Crime Wave: Reportage and Fiction From the Underside of L.A.

by James Ellroy

  Man-o-Manischewitz! What a pussy-whipped provocateur and masochism-mangled motherfucker!

  Yolanda said, "Please, Mr. Crane. I don't like to--"

  "Yolanda, I want you to give me the next letter that Lana gives you."

  "No. No, no, no, no no. I cannot do that to Miss Lana."

  Steve--stern, strong, and strident-voiced now: "I only let you and the others work out of here because you give me information. Don wouldn't like it if I eighty-sixed you."

  Yolanda, fetchingly firm and faultlessly focused: "I cannot betray Miss Lana, as long as Mr. Johnny does not hurt her or Miss Cheryl."

  Steve, resoundingly resigned and ripped with regret. "Well... shit. . . okay. . . for now, at least. But I just want to protect Lana from herself, and I want you to promise me that you'll let me know if Johnny ever puts a hand on her or Cheryl. You see, I've got a gangster buddy who hates the son of a bitch."

  Yolanda, a mellifluous madonna: "Oh, yes, I will. I care about Miss Lana and Miss Cheryl just as much as joo do."

  Mickey Cohen hated Johnny Stompanato. Mickey was the meshugenah mouseketeer on the L.A. mob scene. Mickey had a minor cut of Don Jordan's contract and not much else. Mickey was too Minnie Mouse to stand up for Steve and stomp out Stompanato--and I started to smell money in the mix.

  I could steal the steamy Lana letters. I could sell them to Steve or some lascivious Lanaphile. I could lube-job Ben Luboff and lay a few lackluster excerpts on him for big bread. I could proudly print the whole tumescent text in Hush-Hush.

  The truth is my moral mandate. Dirt digs define my devotion to that difficult discipline. "Disillusionment Is Enlightenment"-- some pundit popped that platitude and clipped a clear chord in my soul. I live to edify, entertain, enlighten, and enforce moral standards. It all entails enterprising entrapment. I'm a zealous First Amendment zealot. I contentiously contend that scandal skank scores free free speech to its fullest extension. I set tricky traps to track down the truth. My methedrine-mapped mandate makes it all morally sound.

  I got Stompanato's stats from the West L.A. White Pages. I called his number and nailed a nigger maid. She said, "Mr. Johnny be back soon," and, "I just be leavin' myself." She sounded like some shine in Song of the South.

  I bopped up to Benedict Canyon and buried my Buick coupe behind some bushes off Beverly Drive. I beat feet a block to Johnny's boss bunker: a big all-glass A-frame.

  Lavishly landscaped and lit up light at i:oo A.M. Wide windows to wiggle your eyes at and high hedges to hide behind. Peeper Paradise and Voyeur Valhalla.

  Motherfuck--

  The mail slot slid straight into the front French doors. I couldn't lift a latch and liberate Lana's love letters.

  I hid behind a hydrangea hedge. I bored my beady browns into a big picture window ten feet away. Johnny Stomp stomped into sight. Don Jordan jiggled up and joined him.

  They yelled and yowled at each other. They paced paths around the parlor and poked themselves in the pecs. Popped Ps popped off the plate-glass window--but I couldn't pick out particular words.

  Jordan pulled a passel of pix out of his pockets and fanned them full. I popped up and peered through the plate-glass powerfully hard. I saw darkroom-dipped photos still wet with developing doo. Interior shots: bountiful bedroom suites with balconies and wide walk-in closets.

  My brain went bim, bango, bingo:

  Don Jordan's moonlight maids with Minox minicams. Wetback women hooked in as hookers. Luau-lounging B-girls brought to Brentwood and Beverly Hills. Papa pops the girls to the pad while Mama meanders in Miami or mingles at her Monday mah-jongg club. The girls pop perspective pix and juke them back to Jordan. Jordan jukes them to some big bad burglary man. Jordan juked Yolanda into the plan. Johnny yanked Yolanda's chain, scammed the skinny on Demon Don's designs and demanded a cut. Yolanda lounged around the Luau in Lana Turner's low-cut gown. Stilltorching Steve Crane recognized it. He yipped, yelled, and yodeled at Yolanda. He demanded that she double-agent for him. Yolanda agreed to dump domestic dirt on Lana and Johnny.

  Stompanato stamped his feet. Jordan jabbed his chest. They stepped back and countermanded the course of a counterproductive contretemps. They smiled. They commandeered a couch. They pored over their pix and penciled a map on a piece of paper.

  I hunched down and hunkered back to my hedge. I smelled Methedrine popping out of my pores--mixed with the musk of MONEY.

