Destination: Morgue!: L.A. Tales

by James Ellroy

  I said, “How did Jack get his background shit on you? You know, the stuff he put in his thesis.”

  Megan simpered. Silk tones—some thorough throat surgeon’s art.

  “He was friends with one of the doctors in Stockholm. The doctor spilled everything he knew on me. All the stuff I told my shrink pre-op, everything.”

  Donna drilled the he-she. Ouch—those hazel eyes hurt.

  “You hit on me. I shut you down, and I’ve got a hunch this ties in to your ‘revenge.’ ”

  “It does, dearie. I made up my mind to screw those silly studio savages by beating them down at the box office. I was going to fuck every name actress in the business. You know, performers are deeply decentered, and they’ll all fuck men, women, and beasts. You see, I’m really straight. I looooove women, which is why I hit on you. That sixteen-inch shlong of mine was a terrible burden. It was why I turned lez. I wanted to love women woman to woman.” I whooped. Woman to woman—whoa! Donna did a double-take and slid slack-jawed.

  The succubus went sulky. She pouted, poofter-style.

  “So I decided to fuck all these actresses, and Gary Getchell was going to film it, and I was going to threaten to show the films publicly, and blackmail the studio boys. ‘Here’s your biggest stars jungled up with a soft-core porno queen. How do you think that will affect your box office in Topeka and Des Moines?’ ”

  Donna said, “Let me guess. You’ve got a film of you fucking Linus Lauter. It’s your wedge against those cops.”

  Megan patted a purple purse. “I’ve got the cassette right here. You’re no dummy, Donna dear.”

  I brought out my beavertail. I sap-slapped my legs. The business end flopped phallic-like. Donna doe-eyed dug on it.

  I said, “Where does Gary G. keep his dirt files?”

  Megan said, “I don’t know.”

  Donna said, “You must hate me.”

  Megan coughed into a hankie. Purloined pubic hairs spun in her spit.

  “No, darling. I looooove you.”

  “Are you this ‘avenging angel’ that Gary Getchell told Rick about?”

  “No, no, no. I loooooove you. But Gary was talking up this ‘bounty’ on you. He said he knew a psycho who had ‘this big Donna Donahue plan.’ Really, that’s all he said, and I’d never hurt you.”

  Annihilating angels. Film fucks and lip-locked lezzies. Bounty-bait Donna. Details dug at me.

  Looks lanced the room. Megan to Donna to—

  The door cracked and crashed. The door hooked off its hinges. Bill Berchem and Bob Mosher barged in.

  Looks lashed the room. Eyeballs socked in their sockets. Bad Bill and Big Bob to Donna, Megan, me.

  Megan pulled her purse. The suddenness startled and stunned. Three guns hopped off holsters: Berchem, Mosher, me.

  Donna ducked. Shades of ’83—Donna dove and dug out my ankle piece.

  Berchem blasted Megan. Bam—a cartridge caught her carotid. Short-range shootout/the room 12 by 12/four guns out and arcing, fuck me—

  Mosher fired. Mosher missed me. I fired back, I rang a ricochet—one bip off his bulletproof vest. Megan blew blood on her muumuu. Berchem capped her hairline-high. Her bleached blond wig sailed off by the seams.

  I fired at Berchem—four feet between us—the punk panicked and pantywaist-screamed.

  My gun jammed. A jacked round jumped from the breach. Donna rolled right. Donna got behind Berchem. Donna braced her arm on an arc light and arced a shot upwards. Berchem’s brains zinged.

  Mosher fired down. Donna ducked. I jumped in and body-blocked him. I smacked him, gouged his gun hand, and smothered his aim. He hooked his head back. His mouth went wide. He showed his teeth and bored in to bite me.

  Donna got between us. Donna tapped his teeth with a 2-inch barrel and popped him point-blank.

  His teeth shattered and shrapnelized. Bloody bridgework bristled Donna. Dental detritus dinged me.

  Check the charnel house. Three dead. Megan’s morte in her muumuu. The Narco cops are wrapped to the River Styx—finito at Donna’s feet.

  I grabbed a wall phone. I mauled my memory. I lined up Linus Lauter’s home number. I dialed it delirious. I heard a pickup click.

  I heard “Hello.” It was Linus L. I greased my greeting.

  It’s all over. Your boys bought it. They killed the Korean. You fag-fucked a he-she. It’s caught on cassette—vivid VCR shit— don’t wait for the DVD.

  I knew he’d do it. He race-mixed radical. He gender-bent for bootie. He couldn’t ignore the ignominy.

  I heard the hammer hitch.

  I heard the cylinder slip.

  I heard the muzzle roar that meant Meet Your Maker.

