Destination: Morgue!: L.A. Tales

by James Ellroy

  Donna. Me. A long jump: ’83 to ’04, time-trippingly.

  It had to happen. The fitful laws of physics mandated more of us. Our vibes ran vampiric. They recklessly reconnected. They spun out and sparked in our spiritus mundi and nuclear-napalmed L.A.

  Donna and me. Lashed to the language that pops on these pages. Allegorized in alliteration and bound back boldfaced like this:

  Hush-Hush 2000, October 2004 issue. SCANDAL KINGPIN GETCHELL DEAD! FUNERAL BODES AS STONE GASSER! By Gary Getchell

  Yeah, he died of AIDS—but he was no skin-flute hootin’ tutti-frutti! Daniel Arthur Getchell—the skank-scamming, scandal-skimming, scopophile king—was a heroin-hooking junkie with a 40-year monkey on his back. Danny the G. was a mensch. He neighborly noodled out his needles and got malignant microbes back. He landed in a secret AIDS ward at Cedars-Sinai. It was fat with faigelahs he outed in Hush-Hush. They homo-humped Danny. Dolorous dozens of gay Getchellphobics stormed the hospital. Danny the G. got the gate. He survived this turd-burglar tyranny and hid out at home. He was tenderly tended by magnificent mama-san Megan More, cable-flick floozy supreme. He died September 12. Ms. More said he went out with “dystopian DTs.” He “alliterated alluringly” to the end. He spritzed the linguinilike lassos of language that have invasively influenced bad-ass bop-talkers worldwide. Ms. More dug Danny G.’s death spiel. It was “wild shit by James Joyce and Iceberg Slim, Danny’s two favorite authors.”

  Danny Getchell took over Hush-Hush magazine in 1955. He rode out lynch-mob-like libel suits. He was L.A.’s litigation-licking truth-trumpeter and mendacity-mauling musketeer. He fragged fruits. He nailed nymphomaniacs. He print-pronged corrupt cops and dollar-driven D.A.s. He punched out pork-barrel politicos. He banged behind-the-scenes in the ’58 California election. He immortalized his work in the Mephistophelian memoir The Trouble I Cause.

  D. the G. ran Hush-Hush up to 1999. I wrapped the reins then. I dropped my nowheresville name of Irv Moskowitz and took the moniker “Gary Getchell.” I follow Danny’s metastasizing mandate. I traffic the truth triumphantly.

  I’ve got Danny the G.’s secret dirt files. They’re furtively fail-safed and hidden Hush-Hush. They barbarously berate and insidiously indict. They pummel political correctness. They priapically prick predators and frappé the frail. They knock Danny’s no-good nemesis, the LAPD.

  The LAPD hassled Danny from ’55 up. Danny grew a hard-on to hurt them back and sucked up to certain fractious factions within. I’ve got that hopping hard-on now. It’s pounding in my pants. I don’t like the new Chief, Joe Tierney. The mischievous mick from filthy Philly gores my goat. He’s a headline hurdler and media mauler from the get-go. I don’t dig his command staff. Take Captain Linus “the Laundryman” Lauter. The Feds are looking at Linus lingeringly. His son, Leotis Lauter, runs a Southside dope cartel. The Feds think Linus launders Leotis’s long green. Linus belongs to the 4-A Club: He’s African-American and Affirmative Action. J’accuse—Jolting Joe Tierney’s afraid to suspend him while the Feds coonduct their biz.

  I’ve inherited Danny G.’s moral mandate. I’ll be there at Forest Lawn next week. A rent-a-rabbi will soliloquize. He’ll tip topical and irradiate the Iraqis. The crowd will be huge and Dannyesque diverse. Dig the details on my public-access TV show, and dig me at hush-hush.com. Don’t send flowers or waste your bread on mementoes. Send your money directly to me. I’m broke, and I need garlands of good Getchellite gelt.

  Remember, dear reader, you heard it here first: off the record, on the Q.T., and very Hush-Hush.

  Los Angeles Times, September 22, 2004. RESIDENTIAL BURGLARIES IN BEL-AIR AND HOLMBY HILLS By Miles Corwin

  A house burglar has struck six times in upscale West Los Angeles neighborhoods over the past eight weeks, a LAPD spokesperson has told the Times. All the homes were occupied at the moments of entry, which detectives consider a crucial aspect of the burglar’s modus operandi.

  Captain Bill Dumais, the commander of the detective unit at the West Los Angeles Station, said, “The burglar enters his target homes through half-open windows or doors with easily picked locks. He temporarily sedates pet dogs with mild prescription sleeping pills stuck in pieces of raw meat, which leads me to believe he’s an animal lover who doesn’t like to hurt pets. He’s not so gentle with humans, though. He finds them, usually asleep, or rousing at the sound of his entry, and shoots them with a tranquilizer gun. He uses a powerful tranquilizing substance that sedates the people from six to ten hours.”

