by James Ellroy
Lloyd began to whimper. He kicked the radio housing, then ripped the metal box free of the dashboard and hurled it out the window. Joanie was dead. His genius had become the door to a telepathic charnel house. He could read Teddy’s thoughts and Teddy could read his. The dream and Joanie’s death; a logic defying fraternal bonding that would spawn more and more and more horror; a horror that would only end with the killing of his evil symbiotic twin. He looked in the rear view mirror and saw Teddy Verplanck’s yearbook picture. The transmogrification was complete. Lloyd drove to the old neighborhood to tell his family that the Irish Protestant ethos was a one-way ticket to hell.
Dutch Peltz sat in his office at the Hollywood Station, armed for betrayal with a Polaroid snapshot of a nude man and woman.
Since he had refused to press assault charges, the Internal Affairs officers investigating Lloyd had been swarming over him in an attempt to find other perfidies that they could bring to light to offset Lloyd’s threatened media barrage. They had no idea that the L.A.P.D.’s most brilliant detective had been intimately familiar with Joan Pratt, the third victim of the Hollywood Slaughterer. The photograph was enough evidence to end Lloyd’s career at best and have him shot on sight at worst.
Dutch walked to the window and looked out, thinking that he may have already signed away his own best years. His refusal to file charges would cost him his command of I.A.D., and if anyone found out that he had withheld the photograph and of his knowledge of the anonymous phone call that had mentioned Lloyd’s name, he would be brought to departmental trial and suffer the ignominy of possible criminal prosecution. Dutch swallowed and asked himself the only question that made any sense. Was Lloyd a murderer? Was his protégé/mentor/son a killer brilliantly concealed by the cloak of genius? Was he a textbook schizophrenic, an academically identifiable split-personality monster? It couldn’t be.
Yet there was a logical narrative line that said “maybe.” Lloyd’s erratic behavior throughout the years, his recent obsession with murdered women, his outburst at the party. That he had seen himself. When coupled with the traumatic aftermath of his wife and daughters’ desertion and Kathleen McCarthy’s phone call and the anonymous phone call and Joan Pratt’s body and the nude snapshot and—
Dutch couldn’t finish the thought. He looked at his telephone. He could call I.A.D. and save himself, dooming Lloyd, but maybe saving innocent lives. He could do nothing or he could track down Lloyd himself. His sleepless night, filled with images of Joan Pratt’s body, had given him a good command of his options. Then Dutch asked himself the only other question that made sense. Who mattered the most? When “Lloyd” resounded through him, he tore up the photograph. He would clear the case himself.
When he got to the old wood-framed house on Griffith Park and St. Elmo, Lloyd went straight to the attic and a thirty-two-year-old treasure trove of antiquity. He traced patterns on dust-covered rosewood surfaces and marveled at his mother’s foresight. She had never sold the furniture because she knew that one day her son would need to commune in the very spot that had formed his character. Lloyd felt another hand resting on his, guiding him in his artwork. The hand forced him to draw death’s heads and lightning bolts. He took a last look at his past and future, then went downstairs to wake up his brother.
While Lloyd stood over him, Tom Hopkins ripped out the squares of synthetic grass that covered the ground adjoining their father’s electronics shack. When he got to bare dirt he whimpered, and Lloyd handed him a shovel and said, “Dig.” He obeyed, and within minutes Lloyd was hauling out wooden boxes filled with shotguns and a steamer truck containing handguns and automatic rifles. Astonished to find the weaponry well oiled and ready to use, he looked at his brother and shook his head. “I’ve underestimated you,” he said.
Tom said, “Bad times are coming down, Lloydy. I gotta get my shit together.”
Lloyd reached down into the hole and pulled out a reinforced plastic bag filled with individually wrapped .44 magnums. He hefted one, then stuck it in his waistband. “What else have you got?” he asked.
“I got a dozen A.K. 47s, five or six sawed-offs and a shitload of ammo,” Tom said.