  I dropped the phone. Donna grabbed me. We held each other a whole half-minute. Her heart never missed a beat.

  6.

  We hid by her hearth. We fooled with the fireplace. We cranked a big blaze and upped the AC.

  Then to now. Twenty-one years. Four fucked hours at Parker Center. Joe Tierney’s tantrum. Two cops shot dead. Linus Lauter’s suicide—horrific hara-kiri.

  The sex-violence nexus. Official obfuscation. The Berchem– Mosher–Megan More “suicide pact.” Witnesses bought and bullied at Ashanti Ashram. Leotis Lauter’s precise press release:

  The LAPD did my dad in. Ditto Bill Berchem and Bob Mosher. They racked up their relatives—don’t rag the suicide scenario, don’t risk your pension pack.

  The media—quelled by quid pro quo. Try to trust Tierney— he’ll pay you back.

  The sex-violence nexus. Say sí to sex, violence vividly yes.

  The nexus nabbed us new. The charnel house challenged us. It was our final fait accompli.

  We laid logs in the fireplace. Reggie Ridgeback reclined nearby. His amber eyes orbited our way.

  Cashmere cushions and comforter. A tantalizing temperature. Lit logs and a glorious glow.

  My brave bride again. Another cross-fire christening. Our moment to memorize and test time with.

  We climbed from our clothes. Embers eddied and shot shadows across us. My memory guided me. I called up every curve and surface and kissed her there.

  Then to now naked. Curves and constellations. The memory map of her spark points, now spin with her sighs.

  We traded curve caresses and kisses. Flame shadows shifted and showed us where to kiss this and that. It felt timeless merged with urgent, imperative and aimless, make me arch and sigh, breathe my breaths and do that.

  The hearth heat made us glisten. We tasted sweet swirls of sweat. Our kisses went right there. Her taste was her taste all fresh and twenty years back. I wanted to stay there and breathe it and live it. She made me stop. She kissed me there and made me move inside.

  It was timeless merged with urgent, all imperative-momentous, this nexus NOW harnessed hot. The hearth heat held us. The flames died and darkened. I kissed sweat from her hazel eyes as new memory mapped.

  DAWN. The fire fizzled out and fanned to enduring embers. Reggie wrapped between us.

  Donna slept on. Her head rested on Reggie’s ridge. I watched her veins vibrate. I counted the cadence of her heartbeat. I saw her breasts bracing brown fur.

  I watched. I wondered how much time she’d give me. Hearth heat and homicide held us. Hold for more horror. Hope for more heat to hold us—or pray for prosaic times to teach us to live sans intrigue.

  Donna slept. I watched my witch woman and wondered. My righteous right brain broiled. I got crisp and creative. I recultivated connections.

  Megan More—no “avenging angel.” Megan More’s ripe-panty racket. Donna’s panty pursuer. Library love-hate e-mails, all anonymous. Megan More: Gary Getchell’s panty pal. Megan, vile-verbatim: “Gary was talking up this ‘bounty’ on you. He said he knew a psycho who had ‘this big Donna Donahue plan.’ ”

  Connections cultivated. Cut to:

  The Hot-Prowl Hoagy. His niggardly nominal thefts. His hot-prowl hits. Their prime proximity—to Bel-Air and L.A. Country Clubs.

  Dave Slatkin said he’
s ripe for rape. Donna’s Holmby Hills house—hard by L.A. CC. Gary Getchell: Bel-Air caddy. The hot-prowl homicide—hard by Bel-Air CC. Dirt on the hot-prowl hump’s shoes.

  I called Dave. I watched Donna and whispered. The dirt, Dave—did the lab latch on to a make?

  Yeah. Dig—the dirt came from Bel-Air Country Club. Hot-Prowl Herb ex-caped on foot.

  Cold-call it: the hot-prowl harridan’s a caddy. It’s a tantalizing target obfuscation. He’s only out to get Donna D.

  He’s Donna-diddled and Donna-driven and Donna-determined. He’s a Donna doofus and a Donna dunce, just like me. He’s me made malignant. He’s my Donna doppelgänger.

  I woke Donna up. I cued her into my connections. She mentioned her “on-and-off” fan notes. They ladled love-hate. “He loved it when I showed skin, he hated it when I showed skin. He’s a skin sicko.”

  The old notes, the new e-mail notes. The pathetic panty requests. One sender or two?

  Some note nexus—maybe.

  Donna dug out the old notes. Donna explained the dates.

  They ran to the run of Biloxi Beach—her boffo ’80s show. They ran out and restarted per her feature film work. The notes flew and flurried. A gulf-wide gap stretched. Then the panty-putz e-mails began.

