Destination: Morgue!: L.A. Tales

by James Ellroy

  Parker pulled the puppet strings and pitted his will against Webb’s. Webb wiggled, withered, and wailed, “What do you want?”

  I mainlined my martini. It seared my cerebellum and pinged my pineal gland. It was godlike good to be Danny Getchell—the scandal-scamming Scopophile King!

  My living-room door lurched loose. It levitated. It lolled off its latches. It creaked, crashed, and flew to the floor.

  Look: LAPD Sergeant John O’Grady.

  He bristled. He brandished a Browning pump. He brought the butt end down and bumped the bulge in my BVDs.

  I retched and ran out of breath. I belched up bile and Beefeater’s. My shag rug shot up and hauled me down in a heap.

  THE LINCOLN HEIGHTS drunk tank:

  An inferno. Incontinent inebriates installed within. Howling hopheads. Wetbacks and wienie waggers. Misanthropic misdemeanants crammed in a crap-crusted crawl space. Sixty sunken-faced sub-felons sunk in a subterranean shit chute.

  Bars. Stainless-steel staves. Sticky stained and sealed with semen. Cement walls. A flat floor flecked with floating phlegm flakes. Catty-corner off a catwalk: the INS tank. Mucho Mexicanos mopped up by the migra.

  My head hurt. My balls boinged. O’Grady ossified me. He planted righteous reefers on my ass and popped me for Possession. He blitzed me for that blind item.

  I stood by the stainless-steel staves. I fretted. I froze in a fresco of frustration. I was fundamentally fucked. I’d landed in the lurid lurch of LAPD limbo.

  Winos wailed. Hopheads howled. Homos humped in a hot heap. Sheriff’s shits moved Mexes out of the migra tank. Jungle John O’Grady assisted.

  The shits chatted up the cholos. “You want trabajo? You want to be in a movie?” The cholos chained cigarettes. They chomped their chancre sores and chewed on the offer.

  The shits shot back to the drunk tank. They walked up to wickedly wasted winos and whispered. The winos wiggled and went wow! The shits ripped off their wristbands. They scooted a scurvy line out to the catwalk.

  O’Grady observed. I orbed in on him. O’Grady ordered the Sheriff’s shits about. They moved the Mexicans. They led them to a loading dock. The winos wiggle-walked their way.

  I felt squirrelly. I squinted square at the dock. O’Grady squawked at the Sheriff’s shits and shoved his weight around. The shits whipped on the winos. They manhandled the Mexes. They ripped wristbands off four choice cholos. They chewed out four chumps and sidled them in a side door.

  I got the gestalt. Troublesome trabajo. A movie or the migra and a march to Mexico. A chilling choice for Charlie Chorizo.

  A truck trundled up. The back bed dipped down to the dock. O’Grady growled gruff. He grabbed wetbacks and winos and herded them wholesale.

  Movie meshugas. Bum Blockade—a blighted blockbuster for LAPD? Threatening threads thrown down at ME.

  I paced. I skirted scurfy scamsters and chirpy child molesters. I was framed. I was french-fried and frappéed. I was fright-fraught and frazzled.

  I heard hard voices wafting out a wall vent. I crawled over two crybaby creeps crapped out by the john. I jumped on a jigaboo’s head and vaulted up to the vent. I heard John O’Grady grand-stand gratuitously.

  “We’ll take two birds out with one stone. The pretty boy and Getchell.”

  The jigaboo jiggled. I jerked into jitters and jumped off his head. I jostled a junkie draped on a drag queen.

  I paced. I plodded and plotzed. Deputies dipped through the tank. They read wristbands and ran inmates into court. Sixty sullen sub-felons sank down submissive and slinked toward a nudge from the judge.

  I was alertly and alarmingly alone. I was the Stranger— stranded and stripped bare. It was existential exile. I was freaked out like that frigid frog Camus.

  The bars banged and boomed. They sluiced and slid. A pouty punk with a pompadour popped in. The bars bashed shut behind him.

  I moseyed up. I moved in and made him.

  Harry Hungwell. A hunky homo. A hophead. The studly star of Stan Stevens’s flick The Greek Way.

  Harry hated me. I hung his handsome hide in Hush-Hush. I hipped Hollywood to his homophile habits. PRIAPIC PROSTY PRIED OFF PRINCE SAHEED AT ALL-BOY BORDELLO.

  I said, “Hi, Harry. What’s shakin’, Daddy-o?”

  Harry hiccuped. Harry heaved. Harry twitched and twanged and ran red in rage.

  I read his wristband. Fuck—555 PC.

  The code numbers numbed me. Possession. Paraphernalia. The narcs nabbed Harry with heroin and nailed him with needles.