  Captain Dumais went on to discuss burglary precedents and the West L.A. burglar’s probable motives. “We call burglars who break into residences with people inside them ‘hotprowl men,’ ” he said. “They tend to get aroused by the prospect of interaction with the people, and they often graduate to physical assault, rape, and even murder.”

  Does this burglar possess that potential? Captain Dumais thinks he does. “So far, the burglar has been stealing only small trinkets,” the captain said. “It appears that he’s not out for saleable items, so it’s our belief that he’s a fetishist looking for souvenirs to commemorate his break-ins.”

  And the LAPD’s plans for apprehension?

  “Plans are in the works,” Captain Dumais said. “We want to catch this guy before he hurts someone for keeps.”

  1.

  Donna Standard Time stung me. The squadroom was dead. I decided to desk-dally and dream.

  I moved the unit TV over. We used it to magnify mug shots and match fingerprints. It was computer-compatible and sturdy state-of-the-art. Dave Slatkin wired a voom-voltage VCR in.

  Hospital Hearts—Donna does doofus TV. She’s an on-call oncologist with a loser love life. The series flailed, flatlined, tipped, and tanked.

  I settled in. I dug on my desk detritus and mused on my murder mandate.

  There’s my PC. It features fine-tuned Fed software. There’s my rhino-horn paperweight. There’s my fetishistic photo spray, plied under Plexiglas. A dozen Donna-look-alike girlfriends—failed flings from ’83 up. There’s Stephanie Gorman, DOD 8-5-65/ unsolved—the case that I clamor to clear. Snuffed at home/West L.A./botched rape-sex job.

  LAPD Homicide, Cold Case Squad. Dave Slatkin, D3 in charge. Six detectives. Mildew-musty murder files to read, review, reject, peruse, and pursue. Divinely deigned DNA—our most clever clue-clearance tool.

  Three years as a unit. Serial killers caught. Rape-os wrapped up and courtroom castrated. The cutting-edge culling of old file data and karmic comeuppance.

  I loved the work. I loved the Donna-dalliance downtime. I popped Hospital Hearts in the VCR and sailed the sound off.

  There’s Donna. She’s wearing wicked white. She’s telling a sickly citizen he’s got the Big C. Fuck that—she’s saying she loves me!

  The Donna scene denoumened. A comatose commercial commenced. I shut my eyes and dreamed.

  I was 52. She was 48. It was 21 years since then. We never married. We serialized separate sex. We mired ourselves in molten and moping monogamy. I carried a flaring flame and a tumescent torch.

  Donna was rich. Donna won two Emmys. Donna lived in Holmby Hills. I was middle-class. I’d shot two wetbacks and three jigaboos. I lived in Chino Hills.

  Donna had dogs—generations of Reggie Ridgebacks. I had in-place informants. Dig: parking-lot punks, coffee-house confidants, maître d’s, molto bene. They saw Donna and buzzed me toward her. I showed up dippy and disingenuous. Donna dug on the game and saw through the shuck.

  I opened my eyes. Dog-food dramaturgy drilled me. I scanned the walls. I saw old LAPD pix.

  Black Dahlia shots. Onion Field shots. My favorite fiend—the doomonic Donald Keith Bashor.

  It’s ’55. Don’s a hot-prowl hunk and one strapping studly. He whips through the Westlake Park District. He B&Es women’s pads. He steals cash only. It’s always late nite. The women sleep on.

  Donald Keith Bashor was sentenced to die for the murders of two women victims of burglary forays. (Los Angeles Times Collection, Department of Speci
al Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA)

  Until 2/16/55—

  Don caroms down Carondelet Street. Don pops a pad packed with nurses. Don pops out with three purses.

  Don nets ninety scoots. Don dumps the purses. Don catwalks down Carondelet. Don taps 271 South. Karil Graham’s door’s ajar.

  He enters. She wakes up. She screams. He beats her dead with a pipe. He loots her purse. He considers a postmortem rape. The blood turns him off.

  He skates on the Graham snuff. He sidles out to South Pasadena. He hot-prowls there. He waits fourteen months. He whips back to Westlake Park.

  He hot-prowls. He steals. He tools off his turf. He rapes an Echo Park woman. He wiggles back to Westlake. It’s 5/56. He hot-prowls a pad on West 5th Street.

  Laura Lindsay screams. He beats her dead with a hammer.

