm. Get ready to bring the brisket to some housewives in heat.

  Donkey Don laid a ladle of bennies on me. I buzzed through my day-watch duty downtown. I broke up a fistfight at the Jesus Saves Mission. I chased a raft of Red agitators out of Pershing Square. I popped a whipout man at the Mayan Theater. I busted a psycho kid blowtorching two lovebirds in a ’49 Ford.

  My tour of duty tapped down. I went by the Criminal Courts Building and read up on divorce law. I reserved a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel and scrounged refreshments off local merchants. Lou’s Liquor Locker supplied champagne. Hank’s Hofbrau coughed up cold cuts. Fast delivery was assured.

  I swooped by my pad. I traded my cop suit for a choice chalk-stripe ensemble. Oh yeah—it’s your ardent arriviste poised to pounce!!!!

  The bungalow was big, boss, flouncy, and flamboyant. The bellman harrumphed at my ham and cheese hors d’oeuvres. He rolled his eyes and split. I paced and smoked myself hoarse. The bell rang at 8:00 p.m. sharp.

  There she is—Elizabeth Taylor at twenty-one.

  She stood in the doorway. I fumbled for chitchat. She wore a tight white dress. It caressed her curves and clambered up to her cleavage. She said, “If I move too fast, I’ll split a seam. Help me over to that couch.”

  I grabbed an elbow and steered her. My hand trembled, my heart trilled. I sat her down and poured two jolts of ’53 domestic. We perched on the couch and offered up toasts.

  Liz raised her arm. A dress seam split down to her hemline. She said, “Shit. I didn’t have to wear this. You’re just the bird dog for my divorce.”

  I yukked. Liz said, “Don’t marry me, okay? I can’t keep doing this for the rest of my life.”

  “Have I got a chance?”

  “More than you think. Hotel heirs and queer actors haven’t worked out, so who’s to say a cop wouldn’t?”

  I smiled. I sipped champagne. Liz snagged a slice of ham and snarfed it. Her wicked white dress constricted her. She looked plaintive, plain, and pure.

  I unzipped the back. I slid in some slack and brought breathing room. Liz sighed—Aaaaah, that’s good.

  The shoulder straps slid slack and fell down her arms. Liz deadpanned it. Our knees brushed. Liz retained the contact.

  “How do I cut loose of Michael? I can’t cite mental cruelty, because he’s a sweetheart, and I don’t want to hurt him. I know you have to show just cause in order to sue.”

  I refilled her glass. “I’ll bug your house. You g
et Wilding looped and get him to admit he digs boys. I levy the threat in a civilized manner, and he consents to an uncontested divorce.”

  Liz beamed. “It’s that easy?”

  “We’re all civilized folks. You probably earn more money than him, but he’s older, and has substantial holdings. You broker the property split and the alimony along those lines.”

  “And how are you compensated?”

  “I get ten percent of your alimony payments, in perpetuity. You keep me in mind and refer me to people who might require my services.”

  Liz lounged on the couch cushions. Her dress collapsed past her brassiere. Our eyes found a fit. The rest of the room vaporized.

  “And how will I keep you in mind? There’s lots of people vying for my attention.”

  “I’ll do my best to make this a memorable evening.”

  * * *

  —

  It started out clumsy and sweet. My punch line cued the first kiss. Liz was victimized and vanquished by too-tight attire. She shrugged her dress off. It wiggled down to her waist.

  I carried her into the bedroom. The hoist popped buttons off my shirt. They shot across the room. We laffed. I heard the radio a bungalow over. Rosemary Clooney sang, “Hey, there—you with the stars in your eyes.”

  We got naked. We were built boss, stratosphere stacked, and hung home wrecker heavy. We were the boffo best of L.A. ’53.

  We made love all night. We drank champagne with Drambuie chasers. We smoked cigarettes and spritzed gossip. We put on robes and climbed to the roof of the bungalow at dawn.

