by James Ellroy
Eddie went Oooh-la-la. Max whistled. My first thought: BLACKMAIL. Big-name men/call girls/some clumsy first approach. A list on paper? Prememorized names? It read AMATEUR NITE.
I tossed a tight changeup. “The Rebel shoot. Has anyone on it expressed interest in Janey or your other girls? The cast and crew are nothing but pervs and shitbirds. It’s a suspect pool we should explore.”
Robbie made the jack-off sign. “Nobody on the shoot knows about Janey or my other girls. I keep my two business worlds separate and compartmentalized. And, as far as Rebel Without a Cause goes, the shoot’s wrapping on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth. I’ll keep my ear down for you, but I’ve got to make one final haul off those weirdos, because once they go into postproduction, I’ll never see any of them again.”
Max said, “The Democratic fund-raiser. You were bussing tables there, so you saw your ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ scene play out. Here’s what interests me. Were there any unusual occurrences outside of that that you can think of?”
Robbie dry-drained his Coke. “Not really. Some stray paparazzi guy got loose and started shooting pix through an uncurtained window, and me and Manuel, this other busboy, got tapped to pick up all these used flashbulbs where he was shooting.”
I said, “We know that Nick Ray and Jimmy Dean have been talking up a Caryl Chessman flick. What else have you heard about that? The whole deal sounds unsavory to me.”
Robbie shrugged. “Nick Ray and Jimmy Dean are unsavory. The whole biz is unsavory. Chessman’s headed for the green room. If movie folks are gabbing up Chessman, it’s just that he’s a hot topic these days.”
The wall speaker sparked. Bill Parker said, “Otash, get out here.”
I walked out. Parker passed me his flask. I gargled Old Overholt and lit a cigarette.
Parker said, “The shoot’s closing down. I’m thinking we should recruit Robbie and do a big dope raid. It would do the magazine good in the short term, and we should net a variety of leads on a variety of criminal matters out of it.”
I said, “I agree.”
Parker went scoot. We popped down to Sweatbox #3 and peeped the wall window. There’s Nick Adams. He looks phone-booked and fit to be tied. Note the blossoming bloody nose and torn earlobe.
Parker said, “He confessed to the burglaries, and he gave up your friend Jimmy Dean as his accomplice. Red and Harry are out shagging him now. It may take a while. They’re chasing a hot lead on Fat Boy Mazmanian, too.”
I made the gimme sign. Parker passed his flask. I glug-glugged and got that glow.
“We’ve got the confession on Adams, Chief. That will stand up in court, and who knows what you’ll get from Jimmy. But we need to cut them loose, so they’ll be there if we run that dope raid.”
Parker popped digitalis. Straight, no chaser. Gas on his glow.
“You’ve been saying ‘we,’ Freddy. I find that encouraging.”
“I’m starting to think like a cop again, sir.”
“Anything else before you go?”
“Yes, sir. Tell Red and Harry to give Jimmy a good thumping.”
* * *
—
I soloed out to Culver City. My peeper penchant popped me out there. Pervdog, peeper, priapic pad prowler. You’re a clue clown on a biiiiiiiig case. Let’s toss Janey Blaine’s pad. Let’s lay it low and look for leads. Let’s sniff her panties while we’re at it.
It was 1:00 p.m. I stopped at a pay phone and called my service. I had one message: “Call Mr. Kennedy at his hotel.”
I did it. A stooge picked up. He asked me to drop by at 3:00 today. I said I’d be there.
To extort your boss, fucker. Ring-a-ding-ding!!!!
I found chez Janey. It was a peach stucco cube job off of Motor Avenue. Her ’50 Buick was gone. The West L.A. dicks impounded it, posthomicide. A first-rate forensic revealed zero and zilch. West L.A. left the case then. The Otash-Hats combine caught the duty. The pad was pristine to prowl.
I pinned my badge to my suit coat. It added official ooomph. I walked up and keestered the keyhole. Pick #6 worked. The door popped. I locked myself in.
The living room was squaresville meets hipsville. Persnickety Persian carpets and nifty Naugahyde chairs. The kitchen featured a gas range/Frigidaire combo. The fridge featured TV dinners and Tovarich vodka. Tovarich was high-test and cut-rate. Janey was jacked on the juice. She was a secret sauce hound. That’s Clue #1.
