by James Ellroy
Here’s a ripe wrinkle. Orson Welles sliced the Black Dahlia. Yeah—I know, it’s day-old bagels at half price. Yeah, but dig this: Rita Hayworth held the Dahlia’s legs while Orson sawed her in half.
Okay, here’s ten scoots—now go away.
Van Johnson’s at it again. The old semen demon’s always up for a taste. He siphoned Tab Hunter’s python in a back row at the Admiral Theatre.
No, I can’t prove it. Yeah, I need gelt. There’s a sneak peek at the Iris, and I’m short on the freight.
Here’s twenty scoots. Uncle Freddy’s a soft touch. The popcorn’s on me.
A guy peddled Carole Landis morgue shots. Yawn. A guy peddled pix of Marlon Brando with a dick in his mouth. Shit—I thought I cornered that market, back in ’53. A call girl tossed me a tip on the steakhouse rape-o/robbers. They were holed up in a hot-sheet flop on 54th and Vermont. They were geezing Nazi-made morphine and meth speedballs. I slid her forty scoots. She slipped me her phone number. I told her to tattle the tip to the Hat Squad. She told me she banged Red Stromwall at an Elks Club smoker, back in ’46.
Juan the fry cook passed me a message. Jimmy was 86’ing the Phyllis Gates meet. Nick Ray culled the cast and called for a script read. Nick Ray ran regular “Motivational Missions,” as in tonite. Sorry, babe—give Phyl my love.
Neuter Nick Ray. “Motivational Missions.” Robbie Molette’s mad monologue. My pal Jimmy. The “Human Ashtray.” I felt god-awful gut-punched.
It was 8:55. A late nite loomed. I had a batch of bilious back issues to study for Big Bill Parker. Nasty Nat’s Soul Patrol popped the airwaves at 1:00. Miss Blind Item might call in. She’d castigate and condemn Confidential. She’d evince righteous rage per Red Light Bandit Caryl Chessman. The deal instantly intrigued me. Chessman was sure as shit guilty. I wanted him to burn, baby, burn.
My dexie dose fizzled, drizzled, and withered to wisps and gnashed nerves. I popped two more and awaited the aaaaahhhh. Phyllis walked in. I stood up and bowed. She walked up and curtsied cute. She wore twill slacks and a cashmere cardigan. She radiated rectitude and a reserved ring-a-ding.
A waitress brought menus. Phyllis sat across from me. She went Where’s Jimmy?
I said, “He couldn’t make it. Something about a script rehearsal.”
The waitress whipped back. Phyllis ordered a dry martini. I held up two fingers. The waitress scrammed. Phyllis said, “Drat.”
I laffed. “Drat?”
“Well, yes.”
“Should I decode that?”
“Well…Jimmy and Rock were pals on Giant. I was hoping that he might provide…”
“A perspective on Rock’s bent, and your conundrum? Maybe buffer you and me getting down to brass tacks?”
The martinis materialized. Phyllis mainlined half of hers. She said, “Drat. What have I gotten myself into?”
I lit a cigarette. “You love him, right?”
“What’s not to love? He’s every Minnesota farm girl’s dream. But this girl has lived in Hollywood for a while, and I’ve heard the rumors, and I know how to read signs.”
“How discouraged are you?”
Phyllis laffed. “Not that much. Part of me knows that it’s more than a little bit of a lark.”
I mainlined my martini. It payload-packed the dexies. I rippled resurgent and revitalized.
“I’m on your side, and Rock’s side. ‘Love conquers all,’ and all that happy horseshit. The magazine’s on your side, and Rock’s side, but the magazine is Confidential, with all the skank that implies. We’ve got to dispel one set of rumors, and create a contradictory, second set to eclipse it. Bob Harrison’s committed to an eternal triangle scenario. That means we need to find a bait girl, and L.A.’s the bait girl capital of the world. And, for what it’s worth, I like your idea of a catfight at the Mocambo.”
Phyllis popped the olive out of her drink and snarfed it. I tossed my olive on her place mat. She snarfed it, quick-quick.
“Rock’s a sweetie pie. Who am I to demand perfection in a man?”
“You’ve got every right to demand more than you damn well might have to settle for.”
Phyllis said, “Ouch.”
I said, “I’m sorry. That was harsh.”
Phyllis went Pshaw. “It’s not like I’m a hundred percent discouraged.”
“Give me the good news, then.”
“Rock took an inkblot test once, in the Navy. He saw butterflies and snakes, which symbolize a feminine nature and the penis. He took a second test, after the war—and this time he scored much more butch.”
I sighed, sad-ass. “Shit, don’t break my heart.”
