by James Ellroy
Lloyd laughed; booming stage laughter to cover the sound of his pushing the activator button on his body recorder. When he felt mild electric tendrils encircle his chest, he said, “An L.A. County Deputy Sheriff running dope and male prostitutes, getting kickbacks from fruit hustlers all over Boy’s Town. What are you going to do with the Birdman dead? You’ll have to find yourself a new sewer, and when the Sheriff’s dicks link you to Craigie you’ll have to find a new career.”
Whitey Haines stared at his feet. “I’m clean all the way down the line,”
he said. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I don’t know nothing about Craigie’s murder or any of that other shit. This is some kind of outlaw shit you’re pulling on me or you would have brought another cop with you. You’re a punk cop who likes to hassle other cops. I had your number the other day when you asked me about them suicides I reported. You wanna bust me for ripping off that vice folder, then bust on, homeboy,
’cause that’s all you got on me.”
Lloyd leaned forward. “Look at me, Haines. Look at me real close.”
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Haines took his eyes from the floor. Lloyd looked into them and said,
“Tonight you pay your dues. One way or the other you are going to answer my questions.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Whitey Haines said.
Lloyd smiled, then held up his .38 snub nose and opened the chamber. He emptied five of the six rounds into his hand, then snapped the chamber shut and spun it. He cocked the hammer and placed the barrel on Haines’s nose. “Teddy Verplanck,” he said.
Whitey Haines’s florid face went pale. His clenched hands mashed together so hard that Lloyd could hear tendons cracking. A network of veins pulsated in his neck, jerking his head away from the gun barrel. A thick layer of dry spittle coated his lips as he stammered, “J—just—a g—guy from high school.”
Lloyd shook his head. “Not good enough, Whitey. Verplanck is a mass murderer. He killed Craigie and God knows how many women. He sends your old classmate Kathy McCarthy flowers each time he kills. He had your apartment bugged; that’s how I connected you to Craigie. Teddy Verplanck was obsessed with you, and you’re going to tell me why.”
Haines fingered the badge pinned above his heart. “I—I don’t know nothing.”
Lloyd spun the chamber again. “You’ve got five chances. Whitey.”
“You haven’t got the guts,” Haines whispered hoarsely. Lloyd aimed between Haines’s eyes and squeezed the trigger. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Haines started to dry-sob. His twitching hands grabbed at the sofa and ripped out hunks of Naugahyde and foam.
“Four chances,” Lloyd said. “I’ll give you a little help. Verplanck was in love with Kathy McCarthy. He was a Kathy Klown. Remember the Kathy Kourt and the Kathy Klowns? Does the date June 10th, 1964, mean anything to you? That was the day that Verplanck first contacted Kathy McCarthy. He sent her a poem about blood and tears and hatred being spent on him. You and Verplanck and the Birdman were all at Marshall High then. Did you and Craigie hurt Verplanck, Haines? Did you hate him and bleed him and—”
“No! No! No!” Haines screamed, wrapping his arms around himself and banging his head on the couch. “No! No!”
Lloyd stood up. He looked at Haines and felt the last piece of the puzzle slip into place, fusing Christmas of 1950 and a score of June 10ths into a door that unlocked the inner sanctum of hell. He put his gun to Haines’s
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head and pulled the trigger two times. At the first hammer click Haines shrieked; at the second he clasped his hands and began murmuring prayers. Lloyd knelt beside him. “It’s over, Whitey. For you, for Teddy, maybe even for me. Tell me why you and Craigie raped him.”
Lloyd listened to Haines’s prayers wind down, catching the tail end of the rosary in Latin. When he finished, Haines smoothed his sweat drenched khaki shirt and adjusted his badge. His voice was perfectly calm as he said,
“I always figured that someone knew, that God would tell someone to hurt me for it. I’ve been seeing priests in my dreams for years. I always figured God would tell a priest to get me. I never figured he’d send a cop.”
Lloyd sat down facing Haines, watching his features soften in his prelude to confession.
