by James Ellroy
A two-hour steam bath at the Hollywood Y sweated the rest of the speedball out of his system. He took a cab to the Beverly Hills police station, gouged his arm with a penknife to induce crocodile tears and turned himself in. He was charged with two counts of third-degree manslaughter and hit and run. Bail was set at $20,000, and arraignment was set for the following morning.
At arraignment, he learned that the two people he had killed were not the dope-slipping mechanics, but a solid-citizen husband and wife. He pleaded guilty anyway, expecting a deuce maximum, back on the street in eighteen months tops.
The judge, a kindly-looking old geezer, gave him a ten-minute lecture, five years state time suspended and his sentence: one thousand hours of picking up paper refuse from the gutters of Doheny Avenue between Beverly Boulevard on the north and Pico Boulevard on the south. After courtroom spectators applauded the decree, the judge asked him if he had anything to say. He said, “Yes,” then went on to tell the judge that his mother sucked giant donkey dicks in a Tijuana whorehouse and that his wife turned tricks with the gorillas in the Griffith Park Zoo. The judge recanted his sentence suspension and hit him with five years in the California Youth Authority Facility at Soledad—the “Baby Joint” and “Gladiator School.”
When Rice finished his story, Anne Vanderlinden doubled over with laughter and launched her rap, chain-smoking two full packs, until all the guests had either split or were coupled off in Louie’s upstairs bedrooms. She told him about growing up rich in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and her hard-ass tax lawyer father, Valium addict mother and religious crackpot brother, who got bombed on acid and stared at the sun seeking mystical synergy until he went totally blind. She told him how she dropped out of college because it was boring and how she blew her $50,000 trust fund on coke and friends, and how she liked blow, but wasn’t strung out. Rice found her use of street argot naive, but pretty well done. Knowing she was on the skids and probably sleeping around for a place to stay, he steered her talk away from the present and into the future. What did she really want to do?
Anne Vanderlinden’s little facial tics exploded as she tripped over words to explain her love of music and her plans to spotlight her singing and dancing talents in a series of rock videos: one for punk, one for ballads, one for disco. Rice watched her features contort as she spoke, wanting to grab her head and smooth her face until she was perfectly soft and pretty. Finally he clutched her lank blond hair and drew it back into a bun that tightened the skin around her eyes and cheeks, whispering, “Babe, you won’t have shit until you quit sticking that garbage up your nose, and you find someone to look after you.”
She fell sobbing into his arms. Later, after they made love, she told him it was the first time she’d cried since her brother went blind.
It was over the next few weeks, after Anne Atwater Vanderlinden had moved in with him and become Vandy, that he figured it out: you don’t wait for things to happen—you make them happen. If your woman wants to become a rock star, you regulate her coke use and buy her a sexy wardrobe and cultivate music business connections who can do her some good. Vandy could sing and dance as well as a half dozen female rock stars he knew of, and she was too good to go the tried-and-untrue route of demo tapes, backup gigs and lack-luster club dates. She had an ace in the hole. She had him.
And he had a chump change job at Midas Muffler, a parole officer who looked at him like he was something that crawled out from under a rock and an overpriced apartment with world-class cockroaches. With his debits cataloged, Rice figured out his credits: he was a great mechanic, he knew how to deactivate automobile alarm systems and bore steering columns for a forty-second start, any car, anywhere, anytime; he knew enough industrial chemistry to compound corrosive solutions that would eat the serial numbers off engine blocks. He had solid Soledad connections who would fix him up with good fences. He would make it happen: become a world-class car thief, set up Vandy’s career and get out clean.
For a year and a half, it worked.
With three strategically located storage garages rented, and armed with a battery-powered ignition drill, he stole late model Japanese imports and sold them at two-thirds their resale value to a buddy he’d known in the joint, supervising the engine block dips that rendered the cars untraceable, rotating his rip-off territory throughout L.A. and Ventura counties to avoid the scrutiny of individual auto theft details. In two months he had the down payment for a classy West L.A. condo. In three months he had Vandy primed for stardom with a health food diet, daily aerobics, coke as an occasional reward and three-walk-in closets stuffed with designer threads. In four months he had the feedback of two high-priced voice teachers: Vandy was a weak, near tone-deaf soprano with virtually no range. She had a decent vibrato growl that could be jazzed up with a good amplifier, and gave great microphone head. She had the haunted sex look of a punk-rock star—and very limited talent.
