by James Ellroy
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apartment to record only x number of hours per night, the absence of “live”
tape would allow plenty of time to set up a stake-out to catch the bugger when he returned to put in fresh spools. Anyone clever enough to set up an electronic surveillance this complex would risk only a minimum number of tape pick-up forays. Lloyd ran down the hall to the interrogation cubicle that bordered the sixth-floor briefing room. He grabbed a battered reel-to-reel recorder from atop a cigarette-scarred table and carried it back to his office. “Be good,”
he said as he placed the “live” tape on the spindle. “No music, no loud noise. Just be good.”
The tape spun, and the built-in speaker hissed, then crackled with static. There was the sound of a door being locked, then a baritone grunt followed by a noise Lloyd recognized immediately—the thud of a gunbelt dropped on a couch or chair. Next came barely audible footsteps, then another grunt, this one octaves higher than the first. Lloyd smiled. There were at least two people in Haines’s apartment.
Haines spoke. “You gotta feed me more, Bird; cut the coke with some of the bennies I glom from the narco guys, raise your prices, find some new fucking customers or some fucking thing. We got new fish coming in, and if I don’t lay some bread on them, all my fuckin’ juice ain’t gonna keep you and your asshole buddies outta the queens’ tank. You dig me, homeboy?”
A high-pitched male voice answered. “Whitey, you said you wouldn’t raise my nut! I’m giving you six bills a month plus half the dope action, plus kickbacks from half the punks on the street! You said—”
Lloyd heard a whirring sound dissolve into a sharp crack. There was silence, then Haines’s voice. “You start that shit again and I’ll hit you for real. You listen, Bird—without me, you are shit. You are the king fucking dick of Boy’s Town because I got you to lift weights and build up your puny body and because I get the fucking kiddy bulls to roust the pretty boy juvie’s off your turf, and because I shoot you the dope and the protection that make you and your punk pals a class act. As long as I’ve got clout with Vice, you are safe. And that takes money. There’s a transfer-happy new day watch commander, and if I don’t grease his fucking palm I may end up busting nigger heads down in Compton. There’s two new fish rotating into Vice, and I got no fucking idea if I can keep them off your tight little ass. My nut is two grand a month before I see a fucking dollar profit. Your nut is going up twenty percent as of today. You dig me, Bird?”
The high voiced man stammered, “Sh-sh-sure, Whitey.” Haines chuck-128
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led, then spoke in a soft voice rich with insinuation. “I’ve always took good care of you. Keep your nose clean and I always will. You just gotta feed me more. Now c’mon in the back. I wanta feed you.”
“I don’t want to, Whitey.”
“You got to, Birdy. It’s part of your protection.”
Lloyd listened as the sound of footsteps metamorphosed into a silence inhabited by pitiful monsters. The silence stretched into hours. It was broken by the sound of muted sobbing and the slamming of a door. Then the tape went dead.
Fruit hustler shakedowns, vice pay-offs, dope dealing and a corrupt, brutal cop unfit to wear a badge. But was it connected to mass murder? And who had bugged Whitey Haines’s apartment, and why?
Lloyd made two quick phone calls, to the Internal Affairs Divisions of both the L.A.P.D. and Sheriff’s Department. Using his reputation as a lever, he was able to get straight answers from the I.A.D. high brass. No, Deputy Delbert Haines, badge 408, was not under investigation by either division. Disturbed, Lloyd ran down a mental list of probable parties interested in the affairs of Whitey Haines: rival dope rings, rival male prostitution combines, a fellow deputy with a grudge. All were possible, but none of the choices rang any bells. Some sort of homosexual tie-in to his killer?
Unlikely. It violated his theory of the murderer having been chaste for years, and Haines had no guilty knowledge of the two June 10th suicides he had discovered.
Lloyd took the concealed tape recorder down to the third-floor offices of the Scientific Identification Division and showed it to a data analyst who he knew was particularly enamored of bugging devices. The man whistled as Lloyd placed the machine on his desk, and reached over lovingly to touch it.