  Harry said, “You framed me. O’Grady said so.”

  I laughed loud. “Back off, bun boy. O’Grady framed me. ”

  Harry hurled my way. He lurched and lunged and shagged a shiv from his pants. A black book blipped out and flew to the floor.

  I jumped back. I judo-chopped. I jabbed and jammed and julienned Harry. I humped heavy hurt. I ripped and raked and raised welts. I hammered Harry with hapkido and japped him with jujitsu and tore him up with tae kwon do. I sheared the shiv from his hand and socked an eyeball out of the socket.

  Harry screeched and screamed. He spun and spasmed like Sputnik on speed. He listed and lolled and launched into one-eyed orbit.

  Fuck—fuzz at five o’clock. Big bulls barging down on the bars. Setup—the Sheriff’s shits shot Harry in to shank me. O’Grady ordered it.

  I hunkered down. I hid behind hysterical Harry. I bagged his black book. I throttled his throat and shoved him up to shield me.

  I ran. I held Harry. The Sheriff’s shits shot through the bars. Harry hemorrhaged and absorbed ammo. He buckled behind buckshot and slumped slow with slugs.

  I jumped on the john. I hurled Harry down. Bullets bit his balls and popped off his patellas. I shook and shimmied up the wall and vipped into the vent. I blasted my way into black.

  2.

  Vibrating vents to silt-sifting sewers. A manhole maze under L.A.

  I slogged slow. I swam swift. Currents curtailed and carried me. I flew through flipped-out flotillas.

  Fetid fetuses and hamburger husks. Rats like Rin Tin Tin. Squishy squids and squashed beer cans.

  I paddled with a propeller piece and steered with a stick. I soaked my way soddenly south. I was aqueduct-adequate and sewer-certified. I played a plump pimp in He Walked by Night. Bad guy Basehart buys it by Ben Hong’s herb hut in Chinatown. He’s the undulating überfiend under the Broadway Bridge.

  I looped through Lincoln Heights. I churned through Chink-town. I crested on a crosscurrent and crashed at Chavez Ravine.

  I meandered out a manhole. I bopped to Ben Hong’s. Chinks checked me out. Slanty-eyed slicksters with pierced pigtails and pointy-toe shoes. I shivered. I shook. Shitballs shot off my shirt.

  Ben Hong handed me a hophead highball. Boss belladonna buttons and monster ma huang. I chugged it. It churned through me. I charted my chance to chisel and cheat my way free.

  I owned Bad Ben. I quashed a quixotic Hush-Hush piece on his perverse peccadillos. Ben poked Peking ducks with his peewee pecker. Ben dicked ducks from Shanghai to Sheboygan.

  Ben hid my Hush-Hush bug gear. Ben bowed and beamed and bent to my bidding. He brought me a big bowl of Hochohan soup—hard on the hoisin. I hauled out Harry Hungwell’s black book.

  I tripped through his tricks. Harry was heavy hung and cooly connected. He trick-trucked with all the hot homos.

  Rapacious Raymond Burr. Robert Taylor—ribald and right-wing. Dirty Dave Garroway. Adlai Stevenson—standard stands at the Statler. Randy Randolph Scott—rump wrangles at his ranch in Rio Ricondo.

  I tracked tricks. I nabbed names. Harry played hide-the-hose with half of hip Hollywood. He mowed his meat on Monty Cliff. He laid the linguine on Leonard Bernstein. He boffed butch Burt Lancaster at Leo’s Lavender Lounge.

  Two no-name names and numbers nudged me. “Jack” and “Bill.”

  I called Carla Cardiff—my cop communications contact. She noodled the names and numbers. She ran them through her reverse book.

  Holy Hu
sh-Hush Hannah—

  Jolting Jack Webb. Wicked William H. Parker.

  I BORROWED Ben Hong’s Hudson Hornet. I parked by Parker’s pad on Parkman.

  Dusk dimmed down. Twilight twirled and slid through slits in the smog. I bopped behind belladonna and metastasized with ma huang. I was hopped up and homicidal.

  Parker popped out of his pad. He poured himself into a Pontiac and punched it. He was bleary-eyed and blotto. He blew a red light and raised rubber.

  I sidled up to a side window. I screwed off the screen and scrunched my way in. I listed and landed on the living-room rug.

  I heard gravel growls. I flipped on my flashlight. My beam beat down on a beady-eyed bull terrier.

  I tossed him a taste treat. Ben Hong’s lichee-nut lollipop laced with LSD. The hound hooked it down and humped a hand-sewn hassock.

  I peered around the pad. I slinked and slunk and surveilled surreptitious. I pored through piles of Parker’s papers. I caught his coruscating correspondence.

