by James Ellroy
he said softly. “My badge and I.D. are in my jacket pocket.”
The middle cop poked Lloyd in the chest with the muzzle of his shotgun.
“You ain’t got a jacket, asshole. Turn around and put your hands on the wall above your head, then spread your legs. Do it real slow.”
Lloyd obeyed in the slowest of slow motion. He felt rough hands give him a thorough frisking. In the distance he could hear the wail of sirens drawing nearer. When his hands were pinned behind his back and cuffed, he said, “My jacket is in the bathroom. I was here on a homicide stakeout. 284
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You’ve got to issue an A.P.B. and a vehicle detain order. It’s a yellow Japan—”
A heavy object crashed into the small of his back. Lloyd twisted around and saw the middle cop holding his shotgun, butt extended. The other two cops hung a few feet back, looking bewildered. One of them whispered,
“He’s got a cross draw holster. I’ll check the bathroom.”
The middle cop silenced him. “Shitcan it. We’ll take him in. You check these people, look for anyone wounded, take statements. The meat wagon will be here in a second, so you help the paramedics. Jensen and I will take asshole in.”
Lloyd squinted and read the leader cop’s nameplate—Burnside. Straining to keep his voice steady, he said, “Burnside, you are letting a mass murderer and probable cop killer walk. Just go into the bathroom and get my jacket.”
Burnside spun Lloyd around and shoved him out the door and into a patrol car at curbside. Lloyd looked out the window and saw other Beverly Hills black-and-whites and paramedic vans pull up directly on the sidewalk. As the patrol car accelerated, he looked in vain for a yellow Japanese import and felt his whole body smolder like dry ice. The ride to the Beverly Hills Station took two minutes. Burnside and Jensen hustled Lloyd up the back stairs and led him down a dingy hallway to a wire mesh holding tank. Shoving him inside, still cuffed, Burnside said to his partner, “This bust feels like fat city. Any legit L.A.P.D. dick would have taken one of our guys with him on a stakeout. Let’s go get the skipper.”
When the two cops locked the cage door and ran off down the hallway, Lloyd leaned back against the wire wall and listened to the laughing and shouting coming from the drunk tank at the far end of the corridor. Letting his mind go blank, he gradually assimilated a mental replay of the events at Bruno’s Serendipity. One thought dominated: Somehow the Identikit man had instantly seized upon him as his enemy. True, his size and outdated business suit would alert any streetwise fool; but the I.K. man had glimpsed him for only a brief moment in a crowded, artificially lighted environment. Lloyd held the thought, testing it for leaks, finding none. Something was way off the usual criminal ken.
“You fucked up, Sergeant.”
Lloyd shifted his gaze to see who had spoken. It was a Beverly Hills captain, in uniform. He was holding his suit coat and .38 and shaking his head slowly.
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“Let me out and give me my jacket and gun,” Lloyd said. The captain shook his head a last time, then slid a key into the cage door and swung it open. He took a handcuff key from his pocket and unlocked Lloyd’s cuffs. Lloyd rubbed his wrists and took his coat and gun out of the captain’s hands, realizing that the man was at least a half dozen years his junior. “Yeah, I fucked up,” he said.
“Nice to hear the legendary Lloyd Hopkins admit to fallibility,” the captain said. “Why didn’t you notify the head of our detective squad of your stakeout? He would have given you a backup officer.”
“It happened too fast. I was going to wait for the suspect outside by his car. I would have called for one of your units to assist me, but he made me for a cop and freaked out.”
“What are you, six-four? Two-twenty-five? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what you do for a living.”
“Yeah? Your own officers couldn’t figure it out too well.”
The captain flushed. “Officer Burnside will apologize to you.”
Lloyd said, “Goody. In the meantime a stone psychopathic killer drives out of Beverly Hills a free man. An A.P.B. and a vehicle detain order might have gotten him.”
“Don’t try my patience, Hopkins. Just be grateful that no one at Bruno’s was hurt. If you had been responsible for the injury or death of a constituent of mine, I would have crucified you. As it stands, I’ll let your own Department deal with you.”
Lloyd’s vision pulsed with red. He shut his eyes to keep the throbbing localized and said, “Do you want to hear the whole story?”
“No. I want a complete report, in triplicate. Go upstairs and find a desk and write it now. I’ve informed your superiors at Robbery/Homicide. You are to report to the Chief of Detectives tomorrow morning at ten. Good night, Sergeant.”
Fuming, Lloyd watched the captain walk away. He gave himself ten minutes to cool down, then took an elevator to the third-floor vehicle registration office. A night clerk gave him a yellow legal pad and a pen, and over the next two hours he block printed three reports detailing the events at Bruno’s and summarizing his investigations into the liquor store homicides and the disappearance of Officer Jack Herzog, copying over his unsubmitted memo to the chief of detectives verbatim in hopes that it would be construed as an effort at “team play.” When he finished, he left the pages with the night desk officer and headed for the parking lot. He was almost out the 286
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door when an intercom voice jerked him back in. “Urgent call for Sergeant Hopkins. Paging Sergeant Hopkins.”