  Donna offered up the old notes. She pack-rat-possessed them still. I read racy and repetitive text. Hot-prowl references repeated.

  “I want to get inside the house of your love.”

  “I want to steal inside your secret places.”

  “I can get inside anyplace. I’ve done it. I killed a girl once, long ago.”

  Sixteen sick notes. Bland block printing. Scary and skin-obsessed. One note nexus nabbed me bad. The return address— charted as Chino Prison. The addressee pseudonymed as Sal Skinman. Sad sentiments—Donna dunned for love—scary skin ruminations. Say he’s censor-scared. Bet your booty he’s in for burglary.

  Scary skin-talk overall. “I killed a girl once”—good grief.

  Donna watched me nail notes. Donna was nexus-nonplussed. Donna danced on my dime now. Homicide and hearth-hunger. Donna could handle herself.

  I cruised to my car. I brought back my evidence kit. I compared the evil e-mails to the skin-scary notes. I tapped textual styles. I saw simple similarities. The same sender—maybe, maybe not.

  I forged on forensic. I fingerprinted Donna. I tipped her tips on print paper. I noodled out some ninhydrin. I sprayed the sixteen sick notes. I latched up two latent prints.

  I culled comparison points. I caught ten per print. I compared points to Donna’s. Bingo—no repeated ridges, no similar swirls.

  His prints—the skin man’s and probable hot-prowl hyena’s. Call it collusive. Call it combined-case combustion. Rick loves Donna. Donna loves Rick. It’s our brave new world brought on back.

  WE POPPED to Parker Center. We briefed Dave and Tim. We broiled to bring Hot-Prowl Hymie down. We clamored for climactic closure.

  Dave took the prints. He promised to feed them to the Fed system fast. We caught a commotion down the corridor.

  There’s Leotis Lauter. He’s one jacked-up jungle bunny. He’s jumping all over Joe Tierney. The mad mick’s mollifying Mrs. Linus Lauter. She’s Aunt Jemima-ish. She’s jumping too.

  There’s Cal Eggers. He’s a newly coined captain. He’s laying the law to Leotis. You’re a dope dealer. You’re indictment-indebted. We’re dead deep in suicides—get your blasphemous black ass the fuck out of here.

  I ducked into an empty office. Donna ducked with me. I called Deputy D.A. Daisy Delgado and cataloged our combined case. I asked for grand jury subpoenas. Let’s detain degenerate caddies. Let’s call in all caddies from Bel-Air and L.A. CCs.

  Daisy agreed. Daisy promised prompt paper—two hours tops. Tim tapped me. I’ve got that box of Gorman paperwork—you can kill time with that.

  Tim brought a big box up. Donna delved in. She saw poignant portraits—Stephanie vivid and vibrant, alight and alive at fifteen. Tears took her over—sa chère Stephanie.

  I pulled old paper. I found field reports. I went through wienie waggers whipped and reluctantly released. I saw pud pounders and parolees pounced on. I saw rape-os rounded up. I saw child molesters charged with tangential crimes. I saw bisexual brunsers bruised and ripped from rubber-hose techniques. I saw—whoa, whoa, whoa—wait.

  The date: 9/12/65. One innocuous and innocent piece of paper.

  Field report. Reinterview. Stephanie’s dad states:

  It’s late 7/65. One week before my daughter’s death. I had some yard work done. I hired Hillcrest caddies.

  Hillcrest—hard by Hillsboro and Sawyer. Hillcrest—one hop to L.A. and Bel-Air CCs. One follow-up field report. Four caddy names caught. Four rap sheets run. Four Mickey Mouse misdemeanants made.

  Alan Aadland, DOB 3/4/46. One reefer roust. One joyride job.

  Richard Donatich, DOB 8/19/44. Popped for Peeping Tom. Caught cunnilingizing his sister.

  Harvey “Huck” Horan, DOB 12/16/40. Boocoo booze busts.

  Sol “Wino” Weinberger, DOB 6/2/37. Obscene phone-call fuck, ladies’ room loiterer, boss barbiturate bandido.

  I got goose bumps. My hackles hacked. I showed the shit to Donna. She got the shakes, too.

  The scurvy skin man’s note. “I killed a girl once, long ago.” The current hot-prowl hoo-ha. The country-club cacophony. A time machine torqued back to this.

  I ripped through reports. Nothing juked me. No fucking follow-ups. No exonerations expressed.

  The cops might have polled the punks and aligned alibis. The cops might have polygraphed or pounded them punklike. It dangled like a dead end. Still, it stung me.

  Daisy Delgado called. The subpoenas—serviced and servable now. Nice—but that sting still stung me. I called Hillcrest CC. I got the caddy shack. The caddy master said he went waaaay back. I named my names. He right-on responded.

