Widespread Panic

by James Ellroy

  I sat down. She read me. Here’s fright-fraught Freddy. Freddy’s got the frets.

  “I saw the bug mounts when Babs and I tricked with V. J. Jerome. I thought it might get back to you. Babs even joked about it. ‘Half these trick pads are hot-wired, and you never know who’s listening. Most likely it’s Freddy Otash.”

  I guzzled her absinthe. I grabbed the goblet too hard. The glass sheared and shattered. Sharp shards cut my hand.

  Claire pressed her napkin into the palm and balled my fist around it. Claire unbuttoned my shirt cuffs and rolled up the sleeves in one go.

  She ran her hands up my arms. She tugged at the hairs. She removed the napkin and blotted blood off my hand.

  “You should assume that I want you to know everything that I do and say, and that it’s all in our common interest. ‘Opportunity is love,’ as you’ve put it before. I’m sure you’ve spoken to Babs. And I’m sure she’s told you a few things. You know why I’m here in L.A., and I know you’re not here to deter me or prevent me from doing what I intend to do. From here on in, we should credit each other with the ability to learn and extrapolate. We’ll have our moment together when we’ve accomplished what we need to, and it will be all that much sweeter then.”

  I said, “Robin Redbreast” and “Connie Woodard.” My voice sheared. Claire pulled her shiv and picked glass shards out of my hand.

  * * *

  —

  Stretch said, “You’re scared. It’s like you’ve seen the world’s worst ghost.”

  My bungalow bid me to safety. Stretch was safe. Lance was safe. I needed that. I wanted to be someplace dark and depraved with Claire Klein.

  I held my hand up. I heal fast. My cuts had crusted into crisp little crosses. I’d been stigmatized.

  Claire was a Navy nurse, circa ’43. Claire knew from knives. She cleansed my wound with high-test absinthe. She placed my hand on her breast and held it there. A part of me passed into her.

  “Uncle Freddy, you’re shaking. And what’s with your hand? Don’t tell me you’ve had some kind of religious visitation.”

  I walked up to my wall graph. Confidential’s daily sales had spiked spectacularly. I scanned my treacherous troika graph. I drew arrows between Operation Rock Wife and the Cochran Gig. I linked former to latter and wrote “Claire Klein & Babs Payton” below. I arrow-linked “V. J. Jerome” & “Connie Woodard.” I wrote “Russian consulate guys” & “Robin Redbreast” below that.

  Stretch walked over. Her eyes grazed the graph and ran right to “Robin Redbreast.” She got goose bumps. They sprouted and spread up her arms.

  I said, “The Sweetzer listening post. Monitor Lez Line #2, every chance you get. I’ll pay you two yards a week.”

  She orbed my hopped-up hieroglyphics. She said, “As long as you tell me how all this plays out.”

  THE NORTH CAMPUS LIBRARY AT UCLA

  3/20/54

  Transcripts. One fat file box. She was Joan Marcelline Hubbard then. She’s Joan Horvath of My Heart now.

  The admin folks delivered. They called me this a.m. They stridently stressed that rules and regulations apply. View the contents here. Return the box by 9:00 p.m. Don’t snitch documents. Don’t mooch monographs. The honor system applies.

  I took a table all by myself. I tallied tabbed file folders and crafted a chronology. Joan Marcelline Hubbard. DOB 11-6-18. She hails from the hellish-hot San Joaquin Valley. She’s farmworker stock. She graduated high school in ’35. She picks fruit with a wetback work crew. She digs her way out of the Depression. She applies to UCLA.

  She’s accepted. She hits Westwood in the fall of ’39.

  It’s all language labs and lit crit. She learns Russian/Polish/Italian. She flaunts her fluency in class and stages stirs. La Hubbard’s a hambone. She’s a distaff disc jockey on Bruin Radio. She shoves Shostakovich down the throats of the campus illiterati. She rewards them with reductive Rachmaninoff and cheesy Tchaikovsky. She riffs on Russki literature. She writes her own commercials for Russian restaurants. She’s a regular at Karlov’s Kasa Kiev. Karlov kicks back kash. She writes her own commercials for Polish Pete’s Pirogi Palace. Pete pays her in cold cash and kielbasa cutlets. She works her way through college in this mad manner. She’s a noted campus cutup. She’s a sinfully self-promoting cheerleader chick.

