Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction From the Underside of L.A.

by James Ellroy

  Facing Maladroit Mesa:

  A barbed-wire bordered baby White House built to 1/10 scale.

  Righteous replication. Exquisite external detail. A lush lawn that led down to Slave City.

  The lawn did double duty as an unpaved parking lot. I pulled up behind a beanerized Buick and a frijolified Ford., I felt felicitously fit and joyfully jingoistic. Tojo was flying a flag. His lusty little Lucifer was trimmed in tricolored lace. I flipped him a salacious salute.

  The joint was jumping jackrabbit high.

  A bonaroo buffet boded by the barbed-wire boundary. Bullwhips bit bullet-loud. Mangled muchachos moaned and mewed, "Mamacita!" Blackshirted blowhards lounged on the lawn and swicked switchblades into the grass.

  I vipped out of the van. I hauled Bad Bob out by the hair. Sammy made a mountain of mink and moved it onto the lawn. The Juke Box Jesus was rope-wrapped and mouth-muted and mummified in mink. He could suffer and suffocate. He could vegetate in the van. He didn't play in my plan.

  Sammy sealed him in safe and soundless. A blackshirt blizzard hit the Mink Matterhorn.

  They reveled and rolled like dogs in the dirt. They mauled mink and salivated on sable. They grabbed and grass-stained and chewed up choice chinchilla.

  A shadow shot over Mink Mountain and shaded in shiveringly. Pedro Pimentel--the tostadofied Tojo and menudoized Mussolini.

  A spiffy spic. A blackshirted blackguard with blackhead pits and bad teeth. A jackbooted jackal not to jive with.

  He said, "Stop."

  The blowsy blackshirts stopped and stood at attention.

  He turned to me. "Mr. Getchell?"

  I said, "In the flesh." I hair-hauled Bad Bob over to him.

  "He killed your kid brother. I'm giving him to you as a getacquainted bonus."

  Bad Bob boohooed and begged for his life. Pimentel pulled a pistol and popped him in the pineal gland. He sheared off six more shots and shaved his crew cut down to a crease.

  Sammy said, "Dig it!"

  Pimentel reholstered his heater. "You look like the American entertainer, Sammy Davis, Jr."

  I said, "That's 'El Negrito.' He's a torpedo for a nigger mob in South L.A."

  Sammy said, "What's shakin',Jefe?"

  Pimentel patted his paunch. "Quite a remarkable resemblance. Come, I will give you a tour before we eat."

  We whipped through the White House. The façade was fetching and faithful to our founding fathers' design. The inside was lusciously Latinate and refreshingly revisionistic.

  The rooms resembled rat-traps on Route 66. Jefe housed his hermanos herd-style. They bunked in six-bed bunkers hung with burro act artwork. Dingo dogs and Dobermans dashed down the halls and defecated dolorously.

  They lived in the Lincoln Bedroom. The Lincoln portraits were painted by Pedro Pimentel. El Jefe altered Abe and changed him to a cholo in a '52 Chevy.

  The dog den opened into the Oval Office. The lewd little Lucifer leered on a lusciously loomed lavender rug. A heavy-hung hound was humping a chewed-up Chihuahua. A Pekingese was pissing on Pedro Pimentel's papers.

  The Rose Room stood in as a stall for the stars at the classy Club Diablo. Dig the hip heaps of hay! Dig the trough tricked up with the devil dick design! Dig the donkeys dozing in postcoital peace!

  The Roosevelt Room was a gun range. The John Adams Room adjoined it at a rigid right angle. It was Pedro Pimentel's private party pad.

  A faux fur--flocked floor. Sheet-shrouded walls to smother with smut films projected prick-primingly. Presidential artwork by El Jefe:

  Abigail Adams on dowager dyke Eleanor Roosevelt. Pat Nixon knob-noshing FDR--wigged out in his wheelchair.

  Oooooh, Daddy-o! Save me from this pixilated Picasso!

  We bopped out to the buffet behind the barb-wire fence. We feasted in full view of the slave kids. El Negrito and I flanked El Jefe. Bloated blackshirts blipped down and joined us.

  Mink Mountain moldered in the sun. Flies flitted on the fur and flew off. A blowsy blackshirt brought me 500 Gs in a mink moneybag. I pitched Pimentel my plan to pop down to Paraguay and seek Paradise. He said he'd set me up with Strongman Stroessner.

  We ate with unique utensils. We stabbed our meat with stilettos and tore our tortillas with Texas toad-stickers. We shivved shiny apples and swacked at our sweetbreads with switchblades. We slung slivers of food over the fence at the slaves. They slathered and scrapped over scraps. Blackshirts blasted them with their bullwhips and bullied them back to work.

