L.A. Noir: The Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy

by James Ellroy

  The chief of detectives shook his head. “No. Surprisingly, it was written by some other cop-hating hack. Just read it, Hopkins. The comments of one Officer Burnside are particularly interesting.”

  Lloyd stood up and took the folded tabloid from the chief, handing him his neatly typed report on the liquor store–Herzog case in return. Sitting back down, he read the Insider’s hyperbolized account of the shoot-out at Bruno’s Serendipity. The three-column piece was written as an indictment of “Gunslinger Justice” and heavily emphasized the “Innocent young singles whose lives were placed in jeopardy by a trigger-happy L.A.P.D. detective.”

  The concluding paragraph featured the observations of Beverly Hills Officer Carl D. Burnside, twenty-four, “whose nose was in a splint from a recent jogging accident.”

  “Sergeant Hopkins attempted to arrest his suspect in a room filled with innocent people, even though he knew the guy was armed and dangerous. He should have had a Beverly Hills officer go with him. His callous disregard for the safety of Beverly Hills citizens is disgusting. Hotdog cops like Hopkins give sensitive, safety-conscious policemen like me a bad name.”

  Lloyd stifled a burst of laughter by wadding up the tabloid and watching the chief of detectives read his report. He had labored over it at home for five hours, detailing his two cases from their beginnings, charting their convergence step by step, underlining his certainty of Martin Bergen’s innocence in Jack Herzog’s presumed death, Herzog’s theft of the six L.A.P.D. Personnel files and how the Identikit man had to have seen those files—it was the only way he could have identified him as a policeman in a crowded, smoky room.

  The last page was the clincher, the evidence documentation that Lloyd hoped would bowl Thad Braverton over and save him the ignominy of departmental censure. At dawn he had driven back to Bruno’s Serendipity and had bribed the two workmen cleaning up the previous night’s damage into letting him make a check for expended .41 rounds. By charting approximate trajectories and scanning the walls with a flashlight he had been 292

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  able to recover two flattened slugs. Artie Cranfield and his comparison microscope had done the rest of the work, delivering the irrefutable ballistics confirmation: The three liquor store rounds and the two rounds extracted from the walls at Bruno’s Serendipity had been fired by the same gun. Thad Braverton finished reading the report and fixed Lloyd with a deadpan stare. “Muted bravos, Hopkins. I was going to suspend you, but in the light of this I’ll let you slide with a reprimand: Do not ever go into another department’s jurisdiction without greasing the skids with their watch commander. Do you understand me?”

  Lloyd screwed his face into a semblance of sheepishness. “Yes, Chief.”

  Braverton laughed. “Don’t try to act contrite, you look like a high school kid who just got laid. You’re the official Robbery/ Homicide supervisor on the liquor store job, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Good. Stay on that full time. I’m turning over the Herzog case to I.A.D. They’ll go at it covertly, which is essential; if Herzog was engaged in any criminal activity I don’t want it getting back to the media. They’re also better equipped to check out the file angle discreetly—those security firms are big bucks, and I don’t want you stepping on their toes. Comprende? ”

  Lloyd flushed. “Yes.”

  “Good. I’ll set up some sort of liaison so that you and I.A.D. can compare notes. What’s your next move?”

  “I want a full-scale effort to identify this asshole. The Identikit portrait is an exceptional likeness, and I want every cop in the county to have a look at it. Here’s what I’m thinking: A closed briefing here at the Center this afternoon. Representatives of every L.A.P.D. and Sheriff’s division to attend. No media shitheads. I’ll get up about ten thousand copies of the I.K. portrait and tell the men to distribute them at their roll calls. I’ll brief the men on my experience with the suspect and offer my observations on his psych makeup and M.O. Every cop in L.A. County will be looking for him. Once we get a positive I.D., we can issue an A.P.B. and take it from there.”

  Thad Braverton slammed his desk with both palms and said, “You’ve got it. I’ll have my secretary start phoning the various divisions immediately. How’s two-thirty sound? That will allow time for the men to go back to their stations and put out the copies before nightwatch. You can take care of getting them in the meantime.”

  Lloyd got to his feet and said, “Thanks. You could have given me a lot of

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  grief, but you didn’t.” He started to walk for the door, then turned around and added, “Why?”

