by James Ellroy
“Mr. Otash, the job is yours.”
I said, “The bite is fifty grand a year, and expenses. My operating costs will go at least double that.”
Now, he’s green at the gills. Now, he knows there’s No Exit. It’s a fabulous fait accompli.
“Yes, Mr. Otash. We have a deal.”
We shook hands. We jacked gin and vermouth. Bondage Bob said, “Jean-Paul Sartre’s a pal of mine. He’ll love The Stacked and the Hung.”
That talking bug rocked across the rug and waved at me. I swear this is true.
* * *
—
Jimmy timed the fuck. It ran 1:46. Jack Kennedy and Ingrid Bergman banged the beast with two backs.
Pillow patter tapped the tape. Jack said, “Aaaaah, that was good.” Ingrid said, “Vell, for vun of us, perhaps.”
I roared. Jimmy howled. The market was 3:00 a.m. dead. We gargled Old Crow.
Jimmy said, “We wrapped GE Theater. I invited Ronnie Reagan to the premiere.”
I said, “He hates the Reds. I’ll hit him up for some snitch-outs.”
The tape groaned and ground down to squelch. Jimmy turned it off. I looked down at the floor. A dippy denizen bought this month’s Confidential.
Jimmy said, “When I’m famous, keep me out of the magazine.”
I said, “When you’re in it, you’ll know you’ve arrived.”
* * *
—
My first ops check arrived. I retained Bernie “the Bug King” Spindel. We spent a week whipping wires to wainscoting and laying mike mounts into mattresses. I bribed hotel honchos up the yammering ying-yang. We drilled, bored, spackled, threaded, planted, and wired all the high-end hotels. Regular retainers would result in records of sicko celebs sacking up in those rooms. Bondage Bob had bountiful bucks. We wire-whipped full-time listening posts at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Hotel Bel-Air, the Beverly Wilshire, the Miramar, the Biltmore, the downtown Statler. A Biltmore bellboy tipped us, right off. Gary Cooper and a jailbait jill jumped into that bugged bedroom. BAM!!!—our system socks in sync. Bedsprings bounce, voices vibrate, mikes pick up tattle text and lay it to the listening post. BAM!!!—my Marine Corps mastiff retrieves the tape. BAM!!!—the babe is sixteen and a Belmont High coed. Coop says, “You’re built, honey. Tell me your name again.” The girl gasps, “I’ve always loved your pictures, Mr. Cooper. And, wow, you’re really big.”
The dirt. The dish. The scandal skank. The lewd libels revealed as real. It all came to me and to Confidential. Freddy O.’s in unstoppable ascent.
Jimmy cut his movie and dubbed in a sizzling sound track. The proud premiere was the L.A. Moment of Fall ’53. I served pizza, booze, and pills from a felonious pharmacy. My pad was packed with movie machers and Marines, stupid starlets, stars, and studs. Dig: Liz, Joi, Ward Wardell, Race Rockwell, Donkey Don Eversall. Ronnie Reagan, Harry Fremont, Arthur Crowley, Bondage Bob, and Jean-Paul Sartre—existentially seeking the scene. A six-foot-six drag queen, Rock Hudson, ex–U.S. Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas. Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, nodding on Big “H.”
It’s the egalitarian epicenter of postwar America. It’s a colossal convergence of the gilded and gorgeous, the defiled and demented, the lurid and the low-down. This seedy summit set the tone for the frazzled and fractured frisson that is our nation today.
I dimmed the lights. Race Rockwell ran the projector. The sound track hit: Bartók, Beethoven, bebop by way of Bird. There’s the opening titles: The Stacked and the Hung, starring Donkey Don Eversall and June Christy. Photographed, edited, produced, and directed by James Dean.
The applause ran apoplectic. There’s the first shot. It’s a Hollyweird motel room. It’s a through-a-wall-peek peep at you know what.
June Christy enters the room and drops her purse on the bed. She looks apprehensive. She lights a cigarette, she checks her watch, she taps her toes and paces. It’s soundless cinema. The camera stays static—the lens is lashed to that peek.
June hears something. She smiles, she walks offscreen, she walks back on with Donkey Don. Donkey Don winks at the wall peek. He’s in on it. June sits on the bed. Donkey Don whips it out and wags it. My pad shakes and shimmies. There’s gasps, wolf whistles, shrill shrieks.
I looked around for Jimmy. June devoured Donkey Don, tonsil-deep. Where’s Jimmy? Fuck—he’s jacking off by the pizza buffet!!!
* * *
—
’53 to ’54. My mauve-and-pink skies. Sales-graph lines in escalation. Confidential hits a million a month. Confidential makes two million in rabid record time.