Lloyd walked to the night desk and picked up the phone. “Yes?”
“It’s Dutch, Lloyd. What happened?”
“Lots of shit. Who told you?”
“Thad Braverton. You’re supposed to see him tomorrow.”
“I know. Is he pissed?”
“Depends on what you have to say. What happened?”
Lloyd laughed through his anger and fatigue. “You won’t believe what happened. The same guy did the liquor store job and killed Jack Herzog. I’m sure of it. He fired on me with his liquor store piece. We did our best to destroy a Beverly Hills singles bar. It was wild.”
Dutch shouted, “What!”
“Tomorrow, partner. I’ll call you after I talk to Braverton.”
Dutch’s voice was soft. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Lloyd’s was softer. “Yeah, on a popsicle stick. You got any good news for me? I could use some.”
Dutch said, “Two items. One, I checked around on that weird name you asked about. Doctor John the Night Tripper. He was a rock bimbo from years ago, and it’s also the nickname of a psychiatrist who does lots of counseling of hookers and court-referred criminal types. He’s very well respected. His real name is John Havilland and his office is in Century City. Two, you’re in good shape with I.A.D. I called Fred Gaffaney this morning and reported Herzog missing. I took the grief, which consisted of Gaffaney screaming ‘fuck’ a few times.”
Lloyd memorized the first item and laughed at the second. “Good work, partner. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Dutch laughed back. “Stay alive, kid.”
Lloyd hung up and walked out into the parking lot, threading his way through a maze of erratically parked black-and-whites and unmarked cruisers. When he got to the sidewalk he saw Officer Burnside striding toward him. Burnside snickered as he passed, and Lloyd halted and tapped him on the shoulder. “You got something to say to me?”
Burnside turned and said, “Yeah. Ain’t you a little old to be hotdogging outside your jurisdiction?”
Lloyd smiled and drove a short right hand into Burnside’s midsection. Burnside gasped and doubled over. Lloyd propped up his chin with his left hand, then swung a full force right at the bridge of his nose, feeling it crack
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beneath his fist. Burnside flew back onto the pavement, moaning and drawing himself into a ball to escape more blows. Lloyd walked to his car feeling
old and numb and tired of his profession.
9
The Night Tripper was on his fourth reading of the Junior Miss Cosmetics files when the phone in his private study rang, twenty-four hours before Goff’s next scheduled call. Picturing his terminal man straining against a bacterial fever, he picked up the receiver and whispered, “You’re early, Thomas. What is it?”
Goff’s reply came out in series of gasps. “Cop! Big man from the cop files!
I tried to wax him like the liquor store scum, but he—” The gasps became a horrified wailing.
Havilland envisioned Goff hyperventilating and frothing and burning up the phone booth with his fever and bewildered rage. Passing sentence in his mind, he said aloud, “Go home, Thomas. Can you understand that? Go home and wait for me. Draw in three breaths and tell me you’ll go home. Will you do that for me?”
The three breaths drew out the semblance of a human voice. “Yes . . . yes . . . please hurry.”
The Doctor replaced the receiver and held his hands in front of his eyes. They were perfectly steady. He walked into the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror. His light brown eyes were unwavering in their knowledge that although Goff had fallen, he was invulnerable. He reached below the sink and picked up the death kit he had prepared the previous night, then went back to his study and stuffed it inside the old leather briefcase he had saved since med school. Squatting down, he pulled up a section of loose carpeting and opened his floor safe, extracting a single manila folder, thinking for a split second that the man in the photo attached to the first page looked exactly like his father.
Thus armed for mercy, he left his apartment and walked out to the street to look for a cab. One cruised by a few minutes later. “Michael’s Restaurant 288
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on Los Feliz and Hillhurst,” Havilland told the driver. “And please hurry.”
The driver sped through the late evening traffic, never looking back at his passenger. Pulling up in front of the restaurant, he said, “Fast enough for you?”
The Doctor smiled and handed him a twenty. “Keep the change,” he said. When the cab drove away, Havilland walked the four blocks to Goff’s apartment, noting with relief that all the lights in the adjoining units were off. He rapped softly on the door, hearing otherworldly moans respond to his knock. The inside chain was withdrawn, and Goff was framed in the doorway, beseeching him with terrified eyes and hands pressed together in prayer. The doctor stared at the hands as they trembled a few inches in front of him. The fingers were bloody stubs, as if Goff’s animal panic had driven him to try to dig a way out of his life. Looking at the inside of the door, he saw gouge marks and trickles of blood.
Havilland put gentle hands on Goff’s shoulders and pushed him back into the living room, seeing his cordite-stinking handgun on the coffee table. Shutting and bolting the door, he pointed Goff to the couch, then rummaged in his briefcase for his instruments of accusation and mercy. Laying the manila folder face down on the floor and filling a syringe from a lab vial of strychnine, he whispered, “Two questions before I sedate you, Thomas. One, did the police see your car?”
Goff shook his head and tried to form ‘no’ with his lips. The Doctor looked into his eyes. Probable truth.