  El Jefe held forth--on himself. He ran down his rackets like a rabid raconteur. He shared shit on his shakedown scam and said he stored his blackmail bait in the basement of the Club Diablo. He raved about Dot Rothstein and lavished praise on Linda Lansing. He said he'd loooove to chuck his chorizo on Linda the next time he laid up in L.A. He'd looooove to jabJoi Lansing, too.

  My brainwaves broiled, bristled, and brought forth that contradictory connection.

  Joi Lansing--lashed to lo mein in Linda Lansing's L.A. lair. My take: Tojo sent two taco heads up to lash Linda and pry a priceless SOMETHING off the premises. The spics spoke no English. They butchered the wrong bimbo.

  But--

  Tojo talked like he loooooved Linda. Like he'd love to loooove her AGAIN. Like he didn't think she got shanked to Shiv City. He said he'd love to jab Joi Lansing--like he didn't know she got mashed to mulch by mistake.

  Which proved the priceless SOMETHING had to be SOMEWHERE.

  ?????

  We stabbed steaks with our stilettos. We shucked oysters with our shivs. We toasted Tojo. We drank to a dreary drumroll of dictators and despots. Tojo twirled a little Lucifer key ring--and clipped a clear chord in my head.

  We toasted Bad Boy Batista. We toasted Patriarch Perón. A blackshirt blasted to his feet and blanched brown to bright white.

  He said, "Hay-soos Christo." Elegant echoes eddied behind the barbed wire. Wasted waifs whispered:

  "Hay-soos Christo."

  "Hay-soos Christo."

  "Hay-soos Christo."

  The whispers whipped into worshipful wails. Blasphemous blackshirts blew the blessing out in synergistic sync. I stood up stunned and stung by the fragrance of Frankincense.

  The Juke Box Jesus. Re-resurrected in Rayban shades and a wild white sheet. Re-toupeed and regal in lizard loafers and a crazy crown of thorns whipped up from wires and widgets and White House whatnots.

  He walked our way. He waved a transistor radio vandalized from the van. "Ave Maria" ate up the air--off the album "AllTime Hits" by Craig Crawford's Christian Chorale.

  He walked our way. He oozed optimum oomph. Juke Box Jesus outworks God at the Galilee Lounge in Las Vegas. He slid on his slick lizard loafers and lurched levitatingly.

  He sliced and sluiced our way. He wiggled on wet grass. He warbled, "I grant you your freedom!"

  Nine hundred niños went nuts. They stampeded--stigmata stained and hurled by the Holy Spirit.

  They gored the guards. They tore at them with the tools they toiled with. They beat them with ball-peen hammers and hacked them with sheet-metal shears. They bullwhipped them and machetified them with machine-gun fire. They barged into the barbed-wire barrier barbarically strong. They ran though it razor-wracked and idolatrously indifferent.

  Sammy said, "Dig it!"

  The fence flew up and flattened the buffet table. Two dozen blackshirts went down wire whipped and barbed in the balls. Tojo took it all in. He stood trenchantly transfixed. He put his pistol to his teeth and tripped the trigger. I dodged whizzing wires and picked his pockets. I lifted the little Lucifer key ring.

  Machine-gun fire torqued the table and tore it to tidbits. My mink moneybag was flayed to fur flecks. My half-million got bullet-burned and scrip-scrapped and devalued to a micro-dime on the dollar.

  I vaulted up to the van. Sammy ran up rápido. Stigmata-stung muchachos stuck machine guns in the air and mowed down malevolent spirits. A group gravitated up to Mink Mountain. My stole stash was stripped to strings by stray bullets.


  Sammy said, "Dig it!"

  I sought out Savior Sinatra. I saw him swaying sweet in his sharp shades and sheet. He was smiling smug and smoking a cigarette. He was righteously and re-resurrectedly cooooooooool.

  7

  I lost my mink and my money. My psycho sidekick succumbed to the Savior and re-Sambofied himself resurrectionally.

  I remained a Hush-Hush heretic and hauled to T.J. I left Juke Box Jesus and his jig John the Baptist at their cut-rate Calvary. Frank was serving up the Sermon on Mex Mountain. Ring-ading--nine hundred niflos noncomprehending. No way for them to grok and groove "Clip Me, Clyde" and "Baby, You're Knocking Me Numbsville."

  Dig it, distinct:

  It didn't matter. The motherfucker made magic and charmed children into mass murder.

  I dipped up to Club Diablo. I stashed my van by some burro stalls and stood by the basement door. I tried Tojo's keys. Number two tickled the lock and let me in.