  Demon Don kept it up. Geography is destiny. Westlake wigged wicked magic on him. LAPD ran rolling stakeouts. Said stakeouts snagged Demon Don.

  June ’56—it’s over. October ’57—Don fries at Big Q.

  Demon Don dug under my skin. He stuck as the Stephanie Gorman paradigm. Your prowl pads. You think you come for cash. You really seek sexual succor. You’ve got an urge to unleash the unknown. Every pad gores your gonads. Your adrenaline’s addressed. Every woman’s a witch wired to take you where you have to go.

  Donald Bashor, flanked by Senior Deputy George Coenen, left, and Sheriff’s Sergeant Howard Earle, starts on the trip to San Quentin Prison. (Los Angeles Times Collection, Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA)

  I checked the screen. Donna was back. Her hazel eyes hit me hard as hybrids of la Gorman’s. I fast-forwarded. Donna dunned a baleful boyfriend for lasting love. I tossed out the text. I licentiously lip-read. Donna expressed explicit love for me.

  Two print techs walked in. I popped out the cassette. Donna Standard Time, adieu.

  I beamed up at Bashor. Dave Slatkin beatified the beast and correlated him to the current hot-prowl man. Dave made the man as moon-mad. He was long-term lunar-looped. He slinked to sliver moons and sharp shadows. The man bopped Bashor-like. Dave figured he’d rape and kill soon.

  The squadroom filled up. There’s my partner, Tim Marti. He’s a heavy-handed hard-charger and a thrill-seeking throwback. He priapically predates the Rodney King/so-PC/no-beavertail-sap-slapping days. There’s Dave. He’s dog-hair-dusted and dog-food-flecked. He’s still got that dog shelter. He’s breeding brindle pits now.

  I was bored. I was restless. DST re-resurrected. Stephanie Gorman caught Donna dust and coopted the ride.

  Identikit internment. Sizzling symbiology. Stephanie and Donna as one.

  I punched up the program. My computer popped and pixilated two faces. There’s Stephanie at 16. There’s Donna at 48. Slow now—let’s mix-and-match faces.

  Four bright hazel eyes. Stephanie’s summer tan. Donna’s soft paleness.

  I free-form Frankensteined for an hour. The now and the then got jungled up and jangled. I thought of Russ Kuster. I thought of fall ’83 and the Jenson-Donahue dead. Stephanie—freeze-frame frissoned at youth forever.

  It hit me:

  Danny Getchell was dead. He snitched for me. He bid me to bop-talk. I owed him some flowers.

  MY DEBT: One boss bouquet. Narco Division’s: floral flotillas. Danny handed them wholesale hopheads and mucho meth dealers. They heaped him heroin back.

  I elevatored down. The Narco bullpen: doom-deep in depression.

  Twenty-plus desks. “Laundryman” Linus Lauter’s cops lolling listlessly.

  I looked at them. They looked at me. They tapped their toes and popped on their PCs. They booted up beaver-shot bashes. They socked in solitaire. They Internet-ignored me.

  I whistled. “Flowers for Danny G. Who wants to contribute?”

  Some guys flipped me off. Most guys depressive-deadpanned me. Bill Berchem tapped his toupee and twirled one finger. Bob Mosher picked his nose and snagged snot my way.

  Division-deep depression. One Fed-fucked captain. The trickle-down trap. Cops headed for Subpoena City.

  I scanned the squadroom. The freeze frappéed me. I checked the chalkboard. I saw Gary Getchell’s loathsome likeness. Gary’s gobbling a big dick. Gary’s got shivs shoved in him. A caustic caption read, “Die, motherfucker!!!!!”

  I said, “Gary G. isn’t Danny G. Come on, Danny did us all solid.”

  Cal Eggers walked up. Call it: Linus Lauter’s less-than-listless lieutenant. Sixtyish. Still a stud. Still a fast-track finagler.

  He urged me outside. We walked. We caught some corridor schmooze space. I said, “Danny G. didn’t burn Lauter, the Feds did. Gary’s rattling cages in Hush-Hush, and so what?”

  Eggers whipped out his wallet and fanned five fifties. I grabbed gratefully.

  “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

  “Come on, Rhino, it’s ‘Cal’ to D2s and up. You know I’m clean and on the Captain’s List, and Linus Lauter’s a dumb jungle bunny who bought a six-million-dollar house, cash, on a captain 2’s salary. Tell me I’m not happy he’s going to burn, and since I’m a recent transfer in, tell me I don’t have a shot at the command.”

  I smiled smug. “It’s a good summation.”

  Eggers winked. “You glommed Danny G. dope when you worked Hollywood Homicide. You’re not afraid that your name’s in a file that hump Gary’s got?”

