by James Ellroy
"Levant scares me."
"You never know what he knows."
"He's a hophead. Those guys crap out all the time, and nobody thinks twice."
"Torture him and find out what he knows, then kill him."
I flew to Pluto. I asked Mickey Mouse why they named a planet after his dog.
"You've got to move him or move the fucking trailer. He's starting to smell, and our location permit expired."
I flew to Neptune. I flew back to Private Hell 36. Joe Friday said, "Hitch the trailer." A spike went in my arm. I flew to Venus. It looked like Las Vegas. I wondered how that could be so.
White.
White plastic. White Naugahyde. Maybe white leather. Tucked and tufted. Sticky. Stuck against my cheek.
White.
Stiff-starched. Mummifyingly tight.
I blinked. I yawned. I tried to rub my eyes. My hands didn't move. My arms didn't move. I had myself in a bear hug.
A big bug bounced my way. He bopped over white tucks and tufts. He got close. I tried to swat him. I couldn't break the bear hug.
I rolled away. I slid on sticky white webs. I saw white-webbed walls and a white-webbed ceiling.
My head hurt. My body throbbed. My white world wiggled and wobbled.
It hit me.
Padded cell/straitjacket/voices or ventriloquistic voodoo:
"Torture him. "/ "Kill him. "/ "Dump Contino someplace."
I remembered Mars and the mermaid. I remembered my trident-tailed twins. I remembered the hypo hits that hopped me up on Big H. I diagnosed my dilemma.
I was hooked on Horse.
I shook. I shuddered. I shivered. I decided to probe my prognosis.
I rubbed my cheek against white rubber. I felt a sticky two-day stubble. I couldn't be a junkie yet.
I still hurt. I still throbbed. My white world still wiggled and wobbled. I was still mummified and dope-doctored.
I scanned my white world. I saw a small black square cut into one wall about a foot above floor level.
I rolled up to it. Heat hit me. I saw metal grates set six inches in. I tried to jam my ass and my rear restraint straps up against them. I couldn't get close.
I rolled over and faced the wall. I bit at white plastic. I snapped three times and got a good tooth hold. I burrowed, bit and spat, burrowed, bit and spat, burrowed, bit and spat. I chewed a big hole around the grates and slammed my ass against them.
Heat.
It warmed me and singed me and scorched my ass. I bit the floor to staunch my pain and stifle incipient screams. I smelled toasted white cotton and burning flesh.
I slammed my ass in tighter. The pain accelerated. I felt little ass hairs sizzle. I bit down harder and almost choked on a chunk of white plastic.
My armiock went limp. My bear hug broke. I rolled away from the grates and rolled out of my straitjacket.
I stood up. I stumbled and fell. My circulation started to circulate. I crawled to a waffle-webbed white door.
I crouched. I rubbed my ass. I counted the waffle webs on the walls to stay calm. The door opened at 4,806.
A man stepped in. I grabbed his ankles and pulled. He hit the floor facedown. I kicked the door shut and jumped on his back.
I pressed his face into white plastic. Tucks and tufts muffled his screams. I knee-dropped him nine times. I came down on his kidneys full force.
Blood blew out of his mouth. It spritzed and sprayed and trickled through little white troughs.
He was dead.
I pulled a key ring off his belt and stumbled to the door. I looked out. I saw an empty hall. I saw a door marked "Pharmacy/ Restricted."
I shook. I shivered. I braced myself into the door. My hands hopped to heavy rpms.
I needed a fix.
I looked down the hallway. I recognized the pink walls. I thought I heard a screech two doors down.
Mount Sinai. The locked ward.
I stumbled to the pharmacy door. I fumbled and bumbled my keys. My hands hopped. I stabbed keys at the keyhole. The fourth key let me in.
I shut the door. I turned on a light. I dumped three drawers of dope into a sink. I dug through Digitalis, Desoxyn, and Dilantin. I tossed Tuinal and Terpin Hydrate and shoved Seconal aside. I grabbed four vials of Methedrine Hydrochloride and dumped every drawer in the room.
I sifted through morphine Syrettes and pawed through pills. I found a portable spike and jabbed up a big jolt of Meth. I tied off my arm with my black lizard belt and mainlined my way back to Mars.
I strafed the stratosphere in six seconds. I returned to Earth and ran toward that screech two doors down.