  An A-bomb test was scheduled in nowheresville Nevada. The newspapers predicted priceless fireworks. Other bungalow dwellers were up on their roofs. There’s Bob Mitchum and a young quail with the quivers. There’s Marilyn Monroe and Lee Strasberg. There’s Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini. Everybody looks fuck-struck and happy. They’ve all got jugs for the toast.

  Everybody laffed and waved hello. Mitchum brought a portable radio and tuned in the countdown. I heard static and “…eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.”

  The world went WHOOSH. The ground shook. The sky lit up mauve and pink. We raised our booze bottles and applauded. The colors bristled into bright white light.

  I had my arm around Elizabeth Taylor. I looked Ingrid Bergman straight in the eyes.

  * * *

  —

  L.A. ’53 was my ground zero. That blast still shoots shock waves through me.

  There was smog in the air then. People coughed and gasped. I never noticed it. That bomb-blast moment made me. My L.A. was always mauve and pink.

  I worked LAPD. I walked a downtown foot beat. I rousted Reds during the “Free the Rosenbergs!” fracas. I pinched pervs, purse snatchers, and pickpockets in Pershing Square. My smut-film biz laid in loot. Donkey Don Eversall plied his python all over Hancock Park. Joi was Donkey Don’s dispatcher. She koffee-klatched with horny housewives and set up the dates. Liberace gave me girl-talk gossip. Liz Taylor and Michael Wilding went to Splitsville. I got 10 percent of Liz’s alimony bite. Joi, Liz, and I threeskied on my Landing Strip. Liz knew a Pan Am stew named Barb Bonvillain. She flew the L.A.–Mexico City route and had half of Hollywood hooked on Dilaudid and morphine suppositories. Bad Barb was six-three, 180, 40-24-36. She scored high in the women’s decathlon, Helsinki ’52. All four of us locked loins. The Landing Strip lurched. We murdered the mattress and banged the box springs down to the floor.

  L.A. ’53—ring-a-ding-ding!!!!

  Joi and I crashed the Crescendo and the Largo most nights. Cocktail waitresses fed me slander slurs. I tipped them, titanic. It brought back my kid-voyeur days, rabidly redux.

  A fragmenting frustration set in. I had the dirt. It would take an armada of shakedown shills and photo fiends to deploy it. I racked my brain. I knocked my noggin against the bruising brick wall of unknowing. Extortion as existential dilemma. A confounding conundrum worthy of those French philosopher cats.

  My cop life could not compete with the lush life. I was a double agent akin to that Commie cad Alger Hiss. Liz Taylor drove me to Central Station and signed autographs for the blues. I knew that word would leak to Chief William H. Parker. I was full of a finger-stabbing FUCK YOU.

  Ralph Mitchell Horvath haunted me. Nightmares nabbed me as I slid into sleep. Joi and Liz nursed me with yellow jackets and booze. My bedtime mantra was He Deserved to Die. It was beastly bullshit. I couldn’t convince myself that it was true.

  I spent nuke-bomb nights at the Hollywood Ranch Market. My office was two-way-mirrored and overlooked the aisles. I scanned for boosters and looked down at the legions of the lost.

  Their pathos pounded me. Bit actors buying stale bread and short dogs of muscatel. Six-foot-two drag queens shopping for extra-long nylons. Cough-syrup hopheads reading labels for the codeine content. Teenage boys sneaking girlie mags to the can to jerk off.

  I watched. I peeped. I lost myself in the losers. A goofy ghost came and went with them.

  He was about twenty-three. He slouched in windbreakers and wore cigarettes as props. He breezed through the aisles at 3:00 a.m. He always looked ecstatic. He talked to people. He cultivated people. He studied people the way I peeped windows as a kid. I saw him out on the sidewalk once. He played the bongos for a clique of fruit hustlers and junkies. A girl called him “Jimmy.”

  The fucker appeared intermittent. I made him for an actor living off chump change and aging queens. I saw him kiss a girl by the bread bin. I saw him kiss a boy in the soup aisle. He moved with a weirdo grace. He wasn’t froufrou or masculine. He was in on some exalted joke.

