Widespread Panic

by James Ellroy

  “And, Freddy—I heard Cochran leans left, if anything.”

  I closed with the cloying clue of “Celebrity Smut.” Bob told me to work the listening post my own self. “And—if it pans out, we’ll send in a female ringer to entrap Steve—Claire Klein might be good.”

  Bob signed off with “Sayonara.” I offered “auf Wiedersehen,” boss. I shit, showered, shaved, and made myself march to the mirror. I saw myself and saw where all this was going. Freddy, what thou hath wrought. I called Harry Fremont and made a lunch date.

  * * *

  —

  I drove home. A basketball hoop was nailed beside my front door. Stretch sank long hook shots. She wore her USC silks. Neighbor kids watched. Lance the Leopard lounged in my doorway. Kids patted him and fed him potato chips.

  I snuck up behind Stretch. I said, “If you convince me you’re really nineteen, I’ll toss your hair and kiss your neck.”

  Stretch laughed. She dropped the ball and pulled her hair to one side. The kids scoped the exchange. What’s this repob? She’s bigger than him.

  “I was born January 18, 1935, at Good Samaritan. That means you can go ahead.”

  I caressed her bare shoulders and kissed her neck. I stood tiptoed to do it. The kids clapped. Lance the Leopard looked over and growled.

  Stretch sank three long ones and swiveled. She grabbed my belt and pulled me inside my own pad. Lance followed us in. He detoured to the front bathroom and guzzled toilet water. Stretch waved to the kids and kicked the door shut.

  I crapped out on the couch. Stretch stretched out and laid her head on my lap.

  “My mom showed me the Mirror. Did you have fun at Ciro’s last night?”

  “Do you live with your mom and dad?”

  “I live with my mom. My dad was killed on Saipan, when I was eight. What did you do in the war?”

  “I was a drill instructor at Parris Island. I trained Marines who got killed at Saipan, but I never went overseas myself.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I knew I’d get killed, and I didn’t have the stones to take the risk.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m fearful and selfish, and I have to get whatever it is that I want, and that’s as far as I’m going with this line of questioning.”

  Stretch balled my hands into fists and kissed the knuckles. She kicked off her sneakers and dangled her feet off the couch. Lance hopped on my favorite chair and licked his balls.

  “You’re watchful, too. You forgot to mention that. And you’re diffident and circumspect around me. And none of the girls at Linda’s hates you, even though you broke half the liquor bottles during that Beverage Control raid in ’48. And you’re chagrined for digging on me, even though you spy on people and expose them in print, and beat the crap out of people who threaten to sue your low-life magazine.”

  I smiled. “I stole the bottles I didn’t break, and Billy Eckstine bought them off me at half price.”

  “Billy likes you. I wouldn’t be here if he didn’t.”

  “Billy’s Billy, and he’s not all moonlight and roses. He tried to promote you to me and my recently ex girlfriend.”

  Stretch pried my fists loose and placed my hands on her breasts. Hey there, you with the stars—

  “Billy overrates me, in lots of different ways.”

  “You’re nineteen, and you’re looking around. I get that you’re bold—and you think the rules don’t apply to you. That’s as far as I’ll take that line of chat, until I see you start making mistakes.”

  “You’re saying the only thing that you can teach me right now is efficacy?”

  “I’m saying that for some people, opportunity is love, and you might be one of them.”

  * * *

  —

  The dizzy duo at the listening post. Leashed Leopard and Large Lady. Race Rockwell and Ward Wardell swooooooned.

  Stretch wore a tweed skirt, saddle shoes, and a pink oxford shirt. Lance wore a spiked collar that Bondage Bob bought him for Christmas. I brought three pizza pies and a cold case of Brew 102.

  Stretch loomed and she-lorded it over three big men. Lance roamed the rooms and let people pat him. Race fed him anchovy pizza. Ward showed off our new corkboard. There’s Operation Rock Wife bold-bannered—with nude pix and dippy dossiers tacked below.

  We snarfed pizza pie and went to work. Race worked the Hunan Hut tap, I worked the Cochran line. Ward worked Call-Girl Line #1. Stretch got Call-Girl Line #2. Cool kicks motivated me. It was the lez line. Bernie Spindel and I hot-wired the crib—Flores south of Sunset. The sinsational sapphic scene sang dusk to dawn and entrapped occasional big-name babes and butches. Let’s see how Stretch registers and reacts.