Rice accepted the appraisals—they made him love Vandy more. He altered his game plan for crashing the L.A. rock music scene and took Vandy to Vegas, where he dug up three out-of-work musicians and paid them two bills a week to serve as her backup group. Next he bribed the owner of a slot machine arcade/bar/convenience store into featuring Vandy and the Vandals as his lounge act.
Four shows a night, seven days a week, Vandy’s vibrato growled the punk lyrics of the group’s drummer. She drew wolf whistles when she sang and wild applause when she humped the air and sucked the microphone. After a month of watching his woman perform, Rice knew she was ready.
Back in L.A., armed with professional photographs, bribed press raves and a doctored demo tape, he tried to find Vandy an agent. One brick wall after another greeted him. When he got past secretaries, he got straight brush-offs and “I’ll call yous”; and when he got past them and whipped out Vandy’s photos, he got comments like “interesting,” “nice bod” and “foxy chick.” Finally, in the Sunset Strip office of an agent named Jeffrey Jason Rifkin, his frustration came to a head. When Rifkin handed back the photos and said, “Cute, but I have enough clients right now,” Rice called his fists and took a bead on the man’s head. Then inspiration struck, and he said, “Jew boy, how’d you like a brand-new silver gray Mercedes 450 SL absolutely free?”
A week later, after he picked up his car, Rifkin told Rice that he could introduce him to a lot of people who might help Vandy’s career, and that her idea of showcasting her talent via a series of rock videos was an excellent “high-exposure breakthrough strategy,” albeit expensive: $150-200 K minimum. He would do what he could with his contacts, but in the meantime he also knew a lot of people who would pay hard cash for discount Benzs and other status cars—people in the “Industry.”
Rice smiled. Use and be used—an arrangement he could trust. He and Vandy went Hollywood.
Rifkin was partially good to his word. He never procured any recording or club gigs, but he did introduce them to a large crowd of semisuccessful TV actors, directors, coke dealers and lower-echelon movie executives, many of whom were interested in high-line cars with Mexican license plates at tremendous discounts. Over the next year, paperwork aided by an Ensenada D.M.V. employed cousin of his old Soledad buddy Chula Medina, Rice stole 206 high-liners, banking close to a hundred fifty thou toward the production of Vandy’s rock videos. And then just as he was about to drill the column of a chocolate-brown Benz ragtop, four L.A.P.D. auto theft dicks drew down on him with shotguns, and one of them whispered, “Freeze or die, motherfucker.”
Out on $16,000 bail, his show biz attorney gave him the word: for the right amount of cash, his bank account would not be seized, and he would get a year county time. If the money were not paid, it would be a parole violation and probable indictments on at least another fifteen counts of grant theft auto. The L.A.P.D. had an informant by the balls, and they were squeezing him hard. He could only buy the judge if he acted now. If he were quickly sentenced, the L.A.P.D. would most likely drop its investigation.
Rice agreed. The decision cost him an e
ven $100,000. His attorney’s fees cost him an additional forty. Ten K for Vandy and bribe money his lawyer slipped to an L.A.P.D. records clerk to learn the identity of the informant had eaten up the rest of his bank account, and had not yielded the name of the snitch. Rice suspected the reason for this was that the shyster pocketed the bread because he knew that the snitch was Stan Klein, a coke dealer/entrepreneur in the Hollywood crowd they ran with. When he learned Klein had been popped for conspiracy to sell dangerous drugs and that it was later dropped to a misdemeanor, he became the number one suspect. But he had to be sure, and the decision to be sure had cost him his last dime and gotten him zilch.
And two weeks away from the release date he’d eaten smoke, fire and bullshit to earn, he’d fucked it up and probably earned himself a first-degree assault charge and at least another ninety days of county time.
And Vandy hadn’t written to him or visited him in a month.