“Not yet, Artie,” Lloyd said. “I want it run for latents.” Artie whistled again, pushing back his chair and sending “Ooh la la” eyes heavenward.
“It’s gorgeous, Lloyd. It’s perfection.”
“Run it down for me, Artie. Omit nothing.”
The analyst smiled and cleared his throat. “The Watanabe A.F.Z. 999
Recorder. Retail price around seven thousand clams. Available at only the very best stereo showrooms. Used primarily by two rather diverse groups of people: music lovers interested in recording rock festivals or lengthy operas in one fell swoop, and police agencies interested in long-term clandestine bugging. Every component of this machine is the finest that money can
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buy and Jap technology can produce. You are looking at absolute perfection.”
Lloyd gave Artie a round of applause. “Bravo. One other question. Are there hidden serial numbers on the thing? Individual numbers or prototype numbers that can fix the date when the machine was sold?”
Artie shook his head. “The A.F.Z. 999 hit the market in the middle seventies. One prototype, no serial numbers, no different colors—just basic black. The Watanabe Corporation has a thing about tradition; they will not alter the design on these babies. I don’t blame them. Who can improve on perfection?”
Lloyd looked down at the recorder. It was in perfect shape, not a scratch on it. “Shit,” he said, “I was hoping to narrow down the list of possible buyers. Look, is this thing listed in one of S.I.D.’s Retailer Files?”
“Sure,” Artie said. “Want me to compile a list?” Lloyd nodded. “Yeah. Do it now, will you? I’m going to take our baby down the hall and leave it for dusting. I’ll be right back.”
There was one fingerprint technician on duty at the S.I.D.’s Central Crime Lab. Lloyd handed him the tape recorder and said, “Latent prints, nationwide teletype. I want you to personally compare them to L.A.P.D. Homicide Bulletin 16222, Niemeyer, Julia L., 1/3/83, partial right index and pinky. Those prints were bloodstained; if you’re in doubt about a match-up on the bulletin, roll the new prints in a blood sample, then recompare. You got that?”
The technician nodded assent, then asked, “Think we’ll find prints?”
“It’s doubtful, but we have to try. Be thorough; this is very important.”
The technician opened his mouth to offer assurances, but Lloyd was already running away.
“Eighteen retailers,” Artie said as Lloyd burst through the door. “That’s up to date, too. Didn’t I tell you our baby was esoteric?” Lloyd took the printed list and put it in his pocket, looking reflexively at the clock above Artie’s desk. 6:30—too late to begin calling the stereo supply stores. Remembering his date with Kathleen McCarthy, he said, “I have to run. Take care, Artie. Some day I may tell you the whole story.”
*
*
*
Kathleen McCarthy closed the store early and went back to her living quarters to write and prepare for her evening with the big policeman. Her business day had been frustrating. No sales, and an endless series of browsers who had wanted to discuss feminist issues while she was on the 130
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phone trying to secure information toward the capture of a psychopathic woman-killer. The irony was both profound and cheap, and Kathleen felt a vague diminishing of selfhood in its aftermath. She had hated the police for so long that even though she was doing her moral duty in aiding them, the price was a piece of her ego. Bolstering herself with logic, Kathleen grabbed the ego fragment and killed it with words. Dialectic at the expense of helping others. Pride. Your intractable Irish heart.
The rhetoric fell short of its mark, and Kathleen smiled at the real irony—sex. You want the cop, and you don’t even know his first name.
Kathleen walked into the bathroom and stripped before the full length mirror. Strong flesh, satisfyingly lean; firm breasts, good legs. A tall, handsome woman. Thirty-six, yet looking . . . Kathleen’s eyes clouded with tears, and she braced herself by maintaining eye contact with her image. It worked—the tears died, stillborn.
