by James Ellroy
“Janice left me!” Lloyd screamed. “She took the girls with her, and I wouldn’t apologize to that sanctimonious cocksucker to save my life!”
Lloyd looked around. Kathleen stood rigid against the wall, shock-stilled, her hands balled into fists. A group of officers and wives filled the dining room door. When he saw nothing but awe and self-righteous judgment in their eyes, Lloyd whispered, “I need five men, Dutch. For thirty-one suspect interviews. Just for a few days. It’s the last favor I’ll ever ask you for. I don’t think I can get him by myself.”
Dutch shook his head. “No, Lloyd.”
Lloyd’s whisper became a sob. “Please.”
“No. Not now. Sit on it for awhile. Take a rest. You’ve been working too hard.”
The crowd in the doorway had spilled over into the kitchen. Moving his eyes over the entire assembly, Lloyd said: “Two days, Dutch. Then I’m taking my act on TV. Watch for me on the six o’clock news.”
Lloyd turned to walk away, then hesitated. He about-faced and swung his open right hand at Dutch’s face. The crack of flesh on flesh died into a huge collective gasp. “Judas,” Lloyd hissed.
Kathleen snuggled close to Lloyd in the car, abandoning herself to wanting his reckless courage. She was afraid of saying the wrong thing, so she stayed silent and tried not to speculate on what he was thinking.
“What do you hate?” Lloyd asked. “Be specific.”
Kathleen thought for a moment. “I hate the Klondike Bar,” she said. “That’s a leather bar on Virgil and Santa Monica. A sadist hangout. The men who park their motorcycles in front frighten me. I know you wanted me to say something about killers, but I just don’t feel that way.”
“Don’t apologize. It’s a good answer.”
Lloyd pulled a U-turn, throwing Kathleen off to the other side of the seat. Within minutes they were parked in front of the Klondike Bar, watching a group of short-haired, leather-jacketed men snort amyl nitrate, then throw rough arms around each other and walk inside.
“One other question,” Lloyd said. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life as a cut-rate Emily Dickinson or do you want to go for some pure white light?”
Kathleen swallowed. “Pure white light,” she said.
Lloyd pointed to the neon sign above the swinging bar doors. A muscular Yukon adventurer, wearing nothing but a Mountie hat and jock strap, glared down at them. Lloyd reached into the glove compartment and handed Kathleen his off-duty .38. “Shoot it,” he said.
Kathleen shut her eyes and fired blindly out the window until the gun was empty. The Yukon adventurer exploded with the last three shots, and suddenly Kathleen was breathing cordite and pure white light. Lloyd gunned the car and peeled rubber for two solid blocks, driving with one hand on the wheel and the other on the squealing Kathleen’s tartan lap.
When they pulled up in front of her bookstore, he said, “Welcome to the heart of my Irish Protestant ethos.”
Kathleen wiped tears of laughter from her eyes and said, “But I’m an Irish Catholic.”
“No matter. You’ve got heart and love, and that’s what matters.”
“Will you stay?”
“No. I have to be alone and figure out what I have to do.”
“But you’ll come by soon?”
“Yes. In a couple of days.”
“And you’ll make love to me?”
“Yes.”
Kathleen closed her eyes and Lloyd leaned over and kissed her alternately soft and hard, until her tears ran between their lips and she broke the embrace and ran from the car.
At home, Lloyd tried to think. Nothing happened. When plans, theories, and contingency strategies wouldn’t coalesce in his mind he had a brief moment of panic. Then the classic simplicity hit him. His entire life had been the prelude to this breathless pause before flight. There was no turning back. His divine instinct for darkness would take him to the killer. The rabbit had gone down the hole and would never return to daylight.
Part Four
Moon Descending
12
His intended was named Peggy Morton, and she was chosen for the challenge her consummation presented as much as for her persona.
