by James Ellroy
Dave and Tim braced the guy. He guy gassed with them. Cops, huh? How can I help you?
Dave said, “Stephanie Gorman.” Tim said, “She was murdered.” The guy said, “Oh, yeah, the little dead twist.”
Oh, shit—he’s coming on callous, ink him innocent.
Dave dug in. Tim tore in. Tell us what you know.
I was across the street. I was boning my best buddy’s bitch. He got his schlong shot off in Korea. The twist’s sister ran over. She was shit-your-pants scared and screaming. My buddy was a quack herb doc. The sister yelped for help. I went over for groovy grins and giggles. Bummer—the little twist was Deadsville.
Call my buddy. Talk to his wife. I poured her the pork for twenty-six years. They’ll vouch and verify my story.
We did it. The No-Dick Doctor confirmed it—call him il cornuto. The wayward wife was one wicked wench. She waxed wild at eighty. Our suspect “gave it to me from 1:00 p.m. on. Man-o-Manischewitz, what a schvantz! He was hung like a nigger!”
One suspect suspended. One case closed—for now.
Open-file status. No semen from ’65. No way to DNA-match.
I couldn’t let it go. I read and reread the file. I combed for connections. I looked for leads and linkage. Nothing nudged me. No brain broils, no synaptic sizzles. I cultivated communion. Stephanie Standard Time stung me. I parked by her pad odd evenings.
A breeze brought leaves up. Clouds climbed past the moon. Window lights leaped inside the house. I shaped shadows as Stephanie.
My cell phone rang. I hit the Talk button.
“This is Jenson.”
“Hi. It’s Rob. You know, from the Starbucks on Beverly Drive.”
“Oh, shit. Is she . . .?”
“Yeah, you fucking horndog. She’s on a big-ass mocha, so I think you’ve got time.”
SHE WORE a serge skirt and a coral cashmere coat. Her hazel eyes hopped.
I sat down. She popped her paperback in her purse.
“I would have gotten this to go, but I saw that kid pick up the phone.”
I mainlined some mocha. Too thick and sweet—ugh.
“He’s a valued LAPD informant.”
Donna laffed. “Are you coercing him or paying him?”
“Both. He honked a vice cop at the Wiltern, and I bought him out of jail. That, plus ten bucks a sighting.”
Donna said, “I could go to the Coffee Bean. It’s just across the street.”
“No go. I’ve got all the shift managers bribed. That, plus the—”
“—the valet park guys, all—”
“—of whom are fucking coercible wetbacks.”
Donna laffed. I mooched more of her mocha. I held her hands for a heartbeat. I straightened one stocking seam.
“You can’t lose me. Not for more than six months at a time. We’re both L.A. lifers, and I know this place too well.”
Donna looked around. I looked around. Our eyes tapped table to table. Beverly Hillsites beamed back, blasé—so what if you’re Donna Donahue.
I said, “Who are you doing these days?”
Donna said, “A screenwriter. He’s handsome and much younger than me. I control things. It’s an indoor relationship, and the age gap embarrasses me. I don’t like to be seen with him.”
I slapped my knees. My suitcoat slid, my holster hitched, my badge beamed, my gun glistened. Jaded eyes jabbed me—who’s that cop with Donna Donahue.
“I was seeing a deputy D.A., who just happened to look like you. We had bad sex twice, and she states her agenda. She wants to get married, move to Portland, and adopt an Iraqi war-refugee baby. I got out then.”
Donna laffed. She held my hands for a heartbeat. She notched up my necktie knot.
“That burglar hit a block over from me. I thought, ‘Shit, let’s be prepared,’ so I called Tom Ludlow. He sold me some guns.”
Fuck—Phone Book Tom. Still at Hollywood Homicide, still a phone-book freak.
“Throw-down guns, right? Unregistered pieces?”
“Right.”
I shook my head. “You’re bored. You’re reliving ’83. ‘Brave new fucking world’ and all that.”
Donna drained her drink. “I get bored and think about it. Last week my agent sent me a script. I’m supposed to be a cop moonlighting as a serial killer. I’m killing my ex-boyfriends’ wives, and having a high old time mutilating the bodies. How do you tell someone you can’t take the job because you killed three people in 1983, and certain things scare you and certain things own you?”
My pulse pulled to 120. My blood-pressure pressed. Dangerous Donna—radical redux.
“What did you do with the guns?”
“I booby-trapped the house.”
“Will you show me?”
“Of course.”