Phyllis snatched my martini and drained it dry. Her eyeballs boinged. Now, she’s all rectitude—ripped to the gills.
“It’s a lark, right?”
“Right.”
“And there’s no guarantee it’ll remain a lark, right?”
“Right.”
“So I should be prepared for any and all outcomes, right?”
“Right.”
“Didn’t you say something about us getting down to brass tacks?”
I leaned close. Phyllis leaned close. We deep-dialed our eyes and cleaved close. She wore Chanel No. 5. I wore Lucky Tiger. Our separate scents sizzled and merged, molto bene.
“You’ll want out sooner or later. You won’t want him hurt in the press, but you’ll want your fair share of the pie. I’ll handle the entrapment and all the other shitwork for ten percent of the initial property and revenue split, and ten percent of your alimony, in perpetuity.”
Phyllis kissed me. She found the fit and held my head and leg-clamped me under the table. The kiss lingered loooooong. We wrapped ourselves into it. Our scents merged that much more. Some geeks at adjoining tables whistled and clapped.
* * *
—
11:00 p.m. Googie’s is late-nite lulled. The dinner crowd’s thinned threadbare. Phyllis split. I brooded and brain-broiled my Rebel Without a Cause caper.
My dexie decibel helped. Vodka shots sheared the rough edges. I worked the pay phone. I called Harry Fremont and my contact at Sheriff’s R & I. Dig: Get me homo-hive roust sheets on Jimmy Dean, Sal Mineo, Nick Ray. Check for juvie sheets on Natalie Wood. Solicit hometown paper per Nick Adams.
The counter man divvied dish. Nick Ray placed take-out orders nitely. Juan the fry cook schlepped the shit up to Nick’s boss bungalow at the Marmont. The orders came in late. There was bupkes tonite. I told Juan to burn a batch of burgers and send them up now.
The Marmont was four blocks west on Sunset. I shagged my Packard pimpmobile and crawl-cruised on over. I saw three hunky hot rods stashed just off the Strip. Craaaaazy chrome creations. Kool kandy-koat kolors.
One ’40 Ford coupé. One ’46 Merc. One cholo-chopped Chevy van, replete with flame paint job. All three flew flags for the “Nick’s Knights Kar Klub, Limited.”
The flags wiggled on whip antennas and flat-out flew in the wind. I fantasized shivering shit.
Nick Ray in tight toga and a simpering Caesar haircut. He’s holding a movie megaphone and sporting a spiked collar. He’s Mr. Fasco Fantastico at the all-boy bacchanal. As real-life proof—there’s Nick’s Knights, poised and posed by their sleds.
Three hunky monkeys. Ruff trade tricksters and buff B-boys. Black leather jackets, pomade pompadours, and pegged pants. Rodent Robbie ratted these punks. They were Nabob Nick’s crowd-scene extras. They went out on “chickie runs” and “panty raids.” Nudnik Nick held swishy sway over them.
I pulled up and parked on the bungalow access road. Juan the fry cook’s junk jalopy was parked just ahead. I walked up to bungalow row. I peeped whipped-wide windows. I saw sapphic soixante-neuf and Marilyn Monroe blowing Joe DiMaggio. I saw a dusky dominatrix whip producer Sam Spiegel. I saw Funky Führer Nick Ray blaspheme, bloviate, and bluster to
his actor acolytes.
He’s the Father Führer, the Daddy Despot, the Doofus Duce who’s exhumed mad Mussolini. He’s brewing up bracing bromides. It’s populist pap across all specious spectra. He’s stamping it Stalinist. He’s looping in Lenin and marginal Marx. It’s the actors’ art to subsume the rule of law and the ordered society. It’s ART to sack sacred synagogues, chain church doors, and retorch Joan of Arc at the stake. It’s sicknik sexual liberation, by way of the maladroit Marquis de Sade. He’s pitching Sex/Sex/Sex/ and Love Me/Love Me/Love Me—and I will beatifically bestow upon you the gilded gift of MOTIVATION—which will unlock all the doors of your life.
His kiddie korps is digging it. They’re bopped back in beanbag chairs. They’re biting the burgers I bought them. They’re big-eyed behind Big Nick’s bullshit. There’s Jimmy Dean and Natalie Wood. There’s sloe-eyed Sal Mineo. That blond cat’s Nick Adams. I’ve seen that Dennis Hopper hump on TV. They’re Nihilist Nick’s hip Hitler Jugend, ten years post–V-E Day.
I unpeeped the window and broomed back down to my sled. Memo to Chief Bill Parker: I got your derogatory profile, hanging a hard fucking yard.
