Widespread Panic
Page 29
Well now, baby. Here’s where it gets really gooooooooood.
OUTSIDE THE HALL OF JUSTICE
Downtown L.A.
10/17/57
Oooga-boooga. There’s the protest. That’s two hundred college kids. Note the Party putzes passing out ten-spots. They’re buying a Commie cacophony. The kids are chugging out chants: “Chess-Man is Inn-O-Cent!!! Stop the Death Machine!!!”
There’s Brando. He’s in with the kids. He’s signing autographs and popping a placard high in the sky. He’s the solo celebrity. He’s top-lining this gig. He’s wrapped in a fulsome phalanx of fans. He’s a hog for their loooooooove.
The Spring Street sidewalk shook with their shouts. I curb-crawled and slid my sled inch-by-inch slow. I looked for Lois. I saw her not. I circled Spring to Temple and drove around the block. I saw counterpickets congregate. Their signs said Burn Chessman Now!!! They were weary working stiffs. The college kids packed more panache.
I full-circled the shit show and shot back to Spring. I saw a solo college boy by the bus stop. He looked bored.
Heh, heh. I had the antidote for that.
I pulled up. He saw me. I waved him up to the car. He ambled on over. Man—this kid’s entrenched in ennui.
I said, “Hey, junior. How’d you like to make a C-note for a half hour’s work?”
He said, “Doing what?”
I held up a stack of my Marlon Brando fotos. They’re a cool cultural touchstone and define our time and place. It’s Mr. Mumbles, gobbling schvantz.
Junior perused the pix. Junior’s jaw jerked and dropped to his drawers. He filched the fotos. I laid out the loot.
He said, “Gee, thanks.”
I said, “Distribute these to your pals. What’s a protest without some smut? Maybe he’ll autograph them.”
* * *
—
I went back to work. I had four more listening posts to dismantle and disencumber. The microbe moved within me. Lois lived within me. Janey Blaine bloomed off by herself. Justice for Caryl Chessman? Fuck that shit. Justice for Janey and Shirley Tutler.
Left brain/right brain. My paid work boded boring. That protest prodded me proactive. I felt radicalized and detectivized. My brain quadrants melded and merged. I realized this:
The Sweetzer listening post. It’s Bug-and-Tap Central. We kept the master bug-and-tap logs for all the posts there. That meant all the typed transcripts. Going aaaaalll the way back to Confidential’s first issue. It’s got aaaalll the callers’ and callees’ names and fone numbers. It’s nothing but names, names, and names. It’s the ripe repository of L.A. vice.
It’s still a long long shot. But confluence causes coincidence. It’s who you know and who you blow. L.A. vice. That wicked world. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody talks. And Confidential had that wicked world wired.
I drove over and let myself in. It was midday musty. I kicked on the air-conditioning and cooled the place off. The master logs ran to eighty-eight volumes. Twelve for ’52/seventeen for ’53/eleven for ’54/eighteen for ’55/twenty-one for ’56/nine for ’57. My confluence was Chessman/Blaine/the Rebel Without a Cause connection.
The convergence culminated in ’55. The Rebel shoot ran from March to May. Nick’s Knights escalated in May. The loose Chessman chatter escalated in May. Janey was murdered in May. I knew of no bug-and-tap mounts at the Marmont. That might or might not mean they weren’t there. Bernie Spindel installed independent of me. The Marmont was a mother lode of L.A. vice. Certain units had to have been bugged and tapped.
I didn’t need to hear voices. I needed typed transcripts and named names. I pulled Log #9/May–June ’55. I noted a Marmont bug-and-tap listed. I finger-walked to page 483.
I noticed the names first. “Voices ID’d as actors Nick Adams and Dennis Hopper.” I noted the listed location: “Bungalow 21 D/Chateau Marmont.” I knew who lived there in May ’55. It was Nabob Nick Ray. I’m a bug-and-tap pro. I know the work. This talk reads like a living room conversation.
I get it. Nick and Dennis Hopper. They’re alone in Big Nick’s boss bungalow suite. It’s 5/14/55. Something Robbie Molette said tweaked me.
Nick Ray’s “alternative movie.” It refracts Rebel and then some.
