by James Ellroy
I took you from
your grief;
I stole you like
a thief;
I rent my heart
to give you
mercy;
You begged me to end
your strife
And I gave you life.
Your body was the
ellipsis,
Your heart my
wife
Your whorish studies
my burden;
Your death, my
life.
I read your words,
hell bound;
Sorrowed to the
core by the dirt
you found—
You grieved me more
Than all the rest—
You were the smartest,
The kindest, the worst
and best—
And I faltered at the
moment I put you
to rest.
Tribute in anonymous
transit,
Live life enclosed
in a cancer
cell,
Only the love in my
knife grants it;
Reprieve from the gates
of this blood-drenched
hell.
Lloyd read the poem three more times, memorizing it, letting the permutations of the words enter him and regulate his heartbeat and the flow of his blood and the thrust of his brainwaves. He walked over and sought his image in the mirror that completely covered the back wall. He couldn’t decide if he was an Irish Protestant knight or a gargoyle, and he didn’t care; he had been placed in the vortex of divinely evil compulsions and he knew, at long last, precisely why he had been granted genius.
As the poem engulfed him further it began to assume musical dimensions, cadences of the corny signature tunes of all the old TV programs that Tom had made him….
The cadences grew, and “Live life enclosed in a cancer cell” became an improvisation on the big band theme song of “Texaco Star Theatre,” and suddenly Milton Berle was there next to him, rotating a cigar against his woodchuck teeth. Lloyd screamed and fell to his knees, his hands cupped to his ears.
There was a screeching, and the music stopped. Lloyd tightened his grip on his ears. “Tell me a story rabbit down the hole,” he whimpered beatifically until he heard the crackle of static coming from a large speaker mounted on the bedroom wall. His dry sobs trailed into relieved laughter. It was the radio.
Rational thoughts of combat entered Lloyd’s mind. He could trash the central source of the music by yanking a few wires and twisting a few dials; let the revelers fuck sans accompaniment, the whole scene was illegal anyway.
Carefully placing the poem back in its envelope and securing it in his pocket, Lloyd walked downstairs, his hands clamped against his sides, twisted into his pants legs. He ignored the couples who were fornicating in standing positions in bedroom doorways and concentrated on the shimmering crimson lights that bathed the hallway. The lights were the reality, the benign antithesis of the music, and if he could let them guide him to the stereo system, he would be safe.
The first floor was a massive swirl of nude bodies moving with the music, heeding and heedless of the beat, rhythmic and abandoned limbs flung wildly into the air, brushing flesh, lingering in the briefest of caresses before being yanked back in seizure-like movements. Lloyd threaded his way through the swirl, feeling arms and hands twist and prod and pluck at him. He saw the stereo system at the opposite end of the living room, Joanie Pratt standing beside it, scrutinizing a stack of record albums. Fully clothed, she looked like a fixed beacon light in a world of insane noise.
“Joanie!”
The alarm in his own voice startled him, jolting him away from the music, into bodies that retreated as he cut a path through them. He crashed through the kitchen, down strobe-lighted hallways and out into a pitch black yard that was enveloped by shuddering silence. Falling to his knees, he let the silent night air and the scent of eucalyptus embrace him.
“Sarge?”
Joanie Pratt knelt by his side. She stroked his back and said, “Jesus, are you o.k.? The look on your face on that dance floor…I’ve never seen anything like it.” Lloyd forced himself to laugh. “Don’t worry about it. I can’t stand loud noise or music. It’s old stuff.” Joanie pointed a finger at her head and twirled it. “You’ve got a few loose up there. You know that?”
“Don’t talk to me that way.”
“I’m sorry. Wife and kids?”
Lloyd nodded and got to his feet. Helping Joanie up, he said, “Seventeen years. Three daughters.”
“Is it good?”
“Things are changing. My daughters are wonderful. I tell them stories, and my wife hates me for it.”
“Why? What kind of stories?”