It’s all ME. I’m awash in the sicko secrets I’ve cruelly craved my whole life. I’ve got L.A. hot-wired. My city teems with tattle tipsters on my payroll. Hotel rooms are hot-sheet hives hooked up to my headset. I know everything sinful, sex-soiled, deeply dirty, and religiously wrong. It’s wrong, it’s real, and it’s MINE.
My Marines lived in listening posts. They caught Corrine Calvet cavorting with a car-park cat at the Crescendo. They caught Paul Robeson, ripped to the gills at a Red rally. They caught Jumping Johnnie Ray again. I verified all of it and fed it to Confidential. Gary Cooper and Miss Belmont High? Quashed for ten grand.
’53 to ’54. A-bomb parties on Liz Taylor’s rooftop. Cavalcades of color against the dim dawn. The camaraderie and opportunity. The sense that this march of magnificent moments would never stop.
Sales graphs. Confidential covers. Dipsos, nymphos, junkies, and Commies, exposed. That cover I regret, that ball I dropped, that malignant moment. That page in Purgatory as I pause my pen.
It’s January 16, 1954. I’m at my pad. I’m booking a threeski for the Landing Strip. I quashed a story on Marilyn Monroe’s Mexican marriage. Marilyn grovels, grateful. She knows a sapphic sister with a sometimes yen for men.
The phone rang. I picked up. Arthur Crowley said, “There’s trouble, Freddy.”
I said, “Hit me.”
“I got a tip. Johnnie Ray’s been to a libel lawyer, and he’s suing the magazine. I know that you verified the story, but he’s going forward anyway. I strongly suggest that you nip this in the bud.”
“Men’s Room Mishegas: Jittery Johnnie Strikes Again.” I verified the story. Confidential ran it. This was untold grief.
“My Marines are on maneuvers, Art. There’s no one to handle it.”
“You handle it, Freddy. Take care of it, before that tip gets back to Bob Harrison.”
I hung up. My nerves were nuked. I took three quick pops of Old Crow. Joi was tight with Johnnie. They girl-talked regular. I liked Johnnie. Jimmy screened The Stacked and the Hung for him, personally.
I dropped three yellow jackets and obliterated the day. I woke up at midnight. Johnnie always hit Googie’s after his closing set. He always parked in the same spot.
I walked over. I recall spring heat and a brisk breeze. I lounged on Johnnie’s Packard Caribbean. Johnnie bopped out at 1:15.
He saw me. He got the gestalt. He said, “Hi, Freddy.”
I said, “Don’t make me, kid. I’ll keep you out from now on, but you’ve got to stop it here.”
Johnnie said, “You’re a parasite, Freddy. You feed off the weak. I’m not backing off. I don’t see any of your goons around, so you’ll have to do it yourself.”
I said, “Let it go, Johnnie. You can’t win this one.”
“You’re the weak one, Freddy. Joi told me you cry out for your mother in your sleep.”
I trembled. “One more time, Johnnie. No lawsuit. Do this for me, and the magazine will never come near you again.”
Johnnie spit on my shoes. “You’re a mama’s boy, Freddy. Joi told me you fucked a tranny, which makes you more queer than me.”
I saw red and black-red. I hit him. My signet ring slashed his cheek. He went down on his knees. I picked him up and hurled him against his car. I heard bones crack and
teeth shear. The bumper ledge gouged his head. I kicked him and tore a chunk of his scalp free.
He said, “Okay, okay, okay.”
I said, “I’m sorry, kid.”
Johnnie spit blood. Johnnie spit teeth and gum flaps. He shot a big fuck-you finger my way.
* * *
—
The market was 2:00 a.m. deadsville. Jimmy and I quaffed Old Crow. We stood by the mirror and gassed at the ghoul show. I was spritzed with Johnnie Ray’s blood.
Jimmy said, “I’m up for the lead in East of Eden. Elia Kazan’s waffling. It could go either way.”
I said, “I’ll lean on Kazan. He’s susceptible. There’s some pinkos he didn’t rat to HUAC.”
Jimmy gazed down at the aisles. My hands hurt. I cracked my signet ring. My shirt cuffs were soaked red.
The Legions of the Lost. They’re down there. They’re damning me. They’re hexing me to Hell. They’re my comrades in chaos. They’re saying You’re One of Us.
“Jimmy, do you know why you’re a freak?”
“I don’t know, Freddy. Do you know why you are?”
I said, “I don’t know, but sometimes it all gets to me.”
