Widespread Panic

by James Ellroy

  March ’55: “The Wife Clark Gable Forgot.” Yawn. “The Girl in Gregory Peck’s Bathtub.” Man, it’s sacked-out soporific.

  Synagogue Sid bleated bleak and deep diminuendoed. I heard the mike-magnified cough of coins dropped in a pay phone. I kicked the volume. Nasty Nat said, “Miss Blind Item’s back—so I know we’re going to be talking Confidential magazine and the infamous Caryl Chessman case.”

  Miss Blind Item said, “Hey, Nat. What’s shaking?”

  I dug her voice. It was cool contralto and mucho Midwest.

  “Nothing but the leaves on the tree, baby.”

  “Locate me, Nat. Where did we leave off last time?”

  “Well, we did the long-range overview of Confidential, and we both commented on how atypically liberal their coverage of the Chessman case was, given that Confidential’s been a Red-baiting and race-baiting rag from jump street.”

  Nasty Nat told it true. August ’52. The cheesy Chessman piece. The mag was naïvely new then. I didn’t sign on till fall ’53.

  Miss Blind Item laffed. “Confidential’s got style, baby. You’re starting to alliterate already.”

  Nasty Nat wolf-whistled. “And you’ve got cojones, as our Mex cousins say, calling a Negro man ‘baby.’ ”

  Miss Blind Item relaffed. Phone-booth sounds went mike-magnified. There’s a match strike and exhale. She’s smoking a cigarette.

  “I’m an actress, Nat. You can always count on me to go for a provocative effect.”

  “Disc jockeys go the same route. Our sponsors here encourage it. Come on, Sultan Sam’s Sandbox and Rae’s Rugburn Room? They ain’t paying me for bland.”

  “Talk about alliteration, baby.”

  Nasty Nat said, “You ain’t Miss Blind Item, you the sexy succubus. Now, moving along, before you get me in trouble with the Klan, the Catholic Legion of Decency, and Chief Parker his own self, why don’t you drop the basic lowdown on the Chessman case on all the folks out in Radioland.”

  Miss Blind Item refed the pay phone. Dimes dipped, nickels notched down the slot.

  “It’s early ’48. Chessman’s fresh out of Folsom. He’s stealing cars and committing armed robberies. He’s utilizing a hot ’46 Ford as his rape vehicle, and he’s affixed a phony red light to it, so he can pass himself off as a policeman. Now, he’s prowling lovers’ lanes in Pasadena and up above Hollywood. He’s robbing young couples making out. On two legally affirmed occasions, he forcibly removes young women from their cars, and places them in his car. That legally constitutes kidnapping. Once they’re in his car, he sexually assaults them, which constitutes a second, specific set of felony charges. His two certified victims conclusively identified him. He was convicted at trial and sentenced to death. Much has been made of the fact that Chessman did not kill anyone. C’est la guerre, sweetie. The Little Lindbergh Law applies. Now, that evil no-goodnik has become an ace jailhouse lawyer, and he’s beaten back a slew of attempts to send him to the green room, where he most devoutly belongs. He wrote a book, which was published last year, called Cell 2455, San Quentin. In it, he fatuously asserts his innocence of the Red Light Bandit crimes and demands a redress of the entire American legal system.”

  Nasty Nat went whew! “I’m renaming you, and it ain’t ‘baby’ or ‘sweetie.’ And you ain’t really Miss Blind Item, you more the ‘Vindictive Vixen,’ which prompts me to ask you why you so het up on this case, when just about everybody I know thinks Chessman got railroaded, and these justice-minded folks I know are all doing their darnedest to make sure he don’t go to that green room.”

  Go, Nasty Nat. You snagged it on the snout. Baby, sweetie, Miss Item—why you calling in to my radio show?

  “It’s dawning on me, sugar. You got a personal stake in this whole Chessman hullabaloo. That means there’s something you haven’t told us.”

  Miss Blind Item lit a cigarette. I heard the match flare and exhale.

  “There was a third victim. She came forth and identified Chessman, but the DA chose not to have her testify at trial. The sexual assault that Chessman perpetrated against her was especially vile and vicious. Bluntly put, she went insane, and has spent the past seven years in Camarillo. The young woman was a friend of mine. We studied at a prestigious acting school in New York together, back in late ’47. That’s the long and short of it, Nat. I’m on leave from a gig in New York now, so I thought I’d make a little ruckus in my friend’s hometown, and maybe take a little drive up to Camarillo.”

  Es la verdad. I was at Hollywood Station that night. I saw Miss Third Victim walk in and collapse on the squadroom floor.