Chez Donna: a sharp chateau off L.A. Country Club. Nestled by the north course—some Holmby Hills hutch.
Tall turrets, big bay windows. Fucking football-field footage. Heavy housage for one woman and a randy ridgeback.
We two-car-caravaned over. We parked in the porte cochere. Donna let us in. The horny hound hurtled high and humped me.
He locked my leg. He pawed my pubes. He bit at my belt. HIVTEST me—the fag dog drew blood.
Donna tossed him a treat. Reggie Ridgeback relented. We thrown-down-gun-toured the pad.
One mighty Magnum—couch-cushion concealed. One fat .45—thrown under a throw rug. One revolver—rigged by Ridgeback Reggie’s dog bed.
The downstairs: designered-out and Donnaesque. Fine fabrics offset by oil paintings. A rapturous Renoir. A magnificent Monet. A clever Klee. Furtive firepower amidst all.
Dangerous Donna, mon dieu!
We walked upstairs. Reggie Ridgeback crept and crotch-sniffed me. Dig the master-bedroom Browning. Dig the guest-room Ruger pump. Dig the Derringer hung in the shower stall, à la soap-on-a-rope.
French provincial trappings—tricked-out wood and wall beams. Pop art by pederastic modern masters. Hard-hitting hollow-point ammo and deer-stopping double-aught buck.
Devil-horned Donna—neo-noir succubus!
We bopped out to the balcony. Reggie crotch-crept between us. The night air made me snap, crackle, pop.
Golf-course view—one vibrant vista, one plumb line southeast. I felt Stephanie starting up.
We laid lounge chairs adjacent. We sat down. We laced hands loose. Reggie registered his cue and vamoosed.
Donna said, “You’re thinking about the girl.”
I stared Stephanie’s way. I heard cars whoop down Wilshire. I orbed into Stephanie’s orbit.
“She’s older than us, but she’ll always be younger. And I was thinking of both of you.”
Donna squeezed my hand. “Everything’s foreplay and yearning with you. You only want what you can’t have.”
A mist meandered in. The golf course metamorphosed into moors.
“I figured something out about us. It takes in ’83 and wraps things up.”
Donna said, “Tell me.”
I said, “We’ve downscaled our expectations on the things that most people live for, so we can live in a world of possibility.”
Donna stared southeast. Her gaze got moor-mired up.
“There’s times I want things to go bad, just so I can go there again.”
“For instance?”
“My Web site’s been getting too many hits. There’s been a lot of nasty questions on my old boyfriends, and intimations that I’m a dyke, because I never married.”
I smiled. “You could marry me.”
Donna smiled. “That would effectively quash all sense of possibility.”
The moor mist rose. The moon moved into it.
“There’s more. I’ve been getting e-mail requests for my panties, which is not unprecedented, but—”
I cut in. “Why not? And if you start selling them, let me know.”
Donna laffed. “I made a cop flick with an actress named Megan More. She’s primarily a soft-core porno star, and she made a pass at me. She’s s
old her panties on the Internet, and she told me it’s quite profitable.”
Dig it! Pounce on that pounding possibility!
I invade the Internet. I shore up my shorts. I buttress the bulges and rack them retail. Rhino Rick Jenson—rhino-horn raider!
Donna poked me. “Here’s the semi-spooky part. The e-mails and the panty requests both come from public-library computers, so there’s no way I can tell the pathetic asshole or assholes to fuck off.”
Reggie walked up. I raked his ridge. I made him mew molto bene.
“One set of assholes in a twenty-year career isn’t so bad.”
“Two, actually. I’ve been getting love-hate notes in the mail, on and off, for years. He loves it when I show skin, he hates it when I show skin. He’s a skin sicko.”
I raked Reggie. “If you’re scared, I could sleep on the couch.”
“For the next thirty years?”
“Why not?”
Donna said, “Speak, Reggie.” Reggie flashed his fangs and growled gravel gruff.
I got the point. Possibility meant abstinence. I had a wishful woody. She had a killer K-9, boocoo guns and guts.
The moor mist moved in. Reggie mewed at the moon.
3.
Dystopian Disneyland—Danny Getchell’s wigged-out wake!
Myriad mourners and morbid scene makers. Legions of L.A. losers festooning Forest Lawn.
Hopheads and hermaphrodites. Porno film stars and Gen-X actors genuflecting. Nihilistic college kids digging on dead Danny. An anarchic assembly of perverts, punks, and freewheeling freaks.
