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

by James Ellroy

  "You're not Frank, Danny, so don't even try. And I wouldn't flick you if you had a sex change and came out Rita Hayworth."

  I looped back to Los Feliz and ran my radio dial en route. Ring-ading--a ripe news report.

  ". . . and here's more on the shootout at the Pacific Dining Car parking lot, which left a marijuana-peddling Mexican busboy and one LAPD officer dead."

  Static stung my ears. I ditzed the dial and diminished it. The newsman said, "The busboy was identified as Juan Ramon Pimentel, age 24, an illegal alien. He was the number one supplier of marijuana in the Los Angeles area and was the focus of an interagency investigation involving the LAPD, the Beverly Hills PD, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Pimentel was cornered in the parking lot, pulled a gun, and fired at four officers. He killed LAPD Sergeant Richard D. Jackson, was fatally wounded by the officer's return fire, and. .

  Static browned out the broadcast. I breezed by Brewster's Newsstand on Bronson and bought a Herald-Express. Huge headlines: HEROIC COPS IN GUN BATTLE! TWO DEAD!

  I pored over the piece. It was officious obfuscation--doggedly dissembled with a profoundly pronounced pro-cop prejudice. Page 2 pix: John O'Grady posed with BHPD bimbo Bob Duhamel and the two police pitdogs.

  Jive on the "Joint Police Venture." Delirious demonization: "Dope Kingpin Pimentel." Obviously and ominously omitted in his omnipresence: wicked witness Frank Sinatra.

  Two cloyingly close and collusive columns down:

  DA TO DROP PAYOLA PROBE.

  A dozen desultory lines. A perfunctory paragraph. "Lack of Evidence" and "Deemed Insufficient"--insinuating innuendo in my book. Unconscionably unmentioned: Lewd Linda Lansing and triad trick Sinatra. One paltry pic: Demon DA J. Miller Leavy--leaning into Bad Bob Duhamel. A captivating caption: "Deputy DA Leavy and Sgt. Duhamel also worked together on the celebrated Barbara Graham case."

  No mention of ME.

  My payola piece prompted the probe. My marijuana machinations mandated a massacre. I was undeniably uniquitous and ignominiously ignored.

  I shivered, shook, and almost shit my pants. My pulse pounded paranoically hard. I'd crusaded for truth in a Christlike fashion and crossed some invisible line. Call me crucifiable. The newspaper neglected to name my name and thus nailed me now for negation. The world wanted me dead. I violated the venal and vindicated their victims. I sodomized silly celebrities and fragged and framed them as frail. I vandalized their vulturelike souls and sold them as soulless on newsstands nationwide. I modeled myself on Mahatma Gandhi and moved beyond that motherfucker in my quixotic quest for the truth. I triumphed over trials that would mash most men to mush. I delivered disillusionment as dystopian dish and entertained, edified, and enlightened. I was a spiritual spearhead--like that spook who sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Hush-Hush outhustles the Bible--at least in L.A.

  I was the journalistic Jesus about to get justifiably Judas'd.

  3

  I bought a bottle of bonded bourbon. I bombed myself out of my martyrdom mode and looped by Linda Lansing's lair lickety-split.

  I rapidly reconnoitered. I bipped around Berendo and cruised cross streets. I noted no cop cars. I hid my Hudson Hornet behind a hydrangea hedge and popped up to the pad.

  It was a mock Moorish mosque in miniature. Minarets, mauve awnings, and mesquite fronds out front. I let myself in. I slipped a light switch, slammed the door, and slid into a slaughterhouse.

  The stomach-stinging stench of flayed flesh. Matted hair and maggot mounds on a mauve rug. Blood blips on white walls and windowpanes.

  Linda Lansing laid out flat on the floor. Slashed and sliced in a slit-leg gown. Sharp shiv marks and sheared tissue torn out in striated strips. Blonde hair blossomed into a blood slick.

  Ten fingertips torn to the tendons and burned to the bone. A hot plate hooked into a wall switch. Scorched skin caught in the coils.

  I rocked, rolled, reeled, and retched on the rug. I made myself memorize the murder scene.

  Overturned ottomans and sofas stabbed into stuffing. Paintings pulled off walls and cut to confetti. Bookcases bumped to the floor and stomped to a stack of stale sticks.

  Bad burns on the body. Scorch-scarred skin. Cigarette circles. A batch of butts blended into a blood pool.

  Torment-inducing torture. Infernally inflicted. My inference: the inflictors intended to induce Linda Lansing into laying out something of interest. She rigorously resisted and refused to give IT up. IT was not information. Call IT concealable. The inflictors invaded the house with the intent to find where IT was. They went at it impulsively and impetuously. The implosive implication: IT was still here.

