Blood on the Moon

by James Ellroy

  After hanging up, Lloyd sat down on the bed, savoring the killer’s voice, then clearing his mind for the final decision: Take Verplanck himself or call Parker Center and request a back-up team. He wavered for long minutes, then dialed his private office number. If he let it ring long enough, someone would pick it up and he could get a fix on what trustworthy officers were available.

  The phone was picked up on the first ring. Lloyd grimaced. Something was wrong; he hadn’t plugged in his answering machine. An unfamiliar voice came on the line. “This is Lieutenant Whelan, Internal Affairs. Sergeant Hopkins, this message was recorded to inform you that you are suspended from duty pending an I.A.D. investigation. Your regular office line is open. Call in and an I.A.D. officer will arrange for your initial interview. You may have an attorney present and you will receive full pay until our investigation is settled.”

  Lloyd dropped the phone to the bed. So it ends, he thought. The final decision: They couldn’t and wouldn’t believe him, so they had to silence him. The final irony: They didn’t love him the way he had loved them. The fulfillment of his Irish Protestant ethos would cost him his badge.

  Noticing a small back yard through the bedroom window, Lloyd walked outside. Rows of daisies growing out of loosely packed dirt and a makeshift clothesline greeted him. He knelt down and plucked a daisy, then smelled it and ground it under his heel. Teddy Verplanck would probably not give up without a fight. He would have to kill him, which would mean never knowing why. Some sort of explanation from Whitey Haines had to be his first step, and if Verplanck took it into his mind to kill or flee while he was drumming a confession out of Haines he—

  The sound of weeping interrupted Lloyd’s thoughts. He walked back into the bedroom. Kathleen was standing over her bed, replacing the glass encased flowers in the oakwood box. She brushed tears out of her eyes as she worked, not even noticing his presence. Lloyd stared at her face; it was the most grief-stricken visage he had ever seen.

  He walked to her side. Kathleen shrieked when his shadow eclipsed her. Her hands flew to her face and she started to back away; then recognition hit and she threw herself into Lloyd’s arms. “There was a burglar,” she whimpered. “He wanted to hurt my special things.”

  Lloyd held Kathleen tightly; it felt like grasping the loose ends of a trance. He rocked her head back and forth until she murmured, “My Baristonians,” and shook herself free of his embrace and reached for the yearbooks scattered on the floor. Her desperate ruffling of pages angered Lloyd, and he said, “You could have gotten duplicates. It wouldn’t have been much trouble. But you’re going to have to rid yourself of them. They’re killing you. Can’t you see that?”

  Kathleen came all the way out of her trance. “What are you talking about?” she said, looking up at Lloyd. “Are…Are you the one who broke in and hurt my things? My flowers? Are you?” Lloyd reached for her hands, but she yanked them away. “Tell me, goddamnit!”

  “Yes,” Lloyd said.

  Kathleen looked at her yearbooks, then back at Lloyd. “You animal,” she hissed. “You want to hurt me through my precious things.” She clenched her hands into fists and hurled them at him. Lloyd let the ineffectual blows glance off his chest and shoulders. When she saw that she was inflicting no damage, Kathleen grabbed a brick bookend and flung it at his head.

  The edge caught Lloyd’s neck. Kathleen gasped and recoiled from the act. Lloyd wiped off a trickle of blood and held it up for her to see. “I’m proud of you,” he said. “Do you want to be with me?”

  Kathleen looked into his eyes and saw madness and power and harrowing need. Not knowing what to say, she took his hand. He cradled her to him and closed the door and turned off the light.

  They undressed in the semidarkness. Kathleen kept her back to Lloyd. She pulled off her dress and stepped out of her pantyhose, afraid that another look at his eyes would prevent her from consummating this rite of passage. When they were nude they fell onto the bed and into each other’s arms. They embraced fiercely, joined at odd places, her chin locked in his breastbone, his feet twisted into her ankles, her wrists bearing into his bloody neck. Soon they were coiled into one force and the pressure of their interlocking limbs forced them to separate as they began to go numb and lightheaded. In perfect synchronization they created a space between themselves, offering the most tentative of overtures to close that gap, a stroking of arms and shoulder blades and stomachs; caresses so light that soon they ceased to touch flesh and the space between them became the object of their love.

