by James Ellroy
“No more innocent ones, Teddy. You’ve been waiting for me all these years. I’m ready, but don’t hurt anyone else.”
“Yes. It’s just you and me. Mano a mano? ”
“Yes. You want to pick the time and place, homeboy?”
“Do you know where the Silverlake Power Plant is?”
“Yes, it’s an old friend of mine.”
“I’ll meet you there at midnight.”
“I’ll be there.” Lloyd hung up, his mind bursting with lightning bolts and death.
*
*
*
Kathleen woke up late and put on coffee. She looked out her bedroom window to appraise the growth of her daisies and saw that they had been trampled. She thought of the neighborhood kids, then saw a huge footprint in the dirt and felt her stratagems for putting the crazy policeman out of her mind coalesce around a unifying thread. Instead of her planned day of
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opening the store and taking care of paperwork she would write her dream lover-betrayer into oblivion, consigning him to villainhood on the wings of a scathing broadside against weak, violence-obsessed men. She would meet Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins head-on and defeat him. After coffee, Kathleen sat down at her desk. Words fluttered through her mind, but refused to connect. She considered smoking a joint to get things going, then rejected the notion; it was too early for a reward. Feeling both her resistance and determination deepen, she walked into the front room and stared at the table by the cash register. Her own books, all six of them, arranged in a circle around a pasteboard blow-up of a four-star review in Ms. Kathleen leafed through her own words at random, looking for old ways to say new things. She found passages decrying male hierarchies, but saw that the underlying symbolism centered on glass. She found acid portraits of men seeking shelter, but saw that the central theme was her own need to nurture. When she saw that her most righteously hateful prose featured crimson-flowered redemption, she felt her narcissistic nostalgia die. Her six volumes of poetry had earned her seven thousand four hundred dollars in advances and nothing in royalties. The advances for Knife-edged Chaste and Notes from a Non-Kingdom had paid off her long-standing Visa card bill, which she promptly ran up again, paying off the following year with the advance for Hollywood Stillness. Staring down the Abyss, Womanworld, and Skirting the Void had secured her her bookstore, which was now skirting the edge of bankruptcy. Her remaining volumes had bought her an abortion and a trip to New York, where her editor had gotten drunk and had stuck his hand up her dress at the Russian Tea Room.
Kathleen ran into her bedroom and hauled out her glass encased rose petals. She carried them back to her bookstore–living room and one by one hurled them at the walls, the sound of breaking glass and falling bookshelves drowning out her own screamed obscenities. When the detritus of the past eighteen years of her life had devastated the room, she wiped tears from her eyes and savored the destruction: books lying dead on the floor, glass shards reflecting off the carpet, plaster dust settling like fallout. The overall symbolism was perfection.
Then Kathleen noticed that something was off. A long black rubber cord was dangling from a torn-out section of her ceiling. She walked over and yanked on it, pulling loose spackle-covered wiring that extended all the way around the room. When she got to the wire’s terminus a tiny microphone was revealed. She took up the cord and yanked a second time. The 192
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opposite end led to her front door. She opened the door and saw that the wire continued up to the roof, shielded by the branches of the eucalyptus tree that shaded the front porch.
Kathleen got a ladder. She stood it up on the ground beside the tree and followed the wire up to her roof. She could see that on the rooftop it had been concealed by a thin coat of tar. Squatting down, she ripped the wiring out and let it lead her to a mound of tar paper covered with shellac. She pulled the cord a last time. The tar paper ripped open and she looked down at a tape recorder wrapped in clear plastic.
*
*
*
At Parker Center, Dutch went through Lloyd’s desk, hoping that the I.A.D. officers hadn’t picked it clean. If he could find any of the homicide files that Lloyd was working with, maybe he could form a hypothesis and go from there.
Dutch rifled the drawers, prying the locks open with the buck knife he carried strapped to the inside of his gunbelt, coming away with nothing but pencils, paper clips and wanted posters. Slamming the drawers shut, he pried open the filing cabinets. Nothing; the Internal Affairs vultures had gotten there first.
