by James Ellroy
4
Reopening
Karyn Two went by "Kari" now. She was four years out of L.A.
She married a stable guy named Brad. She owned a candle store in Chicago. She put down her bad L.A. habits. She surmounted her eating disorder and maintained a stable and slender weight.
Karyn saved her. The obsession still owned her. She flew out to L.A. to see the murder file.
She spent a week at the Homicide Bureau. She went through the file. Sergeant Bill Stoner studied it with her. Stoner retired in '94. He spent fourteen years at Sheriff's Homicide. He remained on the active Reserve.
Kari wanted to rework the case herself. The file provided her with insights and data on the key players. She wanted to find them and interview them.
I met Bill and Kari for dinner. We hogged a booth at the Pacific Dining Car. We discussed the case for three hours.
The consensus at Sheriff's Homicide: Andy Prine and David Lange remained viable suspects--if it was a homicide to begin with.
Karyn probably took eighty-one Desoxyns inside forty-eight hours. She might have built up a tolerance. The collective dose might not have fazed her. It might have caused dizziness and heart cramps.
Hathaway and Rubin revised their statements three years after the fact. Rubin recalled minute details out of nowhere. Hathaway altered the whole tone of his first statement.
Doc Kade was dead now. He did an autopsy shortly after his Kupcinet job. He allegedly told a colleague, "At least I didn't break the hyoid bone on this one!"
Kade had an erratic reputation. Some cops braced him on the hyoid bone back in '66. He stuck to his original statement.
He filed his initial report on 12/1/63. He noted a hemorrhage inside the throat. It buttressed his alleged finding on the hyoid bone.
Forensic glitches. Inconsistent statements. Advanced decomposition and incomplete toxology. Screwed-up witnesses in a screwed-up milieu. Exponential possibilities resultant.
Kari's puzzle to ponder. Her world to explore.
I juxtaposed Karyn and Kari. I melded their features and framed a tight close-up. I captioned it while the image held.
Karyn owned a gene for survival. She didn't get the chance to outgrow her silly flicking dreams.
December 1998
HUSH-HUSH
L.A. TIMES, JUNE 5, 1998:
TURNER-STOMPANATO LOVE LETTERS TO BE AUCTIONED
Smith & Kleindeinst, the Beverly Hills auctioneers, announced today that they will sell the late actress Lana Turner's love letters to reputed hoodlum Johnny Stompanato at their August 16 auction in Century City. A Smith & Kleindeinst spokesman said that the letters were consigned to them by a source who prefers to remain anonymous. There are a total of 14 letters, dated between October 9, 1957, and March 12, 1958. They will be sold as a block purchase.
The Turner-Stompanato liaison occupies a prominent place in Los Angeles criminal history. Their violent relationship culminated on the evening of April 4, 1958, when Cheryl Crane, Miss Turner's 14-year-old daughter by the late restaurateur Steve Crane, came to her mother's aid and stabbed Stompanato to death. No criminal charges were filed against Miss Crane. She was sent to a youth treatment facility for psychiatric evaluation and care.
The Smith & Kleindeinst spokesman said that bidding for the letters will most likely begin in the "mid-six-figure" range.
THE ADVOCATE, JUNE 6, 1998:
SCANDAL-SHEET WRITER IN CRITICAL CONDITION
Daniel "Danny" Getchell, 68, editor-in-chief and head writer for the infamous Hush-Hush scandal magazine of the I950s and early 1960s, was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center last week. An undisclosed source at the center revealed that Getchellis in the "final, deadly throes" of a "severe brain tumor."
Hush-Hush and the other scandal sheets of the era--Confidential, Whisper, Rave, Lowdown, and Tattle--waged a collective smear campaign against gays and lesbians and accomplished it with vicious outing tactics. Innuendo and intimidation were their most commonly applied methods, and their goal was titillation at any human price. The scandal sheets destroyed the lives of many gay and lesbian Americans, and Hush-Hush was arguably the worst of the lot.
Benjamin Luboff, ex-Whisper writer and author of the mea culpa memoir Scandal-Rag Scourge, described Danny Getchell as "viciously single-minded in his fast-buck pursuit of naming homosexual names" and "pathologically driven by a sadistic urge to out gays." When asked to comment on Getchell's hospitalization, Luboff replied, "What can I say? I wish no person-- straight or gay--a painfully protracted death, but the world will be a better place without Danny Getchell."