  Lloyd began to see pure white light in the space, growing in and around and out of Kathleen. He drifted into the permutations of that light, and all the forms that came to him spoke of joy and kindness. He was still adrift when he felt Kathleen’s hand between his legs, urging him to grow hard and fill the light-hallowed void between their bodies. Brief panic set in, but when she whispered, “Please, I need you,” he followed her lead and violated the light and entered her and moved inside her until the light dissipated and they coiled and peaked together and he knew that it was blood he expelled; and then awful noise wrenched him from her, and she said very softly as he twisted into the bedcovers, “Hush, darling. Hush. It’s just the stereo next door. It’s not here. I’m here.”

  Lloyd dug into the pillows until he found silence. He felt Kathleen’s hands stroking his back and turned around to face her. Her head was surrounded by floating amber halos. He reached up and stroked her hair, and the halos scattered into light. He watched them disappear and said, “I… I think I came blood.”

  Kathleen laughed. “No, it’s just my period. Do you mind?”

  Unconvinced, Lloyd said, “No,” and shifted over to the middle of the bed. He took a quick inventory of his body, touching odd parts of himself, probing for wounds and disconnected tissue. Finding nothing but Kathleen’s internal flow, he said, “I guess I’m all right. I think I am.”

  Kathleen laughed. “You think you are? Well, I’m wonderful. Because now I know that after all these years it was you. Eighteen long years, and now I know. Oh, darling!” She bent down and kissed his chest, running her ringers over his ribs, counting them.

  When her hands dropped to his groin, Lloyd pushed her away. “I’m not your dream lover,” he said, “but I know who he is. He’s the murderer, Kathleen. I’m certain that he kills out of some twisted kind of love for you. He’s killed twenty-odd women, going back to the middle 60s. Young women who looked like the girls in your court. He sends you flowers after each murder. I know it sounds incredible, but it’s true.”

  Kathleen heard every word, nodding along in cadence. When Lloyd finished she reached over and switched on the lamp next to the bed. She saw that he was perfectly serious and therefore perfectly insane, terrified at violating his anonymity after close to two decades of courtship.

  She decided to bring him out very slowly, as a mother would a brilliant but disturbed child. She put her head on his chest and pretended to need comfort while her mind ran in circles, looking for a wedge to break through his fear and give her access to his innermost heart. She thought of opposites: Yin-Yang, dark-light, truth-illusion. After a moment, she hit it: fantasy-reality. He must think that I believe his story, and so I must barter for his real story, the story that will let me break through fantasy and make our consummation real. He hates and fears music. If I am going to be his music, I must find out why.

  Lloyd reached an arm over and drew Kathleen closer.

  “Are you sad?” he asked. “Are you sad that it had to end this way? Are you frightened?”

  Kathleen nuzzled into his chest. “No, I feel safe.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s because you have a real lover now.”

  He stroked her hair absently. “We have to talk about this,” he said. “We have to get Marshall High circa ’64 out of the way before we can be together. I need to get a handle on the killer before I take him. I need to learn all I can about him, to get this thing str
aight in my mind before I act. Do you understand?”

  Kathleen nodded, shielding her eyes. “I understand,” she said. “You want me to dig into my past for you. That way you can solve your puzzle and we can be lovers. Right?”

  Lloyd smiled. “Right.”

  “But my past hurts, darling. It hurts to rehash it. Especially when you’re such a puzzle yourself.”

  “I’ll be less of a puzzle as we go on.”

  Angered at the condescension, Kathleen raised her head. “No, that’s not true. I need to know you, don’t you understand? No one knows you. But I have to.”

  “Look, sweetheart…”

  Kathleen batted away his placating hand. “I need to know what happened to you,” she said. “I need to know why you’re afraid of music.”

  Lloyd began to tremble, and Kathleen saw his pale grey eyes turn inward and fill with terror. She took his hand. “Tell me,” she said.