Lloyd slammed his hands onto Tom’s shoulders, forcing him to his knees. “Just two things, Tommy,” he said, “and then our slate will be clean. One, when you get your shit together you’ve got nothing but a big pile of shit; two, stay scared of me and you’ll survive.”
Lloyd grabbed a Remington 30.06 and a handful of shells. Tom pulled a pint of bourbon from his pocket and took a long drink. When he offered him the bottle Lloyd shook his head and looked up at his mother’s bedroom window. After a second the mute old woman appeared. Lloyd knew that she knew and had come to offer a silent goodbye. He blew her a soft kiss and walked to his car.
All that remained was to set a time and place.
Lloyd drove to a pay phone and dialed Silverlake Camera. The call was answered on the first ring, as he knew it would be.
“Teddy’s Silverlake Camera, may I help you?”
“This is Lloyd Hopkins. Are you about ready to die, Teddy?”
“No, I have too much to live for.”
“No more innocent ones, Teddy. You’ve been waiting for me all these years. I’m ready, but don’t hurt anyone else.”
“Yes. It’s just you and me. Mano a mano?”
“Yes. You want to pick the time and place, homeboy?”
“Do you know where the Silverlake Power Plant is?”
“Yes, it’s an old friend of mine.”
“I’ll meet you there at midnight.”
“I’ll be there.” Lloyd hung up, his mind bursting with lightning bolts and death.
Kathleen woke up late and put on coffee. She looked out her bedroom window to appraise the growth of her daisies and saw that they had been trampled. She thought of the neighborhood kids, then saw a huge footprint in the dirt and felt her strategems for putting the crazy policeman out of her mind coalesce around a unifying thread. Instead of her planned day of opening the store and taking care of paperwork she would write her dream lover-betrayer into oblivion, consigning him to villainhood on the wings of a scathing broadside against weak, violence-obsessed men. She would meet Detective Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins head-on and defeat him.
After coffee, Kathleen sat down at her desk. Words fluttered through her mind, but refused to connect. She considered smoking a joint to get things going, then rejected the notion; it was too early for a reward. Feeling both her resistance and determination deepen, she walked into the front room and stared at the table by the cash register. Her own books, all six of them, arranged in a circle around a pasteboard blow-up of a four-star review in Ms.
Kathleen leafed through her own words at random, looking for old ways to say new things. She found passages decrying male hierarchies, but saw that the underlying symbolism centered on glass. She found acid portraits of men seeking shelter, but saw that the central theme was her own need to nurture. When she saw that her most righteously hateful prose featured crimson-flowered redemption, she felt her narcissistic nostalgia die. Her six volumes of poetry had earned her seven thousand four hundred dollars in advances and nothing in royalties. The advances for Knife-edged Chaste and Notes from a Non-Kingdom had paid off her long standing Visa card bill, which she promptly ran up again, paying off the following year with the advance for Hollywood Stillness. Staring Down the Abyss, Womanwold and Skirting the Void had secured her her bookstore, which was now skirting the edge of bankruptcy. Her remaining volumes had bought her an abortion and a trip to New York, where her editor had gotten drunk and had stuck his hand up her dress at the Russian Tea Room.
Kathleen ran into her bedroom and hauled out her glass encased rose petals. She carried them back to her bookstore-living room and one by one hurled them at the walls, the sound of breaking glass and falling bookshelves drowning out her own screamed obscenities. When the detritus of the past eighteen years of her life had devastated the room, she wiped tears from her eyes and sav
ored the destruction: books lying dead on the floor, glass shards reflecting off the carpet, plaster dust settling like fallout. The overall symbolism was perfection.
Then Kathleen noticed that something was off. A long black rubber cord was dangling from a torn but section of her ceiling. She walked over and yanked on it, pulling loose spackle-covered wiring that extended all the way around the room. When she got to the wire’s terminus a tiny microphone was revealed. She took up the cord and yanked a second time. The opposite end led to her front door. She opened the door and saw that the wire continued up to the roof, shielded by the branches of the eucalyptus tree that shaded the front porch.