Whispering, “Good, good,” he clasped his left hand over Goff’s mouth and pressed his head to the wall with all his strength. Goff’s eyes bulged but remained locked into the eyes of his master. Havilland took the manila folder from the floor and slipped off the front page photograph. Holding it up for Goff to see, he said, “Is this the policeman?”
Goff’s eyes widened, the pupils dilated. A scream rose in his throat and he twisted his head and bit at the Doctor’s hand. Havilland pushed forward with all his weight, flailing with his free arm for the syringe, finding it just as Goff’s teeth grazed his palm. Throwing himself across Goff’s squirming torso, he stabbed the needle into his neck, missing his target vein, pulling it free as the point struck muscle tissue. Aiming again, he saw his father and the cop in the photo fuse into one persona just as the ferris wheel at the Bronx amusement park began its descent. The spike struck home; his thumb worked the plunger; the poison entered. Goff’s back arched as his feet twisted and pushed off the wall in a huge full-body seizure. Both mas-
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ter and minion were thrown to the floor. Goff writhed, foam at his mouth. Havilland got to his knees, seeing his father and the cop separate into individual entities, replaced by a little girl in a fifties-style party dress laughing at him. He shook his head to destroy the vision, then heard Goff’s vertebrae popping as he attempted to turn himself inside-out. Getting to his feet, he saw a door opening on blackness and headstones behind a barbed wire fence. Then he held his hands in front of his face and saw that they were steady. He looked down on the floor and saw Thomas Goff, dead, frozen in a final configuration of anguish.
“Father,” the Night Tripper whispered. “Father. Father.”
Now only the disposal remained.
The Doctor dug through his briefcase, removing the black vinyl body bag and laying it out lengthwise on the floor, zipped open. He tossed Goff’s handgun into the bottom, then stuffed in Goff himself and zipped the bag up.
Goff’s car keys were on the coffee table. Havilland pocketed them, then squatted down and hoisted the pain-free Goff onto his right shoulder. Picking up his briefcase and flicking off the ceiling light, he shut the door and walked outside to the street.
Goff’s Toyota was parked four buildings down. Havilland unlocked the trunk and wedged the dead man inside, securing the body bag by placing a spare tire and bumper jack across Goff’s midsection. Satisfied with the concealment, the Doctor slammed the trunk shut and drove him to his final resting place.
Thomas Goff’s grave was the basement maintenance area of a storage garage in the East Los Angeles industrial district. It was owned by one of the Doctor’s former criminal counselees, currently doing ten to life for a third armed robbery conviction. Havilland paid the taxes and sent the man’s wife a quarterly check; the gloomy old red-brick fortress would be his for at least another eight years.
It took the Night Tripper ten minutes to secure the gravesite, rummaging through the ring of keys his counselee had given him, opening up a series of double padlocked doors, driving through an obstacle course of mildewed cartons and rotting lumber until he was in the pitch black bowels of the building. Wiping the car free of his fingerprints and retracing his steps in the dark, he felt a sense of satisfaction and completion hit him harder with each padlock he snapped shut: Thomas Goff had spent his 290
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adult life seeking the absence of light and the Doctor had promised to help; now he would have layer upon layer of darkness to cradle his eternity. When the street door lock was fastened behind him, the Night Tripper walked toward downtown L.A. and shifted his thoughts to the future. With Goff dead, he was flying solo; all the file runs were his. It was time to put off his current lonelies with talk of forthcoming “ultimate” assignments and concentrate on the acquisition of data and his possible combat with the policeman who so resembled his father. Crossing the Third Street bridge, the lights of the downtown business monoliths hovering in front of him, Havilland thought of chess moves: Richard Oldfield, clinically insane yet superbly cautious, who resembled the late Thomas Goff like a twin brother. Pawn to queen. Linda Wilhite, the hooker who fantasized snuff films and who desired a life of blissful domesticity with a big, rough-hewn man. Queen to king.
And finally the highly tarnished “king” himself: Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins, the outsized L.A. cop with the off-the-charts I.Q., the man of whom the Alchemist had said: “I glommed his file because he is simply the best there is. If he weren’t such an up-front womanizer and so outlaw in his methods, he’d be chief of detectives. He’s got close to complete autonomy within the Department, because the high brass knows he’s the best and because they think he’s slightly off his nut. H
e was the one who closed the
‘Hollywood Slaughterer’ case last year. No one really knows what happened, but the rumor is that Hopkins simply went out and killed the bastard.”
Havilland replayed the words in his mind, juxtaposing them with the superlative arrest record and erratic home life detailed in the folder. Check- mate. Staring deeper into the lights before him, he thought of unlocking the door to his childhood void with symbolic patricide. 10
“Before we start, I want you to read this morning’s Big Orange Insider. ”
Lloyd shifted in his chair and lowered his eyes, wondering if Thad
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Braverton bought his look of phony contrition. Their handshake had been a good start, but Braverton’s eyes were pinpoints of barely controlled rage, belying the authoritative calm of his voice.
“Martin Bergen’s byline?” Lloyd asked.
