by James Ellroy
The black-bordered piece was entitled “Night Train to the Big Nowhere.” Lloyd read it over three times, feeling his case move from its strange new light into a stranger darkness.
When a cop jumps on the Night Train to the big nowhere, he doesn’t care about its exact destination, because any terminus is preferable to living inside his own head, with its awful knowledge of how the solar age will never penetrate the Big Iceberg.
When my friend jumped on the Night Train to the Big Nowhere, he probably foresaw only relief from his locked-in knowledge of the big nightmare, and the vise grip of the new nightmare that spelled out his role to play in the shroud dance that owns us all. That you didn’t purchase your ticket with your gun spoke volumes. Like me, you were a blue-suit sham. You did not use that tool of your trade in your nihilist last hurrah, reaffirming your masquerade. Instead you strangled on a pink cloud of chemical silence, giving yourself time to think of all the puzzles you had solved, and of the cruelty of your final jigsaw revelations. At the end you confronted, and knew. It was your most conscious act of courage in a life vulgarized by fearful displays of bravery. I love you for it, and offer you this twenty-one gun verse valedictory:
Resurrect the dead on this day,
open the doors where
they dare not to stray;
Cancel all tickets to the horror shroud dance,
Burn down the night in the rage of a trance.
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Lloyd handed the sheet back to the bewildered typesetter. “Print it,” he said. “Redeem your piece of shit newspaper.”
The woman said, “It ain’t the New York Times, but it’s a regular gig.”
Lloyd nodded, but didn’t reply. When he walked out of the office the strident young man was scrutinizing the bank subpoena with a magnifying glass.
*
*
*
Knowing that he couldn’t bear to recon Marty Bergen’s apartment, Lloyd drove home and called the West Hollywood Sheriff’s, briefly explaining the case and relegating the job to them, omitting his knowledge of the bank draft, telling them to make a check of local motels and to detain Bergen if they found him.
New questions burned in the morass that the Herzog-Goff case had become. Was Jungle Jack Herzog a suicide? If so, where was his body, who had disposed of it, and who had wiped his apartment free of fingerprints? Marty Bergen’s “weird” columns indicated that he had seen the files Herzog had stolen. Where were the files, what was the literal gist of the suicide column, where was Bergen, and what was the extent of his involvement in the case?
When nothing came together for him, Lloyd knew that he was overamped, undernourished, and coming unconnected, and that the only antidote was an evening of rest. After a dinner of cold sliced ham and a pint of cottage cheese, he sat down on his porch to watch the twilight dwindle into darkness, warming to the idea of not thinking.
But he thought.
He thought of the terraced hills of the old neighborhood, and of sleepless fifties nights spent listening to the howling of dogs imprisoned in the animal shelter two blocks away. The shelter had given his section of Silverlake the nickname of “Dogtown,” and for the years of ’fifty-five and
’fifty-six, when he had been a peewee member of the Dogtown Flats gang, it had supplied him with the sobriquets of “Dogman” and “Savior.” The constant howling, plaintive as it was, had been mysterious and romantic dream fuel. But sometimes the dogs chewed and clawed their way to freedom, only to get obliterated by late-night hot-rodders playing chicken on the blind curve blacktop outside his bedroom window. Even though the corpses were removed by the time he left for school in the morning, with the pavement hosed down by old Mr. Hernandez next door, Lloyd could feel and smell and
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almost taste the blood. And after a while, his nights were spent not listening, but cringing in anticipation of coming impacts. Lack of sleep drew Lloyd gaunt that fall of ’fifty-six, and he knew that he had to act to reclaim the wonder he had always felt after dark. Because the night was there to provide comfort and the nourishing of brave dreams, and only someone willing to fight for its sanctity deserved to claim it as his citadel.
Lloyd began his assault against death, first blocking off “Dead Dog Curve” at both ends with homemade sawhorse detour signs to prevent access to chicken players. The stratagem worked for two nights, until a gluesniffing member of the First Street Flats crashed his ’fifty-one Chevy through the barricade, sideswiping a series of parked cars as he lost control, finally coming to a halt by rear-ending an L.A.P.D. black-and-white. Out on bail the next day, the driver went looking for the puto who had put up the sawhorse, smiling when Dogtown buddies told him it was a crazy fourteen-year-old kid called Dogman and Savior, a loco who was planning to flop in a sleeping bag by Dead Dog Curve to make sure that nobody played chicken on his turf.