I hit the bathroom. It was tidy, turquoise-tiled, and crawl-in cramped. I checked the medicine cabinet. Aaahhh—here’s some good shit.
A diaphragm. A big box of cornstarch. Vivid vials of biphetamine and Nembutal. I popped two of Janey’s biphetamine. Let’s bond, baby doll.
I hit the bedroom. It was squaresville squared. The de rigueur ratty carpets. The small slipcovered bed. A small four-drawer desk. A matching four-door dresser. Cheap Picasso prints on the walls.
The desk blotter. It’s a clue clown/pad-toss classic. Check it out. Catch some light and look low.
Jawohl. It’s crisscross indented. There’s cursive marks all over it. Janey wrote loose-leaf letters and pressed her pen hard. Shit—no legible words leaped out.
I rifled the desk drawers. An inconsistency inflamed me. They were all bare-bones empty. No pens, no paper, no envelopes. The wood had been washcloth-wiped. That meant print eradication. The gradations of grain gave it away. The light grain was dry, the dark grain was damp.
The desk had been tossed. The contents were picked clean. The thief carried off correspondence and/or personal pen-to-paper musings. He stole some called-up calculus of Janey Blaine’s life.
I checked the one window. I saw tool marks sawed into the sash. He leaped off the lawn and let himself in, presto chango.
That left the dresser. Women’s dressers always draw me. I’m a peeper and a sniffer. I’ve been one since puberty pulsed. Women’s dressers drew me in 1936. Women’s dressers draw me NOW.
I opened the top drawer. I saw the panties I sought. I pulled away, cold concurrent.
They were white. They were decorous-demure. There was one row, fetchingly folded. It was everything I liked.
BUT—
They were jizz-juiced, semenized, spurt-spattered, and sicko soiled. The B and E bastard laid his load on lace and cool cotton. It enraged me.
And it was evidence. I ran out to the car and grabbed my evidence kit.
* * *
—
The Jack-Freddy Summit. It’s been set for 3:00 p.m. It gave me time to run the panties downtown to the crime lab. Ray Pinker promised results by 6:00. I whipped back west and made the meet on time.
I buzzed the buzzer. Jack opened up. He wore seersucker shorts and a Harvard Crew T-shirt. He was drawn dry. He was too thin. He had stick legs. His raw rib bones showed. He was still strikingly Jack the K.
He pointed to a chair. He said, “Sit.”
I sat. He sat facing me. He lit a cigar. It was Cuban. I recalled Jefe Batista. His pet shark noshed dissidents.
“I need a promise, Freddy.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s no publicity of any kind on the girl. No sandbag job in your magazine. No shakedown attempts by any bent cops who might know the story—which, of course, includes you.”
I said, “I have some questions about ‘the girl,’ as you describe her. I’m wondering what she told you about herself, during that brief amount of time you spent talking.”
Jack flushed. “No. We’re not discussing it. I’m not telling you, and this is the last time this matter will ever come up between us.”
I called up some cool. “I set you up with Ernie Roll and Bill Parker. You own them now. I overheard you guardedly state that you would like to see the girl’s killer put down. There are five of us who intend to find him and kill him, which will surely save you grave embarrassment somewhere
down the line. I expect to be compensated for this, and the price is fifty thousand dollars.”
Jack flinched. “The price is way high, and your manner is entirely too brusque. You’re not saying, ‘Jack, I’m stretched,’ or ‘Jack, I need a touch,’ or ‘Jack, we go back a long time.’ You’re too brusque, Freddy—and you’re rather out of touch with reality, given who I already am and where I’m going. So let’s end this conversation and remain friends while we still can.”
I said, “No. I expect to be compensated for what I’ve done already and what I’m going to do, and the price is nonnegotiable, and a bargain.”
Jack fondled his cigar. “It’s a shakedown. You’re shaking me down.”
“No, it’s not. I’ve levied no threat of exposure. I’m presenting you with a bill for services rendered and services to come. Read whatever you like into it. I’ll expect a call from one of your inbred Irish flunkies, sometime within the near future. We’ll discuss the mode of payment and the time and place, and this is the last time you and I will ever discuss it.”
Jack said, “I’ll pay, Freddy. And this is the last time we’ll ever discuss anything. You’ve just made an impetuous and small-time move—but then, you’ve always been that kind of guy.”