  We pulled chairs up to the consoles. We plugged in. We donned headphones. Lance noshed pizza crusts and crapped out on the floor.

  I sat close to Stretch. We played kneesies and lazy-linked hands. I got two hours of dead air. Some unknown male called Steve the Stud at 8:19 p.m. Steve called him “Cal.” They schmoozed Private Hell 36. Steve dished Howard Duff and wife Ida Lupino. Duff was a souse. La Lupino was a snout trout. She blew him behind the food truck. Dorothy Malone sizzled. “I’ve got this celebrity smut angle I’m working on. She’d be a prime candidate.”

  Bingo!!!—Celeb Smut Lead #1/8:27 p.m.

  The call capped at 8:33. Dead air dinged in its weary wake. I watched Stretch work the lez line. Her headset was clamped tight. She notched notes in her fone log. She evinced deep delight and entrenched ennui.

  Boredom banged me. I snagged Claire Klein’s buff shot and dossier off the corkboard and sat back down. Stretch snatched the buff shot and studied it. She winked and went Oooh-la-la. She said, “Rock should marry her.”

  I winked back. Claire was boss-built and credibly credentialed. Born: New York City, 8/11/21. World War II Wave lieutenant. Court-martialed and DD’d on a pandering beef. Emigrated to Palestine, ’47. Seduced and tortured Arab spies for the Irgun and the Stern Gang. Shit—the A-rabs are my put-upon people!!!!!

  Claire hits America. She moves to L.A. and gets a California teaching credential. She teaches algebra at Le Conte Junior High. She gets part-time studio work. Claire’s a climber. She takes scalps and moves on. Bob Aldrich, Otto Preminger, Henry Hathaway, Willy Wyler. She visits Burt Lancaster’s torture den. Burt wants to spin her on his wall-mounted dartboard and toss darts at her legs. Claire won’t play. Burt comes on coercive. Claire shows him the shiv strapped to her left leg. Burt amps up the ante. Claire drops names.

  Mickey Cohen, Lou Rothkopf, Sammy Dorfman, Baldy Stein. The kosher kowboys in the L.A. rackets. All zany Zionists. All demented and dyspeptic. Burt backs off—Claire’s bad to the bone and calamitously connected.

  Steve the Stud’s phone rang. Log it—10:21 p.m.

  Steve picked up. Unknown Male #2 jabbered. Steve called him “Fritz.” They schmoozed the Jap sword and Jap-shrunken-head market. Fritz called it “a growth industry.” Biz was up, up. Biz was bullish per Nazi-knife cutlery, all swastika-embossed. Plus Nazi helmets recut into chafing dishes and soup tureens.

  Steve said, “I’m moving out of my kraut phase, Fritzie. Find me some Makarov pistols and some NKVD memorabilia. I wouldn’t say no to daggers from some Ivan’s Lubyanka stash.”

  The call droned on. I exhumed Bondage Bob’s dish: “Cochran leans left, if anything.”

  The call capped out—10:42 p.m. Dead air doused me and slid me into sleep. I went someplace safe and soft. I snored in sync with Lance the Leopard, laid out at my feet.

  Time ticked. Safe and soft became wet and warm. I swam in the River Styx. Joan Horvath rebaptized me. She wore a Nazi-print bikini and swim fins. Stretch jerked off my headset. Such innocence, such glee.

  “Dig this, Uncle Freddy. The dots connect. Claire Klein’s hooking, part-time. She tricked with that Communist Party
cultural guy V. J. Jerome, who’s supposedly infiltrating Hollywood, and the third spoke of the wheel was Babs Payton, who’s been on the skids since she dumped Franchot Tone, according to the fan mags my mom reads. They went at it for two hours straight, and then they drank vodka and slurped borscht.”

  OLLIE HAMMOND’S ALL-NITE STEAKHOUSE

  Wilshire and Serrano

  2/18/54

  We drank lunch. My appetite was up, up. I kicked assiduous ass all morning. Morty Bendish at the Mirror. The Transom and Whisper guys. I told them Rock Hudson was my gig, X-clusive. They kvetched, moped, and moaned. Blood bloomed on my beavertail sap. I sacked their civil contracts and ratched their rights of free speech.

  Harry badged our waiter. He slipped us a jug at the PD’s stock half price. Old Crow and Dexedrine—va-va-voom!!!!!

