by James Ellroy
But it was the key to the front entrance foyer, and that night, dressed as a woman and carrying a bag of groceries as camouflage, he brazenly unlocked the door and walked straight to a bank of mailboxes that designated Peggy’s apartment as 423. From there he circled the foyer and learned that a separate key was required for the elevator door. Undaunted, he noticed a
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door off to his left. It was unlocked. He opened it and walked down a dingy hallway to a laundry room filled with coin-operated washers and dryers. He scanned the room and noticed a wide ventilator shaft in the ceiling. Noise from the apartments above him caught his ears, and his wheels started to turn . . .
Again dressed as a woman, but this time wearing a tight cotton jumpsuit underneath the feminine garb, he parked across the street to wait for Peggy to return home. His tremors of expectation were so great that no thoughts of the homicide fisherman’s voice crossed his mind. Peggy showed at 12:35. She shifted her grocery bag and fumbled her new key into the lock and let herself in. He waited for half an hour, then walked over demurely and followed suit, partially shielding his face with his own shopping bag. He walked through the foyer to the laundry room and placed a hand-lettered “Out of Order” sign on the door, then bolted it shut from the inside. Breathing shallowly, he stripped off his loose fitting gingham dress and emptied his work tools from the bag: screwdriver, chisel, ball peen hammer, hacksaw, and silencer-fitted .32 automatic. He stuck them into the compartments of an army surplus cartridge belt, then wrapped the belt around his waist and donned surgical gloves.
Bringing to mind his few fond memories of Peggy, he stood up on top of the washer directly beneath the ventilator shaft and peered into the darkness, then took a deep breath and placed his hands above his head in a diving position and leaped upward until his arms caught the corrugated metal walls of the shaft’s interior. With a huge, lung-straining effort he hoisted himself up into the shaft, flattening out his arms, shoulders, and legs to gain a purchase that propelled him slowly up. Feeling like a worm doing penance in hell, he inched forward, a foot at a time, modulating his breathing in concert with his movement. The shaft was stifling hot and the metal stung his skin through his jumpsuit.
He reached the second-floor connecting shaft, and found it wide enough to climb through. He moved along it, savoring the feeling of again being horizontal. The crawl space terminated at a metal plate covered with tiny holes. Cool air was pouring through them, and he squinted and saw that he was at ceiling level across the hallway from apartments 212 and 214. He rolled onto his back and removed the hammer and chisel from his cartridge belt, then twisted back on his stomach and wedged the chisel head into the edge of the plate and snapped it off with one sharp hammer blow. The plate dropped onto the blue carpeted hallway, and he crawled through the open 154
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hole and dropped to the floor in a handstand. He caught his breath and replaced the metal plate crookedly in the shaft, then walked down the hall, his eyes constantly trawling for hidden security devices. Seeing none, he walked through two connecting doorways and up two flights of concrete service stairs, feeling his heartbeat reach a new crescendo with each step he took.
The fourth floor corridor was deserted. He walked to the door of apartment 423 and placed his ear to it. Silence. He took the .32 automatic from his belt and checked to see that the silencer was screwed tight to the barrel. Concentrating on the timbre of doltish Phil’s voice, he rapped on the door and said, “Peg? It’s me, babe.”
There was a shuffling of feet within the apartment, followed by the fondly muttered words, “You crazy . . .” The door opened a moment later. When Peggy Morton saw the man in the black jumpsuit her hands flew to her mouth in surprise. She looked into his light blue eyes and saw longing. When she saw the gun in his hand she tried to scream, but nothing came out.
“Remember me,” he said, and fired into her stomach. There was a soft plop, and Peggy sank to her knees, her terrified mouth trying to form the word “No.” He rested the gun barrel against her chest and squeezed the trigger. She pitched backward into her living room and expelled a soft “No” along with a mouthful of blood. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. Peggy’s eyelids were fluttering and she was gasping for breath. He bent down and opened her robe. She was naked underneath it. He placed the barrel to her heart and fired. Her body lurched and her head snapped upwards. Blood poured from her mouth and nostrils. Her eyelids fluttered a last time, then closed forever. He walked into the bedroom and found an oversized shift dress that looked like it would fit him, then rummaged in the dresser until he found a brunette wig and a large straw hat. He put the outfit on and checked his getaway image in the mirror, deciding that he was beautiful. A circuit of the kitchen yielded a large, double-strength shopping bag and a stack of newspapers. He carried them into the living room, then placed them on the floor beside the body of his most recent beloved. He removed Peggy’s blood-soaked robe and got his hacksaw. He lowered the saw and closed his eyes and felt sharp sprays of blood cut the air. Within minutes tissue, bone, and viscera had been separated and the pale yellow carpet had turned dark crimson.
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He walked to the balcony and looked out at the silent jetstream of cars on the Sunset Strip. He wondered briefly where all the people were going, then walked back to his twenty-third beloved and picked up her severed arms and legs. He carried them to the edge of the balcony and flung them to the world, watching as they disappeared, weighted down with his power. Now only the head and torso remained. He let the torso lie and wrapped the head in newspaper and placed it in the supermarket bag. Sighing, he walked out the door of the apartment and through the silent security building and into the street. At curbside he slid out Peggy Morton’s dress and removed her wig and straw hat and dumped them in the gutter, knowing that he had met the equivalent of all of mankind’s wars and had emerged the victor.