  I looked at Linda Lansing. I blew the corpse a kiss. My memory snapped me snapshots of Linda alive and alluring and announced an anomaly. The live Linda ran lithe. The corpse ran reduced Rabelaisian.

  I nudged my noggin out of necrophile notions. I bopped to a back bathroom and made for the medicine chest. I pillaged pills and concocted a chemical cocktail.

  Sexy Secobarbital and devilish Dexedrine. Miltown to mellow them out. A bracing Bromo-Seltzer to bring the brew to a boil.

  I licked up my elixir and chased it with a Chesterfield King. It chugged into me and detonated a depth charge. I deliberately and determinedly deep-sixed the house.

  I tore up ten rooms. I upended umpteen underwear drawers. I whipped up wall-to-wall carpets and filleted fine furniture down to fabric debris. I deconstructed daybeds, divans, and doilydraped dressers. I drained drainpipes and cleaned out clothes closets and shivved behind shelves. I beat the basement walls with a baseball bat and bored into a hot little hidey-hole.

  Inserted inside:

  A packet of pix. Glorious glossies surreptitiously shot in Sinemascope.

  Linda Lansing boffing boss butch Barbara Stanwyck. Steamy Stanny--still hot stuff.

  Linda loin-locked with Lana Turner. Woo! Woo! Salivatingly sapphic!

  Linda tasting tough Tallulah Bankhead. Tallulah--too much!

  Linda limb-linked on a lavender bedspread. Buck naked beside Barbara Graham and Al Teitelbaum.

  Sinful synergy. Pervasive perversion. A tricky trio trapped on filthy film.

  A confounding connection.

  A furtive fur merchant. A murder victim and a murderess who graced the green room at San Quentin. A connection to confront: Bob Duhamel did duty on the Barbara Graham case.

  I pored over the pix. I stared at them and steamed them up. I dripped drool on Linda Lansing--lezzed out and lithe. A dykechotomy: her corpse ran corpulent.

  ?????

  Perched by the pix:

  A loose-leaf ledger. Latin names listed in left-hand columns. Five-figure moneymakings mapped to the right.

  Martinez, Madragon, Marquez--Mex monickers. Tostado, Trejo, Tarquez--taco-heads all. Pellicar, Peja, P. Pimentel--

  Whoa now, wait--

  Juan Pimentel--the pincushion/piñata at the parking lot. The make-believe marijuana maven. The bad-luck busboy and scandal scapegoat.

  ?????

  I packed the pix behind some pipes and laid the ledgers under a layer of loose linoleum. I beat feet to the back bedroom and bored through a bunch of books I'd flung to the floor. Va-va-voom--the Variety Directory for 1954.

  I leafed to the Ls and found "Lansing, Joi."

  "Actress. B. 416/2 8, Salt Lake City."

  I leafed to "Lansing, Linda."

  "Singer. B. 5/2 1/30, Salt Lake City."

  I looked at the Lansing listings. I perused two publicity pix. They blended blonde. They blurred and blossomed blissfully as near-identical twins.

  "Nice stuff. I had the better one, so I should know."

  A vivid voice--low and lezlike.

  My hackles hopped. I hurled myself around and hoped for the best. I hitched eyes with Deputy Dot Rothstein.

  Dildo dyke. Sheba the Sheriff's She-Dog at the Women's Jail downtown. A yenta with a yen for young cooze. A Large Marge in a man's suit.

  I came on cooooool. "You look good, Dot. You make me
wish I was a woman."

  Dot shot me a boot to the balls. I belched bile and bounced to my knees. Pain pounded me.

  Dot said, "Stay there. I like my women in that position."

  I stood up straight and strong. I flipped Dot the finger. She bent it back and bit itto the bone.

  Pain:

  Lavishly localized. Bopping off my bit bone to my balls. Pillaging my pill-headed haze.

  Dot said, "Did you kill her?"

  I blotted blood on my blue blazer. "No, did you?"

  Dot handed me a hankie. "I loved her, sweet cakes. We had an occasional thing going, and we were making money together."

  I hankied up my hurt hand. "How?"

  "I was pimping her to some politicians who could do the Sheriff's Department some good."

  My pain pianissimoed. The Miltown mix was melting it mellifluously.

  Dot said, "She was shaking down Frank Sinatra. She shot him some sex, then threatened to turn him off if he didn't get her song some big play."

  Nix, nyet, and no way. Liz Scott shared some shakedown shit with me and laid it out large on Linda. Viably verbatim:

  "She'd put in some innings with Frank, going back to '52."/"She had some dirt on him, and she used it."