“On your feet, Blue. Wristband count.”
Rice jerked his head in the direction of the words. “I won’t let you medicate me,” he said. “I’ll fight you and the whole L.A. County Sheriff’s Department before I let you zone me out on that Prolixin shit.”
“Nobody wants to medicate you, Blue,” the voice said. “A few of L.A. County’s finest might wanta shake your hand, but that’s about it. Besides, I can sell that goose juice on the street, make a few bucks and serve law and order by keeping the Negro element sedated. Let’s try this again: wristband count. Walk over to the bars, stick your right wrist out to me, tell me your name and booking number.”
Rice got up, walked to the front of the cell and stuck his right arm through the bars. The owner of the voice come into focus on the catwalk, a pudgy deputy with thin gray hair blown out in a razor cut. His name tag read: G. Meyers.
“Rice, Duane Richard, 19842040. When do I get arraigned on the new charge?”
Deputy G. Meyers laughed. “What new charge? That scumbag you wasted was in for assault on a police officer with a half dozen priors, and you carried three L.A. County firemen to safety during the Agoura fire. Are you fucking serious? The watch commander read your record, then scumbag’s, and made scumbag a deal: he presses charges on you, then the county presses charges on him for grabbing your shlong. Not wanting a fruit jacket, he agreed. He gets to spend the rest of his sentence in the hospital ward, and you get to serve as blue trusty here in the Rubber Ramada, where hopefully you will not get the urge to whip any more ass. Where did you learn that kung fu shit?”
Rice kicked the news around in his head, sizing up the man who’d delivered it. Friendly and harmless, he decided; probably close to retirement, with no good guys/bad guys left in him. “Soledad,” he said. “There was a Jap corrections officer who taught classes. He gave us a lot of spiritual stuff along with it, but nobody listened. The warden finally got wise to the fact that he was teaching violent junior criminals to be better violent junior criminals, and stopped it. What’s a ding trusty do?”
Meyers took a key from his Sam Browne belt and unlocked the cell. “Come on, we’ll go down to my office. I’ve got a bottle. We’ll belt a few and I’ll tell you about the job.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Yeah? What the fuck kind of criminal are you?”
“The smart kind. You booze on duty?”
Meyers laughed and tapped his badge. “Turned my papers in yesterday. Twenty years and nine days on the job, iron-clad civil service pension. I’m only sticking around until they rotate in a new man to fill my spot. Ten days from now I am adios, motherfucker, so till then I’m playing catch-up.”
As Gordon Meyers explained it, the job was simple. Sleep all day while the dings were dinged out on their “medication,” eat leftovers from the officers’ dining room, have free run of his collection of Playboy and Penthouse, be cool with the daywatch jailer. At night, his duties began: feed the dings their one meal per day, move them out of their cells one at a time and mop the floors, get them to the showers once a week.
The most important thing was to keep them reasonably quiet at night, Meyers emphasized. He would be using his on-duty time to read the classified ads and write out job applications, and he did not want the dings dinging his concentration. Talk softly to them if they started to scream, and if that failed, scream back and make them scared of you. If worse came to worse, give them a spritz of the fire hose. And any ding who smeared shit on his cell walls got five whacks in the ass with the lead-filled “ding-donger” Meyers carried. Rice promised to do a good job, and decided to wait five days before manipulating the fat-mouthed cop for favors.
The job was simple.
Rice slept six hours a day, ate the high-quality institutional fare the jailers ate, and did a minimum of one thousand pushups daily. At night, he would bring the dings their chow, G.I. their cells and stroll the catwalk exchanging words with them through the bars. He found that if he kept up a continuous line of cell-to-cell communication, the dings screamed less and he thought of Vandy less. After a few days he got to know some of the guys and tailored his spiels to fit their individual boogeymen.
A-14 was a black guy popped for getting dogs out of the Lincoln Heights Shelter and cooking them up for Rastafarian feasts. The bulls had shaved off his dreadlocks before they threw him in the tank, and he was afraid that demons could enter his brain through his bald head. Rice told him that dreadlocks were “out,” and brought him a copy of Ebony that featured ads for various Afro wigs. He pointed out that the Reverend Jesse Jackson was sporting a modified Afro and getting a lot of pussy. The man nodded along, grabbed the magazine and from then on would yell “Afro wig!” when Rice strolled by his cell.