Something was brew-brew-brewing. It had to break up and boil over, soon. I hunched low and peeped the hot rod punks. They popped hoods and adjusted fan belts. They poured quik-start in quad carburetors and goosed the gas loud. They made big noise. They torqued and toxified the air outside the Chateau Marmont. Then the moment of Achtung!!!!! arrived.
The punks froze. Eyes right, all Kameraden. There’s Nick Ray in a cool khaki jumpsuit. He’s Rommel, reborn. He’s got an Iron Cross pinned to one pocket. He’s wearing a Desert Korps hat. He’s got a movie camera strapped to one shoulder. Jimmy Dean and Nick Adams stand behind him. They’re his suck-up subalterns.
The punks salaamed and saluted. Nick Ray ran to the Chevy van. Raus mit uns!!!!! Mach schnell!!!!! All subalterns and B-boys to the Chevy van now!!!!!
The crew cringed and complied, toot-fucking-sweet. The van U-turned and booked west on Sunset. I U-turned and tailed it.
We struck off down the Strip and bombed through Beverly Hills. My Packard pimpmobile hovered three car lengths back. Beverly Hills to Holmby Hills to the East Bel-Air gate. Up to Westwood and the UCLA campus.
The van cut south on Hilgard. It decelerated down to a crawl. I crawled and kept perfect pace. We were on Sorority Row now. Note the big Tudor and sparkle-Spanish houses. Note the Greek symbols embossed by the doors.
It was midnite. It was quiet and moon-muzzled dark. The driver rolled down his window and pointed across the street. Somebody said, “Establishing shot.” A back window slid down. Nick Ray held his camera out and rolled film. I decelerated and pulled to the curb. The Führer van U-turned and parked in front of a faux-château sorority house.
The Desert Korps decamped. That’s the B-Boys, Nick Ray, Jimmy, and Nick Adams. A B-boy held Ray’s camera cord and a spotlight gizmo. Ray gave the high sign. They walked six abreast. They crossed the sidewalk and trampled the front lawn. They hit the porch. Nick Adams pulled a set of picks and unlocked the door. It’s soooooo sinister—the six sickos slide and slither inside.
I heard nothing. I saw nothing. No light went on. I got out and jogged up to the door. It stood ajar. I heard wicked whispers and sssshhh, sssshhh upstairs.
The camera light snapped on. A beam bounced across upstairs walls and closed doors. I heard a door open. A girl said, “What’s that?” A girl said, “Who’s there?”
Then door kicks/shrill shrieks/light beams on dorm doors and double sets of bunk beds—
Then college girls in nightgowns and pajamas. They’re kicking off their covers and tumbling out of bed. They’re running straight into bright light and the Desert Korps with their hands out to GRAB.
Nick Ray yelled, “Chickie run!!!”
Jimmy yelled, “Panty raid!!!!!”
Spotlight beams bounced. I saw short shots of grabs at pajama tops and nightgowns. I saw panties pulled down to the knees. I heard screams overlap.
I ran upstairs. Half-nude girls dodged grabbing hands and bouncing light and ran from der Desert Korps demons. I pile-pounded into them. I dumped the fucko Führer’s camera and smashed the bouncing-light machine. I got a fade-out shot. It’s Jimmy Dean with pink panties pulled over his face.
I saw a fire-alarm switch wired to a wall mount. I swatted the switch and instigated deep darkness. A siren shrieked shrill. The girls screamed into it. They ran left and hit the back stairs. The Desert Korps ran to the main stairway. They couldn’t see me. I couldn’t see them. I pulled my belt sap and sapped black leather and coarse khaki. They made with the motivation and bitch-bleated. I might have sapped my pal Jimmy. So what if I did?
MY BOSS BACHELOR PAD
West Hollyweird
5/12/55
I ran the radio. KKXZ—le jazz hot levied with listless bop ballads that blew blue and nodded off to nothingness. A low-watt/storefront station. Above Sultan Sam’s Sandbox and Rae’s Rugburn Room.
I was laid low, bent bare, and stripped to striation on the Isle of Deep Despair. The Westwood caper cornholed me. I humped Hilgard to Sunset. I ripped rubber just as the fuzz and fire engines arrived. The Afrika Korps beat it southbound. Their goofy getaway masked their insidious intent. A moment to maul my memory: Jimmy Dean, with pink panties stretched eyeballs to neck.
Nasty Nat’s Soul Patrol popped the airwaves. Nat read local news spots before he samba’d back to his soporific sounds of the nite. He kicked off with his “Cutie.”