  GRIFFITH PARK

  Above the Rebel Without a Cause Shoot

  5/13/55

  Ouch!!!!!

  Outdoor surveillance. The withering worst. Dirt on my duds and briar bristles brushing my ass. I’m up some hellhole hiking trail. There’s a noxious noonday sun singeing me. I’ve got binoculars trenchantly trained on the Observatory lot.

  It’s lunchtime. The lot’s cordoned off for cast and crew, exclusive. It’s loaded with hot rod heaps and kool kat kids couched within. Robbie Molette’s hopping, heap to heap. He’s pushing pills and reefers. I’m peeping the transactions. It’s a rippling replay of last nite’s panty raid/chickie run.

  There’s Nick Ray, Nick Adams, my putz pal Jimmy Dean. The gang’s got up in street threads. There’s no Afrika Korps kouture and Sieg Heil today. There’s the three B-boys. They’re still dressed in blasphemous black. I memorized the Chevy van plate stats last nite. They came back to one Chester Alan Voldrich/white male American/age twenty-six. Dig: he bossed the nabobically noted Hollywood High Rat Pack, circa ’49. They rolled elderly fruits and Mickey Finn’d Marymount girls and got in their pants.

  That was goooooood derogatory dish. Bill Parker would crap-his-pants cream. And—per Nick Adams/real name Adamshock/DOB 7-10-31/Nanticote, Pennsylvania:

  No arrests/eight rousts on suspicion: GTA, flimflam, malicious mischief, Stat Rape, Peeping Tom, pushing pornographic snapshots. Plus: gay-bar roust sheets on Jimmy Dean and Nick Ray. Confirmed per Jimmy: Robbie Molette’s “Human Ashtray” shtick. Confirmed per Nick Ray: rousted at the Saints and Sinners Drag Ball. Whoa, Nellie—Nick was a knockout in his Red Guard empire gown. Plus: Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, popped at the “Jailbait Jamboree” at Linda’s Little Log Cabin.

  It’s all Kids Run Wild/Kids Led Astray. It summoned me to serve Bill Parker and my meshugenah magazine. It summoned me to save Jimmy D. from himself.

  I binocularized the big parking lot. Robbie pushed pills. Jimmy and Nick Adams shot craps on a Nazi-flag blanket. Jimmy called my service and left a message: “See you at Googie’s tonite.” That meant this: he didn’t make me at the panty raid/chickie run.

  I binocularized. Chester Voldrich and his B-boy buddies sniffed a glue-soaked rag. Natalie Wood basked in a bikini. She reclined on the roof of a ’52 Eldo. Nick Ray walked by and kissed her thighs on the sly.

  * * *

  —

  I walked into Hollywood Station. The desk sergeant moaned. Oh shit—it’s Freddy O.

  I walked up to the squadroom. A meter maid tagging tickets sighed. Oh shit—it’s Freddy O. The squad lieutenant saw me. He rolled his eyes and slammed his door. Oh shit—it’s Freddy O.

  I looked for Colin Forbes and Al Goossen. They bossed the Chessman case, back in ’48. There they are. They’re Hollywood Squad lifers—they’ve still got the same two desks. They’re workhorses worn weary. They’re working. The squadroom was otherwise dead.

  They saw me. They shared a look. Oh shit—it’s Freddy—

  I pulled a chair over. Forbes said, “Hi, Freddy.” Goossen said, “Freddy’s slumming. That means he wants something.”

  I said, “Chessman. The magazine wants to atone for that boo-hoo piece they published three years ago. There’s some rumors percolating on the third victim. I was h
ere when she came in, if you recall.”

  Forbes lit a cigarette. “That’s right. You called Queen of Angels when she fainted.”

  Goossen lit a cigarette. “Chessman bit her forty-three times. You’d faint, too. She went straight from Queen of Angels to Camarillo, and the last I heard, she was still in shock. Don’t put her in the magazine, Freddy. Show some class for once in your life.”

  I let it go. “Do you recall her name?”

  Forbes shook his head nein. Goossen shook his head nyet. They revealed zilch. My reptile rep rubbed them raw.

  “What’s the story on her? Can you give me that, without naming names?”

