by James Ellroy
Those steel-rimmed glasses gave her 3-D vision. She saw through me like some creature in a monster matinee. I shut my eyes to shut her gaze out and deploy the big close-up. A black curtain closed off her kiss.
BERNIE SPINDEL’S BUG VAN
Outside Steve Cochran’s Apartment Complex
West Hollyweird
2/16/54
Bernie said, “I’m wary of this job. This psycho cocksucker scares me.”
Studly Steve lived on Havenhurst between Fountain and the Strip. Three sparkle-Spanish buildings/one cool courtyard. Six pads per building. Call girls and minor movie minions ensconced within.
It’s 9:14 a.m. now. Steve’s home. His coon maroon Merc’s parked out back.
I lit a cigarette and gargled Old Crow. I had a case of the yammering yips and the mean megrims. I kept seeing things. Strongarm cops in surging surveillance. Women I wanted wicked baaaaaaaad and weren’t there. Waiting wilted me. I wanted WORK. I popped two Dexedrine to goose things along.
Bernie said, “He’s got four rooms, plus bathroom. I checked with the County Planning Office. The walls are soft stucco, and all rough-finished. They’ll be easy to drill and respackle. I broke in last night and carved some paint chips. It’s a new paint job, so it should be easy to match.”
We wore TV repairman jumpsuits. Master keys would get us in. Steve the Stud was filming some crime lox called Private Hell 36. Bernie spot-tailed him yesterday. He said Steve got his all-day calls at 9:30 a.m.
I said, “We’ll piggyback the listening post on Sweetzer. Burt Lancaster’s got his torture den in the same building. My Marines will monitor both locations. We’ll have a man hot-wired in at all times.”
Bernie went Oy. “Burt swings both ways. Ward Wardell told me. He buys his boys from a swish named Dwight Gilette.”
I said, “To each his own. You’re a big cheese at your synagogue, and you’ve got eight schvartze girlfriends.”
Bernie went Oy. I pointed across the street. Studly Steve’s rolling. His cherry Merc’s wheeling southbound.
We loaded up. Drills, spackle paste, paint and brushes—check. Wire rolls, condenser mikes, friction tape—check. Wire clamps, spatulas, industrial vacuum—check. Toolbox packed with close-work tools—check.
We packed two big metal cases. They were marked “Acme TV Repair.” We vacated the van and coursed through the courtyard. We hit Steve’s door at a sprint. Bernie jabbed keys at the door lock. Key #3 got us in.
I popped through the pad. It was cool, cozy, and tidy tight. Living room/ bedroom/kitchen/bathroom/washroom. One connecting hallway. One demented decorating motif:
World War II. Ripe real regalia. Booty from Berchtesgaden and Jap flags salvaged from Saipan. Swastika wall banners. German helmets as cereal serving bowls, sunk in the sink. SS-motif ashtrays. Rising-sun rugs. Showy shadow-boxed Lugers. Beaver pix of Eva Braun—der Führer’s freaky Frau. Choice tchotchkes on chairs/tables/wall racks. Dig this, deranged: Jap shrunken heads, beady-eyed beasts, all wearing fit-to-size Brooklyn Dodger hats.
Bernie slavered, slack-jawed. I got out my Minox spy camera and shot it all. I smelled Smear Job. Let’s foto-fuck this creep.
Steve Cochran, the Big Dick Bürgermeister of the L.A. Reich. Nazi nests at Warner’s, Metro, and Fox. We’ll loose-link it to last year’s Nazi/flying saucer piece. Bondage Bob Harrison partied with Paraguayan parasite Alfredo Stroessner and wicked Juan Perón. They hid hordes of Hitlerites, circa ’46. Commie columnists called Confidential “fascistic,” “nativistic,” “hucksteristic,” and “the voice of vile volition in the vox populi.” The coruscating Cochran exposé would lash those leftist lies!!!!!
Bernie jerked at my jumpsuit and jacked me half off my feet. “Freddy, let’s go. Quit gawking. We’ve got work to do.”
So, yeah—we worked. We whipped wires to wainscoting and wiggled them under rugs. We drilled white walls and wedged in bug mounts. We rigorously respackled and repainted. We vacuumed up Spackle dust. We planted microphones in cracks, crevices, crawl spaces. We ripped the receivers off the two telephones and planted condenser mikes. We studied standing lamps and stuck bug mounts under the shades. We bugged the bedroom and looped the living room. We supersocked in the sound.