The bug’s laid in a lamp or wired to a wall. The transcriber typed out bursts of static, dead air, and this:
Adams: “The boss has got some more escalation shit he’s concocting. He’s calling it the ‘final filmic thrust.’ ”
Hopper: “I think he’s a fucking psycho. That’s why I’ve kept my distance with him.”
Adams: “All geniuses are psycho. Look at Bird and Lucretia Borgia. You don’t get one without the other.”
Hopper: “Nick’s out of his gourd. He keeps hopping around the set, asking everyone from the camera guys to the grips, ‘Can you spell the word rape?’ ”
That was it. The conversation coughed to static and dead air. I found the work order and the transcriber’s signature at the bottom. Bernie Spindel ran the gig.
* * *
—
We met at Googie’s. I’d read the rest of the May transcripts. Nothing else slammed me. “Final filmic thrust.” “Can you spell the word rape?” The conversation occurred 5/14/55. Janey Blaine was raped and killed 5/18. Confluence abets consequence. I grokked a cause and effect.
We sipped coffee. Bernie said, “I remember the job, but it wasn’t for the magazine. Whatever you’re looking at, this conversation plays sideways to.”
I lit a cigarette. “Who put in the work order?”
“The security chief at Warner’s. He didn’t trust Nick Ray not to go over budget, and he didn’t trust him with all that young pulchritude around. He was just keeping tabs for the studio execs. It was a nothing kind of Hollywood job. I did all the transcriptions, and nothing I ever heard was worth a shit.”
I said, “Shit.”
Bernie said, “Yeah, ‘Shit.’ Just what I said. One thing you should check, though. One of my guys misfiled a bunch of the May transcripts in the July log. Since the gig never came to anything, I just let it lie.”
* * *
—
Lois Nettleton at thirty. The second time I saw her for the first time.
Gaunt subsumes goooood-looking. She’s winsome and wary, all wound up. She’s much more of whatever made her. She’s a runner stirred in the starting blocks. She’ll run from you but not herself.
Once again. Lois the Lithe. My midnight caller. We’re outside Dale’s Secret Harbor. She’s boxed in a booth. She’s haloed in a heathered crewneck sweater and cord slacks.
I walked up. She saw me. She closed her eyes and probably prayed. It was a whew!!! prayer. We worked through conduits and cupids. Her sudden summons worked.
She talked to the phone. I pulled out the Chessman/Jimmy D. letter and placed it flat on the booth glass. Chessman rags Shirley Tutler. He adamantly admits the assault.
I gripped the door hinge. Lois laid her hand there and laced up our fingers. I heard the phone drop.
* * *
—
We got naked and tumbled to bed. We didn’t do it. We conjured a rainstorm, like last time. It time-machined two years away. It rained hard and hurled hailstones. We sealed our circuit of time lost. ’55 to ’57—our window view’s a wonderland by nite.
It was now. We did what we did then. We kicked the sheets off and burrowed deep-deep. I told her how I found the letters. I forgave her Janey Blaine blurts to the press. She winced and wept at that. I put it off to pillow talk. I didn’t tell her I killed a man to spare her exposure.
Lois talked. She said Chessman’s L.A. court date had been moved up. We had forty-eight hours to make the meet and no more. I talked. I said Ernie Roll retired. Bill McKesson had his job now. He was a tough piece of goods. Bill Parker would have to persuade him. Lois said, The Chief should s
ee the letters. I said, He should. She said, I want to read every one.
The bedroom spun. It arced on an axis in sync with the rain. It rendered me reluctant and muzzled me mute. I wanted to riff, ramble, and laff. I wanted to predict our prosaic future beyond this sacred cause. I stayed still. Our future ended at the green room. We both knew that.
Lois grabbed my briefcase and walked to the kitchen. She left the door open. She chain-smoked and drank coffee and read Chessman’s letters. I watched her. She wept and kept her sobs as mute as me.
I hid in her heartbeats. Her silent sobs put me to sleep. Time hurtled haywire. She slid into bed and moved me to murmurs. I said, “Do you love me?”
She said, “I’ll think about it.”
THE SWEETZER LISTENING POST
West Hollyweird
10/18/57
Escalation.”
“Final filmic thrust.”
“Can you spell the word rape?”
All synced to Janey Blaine’s date of death.
I popped into the post. Bernie’s boys misfiled some May ’55 transcripts. They were master-filed here. I felt moon-mad in broad daylight. Lois was back. I was raking in righteous results.