Dutch emptied the wastebasket, sifting through illegible memos and sandwich wrappers. He was about to give up when he noticed a crumpled piece of Xerox paper. He held it up to the light. There was a list of thirtyone names and addresses in one column, and a list of electronic stores in the other. His heart gave a little leap; this had to be Lloyd’s “suspect” list—
the men that he had wanted him to detach officers to interview. It was slim—but something.
Dutch drove back to the Hollywood Station. He handed the list to the desk officer. “I want you to call all the men on this list,” he said. “Lay out a heavy spiel about ‘routine questioning.’ Let me know who sounds panicky. I’m going out, but I’ll be calling in.”
From his office, Dutch called Lloyd’s house. As he expected, there was no answer. He had called in vain every half hour throughout the night, and now it had become obvious that Lloyd had run to ground. But to where? He was either hiding out from I.A.D. and/or stalking his real or imaginary killer. He might also be—
Unable to complete the thought, Dutch recalled that Kathleen McCarthy had mentioned at the party that her bookstore was on Yucca and Highland. She had fearfully denounced Lloyd on the phone last night, but
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might know of his whereabouts; Lloyd always sought out women when he was under stress.
Dutch drove to Yucca and Highland, pulling up in front of the Feminist Bibliophile, noticing immediately that the front door was half open and the porch was littered with broken glass.
Drawing his gun, Dutch walked inside. Mounds of broken glass, plaster, and books covered the floor. He walked back through the kitchen and into the bedroom. No more evidence of destruction, only the eeriness of a leather purse lying on the bed.
Dutch dug through the purse. Money and credit cards were intact, throwing the scene way out of kilter. When he found more money and Kathleen McCarthy’s driver’s license and car registration inside a calfskin wallet, he grabbed the telephone and dialed the desk at the station.
“This is Peltz,” he said. “I want an all points bulletin issued. Kathleen Margaret McCarthy, white female, 5'9", 135, brown and brown, D.O.B. 11/21/46. Beige 1977 Volvo 1200, license LQM 957. Have the officers detain for questioning only. No force—this woman is not a suspect. I want her brought to my office.”
“Isn’t this a little irregular, Captain?” the switchboard officer asked.
“Shut up and issue it,” Dutch said.
After checking the blocks around the bookstore unsuccessfully for Kathleen and her car, Dutch began to feel like a pent-up Judas having second thoughts. He knew that movement was the only antidote. Any destination was better than no destination.
Dutch drove to Silverlake. He knocked on the door of the old house that Lloyd had driven him by so many times, only halfheartedly expecting someone to answer; he knew that Lloyd’s parents were old and lived in silent solitudes. When no one came to the door, he walked around the side of the house to the backyard.
Peering over the fence, Dutch saw a man swigging from a pint of whiskey and waving a large handgun in front of him. He stood perfectly still, recalling Lloyd’s stories about his crazy older brother Tom. He watched the sad spectacle until Tom dropped the handgun to the ground and reached into a packing crate next to it, pulling out a machine gun. Dutch gasped as he watched Tom weave drunkenly, m
uttering, “Fuckin’
Lloyd don’t know shit, fuckin’ fuzz don’t know how to deal with the fuckin’
niggers, but I know for fuckin’ sure. Fuckin’ Lloyd thinks he can fuck with me, he’s got another fuckin’ think comin’.”
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Tom dropped the machine gun and fell to the dirt along with it. Dutch drew his .38 and squeezed through a gap in the fence. He crept along the side of the house, then sprinted over to Tom, his gun aimed straight at his head. “Freeze,” he said as Tom looked up, bewildered.
“Lloydy took my goodies,” he said. “He never wanted to play with me. He took my best stuff and still wouldn’t play with me.”
Dutch noticed a large hole in the ground next to him. He looked into it. The muzzles of a half-dozen sawed-off shotguns stared up at him. Leaving Tom weeping in the dirt, he ran back to his car. He gripped the steering wheel and wept himself, praying for God to give him the means to indict Lloyd with pity or release him with love.