Anti-Danny pickets: quixotic queers high on homo hegemony. Narco cops poised on the periphery—bad Bill Berchem and beefy Bob Mosher.
Forest Lawn—capped to capacity. Green grass broiled brown—700 soiled souls smack in a baaad smog alert.
I stood with Tim Marti. We lugged our loopy floral flotilla. Tim pointed out pertinent personas bellied up to the bier.
“The guy with the earlocks is a rabbi with a kiddy-raper jacket. He made a little girl nosh his kosher salami at some Holocaust gig. The stacked blonde is Megan More. She’s on these late-night T&A flicks. My kid Brandon sneaks down to watch her and belt his hog all the fucking time. The skinny guy is Gary Getchell, aka ‘Scurvy’ Irv Moskowitz. He’s the so-called editor-in-chief of Hush-Hush, but his full-time gig is caddy at Bel-Air Country Club. He’s a wienie wagger. He likes to flash nuns. I popped him when I worked West L.A. Vice.”
I laffed lewd. I looked at the losers. The rabbi rang me wrong. He vibed skin-pop junkie. His neck was needle-notched. Call the faux Getchell caddy-clad and fully fucked up. He wore gatorskin golf shoes and seersucker shorts. His shirt showed off patterned penguins. Dig his yellow yarmulke—the full-fucked finishing touch.
I laffed loud. I leched on Megan More. She was a skyscraping skin-flick goddess. She soared six feet plus. She was wispy white and tantalizing tan—a bravura Brünnhilde de-luxe.
Tim tapped me. “I saw Berchem and Mosher taking pictures. You think—”
“I think they’re putting heat on Gary Getchell, for no good fucking cause. Maybe he’s got a Narco file, maybe he doesn’t. Maybe Danny G. had shit on Linus Lauter, maybe he didn’t—”
“—but in any case, Hush-Hush 2000 is a fucking joke. The circulation’s low four figures, it’s a mimeograph job, the only people who read it are movie- and music-biz hipsters, and the only reason it survives is that the ACLU protects it from libel suits pro bono.”
The rabbi reached for a microphone. The craaaazy crowd pressed up. I saw bleary and bloodshot eyes. I smelled righteous reefer. A sea of sick souls surrounded us. I flung our floral flotilla. It banged Danny G.’s bier.
Berchem and Mosher moved in. They mingled and moseyed by Megan More. They missed Tim and me. They bopped by the bier. They carried cameras. Said cameras clicked.
They shot Megan More. They shot Megan More and the mourners she talked to. Click/click/click—Megan More and Minox minicam pix.
I shrugged. Tim shrugged. It vibed hinky shit.
The rabbi mauled the microphone and licked his lips. The rabbi davened and delivered.
Danny G. was a marvelous mensch and a sharpshooting shtarker. He wasn’t a schmendrick, a schlemiel, or a schlimazel. He was one magnificent motherfucker.
The rabbi ratcheted it up. Some klezmer clowns joined in. Jazz Judaism jumped. Tim and I splitsvilled.
THE FUNERAL GORED my gourd. Residual reefer smoke smacked me. It was a cool contact high. I drove home to Donnafy and contain it.
The buzz dipped and diminuendoed. I got restless and re-Donnafied. I got the urge to merge. Let’s real-life re-Donnafy before your sex drive cessates.
I called Donna. I came on breezy and brazen. Those panty printouts perturb me. Please let me look.
Donna bought it. I’m going out—I’ll put the printouts on my doorstep. Thanks, Rick—you rock.
I hit Holmby Hills. I picked up the printouts. I chugged back to Chino Hills. I put on some righteous Rachmaninoff—Rick and Donna, you Rach.
The Opus 32 Preludes—preternaturally precious and priapic. Sex seldom seen/lilting loss/heavy heartbreak—the Rick-loves-Donna précis.
I studied the printouts. Bim—silly shit. Bam—similar shit. Bip—sent from West L.A. libraries. Call it cold: silly and similar shit sent by the same sender.
Let’s seek a second opinion.
I called Dave Slatkin. Dave said, Sure—let’s see the shit. I’m busy right now. I’m going out to Bel-Air, to sit in on a hot-prowl stakeout.
The hot-prowl guy is lunar-phased—I know it. His last vic caught two trank darts. He almost died. The geek will kill sooner or later.
I stressed my printouts—Donna danger and pervo potential. A Freaky Freddy in the Panty Pantheon. A Sick Sidney and a morbid masturbator.