I’d messengered a missive to Bill Parker. It included photostats of four Caryl Chessman to Jimmy Dean letters. Ernie’s out, Chief. Bill McKesson’s in. Remember that favor I asked? Twenty minutes with the Fiend?
Parker called McKesson and messengered me back. We got ten minutes with the Fiend.
I blew out of my pad then. I hopped to Hollywood and blitzkrieged Hollywood Station. I blew into the records room and cruised crime-scene pix. I found Shirley Tutler and Janey Blaine. ’48 meets ’55. Mulholland meets Beverly Glen. The abduction spot for Shirley. The probable dump spot for Janey. Five fotos total. They were point-by-point duplicates.
Here’s what’s hair-raising. The ’55 foliage had been trimmed back to ’48 dimensions. I did not imagine this. I saw tree and leaf clippings on the ground.
Escalation meets replication.
I locked myself up in the listening post. I pulled the July ’55 book and skimmed for misfiles. I found the Nick Ray/Chateau Marmont work order. The room-bug transcripts preceded the fone taps. The room bugs revealed jack shit.
Neuter Nick blathers and bloviates. Jimmy D. and Nick A. blather back. Nick pokes Nifty Natalie and Sassy Sal on the couch. Bernie’s notes note “low and high-pitched grunts and sounds of sexual frenzy.” Fourteen pages of garbled-voice overlap follow that.
I hit the phone-tap transcripts. The section ran sixty-two pages. A separate column listed callers. It got boring, fast.
Nick Ray calls Googie’s forty-three times. Cal the counter man picks up. Nick calls Jimmy/Nick A./Natalie and Sal. They discuss movie motivation. Nick promotes underage woof-woof.
Nick calls his agent. Nick calls twenty-nine unknown men and women. Forty-one unknown men and women call Nick. Bad-boring to languorous and long-winded. No ripe revelation. No talk worth jack shit.
I hit twenty-six pages of fone static. Bernie marked it as such. I hit a noodle-nudging non sequitur: Nick calls NO-65832 nineteen times.
It’s a pay phone in Silver Lake. It’s by the Black Cat Bar at Sunset and Vendome. Bernie lists it as a “known bookie drop.”
Nick and Unknown Man #21 talk. It’s 99.9 percent voice voids and static crunch. Yeah—but there’s nuggets in with the dross.
Nick, 5/11/55. Bookie Call #8: “Setups,” “lights,” “the girl.” Interlaced static throughout. Eleven minutes of line static follow.
Unknown Man #21, 5/13/55. Bookie Call #9: “Props,” “the ’46 Ford,” “some sort of real-life location.” Interlaced static throughout. Sixteen minutes of line static follow.
Nick, 5/14/55. Bookie Call #16: “Of course, Jimmy wants to play the Bandit.” Interlaced static throughout. Four minutes of line static follow.
Three more pay-phone calls follow. There’s no transcribed talk. So what? Calls 8, 9, and 16 dumped the dirt.
The calls precede the Janey Blaine snuff. It’s movie talk. “Props,” “lights,” “setups.” Janey’s “the girl.” Caryl Chessman drove a “ ’46 Ford” on his rape jobs. Mulholland and Beverly Glen is the “real-life location.” Jimmy wants to play the (Red Light) Bandit? If the shitbird weren’t dead, he could do just that.
* * *
—
The booth calls belatedly bugged me. I considered them conclusive. They surged circumstantial. The “ ’46 Ford” cinched the whole deal. I wanted more. I wanted to place Janey Blaine’s killer in that phone booth.
I called Al Wilhite at Headquarters Vice. He knew that booth and the bookie-drop gestalt. He said, “Freddy, it’s just a run-of-the-mill pay phone. Yeah, it sees a lot of bookie traffic—because bookies book a lot of action at the Black Cat. But what’s to stop some neighborhood denizen with no phone from making calls there? Or your two callers arranging calls there, because the callee lives in the neighborhood, and he doesn’t want his number listed on any calls-received list?”
It made sense. I drove by Sunset and Vendome and eyeballed the booth. I saw bookie types exit the Black Cat and enter the booth. I saw them take and make calls and fill out bet slips. I got half gassed at the Cat. I called up concepts and threaded theories through my head. One stuck stern and held.
