Widespread Panic
Page 31
* * *
—
Low clouds unzipped and reigned rain. I broomed northeast to Sunset and Vendome. I parked on that same side street and sidled to the same back door.
The same two picks popped the lock. I stepped inside and eeeaaased the door shut. I heard his snores, straight off.
The sleep cubicle. Eight paces and flank sharp right.
I brought a .44 Magnum revolver. It blasted loud. The pro suppressor soaked up all attendant sound. I walked toward the snores and flashed my penlight. It haloed Arvo’s face on the pillow. I aimed and fired six shots.
He vaporized. I smelled dissipation and desiccation in the bone-and-blood mist. I snatched his diary and his wall-to-wall fotos. I jacked the wall heat up to ninety. Let the demon decompose.
KKXZ RADIO
Southside L.A.
10/21/57
Jolting jam session. Walloping world premiere. Live in-studio: the Synagogue Sid Trio.
The piece:
“Trippy Triptych: Dirge for Shirley Tutler and Janey Blaine & Caryl Chessman’s Gas Chamber Chaconne.”
It’s hastily composed. As in right now. Sid and his boys embody improvisation. There’s four kool kats here for the bash. As in Lois, Robbie Molette, Nasty Nat, and yours truly.
We’re celebrating. I bought KKXZ outright and dumped the deed on Nat. Nick Ray paid the freight. I pocketed two g’s in chump change and paid Lois’ air-fare back to the Apple. She’s got an Armstrong Circle Theatre gig pending.
I’m bleak, blue, and shorn to shit. We defanged the Beast. We radically revised the sexy secret history of our nation. Lissome Lois leaves me for ten minutes on TV.
Sid and his boys cranked it. Bass sax/flügelhorn/drums. It only goes so far.
I got itchy and Giant Ant antsy. I kept thinking of fatal fuckups and the loony lore of decomposition. I walked to the waiting room and ran some deep breaths.
It helped. I de-antsified. I scoped the Charlie Parker tribute wall. I noticed a new screed scrawled below the Live on 52nd Street album.
“Pack up all your cares and woes / Here you go, swingin’ low / Bye, bye, blackbird.”
It was signed, “Much love, Lois N.”
INFERNAL INTERMEZZO:
My Pensively Pent-up Life
10/22/57–5/1/60
It came and went. Confidential, the whole Rebel rigamarole. I waltzed on the Arvo Jandine snuff. Decomposition devastated all possible inquiries. Stagnant stomach gasses gasped out of the stiff and ignited. The studio blew up. Nobody made it a murder.
I burned all of the listening-post tapes and tape logs. Confidential and I went kaput. The mag moseys along without me. Bondage Bob’s been raked by residual lawsuits. Savaged celebs now savage him. He’s putting out ten and fifteen g’s per pop. Nuisance suits are draining him dry. The mag’s corrosive content has wizened to wispy white bread. There’s no vindictive va-va-voom and scandal skank. There’s no strongarm goons to dash dissent and fight that fierce First Amendment fight.
I’m shit out of luck there. I’m Ex-Officio Freddy. I’m a former PI and a dervish of divorce at the wheelman lot. I shook the shakedown tree and bled Nosebleed Nick Ray for a spell. Sustained extortion withered my wig. I blew my take on booze, dope, and women. I sold myself into sin and saw a certain sickness eat me alive. I divested to climb clear of the serpent sucking at my soul. I told Nosebleed Nick this. He genuflected and wept.
Opportunity is love. I’ve always known it. I doped a racehorse named Wonder Boy and tried to rig a run of races. I got popped for it. The L.A. DA issued indictments. Bill Parker interceded and rerouted my Quentin trek. I lost my PI’s license. I’m still Big Bill’s back-door bitch and informant. I’m still a rat, a fink, a snarky snitch. I’ve gone from tattle tyrant to tattletale. It’s the work I’m best suited for.
I’m still the Pervdog of the Nite. I still trawl for trouble and peep potent windows in my path. I’ve cruised and crashed a load of lives on said path to date. I’m lonely in my loss of them. I peep them from afar and peruse the paths they’ve chosen.
Jack the K. was resoundingly reelected to the Senate. ’58 boded big for him. Pat Brown was elected governor of California. The Confidential trial trounced the notion that Pat was a putz. Rock and Phyllis are Splitsville. I negotiated the divorce. Nick Ray remains the awful auteur. He makes miasmic movies that slide folks to sleep. The Rebel rigamarole marked his slide into evil. Confluence is destiny. He had help there.
Jimmy D.’s dead. I killed Arvo Jandine. Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo are movie stars. Nick Adams has his own TV show. Chester Voldrich lost the hand I mangled to gangrene. I slide him five yards a month, anonymous.
I see them all as the specious spawn of Caryl Whittier Chessman. The cancerous conjunction of vicious thug/victim/hard-hearted hipster left them too weak to resist. Escalation. The Sorority Panty Raid, the Liquor Store Inferno, the film Red Light Bandit. Spring ’55 et al. Chessman hovers in ellipsis. I cannot and will not forfeit the thought of him. He’s insistently intertwined with Lois Nettleton. They collectively colluded and marked my one shot to become someone else.