* * *
—
It was fifty paces to the Polo Lounge. My legs quake-quivered and held. I ducked by some dowagers and dumped one on her ass. I helped her up and sent drinks to her table. She waved and went Yoo-hoo!
I boozed. I watched a wall clock. Ray Pinker promised semen-stain results by 6:00 p.m. I conjured Montego Bay, Manhattan, the mountains on the moon. I spent the fifty grand fifty million ways. I saw Lois naked by a wild waterfall and Lois naked at the Chapman Park Hotel. Belfast-born hoods killed me all the standard ways. I died by garrote, gun, brass-knuckle blows to the brain. Flags flew. Jack took the oath of office. I saw Caryl Chessman in Hell. He said, “Hey, baby doll.”
6:00 p.m. boded and bopped close. A radio riffed near my booth. The Hat Squad closed in on fiendish Fat Boy Mazmanian. The cocksucker was doomed. I knew it. Nobody said it.
I found a phone and stiffed the call. Ray Pinker got the goods. The jizz-juiced panties matched the Janey Blaine autopsy discharge. Ray said shit like “identical cellular componentry” and “exudate cell formation.” Ray said the sample was six to eight days old. That meant this: the killer left his load before he killed Janey.
I bolted. I drove straight to the Chapman Park Hotel and Lois. We got naked and tumbled into bed. We didn’t do it. We held each other tight-tight and talked.
We made sense and no sense. My monologue on money/Montego Bay/Manhattan. My rude riffs on the Janey Blaine job as really MURDER. Lois on Nick Ray and Jimmy Dean and We Can’t Let Them Make That Movie. I heard what I heard and knew she heard me back the same way. I said We’ve Got Some Money twelve million times. She said Chessman and What Will You Do About It? twelve million times back. We talked at each other. We wrapped ourselves up together and tried to find some fit we never found.
I went out or passed out and went someplace Lois wasn’t. It was booze and dope and Jack and Janey and Jimmy leaving me. I tumbled. I saw things that weren’t there and went somewhere Lois wasn’t. I woke up for real at 4:00 a.m. Lois was gone, her suitcase was gone, she left no note on the pillow. All I had was her scent.
* * *
—
The Hats were off hunting Fat Boy Mazmanian. I drove home and changed clothes. I checked my answering service. Nobody called me. I heard Chessman and What Will You Do About It?—but she wasn’t there.
I called Jimmy’s pad and service and got no answers. What Will You Do?/What Will You Do? She ventriloquized me. I heard her say it—but she wasn’t there.
Jimmy had a crawl-in crib off of Wilshire and La Brea. He slid in there to sleep and be alone. It was an above-garage abode and a cool caterpillar’s cocoon. I drove over and brazenly broke in.
It was easy. One lock poke, one shoulder shove. It’s a room-with-bath/eat-off-a-hot-plate deal. I scoped the one room. Here’s what I saw:
A Chessman shrine. The Chessman Taj Mahal and Sistine Chapel. The Chessman Mount Rushmore and National Cathedral. Newspaper headlines taped wall-to-wall. Chessman foto glossies shellacked to the ceiling. Movie-type test fotos stacked on the bed. Jimmy Dean made up as Caryl Chessman.
He’s got darker hair here. It’s been cut and kinked à la Chessman. A makeup man puttied his nose. That prominent prow is Chessman’s choice feature.
Jimmy always looks peeved and pissed off. It’s always there and always offset by his native pride and prettification. He embodies hip hurt and magnified maladjustment. It’s his studly stock in trade. Here, he moves into MEAN. He looks older. He’s usurped and channeled Chessman. It’s a trenchant transubstantiation. He’s made himself vicious and vile. It’s a metamorphosis, man to monster.
Harrowing headlines hemmed me in. They were existentially Chessman/No Exit. They jumped from January ’48 and jammed up to now. Red Light Bandit Sought. Red Light Bandit Captured! Chessman Convicted—Gas Chamber Looms. Victims Describe Degradation. Third Victim Hinted At.
The walls whipped around me. They coldly constricted me and cut off my air. Pictures popped out. Regina Johnson and Mary Alice Meza. Victims 1 and 2, weeping. Apoplectic appeals. High Court Rules No Stay Of Execution. Worldwide Protests: Free Caryl Chessman!!!