Since Julia Niemeyer and her manuscript and his curbside assignation he had been feeling slippage on all fronts. His lean, strong body looked the same, but felt sluggish and flaccid; his normally clear blue eyes were evasive, clouded with fear when he stared at himself in the mirror. To combat these little crumblings the poet had resurrected several of his pre-Jane Wilhelm disciplines. Hours were spent practicing judo and karate and firing his handguns at the N.R.A. range, doing push-ups and chin-ups and sit-ups until he was one mindless ache. They worked only as a picayune holding action, and nightmares still gnawed at him. Fetching young men on the street seemed to be pantomiming obscene overtures; cloud formations twisted into bizarre patterns that spelled his name for all of Los Angeles to read.
Then his tape recorder was stolen and he gained a faceless nemesis: Sergeant Lloyd the homicide fisherman. In the eleven hours since first hearing the man’s voice on the tape he had exploded four times, progressively more graphic Boy’s Town fantasies driving him into a near stuporous state that would evaporate within minutes, leaving him ready to explode again, but afraid of the price. Looking at the memorabilia on his walls didn’t help; only the voice excited him. Then he thought of Peggy Morton, who lived only a few blocks from a street filled with young men for hire, young men to match the shame-including voice on the tape, young men who shared the hideous lifestyle of “Officer Pig” and his lackey. He drove to West Hollywood and consummation.
Peggy Morton lived in a “security” building on Flores Avenue, two blocks south of the Sunset Strip. He had followed her home one morning from the all-night market on Santa Monica and Sweetzer, staying along the tree shrouded sidewalk, listening as she conjugated verbs in French. There was something very simple and wholesome about her; and in the traumatic aftermath of Julia he had seized on that simplicity as the basis for his ardor.
It had taken him a scant week to establish the pretty young redhaired woman as an extreme creature of habit: She left her cashier’s job at Tower Records at precisely midnight, and her lover Phil, the night manager of the store, would walk her down to the market, where she would buy groceries, then walk her home. Phil would sleep over only on Tuesdays and Fridays.
“It’s our deal, sweetie,” he heard Peggy say a half dozen times. “I have to study my French. You promised you wouldn’t press me.”
The good natured, doltish Phil would protest briefly, then grab Peggy and her shopping bag in an exasperated embrace and walk away shaking his head. Peggy would then shake her head as if to say, “Men,” and dig a bunch of keys out of her purse and unlock the first of the many doors that would take her up to her fourth floor apartment.
The apartment building fascinated and challenged him. Seven stories of glass and steel and concrete, advertised by signs in its entrance foyer as “a 24-hour total electronic security environment.” He shook his head at the sadness of people needing such protection and rose to the challenge. He knew that there were four keys on Peggy’s key ring, and that they were all necessary to gain access to her apartment–he had heard Phil joke about it. He knew also that wall-mounted electronic movie cameras patrolled the foyer constantly. The first step had to be to obtain keys…
It was easily accomplished, but gained him only partial access. After three days of studying Peggy’s routine, he knew that when she arrived at work at four o’clock she went first to the employees’ “breakroom” at the back of the store. She would then leave her purse on a table next to the Coke machine and walk to the adjoining storeroom to check out the incoming supply of albums. He observed this through a sliding glass door for three days running. On the fourth day he made his move–and botched it when Peggy’s returning footsteps forced him to run back into the store proper with only one key in his hand.
But it was the key to the front entrance foyer, and
that night, dressed as a woman and carrying a bag of groceries as camouflage, he brazenly unlocked the door and walked straight to a bank of mailboxes that designated Peggy’s apartment as 423. From there he circled the foyer and learned that a separate key was required for the elevator door. Undaunted, he noticed a door off to his left. It was unlocked. He opened it and walked down a dingy hallway to a laundry room filled with coin-operated washers and dryers. He scanned the room and noticed a wide ventilator shaft in the ceiling. Noise from the apartments above him caught his ears, and his wheels started to turn…
Again dressed as a woman, but this time wearing a tight cotton jumpsuit underneath the feminine garb, he parked across the street to wait for Peggy to return home. His tremors of expectation were so great that no thoughts of the homicide fisherman’s voice crossed his mind.
