by James Ellroy
Lloyd sat down on a floral-patterned sofa. “I came to cop a plea,” he said.
“I haven’t been entirely honest with you, and I—”
Linda silenced him by leaning over and adjusting the knot in his tie.
“And you want something. Right?”
“Right.”
“So tell me,” Linda said, sitting down beside him. Lloyd gave her an unrepentant stare. “Dr. John Havilland put me on to you, unconsciously. I saw those pictures of you in his outer office. Then he—”
Linda grabbed his arm. “What!”
“The framed photographs of you. Don’t you know about that?”
Linda shook her head angrily, then sadly. “That poor, wonderful man. I told him about this arty-farty picture book I posed for, and he went out and bought it. How sad. I figured he was some sort of ascetic asexual, then this morning I told him about a man I’m attracted to, and he freaked out. I’ve never seen anyone so jealous.”
“He blurted your name when I commented on the pictures,” Lloyd said.
“And he obviously takes them down before he sees you. Havilland counsels lots of criminal types. In the course of my investigation I blundered onto his name and decided to exploit his expertise in matters of the criminal psyche. As I suspected, he had his own underworld grapevine. He queried his source and came up with a man who, along with Thomas Goff, sold Stanley Rudolph some art objects. I snuck into Rudolph’s pad and found your name in his phone book. Even though Rudolph himself doesn’t know Goff, this 338
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anonymous man does. The whole Rudolph connection was a weird bunch of information and mis information, which doesn’t alter the fact that Havilland’s source knows Goff. ”
Lloyd paused when he saw that Linda’s face had become a mask of rage. Lowering his voice, he continued. “Havilland is legally protected by a shitload of statutes regarding professional privilege. He does not have to reveal the name of his source, and all my instincts tell me that no amount of coercion would move him to divulge the name of Goff’s cohort.”
Lloyd put his hand on Linda’s shoulder. She cringed at his touch, then batted his hand away and hissed, “There are people who can’t be coerced, Hopkins, and the Doctor is one of them. He can’t be coerced because unlike you, he has principles. There are also people who can’t be manipulated, and even though I’m a whore, I’m one of them. Do you honestly think that I’d manipulate information out of a man who wants to help me and give it to a man who at best wants to fuck me? You want an addition to your epithet list, Sergeant? How about ‘uncaring manipulative sleazebag’?”
Seeing red, Lloyd walked out of the apartment and down to the street and his unmarked cruiser. Ten minutes later he was sitting in Dr. John Havilland’s outer office, staring at the photographs of Linda Wilhite and asking his seldom sought God not to let him do anything stupid. The Doctor appeared just as the red throbbing behind Lloyd’s eyes began to subside. He was ushering an elderly woman wearing a “Save the Whales”
T-shirt out of his private office, cooing into her ear as she checked the contents of her purse. When he saw Lloyd, he said, “One moment, Sergeant,”
issued a final goodbye to his patient, then turned and laughed. “That very rich woman thinks that she can communicate telepathically with whales. What can I do for you? Have you made any progress in your investigation?”
Lloyd shook his head and spoke with a deliberate slowness. “No. Your source was somewhat inaccurate in his information. I questioned Stanley Rudolph. He has no knowledge, guilty or otherwise, of Thomas Goff. His primary source of stolen goods is a black man who works by himself. Rudolph bought goods from a solo white man only once, sometime last year. You said that your source met Goff at a singles bar. Did he tell you the name of it?”
Havilland sighed and sat down in an armchair across from Lloyd. “No, he didn’t. To be frank, Sergeant, the young man has a drug problem, an addiction that sometimes involves blackouts. His memory isn’t always completely trustworthy.”
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“Yet you believe that he knows Goff?”
“Yes.”
“And you credit his statement that he has no knowledge of Goff’s whereabouts and no knowledge regarding the liquor store homicides?”
Havilland hesitated, then said, “Yes.”