  Braverton said, “You really want to know?”

  “Yes.”

  The chief of detectives sighed. “Then I’ll tell you. Only four men know exactly what happened with you last year. You and Dutch Peltz, obviously, and the big chief and myself. I’m sure you know that rumors have circulated and that some cops admire you for what you did while other cops think you should be in Camarillo for it. I love you for what you did. I’m a hard ass with most people, but I’ll take a lot of shit from the people I love.”

  Lloyd ducked out the door at the chief’s last words. He didn’t want him to see that he was a half step away from tears.

  *

  *

  *

  Four hours later, Lloyd stood behind the lectern at the front of Parker Center’s main briefing room, staring out at what he estimated to be two hundred uniformed and plainclothes police personnel. Every man and woman present had been issued a manila folder upon entering the room. Each folder contained fifty copies of the Identikit portrait of the man designated and M.O.-typed as: Multiple homicide suspect, W.M., 30–35, lt. brn., eye color unknown, 5'9''–5'11'', 150–160. Drives late model yellow Japanese import; armed with .41 antique handgun. Known to frequent singles bars and use cocaine. This man is the perpetrator of the April 23 Hollywood liquor store killings. Consider him armed and extremely dangerous.”

  When the last late-arriving officers took their seats, Lloyd held up a copy of the Los Angeles Times and spoke into the microphone. “Good afternoon. Please give me your complete attention. On page two of today’s Times there is an accurate report of my encounter last night with the man whose portrait you are now holding. The only reason I am alive today is because this man uses a single-action revolver. I heard him cock the hammer before he fired at me and was able to avoid his first shot. Had he been using a more practical double-action weapon, I would be dead.”

  Lloyd let his eyes circuit the audience. Feeling them securely in his hand, he continued, “After exchanging fire with me, the man escaped. All the hard facts regarding him are on your Identikit pictures. The portrait, by the way, is a superb likeness—it was put together by an intelligent witness and 294

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  was immediately confirmed by two others. That is our man. What I would like to add are my observations of this killer.”

  He paused and watched the assembled officers study their folders and take out pens and notepads. When there was a gradual shifting of eyes to the lectern, he said, “Last week this man killed three people with clean head shots worthy of a practiced marksman. Last night he fired at me from a distance of ten feet and missed. His four subsequent rounds were wild, fired in panic. I believe that this man is psychotic and will kill until he himself is killed or captured. There must be a concerted effort to identify him. I want these portraits distributed to every officer in L.A. County and every trustworthy snitch. He uses coke and frequents singles bars, so every vice and narco officer should utilize their snitches and question their bar sources. Witnesses have said that he has mentioned ‘an incredibly smart dude’ he knows, so our suspect may have a partner. I want men strongly resembling this suspect to be carefully detained for questioning, at gunpoint. All suspects detained should be brought to the Central Division jail. I’ll be there from five o’clock on, with a legal officer and a stack of false arrest waivers
. Some innocent men are going to be rousted, but that’s unavoidable. Direct all queries from police and non-police sources to me, Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins, at Central Division, extension five-one-nine.”

  Lloyd let the officers catch up on their note taking, knowing that up to now their rapt attention had been on a purely professional level. Clearing his throat and tapping the microphone, he went straight for their purely personal jugulars. “I’ve given you ample reasons why the apprehension of this suspect is the number one police priority in Southern California, but I’ll go a notch better: This man is the prime suspect in the disappearance and probable murder of a Los Angeles police officer. Let’s nail the motherfucker. Good day.”

  *

  *

  *

  It took Lloyd two hours to establish a command post at the Central Division jail’s booking facility. Anticipating a deluge of phone calls, he had first appropriated three unused telephones from the Robbery/Homicide clerical supply office, plugging them into empty phone jacks adjacent to the jail’s attorney room, securing an immediate hookup to the existing extension number by intimidating a series of Bell Telephone supervisors. Central Division switchboard operators were instructed to screen incoming calls and give all police and civilian calls regarding the Identitkit picture first priority in the event of tied-up lines. Any live suspects brought in were to be

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  placed in a soundproof interrogation room walled with one-way glass. Once Lloyd’s negative identification certified their innocence, they were to be gently coerced into signing false arrest waivers by Central Division’s ad hoc

  “legal officer,” a patrolman who had graduated law school, but had failed the California Bar exam four times. The detainee would then be driven back to his point of “arrest” and released.