  “Let’s get to it. You want in on the Joan Horvath snuff. You’ve been waxing sentimental on that nutty broad for years. The price is five yards to buy in, and a yard a pop for special favors.”

  I flashed my flash roll and peeled off ten C-notes. Frazzled Freddy always comes flush. Harry cadged the cash and smiled smug.

  “It looks like a hot-prowl 459, gone way bad. The guy came in a cracked window and left rubber-glove prints on the sill. He had Joanie’s purse in his hands when she woke up and fought him. She scratched him, and we took AB-negative blood spill and dark and coarse beard fragments out from under her nails. That’s good, so far. But there wasn’t enough blood to run individual comparisons on. In this case, that means that blood type can exonerate, but it can’t convict.”

  I gargled Old Crow. “Go on, and tell me why you called Joan a ‘nutty broad.’ ”

  Harry made the jack-off sign. “One, she married Ralphie Horvath, had two kids with him, and stuck with him. Two, she was overqualified for a low-life thief and punk like Ralphie. She had some big education, and was some kind of Russian-history scholar, but all she did was stay at home and tend to her snot-nosed kids.”

  I lit a cigarette. “Here’s the big question. Did George Collier Akin do the job?”

  Harry shook his head. “I’m not so sure. Bill Parker’s convinced himself, he’s convinced the Hats, and you know what that means. Parker saw the hospital pix of that girl that Akin, Brown, and Dulange abducted, and now he’s running hot, with a thermometer so far up his ass that it hurts. He wants Akin dead, the Hats want to kill him, and it’s true that Akin broke with Brown and Dulange when they wouldn’t agree to snuff the girl. Okay, we can assume that Akin—who’s a hot-prowl man from way back—is off working solo, and most likely in L.A. city. So far, so good—but I go back to ’43 with this evil cocksucker—and the Horvath caper doesn’t look like his kind of deal.”

  I stubbed out my cigarette. “How so?”

  Harry said, “Okay. He’s got dark and coarse facial hair, so that matches. I checked his Quentin file, and he’s got AB-negative blood, so that matches, and it’s pretty rare. But I popped Akin for eight hot prowls in ’43, and he always wore a rubber red devil mask, cut down low on his neck, to protect him from scratching and gouging, and to further terrorize his victims—because he is the most sadistic son of a whore I’ve ever met—so if the Hats want to put him down, who am I to raise a stink?”

  I gargled Old Crow. It rerouted my dexie surge, molto bene.

  “He wanted to kill the cheerleader girl, but he’s never killed any women, prior to that, that you know of.”

  Harry twirled his glass. “Never. He spent ’43 to ’51 in Quentin. He paroled out in November, hung up his parole, and went rogue. We’ve had six more hot-prowl/assaults possibly attributable to the Red Devil Bandit since then—all with grievous bodily harm short of murder. Then this fuck hooks up with Brown and Dulange, and it’s the BHPD’s grief from that point on.”

  I said, “He split from Brown and Dulange two weeks ago. You ‘assume’ that he’s working solo, but you’re ‘implying’ that he’s not strictly adhering to his Red Devil Bandit MO, and you’ve got no reported hot prowls that you’re sure he’s good for.”

  Harry sighed. “You nailed it. Never let it be known that the infamous Freddy O. drew a dumb breath.”

  I chained cigarettes. “What else? Describe the crime scene.”

  “The pad was ransacked. I think he was looking for something besides purse cash and whatever else he could carry away. There was over six grand of your penance money stashed in Joanie’s clothes closet, and he didn’t bother to find it or steal it. This whole deal reeks of personal animus. It’s an I-hate-you-and-I’m-going-to-kill-you job, and that spells revenge.”

  I flashed my flash roll and rolled off five more C-notes. Harry snatched them up.

  “You’re a white man, Freddy. I’ll have complete background paper on Joanie by tomorrow.”

  I got noxiously nostalgic. “Harry,” “Ralphie,” “Joanie.” ’49 to ’54. A kid cop THEN. A Pervdog of the Nite NOW.

  “I remember that day in the squadroom. You were younger and not quite so fat. ‘Hey, kid, you look bored. Go shag this Ralphie guy and kill him.’ ”

  Harry went nix. “Can it, Freddy. You can’t pull the shit you pull in your everyday life and think that this jive crusade of yours will render you squeaky-clean.”

  * * *

  —

  Clean,” shit. “Jive crusade”—malignantly more so. Harry Fremont was bent and bought and paid-for since the year one. He knew bewilderingly bupkes per Opportunity is Love.