C-11 was an old man who wanted to get off the streets and back to Camarillo. Rice falsely reported him as a shit-smearer for three nights running, and gave him three fake beatings, thumping the ding-donger into the mattress and screaming himself. On the third night, Meyers got tired of the noise and turned the old man over to the head jailer of the hospital ward, who said the geezer was Camarillo quail for sure.
The tattooed man in C-3 was the hardest to deal with, because the white trash he grew up with in Hawaiian Gardens all had tattoos, and Rice early on figured tattooing as the mark of the world’s ultimate losers. C-3, a youth awaiting a conser-vatorship hearing, had his entire torso adorned with snarling jungle cats, and was trying to tattoo his arms with a piece of mattress spring and the ink off newspapers soaked in toilet water. He had managed to gouge the first two letters of “Mom” when Rice caught him and took his spring away. He started bawling then, and Rice screamed at him to quit marking himself like a lowlife sleazebag. Finally the young man quieted down. Every time he walked by the cell, Rice would roust him for tattooing tools. After a few times, the youth snapped into a frisking position when he heard him coming.
Around midnight, when the dings began falling asleep, Rice joined Gordon Meyers in his office and listened to his dinged-out ramblings. Biting his cheeks to keep from laughing, Rice nodded along as Meyers told him of the crime scams he’d dreamed up in his sixteen years working the tank.
A couple were almost smart, like a plan to capitalize on his locksmith expertise—getting a job as a bank guard and pilfering safe-deposit box valuables to local beat cops who frequented the bank, staying above suspicion by not leaving the bank and letting the beat cops do the fencing; but most were Twilight Zone material: prostitution rings of women prisoners bused around to construction sights, where they would dispense blowjobs to horny workers in exchange for sentence reductions; marijuana farms staffed by inmate “harvesters,” who would cultivate tons of weed and load it into the sheriffs helicopters that would drop it off into the backyards of high-ranking police “pushers”; porno films featuring male and female inmates, directed by Meyers himself, to be screened on the exclusive “all-cop” cable network he planned to set up.
Meyers rambled on for three nights. Rice moved his plan up a day and started telling him about Vandy, about how she hadn’t written
to him or visited him in weeks. Meyers sympathized, and mentioned that he was the one who made sure his photo of her wasn’t destroyed when the bulls choked him out. After thanking him for that, Rice made his pitch: Could he use the phone to make calls to get a line on her? Meyers said no and told him to write her name, date of birth, physical description and last known address on a piece of paper. Rice did it, then sat there gouging his fingernails into his palms to keep from hitting the dinged-out deputy.
“I’ll handle it,” Gordon Meyers said. “I’ve got clout.”
Over the next forty-eight hours Rice concentrated on not clouting the dings or the inanimate objects in the tank. He upped his push-up count to two thousand a day; he laid a barrage of brownnosing on the daywatch jailer, hoping for at least a phone call to Louie Calderon, who could probably be persuaded to check around for Vandy. He stayed away from Gordon Meyers, busying himself with long stints of pacing the catwalks. And then, just after midnight when the ding noise subsided, Meyers’ voice came over the tank’s P.A. system: “Duane Rice, roll it to the office. Your attorney is here.”
Rice walked into the office, figuring Meyers was fried and wanted to bullshit. And there she was, dressed in pink cords and a kelly green sweater, an outfit he’d told her never to wear. “Told you I had clout,” Meyers said as he closed the door on them.
Rice watched Vandy put her hands on her hips and pivot to face him, a seduction pose he’d devised for her lounge act. He was starting toward her when he caught his first glimpse of her face. His world crashed when he saw the hollows in her cheeks and the blue-black circles under her eyes. Strung out. He grabbed her and held her until she said, “Stop, Duane, that hurts.” Then he put his hands on her shoulders, pushed her out to arm’s length and whispered, “Why, babe? We had a good deal going.”