“Never mind. When I was eight years old my mother told me stories, and it saved my life.”
“What kind of…”
Lloyd shook his head. “No, let’s change the subject. Did you hear anything at the party? Did anyone mention Julia? Did you notice anything unusual?”
“No, no, and no. Julia used a phony name when she interviewed people, and that was a bad photo of her on the news. I don’t think anyone even made the connection.”
Lloyd considered this. “I buy it,” he said. “My instinct tells me that the killer wouldn’t come to a party like this; he’d consider it ugly. I want to cover all the angles, though. One of those letters you gave me contained a poem. It was written by the killer; I’m sure of that. The poem made a vague reference to other victims, so I’m certain that he’s killed more than one woman.” When Joanie responded with a blank face, he went on. “What I need from you is a list of your regular partygoers.”
Joanie was already frantically shaking her head. Lloyd grabbed her shoulders and said softly, “Do you want this animal to kill again? What’s more important, saving innocent lives or the anonymity of a bunch of horny assholes?”
Hysterical giggling from inside the house framed Joanie’s answer. “It’s not much of a choice, Sarge. Let’s go over to my place; I’ve got a Rolodex file on all my regulars.”
“What about your party?”
“The hell with it. I’ll have the bouncers lock up. Your car or mine?”
“Mine. Is this an invitation?”
“No, it’s a proposition.”
Afterwards, too full of each other to sleep, Lloyd played with Joanie’s breasts, cupping and pushing and probing them into different shapes and running soft fingers around the edges of the nipples.
Joanie laughed and said sotto voce, “Do-wah, wah-wah, do-rann-rann.” Lloyd asked her what the strange sounds meant and she said, “I forgot; you never listen to music.
“Okay. I came out here from Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1958. I was eighteen. I had it all figured out–I was gonna be the first female rock and roll star. I was blonde, I had tits, and I thought I could sing. I get off the bus at Fountain and Vine and walk north. I see the Capitol Records Tower north of the Boulevard, and I figure it’s gotta be a message, so I hotfoot it up there, lugging this cardboard suitcase, wearing a crinoline party dress and high heels on the coldest day of the year.
“Anyway, I sit down in the waiting room, eyeballing all these gold records they’ve got on the walls. I’m thinking, ‘Some day’ …Anyway, this guy come up to me and says, ‘I’m Pluto Maroon. I’m an agent. Capitol Records is not your gig. Let’s splitsville.’ I go, ‘Huh?’ and we splitsville–Pluto says a buddy-roo of his is making a movie-roo in Venice. We drive out there in this Cadillac soul wagon. Pluto’s buddy is Orson Welles. No shit, Sarge; Orson fucking Welles. He’s making Touch of Evil. Venice is doubling as this sleazy Mexican border town.
“Right off the bat I can tell that Orson baby is condescending to Pluto–that he digs him strictly as a sycophant, kind of an amusing picaresque buffoon. Anyway, Orson tells Pluto to dig him up some extras, locals who’d be willing to hang around all day for a few scoots and a jug. So Pl
uto and I go walking down Ocean Front Walk. What a revelation! Innocent Joanie from St. Paul hobnobbing with beatniks, junkies, and geniuses!
“Anyway, we go by this beatnik book store. A guy who looks like a werewolf is behind the counter. Pluto says, ‘You wanna dig Orson Welles and make a five-spot?’ The guy says, ‘Crazy,’ and we splitsville on down the boardwalk, picking up this incredible low life entourage on the way.
“Anyway, the werewolf zeroes in on me. ‘I’m Marty Mason,’ he says, ‘I’m a singer.’ I think, ‘Wowie zowie!’ and I say, ‘I’m Joanie Pratt–I’m a singer, too.’ Marty says, ‘Sing “do-wah, wah-wah, do-rann-rann” ten times.’ I do it, and he says, ‘I’m playing a gig in San Berdoo tonight. Wanna be my backup?’ I said, ‘What do I have to do?’ Marty says, ‘Sing “do-wah, wah-wah, do-rann-rann”.’