That night fourteen-year-old Lloyd Hopkins, six foot one and a hundred and eighty pounds, began the series of mano a mano choose-off’s that rendered the nicknames Dogman and Savior passé and earned him a new title:
“Conquistador.” The fights continued for ten nights straight, costing him a twice broken nose and a total of a hundred stitches, but ending chicken on Griffith Park and St. Elmo forever. When his nose was set for the second time and his swollen hands returned to their normal size, Lloyd quit the Dogtown Flats. He knew he was going to become a policeman, and it would not do to have a gang affiliation on his record.
The ringing of a telephone jerked him back to the present. He walked into the kitchen and picked it up. “Yes?”
“Hopkins, this is Linda.”
“What?”
“Are you spaced out or something? Linda Wilhite.”
Lloyd laughed. “Yeah, I am spaced out. How’s tricks?”
“Not funny, Hopkins, but I’ll let you slide because you’re spaced. Listen, I did just trick with Stanley, and I very subtly pried some not too encouraging info out of him.”
“Such as?”
“Such as you were misinformed somehow. Stan baby has never heard of 332
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Goff. I described the picture you showed me to him, and he doesn’t know anyone resembling it. Ditto any left-handed man. Stan said he buys his stuff from a black guy who works solo. He did buy some stuff from a white guy, once, last year, but the guy charged too much. Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“You were a lot of help. How did you get my phone number?”
Linda laughed. “You are spaced. From the phone book. Listen, will you let me know how this turns out?”
“Yes. And thanks, Linda.”
“My pleasure. And by the way, if you feel like calling, you don’t have to have a reason, though I’m sure you’ll think one up.”
“Are you telling me I’m devious?”
“No, just lonely and a bit guilt-ridden.”
“And you?”
“Lonely and a bit curious. Bye, Hopkins.”
“Goodbye, Linda.”
15
After a handshake and brief salutations, Linda Wilhite took her seat across from the Doctor and began to talk. When Havilland heard vague self-analysis fill the air, he clicked off his conscious listening power and shifted into an automatic overdrive that allowed him to juxtapose Linda’s beauty against the single most important aspect of his life: thinking one step ahead of Lloyd Hopkins.
Since they were both geniuses, this kept the Night Tripper’s mental engine pushed to its maximum horsepower, searching for loopholes and overlooked flaws in the logical progression of his game. With his physical concentration zeroed in on Linda, he thought of the game’s one possible trouble spot: Jungle Jack Herzog.
Their relationship had been based on mutual respect—Herzog’s genuine, the Doctor’s feigned. The Alchemist was a classic psychiatric prototype—the seeker after truth who retreats into a cocoon of rationalization
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when confronted with harrowing self-truths. Thus the Doctor had played into his pathetic fantasy of using the stolen files to create an “L.A.P.D. credibility gap” that would by implication exonerate his friend Marty Bergen, while at the same time plumbing the basis of his attraction to a man whose cowardly actions he despised. The truth had finally become too strong, and Herzog had run to some unknown terminus of macho-driven shame. Goff had wiped his apartment shortly after he disappeared, and the odds against his leaving records or contacting Bergen or L.A.P.D. colleagues were astronomical—his shameful new self-knowledge would preclude it. Yet Hopkins had tied in Herzog to the late Thomas Goff, although he had not mentioned the missing files. That was potentially damaging, although Herzog had had no knowledge of his hard criminal activity. The most important part of the game was now to convince Hopkins that he was shielding someone close to Goff; that he was strangling on the horns of an ethical dilemma. He would play the role of every wimpy liberal man of conscience that policemen hated, and “Crazy Lloyd”
would buy it—hook, line, and sinker.