Keeping his voice deliberately slow, Lloyd said, “No, you don’t. You’re shielding someone who knows something hot about Goff, and you’re scared. You want to tell me what you know, but you don’t want to compromise your ethics and jeopardize your patient’s well-being. I understand these things. But understand me, Doctor. You’re my only shot. We’re dealing with mass murder here, not petty neuroses. You have to tell me his name, and I think you know it.”
“No,” Havilland said. “That’s absolute.”
“Will you reconsider over a period of twenty-four hours? I’ll have an attorney present when I question the man, and he won’t know that you informed on him. I’ll concoct a story that would satisfy a genius.”
Havilland lowered his eyes. “God damn it, I said no!”
Lloyd felt his slow-motion strategy burst. He jammed his hands into his front pockets, closing them around open handcuff ratchets and a metal studded sap. Staring straight at the doctor, he squeezed the concealed weaponry so hard that the pain forced his words out in a wince. “You fuck with me and I’ll hit you with an I.R.S. audit and more writs, petitions, subpoenas, and court orders than you thought existed. I’ll initiate motions requesting the case files of every court-referred patient who ever crossed your door. I’ll hire shyster lawyers out of my own pocket and keep them on retainer just to dream up ways to hassle you. I’ll have badass nigger vice cops keep your office under surveillance and scare the shit out of the rich neurotics you feed from. Twenty-four hours. You’ve got my number.”
A red tide propelled Lloyd out of the office. When he took his hands from his pockets, he saw that they were bleeding.
*
*
*
Hook, line, and sinker.
Havilland walked into his private office and removed an array of bait from his wall safe. Ten thousand dollars in a brown paper bag and a newly typed psychiatric report accompanied by a snapshot. He placed the report in his top desk drawer, then looked at his watch. One-thirty. He had six hours until his next move. Leaning back in his chair, the Night Tripper closed his eyes and tried to will a dreamless sleep. 340
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He succeeded and failed.
Sleep came, interspersed with semi-conscious moments that he knew to be his memory. As each image passed through him he felt like a surgical bonesaw was slicing his body in two, leaving him the choice of going with his symbolic past or of drifting into the cloud cover of anesthesia. Off to his left was sleep; off to his right was a blood-spattered corkboard equipped with arm and legholes, a rigor-mortised ankle encircled by a steel manacle, and the Bronx ferris wheel spinning off its axis. Full consciousness was a pinpoint of light between his eyes, an escape hatch that could trigger full sleep if concentrated upon in tandem with recitation of his mantra, patria sanctorum. Three roads inward: to wakefulness, to oblivion, to his childhood void. Feeling fearless, the Night Tripper succumbed to memory and let his right side disengage.
A huge magnifying glass descended on the void, serving up details:
“McEvoy-D Block,” etched on the manacle; gouged and cauterized arteries marking the ankle; father whispering in his ear as the ferris wheel reached its apex, suspending them above blocks of Puerto Rican tenements. Straining to read the lips of the people traversing below him, he caught long snatches of conversation and shock waves of laughter. Then his two sides fused.
Havilland awoke, refreshed, at six-forty-five. His yawn became a smile when the new void embellishments passed the credibility test by returning to his conscious mind. His smile widened when he realized that his one-onone with Lloyd Hopkins was the catalyst that had suppli
ed the fresh details. Thus fortified by sleep and memory, he picked up his bag of money, locked the office, and drove to Malibu and the acquisition of data. The rendezvous point was a long stretch of parking blacktop overlooking the beach. Havilland left his car in the service area of a closed gas station on the land side of the Pacific Coast Highway and took the tunnel underpass across to the bank of lighted pay phones adjoining the spot where he was to meet the Avonoco Fiberglass security chief. He checked his watch and walked to the railing: 8:12 P.M., the last remnants of an amber sun turning the ocean pink. Savoring the moment, he watched the ball of fire meld into a pervasive light blue. When the blue died into a dark rush of waves, he walked to the phone booth nearest the railing and dialed the number of his actress pawn.
“Hello?”