18
Kathleen zigzagged through Hollywood side streets, destinationless, numbing the discovery of the tape recorder with silent chantings of her very best prose, the big policeman and his murder theory battling her words point-counterpoint until she ran a red light on Melrose and fishtailed across the intersection, narrowly missing a crossing guard and a flock of children. She pulled to the curb, shaking, her literary holding action drowned out by the honking of angered motorists. She was past words now. Lloyd Hopkins and his conspiracies demanded to be disproved on the basis of fact. The tape recorder was evidence that would require the negation of superior evidence. It was time to visit an old classmate and let his words speak.
*
*
*
Dutch watched from the back of the room as Lieutenant Perkins, the commanding officer of the Hollywood Division detective squad, briefed his men on the Hollywood Slaughterer case:
“Our black-and-white units and helicopter patrols are going to keep the bastard from killing again, but you guys are going to find out who he is. The Sheriff’s dicks are handling the Morton and Craigie cases, and may have an angle—some deputy who used to work West Hollywood Vice blew his brains out last night at his pad, and some of his old Vice partners say he was
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in tight with Craigie. Robbery/Homicide downtown is handling the Pratt case, which leaves you guys the job of rousting every pervert, burglar, dope addict, and all-purpose scumbag known to use violence in the Hollywood area. Utilize your snitches, your parolee files, your brains, and the feedback of the guys from patrol. Use whatever force you deem necessary.”
The men got up and headed for the door. Noticing Dutch, Perkins called out, “Hey skipper, where the fuck is Lloyd Hopkins now that we really need him?”
*
*
*
Kathleen pulled up in front of the red brick building on Alvarado. She noticed a “Closed Due to Illness” sign on the front door and peered through the plate-glass window. Seeing nothing but shadow-covered countertops and stacks of boxes, she walked to the parking lot, immediately spotting a long yellow van with a license plate reading “P-O-E-T.” She had her hand on the rear-door latch when darkness reached out and smothered her.
*
*
*
Lloyd waited for darkness in the park-playground a half mile below the Silverlake Power Plant. His car was hidden from street view behind the maintenance shed, the 30.06 and .44 magnum in the trunk, loaded and waiting. Sitting on a child’s swing that shuddered under his weight, he compiled a list of the people he loved. His mother and Janice and Dutch headed the list, followed by his daughters and the many women who had brought him joy and laughter. Casting out hooks of memory to sustain the loving moments, he reeled in fellow cops and engaging criminals and even passersby he had glimpsed on the street. The more obscure the people became, the deeper the feeling of love touched him, and when twilight came and went Lloyd knew that if he died at midnight he would somehow live on in the vestiges of innocence that he saved from Teddy Verplanck.
*
*
*
Kathleen came out of the darkness with her eyes open, chemical stench and a glaze of tears her prelude to vision. She tried to blink to adjust her focus, but her eyelids wouldn’t move. When squinting with all her might brought nothing but a flood of burning teardrops, she opened her mouth to scream. Some unseen closure rendered her mute, and she twisted her arms and kicked out with her legs, gouging the air for sound. Her arms remained fixed while her feet scraped an invisible surface, and as she flailed and heaved with every inch of her sense-blunted body she heard “sssh, sssh,”
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and then there was a soft blackness daubing at her eyes, followed by bright light. I am not blind and deaf, but I am dead, she thought. Kathleen’s vision centered in on a low wooden table. When squinting brought her greater clarity she saw that it was only a few feet in front of her. As if in answer, the table, with a scraping sound, moved up to where she could touch it. She twisted her arms again, pain cutting through her numbness. I am dead, but I am not cut in pieces. Willing all her senses into her eyes, Kathleen stared at the table. Gradually a room came into view behind it, and then the soft blackness was on and off her like the clicking of a camera shutter, and when the light returned the table was in her face, covered with naked plastic dolls with pins stuck into their crotches and huge heads made out of black-and-white photographs. I am in hell and these are my fellow exiles. Sensing familiarity in the photograph heads, Kathleen forced her mind to function. I am dead, but I can think. She knew that the heads were somehow of her, somehow close to her, somehow—
Kathleen’s senses snapped. Her arms contracted and her legs jerked upward, sending her chair to the floor. I am alive and those are the girls from my court and the policeman was right and Teddy from high school is going to kill me. Invisible hands picked up the chair and turned it around. Kathleen squirmed and dug her heels into a soft white carpet. My eyelids are forced open and my mouth is taped shut, but I am alive. Kathleen rolled her eyes to the far edges of the periphery, memorizing the wall in front of her in hopes of combining sight and thought into something more. When she assimilated all that she saw she began to sob, and tears once again turned her blind. Blood, rose branches, desecrated photographs and excrement. The stench assaulted her. I am going to die. There was a whirring sound. Kathleen followed it with her mind and what remained of her vision. She saw a tape recorder on a nightstand. She tried to scream, and felt the tape across her mouth begin to give. If I can scream, I—
A soft sighing came over the tape machine. Kathleen breathed in through her nose and blew out with all her strength. The tape strained against her mouth and came loose along her lower lip. The soft sighing became a soft singsong voice:
“I am only worthy to love you in verse,
To spread my love on the wings of a curse;
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They betrayed you and ripped you,
Buried in dread;
I avenged your heartache by killing them dead;
Then you betrayed me with
Badge one-one-one-four You let him hurt me and make you his whore; I cannot blame you—but tonight you must choose;
With your eyes sewn open you will watch
him lose;
I will always love—love . . . love . . .”