CELL 2607
Penance Penitentiary
Reckless-Wrecker-of-Lives Block
Pervert Purgatory
8/25/2020
I’m balefully back. It’s time for my next contaminated confession. I’m still stagnantly stuck in the Hell Adjacent Hilton and yammeringly yearn for a heavenly reprieve. I’m still stuck with the fucked-up and failing body I had when I crapped out, back in ’92. It’s still confession/repentence/atonement. It still comes down to that. Here’s the draconian drill:
I’ll repugnantly reprise some shit I pulled in phantasmagoric ’54. I’ll be freewheeling Fred Otash at thirty-two. ’54 was a ring-a-ding-ding year. I’m going to diiiiiiiig going back.
So, succumb to the seditious soul of a scandal-rag scoundrel—because wicked words on paper are pop-pop-popping your way.
Freaky Freddy O. rides again.
ATOP MATTRESS JACK KENNEDY’S BOSS BUNGALOW AT THE BEVERLY HILLS HOTEL
2/14/54
It’s a wind-whipped winter nite. It’s cloudless clear all the way to noxious Nevada. Uncle Sambo is detonating a payload-packed A-bomb in some deserted desert burg. We’re here to grok, groove, flip, flash, and gas on the show.
We’ve got a ripe rooftop perch. I’m here at Bondage Bob Harrison’s behest. Confidential’s running a farkakte feature on radioactive waste as a dick-enlargement bonanza. Bob’s got a mad chemist brother. He’s calling his priapic product “Megaton Man.”
We’re here. That means me and my Marine Corps mastiffs: Race Rockwell and Ward Wardell. Mattress Jack has slipped his gilded guests binoculars and Hyannis Port toggle coats. My cool contingent carries burglars’ tools and comes with B and E know-how. The plan: burglarize Senator Jack’s bungalow in the wiggy wake of the blast.
Dig the guest list. There’s Jack the K. and insolent Ingrid Bergman. There’s Bob Mitchum and Juicy Jane Russell. There’s Tarzan-toned Lex Barker and liquor-looped Lana Turner. Jimmy Dean’s on my guest card. He’s still peddling snapshots of Marlon Brando with a dick in his mouth. Jimmy’s got director Gadge Kazan in tow. He’s this close to snagging the top role in East of Eden. Gadge is a maladroit midget. His flicks send me somnambulistic. He ratted some Comintern cads to HUAC and earned Confidential’s fevered fealty. He snitches recidivistic Reds to Bondage Bob, subversively sub rosa.
Senator Jack served rum drinks topped with floating hashish cubes. I opted for the Benzedrine-spiked reefers. Jack Baby loves my larcenous Lebanese ass. I flew a bitching bevy of call girls down to Acapulco last year. They trashed Jack’s paparazzi-pounced honeymoon and made Jackie jump into my bed. Jack’s a c’est la vie, Daddy-O, noblesse oblige sort of guy. Jackie was grovelingly grateful.
A portable radio announced the countdown. Waiters stood by with postblast drinks and hors d’oeuvres. A doomsday disc jockey intoned: “ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—zero.”
Bombs Away, Motherfuckers!!!!!
A magnificent mushroom cloud morphed into mauve and pink. Man, what a suck-your-soul sight!!! My balls contracted. My boys and I hopped off the roof, down to ground level. Ground zero popped pink particles high in the sky. The gilded gang applauded and roared.
* * *
—
We deviously ditched the party. None of the bomb babies saw us. Jack’s bungalow was right there, off the roof. I demobilized the door lock with a celluloid strip. We locked the door behind us and worked with pocket penlights. Chop, chop—fuckers. I’m giving us eight minutes, tops.
Our top target was address books. They were stashed in handbags and overcoats discarded for Jack’s toggle togs. It’s a scandal-rag caper. I’m out to notch names/numbers/addresses. The lurid love shacks of the heavy-hung and hard up. Nubile names and fuck-struck fone numbers. Noxious names and homo-hideout addresses. Non sequitur names that might mandate bracing break-ins themselves.
It was all for Confidential. Knowledge is power. You naïve nudniks know that. My misanthropic motive? A demonic desire to know the world’s secret shit and hoard said shit for my personal titillation and shakedown potential.
The clock’s ticking. We crisscrossed the crib. Ward and Race went for all the boss booty. Ooooohhh—overcoats draped on hotel-suite chairs, high-line handbags galore. My job was forensic frame-up. I secretly secured three fingerprint cards from Beverly Hills PD Burglary.
Dig: three hot-prowl/rape-o/459 men. Bad lads, already ID’d. At large for six Beverly Hills jobs. Forced oral cop/straight rape/thirty-four thou in stolen furs and jewels.