Tick, tick, tick. Four-plus hours’ work. I was sweat-swacked and dexie-ditzed and stomp-the-stars elated. We repacked our gear. Bernie sighed and went Oy. Opportunity is love. That maladroit maxim moved through me.
* * *
—
The Sweetzer listening post. A two-bedroom flop in a Deco dive off Willoughby. We recorded Burt Lancaster’s torture tilts with stacked starlets there. Plus three call-girl cribs. Plus an opium den in the back of the Hunan Hut—“Home of the Shanghai Shipwreck Cocktail.”
The pad was wire-whipped, floor to rafters. Cable cords and outlet plugs jammed up the joint. We manned tape rigs round the clock. Bernie set up a transceiver in Steve Cochran’s living room. It went optimum operational at 6:00 p.m. 6:00 sharp came and went. I slipped on headphones and listened to dead air.
Jimmy Dean dropped by. He brought nudie pix and brief bios for Rock Hudson’s wife candidates. Dig: six backlot babes who cadged coffee for cast and crew and blew select directors. I told Jimmy they looked gooooood. Jimmy donned earmuffs and manned the Hunan Hut rig. He passed on choice sinuendo. The delivery dinks pushed pills packed in with their pupu platters and pork fried rice. Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre toked “O” in the den. They schmoozed their guest shots on Vampira’s late-nite TV show. Vampira went lez in the Los Amigas home for girls. She was running a lez string out of Googie’s, as we speak.
More dead air. I got bored and called my answering service. Oooooh—Miss Joan “Stretch” Perkins called. She wanted to know if she could pick up Lance the Leopard and install him at my crib. I called Stretch back and set it up. I urged caution. Stretch blew me a fone kiss and said she’d make out with me soon.
Joi called. Johnnie Ray called. The answering-service girl said they got catty. “Tell Mr. Otash he’s hung like a cashew—and who knows better than me?” “Tell Mr. Otash he’s an evil storm trooper—and soon the whole world will know.”
Fuck that shit—I went back to line hiss and dead air.
Time ticked. I chain-smoked and scratched my balls. The Hunan Hut delivered dinner. I noshed Noodles à la Chang and China Joe’s Chop Suey. Steve Cochran’s phone rang at 8:29.
Steve picked up. The voice activator vibrated. “It’s Lew’s War Surplus. We’ve got a clearance sale on Schmeisser machine pistols, Nazi daggers, and Jap shrunken heads—flamethrower-fried on Iwo Jima.” Steve bought three daggers and three heads. The guy said he’d fix them up with Dodger baseball caps.
More dead air. I doodled on scratch paper. I wrote “Freddy & Stretch” and drew a heart around it. Time ticked. Steve’s phone rang at 10:52.
I picked up. Static and line fuzz futzed with the call. I got a woman’s voice. I got Steve’s voice. I got static, fuzz, garbles, line lint, lewd laffs, and static stew.
I cuffed the console. I hit the squelch switch. I ditzed dials and got this:
The woman said, “Well…I don’t know…are you…can sign up the talent?”
Steve said, “Are you kid…concept…time has come….Celebrity smut. You want to talk—”
The call static-stuck, fuzzed and futzed, and diminuendoed to dead air.
* * *
—
Googie’s hop-hop-hopped. The Iris Theatre ran a sneak peek of some 3-D dog. The Googie geeks retained their 3-D glasses and goofed themselves out of their gourds.
Jejune jerkoffs. Their revelry ran rampant and rubbed me raw. Tattle tipsters took note of me. I got stuck with stacks of stale bread.
Yawn. Orson Welles sliced the Black Dahlia. Check The Lady from Shanghai. Grok the symbiology. Yawn. Bill Holden’s in the DT ward at Queen of Angels. He’s banging night nurses two at a
pop. Yawn. I’ve got morgue pix. The Carole Landis suicide, back in ’48. All-nude. Full bush. Kodachrome color—if I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’!!
Snore. There’s a plot to throw the ’54 World Series. The Jewnited Nations is pulling the strings. Snore. Grace Kelly’s a nympho. She turned Johnnie Ray straight in a mop closet at the Crescendo. Snore. I know you won’t believe this—but Pat Nixon hatched Count Basie’s mulatto love child!!!!!
I believed all of it and none of it. I was back at the listening post. Unknown woman: “Can sign up the talent?” Steve Cochran: “Concept…time has come….Celebrity smut.”
Quivering question marks broiled my brain and skimmed under my skin. I couldn’t stop the scurrilous scroll.
Then:
The Googie’s geeks froze. I froze. Four fuzz walked in and waltzed the floor. Not just any cops. The LAPD Hat Squad. Sergeant Max Herman. Sergeant Red Stromwall. Sergeant Harry Crowder. Officer Eddie Benson.