The Night Tripper mentally decelerated, catching bits of psychobabble sloganeering as Linda’s monologue wound down. Knowing that she would expect him to respond, he made brief mental notes to contact and placate his lonelies with excuses for his absence, then smiled and said, “I let you go on like that without interjecting questions because such thinking is living in the problem, not the solution. You’ve got to be able to exposit facts, gauge them for their basic truths and nuances, solicit my feedback, accept it or reject it, then move on the next fact. You’ve obviously read every lunatic and well-intentioned self-help book ever written, and it’s mired you down with a great deal of useless food for thought. Give me facts. ”
Linda flushed, clenched her jaw and slammed the arms of her chair.
“Facts,” she said. “You want facts, then I’ll give you facts. Fact: I’m lonely. Fact: I’m horny. Fact: I just met a very interesting man. Fact: I can tell that he’s turned on to me. Fact: He’s mooning for his estranged wife and will probably not hit on yours truly, as much as he’d like to. Fact: I’m pissed off about it.”
Havilland smiled. The litany sounded like his fish swallowing a huge chunk of bait. “Tell me about the man. Facts, physical and otherwise, then your conclusions.”
Linda smoothed the hem of her skirt and smiled back. “All right. He’s about forty and very large, with intense gray eyes and dark brown hair, sort 334
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of unkempt. Ruddy complexion. His clothes are out of style. He’s funny and arrogant and sarcastic. He’s very smart, but there’s nothing contrived or academic about it. He just has it. He’s a natural. ”
At Linda’s last words the Doctor felt his fish gobble the bait, then inexplicably start to chew through the line. When he spoke, his voice sounded disembodied, as if it had been filtered through an echo chamber. “He has it?
He’s a natural? Those aren’t facts, Linda. Be more specific.”
“Don’t get angry,” Linda said. “You wanted conclusions.”
Havilland leaned back in his chair, feeling his own line snap with the realization that he had displayed anger. “I’m sorry I raised my voice,” he said.
“Sometimes nonspecific information makes me angry.”
“Don’t apologize, Doctor. You know human emotions better than I do.”
“Yes. More facts then, please.”
Linda stared at her clenched hands, then counted facts on her fingers.
“He’s a cop, he’s proud to a fault, he’s lonely. He—oh shit, he just has it. ”
Havilland felt barbed-wire hooks gouge his jugular, Linda’s beauty the hook wielder. Her voice supplied a verbal gouging that honed the hooks to razor sharpness. “I just don’t feel factual about this man, Doctor. It’s weird meeting him so soon after entering therapy, and nothing will probably come of it, but my only facts are my intuitions. Doctor, are you all right?”
Havilland stared through Linda to a mental chessboard he had constructed to resurrect his professional cool. Kings, queens, and knights toppled; and in the wake of their fall he was able to dredge up a smile and a calm voice. “I’m sorry, Linda. One of my little bouts of vertigo. I’m also sorry for impugning your intuitions. One thing struck me when you were describing this fellow, and that’s that he sounds very much like your size forty-four sweater fantasy man. Has that occurred to you?”
Linda covered her mouth and laughed. “Maybe the Rolling Stones were wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re obviously not a rock fan,” Linda said. “I was referring to an old Stones tune called ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’ Although they could be right, because if Lloyd-poo doesn’t want to be had, then I’m sure that he will not be had. That’s part of his charm.”
Havilland made a steeple and brought it up to his face, framing Linda inside the triangle. “How has he affected your fantasy life?”
Linda gave the Doctor a rueful smile. “You don’t miss much. Yes, this man is the basic forty-four sweater prototype; yes, he possesses that certain
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aura of violence I mentioned earlier; yes, I have cast him as the man who watches my gory home movies with me. I also like the fact that he’s a cop. And you know why? Because he doesn’t judge me for being a prostitute. Cops and hookers work the same street, so to speak.”
Collapsing the steeple into his lap, the Doctor said, “For the record, Linda, you’ve made a great deal of progress in only three sessions. So much so that I’m considering a rather avant-garde visual aid session a week or so down the line. Would you be up for that?”
“Sure. You’re the doctor.”
“Yes,” Havilland said, “I am. And doctors have certain results that they must achieve. Mine involve confronting my counselees’ most hideous secrets and fears, taking them through their green doors and beyond their beyonds. You know that your confrontations are going to be particularly painful, don’t you, Linda?”