  She gets the grades. Woooo!!!—Straight A’s across the board. She studies the Russian romantic poets. She cruelly critiques the movement. It’s all marginal and mystical malarkey. She links Polish piano pounder Paderewski to nattering Nazi composers of the oompah-band ilk. Her professors know that she’s a gallivanting gadfly—but stress the solid soundness of her rigor. ’39, ’40, ’41. Joan Marcelline Hubbard makes her mark and goes forth.

  She graduates. She goes on to grad school. That crisp chronology cruised me through her academic life. Course names/dates/test scores/grades/the names of professors. The transcripts tripped by as La Joan’s light fantastic. File pages blew by in a blur.

  I hit late ’41 and the cusp of ’42. I hit my first chronological misfile. Spring ’40: An Introduction to Polish Labor Movements/Professor Witold Kirpaski. I put the transcript aside and plowed through late ’41. Then this, then this, then THIS:

  Fall ’39. The Political Content of the Post-Revolutionary Russian Novel/Guest Professor Constance Woodard.

  * * *

  —

  The nite becomes me. I assume my Pervdog pose. My hophead side sidles forth and fuels me. I’m the Red Devil Bandit, one crazed chromosome removed. It’s kid shit shorn of pretense. I’ve peeped since I was fourteen years old in bumfuck Massachusetts. Thus, I peeped NOW.

  I parked outside Connie Woodard’s pad. I popped three Dexedrine and adjusted my adrenaline load. Midnite marched to 1:00 a.m. All Connie’s lights were off. I pondered a B and E—but abstained.

  My wall graph walloped me. Lives and lines linked on paper. Fall ’39. Connie Woodard links to Joan Hubbard. Connie’s linked to Steve Cochran. Claire Klein links to Connie. She’s marked a man for murder. She thinks Connie may know things. She knows I know things. She knows I’ve got L.A. hot-wired. I’m the Man to See. Claire talks to me through a mad medium. Listening posts broadcast two ways under her spell. She pounds me, paranoiac. Freddy, what thou hath wrought. She Bible-bashes me. The Book of Revelation 3:8. I know all the things you do, and I have opened a door for you that no one can close. She has made me the Man to Be Seen.

  I eyeballed the Woodard house. I fought off B & E urges. I felt seen. I kept seeing things that might or might not be there. Cop cars clustered in close surveillance. Women wielding shivs. Claire stamped me stigmatized. We merged heartbeats. She marked me the Man to Be Seen.

  I worked the phones all afternoon. I talked to Harry Fremont. He froze on the get-me-into-Connie’s-house front. “I can’t come up with a ruse or diversion, Freddy. Give me time to think this through.” I talked to Stretch. She reported from the Sweetzer listening post and Lez Line #2. She said Claire and some unknown Russki talked mucho McCarthy. Jabbering Joe and his feckless Feds were working L.A., through and through. Joe was set to serve subpoenas and roust Red cliques clicking back twenty years. Joe needed gooooooood publicity baaaaaad. Newspapers gnashed him. Radio reporters rebuffed him. TV pundits punished him for his sins. Brother, I empathize. We’re both Men to Be Seen.

  I hid out at the Larchmont listening post and listened to listless dead air. I killed dusk and half the nite there. Connie called nobody, nobody called her. I dozed and dreamed of Stretch and Claire, nude like I’d never seen them. I woke up and drove two blocks to here.

  Late nite becomes me. 1:00 became 2:00. I noticed empty milk bottles outside Connie’s front door. I got This Nutty Notion That Just Might Work.

  Time ticked. I chain-smoked and chewed Chiclets. The milkman arrived at 4:13 a.m. He grabbed the empty bottles and left a fresh four-pack. I grabbed my sodium secobarbital
stash and removed eight capsules. Connie might mix milk with her morning coffee. If so, she’s cooked.

  I walked up to the door. I pulled off the bottle caps and whipped in my witches’ brew. Four bottles/eight pills/Freddy O.’s merry milk shake. I shook the bottles and condensed the contents. I slid back to my sled to wait.

  Dawn dimmed nightfall. Low clouds closed in and reigned rain. Connie opened her front door at 7:14. It was quick. She filched the four-pack and went back inside.

  I waited. Waiting wilts me and wears me thin. I waited, regardless. 7:14 to 8:14. One hour, no more. She’s had coffee or she hasn’t. The kitchen’s the likely location. It’s peepable. Note those low windows facing the driveway.

  I peeper-popped over. I peeped one window, two windows, three. There’s Connie. She’s passed out flat on the kitchen floor. There’s spilled coffee au lait. She’s inviting me in.

