Widespread Panic

by James Ellroy

  No, Freddy. I’m your recidivistic refusenik. Besides, there’s one name that you’ve withheld from me.

  Yes, that’s true. I refused to name Claire Klein. I equivocated here. I told Connie that a dangerous woman was orbiting her orbit. She wants to kill a man—but she won’t tell me why. She won’t name the man. She’s my other ripe refusenik. I’m not naming her. She’s one of the other two women that I love.

  “Freddy & Claire.” “Freddy & Stretch.” More names cutely carved on a tree. Unconsummated communions. That’s fine for now. I’m beat-to-shit busy. I’ve got to find a man and kill him, myself.

  Connie won’t name names. I vow to kill Joan’s killer. Connie won’t name names. I vow to jerk Joe McCarthy’s chain so that he won’t expose her. Connie still won’t name names. Why’s Jack Kennedy’s name in your address book? Oh, pshaw—Jack’s just an old pal. Why’s Steve Cochran’s name in your address book? Here, Connie withers and wilts me: he was my last tortured and torturing male lover—before you.

  I’m thirteen days in with Constance Linscott Woodard. It’s tender and tortured. I’m beat-to-shit busy. I’m rolling lucky and unlucky thirteens.

  Lucky 13: Harry Fremont frosted out my assault on Big Steve. He greased the Sheriff’s bulls investigating the caper. They put it off to a B and E man out to clout Big Steve’s Nazi gear. Unlucky 13: Thirteen Women and Only One Man in Town debuted a week later.

  In Harry Cohn’s rec room. Popcorn and cut-rate booze. I’m there. Big Steve’s there. He’s beat-to-shit bandaged and mummified like Pharaoh’s granddaddy. Jack the K.’s there. Bill Knowland’s there. They yuk-yuk and wolf-whistle. Joe McCarthy’s there, his own self.

  The flick made me squirrelshit squeamish. I’ve got no beef with the A-bomb. We should have mushroomed Moscow after we juked the Japs. Joi Lansing was my ex, and I had a wolfish wingding with Babs Payton. It was the sexploitation aspect. That’s what gored my goat.

  Bondage Bob bagged me outside the rec room. He said he was killing the Cochran exposé. Big Steve was tight with some powerful pols. He pimped for Jack K. He juiced Jack’s pill habit. Freddy, let this one go.

  I did. It rudely rankled me. I compensated, commensurate. I bore down big on the who-killed-Joan and the spare-Connie-from-Joe McCarthy fronts.

  I gave Harry Fremont a gooooood gig. The rogue Feds had to have a long-range listening post. Find it for me, Dads. Lucky 13: Harry hit it, hard. Unlucky 13: I found bugs and taps in Connie’s living room and bedroom. Lucky 13: they were mismounted and mismatched and malfunctioned. The broadcast beams barely made it next door.

  Lucky 13: Stretch worked my Sweetzer listening post. Unlucky 13: she picked up Lez Line #2 chat. Claire Klein tricked with V. J. Jerome. She pressed him on “Robin Redbreast”—but venal V.J. purported to know zilch. Claire pressured him on Connie Woodard. V.J. said, “Don’t sound me—she’s just a dilettante.” Stretch told me his tone was deadly demeaning. V.J., you speak with forked tongue.

  Thirteen days. I want names. Claire wants names. V.J. won’t name names. Connie won’t name names, most of all.

  I vow to find Joan’s killer. Connie won’t name names. I vow to save her from Joe McCarthy. Connie won’t name names. We make love. We pillow-talk around the whirlwind woman who brought us together. Connie won’t name names. She won’t say whether she and Joan did or didn’t do the deed and were or were not rapture-rapt lovers.

  I read Connie’s diaries. The sex sent me. It remained kiss and swerve, breath and scent. I read through years of Commie collusion. Delusion deluged me. Pathos pounded me. Connie and her cell siblings suck up Soviet yak-yak and proudly proclaim it as truth. They dialecticize purulent purges, cold conquest, mass murder. Connie says she’s Sovietizing me. I roll my eyes. It makes her laugh. She covers her mouth then. Some Central Committee of Kremlin kreeps might be listening.

  Connie won’t name names. She won’t reveal Robin Redbreast’s real moniker. She won’t name names. I’m on her side as much as she’ll let me be—and more. She won’t name names in Joan’s memory. She memorializes Joan and tells me how much she loved her. She loves me with her body and won’t say the worshipful words. I explore the world’s secret shit. I excoriate it and explode it in Confidential. I live to do this. I’ve peeped windows since 1936. Connie joined the Party that same year. She joined the Party to run rogue in the squarejohn world and live baaaad bourgeois while she did it. We bit the same cancerous coin and spit it back at the world. Shared blood blooms in our veins. We both know this. She still won’t name names.