  Lloyd settled in for a long tour of duty, setting out notepads and sharpened pencils for jotting information and a large thermos of coffee for fuel when his brain wound down. Every angle had been covered. The two officers working under him on the liquor store case had been yanked from their current duties and told to compile a list of all singles bars in the L.A.P.D.’s jurisdiction. Once this was accomplished, they were to phone vice squad commanders citywide and have them deploy surveillance teams. Watch commanders had been instructed to highlight the Identikit man at evening roll call and to order all units to approach all suspects with their pump riot guns. If the I.K. man was on the street, there was a good chance of taking him.

  But not alive, Lloyd thought. Ruffling through the false arrest forms on his desk, he knew that his killer would not give up without a fight and that on this night the odds of innocent blood being spilled were at their optimum. A panicky, overeager cop might fire on a half-drunk and belligerent businessman who resembled the I.K. suspect; an overly cautious officer might approach a yellow Jap import with a placating smile and get that smile blown off his face by a .41 hollow point. The detain/identify/release approach was desperation—any experienced Homicide dick would know it implicitly.

  At six o’clock the first call came in. Lloyd guessed the source immediately: Nightwatch units had been on the street for an hour, and scores of patrolmen had been putting out the word to their snitches. He was right. A selfdescribed “righteous dope dealer” was the caller. The man told Lloyd how he was certain the liquor store killer was a “nigger with a dye job” who “wasted”

  the three people as part of a “black power conspiracy.” He then went on to offer his definition of black power: “Four coons pushing a Cadillac into a gas station for fifty cents worth of gas.” Lloyd told the man that his definition would have been amusing in 1968 and hung up.

  More calls followed.

  Lloyd juggled the three phone lines, sifting through the ramblings of drunks, dopers, and jilted lovers, writing down every piece of information 296

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  that issued from a reasonably coherent voice. The offerings were of the third-and fourth-hand variety—someone who knew someone who said that someone saw or knew or felt this or that. It was in all probability a labyrinth of mis information, but it had to be written down. At ten, after four hours on the phones, Lloyd had filled up one entire legal pad, all with non-police input. He was beginning to despair of ever again dealing with a fellow professional when a pair of callow-looking Newton Street Division patrolmen brought in the night’s first “hard” suspect, a rail-thin, six-foot-six blonde youth in his early twenties. The officers acted as though they had death by the tail, each of them clasping a white-knuckled hand around the suspect’s biceps. Lloyd took one look at the terrified trio, said, “Take off the cuffs,” and handed the youth a false arrest waiver. He signed it as Lloyd told the officers to take their “killer” wherever he wanted and to buy him a bottle of booze on the way. The three young men departed. “Try to stay alive!” Lloyd called after them.

  Within the next two hours, three reasonable suspect facsimiles were brought in, two by Hollywood Division patrol teams, one by Sheriff’s detectives working out of the San Dimas Substation. Each time Lloyd shook his head, said, “Cut him loose” and force-fed the suspect a hard look, a waiver and a pen. Each time they signed willingly. Lloyd imagined them envisioning every “innocent man falsely imprisoned” movie ever made as they hurriedly scrawled their names.

  Midnight came and went. The calls dwindled. Lloyd switched from coffee to chewing gum when his stomach started to rumble. Thinking that the twelve o’clock change of watch would allow him a hiatus from the phones, he settled back in his chair and let the normal jail noises cut through his caffeine fatigue and lull him into a half sleep. Full sleep was approaching when a voice jerked him awake. “Sergeant Hopkins?”

  Lloyd swiveled his chair. An L.A.P.D. motorcycle officer was standing in front of him, holding an R&I computer printout. “I’m Confrey, Rampart Motor,” the officer said. “I just came on duty and saw your I.D. kit want. I popped a guy who looks exactly like it last month. Jaywalking warrants. I remembered him because he had this weirdness about him. I got his R&I sheet and his D.M.V. record. There’s a mug shot from my warrant bust.”

