by James Ellroy
When the last late-arriving officers took their seats, Lloyd held up a copy of the Los Angeles Times and spoke into the microphone. “Good afternoon. Please give me your complete attention. On page two of today’s Times there is an accurate report of my encounter last night with the man whose portrait you are now holding. The only reason I am alive today is because this man uses a single-action revolver. I heard him cock the hammer before he fired at me and was able to avoid his first shot. Had he been using a more practical double-action weapon, I would be dead.”
Lloyd let his eyes circuit the audience. Feeling them securely in his hand, he continued, “After exchanging fire with me, the man escaped. All the hard facts regarding him are on your Identikit pictures. The portrait, by the way, is a superb likeness—it was put together by an intelligent witness and was immediately confirmed by two others. That is our man. What I would like to add are my observations of this killer.”
He paused and watched the assembled officers study their folders and take out pens and notepads. When there was a gradual shifting of eyes to the lectern, he said, “Last week this man killed three people with clean head shots worthy of a practiced marksman. Last night he fired at me from a distance of ten feet and missed. His four subsequent rounds were wild, fired in panic. I believe that this man is psychotic and will kill until he himself is killed or captured. There must be a concerted effort to identify him. I want these portraits distributed to every officer in L.A. County and every trustworthy snitch. He uses coke and frequents singles bars, so every vice and narco officer should utilize their snitches and question their bar sources. Witnesses have said that he has mentioned ‘an incredibly smart dude’ he knows, so our suspect may have a partner. I want men strongly resembling this suspect to be carefully detained for questioning, at gunpoint. All suspects detained should be brought to the Central Division Jail. I’ll be there from five o’clock on, with a legal officer and a stack of false arrest waivers. Some innocent men are going to be rousted, but that’s unavoidable. Direct all queries from police and non-police sources to me, Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins, at Central Division, extension five-one-nine.”
Lloyd let the officers catch up on their note taking, knowing that up to now their rapt attention had been on a purely professional level. Clearing his throat and tapping the microphone, he went straight for their purely personal jugulars. “I’ve given you ample reasons why the apprehension of this suspect is the number one police priority in Southern California, but I’ll go a notch better: This man is the prime suspect in the disappearance and probable murder of a Los Angeles police officer. Let’s nail the motherfucker. Good day.”
It took Lloyd two hours to establish a command post at the Central Division jail’s booking facility. Anticipating a deluge of phone calls, he had first appropriated three unused telephones from the Robbery/Homicide clerical supply office, plugging them into empty phone jacks adjacent to the jail’s attorney room, securing an immediate hookup to the existing extension number by intimidating a series of Bell Telephone supervisors. Central Division switchboard operators were instructed to screen incoming calls and give all police and civilian calls regarding the Identikit picture first priority in the event of tied-up lines. Any live suspects brought in were to be placed in a soundproof interrogation room walled with oneway glass. Once Lloyd’s negative identification certified their innocence, they were to be gently coerced into signing false arrest waivers by Central Division’s ad hoc “Legal Officer,” a patrolman who had graduated law school, but had failed the California Bar exam four times. The detainee would then be driven back to his point of “arrest” and released.
Lloyd settled in for a long tour of duty, setting out notepads and sharpened pencils for jotting information and a large thermos of coffee for fuel when his brain wound down. Every angle had been covered. The two officers working under him on the liquor store case had been yanked from their current duties and told to compile a list of all singles bars in the L.A.P.D.’s jurisdiction. Once this was accomplished, they were to phone vice squad commanders city wide and have them deploy surveillance teams. Watch commanders had been instructed to highlight the Identikit man at evening roll call and to order all units to approach all suspects with their pump riot guns. If the I.K. man was on the street, there was a good chance of taking him.
But not alive, Lloyd thought. Ruffling through the false arrest forms on his desk, he knew that his killer would not give up without a fight and that on this night the odds of innocent blood being spilled were at their optimum. A panicky, overeager cop might fire on a half-drunk and belligerent businessman who resembled the I.K. suspect; an overly cautious officer might approach a yellow Jap import with a placating smile and get that smile blown off his face by a .41 hollow point. The detain/identify/release approach was desperation—any experienced homicide dick would know it implicitly.