  Goossen kicked his chair back. “She was an L.A. girl, home for a visit. She was studying at the Actors Studio in New York, which is some sort of hotshot deal. So, she’s home, and she’s staying with her folks. She’s also a lezzie, which her folks know nothing about. On the night in question, she picks up a girl at Rhonda’s Rendezvous, and they parked on the shoulder at Mulholland and Beverly Glen. Chessman pulls his red light number, sees the girls making out and flips his lid. He throws the pickup girl out of the car, escorts the victim girl to his car, does what he does to her, and she makes her way here, under her own power. She never testified in court, and she didn’t need to. Judge Fricke heard the story, and that’s what convinced him that Chessman should burn. And he will burn, sooner or later, despite all his books and legal appeals, and Marlon Brando and all the other Hollywood geeks waving placards.”

  Forbes said, “Shove your ‘rumors percolating’ up your ass, Freddy. You’ve got your own perv-o agenda going on this deal, so take it with you when you walk out the door, sometime in the next five seconds.”

  * * *

  —

  Perv-o agenda.” Oh shit—it’s Freddy O. My old cop colleagues lay on the love. Freddy O’s the Shakedown King. He’s the Shaman of Shame. He’s the Pervdog of the Nite. Where’s the payoff here, Freddy? There’s got to be a payoff with you.

  Why mince words? Cherchez la femme. It’s Miss Blind Item. She’s scorched herself under my skin.

  I drove by the Ranch Market. I checked my phone slips. Jack the K. called. “I’m at the hotel. Come by at six. I’m having people up for drinks.”

  I’ll be there, Jack. Fetch, Pervdog, fetch. I’ll go by your favorite pharmacy first. I know what you like. Why mince words? I like it, too.

  Miss Blind Item. She studied with Miss Third Victim. They were New York friends. A “prestigious acting school.” Late ’47.

  Al Goossen. The Actors Studio. “Some sort of hotshot deal.”

  So—

  Quo vadis, Freddy? Where to now?

  I know. Let’s slam Mr. Blacklist. He always gives up the goods.

  * * *

  —

  Jack Lawson. John Howard Lawson. Anglicized from Levy or some such. One studly Stalinist. He tramples Trotskyites and hexes HUAC to hell. Folks hate Jack. It’s that perennial politics and personality parlay. Jack’s determinedly dyspeptic. He’s a schmuck, a schlemiel, a schmendrick, and a schlimazel. The PD and DA Ernie Roll own him covertly. Let’s bop back to ’40. Jack’s the Party’s Kultural Kommissar and hard-hearted hatchet man.

  Enter Budd Schulberg. He’s a ripsnorting writer and a marvelous mensch. He’s writing What Makes Sammy Run? The Party demands rafts of revisions. Budd’s a Party man maimed by mucho misgivings. Like Studly Stalin’s purges that mowed millions dead. Jack mediates a meet and sets the spot. It’s some comrade’s casa off Hollywood and Fairfax. Budd is suddenly summoned. Jumpy Jack’s there. Likewise the viperish V. J. Jerome. V.J.’s Jack’s Ko-Kultural Kommissar. V.J. and Jack pack the Party’s one-two punch.

  V.J. and Jack. They berate Budd for two days, stridently straight. You will rewrite your bourgeois book. It must be proudly proletarian. You’re a revisionist, a refusenik, a deviationist delinquent. You’re a passive pawn of the fascist elite.

  Here’s the punch line. The comrade’s casa is bugged, rugs to rafters. The comrade called in the cops. The Hitler-Stalin pact did it. The comrade ain’t no Commie no more.

  Jack berates Budd. Jack reads him the ripe riot act. Jack motormouths on many topics. Jack pounds popular front groups and takes them to task. Jack jacks off à la idiot ideologues worldwide. The PD shoots the bug tapes to State HUAC. Fourteen Smith Act indictments result.

  The bug’s still in place. Jack’s sublet the comrade’s casa since ’48. Ex-Commies visit Jack. They juke him with jungle juice and get him to jaw. Jack jaws on overdrive. He’s every Red Squad cop and dirt digger’s dream. ’48 to ’55. That’s seven years. The bugs remain in place. Jack don’t know shit.

  I drove over and parked outside Casa Comrade. I brought Jack a jug of Jim Beam. Jack sat on his front steps. I saw him. He saw me. It was Oh shit—Freddy Otash, redux.

  I got out and walked up. Jack went Sieg Heil and hummed “Das Horst Wessel Lied.” I yukked and tossed Jack his jug. He yanked the cap and yodeled a big blast.

  “Freddy the O. Gauleiter for the occupation forces of Chief William H. Parker.”

  “You know who I work for, Jack. I’m a free-speech man, just like you.”

  Jack grabbed his crotch. “Free speech is a shuck. It’s a smoke screen to cosmeticize the fascist agenda. Confidential riles up the schvarzers and faygeles. In that sense, it’s an organ of revolutionary intent.”