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Havilland grimaced; Sherry’s salutation was slurred into three stoned syllables.
“Hello? Who’s this? Is that you, Otto, you horny hound?”
Havilland’s grimace relaxed. Though loaded, his pawn was lucid. “This is Lloyd, Sherry. How are you?”
“Hi, Lloyd!”
“Hi. Do you remember our deal?”
“Of course, baby. I got ripped off to the max on Steep Throat and Nuclear Nookie. I’m not letting this one get away.”
Havilland turned around and stretched, catching a glimpse of a man hunched over the phone in the last booth at the end. Even though the caller was a good ten yards away, he turned back and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Good. We’re shooting tomorrow night. Your co-star will pick you up. That’s a little idea of mine. You know, let the stars get acquainted so that they can perform more realistically. He’ll bring an outfit for you to wear. Is that your current address on your business card?”
“Yeah, that’s my crib. And I’ll get the rest of my money then?”
“Yes. Your co-star’s name is Richard. He’ll pick you up at nine. I’ll see you on the set.”
Sherry laughed. “Nine P.M. Tell Richard to be there or be square. Bye, Lloyd.”
“Goodbye, Sherry.”
Havilland hung up and stared through the Plexiglas booth enclosures, noting with relief that the caller was gone. He checked his watch again, then walked to the railing and over to the approximate middle of the parking strip. 8:24. Hopefully, Lieutenant Howard Christie would be punctual. At precisely eight-thirty, slow footsteps echoed on the blacktop. The Doctor squinted and saw a man materialize out of the shadows and walk straight toward him. When he was ten feet away, a sudden burst of moonlight illuminated his features. It was the man in the phone booth. Shunting that knowledge aside, the Doctor walked forward with his hand extended, watching an archetypal cop come into focus.
He was a big crew-cutted man going to fat. He had a blunt face and cold eyes that measured the Doctor up, down, and sideways without revealing a hint of his appraisal. When they were face to face, he took the extended hand and said, “Doctor Havilland, I presume?”
The words rendered the Doctor mute and faint. He tried to jerk his hand free. It was futile; the force that grasped it was crushing it into numbness. 342
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The force spoke: “Did you think you were dealing with amateurs? I’ve been a cop for twenty-two years, fourteen of them on the take. I know the ropes. I saw you park your car half an hour ago, and ran you through the D.M.V. The White Pages told me the rest. A psychiatrist. Very fucking unimpressive. Do you know how many shrinks I’ve gamed to get out of trouble in the Department? Did you think I’d let you pull this clandestine rendezvous horseshit anonymously? Did you think I believed that snow job you gave me on the phone? A book about secret information abuse? Really, Doctor, you insult my intelligence.”
With a final squeeze, Howard Christie released the Doctor’s hand, then put an arm around his shoulders and led him to the railing. Havilland concentrated on his mantra. He sat on the railing and forced an appropriately frightened laugh. When Christie laughed in return, he felt his newfound courage click in.
Christie took a deep breath of ocean air. “Don’t look so scared, Doc. One thing my first shrink taught me: In all relationships, power bondings are established in the first five minutes. I had to establish the fact that I am the power broker, because I have what you want, and since we are dealing with class two security clearance stuff, this scam is felonious. Capice?”
“Yes,” Havilland said. “I understand. But where are the files?” He ran his right foot nervously over the blacktop in wider and wider circles. A big rock caught his toe. He nudged it toward him and added, “Does anyone else know my name or that I contacted you?”
Christie shook his head. “I told you I knew the ropes. No one at Avonoco knows, and I just found out your name from a D.M.V. clerk who’s already forgotten it. But listen: Where did you get my name?”
Lowering his head, Havilland saw a holstered revolver clipped to Christie’s belt, half covered by his open sports jacket. “I—I—met an L.A.P.D. officer at a bar. He—he told me you had a gambling problem.”
Christie slammed the railing with both palms. “Loudmouthed motherfuckers. For your info, Doc, cops are just like crooks, you can’t trust any of them. What was his name?”