At six o’clock the first call came in. Lloyd guessed the source immediately: Nightwatch units had been on the street for an hour, and scores of patrolman had been putting out the word to their snitches. He was right. A self-described “righteous dope dealer” was the caller. The man told Lloyd how he was certain the liquor store killer was a “nigger with a dye job” who “wasted” the three people as part of a “black power conspiracy.” He then went on to offer his definition of black power: “Four coons pushing a Cadillac into a gas station for fifty cents worth of gas.” Lloyd told the man that his definition would have been amusing in 1968 and hung up.
More calls followed.
Lloyd juggled the three phone lines, sifting through the ramblings of drunks, dopers, and jilted lovers, writing down every piece of information that issued from a reasonably coherent voice. The offerings were of the third- and fourth-hand variety—someone who knew someone who said that someone saw or knew or felt this or that. It was in all probability a labyrinth of misinformation, but it had to be written down.
At ten, after four hours on the phones, Lloyd had filled up one entire legal pad, all with non-police input. He was beginning to despair of ever again dealing with a fellow professional when a pair of callow-looking Newton Street Division patrolmen brought in the night’s first “hard” suspect, a rail-thin, six-foot-six blond youth in his early twenties. The officers acted as though they had death by the tail, each of them clasping a white-knuckled hand around the suspect’s biceps.
Lloyd took one look at the terrified trio, said, “Take off the cuffs,” and handed the youth a false arrest waiver. He signed it as Lloyd told the officers to take their “killer” wherever he wanted and to buy him a bottle of booze on the way. The three young men departed. “Try to stay alive!” Lloyd called after them.
Within the next two hours, three reasonable suspect facsimiles were brought in, two by Hollywood Division patrol teams, one by Sheriff’s detectives working out of the San Dimas Substation. Each time Lloyd shook his head, said, “Cut him loose” and force-fed the suspect a hard look, a waiver and a pen. Each time they signed willingly. Lloyd imagined them envisioning every “innocent man falsely imprisoned” movie ever made as they hurriedly scrawled their names.
Midnight came and went. The calls dwindled. Lloyd switched from coffee to chewing gum when his stomach started to rumble. Thinking that the twelve o’clock change of watch would allow him a hiatus from the phones, he settled back in his chair and let the normal jail noises cut through his caffeine fatigue and lull him into a half sleep. Full sleep was approaching when a voice jerked him awake. “Sergeant Hopkins?”
Lloyd swiveled his chair. An L.A.P.D. motorcycle officer was standing in front of him, holding an R&I computer printout. “I’m Confrey, Rampart Motor,” the officer said. “I just came on duty and saw your I.D. kit want. I popped a guy who looks exactly like it last month. Jaywalking warrants. I remembered him because he had this weirdness about him. I got his R. and I. sheet and his D.M.V. record. There’s a mug shot from my warrant bust.”
Lloyd took the sheet and slipped off the mug-shot strip. The Identikit man
jumped out at him, every plane and angle of his face coming into focus, like a paint-by-numbers portrait finally completed.
“Is it him?” Confrey whispered.
Lloyd said, “Yes,” and stared at the full-face and profile shots of the man who had almost killed him, trembling as he read the cold facts that described a monster:
Thomas Lewis Goff, W.M., D.O.B. 6/19/49, brn., blu. 5′ 10″, 155. Pres. Add.—3193 Melbourne #6, L.A. Crim. Rec. (N.Y. State): 3 agg. asslt. arrst.—(Diss.); 1 conv.-lst Deg. Auto Theft-11/4/69-sent. 3-5 yrs. Paroled 10/71. (Calif. State): Failure to app.—3/19/84-Bail $65—paid. Calif. dr. lic. # 01734; Vehic—1980 Toyota Sed. (yellow) lic. # JLE 035; no mov. viol.
Lloyd put the printout down and said, “Who’s the morning watch boss at Rampart?”
Confrey stammered, “Lu-Lieutenant Praeger.”
“Good. Call him up and tell him we’ve got the big one on Melbourne and Hillhurst. Hold him for me; I’ll be right back.”