He took his trophy out of the shopping bag and walked along the sidewalk. At the corner he saw a beautiful, pristine white Cadillac. He placed Peggy Morton’s head on the hood. It was a declaration of war. Warrior slogans passed through his mind. “To the victor belong the spoils” caught and stuck. He got his car and went looking for spartan revelry. Benevolent voices propelled him down Santa Monica Boulevard. He drove slowly in the right lane, the tight rubber gloves numbing his hands on the wheel. There was little traffic, so the absence of street noise left him free to listen; to hear the thoughts of the young men lounging against stop signs and bus benches. Keeping eye contact was hard, and it would be even harder to make up his mind based on looks alone, so he stared straight ahead, throwing his encounter open to the voice of fate. Near Plummer Park, crude hustler catcalls and importunings assailed him. He kept going; better nothing than someone nasty. He crossed Fairfax, moving out of Boy’s Town, frightened and relieved that his gauntlet was ending. Then he hit the red light at Crescent Heights and voices came down on him like shrapnel: “Good weed, Birdy. You carry dime bags for your johns and you’ll clean up.”
“I already cleaned up, what do you think I am, a fucking janitor?”
“It might not be a bad idea, beauty. Janitors get social security, jockers get the clap.”
All three voices dissolved into laughter. He looked over. Two young blondes and the lackey. He gripped the wheel so hard that his numb hands came to life and twisted in spastic tremors, hitting the horn by accident. The voices stopped at the noise. He could feel their gazes zeroing in. The light turned green, the color reminding him of tape slithering through 156
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bloody apertures. He stood his ground; to run now would be cowardice. Cancer cells started to crawl over his windshield, and then a soft voice was at his passenger window.
“You looking for company?”
It was the lackey. Staring at the green light, he ran through a mental litany of his twenty-three beloveds. Their images calmed him;
they wanted him to do it.
“I said, ‘You want some company?’ ”
He nodded in return. The cancer cells vanished at the act of courage. He forced himself to look over and open the door and smile. The lackey smiled back, no recognition in his eyes. “The silent type, huh? Go ahead, stare. I know I’m gorgeous. I’ve got a pad down near La Cienega. Five minutes and Larry the Bird flies you straight to heaven.”
The five minutes stretched into twenty-three eternities; twenty-three female voices saying “Yes.” He nodded each time and felt himself go warm all over.
They pulled into the motel parking lot, Larry leading the way up to his room and closing the door behind them, whispering, “It’s fifty. In advance.”
The poet reached into his jumpsuit and extracted two twenties and a ten. He handed them to Larry, who put them in a cigar box on the nightstand and said, “What’ll it be?”
“Greek,” the man said.
Larry laughed. “You’ll love it, doll. You ain’t been fucked till you been fucked by Larry the Bird.”
The man shook his head. “No. You’ve got it mixed up. I want to fuck you.”
Larry breathed out angrily. “Buddy, you got it all wrong. I don’t take it up the ass, I give it up the ass. I been rippin’ off butthole since high school. I’m Larry Bir—”
The first shot caught Larry in the groin. He crashed into the dresser, then slid to the floor. The man stood over him and sang, “On, o’ noble Marshall, roll right down that field; with your banner flying o’er us, we will never yield.” Larry’s eyes came alive. He opened his mouth, and the man stuck the silencer-fitted barrel into it and squeezed off six shots. The back of Larry’s head and the dresser behind it exploded. He removed the spent clip and reloaded, then rolled the dead hustler onto his back and pulled off his pants and jockey shorts. He spread Larry’s legs and wedged the gun barrel into his rectum and pulled the trigger seven times. The last two shots ricocheted off
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the spinal cord and tore through the jugular as they exited, sending crisscrossed geysers of blood into the cordite-reeking air. The poet got to his feet, surprised to find that he could hold himself steady. He held both of his hands in front of his face and noticed that they were steady, too. He pulled off his rubber gloves and felt symbolic life return to his hands. He had now killed twenty-three times for love, and once for revenge. He was capable of bringing death to man and woman, lover and rapist. He knelt beside the corpse and reached his hands into a pile of dead viscera and immersed them in blood, then turned on all the lights in the room and wrote on the wall in bloody finger strokes: “I am not Kathy’s Klown.”
Now that he knew it himself, he pondered the proper means of spreading the news to the world. He found the telephone and dialed “Operator,”
requesting the number of the Homicide Division, Los Angeles Police Department. The operator gave it to him and he dialed, drumming bloody fingers on the nightstand as he listened to the dial tone. Finally, a gruff voice answered, “Robbery/Homicide, Officer Huttner speaking. May I help you?”
“Yes,” the man said, going on to explain that a very kind Detective Sergeant had rescued his dog. His daughter wanted to send the nice policeman a Valentine. She forgot his name, but remembered his badge number—1114. Would Officer Huttner get the word to the nice policeman?