“Teddy Verplanck was weird,” Whitey Haines said. “He didn’t fit in and he didn’t care. He wasn’t a sosh and he wasn’t an athlete and he wasn’t a badass. He wasn’t a loner, he was just different. He didn’t have to prove himself by doing crazy shit, he just walked around school in his fruity ivy league clothes, and every time he looked at you you knew he thought you were scum. He printed up this poetry newspaper and stuffed it into every locker on the fucking campus. He made fun of me and Birdy and the Surfers and Vatos and nobody would fuck with him because he had this weird kind of juice, like he could read your mind, and if you fucked with him he’d put it in his newspaper and everyone would know.
“There were these love poems that he used to put in his paper. My sister was real smart; she figured out all the big words and the symbolic shit and told me that the poems were ripoffs of the great poets and dedicated to that snooty bitch Kathleen McCarthy. Sis sat next to her in Home Ec, she told me that the McCarthy cunt lived in this fantasy world where she thought that half the guys at Marshall had the hots for her and the other stuck-up bitches she hung out with. ‘Cathy’s Clown’ was a big hit song then, and the McCarthy bitch told Sis that she had a hundred personal ‘Cathy Clowns.’
But Verplanck was the only clown, and he was afraid to hit up on McCarthy and she didn’t even know he had the hots for her.
“Then Verplanck printed these poems attacking the Bird and me. People started giving us the fisheye in the quad. I was cracking jokes when Kennedy got knocked off, and Verplanck stared me down. It was like he was ripping off my juice for himself. I waited for a long time, until just before graduation of ’64. Then I figured it out. I had my sister write this fake note from Kathy McCarthy to Verplanck, telling him to meet her in the bell 178
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tower room after school. Birdy and I were there. We were only going to hurt him. We kicked his ass good, but even when he was all beat up he still had more juice than we did. That’s why I did it. Birdy just followed me like he always did.”
Haines hesitated. Lloyd watched him grope for words to conclude his story. When nothing came, he said, “Do you feel shame, Haines? Pity? Do you feel anything?”
Whitey Haines pulled his features into a rock hard mask that brooked no mercy. “I’m glad I told you,” he said, “but I don’t think I feel nothing. I feel bad about the Birdman, but he was born to die freaky. I’ve been revenging myself all my life. I was born to live hard. Verplanck was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He got what he paid for. I say tough shit. I say I’ve paid my dues all the way down the line. I say fuck ’em all and save six for the pallbearers.” It was the most eloquent moment of his life. Haines looked at Lloyd and said, “Well, Sergeant. What now?”
“You have no right to be a policeman,” Lloyd said, opening his shirt and showing Haines the tape recorder hook-up. “You deserve to die, but I’m not equipped for cold-blooded killing. This tape will be on Captain Magruder’s desk in the morning. You’ll be through as a Deputy Sheriff.”
Haines breathed out slowly as his sentence was passed. “What are you going to do with Verplanck?” he asked.
Lloyd smiled. “Save him or kill him. Whatever it takes.”
Haines smiled back. “Right on, homeboy. Right on.”
Lloyd took out a handkerchief and wiped the door knob, the arms of the chair and the grips of Haines’s service revolver. “It’ll only take a second, Whitey,” he said.
Haines nodded. “I know.”
“You won’t feel much.”
“I know.”
Lloyd walked to the door. Haines said, “Those were blanks in your gun, right?” Lloyd raised a ha
nd in farewell. It felt like a giving of absolution.
“Yeah. Take care, homeboy.”
When the door closed, Whitey Haines walked into the bedroom and unlocked his gunrack. He reached up and took out his favorite possession—a sawed-off .10 gauge double barrelled shotgun, the weapon he was saving for the close quarters apocalypse that he knew would one day come his way. After slipping shells into the chambers, Whitey let his mind drift back to
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Marshall High and the good old days. When the memories started to hurt he jammed the barrels into his mouth and tripped both triggers. Lloyd was unlocking his car when he heard the explosion. He sent up a plea for mercy and drove to Silverlake.