Peggy showed at 12:35. She shifted her grocery bag and fumbled her new key into the lock and let herself in. He waited for half an hour, then walked over demurely and followed suit, partially shielding his face with his own shopping bag. He walked through the foyer to the laundry room and placed a hand-lettered “Out Of Order” sign on the door, then bolted it shut from the inside. Breathing shallowly, he stripped off his loose fitting gingham dress and emptied his work tools from the bag: screwdriver, chisel, ball peen hammer, hacksaw, and silencer-fitted .32 automatic. He stuck them into the compartments of an army surplus cartridge belt, then wrapped the belt around his waist and donned surgical gloves.
Bringing to mind his few fond memories of Peggy, he stood up on top of the washer directly beneath the ventilator shaft and peered into the darkness, then took a deep breath and placed his hands above his head in a diving position and leaped upward until his arms caught the corrugated metal walls of the shaft’s interior. With a huge, lung-straining effort he hoisted himself up into the shaft, flattening out his arms, shoulders, and legs to gain a purchase that propelled him slowly up. Feeling like a worm doing penance in hell, he inched forward, a foot at a time, modulating his breathing in concert with his movement. The shaft was stifling hot and the metal stung his skin through his jumpsuit.
He reached the second floor connecting shaft, and found it wide enough to climb through. He moved along it, savoring the feeling of again being horizontal. The crawl space terminated at a metal plate covered with tiny holes. Cool air was pouring through them, and he squinted and saw that he was at ceiling level across the hallway from apartments 212 and 214. He rolled onto his back and removed the hammer and chisel from his cartridge belt, then twisted back on his stomach and wedged the chisel head into the edge of the plate and snapped it off with one sharp hammer blow. The plate dropped onto the blue carpeted hallway, and he crawled through the open hole and dropped to the floor in a handstand. He caught his breath and replaced the metal plate crookedly in the shaft, then walked down the hall, his eyes constantly trawling for hidden security devices. Seeing none, he walked through two connecting doorways and up two flights of concrete service stairs, feeling his heartbeat reach a new crescendo with each step he took.
The fourth floor cooridor was deserted. He walked to the door of apartment 423 and placed his ear to it. Silence. He took the .32 automatic from his belt and checked to see that the silencer was screwed tight to the barrel. Concentrating on the timbre of doltish Phil’s voice, he rapped on the door and said, “Peg? It’s me, babe.”
There was a shuffling of feet within the apartment, followed by the fondly muttered words, “You crazy…” The door opened a moment later. When Peggy Morton saw the man in the black jumpsuit her hands flew to her mouth in surprise. She looked into his light blue eyes and saw longing. When she saw the gun in his hand she tried to scream, but nothing came out.
“Remember me,” he said, and fired into her stomach.
There was a soft plop, and Peggy sank to her knees, her terrified mouth trying to form the word “No.” He rested the gun barrel against her chest and squeezed the trigger. She pitched backward into her living room and expelled a soft “No” along with a mouthful of blood. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Peggy’s eyelids were fluttering and she was gasping for breath. He bent down and opened her robe. She was naked underneath it. He placed the barrel to her heart and fired. Her body lurched and her head snapped upwards. Blood poured from her mouth and nostrils. Her eyelids fluttered a last time, then closed forever.
He walked into the bedroom and found an oversized shift dress that looked like it would fit him, then rummaged in the dresser until he found a brunette wig and a large straw hat. He put the outfit on and checked his getaway image in the mirror, deciding that he was beautiful.