LAPD Robbery. Hunter-slayers of heist men. All six-four and 220. All in pearl gray suits and white panama hats. The PD’s hardest hard boys. Chief William H. Parker’s personal pit dogs. Mastiffs on a mission to maul for their master.
I stood up. They whipped up and braced me. Red Stromwall said, “Hi, Freddy.”
Max Herman said, “The Chief wants to see you, Freddy.”
Harry Crowder said, “I like your suit, Freddy. Where’d you steal it?”
Eddie Benson said, “You were always a dipshit, Freddy.”
Max Herman tugged a belt loop and made me his bitch. Red Stromwall poked me with a beavertail sap. Harry Crowder and Eddie Benson flanked me and dwarfed me and made me mince minuscule.
We marched out to the parking lot. A PD plainclothes car rumbled, off by itself. Bill Parker sat in the backseat. I looked in. He looked out. I said, “How’s tricks, Bill? Your wife still doing her act with the mule?”
Harry Crowder kidney-punched me. Red Stromwall sapped me. Max Herman said, “Don’t screech, Freddy. You’ll sound effeminate.” Eddie Benson tossed me in the backseat.
I caught my breath and caressed my kidneys. Parker wore civvies. Parker spoke in his foghorn South Dakota drawl.
“Joan Hubbard Horvath, the widow of the man you killed in the line of duty, was murdered in her home last night. Her kids were off on a school trip. It appears to be a hot-prowl sex snuff. The house was ransacked, and the woman was strangled and stabbed. We found a total of fourteen envelopes bearing your fingerprints. Two of them were stuffed with twenty- and fifty-dollar bills.”
Parker paused. He evil-eyed me. He made with the malocchio.
“The victim fought. We found beard and skin fragments under her nails, and I can see that you’re unmarked. Her assailant had AB-negative blood. Your PD file reveals that you have O positive. This exonerates you as the actual killer, but not as an accomplice or a material witness. I would advise you to provide me with a plausible explanation for your prints on those envelopes.”
I evil-eyed Parker. I made my malocchio more hopped-up and hateful than his.
“I killed Ralph Mitchell Horvath under the PD’s implied dictum that cop killers must die. He was unarmed. I planted a throwdown gun on him and shot him in the back. Then the cop he shot recovered, which rubbed me the wrong way. I’ve been laying penance payments on Joan Horvath, going back five years. I’ve never spoken to her. You’re a good Catholic boy, Bill. You get the guilts sometimes, so you know how it is.”
Parker lit a cigarette and blew smoke in my face. I coughed the smoke back in his face.
“There’s more to this, and most of it makes you look bad. First off, we’ve seen you talking to the Beverly Hills PD, and we make you and your boys for the 459 on Senator Kennedy’s hotel suite. You screwed up the print transparencies, though. You laid down prints for all three of those shitheels who’ve been terrorizing Beverly Hills. That was a big mistake. George Collier Akin left the gang two weeks ago. We have very sound intelligence on this. He insisted on killing the girl they kidnapped, but Brown and Dulange held him back, and the girl was released. George Collier Akin is alleged to be casing solo hot-prowl jobs in my jurisdiction, and I’ve told Max and the boys to find him and kill him. They may seek to consult you in the course of their investigation, and I would advise you to cooperate. It might prevent the Beverly Hills PD from filing charges on you.”
Parker paused. Parker went Shoo, you cockroach. I stepped out of the car. The Hats surrounded me, hail-fellows all.
Max Herman shook my hand. “Here’s to you, Freddy.”
Red Stromwall shook my hand. “Be good, kid.”
Harry Crowder shook my hand. “We miss you, Freddy. Keep your chin up.”
Eddie Benson shook my hand. “Stay clean, dipshit.”
I cut free and stumbled back into Googie’s. I beelined for the front door and plowed busboys and waiters, en masse. I knocked over drink trays. Customers went eeeek and crap-your-pants cringed. I grabbed a double scotch off Gene “the Mean Queen’s” table and guzzled it, sans consent. I capsized a waitress and sent milk shakes and club sandwiches airborne. I crashed out the front door and snagged my Packard pimp sled at the curb.
The Strip was one block north. I blew a red light and whipped westbound. Ciro’s was close. I floored the gas and flamed through late-nite traffic. I swung hard right and racked my undercarriage all up the porte cochere. I fender-bended Ferraris and Facel-Vegas and didn’t give a fucking shit. Two car-park kids tried to corner me. I decked them and downed them and bashed them in the balls. They went ball-bashed falsetto and mewed for their mamas in Miami and Milwaukee.
