by James Ellroy
The gunman had grabbed a young prostitute and was holding a knife to her throat while his accomplice tapped the cash register and grabbed the purses and billfolds of the bar’s patrons. Herzog, in the guise of a crippled drunk, taunted the knife wielder to release the girl and take him in her stead, screaming obscenities at him, inching closer as the blade drew a trickle of blood at the girl’s throat. When he was two feet away, the gunman shoved the prostitute aside and grabbed Herzog, screaming when Jungle Jack’s elbow crashed into his windpipe. Herzog disabled the man with a flathanded karate chop and took off after his accomplice, catching him after a five-block foot pursuit.
The second hostage situation was resolved even more boldly. A man known to local officers as a heavy angel dust user had snatched a little girl and was holding her at gunpoint while a crowd gathered around him. Jack Herzog, in uniform, walked through the crowd and up to the man, who
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dropped the little girl and fired at him three times. The shots missed, and Herzog blew the man’s brains out at point-blank range. Herzog’s reputation grew within the Department; requests from vice squad and plainclothes commanders multiplied. Then Sergeant Martin Bergen, Herzog’s best friend, committed an act of cowardice as noteworthy as Herzog’s acts of bravery. A trial board followed, and Herzog went to the wall for his friend, calling in favors in hope of saving Bergen’s career, testifying as a character witness at his trial, decrying the L.A.P.D.’s hero mentality from his standpoint as one of its greatest heroes. Martin Bergen was banished from the Department in disgrace and Jungle Jack Herzog was banished to a file clerk job—a defeat as ignominious as Bergen’s. Even a hero shouldn’t fuck with the bosses.
Lloyd put the folder down when he realized that a shadow had fallen across the pages. He looked up to find Officer Artie Cranfield from S.I.D. staring at him.
“Hello, Lloyd. How’s tricks?”
“Tricky.”
“You need a shave.”
“I know.”
“Any leads on the liquor store job?”
“No. I’m waiting on queries. Ever hear of a cop named Jungle Jack Herzog?”
“Yeah, who hasn’t? A real gunslinger.”
“Ever hear of an ex-cop named Marty Bergen?”
“What is this, a guessing game? Everyone knows Old Yellowstreak and that toilet paper tabloid he writes for. Why?”
“Herzog and Bergen were best buddies. Mr. Guts and Mr. Chickenshit. You like it?”
“Not particularly. You look sardonic, Lloyd.”
“Waiting makes me feel sardonic. Not sleeping makes me look sardonic.”
“Are you going home to sleep?”
“No, I’m going to look for Mr. Guts.”
Artie shook his head. “Before you go, say something macho about the liquor store asshole.”
Lloyd smiled. “How about ‘his ass is grass and I’m the fucking lawnmower’?”
“I like it! I like it!”
“I thought you would.”
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*
*
*
Lloyd drove to Jack Herzog’s last known address, a twenty-unit apartment house on the valley side of the Hollywood Hills. The pink stucco building was sandwiched between two shopping malls and featured a video game arcade in the front lobby. The directory listed Herzog as living in apartment 423. Lloyd walked up four flights of stairs and checked the hallway in both directions, then jimmied the lock with a credit card and closed the door behind him, almost stumbling over the pile of unopened mail that was spread out on the floor.
He flipped a light switch and let his eyes fall on the first thing that greeted them, a trophy case filled with award scrolls and loving cups. The ink on Herzog’s death certificate was the scouring powder wipe marks that covered the wood and glass surfaces. A quick check of the rest of the apartment revealed that wipe marks streaked with abrasive powder were spread over every surface capable of sustaining latent prints. It was the job of a conscientious professional.
Lloyd leafed through the envelopes on the floor. No personal letters or postcards—every piece was either a utility bill or junk mail. Letting his eyes stray over the living room walls, he saw an impersonal habitat come into focus—no artwork of any kind; no masculine disarray; furniture that had probably come with the lease. The award scrolls and loving cups had the look of hand-me-downs, and when he squinted to read the names and dates embossed on them, Lloyd saw that they were track and field awards won by Herzog’s father in Lebanon during the late ’40s.