  I saw him boost a carton of Pall Malls. I cornered him, cuffed him, and hauled him upstairs. His name was James Dean. He was from bumfuck Indiana. He was an actor and a bohemian you-name-it. He said that Pall Mall cigarettes were queer code. The In hoc signo vinces on the pack meant “In this sign you shall conquer.” Queens flashed their Pall Malls and ID’d each other. It was all-new shit to me.

  I cut Jimmy loose. We started hanging out in the office. We belted booze, looked down on the floor, and gassed on the humanoids. Jimmy habituated the leather bars in East Hollywood. He ratted off pushers and celebrity quiffs and filled a whole side of my dirt bin. I told him about my smut-film and male-prosty gigs. I promised him a date with Donkey Don Eversall in exchange for hot dirt.

  We’d hit silent stretches. I’d scan the floor. Jimmy would read scandal rags.

  They were just popping up. Peep, Transom, Whisper, Tattle, Lowdown. Titillation texts. Lurid language marred by mitigation. Insipid innuendo that left you craving more.

  Politicos got slurred as Red—but never nailed past implication. Jimmy loved the rags but cruelly critiqued them. He said they weren’t sufficiently sordid or precise in their prose. He called them “timid tipster texts.” He said, “You’ve got better skank than this, Freddy. I could give you three issues’ worth from one night at the Cockpit Lounge.”

  A bell bonged. It was faint and far off. Memory is revised retrospection. Oh yeah—fate fungooed me that night.

  A newsboy pulled a red wagon into the market. It was stacked with magazines. He started filling up racks.

  A cover caught my eye. Priapic primary colors and hard-hearted headlines screamed.

  You get the picture. The magazine was called Confidential.

  THE BEVERLY HILLS HOTEL

  8/14/53

  Joi woke me up. I was nudging off a nightmare. It was a dark double dip. Ralph Mitchell Horvath, shot in the mouth/Manolo Sanchez with skeleton claws.

  I looked across the bed. Shit—Liz was gone.

  Joi read my mind. “She had an early call. She said to remind you that Arthur Crowley wants that phone date.”

  I lit a cigarette. I chased bennies with Old Crow. Aaaaaaah, breakfast of champions!!!!

  “Remind me again. Who’s Arth
ur Crowley?”

  “He’s that divorce lawyer who needs your help.”

  I said, “I’ll call him when I go off-duty.”

  Joi stepped into a skirt and pulled her shoes on. She dressed as fast as most men.

  “No more girls for a while, okay, Freddy? Liz is great, but Barb is like Helga, She-Wolf of the SS. Really, that stunt with the armband and the garters? That, and she hogs the whole bed.”

  I laffed loud and lewd. My wake-up whipped through me. It canceled out all dreary dreams and coarse cobwebs. Late summer in L.A.—ring-a-ding-ding!!!!

  Joi kissed me and bopped out of the bungalow. I shit, showered, shaved, and put on my uniform.

  The phone rang. I snagged it. A man said, “Mr. Otash, this is Arthur Crowley.”

  I buffed my badge with my necktie. A mirror magnetized me. Man-O-Manischewitz, I look good!!!!

  “Mr. Crowley, it’s a pleasure.”

  Crowley said, “Sir, I’ll be blunt. I’m swamped with pissed-off husbands and wives, looking to take each other to the cleaners. Legal statutes are in flux, and divorce-court judges are demanding greater proof of adultery. Liz Taylor told me you might have some ideas.”

  I lit a cigarette. Benzedrine arced through my arteries and piqued my pizzazz.

  “I do have ideas. If you have flexible scruples, I think we can do biz.”

  Crowley laffed. “I’m listening.”

  I said, “I know some Marines stationed down at Camp Pendleton. I was their DI in ’43 and ’44, and now they’re back from Korea and looking for kicks. It’s a parlay. Hot rods, good-looking shills, walkie-talkies, phone drops, and Speed Graphic cameras.”

  Crowley hooted. “Semper fi, sir. You’re a white man in my book.”

  “Semper fi, boss. We’ll work out the details at your convenience, and I’ll round up my boys.”

  “And, in the meantime? Is there anything you need?”