  Dot stared at me--stock still and stoic. "Care to tell me what you were thinking? And what you know about all this?"

  I shrugged like I didn't know shit from Shinola. Dot said, "They killed the wrong woman. That's Joi in the living room. I know Linda's body on an intimate level, and that isn't her. Joi always ran chubbier than Linda, and she had a key to the place. And if Linda's smart, which she is, she'll gorge herself on hot fudge sundaes and impersonate her sister until all this blows over."

  My synapses snapped to attentive attention. A theory threaded through my head.

  Juan Pimentel--the parking lot pincushion/piñata. P. Pimentel--the piñata's padre or partner or hellacious hermano? Liz Scott, volubly verbatim: "Linda was making a run to Tijuana for Al Teitelbaum."

  Teitelbaum: pornographically portrayed in Linda Lansing's love pix. Tijuana: sinfully situated a beat below the border. Joi Lansing: luridly lashed to linguine by Mexican marauders--bad-boy bandidos who botched their job and bagged the wrong bitch-- because they only spoke Spanish.

  Dot said, "Your wheels are turning. You're thinking up some kind of angle, and you're wondering where I fit in."

  I shot her a shit-eating grin. "I'm wondering what you know about a cop named Bob Duhamel, and a run to T.J. that Linda might be making for Al Teitelbaum."

  "Duhamel," ditzed Dot--she dipped her shoulders disingenuously.

  "I don't know that cop you mentioned, but I do know that you were there when they took out that spic this morning, and I know that Al T.'s broke, and he's staging a fake fur heist to get some insurance money, and Linda was going to run the furs down to TJ. for him."

  My wheels whizzed, shirled, whipped, and--

  "Look, Danny. We're both in this, but you're in it bad. That said, I have to say that fifty Gs to the right people and some smear jobs in Hush-Hush could set you right."

  --wiggled like a whacked-out whirlybird.

  I said, "Give it to me. Straight, no chaser."

  Dot delivered. "Teitelbaum doesn't know who the fake heist guys will be. Linda set the scam up, and all Al knows is the time and date--6:oo P.M. on the twenty-seventh. All you have to do is beat the heist guys to the punch, move the furs to Tj., and bring me the money. Linda will be too busy playing her big sister to flick with you."

  SCANDAL SCRIBE SCRAPS CAREER AND CAREENS INTO CRIME! BOFFO BURGLAR SAYS, "MAKE MINE MINK!" AND MOVES TO MEXICO!

  I said, "Who do I dump the furs on?"

  Dot said, "The Chief of Police in Tj. His name's Pedro Pimentel."

  4

  I hid out at a hip hutch in Santa Monica Canyon. I crawled to Crazy Chris Isherwood and begged for a bed.

  Christlike Chris shot me shelter at his shitty little Shinto shrine. Crafty Chris issued the invite and predicated it on a promise:

  Don't hump me in Hush-Hush. Don't spin your spotlight on my homo hijinx. Don't condemn my combination kick-pad/ashram and ridicule the residents. Don't publish that picture of me with a lip lock on Liberace.

  I smiled smug. I crossed my heart to Chris and Christ Himself and issued an insincere promise. I hauled in my Hudson Hornet and my hop from Ben Hong's herb hut.

  The ashram was a dope den and a lavender lovenest. My rambunctious roommates:

  Aldous Huxley--addled on absinthe, pickled on peyote, and looped on a loony Lysol called lysergic acid diethylamide.

  Bogie Bogart--battling the Big C with voodoo vows and peach-pit potions.

  Oscar Levant--levitatingly lost in laudanum and Lowenbrau lager.

  Sammy Davis Jr.--jigaboo-juked for pouring the pork to a white wench who went out with Walter Winchell. Winsomely COONfidential: Winchell sent some wops out to whack Sammy.

  Last--but not loin-longingly least:

  Three masochism-mauled marines marked for molestation. Deserters seeking shelter from the Shore Patrol. Prime prey for Creepy Chris.

  I moved in and made time to map out my mink misadventure. I lounged around in limbo.

  I lapped up laud anum with Levant and got high on hashish with Huxley. Chris crystallized Ben Hong's herbs and cooked up anticancer cocktails for Bogie. I watched nightly newscasts and notched nerve-wracking news.

  Skip Towne and Flash Flood--flattened by a fly-by-night who flipped a two-ton truck. Flash Flood's Fleetwood: torched to toast in Topanga Canyon. Rival DJs riding together? Make that murder in my magazine.

  No news on lush Linda Lansing and the Moorish Mosque Massacre. No poop on the payola probe and priapic Sinatra. Call that collective collusion.