UCLA. Sorority row. Panty raid at Chi Beta Gamma. The fuzz arrive. There’s a garland of girls, wrapped in robes and issuing indignation. Four girls put it off on the SAE boys or USC football studs. One girl called it “more evil than that. These guys were older. One guy carried a camera. They ripped our robes, and tried to shoot a nudie film right there.”
Nasty Nat put down some pooh-pooh patter. “UCLA ain’t the ghetto, sisters. And I’m sure those young buck cops will be back to ask you to stage in-the-buff reenactments.”
Ouch.
Nasty Nat said, “It’s crime on the dime, tonite. The some might say infamous LAPD Hat Squad shot it out with those two steakhouse rapist-robbers. It went down at Tommy Tucker’s Playroom on Washington and La Brea. One man escaped in the mad melee. Muerto at the scene: Richie ‘The Dutchman’ Van Duesen/white male American/age thirty-eight. Still at large: George ‘Fat Boy’ Mazmanian/white male American/age forty-two. The Fat Boy is purportedly armed and dangerous, so watch out.”
Nasty Nat mimicked the Confidential style. It gored my goat. He cut from crime on the dime to bleak blues from the Synagogue Sid Trio. Dig: Sid on bass sax, Bobby Horvitz on flügelhorn, Aaron Adelman on drums. The piece: “Premature Funeral March for Gamal Abdel Nasser and King Farouk.” Nat laid down the intro. He closed with “These cats run long.” One, two, three—shalom, cats.
Synagogue Sid blatted his sax. Bobby Horvitz flaunted his flügelhorn. Aaron Adelman drilled his drums. I doused the volume. I got imperiously impatient. Where’s Miss Blind Item? Where’s her cruel critique of Confidential’s Caryl Chessman piece??? Where’s her fry-the-cocksucker rebuttal???
I was itchy/antsy/fraught/fragged and dexie-ditzed out of my gourd. I got out my notepad and skimmed ’52 to ’55 Confidentials. I’m a snitch, a rat fink, a stool pigeon, a squealer, a quisling, a rogue dog who bites the hand that feeds him. Let’s do legal prep work for Chief William H. Parker.
Bill Parker and me. We’re like that now. Let’s take down Confidential.
Back issues. Clipped-on legal files. Lawyers’ notes and field reports. Look for loopholes. Dippy depositions to dice and deep-six. The mag hired ace legal beagles. The mag had Freddy O. for strongarm vetting and verification. All our slurs and slander slams are true. We stand by our shit. Yeah, but if anybody’s prone to fuck it all up, it’s yammeringly yours truly.
I skimmed
back issues. I read legal briefs and my own notes. I muddled through mellifluous memories.
December ’52: “Showgirl Sells Shares in Self!!!”
Bland, by and large. A stock-market spoof. Vetted by a kid clerk. No slander slams or libel loops here.
December ’52: “Exposed: Love in the UN!!!!”
Tattle text. The Multinational March of Miscegenation. Minor minions j’accused. I’m bored already. No vetting notes. Doofus diplomats never sue.
November ’53: “Marked for Death: Walter Winchell, Bishop Fulton Sheen!!!”
Anti-Commie pap. Lawyers cite unnamed sources. Snoresville, U.S.A.
March ’54: “Why Orson Welles Bit the Lip of Eartha Kitt.”
Miscegenation—Confidential’s merry mainstay. Orson was boning irksome Eartha. A Vegas stringer fed us the bit. Eartha said goons broke down her door. She was right. I hired the goons. Eartha demanded cold compensation. I slid her ten thou. Orson said, “You’re a shit, Freddy.” I bitch-slapped him.
This piece was bad juju and a potential Parker payoff. It exposed the mag’s strong-arm methods and exposed ME. I put it in my secret Parker dirt file.
November ’54: “Christine Jorgensen’s Romance with a Vanderbilt Stepson.”
He-she hijinx. Ex-man Christine set Vanderbilt up and had me shoot sneak pix. She wanted the publicity—to goose her dead-stalled film career. I shook down Vanderbilt for twenty thou. Christine and I split the gelt. Confidential published a pablum-packed piece that went pffft. Christine was pissed. She wanted to see some wild and wet woof-woof. This piece could mulch the magazine, baaaaaad. Ditto, Fred Otash. It was goooood Parker file fodder.
January ’55: “Eartha Kitt and her ‘Santa Baby’ Arthur Loew, Jr.”
Miscegenation marches on. The old colored canary/white sugar daddy bit. It’s Irksome Eartha again. Eartha threatens to sue. I’m the bagman. Confidential coughs up cold cash.
Synagogue Sid blatted on. I yawned. Where’s Miss Blind Item? It’s almost 2:00 a.m.