  I needed names. I could B&E Johnny's pad and boost a burglary list. I could bug the pad and bug Demon Don's digs. I could tap their telephones and tape their talks and wire up the wetback wenches. I could impersonate an Immigration agent and intimidate them. I could contact the feckless fools that they flicked and feed them an ultimatum: Feed me in five figures, or I'll tell your wife who you fucked one freaky Friday night.

  Oooooh, Daddy-o!!!!! I was digging it all, delirious!

  I hauled back to the Hush-Hush office. I had to hook my hands on a boss batch of bug shit.

  The office was occupied. My crew was crapped out on the floor. They were blasted, blitzed, blotto, zilched, zorched, and zombifled. They'd gone off the wagon en masse.

  They got tanked on Tokay and T-Bird. They got stinko on Sterno and got wiped out on White Port. Short-dog bottles shifted and shimmied on every spare inch of floor space.

  I checked my equipment chest. All my bug mikes were bunched up, broken, frayed, frazzled, and fucked. My condenser cords were stripped and striated down to mere strips. My diode dials were ripped, rusted, and ratched to shit.

  FUCK--

  I had to find a freelance bug freak and co-opt him into my conspiracy. That meant pitching him a prime piece of my potential payout.

  FUCK--

  I called Freaky Fred Turentine. His wife said he was working for Whisper tonight. I buzzed Buddy "Bug King" Berkow. His wife said Ben Luboff just brought him in on a big bug job. I called Voyeur Vance Vanning. His wife said he was out on a wire job for Whisper. He left her a late-nite number: a pay phone at Wilshire and La Cienega.

  It all congealed and constellated.

  My tip to trap homo hunk Rock Hudson. The sweaty swish at Delores's Drive-In. Ben Luboff poised to scale the Purple Parthenon.

  3

  It had to be huge. Three bug boys at twenty bucks an hour boded big. My bet: Ben wanted bug bits on the bun-boy biz--to buttress his hit on hunky Rock Hudson. He'd set some phone-tap traps and bug baits on the sweaty swish carhop and develop some derogatory dish on Delores's Drive-In. A prick-tease prelude to priapic Rock and some prick-happy call boy.

  I had to see it. It beckoned as big as the Bikini Atoll atom-bomb blast. A bifurcated motive bolstered my urge to merge with the moment. I wanted to boost a batch of Buddy Berkow's bug gear for my gig.

  I whizzed down to Wilshire and La Cienega at warp speed. I whipped by Delores's Drive-In and dug all the dirty details.

  The 2:00 A.M. tumult. Late-nite L.A. out for burgers, borscht, and bagels. Beatniks and beaten-down benny-heads in battered Bonnevilles. Cholos in chopped-down Chevys riding on cheater slicks.

  Carhops rolling roisterous on roller stakes. All mincy males laid out in lacy lounge wear. Buddy Berkow's bugmobile back by the men's room. Beside it: Voyeur Vance Vanning's van. Freaky Fred Turentine wolflng french fries at an inside counter.

  I whipped back to Wilshire and parked. I brought my beady browns up against my Bausch & Lombs and went into ocular orbit.

  Dig:

  Sweat beads bipping off the brow of that too-tall carhop topping off the tape toward 68". A sweaty swish with the shakes: His tray twitched and twisted and almost toppled two twincheeseburger plates.

  He fed the food to two Filipinos in a Ford Fairlane. He flitted back to a little shack lit by floodlights. He stood by the door and chain-smoked two Chesterfield Kings.

  Envy entered my heart. An enlightened sense of entitlement entered my soul. A cosmic course of covetousness covered my whole being.

  This gig should be MINE. I was the scandal-scamming, skinny-skimming scopoph
iliac king. The scopophiliacal scope of this gig screamed GETCHELL!

  I alakazammed to Allah, genuflected to Jesus, and called out to that cat the kikes call God. I said I'd keester communists and bash ban-the-bombers, and dig up dirt on that dowager dyke Eleanor Roosevelt. I'd donate dough to a Moslem mosque. I'd put in with Pat Boone, wear white buck shoes, and warble at a Billy Graham Crusade. I wouldn't print my piece on Rabbi R. R. Ravitz and that Hebrew-school Hannah he humped last Hanukkah.

  I shut my eyes. I gave the God guys time to get together and go for my deal. I could feel them finagling the fine points. Divine deals demand deliberation.

  I opened my eyes. Ben Luboff bopped in front of my binoculars. He slid the sweaty swish a C-note and slid into the shack alone. The swish sashayed up to a lavender Lincoln and leaned in.