The kitchen was even more spare—dishes and silverware stacked neatly by the drainboard, no food of any kind in the refrigerator or on the shelves. Only the bedroom bore signs of personality: a closet stuffed with L.A.P.D. uniforms and a huge supply of civilian clothes, outfits ranging from ragpicker overcoats to skinny-lapel pimp suits to outlaw motorcycle leathers. Beside the bed were tall shelves crammed with books. Lloyd scanned the spines. All the titles were biographies, the lives of generals, conquerors and religious iconoclasts predominating. One whole shelf was devoted to works on Richard the Lion Hearted and Martin Luther; another to books on Peter the Great. Romantic plunderers, despots, and mad visionaries. Lloyd felt a wave of love for Jungle Jack Herzog.
After checking out the bathroom, Lloyd found the phone and called Dutch Peltz at the Hollywood station. When Dutch came on the line, he
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said, “I’m at Herzog’s pad. It’s been wiped by a pro. You can scratch Herzog for real, but don’t let anyone know, okay?”
“All right. Was the pad trashed?”
“No. I get the feeling the killer was just being cautious, covering his ass from all standpoints. Can you do me a few favors?”
“Name them.”
“When the Vice Squad comes on, find out from Walt Perkins what bars Herzog was working. Glom any reports he may have filed. I’m going to check out Marty Bergen myself, and I’ll come back here and interview Herzog’s neighbors tonight. I’ll call you at home around seven.”
“Sounds good.”
“Oh, and Dutch? Have your guys feel out their snitches on antique gun freaks, or any assholes known to use violence who’ve been taking up guns lately. Even if it’s just street bullshit and jive, I want to know about it.”
“You’re fishing, Lloyd.”
“I know. I’ll call you at seven.”
Lloyd walked through Jungle Jack Herzog’s barren dwelling place. Locking the door behind him, he said, “You poor noble son-of-a-bitch, why the fuck did you have to prove yourself so hard?”
*
*
*
It took Lloyd half an hour to drive to the West Hollywood office of the Big Orange Insider. Heat, smog, and lack of sleep combined to produce a head pounding that had the pavement wobbling before his eyes. To combat it he rolled up the windows and turned the air conditioning on full, shivering as a fresh adrenaline rush overtook him. Two new cases, three dead and one presumed dead. No sleep for at least another twelve hours. The Big Orange Insider occupied the first floor of a pseudo art-deco chateau on San Vicente a block south of Sunset. Lloyd walked in, bypassing the receptionist, knowing she made him for a cop and would be instantly buzzing the editorial offices to tell them the enemy was coming. He walked into a large room crammed with desks and smiled as suspicious eyes darted up from typewriters to appraise him. When the eyes turned hostile he bowed and blew the assembly a kiss. He was beginning to feel at ease when two women waved back. Then he felt a tugging at his sleeve and turned to see a tall young man pressed into him.
“Who let you back here?” the young man demanded.
“No one,” Lloyd said.
“Are you a policeman?”
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“I’m a defector. I’ve quit the cops, and I’m seeking asylum with the counterculture fourth estate. I want to peddle my memoirs. Take me to your wise
st ghost writer.”
“You have thirty seconds to vacate the premises.”
Lloyd took a step toward the young man. The young man took two steps backward. Seeing the fear in his eyes, Lloyd said, “Shit. Detective Sergeant Hopkins, L.A.P.D. I’m here to see Marty Bergen. Tell him it’s about Jack Herzog. I’ll be waiting by the reception desk.”