  I drove back to my pad. The door was whipped wide open. I heard screeches, yowls, growls, eeeeks, and roars. I ran inside and grokked on the grief.

  Catfight. Lance the Leopard versus Joi Lansing—my exultant ex and extortion partner par excellence.

  Joi was packing left-behind undies. Lance smelled thievery. He pinned Joi to the back wall and clawed her clothes to torn tatters. Her dress dripped off of her. He sharp-shredded her brassiere. His claws caught frayed fabric and rip-rip-ripped. I sensed sexual intent. Lance lashed at Joi. He orgiastically ordered up a cross-species striptease.

  I laffed. Joi screeched, “Freddy?” I grabbed Lance’s spiked collar and pull-pull-pulled. Lance went sulky submissive. He cursory-growled and slither-slunk to the bathroom. I heard him lap up a toilet-water aperitif.

  I said, “What’s shaking, baby?”

  Joi said, “You loser shitheel.”

  I stepped toward her. She stepped toward me. She launched a left hook and landed it mid-face. She ripped a right. I let it land and pushed her down on the bed.

  She said, “One for what you did to Johnnie, and one for that stunt you pulled at Ciro’s. And tell Lee to get that rape-o cat declawed.”

  I pulled a chair up. Joi grabbed her purse and dug out her cigarettes. I lit her up.

  “It’s good to see you, kid.”

  “You insouciant shitheel. I’m never coming back to you, and I’m never working with you again—not in this lifetime.”

  I laffed. “How’s this sound? Rock Hudson needs a wife. Lew Wasserman’s protecting his reputation and Universal’s investment. I could let you be the girl, for ten percent of the alimony deal when you dump him.”

  Joi kicked out at me. Her shoes flew wide and missed me. Her nylons were nicked and rife with runs. Lance clawed cloooose.

  “I’m never coming back to you.”

  “I heard you the first time.”

  “No more shakedowns, no more bait jobs, no more three-ways.”

  “Come on. You’re saying no more Liz Taylor in the sack?”

  Joi blew smoke up at me. Her fierce façade cracked a tad. She’d landed two good ones. I wiped blood off my lips.

  “The world’s hip to you, Freddy. Your ‘Tattle Tyrant holds Hollywood hostage’ shtick is wearing people thin.”

  “Who’s ‘people,’ babe? Come on. Name some names that mean something to me.”

  Joi
rehooked her brassiere. “How’s Steve Cochran sound? He said he’s seen you and Bernie Spindel lurking around his place. He ran a bug check and came up empty, but he’s got you pegged as Public Cockroach Number One, and he said you’re heading for a good ass kicking.”

  Steve the Stud. There’s a grabber. It’s an irksome inkling of Something.

  I lied loud. “His building’s full of call-girl cribs. Bernie and I were planting some taps. ‘Lurking,’ shit. He’s talking out of his ass, and the magazine’s got no stake in him.”

  Joi flipped her burning butt at me. It singed my Sy Devore coat.

  “You’re jealous. Steve’s got all the goods you’re envious of. I know you, Freddy. You’ve got to know what’s going on with him, and you’ll pay me for the debrief.”

  My throat clamped and closed tight. My hands shimmy-shimmied. I whipped my wallet out and tossed bills on the bed.

  Joi culled the cash and counted it. Confidential comes up flush. A grand for a five-minute snitch.

  “I ran into Steve at Johnnie’s. He told me he’s making a ‘message’ smut movie, based on a hillbilly song by Bill Haley and His Comets, whoever the hell they are. He’s trying to recruit some name actors and actresses, because the film will only be shown privately, so no one’s career will get hurt. The song’s called ‘Thirteen Women and Only One Man in Town.’ The atom bomb destroys the world, except for thirteen women and a man in this little desert burg, and the man has a giant dick, and he’s on a crusade to repopulate the world. Get it? Steve’s out of his gourd, and he’s the director, the writer, and very obviously the star. He said he’s got financial backing, but I don’t believe him. Get it? He wants to lure thirteen women to the desert and get laid, and odds are, there’s no film in the camera, and it’s all some pipe dream.”

  “Celebrity smut.” Steve Cochran’s name in Jack Kennedy’s address book. The phone records. Steve calls Jack/Jack calls Steve/Steve calls Jack.

  I smelled Something.

  “Five grand, love. I’ll hot-wire you and send you in to bait him.”