by James Ellroy
Lloyd reached an arm over and drew Kathleen closer.
“Are you sad?” he asked. “Are you sad that it had to end this way? Are you frightened?”
Kathleen nuzzled into his chest. “No, I feel safe.”
“Because of me?”
“Yes.”
“That’s because you have a real lover now.”
He stroked her hair absently. “We have to talk about this,” he said. “We have to get Marshall High circa ’64 out of the way before we can be together. I need to get a handle on the killer before I take him. I need to learn 168
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all I can about him, to get this thing straight in my mind before I act. Do you understand?”
Kathleen nodded, shielding her eyes. “I understand,” she said. “You want me to dig into my past for you. That way you can solve your puzzle and we can be lovers. Right?”
Lloyd smiled. “Right.”
“But my past hurts, darling. It hurts to rehash it. Especially when you’re such a puzzle yourself.”
“I’ll be less of a puzzle as we go on.”
Angered at the condescension, Kathleen raised her head. “No, that’s not true. I need to know you, don’t you understand? No one knows you. But I have to.”
“Look, sweetheart . . .”
Kathleen batted away his placating hand. “I need to know what happened to you,” she said. “I need to know why you’re afraid of music.”
Lloyd began to tremble, and Kathleen saw his pale gray eyes turn inward and fill with terror. She took his hand. “Tell me,” she said. Lloyd’s mind moved backward in time, collating moments of joy to counterbalance the horror story that only he and his mother and brother knew. He gained strength with each recollection, and when his mental time machine came to a halt in the spring of 1950 he knew that he had the courage to tell his story. Taking a deep breath, he began.
“In 1950, around my eighth birthday, my maternal grandfather came to Los Angeles to die. He was Irish; a Presbyterian minister. He was a widower with no family except my mother, and he wanted to be with her while the cancer ate him up. He moved in with us in April, and he brought everything he owned with him. Most of the stuff was junk; rock collections, religious knickknacks, stuffed animal heads, that kind of thing; but he also brought a fabulous collection of antique furniture—desks, dressers, wardrobes—all made of rosewood so well varnished that you could see your reflection just as in a mirror. Grandfather was a bitter, hateful man; a rabid anti-Catholic. He was also a brilliant storyteller. He used to take my brother Tom and me upstairs and tell us stories of the Irish Revolution and how the noble Black and Tans wiped out the Catholic rabble. I liked the stories, but I was smart enough to know that Grandfather was twisted with hate and that I shouldn’t take what he said completely to heart. But it was different with Tom. He was six years older than me and already twisted with hate himself. He took Grandfather seriously, and the stories gave his hatred
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a form; he started aping Grandfather’s broadsides against Catholics and Jews.
“Tom was fourteen then, and he didn’t have a friend in the world. He used to make me play with him. He was bigger than me, so I had to go along with it or he’d beat me up. Dad was an electrician. He was obsessed with television. It was new, and he thought it was God’s greatest gift to mankind. He had a workshop in our backyard. It was crammed to the rafters with TV
sets and radios. He spent hours and hours out there, mixing and matching tubes and running electrical relays. He never watched TV for enjoyment; he was obsessed with it as an electrician. Tom loved TV, though. He believed everything he saw on it, and everything he heard on the old radio serials. But he hated being alone while he watched and listened. He didn’t have any friends, so he used to make me sit with him out in the workshop, watching Hopalong Cassidy, and Martin Kane, Private Detective and all the rest. I hated it; I wanted to be outside playing with my dog or reading. Sometimes I tried to escape, and Tom would tie me up and make me watch. He . . . He . . .”
Lloyd faltered, and Kathleen watched his eyes shift in and out of focus, as if uncertain of what time period they were viewing. She put a gentle hand on his knee and said, “Go on, please.”
Lloyd drew in another breath of fond memories.