A hospital source said that Getchell is under intensive around-the-clock care and would not be able to answer a list of questions submitted by The Advocate.
Cheryl Crane did not shank Johnny Stompanato, and I don't have a fucking brain tumor. And I always gave the fags Ifragged a chance to buy their stories back.
And you won't believe the shit I've got on Ben Luboff
The brain-tumor bit is a smoke screen smoked by a hosp ital flack. I'm ensconced in a secret Cedars ward built from an old bomb shelter I'm sunk subterranean with sixty-three male patients and sixteen doctors set to vanquish our virus. They'll hypocritically ignore the Hippocratic oath and sell their cure exclusively to the rich. I'm selling everything I own to buy bed space at twenty grand a day.
I've got AIDS. The worst thing about having it is having it. The fact that people think you're afag runs a close second.
I'm not a fag. I'm a junkie with a 40-year-old monkey on my back.
Reliable rejuvenations ruined me. I periodically purge myputrefied system with black-market blood transfusions. I bought some Desert Storm surplus blood back in '91. It dried out my sex drive, downsized my redblood count, and devastatingly deep -sixed me into total devolution.
Or somebody poisoned me on purpose.
Maybe a minor miscreant I maligned in May '6i. Possibly a punk I pilloried as purple-tinged a loooong time ago. Perhaps a perpetrator with a perfect sense ofpoetic justice.
I'm pulsatingly paranoid now. I'm a hemophiliac homophobe and a crucifiable Christian abed at the Gay Roman Inn.
I see six of my scandal-rag scapegoats hooked up to hydration machines. They strategically strafe me with hate in their eyes. They huddle within hailing and hurting range and haunt me as I hatch this harangue in the Hush-Hush style.
I've got a sharp shiv shoved under my bed. I've got the guardedly gayfriendly tale that you're about to get. I'll pander to pederastic pride or hurl some hurt in the spirit of the Hush-Hush holocaust.
The gonif three gurneys down is staring straight through me. I can't place him in my backlog of blackmail and bad juju. I'm going to cut him out of my thoughts and concentrate on my story while I can still alliterate alluringly.
I
The debilitating dirt drought of Spring, '58.
It hindered, hampered, and hog-tied Hush-Hush. It forced us to print presumption as veracity verified. It forced me to misconstrue old morgue memos and pass them off as fresh scandal skank.
JACKIE GLEASON FIGHTS FOOD FIXATION AT FAT FARM OUTSIDE PHILLY! JOHNNIE RAY MAULED IN MEN'S-ROOM MISADVENTURE! STARLETS STATE STEVE COCHRAN TOPS TAPE AS TINSELTOWN'S MR. KINGSIZE.
Bum bits and rumor retreads. Libelous liabilities and lightning rods to lasso lewd litigation. Unprovable assertions to attract unremitting heat in an unenlightened climate.
Maureen O'Hara keestered Confidential last year. The mag maligned her and said she groped a guy at Grauman's Chink. She sued successfully. Confidential detailed Dorothy Dandridge's dipso descent. She sued successfully. Monkey see, monkey do: A chain of chimps sued Hush-Hush. Our current courtroom count stands at o-and- 3. We're mainlining monetary liens and moving toward Bankrupt Boulevard and Moribund Mesa. We're taking it up the ass bad.
We've dramatically downscaled our dimensions. We moved into a dumpy building down from the downtown dog pound. The doped-out dentist down the hail drives my new crew crazy. I cut my old crew l
oose to cover court costs and slapped up some fresh slaves from the Salvation Army. They're all dry drunks with the shimmy-shimmy shakes. Dental-drill noise drips through the walls and drills its way under their skin. They drop type trays and drizzle glue all over my pasteup plates.
Our circulation has circled down to the scandal-rag cellar. Whisper was whispered to top our toll by ten figures per month. Ben Luboff scammed skank for Whisper. I hated him. I owed his bookie brother two big on Basilio-Robinson. Ben bought bonus buzz-dirt off me and bought down my debts with his brother sometimes. I hated to humble Hush-Hush and humiliate myself-- but I had to now.
I looked around the office. A dry drunk dropped a cigarette and scorched a scalding shot primed for pasteup:
Lezzie Lizabeth Scott with a loin-lapping look at Linda's Little Log Cabin on Lankershim Boulevard.
Shit--
It was time to pound the pavement proactive. I walked down the hall and wiggled into Dr. Dave Dockweiler's chair.