It gets wicked worse. There’s a Little Lindbergh Law kidnap. She’s a Beverly High cheerleader. There’s multiple motel-room rapes before she’s cut loose. The BHPD wanted these fucked-up fiends, baaaaaaaaad. Heh, heh—I made Scotch-taped transparencies of the three print cards. George Collier Akin, Durwood N. M. I. Brown, Richard “Rattlesnake” Dulange. Fred O. judge-and-juries a frame job on YOU.
I got out my print cards. I laid the treated transparency tape across three thumb and full-fingerprint spreads. I pulled off my single-digit tapes. I laid prints on chair backs, waist-high wainscoting, touch-and-grab bedroom planes.
J’accuse—Akin, Brown, and Dulange—you were here. You robbed Senator Jack Kennedy’s hotel suite. You done been FRAMED.
Ward and Race dumped furs and address books. They stacked them in Senator Jack’s ostrich-skin suitcase. We were six minutes in. I saved the best booty for last.
Mattress Jack was a hellacious hophead. He had legal scripts from half the pharmacists in L.A. I made for the bathroom and Jack’s mad medicine chest. Oh yeah—Dilaudid, Dexedrine, Dolophine sulfate. Ooooohhh—the nifty new Nembutal suppositories!!!
Jack collected lissome locks of women’s pubic hair. He traveled with them and kept them in unscented sachets. I found his stash in an attaché case under the bed. They were lewdly labeled. I’ve always gassed on La Bergman and Anna Magnani. I left the attaché behind. I took two love-lashed sniffs on my way out the door.
* * *
—
Ward and Race left me the address books. Bomb blasts and burglary—the total take vibed ten g’s. Don Wexler knew a fence. We’d lay off the furs soonsville. We split the wallet cash three ways.
I popped two of Jack’s delectable dexies and leveled the load with a one-grain Dilaudid. I drove to Googie’s to log tattle tips from the late-nite legions who lingered there.
Tipsters crept up and crowded my table. Here’s baritone sax Gerry Mulligan. He lays out alto sax Art Pepper’s yen for lush high school chicks. Pepper pounded his pud at the sight of pom-pom-girl garb. He haunted Hollywood High and Hami High and left drool stains on the football field bleachers.
Comme ci,
comme ça. I laid twenty clams on Gerry. He amscrayed to score some Big “H.”
Billy Eckstine dropped by to schmooze. The mellifluous Mr. B. was mad for miscegenation. He played all the colored clubs on 46th and Central. He loved Confidential and lauded its sheer linguistic flair. He called it the “scatterbrained scat of white men working hard to be hip.” Billy was right. I told him I’d insert the quote in the next issue. Billy went on to coonfide his own recent affairs. And, Freddy, dig—all these bints want to see themselves linked to me in Confidential.
“All these bints.” As in Ava Gardner, Bette Davis, ex–U.S. Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas. Lezbo basketball player Joan “Stretch” Perkins—hiding her secret yen for men from her sapphic sisters on the USC team. Plus the Misty June Christie, Anita O’Day, four boss bitches on work furlough from Tehachapi, and smack-back Chet Baker’s willowy white wife.
I laid two yards on Billy. He showed me a pic of Stretch Perkins. She’s sinking a loooooong hook shot against UCLA. I emitted low growls. Stretch ran six-six and 190. Billy grokked my Landing Strip antics. He affirmed that Stretch dug threeskies. He said he’d set Joi and me up with her.
Low growls and bilious boredom. Billy bopped off. Jilted lovers bopped up. They ratted out their cheating wives and hubbies as the Black Dahlia killer. The Dahlia was stale bread. I fobbed them off with a five-spot apiece.
It was 2:00 a.m. My dope cocktail coursed through me. My thoughts tumbled and tossed. That A-bomb blast blazed behind my eyelids. I saw three big squarejohns in gray suits by the bar. They vilely vibed fuzz. I thought of William H. Parker, still running spot tails on me. I blinked, the squarejohns squiggled, they might have been A-bomb/dope fantasia.
I thought about the magazine. Sales were up 16 percent for January ’54. Shame shot through me. I thought about my thump job on Johnnie Ray. Johnnie was tight with Joi. They koffee-klatched and gal-talked. Johnnie threatened to sue Confidential. He refused to desist. I had one rancid recourse. Johnnie gave Joi the blow-by-blow. Joi was righteously repelled. She resisted my rigorous romancing and refuseniked threeskies with Liz Taylor. Maybe Stretch Perkins would loosen her libido and liberate her heart.