  Parker pen-palled with punk patriarchs in Paraguay. He kept carbon copies of his own nasty notes. He fulminated to Fulgencio Batista. He waxed weepy to Juan Perón. He ballyhooed Bum Blockade to rasty Rafael Trujillo. He lavishly lauded the “LAPD Reich” and lachrymosely lamented likely losses in the ’58 elections.

  William H. Parker, appointed chief of police in 1950 and serving until his death in 1966, molded the LAPD’s paramilitary image that would earn the force both fame and infamy. (Los Angeles Times Collection, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA)

  ?????

  I pawed more papers. I shot through shelves and drove through dressers and drawers. I found a fat file: “’58—Senate/Governor’s Race.”

  I read it—red-eyed and rapidamente.

  Facts. Fatuous fancies. Prissy prognostications. Doleful dope on the cancerous candidates.

  Idiot incumbents: Governor Goodwin J. Knight and senescent Senator William F. Knowland. Retards. Retread Republicans. Late-breaking lowdown: Both boobs plotted a ploy to ply themselves with more power. Noxious Knowland would seek the governor’s seat. Goody Knight would swing a sweet switcheroo and sententiously seek the Senate.

  Bodes big, but:

  Goody and Boiled Bill boasted paltry poll numbers. The numbers negated them and nodded to their obvious opponents:

  Senator Clair Engle—a Democratic demagogue. Attorney General Edmund G. “Pat” Brown—a dipsomaniacal Democrat diva.

  The file fulminated:

  Pat Brown bristled and broiled with hate for Bill Parker. Brown brewed a brilliant plan to broast him—if he got his gloves on Goody Knight’s governorship.

  Pat patterned a plenary plan to plow the LAPD. Fuck—full-scale floodlights on their fascist agenda!

  The file text turned torrid.

  Parker paid heavy headshrinkers to hatch populist polls. Their freakily Freudian findings:

  Cal Californian calls it this way. Carla Californian concurs. We want Homeric heroes to love and lead us. Menschy men with magnetic machismo. We want magnanimously male MOVIE STARS.

  Ooo-hooh, Daddy-o! I was digging it all, Democratic!

  Torrid text. Followed by: filched tax returns.

  Menschy men:

  Doofus Duke Wayne. Holy Hank Fonda. Randolph Scott and Robert Taylor—turgid turd burglars tracked from a trick book.

  I read the returns. Doofus Duke—solidly solvent. Holy Hank— in hock on stiffed stocks and half-breed haoles hatched in Hawaii. Robert and Randy—rolling in rice.

  Oooooh, papa-san! I was paring it down, paranoiac!

  JACK WEBB LIVED in a lurid lanai in Laurel Canyon. A lavish lean-to off Leawood and Lotus Lane.

  I slid my sled slow to the curb. I bipped the back bumper of a big Bonneville. Fuck—a furtive fuzzmobile with fish fins and a wiggly whip antenna.

  I loped around the lanai. I leaned low and lurked under wide windowsills. I popped up and peeked the pad. I spotted Jive Jack and John O’Grady.

  Simmering silhouettes. Bad boys backlit by lava lamps and low shadows. A TV cop caught in a conundrum. A goon who got Getchellized.

  Webb waved a scrawled-up script. O’Grady groused and grew grave. I loitered and listened.

  Webb said, “I want Ronald Reagan. Randy Scott’s too swishy to play a cop.”

  O’Grady sneered snide. “We’ve got no wedge on Reagan—and he won’t work for the low coin the Chief’s paying.”

  A ripe revelation ripped me:

  Harry Hungwell’s whore book. One wild wedge on Raw Randy Scott.

  Webb whined and whinnied. “Johnny, have a heart. I don’t want to direct this fucking lox.”

  O’Grady said, “Shitfire, Jack, you have to. You direct Bum Blockade or Parker pulls the LAPD’s sanction on Dragnet. ”

  Webb withered. “Okay, I’ll do it. Jesus fucking Christ.”

  O’Grady groaned. “No, Danny Getchell.”

  Webb said, “What’s that cocksucker got to do—”

  “He killed a fruit hustler at the Lincoln Heights tank. The D.A. just issued a warrant. The first cop who spots him will waste his alliterative ass.”

  Cowabunga! Call it cold—cop conspiracies colliding—

  Webb whistled. “That fuck will rue the day he wrote that blind item.”

  O’Grady said, “Rue, shit. You just be at the set at midnight. We’re hijacking a load of wetbacks and bringing them in to play bums. Between them and those humps we got from the tank, we’ll have enough extras.”

  A telephone trilled. O’Grady grabbed it.

  “Yeah?”

  Scintillating silence. O’Grady—grossly gruff.