  I latched it behind me. I swicked on a wall switch and laid some light in. A long corridor led to a crud-crusted crawl space.

  The corridor reeked of cordite and caustic chemicals. I coughed and caught sight of hipbones and hair-hanks in a hardened heap. Blood blips and flesh flaps flared out flat on the walls.

  Tojo's torture chamber.

  Quivering quiet upstairs. No delighted donkeyphile dementia. The club might be closed. Tojo's minions might have caught word on the coup at Calvary.

  I walked wary. I crept into the crawl space. I skivved my way through skeletons and scooted through scorched scalps. I squealed and squirmed into another hipbone-heaped hallway.

  I saw a dust-covered door. I ratched keys into a rusty lock. Key number three tumbled the tumblers. I tumbled into a tunnel-like enclosure.

  Shelves shot floor to flat ceiling. Film cans filled them up. Tape strips were stuck to the edges. Date designations blipped out in black block print.

  Bolted to the back wall: a rust-ratched movie magnification machine.

  The cans were crammed in chronologically. The dates dipped back to 1936. I started there and shot my eyes shelf to shelf.

  I hit 3/9/53. The date distracted me. I got dizzy. My memory mailed me a message: the Mabel Monahan murder.

  I pulled out the film. I slid a slice under the slide on the movie magnifier. I looked in the lens. I thrilled to the throes of the Three-Way Supreme.

  Freon Frank Sinatra.

  Avid Ava Gardner.

  Barbaric Barbara Graham.

  Surreptitiously shot shakedown shit. An extortion extravaganza. The blackmail blight of all time.

  I fed film and sliced it under the slide. I shared the sheets with a shimmering cast and spun under their spell. I popped a posthumous pardon on Barbaric Barb.

  She didn't murder Mabel Monahan. She had an all-star alibi for 3/9/5 3. Linda Lansing learned about it. She shook down Freon Frank and had him pay her off with payola. Bad Bob and Demon Dot--in league with Devil DA Leavy on the Graham case. His conviction: contaminated by the contents of the film can. Call it a cause célèbre--the can could lay L.A. law enforcement laughingstock low--Leavy pulled the plug on the payola probe for that reputation-ruining reason.

  It ALL congealed and constellated. A special spark spoke to my spirit. Call it the Sermon on Mount Monahan.

  Barbaric Barb the martyred madonna.

  Who refused to rat off Frigid Frank and Avid Ava as her alibi. Who died in deference to the deification confirmed at the cutrate Calvary.

  Who jumped off the jury and did not Judas the Juke Box Jesus.

  8

  The kiddie coup went commie. The cops quelled it quicksville.

  I filched five film cans and trawled TJ. for Jesus and Jungle John. I hit some hot spots and ran up against the Red Revolt in retreat.

  Malnutrition-mauled muchachos moped down the main drag. They lurched and lisped leftist slogans. They slung empty machine guns and stumbled with the weight--withered waifs who wasted their wad at the White House.

  They staggered and stumped for pickled plantains on every plate. They lashed out at laissez-faire labor laws and slandered slavery. They sideswiped soldiers and sailors. They agitated against Uncle Sam. They propagandized prostitutes. They chanted and chastised the cholos who made Mexico great. They beat their balls into an uproar and ran out of Red rancor. They hit the street from heat stroke one by one.

  The local cops let them run raucous and run out of steam. They didn't muscle them or mow them down and martyr them. They made like that Martin Luther King motherfucker. They put out passive resistance and popped the little putzes into paddy wagons. Pedro Pimentel's successor would subsidize their rigorous reeducation.

  They succumbed to Sinatra in one magic moment of misplaced identity. They couldn't sustain their subversion without him.

  I said vaya con dios to the Vauxhall van and freed Frank's lilac Lincoln. I hit the hip whorehouses and the jai alai games and buzzed by the bullfight ring. I saw Sambo and the Savior at the Salamander Club and dipped by on disingenuous instinct.

  Frank looked freon-fresh and crisply non-Christlike. His gracious greeting: "Getchell, you cocksucker, what are you doing here?"

  Sammy marched me into the men's room and revealed the reverse metamorphosis.

  Frank collapsed cold on Mink Mountain. He woke up wigged out and wondered where he was. His lost days lapped back to L.A. and the snuff snafu. He did not recall his re-resurrection and his acid-induced atavism. He was pissed at my piece on the payola probe--properly so. Sammy said he propagandized the prick. Bygones as bygones--let's bop back to L.A.