“So that was it. I did it. I sang ‘do-wah, wah-wah, do-rann-rann’ for ten years. I married Marty, and he became Marty ‘Monster’ Mason and cut the “Monster Stomp,” capitalizing on his werewolf resemblance, and we were biggg time for a couple of years, then Marty got strung out and we got divorced, and now I’m sort of a business woman and Marty is on M’ethadone Maintenance and working as a fry cook at a Burger King in the Valley, and it’s still ‘do-wah, wah-wah, do-rann-rann.’”
Joanie sighed, lit a cigarette and blew smoke rings at Lloyd, who was tracing patterns on her thighs and thinking that he had just heard existentialism in a nutshell. Wanting Joanie’s interpretation, he asked, “What does it mean?”
She said, “Whenever things are up in the air, or scary, or about to maybe get good, I sing ‘do-wah, wah-wah, do-rann-rann’, and they seem to fall into place; or at least they’re not so scary.”
Lloyd felt a little piece of his heart work its way loose and drift back to Venice in the winter of ’58. “Can I sleep with you again?” he asked.
Joanie took his hand and kissed it. “Anytime, Sarge.”
Lloyd got up and dressed, then picked up the Rolodex file and cradled it to his chest. “I’ll be very discreet about this,” he said. “I’ll have smart, competent officers do whatever questioning has to be done.”
“I trust you,” Joanie said.
Lloyd bent over and kissed her cheek. “I’ve memorized your phone number. I’ll call you.”
Joanie leaned into the kiss. “Take care, Sarge.”
It was dawn. Lloyd drove downtown to Parker Center, feeling spellbound with purpose. He took the elevator to the fourth floor computer room. There was a lone operator on duty. The man looked up from his science-fiction novel as he saw Lloyd approach, wondering if there was a chance to banter with the big detective the other cops called “The Brain.” When he saw the look on Lloyd’s face, he decided against it.
Lloyd said brusquely, “Good morning. I want printouts on every unsolved female homicide in Los Angeles County over the past fifteen years. I’ll be up in my office. Ring extension 1179 when you have the information.”
Lloyd about-faced and walked the two flights of stairs up to his office. The cubicle was dark and quiet and peaceful, and he flopped into his chair and fell asleep immediately.
6
It was the poet’s eleventh complete reading of the manuscript, his eleventh journey into his most recent beloved’s shameful passion, his third since he consummated their love.
His hands shook as he turned the pages, and he knew that he would have to return to the repulsively fascinating third chapter, the words that tore and bit at him, that made him feel his organs and their functions, that made him sweat and tingle and drop things and laugh when nothing was funny.
The chapter was entitled “Straight Men–Gay Fantasies,” and it reminded him of his early poetry writing days, the days before he became so obsessed with form, when stanzas didn’t have to rhyme, when he trusted the thematic unity of his subconscious. In this chapter his beloved had gotten a disparate sampling of normal men to admit things like, “I would really like to take it up the ass just once. Just do it–and fuck the consequences, then go home and make love to my wife and wonder if it felt any different to her,” and “I’m thirty-four now, and I’ve screwed every woman who’d let me for seventeen years and I still haven’t quite found the nitty gritty excitement that I thought I would. I drive down Santa Monica Boulevard sometimes and see the male hustlers and everything goes slightly haywire and I think and think and…(here Interviewee sighs disgustedly)…and then I think that a new woman will do it, and I think of coming here to these parties and before you know it I’m turning off Santa Monica and thinking of my wife and kids and then…oh, shit!”
He put the looseleaf binder down, feeling the little body flushes that had ruled his life since his consummation with Julia. She had been dead for two weeks and they were continuing unabated, undaunted by the courage he had shown in writing her anonymous tribute etched in his own blood, undaunted by his first sexual transit since….