“I—I—don’t remember. Honestly.”
“No problem. People who go to bars forget things fast, which is why they go to bars. I’m glad I’m not a drunk. Two addictions would be too fucking much. Let’s cut the shit and get down to business. First off, don’t tell me why you want the files—I don’t want to know. Second, we’re talking about a long process of photocopying them and moving them out a few at a time.
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If you want quick gratification, tough shit—discuss it with your shrink. Third, your offer of ten thou doesn’t cut it. I owe a lot of money to some very bad dudes to owe money to. I want thirty K, no less. Capice?”
Havilland faked a coughing attack, leaning over with his head between his knees. When he felt Christie slap his back, he pretended to retch and braced his hands on the pavement, palming the rock, then shoving it into his right jacket pocket as he resumed a sitting position. Wiping his eyes, he inched closer to his adversary, seeing the gun butt fully exposed, Christie’s badge attached to his belt next to it.
Christie slapped his back a last time. “Breathe deep, Doc. That good sea air will put hair on your chest. What do you think of my terms?”
Havilland took a deep breath and stuck his hand in his pocket, closing it around the rock. He calculated potential arcs and slid over to where his left shoulder and Christie’s right shoulder were brushing. “Yes, it’s a deal. You’re holding all the aces.”
Christie laughed. “No gambling metaphors, I’m trying to quit.” He reached his arms up as if to embrace the sky, then brought them down in a huge yawn. “I’m tired,” he said. “Let’s wrap this up for tonight. Here’s what I’m thinking: Six payments of five K apiece, the files to be very cautiously siphoned out at my discretion. You’ll have to trust me on that. I’m the dominant ego in this relationship, but I’ll be benevolent about it. Look at it as a father-son type of gig. Capice?”
Dr. John Havilland gasped at the worst insult ever hurled at him. He recalled a quote from Christie’s L.A.P.D. file: Long history of overdependence upon supportive figures. Thinking, So be it, the Doctor said, “What do you think I am, an amateur? Don’t you think I know that compulsive gamblers have a need to counterbalance their self-destruction by asserting themselves in business relationships, an unconscious ploy to overrule their awful dependency on their closest loved ones, the ones who rule them and own them and give them the tit they suck on?”
Christie stood up and stammered, “W-w-why you little fuck,” just as Havilland smashed the rock into his face. The cop teetered on the railing, grabbing it with one hand, wiping blood from his eyes with the other. Havilland reached for his waistband and pulled the gun free, then closed his eyes and aimed at where he thought Christie’s face should
be. He pulled the trigger twice, screaming along with the explosions, then opened his eyes and saw that Christie’s face was not a face, but a charred blood basin oozing brain and skull fragments. He fired four more times, eyes open and not screaming, 344
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ripping Christie’s badge from his belt just as his last shot sheared off his head and sent him pitching over the railing to the rocks thirty feet below. Drenched in blood and inundated by horror and memory, the Night Tripper ran. 17
At ten o’clock, after nine straight hours of prowling singles bars and simple drinking bars for Thomas Goff and Marty Bergen, Lloyd gave up, surrendering himself to the idea of a trip to New York to prowl Goff’s old haunts. The Department would pay for his ticket and per diem, and before he left he would consult an attorney on legal loopholes to exert against Dr. John Havilland. Defeat loomed like a stark black banner. Lloyd succumbed to the knowledge that there was no place to go but backward in time. The old neighborhood greeted him with banners that mocked his cop exigencies. Parking at Sunset and Vendome, he sprinted up the cracked concrete steps to the highest point in Silverlake, hoping to find a reprise of old themes that would affirm the forty-two-year-old warrior persona he had paid so dearly to assume.
But the timeless L.A. haze blanketed, then shut down his would-be reverie. He could not see his parents’ house a scant half mile away; whole vistas of landmarks were covered by a witch’s brew of evaporating low clouds, industrial fumes and neon. Lloyd’s affirmation became a rhapsody of high prices paid for dubious conquests.