  Lloyd took the sheet and slipped off the mug-shot strip. The Identikit man jumped out at him, every plane and angle of his face coming into focus, like a paint-by-numbers portrait finally completed.

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  “Is it him?” Confrey whispered.

  Lloyd said, “Yes,” and stared at the full-face and profile shots of the man who had almost killed him, trembling as he read the cold facts that described a monster: Thomas Lewis Goff, W.M., D.O.B. 6/19/49, brn., blu., 5'10'', 155. Pres. Add.—3193 Melbourne #6, L.A. Crim. Rec. (N.Y. State): 3 agg. asslt. arrst.—(Diss.); 1 conv.—1st Deg. Auto Theft—11/4/69—sent. 3–5

  yrs. Paroled 10/71. (Calif. State): Failure to app.—3/19/84—Bail

  $65—paid. Calif. dr. lic. # 01734; Vehic.—1980 Toyota Sed. (yellow) lic. # JLE 035; no mov. viol.

  Lloyd put the printout down and said, “Who’s the morning watch boss at Rampart?”

  Confrey stammered, “Lu-Lieutenant Praeger.”

  “Good. Call him up and tell him we’ve got the big one on Melbourne and Hillhurst. Hold him for me; I’ll be right back.”

  While Confrey made the call, Lloyd ran down the hall to the Central Division armory and grabbed an Ithaca pump and box of shells from the duty officer. When he returned to the jail area, Confrey handed him the phone and whispered, “Talk slow, the loot is an edgy type.”

  Lloyd took a deep breath and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Lieutenant, this is Hopkins, Robbery/Homicide. Can you set something up for me?”

  “Yes,” a taut voice answered. “Tell me what you need.”

  “I need a half dozen unmarked units to check the area around Melbourne and Hillhurst for a yellow nineteen-eighty Toyota, license JLE oh-threefive. No approach—sit on it. I need the thirty-one hundred block of Melbourne sealed at both ends in exactly forty minutes. I want five
experienced squad room dicks to meet me at Melbourne and Hillhurst in exactly forty minutes. Tell them to wear vests and to bring shotguns. Have them bring a vest for me. I want no black-and-whites inside the area. Can you implement this now?”

  Lloyd didn’t wait for an answer. He handed the phone back to Confrey and ran for his car.

  *

  *

  *

  By zigzagging through traffic and running red lights, Lloyd made it to Melbourne and Hillhurst in twenty minutes. No other unmarked cruisers were yet on the scene, but he could feel the too perfect silence that preceded im-298

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  pending explosions all around him. He knew that the silence would soon be broken by approaching headlights, two-way radio crackle and the hum of powerful engines held at idle. Last name introductions and his orders would follow, leaving nothing but the explosion itself.

  Parking under a streetlamp at the edge of the intersection, Lloyd turned on his emergency flashers as a signal to the other officers and jacked shells into his shotgun, pumping one into the chamber and setting the choke on full. Grabbing his flashlight, he walked down Melbourne, staying close to the trees that bordered the sidewalk, grateful that there were no late night strollers or dog walkers out. The street was a solid mass of two-story apartment buildings, identical in their sideways exposures and second-story landings. Three-one-nine-three was in the middle of the block, a dark gray stucco with wrought-iron railings and recessed door without screens. Lloyd flashed his light on the bank of mailboxes at the front of the building. T. Goff—Apt. 6, true to the R&I printout. He counted mail slots, then stepped back and counted the doorways themselves, playing his beam over them to illuminate the numerals embossed at eye level. Ten units; five up, five down. Apartment six was the first unit on the second story. Lloyd shivered when he saw muted light glowing behind drawn curtains. He walked back to Hillhurst, scanning parked cars en route. No yellow Toyotas were stationed at curbside. When he got to the intersection, he found it blocked off by sawhorse detour signs affixed with blinking red lights. Radio static broke the silence, followed by hoarse whispers. Lloyd squinted and saw three unmarked Matadors parked crossways behind the barricade. He blinked his flashlight at the closest one, getting a double blink in return. Then there was the opening of car doors and five men wearing bullet-proof vests and holding shotguns were standing in front of him.