  I laffed. “I’ll tell Bob Harrison that.”

  “Tell Bob I saw his first wife at a Scottsboro Boys rally, back in ’30-something. She was holding hands with a shvoogie and Pete Seeger’s Filipina girlfriend. They were singing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’—off-key, no less.”

  I stuffed a fifty in Jack’s shirt pocket. Jack reyodeled Jim Beam. He hummed “Lili Marlene” and the love-death bit from Tristan und Isolde.

  “Freddy the O. wants something. He never comes just to schmooze.”

  I said, “The Actors Studio. The late ’40s. I know you go back to the Group Theatre, so I thought you might be able to help me.”

  “The Actors Studio. Oy. Not a revolutionary organ, susceptible to takeover by Comrade John Howard Lawson and the hundreds of young Red Guard majorettes eager to suck his big dialectical cock.”

  I said, “Come on, Jack. I was thinking you could give me some names.”

  Jack went mucho outraged. “Me? Name names? You think the apparatchik to end all apparatchiks would name names and betray the Fourth Apparatus of the Central Soviet?”

  I said, “Jack, you’re a pisser.”

  Jack stumbled into Casa Comrade. He left the door open. I saw him banging bookshelves and tossing tomes on the floor.

  I lit a cigarette. Jack barged back outside. He passed me a school-type yearbook. It was buckram-bound and gilt-embossed. The cover read: The Actors Studio/1946–47.

  “Thanks, Jack.”

  Jack hummed “The Internationale.” “I know about the bug, Freddy. My schvartze cleaning lady discovered it when I first moved in.”

  I was floored and flat-flabbergasted. I grabbed Jack’s jug and jammed down the juice. The world rippled and revised itself right before my eyes.

  “You could have pulled it. You’d have saved some comrades of yours a whole lot of grief.”

  “Maybe I didn’t want to. Maybe they deserved what they got. Maybe I thought I’d fuck with History and roll the dice for a while.”

  * * *

  —

  I traveled Trans-Jack Airways. The Lawson-Kennedy loop. It flew Casa Comrade to Beverly Hills. I buzzed by the Beverly Wilshire Pharmacy and filled Jack the K.’s order. Spaceman Jack would orbit tonite.

  I hit the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was a back-bungalow bash. I lit through the lobby and landed right on cue. Women outnumbered men six to one. It was all stacked starlets and porko politicians. DA Ernie Roll and AG Pat Brown. Both quash-Confidential conspirators. Govern
or Goodie Knight. Colored congressman Adam Clayton Powell. Note his “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” campaign button.

  I crashed the crowd. I popped out to a poolside porch and straddled a deck chair. A brisk breeze induced aaahhhs. I studied the Actors Studio book.

  I poured through picture-packed pages. No-name kids built sets. Lee Strasberg made like Moses and laid down the law. I noted name actors and nudniks I’d seen on TV. I hit a section marked “1946–47 class.” Kids congregated on bleachers and smiled, heartbreak hopeful. Page twenty-two popped out at me. I thought I saw—

  Some names and no-names mingled. Kim Hunter, Ralph Meeker. Two no-name males. I recognized Reed Hadley of Racket Squad. There’s Julie Harris and boss Barbara Bel Geddes. There’s the wounded waif I saw at Hollywood Station during the Red Light Bandit’s rampage.

  She’s hopeful here. She’s heartfelt. She’s wearing a paint-smeared smock and saddle shoes. She’s standing beside a lissome light-haired woman I’d never seen before.

  A name list laid out the players. Miss Third Victim was Shirley Tutler. The light-haired woman was Lois Nettleton.

  Jack the K. walked up. I tossed him the pharmacy bag. Pill vials vibrated and did the shimmy-shimmy shake.

  “Dare I ask what it cost?”

  I said, “Zilch. The pharmacist’s a defrocked physician. He owes me numerous favors.”

  Jack relit his cigar. “I’ll be a defrocked U.S. senator, if I can’t raise a whole lot of money tonight.”

  “There’s not a lot of money in the next room. The girls don’t have it, and the political guys never give it away.”

  Jack chortled. “Give me a good one, Freddy. My sisters like dish on handsome young actors and their secret lives. And don’t give me Rock Hudson, because that’s yesterday’s news.”

  I said, “James Dean is known as the ‘Human Ashtray.’ ”

  “That’s fairly unsavory.”

  “Barbara Payton’s on the skids. She’s car-hopping at Stan’s Drive-In, across from Hollywood High.”