While Confrey made the call, Lloyd ran down the hall to the Central Division armory and grabbed an Ithaca pump and box of shells from the duty officer. When he returned to the jail area, Confrey handed him the phone and whispered, “Talk slow, the loot is an edgy type.”
Lloyd took a deep breath and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Lieutenant, this is Hopkins, Robbery/Homicide. Can you set something up for me?”
“Yes,” a taut voice answered. “Tell me what you need.”
“I need a half dozen unmarked units to check the area around Melbourne and Hillhurst for a yellow nineteen-eighty Toyota, license JLE oh-three-five. No approach—sit on it. I need the thirty-one hundred block of Melbourne sealed at both ends in exactly forty minutes. I want five experienced squadroom dicks to meet me at Melbourne and Hillhurst in exactly forty minutes. Tell them to wear vests and to bring shotguns. Have them bring a vest for me. I want no black-and-whites inside the area. Can you implement this now?”
Lloyd didn’t wait for an answer. He handed the phone back to Confrey and ran for his car.
By zigzagging through traffic and running red lights, Lloyd made it to Melbourne and Hillhurst in twenty minutes. No other unmarked cruisers were yet on the scene, but he could feel the too perfect silence that preceded impending explosions all around him. He knew that the silence would soon be broken by approaching headlights, two-way radio crackle and the hum of powerful engines held at idle. Last name introductions and his orders would follow, leaving nothing but the explosion itself.
Parking under a streetlamp at the edge of the intersection, Lloyd turned on his emergency flashers as a signal to the other officers and jacked shells into his shotgun, pumping one into the chamber and setting the choke on full. Grabbing his flashlight, he walked down Melbourne, staying close to the trees that bordered the sidewalk, grateful that there were no late night strollers or dog walkers out. The street was a solid mass of two-story apartment buildings, identical in their sideways exposures and second story landings. Three-one-nine-three was in the middle of the block, a dark gray stucco with wrought-iron railings and recessed door without screens. Lloyd flashed his light on the bank of mailboxes at the front of the building. T. Goff—Apt. 6, true to the R. & I. printout. He counted mail slots, then stepped back and counted the doorways themselves, playing his beam over them to illuminate the numerals embossed at eye level. Ten units; five up, five down. Apartment six was the first unit on the second story. Lloyd shivered when he saw muted light glowing behind drawn curtains.
He walked back to Hillhurst, scanning parked cars en route. No yellow Toyotas were stationed at curbside. When he got to the intersection, he found it blocked off by sawhorse detour signs affixed with blinking red lights. Radio static broke the silence, followed by hoarse whispers. Lloyd squinted and saw three unmarked Matadors parked crossways behind the barricade. He blinked his flashlight at the closest one, getting a double blink in return. Then there was the opening of car doors and five men wearing bullet-proof vests and holding shotguns were standing in front of him.
“Hopkins”, Lloyd said, getting “Henderson,” “Martinez,” “Penzler,” “Monroe,” and “Olander” in return. A vest was handed to him. He slipped into it and said, “Vehicle?”
Five negative head shakes answered him at once. One of the officers added, “No yellow Toyotas in an eight block radius.”
Lloyd shrugged. “No matter. The target building is halfway down the block. Second story, light on. Henderson and I are going in the door. Martinez and Penzler, you stand point downstairs, Monroe and Olander, you hold a bead on the back window.” Feeling a huge grin take over his face, he bowed and whispered, “Now, gentlemen.”
The men formed a wedge and ran down Melbourne to 3193. When they were on the sidewalk in front of the building, Lloyd pointed to the first upstairs back window, the only one on the second story burning a light. Monroe and Olander nodded and hung back as Martinez and Penzler automatically took up their positions at the bottom of the stairs. Lloyd nudged Henderson with his gun butt and gestured upwards, whispering, “Opposite sides of the door. One kick.”
With Lloyd at the lead, they tiptoed up the stairs and fanned out to cover both sides of the door to apartment 6. Henderson put his ear to the doorjamb and formed “nothing” with his lips and tongue. Lloyd nodded and stepped back and raised his shotgun. Henderson took up an identical position beside him. Both men raised their right feet simultaneously and kicked out at the same instant. The door burst inward, ripped loose at both sides, dangling from one remaining hinge. Lloyd and Henderson pressed into the wall at the sound of the implosion, listening for reflex movement within the apartment. Hearing nothing but the creaking of the door, they stepped inside.