“Grandfather’s condition got worse. He started coughing up blood. I couldn’t stand seeing it, so I took to running away, ditching school and hiding out for days at a time. I was befriended by an old derelict who lived in a tent on a vacant lot near the Silverlake Power Plant. His name was Dave. He was shell-shocked from the First World War, and the neighborhood merchants sort of looked after him, giving him stale bread and dented cans of beans and soup that they couldn’t sell. Everyone thought Dave was retarded, but he wasn’t; he slipped in and out of lucidity. I liked him; he was quiet, and he let me read in his tent when I ran away.”
Lloyd hesitated, then plunged ahead, his voice taking on a resonance unlike anything Kathleen had ever heard.
“My parents decided to take Grandfather to Lake Arrowhead for Christmas. A last family outing before he died. On the day we were to leave I had a fight with Tom. He wanted me to watch television with him. I resisted, and he beat me up and tied me to a chair in Dad’s workshop. He even taped my mouth shut. When it came time to leave for the lake, Tom left me there. I could hear him in the backyard telling Mother and Dad that I had run 170
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away. They believed him and left, leaving me alone in the shack. There was no way I could move a muscle or make a sound. I was there for a day or so, cramped up in awful pain, when I heard someone trying to break into the shack. I was scared at first, but then the door opened, and it was Dave. But he didn’t rescue me. He turned on every TV set and radio in the shack and put a knife to my throat and made me touch him and eat him. He burned me with tube testers and hooked up live wires and stuck them up my ass. Then he raped me and hit me and burned me again and again, with the TVs and radios going full blast the whole time. After two days of hurting me, he left. He never turned off the noise. It grew and grew and grew and grew . . . Finally my family came home. Mother came running into the shack. She took the tape off my mouth and untied me and held me and asked me what happened. But I couldn’t talk. I had screamed silently for so long that my vocal cords had shredded. Mother made me write down what had happened. After I did, she said, ‘Tell no one of this. I will take care of everything.’
“Mother called a doctor. He came over and cleansed my wounds and sedated me. I woke up in my bed much later. I heard Tom screaming from his bedroom. I snuck over. Mother was lashing him with a brass studded belt. I heard Dad demanding to know what was happening and Mother telling him to shut up. I snuck downstairs. About an hour later, Mother left the house on foot. I followed her from a safe distance. She walked all the way up to the Silverlake Power Plant. She went straight up to Dave’s tent. He was sitting on the ground reading a comic book. Mother took a gun from her purse and shot him six times in the head, then walked away. When I saw what she had done, I ran to her, and she held me and walked me back home. She took me to bed with her that night and gave me her breasts, and she taught me how to speak again when my voice returned and she nurtured me with many stories. After Grandfather died she would take me up to the attic and we would talk, surrounded by antiquity.”
Rigid with pity and terror, tears streaming down her face, Kathleen breathed out: “And?”
“And,” Lloyd said, “my mother gave me the Irish Protestant ethos and made me promise to protect innocence and seek courage. She told me stories and made me strong again. She’s mute now, she had a stroke years ago and can’t speak; so I talk to her. She can’t respond, but I know she understands. And I seek courage and protect innocence. I killed a man in the Watts Riot. He was evil. I hunted him down and killed him. No one ever
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suspected Mother of killing Dave, no one ever susp
ected me of killing Richard Beller and if I have to kill him, no one will suspect me of ridding the world of Teddy Verplanck.”
Kathleen went shock-still at the words “Teddy Verplanck.” Caught in a benign web of her own memories, she said, “Teddy Verplanck? I knew him in high school. He was a weak, ineffectual boy. A very kind boy. He—”
Lloyd waved her quiet. “He’s your dream lover. He was one of the Kathy Klowns back in high school; you just never knew it. Two of your other classmates are involved in the killings. A man named Delbert Haines and a man who was killed last night—Lawrence Craigie. I discovered a bugging device—a tape recorder, at Haines’s apartment—that’s what put me on to Verplanck. Now listen to me . . . Teddy has killed over twenty women. What I need from you is information on him. I need your insights, your . . .”