16
Teddy Verplanck was parked across the street from his camera store sanctuary, waiting for the arrival of a tan unmarked police car. Within minutes of the incredible phone call he had thrown his entire set of consummation tools into a canvas duffle bag and had run for his safeguard unregistered car and the one-on-one combat that would decide his fate. Somehow, through chance or divine intervention, he had been given the opportunity to fight for the very soul of his beloved Kathy. He had been passed the torch by Kathy herself, and an eighteen-year-old covenant was about to be fulfilled. He thought of the armaments now resting in his trunk: silencer-fitted .32,
.30 caliber M-1 carbine, two-edged fire axe, custom-made six-shot Derringer, spiked, lead-filled baseball bat. He had the technology and the love to make it work.
Two hours after the call, the car pulled up. Teddy watched a very tall man get out and survey the front of the shop, walking the length of its facade, peering into the windows. The big man seemed to be savoring the moment, collating instinctive information for use against him. Teddy was beginning to enjoy his first glimpse of his foe when the big man bolted for his car, hung a U-turn and headed south on Alvarado.
Teddy took deep breaths and decided to pursue. He waited ten seconds and followed, catching the tan car at Alvarado and Temple and keeping a discreet distance behind as it led him to the Hollywood Freeway westbound. When it hit the on-ramp, the Matador accelerated full force into the middle lane. Teddy followed suit, certain that the policeman was so lost in thought that he would never notice the headlights behind him. Ten minutes later the Matador exited at the Cahuenga Pass. Teddy let two cars get between them, keeping one eye on the road and the other on 180
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his foe’s long radio antenna. They drove into the hills surrounding the Hollywood Bowl. Teddy saw the tan car come to an abrupt halt in front of a small thatch-covered house. He pulled to the curb several doors down and quietly squeezed out the passenger side, watching his policeman-adversary walk up the steps and knock on the door.
Moments later a woman opened the door and exclaimed, “Sarge! What brings you here?!”
The voice that answered her was hoarse and tight. “You won’t believe what’s been happening. I don’t know if I believe it myself.”
“Tell me about it,” the woman said, closing the door behind them. Teddy walked back to his car and settled in to wait, weighing the dark practicalities of his situation. He knew that it had to be a vendetta waged by one man—Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins—or he would have been deluged with policemen before this. It had to be that Hopkins wanted Kathy for himself and was willing to forgo due process to get her. Comforted by the knowledge that the force arrayed against him consisted of only one man, Teddy formulated a plan for elimination, then thought of the path that had brought him to this point.
He had spent the days after June 10, 1964, regrouping in his art and observing the mutiny of Kathy’s Kourt. His initial outrage against his violators had become tragic validation of his art; he had paid for his art in blood, and now it was time to take his blood knowledge and reach for the stars. But the pages he filled up were turgid and hollow, timid and obsessed with form. And they were completely subservient to the drama that was taking place in the rotunda court: a betrayal so brutal that he knew it rivaled his own recent devastation. One by one, hurling maiming prose, the girls of Kathy’s Kourt attacked their leader in the very spot where she had given them every sustaining ounce of her love. They called her frigid and a no-talent shanty mick. They told her that her no-dating policy was a cheap ploy to save them for scuzzy lesbian encounters that she was too cowardly to initiate. They called her a prissy, derivative poet. They left her with nothing but tears, and he knew that they had to pay.
But the price eluded him, and he was too fragmented in his own life to pursue the payoff. He spent a year writing an epic poem on the themes of rape and betrayal. When the poem was completed he knew that it was trash and burned it. He grieved for the loss of his art and turned to the sad efficacy of a craft—photography. He knew the rudiments, he knew the business
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end, and above all he knew that it would supply him with the means to live well and seek beauty in an ugly world.
He became a proficient, unimaginative commercial photographer, earning a decent living by selling his photographs to newspapers and magazines. But Kathy was always with him, and thoughts of her brought back the terror of June 1964 full force. He knew that he had to combat that terror, that he would not be worthy of Kathy’s memory until he had conquered the fear that always came with it. So for the first time in his life, he sought the purely physical.