  THE SWEETZER LISTENING POST

  4/5/54

  The noxious nite shift. Torrid two-line tilts. Pizza pie and beer and Pink’s hot dogs. Stretch worked Lez Line #1. I worked Lez Line #2. We held hands and swapped nifty nuggets.

  Gamal Abdel Nasser’s in town. He’s scrounging funds to overthrow Egypt. He’s a fellow camel jockey. He’s banging butch girls, three at a throw. Go, Gamal, go!!!

  Biff Stanwyck’s ensconced at a hot-sheet hut on Highland. She likes it fresh and heavenly wholesome. There’s a dyke slave den near Hollywood High. The den doyenne’s an old studio scrape nurse. She “reeducates” nymphets and feeds them dope and the lewd lore of Lesbos. Currently embroiled: ex–kiddie star Natalie Wood. Jimmy Dean told me she’s hot to trot, across the sex spectrum. Biff’s got first dibs.

  Art Pepper’s at it again. He’s gone foto fiend. He’s now the King of the Sapphic Snapshot. He’s snapping pix at a fuck pad on Fountain. Go, Art, go!!!

  I was big-time bored. My headphones itched. Lance went home to Liberace. Stretch and I boo-hoo’d his departure. The lez line pickings were thin—but tasty. Then Harry Fremont called, two hours back. Go, Harry, go!!! Once again, Harry delivers.

  That Fed car. The rear plate I saw. Outside the Horvath crime scene. It’s on loan to a Fed fuck named Charles Fullerton. He’s in Joe McCarthy’s posse. He’s a rogue Red basher from Jump Street. And, Freddy, dig: I’ve located the longrange listening post. It’s a shit shack in Silver Lake. They’re running bug-taps up the yammering ying-yang. I hit my PC Bell contact. Dig: the phone bills run three grand a month.

  Woooo!!!—that’s one nifty nugget!!!

  I yawned. I scratched my balls. I ogled Stretch in basketball silks. I got insistently itchy. I wanted to sloooooooow-cruise the Fed pad and lay some late-nite love on Connie.

  I yawned. I scratched my balls. I ogled Stretch in basketball silks. She went Wowie-zowie and scribbled up her scratch pad. She hurled off her headset and went You, too.

  I hurled my headset. Stretch glooooowed and dished this:

  “Claire and Babs just tricked with V. J. Jerome. I got forty minutes of grunts and groans, and then Claire starts pumping V.J. on Robin Redbreast again. V.J.’s vexed and bored, but he finally cops that Robin Redbreast was a crackpot scientist and a CP flunky named ‘Sammy.’ But that’s as far as it went, because they all started up with the woof-woof again.”

  * * *

  —

  We lounged in the red bedroom. Connie wore a half-slip and her tartan skirt. I was stripped down to my skivvies. We ran the radio. Some Russki piano putz rippled Rachmaninoff.

  I was tooooooo tense and caught-up constricted. I went by the Fed pad and reconnoitered. I got a Big Dumb Idea. It was cold-calculated and meant to make Connie name names.

  Connie lay languorous. We stretched and struck poses and draped off the bed. I kissed Connie’s knock knees. She ran her hands through my hair.

  “Don’t start hounding me again, dear. My lips are sealed, and I won’t let you ruin this lovely moment.”

  I parted her legs and tossed her skirt and kissed my way up a bit. Connie made this soft sound that she makes.

  “I’ll name some names that you might recognize. You don’t have to respond, but I’d be happy if you would.”

  Connie laffed. “It’s our ongoing game, isn’t it? Freddy i
nterrogates Connie. Connie takes the Fifth. Freddy and Connie. Has it ever occurred to you that our names lack dignity?”

  I smiled. Connie said, “I’ll indulge you, if you promise that you won’t press me too hard. I’m out to sustain this mood that I’m in.”

  I pulled her skirt down and patted it back into place. I looked up at her and fixed on her eyes. I’d know if she dissembled or flat-lied to me. I’d know if she knew the names and went refusenik.

  “Robin Redbreast. He’s allegedly a ‘crackpot scientist’ and a Party flunky named Sammy. There’s also an FBI man named Charles Fullerton. He was at Joan’s house with all the other cops, and I saw him there myself. You should know that he’s in Joe McCarthy’s posse—which is, quite frankly, out to get you, given the bugs and taps that I’ve pulled here.”

  Bingo/Eureka/Three-Cherry Jackpot. The refusenik reacts. Tears fill her eyes. Her hands fly to her face.