  Sammy's pulverizing punch line:

  "He is the Christ, Danny. I know you think it's all some kind dope fluke, but it's not. I'm back with him now, and I'll always be with him, and thank God he doesn't know that I betrayed him."

  We buzzed up to the border. We quaffed Cuervo from the bottle and bit bitter limes. Re-Sambofied Sammy chauffeured and shucked and jived. I daydreamed and disdained his Christ crap.

  Fuck Frank the Freewheeling Freak. I had the 3/9/5 3 fuck film and four more. I had Governor GoodwinJ. Knight and his nigger nurse. I had Diana Dors and a dipshit who delivered her pizza. I had Dan Dailey in a daisy chain and Mickey Mantle and Marilyn Monroe in the men's room at the Mocambo. That meant MONEY in my tote tucked in the trunk.

  Frank tippled tequila and licked lime and blue-eye blitzed me. It rankled and roughed up my ego. I bored back with my beady browns. Our brainwaves bristled and telescoped telepathically.

  Frank hopped in my head. He crept around my cranial crevices and crisscrossed my crazily wired wig. He verbally vandalized me. He thumped me with a thick thesaurus and alliterated with alacrity. Literal lightning flares flew between our foreheads and threw out huge thuds of thunder. Synaptic syncopation singed the seats we sat on. We communicated in capsulized containment. Samboized Sammy sat there and didn't see or hear shit.

  Frank Freud-frappéed me and undid my unconscious. I shared my chickenshit childhood in Chillicothe, Ohio. We commiserated. He communicated his kid conundrums contrapuntally. I sunk down syncophantic. We negotiated a nonaggression pact. I said I'd never hurl him hurt in Hush-Hush. Frank Freud-frappéed and freed himself. He conflagratingly confessed his love for nonbarbaric Barbara Graham.

  He was addlepatedly and adoringly in love with awful Ava Gardner. Ava liked to lez once in a soft sapphic moon. Hubert Humphrey hipped them to thrilling three-way thrush Barb. The triad trick went down Ofl 3/9/53. The soft siren syphoned his soul off Ava as they all linked limbs on luscious lilac sheets.

  He capitulated. He commandeered himself into captivity. La Graham graced him with three grateful months. He left avid Ava in the lilac lurch. The scandal rags read it wrong and said she spun out for Splitsville. The cops mistakenly made Boss Barb for the Mabel Monahan murder. Sinatra stormed out to straighten her strait. Boss Barb interceded and interdicted him. She said his alibi would annihilate him and annex him from the world he wowed and rang ring-a-ding. Her death would not diminish them. Sh
e possessed preternatural powers. She could dip into them dispensationally and deify him beyond his catastrophically cool charisma.

  Dig:

  She died and did it.

  Doubt ditzed me. Scandal-scribe skepticism scrawled itself out in telltale telepathy. Frank scrolled a resounding response: "Don't you dig me, Dad?" I screwed up and scrawled back: "Jesus, I'm not sure."

  Frank snapped his fingers. The trunk door trembled and leaped off the lilac Lincoln. My tote bag tipped out and popped to the pavement. Two mangy muchachos materialized and moseyed up to it.

  Frank said, "It's my world. Even God knows that."

  L.A. paled pallid next to torrid Tj. I loped by Linda Lansing's lair and let myself in with Liz Scott's key.

  No blood. No maggot mounds. No cool corpus delicti. No living room ratched and wrecked past recognition.

  Dot Rothstein wrapped in a man-sized muumuu. The NEW Joi Lansing lez-locked on her lap.

  A headline hopping off a heap of Heralds chucked by their chair:

  SINGER LANSING FOUND IN HOLLYWOOD HILLS. CORONER CITES DECOMPOSITION AND RULES CAUSE OF DEATH UNKNOWN.

  The girls giggled. They looked me over looooooong. The live Lansing licked crumbs off her lips.

  I said, "I don't have the fifty Gs. Things went bad down in Mexico."

  Dot dipped into an ice-cream dish and chomped some chocolate chips.

  "Frank squared it for you. He called Miller Leavy and told him you were kosher. Miller called off the BHPD and told them to hang the fur job on Al Teitelbaum. And as far as they're concerned, those heist guys you killed didn't exist."

  The REAL Linda Lansing toyed with a toll-house cookie. She'd popped on some porky pounds to portray her pudgy sister. The coffee table was covered with candy cartons and cruller crusts and doughnut debris.

  I said, "You killed Joi. You were in way too deep with way too many people, and you needed a way out. You rented this place to set up your murder scene. You trashed it to make it look like the killers were looking for something. Then I came along and saw the body, so you decided to dump it in the hills to queer the cause of death."