  Ben bribed the too-tall brunser. That meant he didn't want to roust his racket. The gig developed different dimensions--maybe divinely deigned.

  I latched my lenses on the Lincoln and locked my eyes in hard. I saw hunky Rock Hudson hand up a handful of hard cash.

  All praise to Allah! Joy to Jesus! Hush-Hush hosannahs to the Hebrew God!

  Rock locked his Lincoln, ditched the drive-in, and joyfully jaywalked straight across Wilshire. He walked up to the front of the Fine Arts movie house and made with a wicked wolf whistle.

  A winsome wolf whistle whisked back his way. A muscular manchild meandered out of a moonbeam and leaned in the lobby doorway.

  Rock, you rambunctious rump ranger--

  Rock loped into the lobby. The kid locked them in. They disappeared near a dark candy counter.

  I blew out of my Buick and flew around the Fine Arts fast-footed. I saw blue lights blink at the back of the building upstairs. I shimmied up a shaky drainpipe and shagged myself onto a ledge. I undulated through an unlocked window and heard Rock ululating.

  I landed on a lopsided pile of film cans. I pitched forward and pulled myself up. I peeped through a pebble-glass door and saw shadows shifting down a short hallway.

  I fast-footed it out of the film-storage room. I saw flickery flits of light flick out from below two doorways. I ducked down the dark hall. Shifty shadows shot up from the door slits. I crept up on them and got down in a crab-crawl crouch. I slid one eye up against the door slits.

  I saw a punk cameraman with a Panflex porta-cam packed into a pod-shaped peephole. Next door: Rock and the monster-hung man-child making meat-mangling motions on a light-colored couch with the lights on. Motherfucker: minuscule mini-mikes taped to a tall table lamp!

  I flew back to the film-storage room. I rapidly reshimmied down that drainpipe. I whizzed across Wilshire, looped around La Cienega, and ducked down an alley behind Delores's Drive-In. I vaulted a vine-covered fence, veered past Vance Vanning's van, and vibrated up to that shitty little shack that the sweaty swish had swayed by.

  The drive-in was deep in a late-nite lull. I spotted six sleds snouted into snack-serving slots. I looked left and wrapped my eyeballs right. I didn't see the sweaty swish or Ben Luboff. I saw Vance Vanning and Buddy Berkow buzzing logs in their bug vans.

  I fearlessly faced the shack door. I nervously knocked and locked my loins to fight a scandal-skank war of some scope. Nobody answered. I wiggled the door open and walked in uninvited.

  A lousy little all-linoleum office. Disinfectant stench, a dirty desk, and a doily-covered chair.

  A closet.

  A preciously apropos prop and a prime hideout hole.

  I hid in the closet. I hunched myself up and heaved for breath. Methedrine-mad minutes marched by. I sweated and swore out a warrant on Ben Luboff's hide.

  I heard the outer door open and shut. Furtive footsteps and vague voices. I peered through a pint-size pinhole in the closet door. I saw Ben Luboff and the sweaty swish.

  Perspiration poured over the pinhole and voided my view. I locked my eyes shut and listened.

  Ben said, "You know, it's ironic. I've been hearing about your service for years, but it took a tip from fucking Danny Getchell to get me to contact you."

  The sweaty swish said, "Choice chicken, doll. The best boys in the West, and a good rep for discretion."

  Ben said, "Yeah, and that's why the Rock buys all his extracurricular tail from you."

  The sweaty swish said, "The Rock ain't nothin' but a hound dog. He's got a perfectly gorgeous lover at home--an art director at Metro--but he's got to roll around with every Tom, Dick, and Harriet he can find--with the emphasis on Dick."

  Ben said, "You've never forgiven him, have you? He broke your heart, and that's what makes this deal so sweet for you."

  The sweaty swish said, "Truer words never spoken, doll. And godddd, it was torture selling boys to him."

  Ben said, "Vengeance is sweet, baby-cakes. You get your shot at the Rock, I get mine at the schmendrick Getchell."

  In your faigeleh-finagling dreams, you fucking--

  The sweaty swish said, "You're sure we can't get hurt on this?"

  Ben said, "Nix. My camera guy set up a breakaway set at the Fine Arts. If the Rock takes the fuzz back there, they won't find the room he told them about. It was all strictly clandestine. My camera guy let your boy in the theater, and none of the theater chumps know that any of this happened."

  The sweaty swish said, "Vengeance is mine, sayeth both of us."

  Ben said, "Especially me. See, I gave Getchell that tip on Don Jordan's whore racket, and I called Don and clued him in that Getchell was onto his biz. Now, Don Jordan is a bad hombre to flick with. He killed lots of guys in the Dominican Republic, and he's tight with this spic gang--the Apaches--out in Boyle Heights. I think it's safe to say that Danny Getchell's days are numbered."