I kicked the door in. I entered another white world.
Oscar Levant was strapped to a king-size dartboard. A dozen darts dotted his chest. The nut-ward guy held jumper cables and a squirt gun. The cable cord was socked into a wall switch.
He saw me. He squirt-gunned me. He charged at me with his cables. I slipped on wet white plastic and hit the floor.
He stabbed at me. He caught me. Voltage bounced off my chest. I rolled into the dartboard. It capsized. Oscar hit the floor and slipped free.
I stood up. The nut-ward guy charged me. Oscar pulled a dart off his chest and let fly. He nailed the nut-ward guy in the neck.
It stunned him. He dropped the squirt gun. I grabbed it and squirted him. Oscar lobbed two darts at his face.
They stunned him. He dropped his cables. I grabbed them and clamped them down on his balls.
He screamed. I slipped Oscar the squirt gun. He shot him in the balls and electrocuted him.
6
Joi Lansing hid us out. We turned her house into a kick pad.
I kicked Big H. Joi knew a dope doc and a Chinese herbalist. They collaborated and cooked up compounds to cleanse me. I popped their portions and felt all the poison pour out of my pores.
Oscar kicked cold turkey. He played Joi's piano twenty hours a day. He played himself into and way past exhaustion. He played blistering Bartok and soft Brahms ballades. He perched on Joi's balcony and played for the Hollywood Hills. People stood on their rooftops and listened.
Busy hands can't shake. Busy brains don't dwell on dope deprivation.
I kicked Horse. I didn't know if I could kick my homicide habit.
Murder was a monkey on my back now. I found a context to make mayhem mine. Most men found it in war. I attracted it with my fear and put myself in peril to perpetrate it. I was a murder magnet. I'd continue to kill as long as it felt justifiable and erotic.
I wanted to juke Jack Webb and Johnny Stomp and hang their hides out to dry. I wanted to fry Freddy Otash in hot oil and pulverize William H. Parker. I didn't know if I wanted to avenge Trent Woodard or go on another kill spree. My murder motives were convoluted and ego-polluted. I didn't know if I wanted to save L.A. or annihilate it and go down behind a big ovation.
I ran it byJoi. She told me to relax and let things play out hushhush. Dinkins and Wells were still John Doe'd in the papers and on TV. The Mount Sinai massacre never made print. The LAPD plot was huge and unverifiable. Oscar was a hophead. I was a draft dodger. Jack Webb was Joe Friday. Let it go. It was all too big to flick with.
I couldn't let it go. My murder-mangled memory said no. Joi took me to bed and tried to induce amnesia.
We made love to Bartok and Brahms. We slept to soft Schubert and Schumann. Oscar played to our passion. His music molded my memories of murder and sparked my lust for more of the same.
We made love and slept for a week. A Rachmaninoff opus 32 prelude pushed me over the edge.
I called my parents and told them to hide in their bomb shelter. I told Joi to call Harvey Glatman and suggest some publicity pix.
7
Voices or ventriloquistic voodoo:
"We've got to move the master file tonight. Stash it someplace safe at your studio."
"Yeah, boss."
I heard those words in a hop haze. I was half-ass sure that Freddy 0 and Harvey Glatman said them. I had a hunch that Harve
y took his pervert pix in some sick sanctum sanctorum.
Joi walked into his repair shop. Oscar and I watched. We were staked out in Joi's Jag coupe.
We watched the door. We waited. Joi went in wired.
Oscar hooked her up. We bought a "Sergeant Joe Friday Surveillance Kit" at a toy store and went wild. Joi packed a "Jill Friday Purse Pistol" and a signal device. Oscar held the "Trap-Your-Man Transmitter." We parked two doors down from the shop. Joi was set to signal us to the sanctum sanctorum.
We watched the door. Oscar sucked cigarettes. I fought the homicide heebie-jeebies.
I wanted to hurl some hurt on Harvey. I wanted to kick my homicide habit and reembrace my accordion.
Seconds slogged by. Minutes meandered. We watched the door.
Our beep device beeped.
We jumped out of the car. We ran into the shop. We shut the door and threw up the Closed sign. We followed the beeps. We beeped through the back room. We beeped up to a big green door.