  I shook my head. “It’s a he-said/he-said scenario. Danny’s dead, and I’ve won the Medal of Valor.”

  Eggers shook his head. “You’re a fucking eccentric. You’re a fifty-plus bachelor who wears rhino-horn regalia. You capped three spooks and two wetbacks in a reasonably distinguished police career, but the balance of public opinion has tipped away from us. Look down the fucking hallway.”

  I did it. I didn’t dig the drift.

  Bulletin-board brouhaha. Diversity classes: malevolent and mandatory. Pernicious postings: the Federal Consent Decree/stiff strictures/Radically Reform Your Wicked White Man’s Ways. Civilian lawsuit updates: ultimatums from shyster lawyers/cleverly cloaked class-action shit. Call it cold: baton-bopping back-alley justice, adios. Viva malignant multiculturalism and coerced coonsensus.

  I yawned. “Yeah, I know the precedents. O.J., Rodney King, the ’92 riots. Payback time for the great L.A. unwashed. You know how I see the Lauter thing playing in? He catches a bullet for being a cop, and dodges one for being a jig. His kid, Leotis, is a piece of shit, so that tips the balance against him.”

  Eggers cracked his knuckles. “You saw the squadroom. Middle-aged white men up the ying-yang. They’ll all get tarred with the Linus brush, their careers will flatline, their retirement job prospects will tank, and every fucking man is thinking,‘Danny G. could keep his mouth shut, but the fuck wrote everything down. Will that sick little shit Gary use his files?’ ”

  I shrugged. I wanted to short-shrift this shit. Hush-Hush was non-mainstream media. Both Getchells were scum scamsters. A noxious Narco probe—yes. Linchpins Linus and Leotis—yes. Fed subpoenas for Hush-Hush files—not likely.

  My hackles hopped. Eggers felt hinky. I got instantly itchy. My bald head buzzed.

  I said, “You’re tweaking me. You want an outsider’s damage assessment. Okay, here it is. Linus and Leotis go down, but nobody else does. Yeah, your guys bought snitches from Danny Getchell, and yeah, he wrote it down. So what? It ends there. Danny’s dead, and Gary G.’s a secondhand, compromised informant.”

  Eggers bowed. My tweak take—touché!

  “Yes, I wanted an outside opinion, and you confirmed what I thought myself. There’s that, and the fact that I always enjoy talking to the guy who had ten minutes with Donna Donahue.”

  I laffed. “It went fast. Ten minutes twenty years ago, and I’m fucked forever.”

  Eggers laffed. “I worked the Rampart DB then. I know the whole story.”

  “No, you don’t. And Donna and I aren’t telling.”

  “Cherchez la femme. I’ve always gone by that.
”

  “I’ve got two women. I cherchez more than most.”

  2.

  Cherchez this:

  Beverlywood. A delightful demimonde near Beverly Hills. Peaceful and pastoral. A kalm Kosher Kanyon.

  Hillsboro and Sawyer—Stephanie Gorman’s house still standing.

  I parked across the street. The sky tipped toxic tan to bleached blue. The red-rimmed sun set. I dug on the dark.

  She died in daylight. Ma chère Stephanie.

  It’s 8/5/65. There’s a hellacious heat wave. Stephanie goes to summer school—Hamilton High sessions.

  She carpools home. She’s alone. Her mom’s at their tennis club. Dad and sis work downtown.

  There’s two doors in. It’s a horrific hot-prowl variation.

  The back gate. The backyard. The sliding door in. The front door. The possible unlocked status.

  He brought mason’s cord. He brought a small pistol. He hit Stephanie. He dragged her. They made the front bedroom. He tied her to a daybed. He stripped her.

  She broke free. She screamed and ran. He shot and killed her.

  The investigation clicks. The Watts Riot runs roughshod and reroutes it. Career confessors cop out and lie themselves loose. Cops ream rape-os. Cops whip on wienie waggers. Cops hurl hurt on hot-prowl hyenas.

  Nothing. Zero, zilch, bupkes, bust, goose egg, gornish.

  Thirty-plus years pass. Dave S. reads the file. Tim Marti reads the file. I read the file, cherchez-la-femmingly. We fall for Stephanie. She’s a lost daughter shared. She’s my daughter with Donna D.

  We pry up print cards. We cough up comparison prints—family, fuzz, friends. We winch a wild-card print. We feed it to the Feds. We get a hit.

  The guy’s a minor miscreant. He racked up a receiving charge, post-Stephanie. He’s kool, kalm, and kosher—before and since.

  We blast a background check. We crawl up every known crack and crevice. We know he did not know the Gormans. Check this, Chuck—what’s your fucking print doing there?