He had read the third chapter beside Julia’s body, savoring her nearness, wanting the completeness of her flesh and her words. The men who had told Julia their stories were so blighted in their dishonesty that he wanted to retch. Yet… he read the man’s account of driving down Santa Monica Boulevard over and over, looking up only to watch Julia sway on her external axis. She was more of him than any of the first twenty-one, more even than Linda, who had moved him so deeply. She had given him words to keep–tangible love gifts that would grow in him. Yet…Santa Monica Boulevard…yet…the poor wretch so devastated by societal mores that he couldn’t….
He walked into the living room. Rage In The Womb. A lesbian poet wrote of her lover’s “multiunioned folds of wetness.” Visions of muscular torsos, broad shoulders, and flat, hard backsides entered him, given to him by Julia, telling him to seek a further union with her by showing courage where the cowardly wretch had failed. He balked inside, searching frantically for words. He tried anagrams of Julia and Kathy, five letters each. It didn’t work. Julia wanted more than the others. He walked back to the bedroom to view her corpse a last time. She sent him visions of sullen young men in macho poses. He obeyed. He drove to Santa Monica Boulevard.
He found them a few blocks west of LaBrea, standing in front of taco stands, porno book stores, and bars, outlined in neon tendrils that gave them the added enticements of halos, auras, and wispy appendages. The idea of looking for a specific image or body crossed his mind, but he killed the thought. It would give him time to retreat, and he wanted to impress Julia with his unquestioning compliance.
He pulled to the curb and rolled down the window, beckoning to the young man leaning against a newsrack with one hip thrust toward the street.
The young man walked over and leaned in through the window. “It’s thirty; head only, pitch or catch,” he said, getting an inward wave of the arm as his answer.
They drove around the corner and parked. He clenched his body until he thought his muscles would contract and suffocate him, then whispered, “Kathy,” and let the young man unbutton his pants and lower his head into his lap. His contractions continued until he exploded, seeing colors when he came. He tossed a handful of cash at the young man, who vanished out the door. He was still seeing colors, and he saw them on his drive home and in his restive, but altogether wonderful, dreams that night.
His post-consummation ritual of sending flowers took up the following morning. Driving away from the florist’s, he noticed that his usual valedictory feeling was missing. He spent the afternoon developing film and setting up shooting assignments for the following week, thoughts of Julia rendering his workday pursuits a treadmill of ugly boredom.
He read her manuscript again, staying up all night, seeing colors and feeling the weight of the young man’s head. Then the terror began. He could feel foreign bodies within his body. Tiny melanomas and carcinomas that moved audibly through his bloodstream. Julia wanted more. She wanted written tribute; words to match her words. He severed an artery in his right forearm with a paring knife, then squeezed the gash until it yielde
d enough blood to fill completely the bottom of a small developing tray. After cauterizing the wound he took a pen quill and ruler and meticulously printed out his tribute. He slept well that night.
In the morning he mailed his poem to the post office address he had seen on the front page of Julia’s manuscript. His feeling of normalcy solidified. But at night the terror returned. The carcinomas were inside him again. He started dropping things. He saw the colors, this time even more vividly. The Santa Monica Boulevard phantasmagoria flashed continually before his eyes. He knew that he had to do something or go insane.
The poet had now possessed the manuscript for the two weeks since Julia’s death. He began to look on it as an evil talisman. The third chapter was particularly evil, inimical to the control that had been the hallmark of his life. That night he burned the manuscript in his kitchen sink. He doused the charred words with tap water and felt new purpose grip him. There was only one way to obliterate all memory of his twenty-second lover.
He had to find a new woman.
7
It had been seventeen days since the discovery of Julia Niemeyer’s body, and Lloyd wondered for the first time if his Irish Protestant ethos had the juice to carry him through what was turning into the most vexing episode of his life, a crusade that portended some deep, massive loss of control.