Chessman continues. He files appeals and writes books and claims the ownership of a fatuous phalanx of folks given to dime-store notions of redemption. He’ll fry sooner or later. I trust that legal consensus. Here’s what my most heated hatred and powerful perceptions tell me.
He’s struck Lois with a strain of his virus. It lives within that part of her where the hard-hearted careerist and ardent artist coexist. Lois worships a tricky trinity. It’s Art/Chessman/Shirley Tutler’s Desecration. She found me because she needed me and sensed my susceptibility and rage for romance. She’s discarded me twice now. She sees me as a Chessman casualty, as I see her. She knows that I’m love-struck in a way that careerist-artists are not. I torch for her as she does not torch for me. She’s unfit to live a squarejohn life. So am I. I’d try it with her. She won’t try it with me. I must change my life. She will not abet this design. She considers the design pathetic and inimical to her Drama of the Artist Alone. I’ve got one last shot at Lois Nettleton’s love. I consider it a curtain call. We must stand together the day Chessman burns.
THE GREEN ROOM
San Quentin Penitentiary
5/2/60
There it is. This stark steel contraption. It’s ghastly ghost green and riven with rivets and big bolts. It faces the spectator seats. It fits one condemned convict. The door’s plied with a Plexiglas window staring straight at us. The hot seat features cinchable restraints. A vat socked with sulfuric acid sits beneath it. The cyanide pellets scoot through a chute and dissolve there. Thus begins the big adios.
I sat with Lois. Bill Parker booked our seats. Colin Forbes sat two seats down. Chessman drew a full house. Sixty seats. Sixty newsmen, politicos, and those with clear-cut clout.
We parked in a lower lot and pried through protesters to get here. A thousand people jostled, jeered, shoved, and shrieked. Marlon Brando mugged into a megaphone. He told the folks he was set to play Chessman in a forthcoming flick.
It’s 10:01 a.m. There’s the Beast. He’s entered through a side hallway. Two guards hold his arms. A third guard pops the door. They strap Chessman hard in the hot seat. He’s strapped legs, lap, and chest.
A doctor appears. He hangs a stethoscope around Chessman’s neck. The death dudes pop back out. Chessman’s alone in the green room. It’s 10:02 a.m.
The Warden spoke. Wall speakers sent sound our way.
“Do you have any last words?”
Chessman said, “I am not the Red Light Bandit.”
A green-room mike cranked out his credo. I winked at Colin Forbes. Colin went Freddy, you dog. Lois caught it and swatted my leg.
The pellets dropped. It was soundless. I saw Chessman feign nonchalance. Cyanide fumes filled the chamber. They were invisible. Chessman buckled and gasped
and dripped drool.
His head lolled and sat sideways. His mouth stretched wide-wide. His lips curled over his teeth. His tongue torqued. His arms trembled and palsied palms-up. He looked sure-as-shit deadsville to me.
Time slipped slow and stood still. The fumes dissipated and died. The doctor reentered the green room. He held a handkerchief to his face. He donned his stethoscope and put it to Chessman’s chest. He said, “I pronounce this man dead.”
* * *
—
Guards got us through the throng. Protesters pressed against us. Lois looked at them and waved at kids in papoose-style pouches. We trudged and tripped down some stairs. The slogan chants and shouts sheared off to a low roar.
We made the lower lot and my Packard pimpmobile. We lounged upside it and lit cigarettes.
I said, “Let’s head into the city. I’ll get us a suite at the Fairmont, and we’ll lay low for a while.”
Lois blew smoke rings. “I’m getting married, Freddy. I thought you should know.”
I slumped into my sled. “Well, shit. Who is he?”
“He’s a playwright, and he has his own radio show. Before you ask, I’ll admit it. I took to calling in, and one thing led to another.”
I laffed. “Okay. L.A., then. We’ll hit Trader Vic’s or Ollie Hammond’s. I’ll drop you at the airport tomorrow.”
Lois said, “Marlon’s driving me back. Don’t look so glum, and don’t pretend you don’t know. It was always about the three of us, and with What’s His Name gone, we’d just be fishing for compliments, and making conversation.”
* * *
—
An evil rape-o burns. I lose the girl. My confession ends right here, right now.
The bridge traffic was brutal. News trucks traipsed to and from Quentin. Outbound cars carted slogan slammers and protest pros out to hatch havoc. Placards plumed out their windows. Stop The Death Machine and Kennedy in ’60. Hey, kids—I used to pimp and cop dope for that guy!!!
I dipped downbeat and bopped with the blues. Dig my big boo-hoo. Lost Lois and a dizzy decade out to castigate and confound me. I’m shivering under my shroud. I’m a rogue cop and strongarm goon with too much past and no future to lose.
The traffic thinned. I hit the bridge and goosed the gas. It propelled me past a caravan of Kennedy kids. Sheer movement gored my gonads. L.A. was four hundred miles south. Opportunity is love. I’m gonesville, Daddy-O.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAMES ELLROY was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy: American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood’s A Rover, and the L.A. Quartet novels: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz. He lives in Colorado.
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