He walked back to the reception area. The woman at the desk gave him a deadpan stare, so he busied himself by perusing the enlarged and framed editorial cartoons that adorned the four walls. The L.A.P.D. and L.A. County Sheriff’s were attacked in vicious caricatures. Fat, porcine-featured policemen cloaked in American flags poked sleeping drunks with tridents; Chief Gates was dangled on a puppet’s string by two men in Ku Klux Klan robes. Wolf-faced cops herded black prostitutes into a paddy wagon, while the officer at the wheel guzzled liquor, a speech balloon elaborating his thoughts: “Wow! Police work sure is exciting! I hope these bimbos are holding some cash. My car payment is overdue!”
“I’ll admit it’s a bit hyperbolic.”
Lloyd turned to face the voice, openly sizing up the man who owned it. Martin Bergen was over six feet tall, blonde, with a once strong body going to flab. His florid face was contorted into a look of mirthless mirth and his pale blue eyes were liquid but on target. His breath was equal parts whiskey and mint mouthwash.
“You should know. You had what? Thirteen or fourteen years on the job?”
“I had sixteen, Hopkins. You’ve got what?”
“Eighteen and a half.”
“Pulling the pin at twenty?”
“No.”
“I see. What’s this about Jack Herzog?”
Lloyd stepped back in order to get a full-body reaction. “Herzog’s been missing for over three weeks. His pad has been wiped. He was working Personnel Records downtown and on a loan-out to Hollywood Vice. No one at Parker Center or Hollywood Station has seen him. What does that tell you?”
Marty Bergen began to tremble. His red face turned pale and his hands plucked at his pants legs. He backed into the wall and slid down into a folding metal chair. The woman at the desk brought over a glass of water, then
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hesitated and hurried off into the ladies’ room when she saw Lloyd shake his head.
Lloyd sat down beside Bergen and said, “When did you see Herzog last?”
Bergen’s voice was calm. “About a month ago. We still hung out. Jack didn’t blame me for what I did. He knew we were different that way. He didn’t judge me.”
“What was his state of mind?”
“Quiet. No—he was always quiet, but lately he’d been moody, up one minute, down the next.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Stuff. Shit. Books, mostly. My novel, the one I’ve been writing.”
“Did you and Herzog discuss his assignments?”
“We never talked police work.”
“I’ve heard Herzog described as a ‘stone loner.’ Is that accurate?”
“Yes.”
“Can you name any of his other friends?”
“No.”
“Women?”
“He had a girlfriend he saw occasionally. I don’t know her name.”
Lloyd leaned closer to Bergen. “What about enemies? What about men within the Department who hated him for the way he stood by you? You know the rank-and-file cop mentality as well as I do. Herzog must have engendered resentment.”
“The only resentment that Jack engendered was in me. He was so much better than me at everything that I always loved him the most when I hated him the most. We were so, so different. When we talked last, Jack said that he was going to exonerate me. But I ran. I was guilty.”
Bergen started to sob. Lloyd got up and walked to the door, looking back on the hack writer weeping underneath framed excoriations of what he had once been. Bergen was serving a life sentence with no means of atonement. Lloyd shuddered under the weight of the thought.
*
*
*
The return trip to the Valley eased Lloyd’s fatigue. Snug in his airconditioned cocoon, he let his mind run with images of Herzog and Bergen, intellectual cop buddies, two men who his instincts told him were as much alike as Bergen said they were different. The Freeway Liquor case receded temporarily to a back burner, and when he parked in front of Jack Herzog’s 234
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building he felt his mental second wind go physical. He smiled, knowing he would have the juice for a long stretch of hunting. Herzog’s neighbors began returning home from work shortly after five. Lloyd sized the first several of them up from his car, noting that their common denominator was the weary lower middle class look indigenous to Valley residents of both genders. Prime meat for the insurance payoff ploy. He pulled a stack of phony business cards from the glove compartment and practiced his glad-hander insurance man smile, preparing for a performance that would secure him the knowledge of just how much a loner Jungle Jack Herzog was.