Kathleen leaped from the bed. “You are insane,” she said softly. “After all these years you have to construct this policeman’s fantasy to protect yourself? After all these years, you—”
“I’m not your dream lover, Kathleen. I’m a police officer. I have a duty to perform.”
Kathleen shook her head frantically. “I’ll make you prove it. I still have the poem from 1964. I’ll make you copy it, then we’ll compare handwritings.”
She ran nude into the front room. Lloyd heard her murmuring to herself, and suddenly knew that she could never accept reality. He got up and pulled on his clothes, noting that in the aftermath of confession his sweatdrenched body was both relaxed and incandescently alive. Kathleen returned a moment later, holding a faded business card. She handed it to Lloyd. He read:
“6/10/64
My love for you
now etched in blood;
My tears caked in
resolute passion;
Hatred spent on me
will
metamorphose into
love
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Clandestinely you
will be mine.”
Lloyd handed the card back. “Teddy, you poor, twisted bastard.” He bent and kissed Kathleen’s cheek. “I have to go,” he said, “but I’ll be back when this is settled.”
Kathleen watched him walk out the door, closing it on her entire past and all her recent hopes for the future. She picked up the phone and dialed Information, securing two telephone numbers. She dialed the first one breathlessly, and when a male voice came on the line, said, “Captain Peltz?”
“Yes.”
“Captain, this is Kathleen McCarthy. Remember me? I met you at your party last night?”
“Sure, Lloyd’s friend. How are you, Miss McCarthy?”
“I . . . I . . . I think Lloyd is crazy, Captain. He told me he killed a man in the Watts Riot, and that his mother killed a man and that—”
Dutch cut in, “Miss McCarthy, please be calm. Lloyd is in a bit of a crisis within the department, and I’m sure he’s behaving erratically.”
“But you don’t understand! He’s talking about killing people!”
Peltz laughed. “Policemen talk about such things. Please have him call me. Tell him it’s important. And don’t worry.”
When she heard the receiver click, Kathleen steeled herself for the next call, then dialed. After six rings a soft tenor voice said: “Teddy’s Silverlake Camera, may I help you?”
“Y . . . Yes . . . Is this Teddy Verplanck?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Thank God! Look, you probably don’t remember me, but my name is Kathleen McCarthy, and I . . .”
The soft voice went softer. “I remember you well.”
“Good . . . Look, you may not believe this, but there’s a crazy policeman out to get you. I—”
The soft voice interrupted. “Who is he?”
“His name is Lloyd Hopkins. He’s about forty, and very big and tall. He drives a tan unmarked police car. He wants to hurt you.”
The soft voice said, “I know that. But I won’t let him. No one can hurt me. Thank you, Kathleen. I remember you very fondly. Goodbye.”
“G . . . Goodbye.”
Kathleen put down the phone and sat on the bed, surprised to find that
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she was still nude. She walked into the bathroom and stared at her body in the full-length mirror. It looked the same, but she knew that somehow it had changed and would never be completely hers again. 15
Running red lights and using his siren, Lloyd drove downtown. He left the car in an alley and ran the four blocks to Parker Center, taking a service elevator to the third floor S.I.D. offices, sending up silent prayers that Artie Cranfield would be the only data analyst on duty. Opening a door marked “Data Identification,” he saw his prayers rewarded—Cranfield was alone in his office, hunched over a microscope.
The technician looked up when Lloyd closed the door behind him.
“You’re in trouble, Lloyd,” he said. “Two I.A.D. bulls were here this morning. They said you were talking about becoming a TV star. They wanted to know if you had processed any evidence lately.”
“What did you tell them?” Lloyd asked.
Artie laughed. “That you still owe me ten scoots on last year’s World Series pool. It’s true, you know.”
Lloyd forced himself to laugh back. “I can do better than that. How’d you like your very own Watanabe A.F.Z. 999?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Nagler from Fingerprints has it. He’s at his father’s house in San Berdoo. Call the San Berdoo P.D., they’ll give you the phone number.”
“What do you want, Lloyd?”
“I want you to outfit me with a body wire, and I want six .38 caliber blank slugs.”