  Lloyd’s mind moved backward in time, collating moments of joy to counterbalance the horror story that only he and his mother and brother knew. He gained strength with each recollection, and when his mental time machine came to a halt in the spring of 1950 he knew that he had the courage to tell his story. Taking a deep breath, he began.

  “In 1950, around my eighth birthday, my maternal grandfather came to Los Angeles to die. He was Irish; a Presbyterian minister. He was a widower with no family except my mother, and he wanted to be with her while the cancer ate him up. He moved in with us in April, and he brought everything he owned with him. Most of the stuff was junk; rock collections, religious knick-knacks, stuffed animal heads, that kind of thing; but he also brought a fabulous collection of antique furniture–desks, dressers, wardrobes–all made of rosewood so well varnished that you could see your reflection just as in a mirror. Grandfather was a bitter, hateful man; a rabid anti-Catholic. He was also a brilliant story-teller. He used to take my brother Tom and me upstairs and tell us stories of the Irish Revolution and how the noble Black and Tans wiped out the Catholic rabble. I liked the stories, but I was smart enough to know that Grandfather was twisted with hate and that I shouldn’t take what he said completely to heart. But it was different with Tom. He was six years older than me and already twisted with hate himself. He took Grandfather seriously, and the stories gave his hatred a form; he started aping Grandfather’s broadsides against Catholics and Jews.

  “Tom was fourteen then, and he didn’t have a friend in the world. He used to make me play with him. He was bigger than me, so I had to go along with it or he’d beat me up. Dad was an electrician. He was obsessed with television. It was new, and he thought it was God’s greatest gift to mankind. He had a workshop in our back yard. It was crammed to the rafters with TV sets and radios. He spent hours and hours out there, mixing and matching tubes and running electrical relays. He never watched TV for enjoyment; he was obsessed with it as an electrician. Tom loved TV, though. He believed everything he saw on it, and everything he heard on the old radio serials. But he hated being alone while he watched and listened. He didn’t have any friends, so he used to make me sit with him out in the workshop, watching Hopalong Cassidy, and Martin Kane, Private Detective and all the rest. I hated it; I wanted to be outside playing with my dog or reading. Sometimes I tried to escape, and Tom would tie me up and make me watch. He… He…”

  Lloyd faltered, and Kathleen watched his eyes shift in and out of focus, as if uncertain of what time period they were viewing. She put a gentle hand on his knee and said, “Go on, please.”

  Lloyd drew in another breath of fond memories.

  “Grandfather’s condition got worse. He started coughing up blood. I couldn’t stand seeing it, so I took to running away, ditching school and hiding out for days at a time. I was befriended by an old derelict who lived in a tent on a vacant lot near the Silverlake Power Plant. His name was Dave. He was shellshocked from the First World War, and the neighborhood merchants sort of looked after him, giving him stale bread and dented cans of beans and soup that they couldn’t sell. Everyone thought Dave was retarded, but he wasn’t; he slipped in and out of lucidity. I liked him; he was quiet, and he let me read in his tent when I ran away.”

  Lloyd hesitated, then plunged ahead, his voice taking on a resonance unlike anything Kathleen had ever heard.

  “My parents decided to take Grandfather to Lake Arrowhead for Christmas. A last family outing before he died. On the day we were to leave I had a fight with Tom. He wanted me to watch television with him. I resisted, and he beat me up and tied me to a chair in Dad’s workshop. He even taped my mouth shut. When it came time to leave for the lake, Tom left me there. I could hear him in the back yard telling Mother and Dad that I had run away. They believed him and left, leaving me alone in the shack. There was no way I could move a muscle or make a sound. I was there for a day or so, cramped up in awful pain, when I heard someone trying to break into the shack. I was scared at first, but then the door opened, and it was Dave. But he didn’t rescue me. He turned on every TV set and radio in the shack and put a knife to my throat and made me touch him and eat him. He burned me with tube testers and hooked up live wires and stuck them up my ass. Then he raped me and hit me and burned me again and again, with the TVs and radios going full blast the whole time. After two days of hurting me, he left. He never turned off the noise. It grew and grew and grew and grew…Finally my family came home. Mother came running into the shack. She took the tape off my mouth and untied me and held me and asked me what happened. But I couldn’t talk. I had screamed silently for so long that my vocal cords had shredded. Mother made me write down what had happened. After I did it, she said, ‘Tell no one of this. I will take care of everything.’