Three hours later, with two dozen impromptu interviews behind him, Lloyd felt Herzog move from loner to cipher. None of the people he had talked to recalled even seeing the resident of apartment 423, assuming that the unit was kept vacant for some reason. The obvious candor of their statements was like a kick in the teeth; the fact that several had mentioned that the landlord/manager would be out of town for another week was the finishing blow. It was a solid investigatory angle shot to hell. Lloyd drove to a pay phone and called Dutch Peltz. Dutch answered on the first ring. “Peltz, who’s this?”
“Anyone ever tell you you answer the phone like a cop?”
Dutch laughed. “Yeah, you. Got a pencil?”
“Shoot.”
“Herzog was working two singles bars, the First Avenue West and Jackie D.’s, both on Highland north of the Boulevard. He was specifically looking for bartenders taking bribes to serve minors and hookers giving head in the hat-check room; we’d had a dozen complaints. He worked those joints for over six weeks, never blowing his cover, always calling narco or patrol from a pay phone when he saw something coming down. He figured in six coke busts and one for prostitution. As a result, the A.B.C. has both joints up for suspension of their liquor licenses.”
Lloyd whistled. “What about the reports he filed?”
“No reports, Lloyd. Walt Perkins’s orders. The arresting officers filed. Walt didn’t want Jack compromised.”
“Shit. That means you can scratch revenge as a motive.”
“Yeah, at least as far as his recent arrest record is concerned. What happened with Bergen?”
“Nothing. Bergen hasn’t seen Herzog in over a month, says he was
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moody, troubled. He took the news hard. He was drunk at two in the afternoon. Poor bastard.”
“We’re going to have a file a Missing Persons Report, Lloyd.”
“I know. Let Internal Affairs handle it, which means you and Walt Perkins are going to catch shit for not reporting it earlier and probably even heavier shit for working Herzog off the payroll.”
“You might get the case if it goes to Robbery/Homicide.”
“They’ll never find the stiff, Dutch. This job is pro all the way. I.A.D. will go at it sub rosa, then stonewall it. Let me give it another forty-eight hours before you call them, okay?”
“Okay.”
“What have you got from your snitches on the liquor store job?”
“Nothing yet. I sent out a memo to all officers on it. It’s still too early for a response. What’s next on Herzog?”
“Barhopping, Dutchman. Yours truly as a swinging single.”
“Have fun.”
Lloyd laughed and said, “Fuck you,” then hung up.
*
*
*
Bombarded by disco music, Lloyd competed for floor and bar space at First Avenue West. Showing his insurance agent’s business card and Jack Herzog’s personnel fi
le photo to three bartenders, four cocktail waitresses and two dozen singles, he got negative responses, distinguished only by hostile looks and shakes of the head from low-rider types who made him for fuzz and annoyed brush-offs from young women who didn’t like his style. Lloyd walked out the door angrily shaking his head as the washout continued. Jackie D.’s, three doors down, was almost deserted. Lloyd counted heads as he took a seat at the bar. A couple doing a slow grind on the dance floor and two overaged swingers feeding coins to the jukebox. The bartender slipped a napkin in front of him and explained why: “Twofers at First Avenue West. Every Tuesday night I get killed. First Ave. can afford it, I can’t. I keep my prices low to do volume and I still get killed. Is there no mercy in this life?”
“None,” Lloyd said.
“I just wanted a confirmation. What are you drinking?”
Lloyd put a dollar bill on the bar. “Ginger ale.”
The bartender snorted, “You see what I mean? No mercy!”
Lloyd took out the snapshot of Jack Herzog. “Have you seen this man?”
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The bartender scrutinized the photo, then filled Lloyd’s glass and nodded. “Yeah, I seen him around here a lot.”
Lloyd’s skin prickled. “When?”
“A while back. A month, six weeks, maybe two months ago, right before those A.B.C. cocksuckers filed on me. You a cop?”
“That’s right.”
“Hollywood Vice?”
“Robbery/Homicide. Tell me about the man in the picture.”
“What’s to tell? He came in, he drank, he tipped well, he didn’t hit on the chicks.”