Artie’s face darkened. “When, Lloyd?” he asked.
“Right now,” Lloyd said.
The outfitting took half an hour. When he was satisfied with the concealment and feedback check, Artie said, “You look scared, Lloyd.”
This time Lloyd’s laughter was genuine. “I am scared,” he said. 174
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*
*
*
Lloyd drove to West Hollywood. The body recorder constricted his chest, and each of his raging heartbeats felt like it was bringing him closer to a short-circuit suffocation.
There were no lights on in Whitey Haines’s apartment. Lloyd checked his watch as he picked the lock with a credit card. 5:10. Daywatch ended at 5:00, and if Haines came home directly after getting off duty, he should arrive within half an hour. The apartment was unchanged since his previous entry. Lloyd chased three Benzedrine tablets with sink water and stationed himself beside the door, accustoming himself to the darkness. After a few minutes the speed kicked in and went straight for his head, obliterating the smothering feeling in his chest. If it didn’t take him too high, he would have enough juice for days of manhunting.
Lloyd’s calm deepened, then shattered when he heard a key inserted into the lock. The door swung open a split second later, and blinding light caused him to reach up to shield his eyes. Before he could move, a flat handed karate chop glanced off his neck, long fingernails gouging his collarbone. Lloyd dropped to his knees as Whitey Haines shrieked and swung his billy club at his head. The club smashed into the wall and stuck, and as Haines tried to jerk it free Lloyd rolled onto his back and kicked out with both feet at Haines’s groin, catching him full force and knocking him to the floor.
Haines retched for breath and went for his holstered revolver, wrenching it free just as Lloyd managed to get to his feet. He pointed the gun upward as Lloyd sidestepped, yanked the billy club out of the wall, and slammed it into his chest. Haines screamed and dropped the gun. Lloyd kicked it out of the way and drew his own .38 from his waistband. He leveled it at Haines’s nose and gasped, “On your feet. Up against the wall and walk it back. Do it real slow.”
Haines drew himself slowly upright, massaging his chest, then spreadeagling against the wall, his hands above his head. Lloyd nudged the .38 on the fl
oor over to where he could pick it up without relinquishing his bead on him. When the gun was safely in his waistband he ran his free hand over Haines’s uniformed body. He found what he was looking for in the lining of his Eisenhower jacket—a plain manila folder stuffed with paper, Craigie, Lawrence D., a.k.a. Bird, Birdy, Birdman, 1/29/46, typed on the front. Haines started to blubber as he sensed Lloyd’s eyes boring into the folder.
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“I . . . I . . . I didn’t kill him. It . . . It . . . was probably some crazy faggot. You gotta listen to me. You got—”
Lloyd kicked Haines’s legs out from under him. Haines crashed to the floor and stifled a scream. Lloyd squatted beside him and said, “Don’t fuck with me, Haines. I’ll eat you up. I want you to sit on your couch while I do some reading. Then we’re going to talk about the good old days in Silverlake. I’m a Silverlake homeboy myself, and I know you’re going to love walking down memory lane with me. On your feet.”
Haines stumbled over to his Naugahyde sofa and sat down, clenching and unclenching his fists and staring at the gleaming toes of his boots. Lloyd took a chair across from him, the manila folder in one hand, his .38 in the other. With one eye on Haines, he read through the pages of the Vice files. The notations went back ten years. In the early ’70s, Lawrence Craigie had been arrested regularly for soliciting homosexual acts and had been frequently questioned when found loitering in the vicinity of public restrooms. Those early reports carried the signatures of the entire eight-man Vice Squad. After 1976, all entries pertaining to Lawrence Craigie were filed by Deputy Delbert W. Haines, #408. The reports were ridiculously repetitive, and dubious question marks covered the later ones. When he saw the report dated 6/29/78, Lloyd laughed aloud. “Today I employed Lawrence Craigie as my vice finger man. I have told the men on the squad not to bust him. He is a good snitch. Respectfully—Delbert W. Haines, #408.”