  Aadland—AIDS-dead—he freelanced as a fruit hustler. Donatich—dead from Dilaudid-coke combos. Horan—hit by a bus on Beverly Boulevard. “Wino”—winding up his caddy career at beautiful Bel-Air CC.

  Caddies.

  Culminations/coincidence/connections—

  Dave walked in. “The Feds kicked back on your prints. The guy’s a 67-year-old white male. His name’s Solomon Weinberger.”

  Heaven hurled itself on me. Donna hugged me hard. Hail the hot-prowl man with Hush-Hush hosannahs!

  Wino for Stephanie—thirty-nine years later.

  7.

  Bel-Air bid us. We winged to the Wino Weinberger Walpurgisnacht.

  Tim toted a shotgun. I brought my Browning .9 and a big Beretta. Donna brought brains and a wild will to whip Wino with.

  Dave did backup. He ripped R&I and glommed a Wino mug shot. He made up a four-man mug card—the sixty-plus Wino and four similar sixtyish cops. The plan: Work the West L.A. libraries. Engage an e-mail alert. Track the panty postulant. Confirm Wino as the panty punk and hot-prowl hump.

  We ran up Roscomere. We bombed up Bellagio. We pulled into the club parking lot. We tripped into a traffic jam—a cop-car kaleidoscope.

  Black-and-whites, unmarkeds, coroner’s canoes—all snared up snout to snout.

  We ran. We cut through the caddy shack. We caught the cart cottage. We gonifed a golf cart and coursed out on the course. We followed fleet-foot figures. We traipsed after truck tracks. We hit a big barnlike maintenance shack.

  Bluesuits blocked the entrance. I badged them and bullied us through. I saw Bill Dumais, West L.A. dicks. I saw a starched stiff and junkyard Jesus.

  It’s Gary Getchell. He’s crucifix-crisp. He’s stiff on a stack of manure sacks.

  He’s nicked with neck notches—tough torture cuts. He’s blood-blistered and mutilated maroon. He’s wearing golf togs. He’s pincushion-pricked with two dozen trank darts.

  Dumais saw Tim and me. Golfers and gofers and coroner’s cats saw Donna. They dug her more than the dead man. They dunned her for autographs.

  Dumais dipped over. The big barn vibrated with voice
overlap. I orbed outside. I saw fractious factions fixated on the action inside.

  Eyes right—there’s two Narco cops. Eyes left—there’s Captain Cal Eggers. Loop left again—there’s Leotis Lauter. He’s looking cooncerned and coontemptuous. He’s boogie bodyguarded. He’s couched with four cool coon commandos.

  Dumais said, “It looks like we’ve got two scenarios. The torture shit looks a couple of days old, but the coroner says he caught the trank shots within the past few hours. The maintenance boss says Getchell hung out and wrote his scandal shit here. I figure the killer found him alone, darted him, and walked off the course unseen.”

  Tim walked over. “You think he was tortured for file information?”

  Dumais looked around. Eyes right—Narco cops. Eyes left— Leotis and his coonvocation.

  “I figure it’s Leotis or some rogue Narco guys, and they’re both pissed off at that shit at the ashram and Linus’s suicide.”

  Tim said, “They tortured Getchell for file skinny, before they learned that Linus offed himself.”

  I agreed. Dumais agreed. I tiptoed tall. I eyeball-orbed. Caddies/connections/convergence. Where’s the Wino man?

  The crowd crammed up to the barn. Bluesuits barricaded them out. Donna signed autographs. I saw a cat with a “Caddy Master” name tag. I cornered him.

  He said, “Some scene, huh?”

  I said, “Where’s Wino Weinberger? We’re old friends.”

  The caddy master cackled. “Try Skid Row. I heard Wino’s on a toot down there.”

  Autograph hounds hurtled by—six blissful bluesuits. Their autographed field forms read, “Brave new fucking world again— Love, Donna D.”

  WINO:

  Let’s find him. Let’s fuck him. Let’s stomp him for Stephanie.

  Let’s scour Skid Row.

  The caddy master kicked loose his address: The Viceroy Hotel, East 5th Street. It was skanky and scummy and scurvy down there. We slipped east and slid into slumland.

  Sidewalk cities. Hophead Hoovervilles. Crackheads camped out in cardboard-box billets. Loonies looped on Listerine. Wiggling wineheads and jake-legged juicers made mad by Muscatel.

  We hit the hotel. The lobby was lice-laced linoleum. Wine stains and bloodstains blistered the cracks. Palsied pensioners toked Tokay shored in short-dog bottles. We shook them down. They jitter-jumped and Tokay-toked and palsy-punked-out. They gave up Wino—room 218.