  I know you, Constance. You’ll wipe your face on a pillowcase. You’ll light a cigarette and blow smoke at the ceiling. You’ll say, “No comment” or “I’m not telling you.”

  I nailed the first part. I blew the second part. Connie said, “You’re never going to quit, are you? You will always insist on this, and in the end, I’ll either lose you or never have a moment’s peace.”

  I pulled myself up close to her. I got our eyes close.

  “Sammy. Charles Fullerton. The ‘SA,’ ‘RJC,’ and ‘EPD’ in your cell. I want full names and confirmations. It’s all for Joan. You know that’s true, and since you’re a dialectical materialist who’s always looking for a payoff, I’ll offer you a doozy if you’ll do this for me.”

  Connie kissed me. I wiped some tears off with my thumbs. She kissed me again. I pulled her slip up and kissed her bare back.

  “ ‘A doozy,’ you said?”

  “Yes. If you tell me what I need to know, I’ll burn down the McCarthy gig. You’ll never set foot on a witness stand. It’ll spare some other people a good deal of grief, whether they’re for-real traitors, or just bleeding-heart fools like you.”

  Connie said, “It’s not nice to betray your friends, you know. People you’ve lived History with.”

  I said, “Joan.”

  Connie said, “We’ll always come back to her. She’s our deus ex machina.”

  I said, “Joan.” Connie stubbed out her cigarette and turned back to me.

  “Yes, we were briefly lovers, and that’s as far as I’ll go to sate your curiosity there. Charles Fullerton turned Joan out as an FBI informant, and served as her handler for years. He also introduced Joan to Ralph Horvath. Sammy is a physicist named Samuel Ahlendorf—and, yes, he was Robin Redbreast in our cell. ‘RJC’ was a Negro man named Robert Jones Crawshaw. He wrote for the Daily Worker, and now he writes cheap paperbacks about Negro pimps. I know that he’s friends with your friend Billy Eckstine, for what that’s worth. ‘EDP’ is Eleanor Price Donnell. She was one of Joan’s professors at UCLA.”

  She snitched. It hit me six ways from Sunday. I rolled away from her. I stared at the red walls and faux-Goya garlands of women. Connie clung claustrophobe close.

  “ ‘The citadel of my integrity has been irrevocably lost.’ That’s from T. E. Lawrence, in case you were wondering.”

  I wasn’t. “Don’t shit a shitter, and don’t playact with me. It was the right thing to do.”

  Connie stage-sighed. “I’m twenty years, one month, and nine days older than you. I was born in 1902, and you’re in love with two other women. Why did I do what I just did? Am I really that desperate to keep you?”

  I stage-sighed. “You’re just self-absorbed. Are all Communists as self-involved as you?”

  Connie laffed. “Frankly, yes.”

  “Including Joan?”

  “Yes, and Joan more than most.”

  I said, “She made the rounds, didn’t she? Men, women—she had the appetite.”

  Connie said, “She was faithless, yes.”

  I said, “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be, dear. You’re like that yourself.”

  I pulled down her skirt. I caught her scent and kissed her breasts.

  “I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain, dear. How will you derail the evil senator and save me?”

  “I’ll do something brave and stupid, and it will damn well cost me a great deal.”

  THE DOWNTOWN L.A. PUBLIC LIBRARY

  4/6/54

  Research. Reading-room rigor. Know your foe. They might have YOU made, going in. You’re the Tattle Tyrant Who Holds Hollywood Hostage. You’re the Freewheeling Freddy O.

  I felt gooooooood. Connie fed me a big breakfast. I chased it with three dexies and four jolts of Old Crow. I hit the library early. I collated a cavalcade of goooooood dish. I tapped solid sources.

  The L.A. Herald and the L.A. Sentinel—L.A.’s colored rag. Who’s Who In America/1953. Who’s Who In American Academia/1953. Plus Downbeat magazine, the Daily Worker, and a call to LAPD R & I.

  Dig:

  Comrade Sammy Ahlendorf. Age sixty-three. That’s “Robin Redbreast” to you. He’s a physicist. He got doctorates in his native Russia and the U. of Chicago here. He’s also a kultural kommissar. He partied with bibulous bohemians in wicked Weimar Berlin and malignant Moscow. He knew Eisenstein/Nijinsky/Stanislavsky/Meyerhold/Okhlopkov. Sicko cinema, dipshit dance, stilted stage productions for the maimed millions enslaved by the Red Beast. Sambo emigrates to the U.S., circa ’36. He’s dumped off the Manhattan Project, circa ’44. He was pro-A-bomb then. He’s anti-A-bomb now. This guy gored my goat. I was hopped-up and out for Commo blood—baaaaaad. I might phone-book Sambo in the studly style of the Hat Squad.