Kathleen got a ladder. She stood it up on the ground beside the tree and followed the wire up to her roof. She could see that on the rooftop it had been concealed by a thin coat of tar. Squatting down, she ripped the wiring out and let it lead her to a mound of tar paper covered with shellac. She pulled the cord a last time. The tar paper ripped open and she looked down at a tape recorder wrapped in clear plastic.
At Parker Center, Dutch went through Lloyd’s desk, hoping that the I.A.D. officers hadn’t picked it clean. If he could find any of the homicide files that Lloyd was working with, maybe he could form a hypothesis and go from there.
Dutch rifled the drawers, prying the locks open with the buck knife he carried strapped to the inside of his gunbelt, coming away with nothing but pencils, paper clips and wanted posters. Slamming the drawers shut, he pried open the filing cabinets. Nothing; the Internal Affairs vultures had gotten there first.
Dutch emptied the wastebasket, sifting through illegible memos and sandwich wrappers. He was about to give up when he noticed a crumpled piece of Xerox paper. He held it up to the light. There was a list of thirty-one names and addresses in one column, and a list of electronic stores in the other. His heart gave a little leap; this had to be Lloyd’s “suspect” list–the men that he had wanted him to detach officers to interview. It was slim–but something.
Dutch drove back to the Hollywood Station. He handed the list to the desk officer. “I want you to call all the men on this list,” he said. “Lay out a heavy spiel about ‘routine questioning.’ Let me know who sounds panicky. I’m going out, but I’ll be calling in.”
From his office, Dutch called Lloyd’s house. As he expected, there was no answer. He had called in vain every half hour throughout the night, and now it had become obvious that Lloyd had run to ground. But to where? He was either hiding out from I.A.D. and/or stalking his real or imaginary killer. He might also be—
Unable to complete the thought, Dutch recalled that Kathleen McCarthy had mentioned at the party that her bookstore was on Yucca and Highland. She had fearfully denunciated Lloyd on the phone last night, but might know of his whereabouts; Lloyd always sought out women when he was under stress.
Dutch drove to Yucca and Highland, pulling up in front of the Feminist Bibliophile, noticing immediately that the front door was half open and the porch was littered with broken glass.
Drawing his gun, Dutch walked inside. Mounds of broken glass, plaster, and books covered the floor. He walked back through the kitchen and into the bedroom. No more evidence of destruction, only the eeriness of a leather purse lying on the bed.
Dutch dug through the purse. Money and credit cards were intact, throwing the scene way out of kilter. When he found more money and Kathleen McCarthy’s driver’s license and car registration inside a calfskin wallet, he grabbed the telephone and dialed the desk at the station. “This is Peltz,” he said. “I want an all points bulletin issued. Kathleen Margaret McCarthy, white female, 5’9”, 135, brown and brown, D.O.B. 11/21/46. Beige 1977 Volvo 1200, license LQM 957. Have the officers detain for questioning only. No force–this woman is not a suspect. I want her brought to my office.”
“Isn’t this a little irregular, Captain?” the switchboard officer asked.
“Shut up and issue it,” Dutch said.
After checking the blocks around the bookstore unsuccessfully for Kathleen and her car, Dutch began to feel like a pent-up Judas having second thoughts. He knew that movement was the only antidote. Any destination was better than no destination.
Dutch drove to Silverlake. He knocked on the door of the old house that Lloyd had driven him by so many times, only half heartedly expecting someone to answer; he knew that Lloyd’s parents were old and lived in silent solitudes. When no one came to the door, he walked around the side of the house to the back yard.
Peering over the fence, Dutch saw a man swigging from a pint of whiskey and waving a large handgun in front of him. He stood perfectly still, recalling Lloyd’s stories about his crazy older brother Tom. He watched the sad spectacle until Tom dropped the handgun to the ground and reached into a packing crate next to it, pulling out a machine gun.
Dutch gasped as he watched Tom weave drunkenly, muttering, “Fuckin’ Lloyd don’t know shit, fuckin’ fuzz don’t know how to deal with the fuckin’ niggers, but I know for fuckin’ sure. Fuckin’ Lloyd thinks he can fuck with me, he’s got another fuckin’ think comin’.”