Dave said, "How long?" I said, "Forty-eight hours straight." Dave jacked joy juice into a spike and found a vividly viable vein in my left arm.
He said, "Three good ones too hot to print. I'm going to an American Legion smoker tonight." I concocted a commie conspirator's clique and twisted a fist to twang my target vein.
"Paul Robeson is pouring the pork to Pat Nixon. I swear this is no shit. He's got her hooked on that big roll of tar paper he's packing, and she's leaking him all of Tricky Dick's secrets, and Robeson's feeding them to the Kremlin, and they're feeding them to Senator John F. Kennedy, who's going to run against Dick in '6o. This is no shit, I swear to you. Oh, and Sammy Davis Jr. is flicking Mamie Eisenhower. I swear to you, Dave, this is no fucking shit."
Dave spanked his spike on my vividly violet vein. "You swear this is no shit?"
"This is no shit, Dave, I swear to you."
Dave bit the bait and shook his head and let my shit sift into his system. He shot me up with his shit and watched me shift up to the stars.
I went into orgasmic orbit. I spun past Sputnik and jived with Jesus himself. I jumped back to Earth and jumped out of the chair like a jacked-up jungle bunny.
I fly on methamphetamine moored in male hormones and a multivitamin mix. Here's why scandal sheets fly:
People are ambivalently amped up on celebrities. They wildly worship them. They aim their adolescent adulation at them and get bupkis back. It's depressingly disassociative. It's idiotic idolatry. Fan magazines fan the flames of fatuous fancy and reinforce the fact that your favorite stars will never fuck you. Scandal rags rip that reinforcement and deliriously deconstruct and deidolize the idols who ignore you. It's revisionistic revenge. It reduces your unrequited lovers to your own low level of erratic erotics. It rips the rich and regal and guns them into the gutter beside you. It fractiously frees you to love them as one of your own.
I was flying on high-grade meth and a high-faluting head full of Hush-Hush homilies. I hit Hollywood hopped-up to dish dirt and dig my way out of debt.
Every bartender, bouncer, B-girl, busboy, and B-movie bimbo in town has his hand out to Hush-Hush or whispers to Whisper or tattles their tails off to Tattle. I tripped a path through my tipsters and said, "How's tricks?" I locked in the following lowdown:
Howard Hughes had a hard-on for a high-yellow hooker named Dusky Deelite. Rin Tin Tin ripped Lassie into renal distress at a recent kiddie roundup. Mickey Cohen can't afford to keep Candy Barr. Candy's starring in stag flux and moving a mountain of Mary Jane. Mickey's tapped out and tapping his old legbreakers for loans. Johnny Stompanato stood Mickey up at the Statler and stiffed him on a long-term debt. Lana Turner was lamenting the loss of Lex Barker. Stompanato stomped into her life. He bullies her and beguiles her into long bouts of bury the brisket. Lana now lisps, "Lex who?"
Bob Mitchum mauled a mulatto mama at a niggertown niteclub. Porfirio Rubirosa pulled out his pud at a Bel-Air bash for Bill Bendix. Rock Hudson humps prodigiously pretty call-service boys. He gets them from a sweaty swish carhop at Delores's Drive-In. Lenny Bruce is handing up hopheads to the Sheriff's Narco Squad.
The Rin Tin Tin riff rated zero. The Mitchum mishigaas might be milkable and make for a good miscegenation piece. Stompanato was stale stuff--Confidential cornholed him three months back. I'd played up Porfirio's pud and Howard Hughes's hooker hungries already. Ben Luboff wouldn't bite for that batch.
But he'd bite for the boffo bit on Rock Hudson.
Ben wanted to ram Rock out of the closet. He wanted to push him past the Pink Curtain and parade him around in a purple peignoir. Every scandal scribe wanted to skewer and scupper the Rock. He was the hunky height of the homo heap. Hush-Hush, Whisper, Rave--we all got cloyingly close to the clasp on the closet door. But pugnacious publicists grabbed at our greed, bought our stories back, and heaped us with heat on their other homo clients. The Rock remained ramrod erect--just past the Purple Passage.
Ben Luboff hogged a back booth at Googie's twenty hours a day. Tipsters trucked in and tossed him tidbits. I bopped back to his booth and blew out a blast of bravado.
"I owe your brother two Gs. Take care of it and slip me an item for the May issue, and I'll give you the Rock."
Ben belched bicarbonate of soda. Bubbles bipped off his lips. He looked disturbingly drawn and dyspeptic. The dirt drought had drained him dry.