Throwing on a robe, Kathleen walked into her living room–study and arrayed pen, paper, and thesaurus on her desk, then went through her prewriting ritual of letting random prose patterns and thoughts of her dream lover battle for primacy of her mind. As always, her dream lover won, and Kathleen plucked absently at the crotch of her robe and relinquished herself to the smell of the flowers that always came just when she most needed them, when her life was almost to some brink. Then, anonymously and in perfect psychic sync the flowers would be at her doorstep and she would be overwhelmed and wonder who, and look to the faces of strange men for signs of kinship or commiseration or special interest. She knew that he had to be tall and intelligent and about her age—
eighteen years of floral tribute without a clue to his identity! Except that he had to have come from the old neighborhood, had to have seen her on the way to school with her court . . .
Thoughts of her court gave Kathleen a hook. She took up her pen and wrote:
Bring back the dead
Give them head
Remember the songs they sang
And the words they said.
From protracted adolescence
To premature senescence
I do penance with regret;
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For the epiphanies I never held
And the joy I never met.
Sighing, Kathleen settled back in her chair. Sighing again, she got out her diary and wrote:
Good prose seems just about to burst out of me, so I’ll do a little tease number and sit back and collate the present again, from approximately my nine thousandth “good prose breakout” plateau. Weird these days. Even good serviceable prose seems contrived. This diary (which will probably never be published!) seems much more real. I’m probably moving into a period where I’ll just sit back and let things happen, figure them out as they happen, then shut whatever is happening out and sit down and grind out another book. The cop seems to be evidence of this. O.K., he’s compelling and attractive, but even if he weren’t I’d probably give his attentions a shot. Weirder yet: Is this “Let it flow” attitude undertaken out of the desire for edification or out of loneliness, horniness, and the desire to ultimately give up that awful part of me that wants to stand apart from the whole human race and exist through my words? Empirically speaking, who knows? My solitude has given me brilliant words, as have my abysmal relationships with men. Another (nine billionth?) meditation on the identity of him? Not today, today is strictly the realm of things possible. All of a sudden I’m tired of words. I hope the cop isn’t too right wing. I hope he is capable of bending.
*
*
*
Kathleen placed her pen across her words, surprised that the combination of her dream lover and the policeman had inspired such somber sentiments. Smiling at the unpredictability of muses, she glanced at her watch. 6:30. As she showered for her date, she wondered where those first stanzas would take her and how she would react when her doorbell rang at seven o’clock.
*
*
*
The bell rang precisely at seven. When Kathleen opened the door, Lloyd was standing there, wearing beat-up cords and a pullover sweater. She saw a holstered revolver outlined on his left hip and cursed herself; her Harris tweed pantsuit was a definite overdress. To correct the mistake she said,
“Hi, Sergeant” and grabbed at the gun bulge and pulled Lloyd inside. He 132
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let himself be led, and Kathleen cursed herself again when she saw him smile at the gesture.
Lloyd sat on the couch and spread out his long arms in a mock crucifixion pose. Kathleen stood over him self-consciously. “I made those phone calls,” she said. “To over a dozen bookdealers. Nothing. None of my friends recall seeing or talking with a man like the one you described. It was bizarre. I was helping the police to find an insane woman-killer, and women kept interrupting me to ask questions about the Equal Rights Amendment.”
“Thank you,” Lloyd said. “I didn’t really expect anything. Right now I’m just fishing. Badge 1114, homicide fisherman on the job.”
Kathleen sat down. “Are you supervising this investigation?” she asked. Lloyd shook his head. “No, right now I am this investigation. None of my superiors would authorize me to detach officers to work under me, because the idea of mass murderers killing with impunity makes them afraid for their careers and the Department’s prestige. I have supervised homicide investigations, duties normally assigned to lieutenants and captains, but I’m—”
“But you’re that good.” Kathleen said it as a matter of fact. Lloyd smiled. “I’m better.”
“Can you read minds, Sergeant?”