  “Mother called a doctor. He came over and cleansed my wounds and sedated me. I woke up in my bed much later. I heard Tom screaming from his bedroom. I snuck over. Mother was lashing him with a brass studded belt. I heard Dad demanding to know what was happening and Mother telling him to shut up. I snuck downstairs. About an hour later, Mother left the house on foot. I followed her from a safe distance. She walked all the way up to the Silverlake Power Plant. She went straight up to Dave’s tent. He was sitting on the ground reading a comic book. Mother took a gun from her purse and shot him six times in the head, then walked away. When I saw what she had done, I ran to her, and she held me and walked me back home. She took me to bed with her that night and gave me her breasts, and she taught me how to speak again when my voice returned and she nurtured me with many stories. After Grandfather died she would take me up to the attic and we would talk, surrounded by antiquity.”

  Rigid with pity and terror, tears streaming down her face, Kathleen breathed out: “And?”

  “And,” Lloyd said, “my mother gave me the Irish Protestant ethos and made me promise to protect innocence and seek courage. She told me stories and made me strong again. She’s mute now, she had a stroke years ago and can’t speak; so I talk to her. She can’t respond, but I know she understands. And I seek courage and protect innocence. I killed a man in the Watts Riot. He was evil. I hunted him down and killed him. No one ever suspected Mother of killing Dave, no one ever suspected me of killing Richard Beller and if I have to kill him, no one will suspect me of ridding the world of Teddy Verplanck.”

  Kathleen went shock-still at the words “Teddy Verplanck.” Caught in a benign web of her own memories, she said, “Teddy Verplanck? I knew him in high school. He was a weak, ineffectual boy. A very kind boy. He—”

  Lloyd waved her quiet. “He’s your dream lover. He was one of the Kathy Klowns back in high school; you just never knew it. Two of your other classmates are involved in the killings. A man named Delbert Haines and a man who was killed last night–Lawrence Craigie. I discovered a bugging device–a tape recorder, at Haines’s apartment–that’s what put me on to Verplanck. Now listen to me…Teddy has killed over twenty women. What I need from you is information on him. I need your insights, your…”

  Kathleen leaped from the bed. “You are
insane,” she said softly. “After all these years you have to construct this policeman’s fantasy to protect yourself? After all these years, you—”

  “I’m not your dream lover, Kathleen. I’m a police officer. I have a duty to perform.”

  Kathleen shook her head frantically. “I’ll make you prove it. I still have the poem from 1964. I’ll make you copy it, then we’ll compare handwritings.”

  She ran nude into the front room. Lloyd heard her murmuring to herself, and suddenly knew that she could never accept reality. He got up and pulled on his clothes, noting that in the aftermath of confession his sweat-drenched body was both relaxed and incandescently alive. Kathleen returned a moment later, holding a faded business card. She handed it to Lloyd. He read:

  ‘6/10/64.

  My love for you

  now etched in blood;

  My tears caked in

  resolute passion;

  Hatred spent on me

  will

  metamorphose into

  love

  Clandestinely you

  will be mine.’

  Lloyd handed the card back. “Teddy, you poor, twisted bastard.” He bent and kissed Kathleen’s cheek. “I have to go,” he said, “but I’ll be back when this is settled.”

  Kathleen watched him walk out the door, closing it on her entire past and all her recent hopes for the future. She picked up the phone and dialed Information, securing two telephone numbers. She dialed the first one breathlessly, and when a male voice came on the line, said, “Captain Peltz?”

  “Yes.”

  “Captain, this is Kathleen McCarthy. Remember me? I met you at your party last night?”

  “Sure, Lloyd’s friend. How are you, Miss McCarthy?”

  “I…I…I think Lloyd is crazy, Captain. He told me he killed a man in the Watts Riot, and that his mother killed a man and that—”