Hundreds of hours of weightlifting and calisthenics transformed the puny body he had always secretly despised into a rock-hard machine; a like amount of time earned him a black belt in karate. He learned about weaponry, becoming an expert rifle and pistol shot. With the gathering of these worldly skills came a concurrent lessening of terror. As he grew stronger his fear became rage and he began to contemplate the murder of the Kathy Kourt betrayers. Death schemes dominated his thoughts, yet last vestiges of fear prevented him from taking action. Self-disgust was returning in force when he hit on the solution. He needed a rite of blood passage with which to test himself before beginning his revenge. He spent weeks speculating on the means, without results, until one night a phrase from Eliot jumped into his mind and stuck there:
“Below, the boardhound and the boar, pursue their pattern as before, yet reconciled among the stars.”
He knew immediately where that pattern was taking him—the inland regions of Catalina Island, where wild boars roamed in herds. He sailed over the following week, bringing with him a six-shot Derringer and a weighted baseball bat with sharpened ten-penny nails driven into the head. Carrying only those weapons and a canteen of water, he hiked by nightfall into the middle of the Catalina outback, prepared to kill or die. It was dawn when he spotted three boars grazing next to a stream. He raised his baseball bat and charged them. One boar retreated, but the other two stood their ground, their tusks pointing straight at him. He was within killing range when they charged. He feinted, and they rushed past him. He waited two seconds, then feinted in the opposite direction, and when the boars snorted in frustration and turned to ram him, he sidestepped again and swung his bat downward at the closest one, catching it in the head, the impact of the blow wrenching the bat from his hands. The wounded boar writhed on the ground, squealing and flailing at the 182
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embedded bat with its hooves. The other boar turned around, then stood on its hind legs and leaped at him. This time he didn’t feint or sidestep. He stood perfectly still, and when the boar’s tusks were almost in his face he raised the Derringer and blew its brains out.
On his exultant return hike he let the dozens of boars that he saw live in peace. At last “reconciled among the stars,” he took the tourist steamship back to L.A. proper and began plotting the deaths of Midge Curtis, Charlotte Reilly, Laurel Jensen, and Mary Kunz, first determining their whereabouts through phone calls to the Marshall High Records Office. When he learned that all four girls were scholarship students at Eastern colleges he felt his hatred for them grow in quantu
m leaps. Now their motive for betraying Kathy was clearly delineated. Academically validated, and thrilled with the prospect of leaving Los Angeles, they had spurned their mentor’s plans to remain in L.A. and be their teacher, attributing it to the basest of desires. He felt his rage branch out into deepening areas of contempt. Kathy would be avenged, and soon.
He compiled his college itinerary and left for points east on Christmas day, 1966. Two carefully staged accidental deaths, one forced drug overdose and one killing that matched the Boston Strangler M.O. comprised his mission. He landed in snowbound Philadelphia and rented a hotel room for three weeks, then set out by rented car on his circuit of Brandeis, Temple, Columbia, and Wheaton Universities. He was armed with caustic agents, strangling cord, narcotics, and formidable reserves of bloodstained love. He was invulnerable at all levels but one, for when he saw Laurel Jensen sitting alone in the Student Union at Brandeis he knew she was of Kathy, and that he could never harm anyone who was once so close to his beloved. Glimpses of Charlotte Reilly browsing the Columbia bookstore confirmed the symbiotic thrust of their union. He didn’t bother to search out the other two girls; he knew that to see them would render him as vulnerable as a child at its mother’s breast.
He flew home to Los Angeles, wondering how he could have paid such a severe price and not even have his art or his mission as a reward. He wondered what he was going to do with his life. He fought fear by strict adherence to the most stringent martial arts disciplines and by the penance of prolonged fasting followed by ascetic desert sojourns where he clubbed coyotes to death and roasted their carcasses over fires he built and nurtured with desert tools and his own breath. Nothing worked. The fear still drove