He nudged me a napkin. I pulled out my pen and wrote down my rap on Rock and the sweaty swish. Ben Scripto scrawled his own napkin note. We noodled our notes across the table simultaneously.
His read:
"Don Jordan (top welterweight contender) running string of wetback maids as hookers out of the Luau."
MOONLIGHTING MEXICAN MAIDS MAKE FOR MISCHIEVOUS--
Ben noshed my napkin note and blew me a big bicarbonate kiss.
2
The Luau:
A tiki-torchlit restaurant rendezvous on Rodeo Drive. A mecca for movie-biz mavens and Beverly Hills business boys.
Big booths and baroque backlighting. Tricked-up tropical trappings. Rambunctious rum drinks and rumaki sticks at the bamboo bar.
A polyurethane Polynesian paradise--with peekaboo posts perched behind wall panels by the bar and the ladies' too.
Steve Crane owned the Luau. Steve loved to lurk and look. He voyeur-vamped the joint every night.
Steve owed me. I bought him out of a blow-job beef back in '54. Ben Luboff tried to trap him with a 16-year-old San Quentin quail. Steve let me lurk in peeper perpetuity.
I was lurked out behind the ladies' lay. My peephole post provided a prime view. I saw Helen Hayes hitch up her hose. I saw the Misty June Christy crimp a crisp twenty and crib coke up her nose. I ducked down a dark panel passage and peeped out a peephole right behind the bar.
Dreamy drunks adrift in demerara rum. Don Jordan fretting a frosted fruit frappe. Demonic Don from the Dominican Republic--a maladroit mulatto now in moonlight mode with a melange of Mexican maids.
Donkey Don: rumored to reach twelve inches. Devil Don: rumored to run a right-wing death squad back in the D.R. A ripe recent rumor: Mickey Cohen owned a prime piece of Don's prizefighting percentage.
I bored my eyes in on the bar. Don downed his daiquiri and doodled up his napkin. Three wetback wenches wiggled up to him.
Luscious Latinas pulling out va-va-va-voom volts. A stellar stable too starkly dark to strike up biz in Steve Crane's lily-white Luau.
Steve stuck to a strict B-girl Bill of Race Rights. Negro: Nyet, nein, no, not at my place. White: Welcome, what will you have? Latin: Light-skinned Lupes and Lucitas only.
Something was twisted two twirls off.
It hit me:
Two twists in twin frocks fresh out of Frederick's of Hollywood. Pulchritudinous--but not pulsingly so. The supreme señorita: languidly lissome in Lana Turner's light blue gown from last month's Oscar show.
Lana Turner:
Steve Crane's ex. Movie-star mama to Steve's starstruck daughter, Cheryl. Steve was still starved for Lana's lewd love. Ste
ve couldn't stomach thoughts of Johnny Stompanato sticking it to her.
I panted and peeped out my peephole. A methamphetamine breath mist glazed up the glass. I wiped it off and watched a waiter walk up to the mass magnifica mama.
He passed her a piece of paper. Don Jordan passed his other prosties Mickey Mouse--size Minox minicameras.
What the fuck--
The main mamacita mainlined her way out of the bar. I peephole-patched a path through the main passageway and kept her within peeping range. She walked out to the back parking lot and stepped over to Steve Crane. Steve was poised by a powder blue Packard Caribbean.
I pushed out a passageway panel and pulled myself into a storeroom. I pushed aside some rum crates and pried open a window. Whisper-close: Steve and the stark dark stunner.
I loitered. I lurked. I lolled my head below the window ledge and listened.
Steve said, "--come on, you know the deal. Don can run you and the other girls out of here, but only--"
The girl said, "Pleeeese, Mr. Crane. I don't know what joo want me to say."
Steve said, "Don't play coy, Yolanda. We've been through this before."
Yolanda said, "Well, all right, but joo should say exactly what joo--"
"Does Johnny ever hit Lana or Cheryl?"
"No, he just yells at them. It eeesn't very nice, but--"
"Are you still mailing the letters that Lana writes him?"
"Well, yes . . ."
"Love letters, right?"
"Well . . . I don't . . ."
"Yolanda, you told me that she dips the letters in perfume, and you saw her drop in curly little hairs when she sealed the envelopes."
Man-o-Manischewitz! What a pussy-whipped provocateur and masochism-mangled motherfucker!
Yolanda said, "Please, Mr. Crane. I don't like to--"