  My #6 pick fit the keyhole. The back door wiggled wide open. I cut into the kitchen. Connie snored. She should inhabit Dreamsville for ten to twelve hours. I had time for a top-end toss.

  The kitchen. Chromium and bleached-blond wood. Nothing succulent or suspicious. The living room. All mid-century modern miasma and murky abstract art. A blitzkrieg of black leather. Glare off glass walls. A Kandinskyesque carpet, cobalt-colored and loaded with goofball gewgaw shapes. Nothing succulent or suspicious. Just Connie’s suspect taste.

  I checked the downstairs bathroom. Nothing nudged me. I walked upstairs. No surprises sandbagged me, straight off. One bathroom/one bedroom/one office. I always work up to women’s bedrooms. I checked the bathroom first.

  No, nein, nyet. Cold-cobalt walls and threadbare throw rugs. No medicine-chest mishpokeh—no dizzy dope/no ribbed rubbers/no diaphragm dusted with cornstarch.

  The office. Here it gets gooooooood.

  Note the red walls. They’re all poster-pinned. It’s a treasonous triptych. Free the Scottsboro Boys!!!!! Communism is 20th Century Americanism!!!!! Ben Shahn’s screechy screed: “You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.”

  I grabbed my crotch. Hey, Connie—convert this, you Red Reptile!!!!!

  There’s a desk/a swivel chair/a typewriter. There’s three drawers packed with dumb desk supplies. Connie’s column for today was tucked in the typewriter. The Marlborough School for Girls, the winter ’54 ball, the Hancock Park elite attends.

  I checked the top drawer. There’s a red leather diary marked “1954.” Yesterday was March 20. I dipped to the date and read this:

  “I fear what I presume will be Senator McCarthy’s last stand before a long-overdue U.S. Senate censure. I fear what will happen when less strident anti-Communists take up the cause that once he owned and has now all too overtly besmirched, and that those subtle fascists will assume an aura of respectability. I fear that my Party membership will be exposed, along with those in my cell—which seems likely, as Senator Joe has set up shop here in Los Angeles, rather covertly, and seems determined to do damage to those I love in the city that I love and call home. All of us have sworn allegiance to the Soviet Union. How could any sane person not? But I fear that we will never have the chance to put forth our public case, as we conduct our more pertinent tasks in secret. McCarthy has been our most consistent goad and the most persistent face of fascist vituperation since the early days in Korea. What will happen when he goes? We require intense persecution to prove the solvency of our war on capital. We must never be tolerated. Tolerance militates against revolution. We must be violently opposed, so that our reaction in kind will be considered the only true and sane reaction by the oppressed masses that we strive to liberate.”

  Woooo!!!!! That is some dippy dialectic and convoluted confusion!!!!! Connie’s a stagnant Stalinist—with Uncle Joe now a year dead!!!!!

  I dipped diary pages backward. It was more, more, more—maladroitly more of the same. I hit February 17. Simple sentiment stunned me and stopped me in my tracks.

  “JMH is dead. She is dead, the only she I’ve ever known. It was in the papers and briefly on the radio. The police suspect a burglary gone awry.”

  I flipped back to New Year’s. It was all agitprop and agitation. I got no more Joan jolts, no incriminating initials, no named names.

  I bopped to the bedroom. I saw more red walls. They were garlanded with Goyaesque portraits of women. Ooooh—they were nuke-bomb nude and clad in the wicked wardrobe of revolution. They wore black boots and fur-trimmed hats emblazoned with hammer and scythe. They wielded whips and laid the lash on men marked “Fascist Oppressor.”

  I got it. It’s Goya as comic-book artiste. It’s savage satire. It’s the annihilating antithesis of Connie Woodard’s toooooooo-tame life as a Hearst hack. It’s communism as contraband pornography. It’s a staggering strain of the jejune jive WE ALL jerk off to. It’s the jack-off juvenilia that has enslaved half the world.

  I opened a closet door. Connie’s spinster threads channeled Chanel No. 5. A top shelf featured comely camisoles and slithery slips. I ran a hand under them. Scented envelopes slid out. I knew they were lesbian love letters.

  I let the butch billet-doux lie. A file cabinet couched against the wall caught my eye. Three file drawers. All unlocked. I tornado-tore through them.