Lloyd would never forget what he saw. While Henderson ran ahead to check the other rooms, he stood in the doorway, unable to take his eyes from the nightmare hieroglyphics that surrounded him on all sides.
The living room walls were painted dark brown; the ceiling was painted black. Taped across the walls were photographs of nude men, obviously clipped from gay porno books. The bodies were composites formed of mismatching torsos, heads, and genital areas, the figures linked by magazine photos of antique handguns. Each collage had a slogan above it, block printed in contrasting yellow paint: “Chaos Redux,” “Death’s Kingdom,” “Charnel Kong,” and “Blitzkrieg.” Lloyd studied the printing. Two of the slogans were in an unmistakable left-hander’s slant; the other two in a straight up right-handed motion. Squinting at the wall area around the cutouts, he saw that they were bracketed by abrasive powder wipe marks. He ran his fingers over the walls in random circles. A film of white powder stuck to them. Like Jack Herzog’s apartment, this place had been professionally secured against latent print identification.
Henderson came up behind Lloyd, startling him. “Jesus, Sarge, you ever see anything like it?”
Lloyd said “Yes,” very softly.
“Where?”
Lloyd shook his head. “No. Don’t ask me again. What are the other rooms like?”
“Like a normal pad, except for the colors of the wall and ceiling paint. All the surfaces have been wiped, though. Ajax or some shit like that. This motherfucker is whacked out, but smart.”
Lloyd walked to the door and looked out. Martinez and Penzler were still stationed downstairs and there was as yet no general awakening of the other tenants. He turned and said to Henderson, “Go round up the other men, then wake up the citizens.” He handed him the mug-shot strip of Thomas Goff and added, “Show this to every person and ask them when they saw the bastard last. Bring anyone who’s seen him in the past twenty-four hours to me.”
Henderson nodded and went downstairs. Lloyd counted to ten to clear his mind of any preconceived notions of what he should look for and let his eyes take a quick inventory of the living room, thinking: darkness beyond the aesthetic limits of the most avant garde interior decorator. Black naugahyde sofa; charcoal gray deep-pile rug; black plasticene high-tech coffee table. The curtains were a thick olive drab v
elour, capable of shutting out the brightest sunlight, and the one floor lamp was sheathed in black plastic. The overall effect was one of containment. Although the living room was spacious for a small apartment, the absence of color gave it a stiflingly claustrophobic weight. Lloyd felt like he was enclosed in the palm of an angry fist. In reflex against the feeling he slipped off his bullet-proof vest, surprised to find that he was drenched in sweat.
The kitchen and bathroom were extensions of the darkness motif; every wall, appliance and fixture had been brushstroked with a thick coat of black enamel paint. Lloyd scrutinized potential print-sustaining surfaces. Every square inch had been wiped.
He walked into the bedroom. It was the disarrayed heart of the angry fist; a small black rectangle almost completely eclipsed at floor level by a large box spring and mattress covered by a purple velour bedspread. Lloyd stripped the bedspread off. The dark blue patterned sheets were crumpled and rank with sweat. Male clothing, varied in color, was strewn across them. Squatting to examine it, he saw that the pants and shirts were stylish and expensive and conformed in size to Thomas Goff’s dimensions. An overturned cardboard box lay next to the front of the bed. Upending it, Lloyd sifted through a top layer of male toiletries and a second layer of paperback science fiction novels, coming to a tightly wedged stack of battered record albums on the bottom.
He thumbed through them, reading the titles on the jackets. Dozens of albums by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Jefferson Airplane, all bearing the block printed warning: “Beware! Property of Tom Goff! Hands off! Beware!” Lloyd held two albums up and examined the printing. It was right-hand formed and identical to the printing on the living room walls. Smiling at the confirmation, he read through the remaining records, knowing that the common denominator of Goff’s musical taste was the 1960s, going cold when he saw a garish album entitled, “Doctor John the Night Tripper—Bayou Dreams.”