I gasped for air. I stumbled and fell on the bed. I looked up at Jimmy’s Michelangelo art. He’d pasted Chessman pix to the bodies of Greek cherubs. They flew, flitted, and flung the face of the Beast down at the whimpering world.
Maladjustment. He’s memorializing it. It’s his movie motivation. He’s a tortured teenager tempting teens to toss themselves at the abyss. He’s a mad marionette of modernist depravity. And Nihilist Nick Ray is pulling the strings.
I shut my eyes and conjured Lois. I counted to fifty thousand dollars, one dollar bill at a time. I magically misplaced myself: Montego Bay, Manhattan, the mountains on the moon. I opened my eyes and saw the file cabinet by the bed.
Flimsy green metal. One file drawer. File-tabbed C.C./San Quentin Correspondence.
I opened the drawer. I saw dozens of envelopes dumped in. They were addressed to Nicholas Ray and James Dean and postmarked San Rafael, California. I recognized Chessman’s handwriting. The Herald had run two of his prison letters in full cursive. He moved these missives past censors and guards and got them into the mail.
I plucked the first envelope and pulled the first page. The sassy salutation said, “Hey there, Jimmy and Nick.” It was dated 12/18/54. The first line read, “Before we start, let me state that I want Elizabeth Taylor to play the Meza bitch. She’s got bigger jugs, that’s the main thing.”
Chessman scrawled a script title here. If I Really Did It—(heh, heh).
I read my way through the whole file. I popped sweat and sweltered out toxins from my delirious last days. Some tears must have merged there. My eyes burned bad and felt funny. I kept wiping them.
Chessman admitted all of it. He copped to the most minute evidentiary details. It was a savagely sustained depiction of sexual horror. It was demonically descriptive. Chessman recalled sights, scents, and sounds. He reveled in the mess he’d made of lives for years to come. He described the Shirley Tutler assault and designated Shirley by name. He spent forty-three pages extolling each and every time he bit her. He said he sucked the blood off her blouse front. He wrote, “Maybe we can get Natalie Wood to play Shirley.”
I read all of it. I read Jimmy’s margin notes. He wrote, “Wow!” “Dig it!” and “This Caryl cat is cold,” repeatedly.
I got my evidence kit out of the car. I walked back inside and prepped my shooting stage. I turned on all the room lights and photographed all the pages. I ran through twelve rolls of film and dumped the envelopes back in the drawer in approximate order.
My legs
quake-quivered and almost caved. I walked into the bathroom and doused my face. I looked different. What Will You Do About It? I looked older. I wondered if Lois would notice.
Evidence. “This Caryl cat” was cooked. His rights of redress had run out. I just punched his ticket to the green room.
* * *
—
Dizzy spells. Discontent and discombobulation. Don’t go for exultant. There’s No Exit, Baby. Don’t pop to your pad or rack out at the Ranch Market. Roll somewhere nobody can find you.
I’d lost a full day and a half at Jimmy’s crawl crib. It was the next nite of the next day at least. I drove downtown and parked in the cop lot at City Hall. My car cocooned me and sent me soporific. I tried to count from one to fifty thousand. I fell asleep at two thousand-something.
Bill Parker rapped on my windshield and woke me up. I popped the passenger door. He stepped in and dropped the early a.m. Herald on my lap.
I saw the Call Girl Homicide headline. Plus Coroner Curphey’s Accident Ruling “Hogwash,” Anonymous Source Sez.
Janey Blaine, hot off the press. There’s one fab foto. She’s fetching fine in ’49. She’s Miss Visalia JC.
There’s zero per Jack the K. Ouch—Prominent politicos among her many patrons. LAPD with egg on face. Chief Parker pledges revived investigation.
I said, “Who’s the source?”
Parker said, “As if you didn’t know.”
“Are you saying you won’t buy the pillow-talk defense?”
“No, and I would think you’d have figured out that you’re being spot-tailed a goodly portion of the time, and would have learned to conduct your liaisons accordingly.”
I lit a cigarette. Parker passed me his flask. I dunked deep and passed it back. Parker dunked deep. A barter bid’s boding. He’d have bitch-slapped me otherwise.
I said, “Let’s trade favors. Binding, as of now.”