  Comrade Robert Jones Crawshaw/aka “KKKomrade X.” Age forty-one. Labor agitator and scurvy scribe for the Daily Worker. Would-be “Racial Reconciler.” Dig this: He tried to integrate the L.A. Klan, circa ’40. Close pal of my pal Billy Eckstine. The august author of Black Pimp, Black Bossman, Black Savior, Black Dictator, Black Kingpin, Black Bwana, and the KKKontroversial Black Führer. Comrade Bob renounces Communism, circa ’51. Comrade Bob heads hard right. He’s pals with nativist nudnik Gerald L. K. Smith. He’s got a righteous rap sheet. There’s three pops for receiving stolen goods. There’s the cancerous capper, circa ’48. Ralph Mitchell Horvath bails him out on a burglary beef.

  Comrade Eleanor Price Donnell. Age thirty-eight. Tenured history professor at UCLA. She’s a shrill shrike and shrieky Soviet suck-up. She’s the author of Moscow Miasma—an apoplectic apologia for the show-trial sins of Uncle Joe Stalin. You think you’ve got this bilious babe pegged, don’t you? Well, fuckers, here’s the real reconstructionist riff:

  She’s an ex–call girl. She pandered poon to the Party, circa ’44–’45. She sold sex to CPers with gelt. She was part of a poor-working-girls/Stalinist stable. She gets popped V-E Day. A cadre of Commie construction magnates celebrates Hitler’s surrender. It’s caviar and call girls for these cats. La Donnell and her sick sisters turn tricks for striking dock workers. LAPD Vice intervenes. They raid a fuck pad-cum-millionaire’s mansion. La Donnell and eighteen other confessed Commie girls get busted. La Donnell writes a memoir about her salacious sojourn. It’s called Party Girl. She wrote it under the pseudonym “Miss X.” Robert Jones Crawshaw’s publisher published it.

  My Connie’s Commie cell. Add on the late Joan Hubbard Horvath: Commo, turncoat, licentious lover. Here’s the tattle-tabloid tilt of a lifetime:

  I’m marching into the maximum maw of madness.

  * * *

  —

  They all lived in L.A. I installed an itinerary—north/south/northwest. Comrade Sam lived in the Valley. Comrade Bob lived in Watts. Billy Eckstine set the meet at Club Zombie. Comrade Ellie lived on the Wilshire corridor. It was très close to UCLA.

  Sambo and Party Girl were door knocks. Knock, Knock—trouble treads your
way. I’d browbeat them. I’d bring them to tears. I’d dig for the dish on Comrade Joan Hubbard. I’d yank them through the war years. I’d push the Claire Klein angle. This dangerous dame is out to kill a man. She thinks Connie Woodard might know him. So, how about you?

  I bopped out to bumfuck Van Nuys. The Valley Vista Villas—hotbox huts off Hastings and Harlequin Heights. I parked and popped up to the pad. Knock, knock—trouble treads your—

  Sambo opened up. Ooohhh—he’s threadbare thin and cancer cough–consumptive. I flashed my State Police badge. All the HUAC humps had them. Cringe, you Red rat fink.

  “Yes. I’ve seen that badge before. It’s not like you people haven’t sought me out in the past.”

  I said, “This is a new wrinkle, boss. It pertains to the murder of a woman named Joan Horvath. You knew her as Joan Hubbard.”

  Sambo let me in. He rolled an oxygen tank to his chair. He sucked air. He cancer-coughed and said, “Yes?”

  I perched on a footstool. “I’m not here to nail you for your CP membership, pops. You should know that going in.”

  Sambo said, “That’s white of you—and uninformed. I left the CP in ’44, before I got cleared for the Manhattan Project. I was the first one to abandon the cell I was in, although all of the others, except for our den mother, ultimately saw the light.”

  The statement stunned me. Connie’s diaries ditzed me. I saw Sambo’s initials on cell minutes for the postwar period.

  “I have documents, sir. These documents plainly state that you attended cell wingdings up to the late ’40s.”

  Sambo sighed and sucked air. “Then they’re fabrications. Especially if the den mother proffered them to you. I’m an apostate, Mr. Detective. I renounced the Party, and I’ve been vetted by a great number of committees, both State and Federal. And if Mr. McCarthy should subpoena me for this latest pogrom of his, I’ll testify to that at the outset. You look like McCarthy, I might add. You share his black-haired, beetle-browed look.”