  I swirled sweat off my face and popped an eye up to the pintsize pinhole. Ben said, "And look, call it penance. I've done a shitty thing by exposing our kind of people, but now I'm doing all of us a mitzvah by taking Getchell out."

  "Penance"? "Our people--"?

  Ben leaned in and kissed the sweaty swish on the lips. He said, "Later, Lover," and languidly loped out the door.

  I crashed out of the closet--crazily out of control. The sweaty swish saw me. He swirled and swung a switchblade out of his pocket.

  He pirouetted and pounced. I closed the closet door, swiveled, and swung it at him. His switchblade swiped wood. He swung off balance. I swatted at his knife hand and kicked him in the kidneys and the cojones.

  He clipped the closet door. I clotheslined him and claimed his knife off the floor. I clamped down on his neck and kicked out his legs and laid him out on the linoleum.

  I pinned him prone and swicked sweat beads off his beak with my blade. I said, "Sing, shitbird."

  He coughed and caught some breath. He hemmed, hawed, and hummed in hyperventilation. He stopped and stared at me. He got hip to the hard hophead hate I had for him and put it all out prestissimo.

  "It all went down today. You tipped off Ben to my operation, which he'd heard rumors about for years. Ben told me you'd ratted me out, but why blow a potentially sweet partnership when we could work breakaway-bedroom jobs and snag some big people? I wanted to put some hurt on Rock, and Ben and I both wanted to nail you for all the gay folk you've messed with."

  I leaned in laceratingly low. "So this was a scandal squeeze on the Rock. Pay, or see yourself in Whisper."

  The sweaty swish said, "Yes." I said, "How much were you going to squeeze him for?" The sweaty swish said, "Twentyfive G's."

  I leaned in lower and laughed. "Rock doesn't have it. I heard he took a bath on a real estate deal."

  The sweaty swish swung a sweet smile at me. "Then look for the Rock on the cover of the June 1958 issue of Whisper."

  WHISPER WINS WICKED WAR OF WORDS! THE HUSH-HUSH HEGEMONY WIPED OUT WITH A WHIMPER!

  I blinked. The sweaty swish blindsided me blindingly fast.

  He landed a left on my lips. He ratched a right to my chin. A knee bit my balls and bounced me backward.

  The sweaty swish swung to his feet. I fla
ttened myself to the floor, grabbed his two fat Florsheims and watched him fly back where he'd been. He landed on linoleum, lurched upright, and laughed. I lobbed my knife and lanced him in the larynx.

  4

  I punked out and panicked. I left the sweaty swish larynx-lashed and laid out in lurid state. I ran from the hellacious homo-cide.

  I popped up to my pad off Pico. I saw a pack of pachucos parked outside. Mean Mexicans in mohair shirts and mohawk haircuts. Machismo-mangled minions. Don Jordan's homicidal hermanos.

  I hauled to the Hush-Hush office. I hit on a horrific scene out of Hieronymus Bosch.

  Heaps of Hush-Hush dirt files tossed and torched to Cinder City. Scandal skinny scorched and dumped into dust piles. Art sheets shivved and shorn to shit. Type trays trashed and chairs chopped into chop suey.

  My crew:

  Bruised, contused, confused, and ripped from a raid on Dave Dockweiler's dope stash.

  Dawn.

  I dashed back to Delores's Drive-In and dipped by at a safe distance. I drove one-handed and drilled the dive with my Bausch binoculars.

  Cops--a bevy of bulls from the Beverly Hills PD. Two guys swinging the sweaty swish onto a sheet-shrouded stretcher. A biiiig bull bracing Ben Luboff--nellyingly nervous and limpwristedly lily-white now. Shit shaking inside the shack--drones dripping print powder on the symbiotically symbolic closed closet door. Checking it out: Chief Clinton Anderson.

  I fought a fit of foul flicking fear: I fondled that door and forgot to wipe my prints.

  I buzzed by the BHPD Building. By the back door: two bulls and Buddy "Bug King" Berkow. Buddy looked beat on. I knew the bulls had bopped him with beaver-tail saps.

  I bombed my Buick out of Beverly Hills. I ran my radio for random newscasts. KMPC coughed up crap on Croatian commies and switched to a swift bit on the sweaty swish.

  A commentator called it a suicide. Clinton Anderson confirmed the call conclusively.

  I was prespiringly perplexed and pulsatingly puzzled. I sent up guarded thanx to my guardian angel and dipped the dial to the BHPD band.