  “Listen, Pancho, you’ll do as you’re told. The truck’s crossing the border at eleven. We’ll take it down in Chula Vista.”

  Simmering silence. O’Grady: “Yeah, what’s the plate number? . . . DDX089. . . . Yeah, right.”

  I went slit-eyed. I sluiced back to my sled and slid in. I sliced south—silent and psychopathic.

  3.

  I tripped into the truck near Trejo and Tregundez Streets. I tipped in tanked on tequila.

  The truck trundled and shook on shot shocks. It shimmied by sharecropper shanty shacks and rocked through ruts in the road. I popped in off a pogo stick. Dig my distinct disguise:

  A somber sombrero. A sexy serape. Sandblasted sandals and a zany Zapata ’stache.

  The wetbacks welcomed me. We quaffed Cuervo and chewed cheese chimichangas. I said “Sí, sí” every six seconds. The beaners bought me as one bad bandido.

  We bopped over the border. We chugged into Chula Vista. We violated vital immigration laws. We hid under heaps of hashish hunks and chests of child smut. We bit through burlap bags and hooked into the hash. We vizzed through vivid visions. Visitations with the Venal Virgin of Vera Cruz and other vapid shit. We hash-howled through one hot hijack.

  Some fucked-up fuzz futzed with the truck. They cadged into the cab. They badged the burrito boy behind the wheel. They pistol-whipped the puto and poured him out on the pavement. I heard it through holes in the hash heaps.

  The hijackers hauled ass. One rascal said, “Rio Ricondo — rapido.” One jackal said, “Jack’s shooting night for day.”

  Rio Ricondo. Risqué Randy Scott’s rancho—

  The truck trudged tranquil trails and cut through coastal canyons. It hung hairpin turns and hit high heights. I tore the tarp by the tailpipes and took in the view.

  Rich ranch land. Ridges rippled with rivers and roaming roans. A red-rocked ranch right up the road. Arc-light glow glaring.

  Nail it now—night for day.

  The truck stalled and stopped. The wetbacks snoozed and snored. They were hovering high in Hash Heaven.

  I tapped my eye to the tarp hole. I saw a skimpy crew. Skeletal and skanky. Scabs hired cheap. Scads of scabby winos. Mexicans moved out by the migra. The recidivists recruited and run in from Lincoln Heights.

  Jack Webb in jodhpurs and a jersey. Shitty Sheriff’s shills with shouldere
d shotguns. Two rangy rump rustlers resplendent in LAPD blues.

  Rough Randy Scott. Rabelaisian Rob Taylor.

  Webb warbled, “Action!” A Panaflex panned. It whirled wide and dipped to the door of the ranch house. Rangy Rob ran up. He rang the bell. Raw Randy rolled up rasping. The blue boys booted the door down. Dig the cell block set sunk within.

  Bare bars stuck to steel stanchions. Seedy cement. Cruddy creeps passed out on pallets. Lovely Lincoln Heights—revisited and revised.

  Rob said, “We’ve got to get these panhandlers and welfare jerks off the street.”

  Randy said, “The Communists use them to undermine our way of life.”

  Rob said, “We’ve got to reestablish the Bum Blockade. It’s the first line of defense between us and the Fifth Column.”

  Jodhpur Jack yelled, “Cut! Print it!”

  A greasy grip hauled a hose up to the truck. Jingo Jack yelled, “Wake up, you illegals! It’s movie work or a trip back to T.J.!”

  The hose heaved. Water whacked the truck. It doused the dozing Diegos and hauled them out of Hash Heaven. We got sprayed, spritzed, and sprinkled. We got swizzled and swacked. We hit the ground on our huaraches and hurtled.

  I hunkered by a hibiscus hedge and hid from the heaving hose. Sheriff’s shills hemmed in the hermanos. Hardheaded harness bulls with Remington riot pumps.

  The spics spotted the cell block set. Their hackles hopped. Their lazy lids levitated and hitched up to their hairlines. Their hashish-hallowed hearts hardened in rigorous rage.

  Joo don’ juke Juan Wetback into no jail.

  They pulled stabbing stilettos and mini-machetes. They shook out shanks and shears. They flew at the flank of Sheriff’s shills with shotguns.

  A shuddering shitstorm shook Rio Ricondo. Double-aught deershot disinterred. It decimated and disemboweled and detached dicks as it dispersed. It mowed down the Mexicans and mulched them into movie-set menudo.

  Panic. Pantheonic pandemonium.

  I ran toward Randy’s ranch. I crashed through the crew. I capsized cameras and lunged into lights. I jostled Jack Webb. I rammed Randy and Rob. I grazed grips and ground them into the grass.