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP--
Oscar kicked the door. It stayed upright. Oscar grabbed his foot and yelled, "Shit!" I kicked the door. It stayed upright. Oscar picked up a TV set and threw it at the door. The door blew off the doorway.
We ran into a little green room. It looked like the gas chamber up at San Quentin. Joi held Harvey hostage. He sat in a gaschamber chair. Joi held her toy gun on him.
I smelled stale gas. I pried open a floor vent. I smelled it stronger there. I saw cardboard boxes stacked in a hidey-hole. I saw a crawl space behind them.
Oscar grabbed a box. Joi pistol-slapped Harvey. Her toy gun decomposed in her hand.
Harvey yelped. Joi said, "He tried to tie me up, the sick shit."
I eyeballed the room. It had a feral feel and an abattoir air. Oscar opened a box and skimmed some carbon paper. He said, "It's the big Hush-Hush file."
Harvey yipped and yelped. Joi jammed a high heel down on his foot. Oscar spieled scandal-rag skank:
"Otto Preminger sniffs coke and H speedballs. Mayor Bowron's got a Filipino love child. Randy Randolph Scott wrangles with a Mexican middleweight. Dean Martin moves Mob money direct to Pope Pius at the Vatican. Dick Powell delivers dope to--,,
I cut him off. "Talk, Harvey."
Harvey squirmed. I sniffed more stale gas. I caught a bitteralmond subscent and felt my hackles hop.
Harvey said, "What do you want to know?"
I said, "All of it. Off-the-record, on the q.t., and very hushhush."
Harvey talked. Harvey laid out the whole ball of wax. I sniffed bitter almond and shivered as he spritzed it.
He was Freddy 0 and Johnny Stomp's Einstein. He ran their "Subscription TV" scam. They sold smut-film subscriptions to pervs and the Great White Priapic all over L.A. Harvey could beam film from his shop to any Joe Blow's TV set. The pervs paid prime prices for home pornography.
Cal Dinkins and Playboy Wells provided inmate actors. LAPD goons transported them to the flick-film set in Duarte. Freddy 0 coerced Ida Lupino into director duty. Freddy fixed her manslaughter beef. Ida plowed a car full of wetbacks dead drunk and killed all four passengers. Freddy forced the Schvantz to star in her films. The Schvantz had three reefer-roust priors and a current case pending. The Schvantz skin-popped White Horse and loved jungle-bred jailbait hot off a slave boat from Zanzibar. The Schvantz was viably pliable.
Freddy O was Chief Parker's pet pit dog. Parker wanted to shaft the Sheriff's Department and take a fat share of its budget. Freddy concocted a covert operation. He coopted Johnny Stomp's stagnight racket and put six ranking Sheriff's men in bed with six inmate hookers. The men shot their mouths off. They shamelessly shared Sheriff's Department secrets. Ida Lupino filmed their philandering.
Parker needed money. He wanted to build debtors' prisons and work farms. He wanted to wipe the winos and strong-arm the stumblebums off the streets of L.A. and sell them to spic dictators.
It was all working well-oiled and wonderful. Until Playboy pulled an unpermitted heist with Cal Dinkins right there. Until Oscar Levant and Dick Contino bumbled down to Darktown.
Harvey stopped talking. Joi blew cigarette smoke in his face and said, "Creep." Oscar tossed a dozen film cans out of the hideyhole.
I looked in the hole. I saw pipes pointing up to the hot seat. I caught a biting blast of bitter almond.
Oscar said, "I've been through six boxes. There's enough dirt in them to outextort the gross national product. Bing Crosby bangs underage tail in an archdiocesan ark moored in San Pedro! Dave Garroway checks out the chicken in---"
I jumped into the hole. I bent down and followed a shaft of light. The cyanide scent went south. I smelled something worse.
The hole expanded into a tunnel. Wood walls shut out dirt and foundation debris. I saw a pile of bones and smelled mothballs mixed with decomposed flesh.
Skulls. Arm bones. Leg bones. Wide female pelvic bones flecked with red gristle.
I ran out of the hole. I ran up to Harvey Glatman.
Harvey smiled. Harvey said, "Seventeen. But then, who's counting?"
The terror trove went telepathic. Time stood still.
Joi dropped her cigarette. Oscar dropped a scandal skank sheet.
Nobody said a word. We all let IT sink in.
Nobody talked. Nobody breathed. We all looked at the hole.