Linda stood up and adjusted the pleats in her skirt, then slung her handbag over her shoulder. “No pain, no gain. I’m tough, Doctor. I can handle all the truth you can hit me with. Friday at ten-thirty?”
Havilland got to his feet and took Linda’s hand. “Yes. One thing before you go. What were your parents wearing at the time of their deaths?”
Linda held the doctor’s hand while she pondered the question. Finally she said, “My father was wearing khaki pants, a plaid lumberjack shirt and a Dodger baseball cap. I remember the pictures the policemen showed me. The detectives were amazed that he could blow his brains out and still keep the cap on his head. My mother was doing part-time practical nursing then, and she was wearing a white nurse’s uniform. Why?”
Havilland lowered her hand. “Symbolic therapy. Thank you for digging up such an unpleasant memory.”
“No pain, no gain,” Linda said as she waved goodbye.
*
*
*
Alone in his office with the scent of Linda’s perfume, the Night Tripper wondered why validation of his most audacious move should cause such a bizarre reaction. He played back the session in his mind and got nothing but a static hiss that sounded like an air-raid siren about to screech its doom warning. Reflexively, he grabbed his desk phone and dialed one of his pawn’s numbers, getting a recorded message: “Hi, lover, this is Sherry! I’m out right now, but if you want to party or just rap, talk to the machine. Bye!”
He put down the receiver, knowing immediately that he had made a mistake. Sherry Shroeder lived in the Valley. He had made a toll call that 336
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would appear on his phone bill. Havilland took a deep breath and closed his eyes, searching for a train of thought to provide a counteraction to the blunder. It arrived in the form of facts: the remaining Junior Miss Cosmetics files were boring. They were boring because they detailed unimaginative
sleaze. Thus a higher class line of confidential dirt should be procured. The Avonoco Fiberglass Company had a class two security rating. The Alchemist had said, “If you cut a fart they’ve got a file on you. They hire lots of parolees and work furlough inmates as part of an L.A. County kickback scam.” The L.A.P.D. file on their security chief had described him as a compulsive gambler with a history of psychiatric counseling. Choice meat for Thomas Goff. Choicer meat for a trained psychiatrist. The Night Tripper locked up his office and took the elevator down to the bank of pay phones in the lobby. He was leafing through the Yellow Pages when the reason for his erratic behavior stunned him with its implications of cheap emotion: he was jealous of Linda Wilhite’s attraction to Lloyd Hopkins. 16
Lloyd spent the morning at the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Substation, reading over the report filed by the team of detectives who had searched Marty Bergen’s apartment.
The report ran a total of eight pages, and contained both the officers’ observations regarding the apartment’s condition and a six-page inventory of items found on the premises. There was no mention of the personnel files or any other official police document, and nothing that pointed to Jack Herzog or his murder/suicide/disappearance. What emerged was a clipped word portrait of an alcoholic ex-cop reaching the end of his tether. On the ambiguous pretext of a “routine check,” the detectives had learned from Bergen’s landlady that she had not seen her tenant in over a week, and that in her opinion he was “holed up swacko in some motel on the Strip.” The state of Bergen’s apartment confirmed this appraisal. Empty scotch bottles were strewn across the floor, and there were no clothes or toi-
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let articles to be found. All four rooms reeked of booze and waste, and a portable typewriter lay smashed to pieces on the kitchen floor. The officers had followed the landlady’s advice and had checked every motel and cocktail bar on the length of the Sunset Strip, showing Bergen’s Big Orange Insider byline photo to every desk clerk and bartender they encountered. Many recognized Bergen as a frequent heavy binger, but none had seen him in over two weeks. Deciding to sit on the information before assigning L.A.P.D. detectives to search for the ex-cop/writer, Lloyd drove to West L.A. and his last remaining uncharted link to the whole twisted mess, wondering if his motives were entirely professional. Linda Wilhite opened her door on the second knock, catching Lloyd in the act of straightening his necktie. Pointing him inside, she looked at her watch and said, “Noon. Fourteen hours after my call, and you’re here in person. Got a good reason?”