A circuit of the kitchen yielded a large, double-strength shopping bag and a stack of newspapers. He carried them into the living room, then placed them on the floor beside the body of his most recent beloved. He removed Peggy’s blood-soaked robe and got his hacksaw. He lowered the saw and closed his eyes and felt sharp sprays of blood cut the air. Within minutes tissue, bone, and viscera had been separated and the pale yellow carpet had turned dark crimson.
He walked to the balcony and looked out at the silent jetstream of cars on the Sunset Strip. He wondered briefly where all the people were going, then walked back to his twenty-third beloved and picked up her severed arms and legs. He carried them to the edge of the balcony and flung them to the world, watching as they disppeared, weighted down with his power.
Now only the head and torso remained. He let the torso lie and wrapped the head in newspaper and placed it in the supermarket bag. Sighing, he walked out the door of the apartment and through the silent security building and into the street. At curbside he slid out of Peggy Morton’s dress and removed her wig and straw hat and dumped them in the gutter, knowing that he had met the equivalent of all of mankind’s wars and had emerged the victor.
He took his trophy out of the shopping bag and walked along the sidewalk. At the corner he saw a beautiful, pristine white Cadillac. He placed Peggy Morton’s head on the hood. It was a declaration of war. Warrior slogans passed through his mind. “To the victor belong the spoils” caught and stuck. He got his car and went looking for spartan revelry.
Benevolent voices propelled him down Santa Monica Boulevard. He drove slowly in the right lane, the tight rubber gloves numbing his hands on the wheel. There was little traffic, so the absence of street noise left him free to listen; to hear the thoughts of the young men lounging against stop signs and bus benches. Keeping eye contact was hard, and it would be even harder to make up his mind based on looks alone, so he stared straight ahead, throwing his encounter open to the voice of fate.
Near Plummer Park, crude hustler catcalls and importunings assailed him. He kept going; better nothing than someone nasty.
He crossed Fairfax, moving out of Boy’s Town, frightened and relieved that his gauntlet was ending. Then he hit the red light at Crescent Heights and voices came down on him like shrapnel: “Good weed, Birdy. You carry dime bags for your johns and you’ll clean up.”
“I already cleaned up, what do you think I am, a fucking janitor?”
“It might not be a bad idea, beauty. Janitors get social security, jockers get the clap.”
All three voices dissolved into laughter. He looked over. Two young blondes and the lackey. He gripped the wheel so hard that his numb hands came to life and twisted in spastic tremors, hitting the horn by accident. The voices stopped at the noise. He could feel their gazes zeroing in. The light turned greed; the color reminding him of tape slithering through bloody apertures. He stood his ground; to run now would be cowardice. Cancer cells started to crawl over his windshield, and then a soft voice was at his passenger window.
“You looking for company?”
It was the lackey. Staring at the green light, he ran through a mental litany of his twenty-three beloveds. Their images calmed him; they wanted him to do it.
“I said, ‘You want some company?’”
He nodded in return. The cancer cells vanished at the act o
f courage. He forced himself to look over and open the door and smile The lackey smiled back, no recognition in his eyes. “The silent type, huh? Go ahead, stare. I know I’m gorgeous. I’ve got a pad down near La Cienega. Five minutes and Larry the Bird flies you straight to heaven.”
The five minutes stretched into twenty-three eternities; twenty-three female voices saying “Yes.” He nodded each time and felt himself go warm all over.
They pulled into the motel parking lot, Larry leading the way up to his room and closing the door behind them, whispering, “It’s fifty. In advance.” The poet reached into his jumpsuit and extracted two twenties and a ten. He handed them to Larry, who put them in a cigar box on the nightstand and said, “What’ll it be?”
“Greek,” the man said.
Larry laughed. “You’ll love it, doll. You ain’t been fucked till you been fucked by Larry the Bird.”
The man shook his head. “No. You’ve got it mixed up. I want to fuck you.”
Larry breathed out angrily. “Buddy, you got it all wrong. I don’t take it up the ass, I give it up the ass. I been rippin’ off butthole since high school. I’m Larry Bir--”