Tom dropped the machine gun and fell to the dirt along with it. Dutch drew his .38 and squeezed through a gap in the fence. He crept along the side of the house, then sprinted over to Tom, his gun aimed straight at his head. “Freeze,” he said as Tom looked up, bewildered.
“Lloydy took my goodies,” he said. “He never wanted to play with me. He took my best stuff and still wouldn’t play with me.”
Dutch noticed a large hole in the ground next to him. He looked into it. The muzzles of a half-dozen sawed-off shotguns stared up at him. Leaving Tom weeping in the dirt, he ran back to his car. He gripped the steering wheel and wept himself, praying for God to give him the means to indict Lloyd with pity or release him with love.
18
Kathleen zigzagged through Hollywood side streets, destinationless, numbing the discovery of the tape recorder with silent chantings of her very best prose, the big policeman and his murder theory battling her words point counter-point until she ran a red light on Melrose and fishtailed across the intersection, narrowly missing a crossing guard and a flock of children.
She pulled to the curb, shaking, her literary holding action drowned out by the honking of angered motorists. She was past words now. Lloyd Hopkins and his conspiracies demanded to be disproved on the basis of fact. The tape recorder was evidence that would require the negation of superior evidence. It was time to visit an old classmate and let his words speak.
Dutch watched from the back of the room as Lieutenant Perkins, the commanding officer of the Hollywood Division Detective squad, briefed his men on the Hollywood Slaughterer case:
“Our black and white units and helicopter patrols are going to keep the bastard from killing again, but you guys are going to find out who he is. The Sheriffs dicks are handling the Morton and Craigie cases, and may have an angle–some Deputy who used to work West Hollywood Vice blew his brains out last night at his pad, and some of his old Vice partners say he was in tight with Craigie. Robbery-Homicide downtown is handling the Pratt case, which leaves you guys the job of rousting every pervert, burglar, dope addict, and all-purpose scumbag known to use violence in the Hollywood area. Utilize your snitches, your parolee files, your brains, and the feedback of the guys from patrol. Use whatever force you deem necessary.”
The men got up and headed for the door. Noticing Dutch, Perkins called out, “Hey skipper, where the fuck is Lloyd Hopkins now that we really need him?”
Kathleen pulled up in front of the red brick building on Alvarado. She noticed a “closed due to illness” sign on the front door and peered through the plate-glass window. Seeing nothing but shadow-covered countertops and stacks of boxes, she walked to the parking lot, immediately spotting a long yellow van with a license plate reading “P-O-E-T”. She had her hand on the rear door latch when darkness reached out and smothered her.
Lloyd waited for darkness in the park-playground a half mile below the Silverl
ake Power Plant. His car was hidden from street view behind the maintenance shed, the 30.06 and .44 magnum in the trunk, loaded and waiting. Sitting on a child’s swing that shuddered under his weight, he compiled a list of the people he loved. His mother and Janice and Dutch headed the list, followed by his daughters and the many women who had brought him joy and laughter. Casting out hooks of memory to sustain the loving moments, he reeled in fellow cops and engaging criminals and even passersby he had glimpsed on the street. The more obscure the people became, the deeper the feeling of love touched him, and when twilight came and went Lloyd knew that if he died at midnight he would somehow live on in the vestiges of innocence that he saved from Teddy Verplanck.
Kathleen came out of the darkness with her eyes open, chemical stench and a glaze of tears her prelude to vision. She tried to blink to adjust her focus, but her eyelids wouldn’t move. When squinting with all her might brought nothing but a flood of burning teardrops, she opened her mouth to scream. Some unseen closure rendered her mute, and she twisted her arms and kicked out with her legs, gouging the air for sound. Her arms remained fixed while her feet scraped an invisible surface, and as she flailed and heaved with every inch of her sense-blunted body she heard “sssh, sssh,” and then there was a soft blackness daubing at her eyes, followed by bright light. I am not blind and deaf, but I am dead, she thought.