Harvey read my mind.
"I know you want to kill me, Dick. I know how it is when timid men smell blood."
Nobody talked. Nobody breathed. We all looked at Harvey.
He said, "Don't be hasty. I'm the only one who can help you out of this scrape you're in."
He explained.
I granted him a stay of execution.
8
I hogged a booth at Ollie Hammond's Steakhouse. I held a cross and a big garlic bulb.
The succubus was late.
Oscar and Joi guarded the gas chamber. They barricaded the shop and held my dad's shotgun on Harvey. Harvey hammered away at my Home-TV Show. He thought he could buy me out of the shit I slid into and slide on his seventeen snuffs.
He was wrong. I passed sentence. Oscar and Joi played public defenders and petitioned me for a pardon. I said no. They said they were glad and conceded their collusion in Contino's kangaroo court. I said Harvey's death would bea real gas. Oscar and Joi laughed. We drew straws to pick who'd drop the pellets. Joi won. Oscar dipped down to Western Costume. He bought her a boss black death robe.
I felt righteously righteous and smilingly smug. I ratified my rationale a dozen times and reveled in its logic. Harvey was a freelance freak. The LAPD did not know he killed women. The LAPD could not be trusted to rein in their rabid Rottweiler. I could gas Harvey and give up gore for good.
The succubus was late.
I felt valiantly virile. I felt spectacularly spiritual and alluringly alive. I had the big Hush-Hush file. I had dirt. I knew who fucked and sucked and licked and dicked and boozed and coozed and injected and elected to genuflect to their basest desires. I could wreck careers and resurrect my own. I could shake down booking agents and casting agents and columnists. I could run a prime portion of the press and have them castrate my competitors. I could regulate my rise to Mount Olympus. I could humble those who humbled me in the spirit of Hush-Hush hegemony.
The succubus walked in.
I shook. I shivered. I squeezed my garlic bulb.
She sat down at the table. She wore her widow's weeds witchingly well.
Vivid Viv.
She said, "Jesus, Dick. You smell."
I dropped my garlic. I picked up my cross. I aimed it at her crotch under the table. I said, "You're probably wondering why I called."
She nodded. "I'm wondering where you found the audacity."
I said, "I've been having an audacious time lately."
"That's an evasion, and it's not a suitable answer."
Vicious Viv.
I said, "I'm sorry about your husband."
Viv flicked some tobacco off her tongue. "That's a craven response
, and it's what you should have said first."
Vindictive Viv.
I tamped my temper down. I made a neutral and nut-neutered statement. "I didn't have a choice. The LAPD was squeezing me."
Viv laughed. "You had a choice. Your options were suicide or direct action."
I laughed. Viv laughed. It was shitty laughless laughter.
"You blew your most immediate options and your chance to father my child. I suspect that you'll blow whatever else comes your way."
I popped a few tears. Wicked words and garlic fumes sucked them out of me. A waiter walked up. Viv waved him away.
"You never returned my car, Dick."
I shrugged.
"I found another handsome Italian man to impregnate me. He's much more famous than you, and I'm sure that he has a larger penis."
I said, "Who?"
Viv said, "Dean Martin."
I dropped my cross. It hit the floor. It made a wop! sound.
I said, "Fuck Dino. He moves Mob money to the Vatican."
"Yes, and my husband was a homosexual. If you're trying to shock me or titillate me, you're employing the wrong tactics."
I wiped my eyes. I wiped my nose. Viv tossed me her napkin.
"Tell me what you want, Dick. I'm meeting Dean at Chasen's, and I don't want to be late."
I blew my beak on white linen. "I want direct action, and I need to talk to Sheriff Biscailuz."
Viv stood up. "I'll arrange it in the spirit of what we could have had."
I smelled her perfume. I recognized it. Joi said she wore it to funerals.
Matchabelli's Mourning Madness.
Viv said, "Wash my car before you return it."
9
I walked in on the Sheriff's arm. Chief Parker almost shit on his living-room floor.
I said, "What's shakin', Daddy-O?"
Daddy-O went raging red and pulmonary purple. His veins bulged blue and vibrated violet.
The Sheriff sat him down in front of his TV set. He drilled me with Draculean eyes and hexed me from the heart. I knew he couldn't talk. I knew a catatonic cat captured his tongue.