  I called my cop contacts. I picked up poop on Pedro Pimentel.

  One baaaad beaner. The taco-phile Tojo of Tj.

  He controlled the corrupt cop corps. His cops copped coin off incarcerated inmates run in on random charges. Pedro pried their property loose. He violated their virgin daughters and made them vice vixens at the Va-Va-Voom Club. He kicked their less comely kids into cardboard casas and coerced them to work in his sweatshops. They moonlighted as wistful waifs and charmed chump change out of cheerful gringos.

  Pedro Pimentel owned a clap clinic and the Club Diablo--an adoringly adorned adobe hut that housed hermaphrodites and the best burro act in Baja. Pedro Pimentel smuggled smut. Pedro Pimentel pummeled pinkos and castrated Castroites out of Cuba. Pedro Pimental made nice to Nazis named at Nuremburg and assured them asylum.

  Pedro Pimentel fenced furs.

  My cop contacts dispensed more dish.

  Juan Pimentel was Pedro's pedophile brother. Juan bopped out of Baja behind some child-snuff snafu. Pedro put him in touch with Bad Bob Duhamel--BHPD. Bad Bob made Wicked Juan his sneaky snitch. Wicked Juan worked at the Pacific Dining Car--a front to frame his sniveling snitchwork. Bad Bob went way back with delightful dyke Dot Rothstein. They engaged in an entrapment scheme to screw Barbara Graham--wigged out in the women's jail.

  Barbarous Barb was gorgeous gash and one good actress. She maintained that she didn't murder Mabel Monahan. Demon DA Miller Leavy found her fetching. He feared that she'd move the men on the jury to mush. Leavy dished up a plan to discredit her and divvied it out to Dot and Bad Bob.

  They went underground. They unearthed some underworld untermenschen and unleashed them on Barbarous Barb. They handed her handy alibis for 3/9/53. She bit and said she'd buy them if they bought her out of the shit. The untermenschen shot her the shaft and strode straight to Miller Leavy. Leavy levied the alibi bit against Barb. It chewed her up and helped him chalk up a convincing conviction.

  My cop contacts contradicted Diabolical Dot. She'd dissembled and said she didn't know Duhamel. The Barbarous Barb bit bit my brain and ditzed me to distraction. Did it play in to payola and sin-tillating Sinatra?

  The riddle wracked my dope-diddled head. It lanced me as I laid iow and lived it up in limbo.r />
  I ran reefer-ripped ripostes with Sammy Davis. Sammy was one sick Sambo. Maryjane made him mean-minded. He ran race riffs like a mau-mau motherfucker. He teed off on ofay oppression and segued to sepia self-hate and slick slavemaster Sinatra.

  Annihilating anecdotes:

  Frank frags Sammy at a Mob meet in Miami. Sammy sings for made Mafia men. They make him step like Stepin Fetchit and feed him fettuccine with the Cuban kitchen crew. Frank frees Sammy and eggs him into an encore: "No-Count Nigger Me."

  Sammy slips the schnitzel to Miss Schlitz Beer at a backstage bash for Sinatra. Sissified Sinatra sincerely thinks that he had first dibs. His chauffeur shanghais Sammy. He shunts him to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and snouts him into a snowstorm in his snapbrim hat and skintight skivvies.

  Sinatra stomps onstage as Sammy creams the crowd at the Crescendo. Sammy blows a bluesy ballad and lights an L&M to look cool. The crowd cracks up. Sinatra signals a waiter. The waiter wings a watermelon up onstage. The crowd craps its pants. Sammy laughs to look like he's loving it. Frank freezes him out and wilts the room with "Willow Weep for Me."

  I spritzed my spin on Sinatra. Sammy succumbed to its succulence and sucked up to me. We sulked ourselves silly and sunk into a Sinatra-phobe Abyss.

  We hexed him with hellish hate. We shivved him with a Shinto curse that Crazy Chris cooked up. We defaced and dart-boarded all his album covers and ratched the records inside. We worked ourselves into a frenzy--frankly frantic and Francophiliacal. The fragrance of Frankincense froze us--and freed me to act.

  I said, "Help me steal some furs and run them down to Tj."

  Sammy said, "Yes, Big White Bwana."

  I said, "Call Frank. Make like you don't hate him, and put out some peace feelers for me."

  Sammy said, "Yes, Sahib."

  We surreptitiously surveilled Teitelbaum Furs. We sat in Chris's Chrysler and sunk down to the dash. We wore distinct disguises.

  I played a Shinto shaman. Dig it: a multicolored monk's robe and sharp shades to shield my eyes. Sammy posed as a pachuco in peg pants and a cheap cholo chirt.