Officer Huttner said “Shit” to himself and “Yes sir, what’s the message?”
into the mouthpiece.
The man said, “Let the war begin,” then yanked the cord out of the wall and hurled the phone across the bloody motel room. 13
Lloyd drove to Parker Center at dawn, the possible ramifications of his outburst at the party banging in his head like cymbals gone mad. Whatever the upshot, from formal assault charges to departmental censure, he was going to be the object of an I.A.D. investigation that would result in his 158
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being immediately placed on a full-time specific assignment that would preclude investigating the killings. It was time to take his investigation underground, stay unavailable to the department in general and the I.A.D. witch-hunters in particular, make his amends to Dutch later and get the killer, whatever the price to his career.
Lloyd ran the six flights of stairs up to his office. There was a note on his desk from the night officer downstairs: “Badge 1114. Let the war begin?
Probably a crank—Huttner.” I.A.D. psychological warfare, Lloyd decided; religious fanatics were never subtle.
Lloyd walked down the hall to the junior officers’ lounge, hoping that there would be no night-watch dicks lingering there. He was going to be out on the street for a long stretch, and coffee alone wouldn’t do it. The lounge was deserted. Lloyd checked the undersides of the lunch tables, the classic “Long-term surveillance” cops’ hiding place. On his fourth try he was rewarded: a plastic baggie filled with Benzedrine tablets. He grabbed the whole bag. Thirty-one names on his stereo supply list and a one man stake-out of Whitey Haines’s apartment. Better too much speed than too little.
The Parker Center corridors were coming alive with early arriving officers. Lloyd saw several unfamiliar men with crew cuts and stern looks give him the eye, and immediately made them for I.A.D. detectives. Back in his office, he saw that the papers on his desk had been gone over. He was raising his fist to slam the desk when his phone rang.
“Lloyd Hopkins,” he said into the mouthpiece. “Who’s this?”
A distressed male voice answered. “Sergeant, this is Captain Magruder, West Hollywood Sheriff’s. We’ve got two homicides out here, separate locations. We’ve got a set of prints, and I’m certain they match the ones in your teletype on the Niemeyer killing. Can you . . .”
Lloyd went cold. “I’ll meet you at the station in twenty minutes,” he said. It took him twenty-five, running red lights and siren all the way. He found Magruder at the Information Desk, in uniform, poring over a stack of folders. Noting his name tag, Lloyd said, “Captain, I’m Lloyd Hopkins.”
Magruder jumped back as if stung by a swarm of bees. “Thank God,” he said, sticking out a trembling hand. “Let’s go into my office.”
They walked down a hallway crowded with uniformed officers talking in animated whispers. Magruder opened his office door and pointed Lloyd to a chair, then sat down behind his desk and said, “Two homicides. Both last night. One woman, one man. Murder scenes a mile apart. Both victims
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blown to hell with a .32 automatic. Identical spent casings at both scenes. The woman was dismembered, probably with a saw. Her arms and legs were found in the swimming pool of the adjoining apartment building. Her head was wrapped up in a newspaper and placed on the hood of a car directly outside her apartment house. A nice girl, twenty-eight years old. The second victim was a fruit hustler. Worked out of a motel a few blocks from here. The killer stuck the .32 in his mouth and up his ass and blew him to shit. The night manager, who lives directly below, didn’t hear a thing. She called us when blood started dripping down through her ceiling.”
Lloyd, stunned beyond thought at the news of the male victim, watched Magruder reach into his desk drawer and pull out a fifth of bourbon. He poured a large shot into a coffee cup and downed it in one gulp.
“Jesus, Hopkins,” he said. “Holy Jesus Christ.”
Lloyd declined the bottle. “Where were the prints found?” he asked.
“The fruit hustler’s motel room,” Magruder said. “On the telephone and the nightstand and next to some writing in blood on the walls.”
“No sexual assault?”
“No way to tell. The guy’s rectum was obliterated. The M.E. told me he’d never seen—”
Lloyd raised a hand in interruption. “Do the papers know about it yet?”
“I think so . . . but we haven’t released any information. What have you got on the Niemeyer killing? Any leads you can give my men?”
“I’ve got nothing!�
�� Lloyd screamed. Lowering his voice, he said, “Tell me about the fruit hustler.”
“His name was Lawrence Craigie, a.k.a. Larry “The Bird,” a.k.a. “Birdman.” Middle thirties, blonde, muscles. I think he used to hustle off the street down near Plummer Park.”
Lloyd’s mind exploded, then coalesced around an incredible series of connections: Craigie, the witness at the 6/10/80 suicide; the “Bird” in Whitey Haines’s bugged apartment. It all connected.
“You think?” Lloyd shouted. “What about his rap sheet?”
Magruder stammered, “We . . . We’ve run a make on him. All we got was unpaid traffic warrants. We—”
“And this guy was a known male prostitute? With no record at all?”
“Well . . . maybe he paid a lawyer to get his misdemeanors wiped.”
Lloyd shook his head. “What about your vice files? What do your vice officers say about him?”