Dave laughed me off. Yeah, I’ll read the shit. Find me on the stakeout. And get real, Rhino—you’re just Donna-diddled right now.
Ouch—
I started to hang up. Dave said, Oh, and call Chief Tierney’s office—he’s got an errand for you.
I hung up. I relived the call and re-ouched. Dave Slatkin slams me. Dave instigates my inventory. Be real, Rhino Rick. You’re Donna-diddled. You’re a Donna doofus and a Donna dunce. You Donna-dallied in 1983. You’re a Donna determinist. You’re Donnafied and Donnafried behind the hellbound heat and monster meshugas of that moment.
Yeah, and it’s solemnly sad—but it’s so fucking goooooooooood.
I propped up the printouts. I underscored ugly outtakes. Dig the pandemic pantyphile:
“Dear Donna: I’m a handsome & well-hung collector of women’s undergarments, which I catalog & keep behind glass at my bachelor pad in Malibu. Would you e-mail me about the availability of such items & how much they would cost?”
“Dear Donna: I would like to purchase your panties to fill out my collection, but I can’t do it unless you answer my e-mails, which so far you haven’t done. Are you too busy to connect with your fans, or are you just terminally stuck up?”
“Dear Bitch: You’ve got a last chance to redeem yourself by selling me your panties at discount prices. Don’t hesitate! Do it today!”
I skimmed skanky cybernotes. Nasty nuggets stood out:
“I think it’s twisted that you’ve never married. Are you some kind of muff muncher or rug merchant?”
“I know you’ve been thru lots of men. Who was the biggest & the best?”
“I want to douse your panties with Chanel #5 & take them to school with me, because they remind me of my mom.”
Maybe one deadly Donnaphobe. Maybe a kook kavalcade. Maybe one passive putz.
I got out my notepad. I wrote:
“Panty man—frustration/violence of language escalating. Does he know of panty-selling-actress precedents? Megan More told Donna she sold her stuff.”
?????—let’s seek a second opinion. Brace Brandon Marti— Tim’s tumescent teen.
I buzzed Tim’s pad. Brandon picked up.
“Uh, yeah?”
“It’s me, kid.”
“Oh, hi, Uncle Rhino.”
I cleared my throat. “I need help with something. I know you’re a guy in the know.”
Brandon said, “Uh, sure. What do you . . .?”
“I’ll talk turkey, kid. You’re red-blooded, but you’ve got no real outlet, if you catch my drift. You’ve got to know where to find all the porno babes on the Internet. You know, their Web sites.”
The little lech laffed. “My dad said you had this martyr thing going. He said you couldn’t see past this actress chick who did you, like twenty years ago.”
Double-aught ouch.
“Brandon, come—”
“Well, there’s Jenna Jamison, and Seka, and Summer Storm, and Porsche Poon, and . . . shit, I don’t know . . . mostly they’re just . . . chicks.”
Sterile stuff. Deep-down depressive. Downscale Donnaphobia and teenage ennui.
“Thanks, Brandon. You were a big help.”
“You’re welcome. Oh, and my dad just handed me a note. It says, ‘Get a life.’ ”
I WALKED WEB SITES. I juked Jenna Jamison. I sought Summer Storm and Seka. I popped Porsche Poon’s page.
Skin pix and news notes. Pathetic fan postings. No panties for sale.
Let’s move mainstream. Let’s mine movie stars.
I Web-walked. I hopped home pages. I hit salty Sandy Bullock and nasty Nicole K. Dig: pathetic postings and news notes. No panties for sale.
I moved my mouse. I hit Megan More—the “official” Web site.
Panties proffered—$29.95 per. News notes. Pathetic postings— whoa, wait, what’s this?
The pathetic poster: Big Bob at bigbob.com. Paragraphs of pathos, then this:
I tapped into this guy Jack Jen-kin’s website. He offered this so-called ‘Master’s Thesis’ on Megan, for sale at $16.95. I read it, and it’s nothing but a bunch of blasphemous lies. I urge all Megan fans to boycott this clown.
I boycotted Big Bob’s boycott. I moved my mouse. I jumped Jack Jen-kin’s Web site. I got this:
The Transformation of Megan More, 168PP, $16.95. The Truth About the Soft-Core Sensation. Visa, MC, Amex, Discover: Punch in number & exp. date after cue. Prepaid money-order purchases to: Jack Jen-kin, 1284 S. Berendo #14, L.A. 90018.