“Call me Lloyd.”
“All right, Lloyd.”
“The answer is sometimes.”
“Do you know what I’m thinking?”
Lloyd draped his arm over Kathleen’s tweed shoulders. She buckled, but didn’t resist. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “How’s this for starters? Who is this guy? Is he a right-wing loony, like most cops? Does he spend hours cracking jokes about niggers and discussing pussy with his policeman buddies?
Does he like to hurt people? To kill people? Does he think there’s a Jewcommie-nigger-homo conspiracy to take over the world? Does . . .”
Kathleen put a gentle restraining hand on Lloyd’s knee and said,
“Touché. In basic theme you were correct on all counts.” She smiled against her will, slowly withdrawing her hand.
Lloyd felt his blood start to race to the tempo of their banter. “Do you want my answers?” he asked.
“No. You’ve already given me them.”
“Any other questions?”
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“Yes. Two. Do you cheat on your wife?”
Lloyd laughed and dug into his pants pocket for his wedding band. He slipped it onto his ring finger and said, “Yes.”
Kathleen’s face was expressionless. “Have you ever killed anyone?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Kathleen grimaced. “I shouldn’t have asked. No more talk of death and woman-killers, please. Shall we leave?”
Lloyd nodded and took her hand as she locked the door behind them.
*
*
*
They drove aimlessly, ending up cruising the terraced hills of the old neighborhood. Lloyd steered the unmarked Matador through the topography of their mutual past, wondering what Kathleen was thinking.
“My parents are dead now,” she said finally. “They were both so old when I was born, and they doted on me because they knew they’d only have me for twenty years or so. My father told me he moved to Silverlake because the hills reminded him of Dublin.”
She looked at Lloyd, who sensed that she wanted to end her games of will and be gentle. He pulled to the curb at Vendome and Hyperion, hoping that the spectacular view would move her to divulge intimate things, things that would make him care for her. “Do you mind if we stop?” he asked.
“No,” Kathleen said, “I like this place. I used to come here with my court. We read memorial poems for John Kennedy here on the night he was shot.”
“Your court?”
“Yes. My court. The ‘Kathy Kourt’—spelled with two Ks. I had my own little group of underlings in high school. We were all poets, and we all wore plaid skirts and cashmere sweaters, and we never dated, because there was not one boy at John Marshall High School worthy of us. We didn’t date and we didn’t nec
k. We were saving it for Mr. Right, who, we all figured, would make the scene when we were published poets of renown. We were unique. I was the smartest and the best-looking. I transferred from parochial school because the Mother Superior was always trying to get me to show her my breasts. I talked about it in hygiene class and attracted a following of lonely, bookish girls. They became my court. I gave them an identity. They became women because of me. Everyone left us alone; yet we had a following of equally lonely, bookish boys—‘Kathy’s 134
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Klowns’ they were called, because we never even deigned to speak to them. We . . . We . . .”
Kathleen’s voice rose to a wail, and she batted off Lloyd’s tentative hand on her shoulder. “We . . . We . . . loved and cared for each other, and I know it sounds pathetic, but we were strong. Strong! Strong . . .”
Lloyd waited a full minute before asking, “What happened to your court?”
Kathleen sighed, knowing that her answer was an anticlimax. “Oh, they drifted away. They found boyfriends. They decided not to save it for Mr. Right. They got prettier. They decided they didn’t want to be poets. They . . . they just didn’t need me anymore.”
“And you?”
“I died, and my heart went underground and resurfaced looking for cheap kicks and true love. I slept with a lot of women, figuring I could find a new entourage that way. It didn’t work. I screwed a lot of men—that got me the entourage, all right, but they were creeps. And I wrote and wrote and wrote and got published and bought a bookstore and here I am.”
Lloyd was already shaking his head. “And what really,” he said. Kathleen spat out angrily, “And I am a damn good poet and a better diarist! And who the hell are you to question me? And? And? And? ”