The soft voice receded back into a sigh. Kathleen contorted her eyebrows and felt the stitches at the corners of her eyelids loosen. I am going to kill him before he kills me.
The tape recorder clicked off. Kathleen’s chair was hoisted into the air and spun around in a perfect circle. She screamed and heard the faintest vibration of her own voice, then looked up at Teddy Verplanck in a skin-tight black jumpsuit. She formed words to keep from screaming and ripping the tape from her mouth prematurely. He has become so hands
ome. Why are cruel-looking men always the most handsome?
Teddy put a piece of paper in front of Kathleen’s eyes. Biting down on her tongue, she read the block printed script: “I cannot speak to you yet. I am going to take out a knife and mark myself. I will not hurt you with the knife.”
Kathleen nodded up and down, probing the tape with the tip of her tongue. Feeling was returning to her feet, and she could tell that she was wearing her blunt-toed wingtip flats. Good kicking shoes. Teddy smiled at her nodding acquiescence and turned the paper over. The reverse side was covered with faded newspaper clippings. Kathleen’s gaze zeroed in on them. When she saw that the clippings detailed accounts of women’s murders she stifled a dry sob by biting her cheeks and methodically reading every word on the page. Her terror turned to rage and she bit down hard, until blood and spittle filled her mouth. She breathed deeply through her nose and thought: I am going to maim him. Teddy threw the paper to the floor and unzipped the top of his jumpsuit, letting it fall to his waist. Kathleen looked at the most perfect male torso she had ever seen, transfixed by the rock-hard perfection until Teddy reached behind his back and drew out a penknife. He held the blade in 198
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front of his chest and twirled it like a baton, then pointed the blade at the area above his heart. When the tip drew blood, Kathleen twisted her hands on the arms of her chair, pushing out with her elbows, feeling her right hand bonds give way completely. Now. Now. Now. Please God let me do it now. Now. Now.
Teddy wiped his torso and squatted in front of Kathleen, holding his chest at her eye level. He whispered, “It’s 10:30. We have to go soon. You were so beautiful with your eyes rolled back.” He wiped his chest a second time. Kathleen saw that he had carved “K Mc” beside his left nipple. She gagged, but held on. Now.
Teddy squatted lower and smiled. Kathleen spat in his face and kicked out with both her legs, catching him in the groin, jerking her right hand free and pushing forward, toppling her chair just as Teddy crashed to the floor. She screamed and kicked again, her legs glancing off Teddy’s stomach. Teddy dropped his knife and shrieked, wiping bloody spittle from his eyes. Kathleen lunged with her whole body and got her free hand on the knife, hooking her right leg around Teddy to draw her within stabbing range. Teddy twisted and flailed blindly with his arms. Kathleen brought the knife down in a swooping roundhouse at his abdomen. Teddy jerked backward and the blade cut air. Kathleen stabbed again, the knife snagging into the carpet. Teddy got to his knees and wrapped his fists into a hammer and swung down. Kathleen bared her teeth to bite as the blow arced toward her. She screamed and tasted blood when the hammer made contact. Then there was a throbbing red darkness.