Phone calls. Letters. Codes of communiqué. Caryl Chessman writes to Jimmy Dean. Jimmy probably writes back. It’s Nick Ray’s repugnant replication film. Wouldn’t Neuter Nick want to talk to Caryl Chessman—at least once?
I whipped west. The concept coursed through me. I ran by the Ranch Market. I kept my Rebel cast and crew records check paper there. I ran through the address index. Nein and nyet. Nobody lived near Sunset and Vendome/the Black Cat.
Nick Ray called Chessman. I sensed it. Death row cons caught calls at the attorney room. The Quentin switchboard put them through. Nick Ray called Chessman in May ’55. His hotel bungalow was bugged and tapped. He might have sensed it. I was hurling heat at him then. What would he do? He’d place a switchboard call.
I moseyed over to the Marmont. I badged a dippy desk clerk and played special deputy. I laid it out. Nicholas Ray/the Rebel shoot/May ’55. Did Mr. Ray make any switchboard calls, here in the flesh?
The clerk said he seemed to recall it. He was on the desk that month. He checked his call records and went all aglow.
Here it is. Now, I remember. He called San Quentin Penitentiary. He spoke for fourteen minutes, and he used that phone right here at the desk.
I slid him a C-note. He palmed it, perfecto. I went all dippy disingenuous.
I would never accuse you of eavesdropping, but—
Well, I recall one thing that Mr. Ray said. He said, “Jimmy and I consider you our technical adviser.”
I checked the call list. The call went through at 3:16 p.m., 5/17/55. Janey Blaine was murdered the next morning.
OUTSIDE CITY HALL
Downtown L.A.
10/19/57
Picket punks. Slogan slammers. College kids and movie morons moved to outrage. Their main martyr’s up in the DB. He’s hard-wired to a hot seat. We’re heading that way.
“Chessman Is Inn-O-Cent!!!” “Stop The Death Machine!!!”
I ran interference. Lois lugged a prop steno machine. Picket punks posed and paraded. They were packed tight and pissed off. They bristled with bromides and placard-plumed the air.
I stiff-armed us through them. We maneuvered by Marlon Brando. Lois said, “Hi, Marlon!” Brando said, “Lois, what are you doing with that putz?” I flipped his necktie in his face.
There’s the steps. We tumbled over, up, and inside. Max Herman and Red Stromwall played escort. They doffed their Hat Squad fedoras. Max ogled Lois. Red went Woo-woo!!!
We made the freight lift and the DB. We walked to sweatbox row. The Fiend’s in #2. I looked at L
ois. She looked at me. I winked. We held the Holy Shit moment close and linked hands. I pushed the door in.
There he is.
Beelzebub. 666. The Biblical Beast. The red-horned/trident-tailed/cloven-hoofed apparition. He emits dust and sparks. Serpents coil through his hair. He’s assumed human form today. He’s thirty-six and pale. He’s got that bumpy nose. He’s skinny, he’s prissy, he wears jail denims. He vibes World’s Smartest Convict.
He sat cross-legged. I pulled a chair up. Lois perched her steno machine on the table. I brought my briefcase.
Chessman said, “You were at Hollywood Station. I recall you at the squadroom there.”
The Beast speaks. He’s a brazen braggart. I know that about him. He’s brought his so-soft voice today. He’s surgically circumspect and silky self-effacing. He’s the watchful world’s Victim of This Time and Place. He’s Sacco and Vanzetti, and Timothy Evans, framed for Reg Christie’s grief.
I said, “Yes, I was there. I saw Colin Forbes and Al Goossen interview you, and I was there when Shirley Tutler came in.”
Chessman said, “Who’s Shirley Tutler?”
“She’s the woman you assaulted between your assaults on Regina Johnson and Mary Alice Meza. I state that knowing full well that you’ve denied those crimes, and will certainly deny assaulting Miss Tutler.”
I let the moment meander and metamorphose. He’ll deny it. He’ll say there’s no proof. Lois futzed with her machine. Dear Lord, her eyes. Such righteous hate.
“I don’t have to talk to you. The court will invalidate the stenographer’s transcription, and I surely will not confess to yet another crime I did not commit.”
I popped my briefcase. I pulled out the forty-three-page depiction of Shirley Tutler’s bite wounds. I put the pages before the Beast’s eyes.