I crashed into the club. The floor was packed tight-tight. Johnnie Ray stomped the stage. He woman-wiggled and wanton-warbled his hit song, “Cry.” He wiggled the mike and wailed like a jilted fishwife. He sobbed, he sighed, he tossed his spit curl and spun his hearing aid out into the crowd.
Joi and Liberace sat front-row center. I charged up. Patrons saw me. They stood up and went Whoa and Halt now!!!!! I dumped waiters and a fat broad at Bing Crosby’s table. I made the front row. Joi and Lee looked up. Joi lip-synched, “You loser cocksucker.”
I poured her Tom Collins down her dress and ice-cubed her chichis. Joi roundhoused me and fell flat on her ass. Patrons yowled. Johnnie blew his crescendo and cried for real. I dumped Joi’s purse and found her Seconal stash. I guzzled out the contents. I chased five fat red devils with Lee’s double martini. Lee looooved it. He pinched my cheek and swooned. I lurched and lunged and levitated my way out of the club. I slid into my sled and sluiced eastbound on Sunset.
Some new solar system subsumed me. Streetlights went mauve and pink. A-bomb particles parsed and pierced my windshield. I eyeballed passersby. Every man’s face went gargoyle, every woman’s went succubus. Steve Cochran sang “Das Horst Wessel Lied.” I ripped Nazi flags off his walls.
There’s Vine Street. I cut south and cut east on Camerford.
The Horvath house was hot-lit, postmidnite. Nosy neighbors gawked. Outside arc lights glare-glowed the pad and strafed the sky. I parked behind a row of black-and-whites and K-cars. Plainclothesmen and bluesuits pounded the porch. Kids’ toys and furniture were loose on the lawn. The front door stood open. Print men dusted walls. Foto men snapped fotos. Lab men fiber-swept the floors.
Burglary dicks checked window openings and cluck-clucked. I saw Harry Fremont at work. The red devils ripped me and turned it all topsy-turvy. I went blank. Arc-light glare burned my eyes. Joan Horvath and Joan Perkins kissed me like Liz in that close-up. I went black-blank and blinked. I saw Bill Parker and Red Stromwall pass a flask on the porch. I slid my car seat back to deflect the arc light. I got snug and supine. I said, “Please, God—make me safe,” and passed out.
* * *
—
I passed out cold and woke up windshield-warmed by the sun. My windows were up. A cop type stood in the street and eyeballed me. I
didn’t recognize him. He got into an unmarked unit parked in front of me. I grabbed a stray piece of paper and wrote down the rear plate number.
It all came back. I prayed my way out of the sunlight and blinked back to black. Rosie Clooney sang, “Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes.”
THE SECURITY OFFICE AT THE SLEAZOID HOLLYWOOD RANCH MARKET
2/17/54
I made the Mirror. Niteklub Inferno: P.I. Fred O. In Frantic Fracas. I made the Herald: Confidential Cop Otash In Ciro’s Brouhaha. The hot headlines heartwarmed me. They instilled instant pride. Joan Horvath dead-deadened it. Freddy, what thou hath wrought.
Bondage Bob called and congratulated me. The insidious ink spiked Confidential’s early-morning sales. Ciro’s was Sheriff’s turf. Bob called Gene Biscailuz and pledged ten thou to his reelection campaign. It covered the cost of my ten-minute tantrum and frosted out possible beefs.
Joan Horvath got a bleary blip in the Herald’s local spread. Widow Woman Slain in Hollywood Home. Burglary-Sex Motive Cited.
Bob and I biz-talked. I tossed him the tattle on the Rock Hudson wife hunt and laid out the lowdown on the would-be wives. Bob knew candidate Claire Klein. She played shakedown shill at Whisper, back in ’51. Her part-time gig at Universal was a plain ploy to meet extortable men. I weighed in: We’ve got to scoop the fan mags on this one. Dole out the dish on Rump Ranger Rock’s disingenuous dates with real women. Sock in the subtext. It’s a shadow shuck. Hollywood will fuck you when no one else will.
Bob agreed. He added, And we’ll double-cross Rock on his wedding nite and expose his boy bent. We yukked the irksome irony. I dumped the dirt on the Steve Cochran gig. Bob pooh-poohed the Nazi-Jap fetish trove and called Steve a history buff and no more. He himself paid five thou for a swastika-print bikini once worn by Leni Riefenstahl. His girlfriend turned heads at that big Polio Fund pool party.