  Red-leather diaries. Connie’s Red message, beaming back to ’38. The Moscow show trials. Connie justifies Stalin’s purges. She confoundingly cosigns death, death, and more death. There’s photographs tucked between pages. Connie cultivates young women and preens proud with them. Perdition, catch my soul—there She is.

  Connie and Joan Hubbard. A UCLA backdrop. The foto is dated 8/12/41. There’s Joan. She’s twenty-two. It’s faded Kodachrome color. Connie’s russet-haired and knock-kneed at forty. Joan wears a red beret.

  I tore through Connie’s August ’41 diary. I went to 8/12/41 and found this:

  “I spent time with Joan H. today. I think she’s ready to join the Party. I told her my cell was small and all were utterly loyal to one another. She’d be safe there.”

  It wasn’t enough. I wanted more of what all of this was. I found diaries dated up to 1946. Connie’s prose went crypto-clipped. Initials replaced names. “All of this” had to be Commie cell minutes.

  I hit my first “JH” in May ’42. I followed “JH” at weekly intervals, up through V-J Day. “JH,” “JH,” “JH.” My Joan’s a certified subversive. I know who “CW” is. Who’s “SA”? Who’s “RJC”? Who’s “EPD”? I didn’t know and didn’t care. I only wanted Joan’s name and Connie’s scent on the pages.

  JH, JH, JH. She’s mine throughout the war years. She’s left UCLA. I’m in the Marine Corps and dodging combat duty. She translates for the California State Senate. I join LAPD. JH, JH, JH. We’re into ’46 now. I’ll murder Joan’s husband in three years’ time—

  * * *

  —

  Googie’s. My unfailing fallback and righteous retreat. The Tattle Tyrant held sway here. Confidential was king. Bondage Bob Harrison’s handouts bought me all the love I could take.

  Late-a.m. tipsters almost toppled my table. Orson Welles snuffed the Black Dahlia. The rumor raged now. I told the tipsters to fuck off and bought them off with chump change. Joe McCarthy’s in town. No shit, Sherlock. Yeah—but he’s shacked at the Chateau Marmont with Danny Kaye. Okay—here’s ten scoots, don’t bug me, my heart’s heavy, and I’m all alone with some shattering shit.

  Boo-hoo, boo-hoo. I’m in existential exile. I’ve got boocoo opportunity, but the love eludes me.

  I wolfed pancakes and pondered my doofus dilemma. I told my wetback waiter to bring me a phone. I called Harry Fremont at the City Hall DB. Harry boo-hoo’d me. He hadn’t rigged a ruse or devised a diversion to get me inside Casa Connie. I told him I got inside. I trashed my tracks and blew a blistering shot at reentry. In the meantime, I’ll pay you to do this:

  There’s Feds in town. They may be running rogue. They’r
e jungled up in jumpy juju with Joe McCarthy. They must have a field office somewhere. Find them and suborn them with Bondage Bob’s payola. I need three hours with their files.

  Harry said, “And this pertains to Joanie?”

  I said, “Yeah—it sure as shit does.”

  Harry coughed up compliance. I hung up. Claire Klein and Rock Hudson sat down with me. They held hands. I held up my hand and showed them my stigmata. Claire laffed. Rock went Huh?

  They looked good together. They glowed. They were actors to their core. They were Strasbergites maimed by the Method. The homo heartthrob marries the sicko psychopath. This mock marriage sends them, Daddy-O.

  Rock said, “You’re green at the gills, Freddy. You should take a Bromo and hit the sack.”

  Claire said, “Freddy has things on his mind.”

  I laffed. “Have you set a date yet?”

  Rock lit a cigarette. “Jimmy’s working on it. He’s with Liz and me on Giant, you know. He thinks two ceremonies is the way to go. Claire’s Jewish, and I’m a Presbyterian. Jimmy wants to emphasize the interfaith angle. You know, one synagogue gig, and one church gig.”

  Claire lit a cigarette. “There’s no need for Rock to convert. I know a rabbi who performs a good ceremony and works cheap. We met in the Sinai, back in ’48.”

  Rock said, “Claire’s got a history.”

  I said, “Don’t I know it.”

  Autograph hounds hit the table. Rock threw up his hands and winked at Claire. I’m in demand, babe.

  Claire winked at me. Rock signed autographs. Claire slipped me a note under the table. I peeped the piece of paper.

  Tipster Claire. The insidious insider. She’s got news on the celeb smut film.

  The start date had been moved up. They shoot tonight. Here’s the address. It’s an abandoned motel in Cathedral City.