L.A. Noir: The Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy

by James Ellroy

  Havilland wrote down Sherry Shroeder’s address and phone number and put it in his pocket. Relieved that his next move was ready to be implemented, he let his thoughts return to Lloyd Hopkins, making a spur of the moment decision that felt uncommonly sound: If the policeman didn’t come his way within forty-eight hours, he would initiate the confrontation himself.

  12

  After a twenty-four hour stint of Robbery/Homicide conferences and paper chasing at Parker Center, Lloyd drove to Century City to grasp at the wildest of straws, getting honest with himself en route: His investigation was stymied. Every cop in Southern California was shaking the trees for Thomas Goff, and he, the supervising officer and legendary “big brain,” did not yet have a psychological mock-up to work from. If he could use the legendary criminal shrink’s nickname as his entree, he could probably interest

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  him in the Goff case and get him to offer his observations. It was slim, but at least it was movement.

  The twenty-four hours at the Center had yielded nothing but negative feedback. The New York State Police had reacted promptly to his inquiry on Thomas Goff, issuing the L.A.P.D. a teletype that ran to six pages. Lloyd learned that Goff was a sadist who picked women up in bars, seduced and then beat them; that he liked to steal late model convertibles, that he had

  “no known associates” and was given a no-parole release from Attica, most likely a bureaucratic stratagem to encourage his departure from New York State.

  The day’s major frustration had been at a late afternoon conference in Thad Braverton’s office, where the chief of detectives had read a strongly worded memo from the big chief stating that there was to be a total media blackout on the Goff case, for reasons of “public safety.” Lloyd had laughed aloud, then had sat fuming as Braverton and his old nemesis Captain Fred Gaffaney of I.A.D. gave him the fish-eye. He knew that “public safety”

  translated to “public relations,” and that the media kibosh was undertaken out of apprehension regarding Jack Herzog’s possible criminal activities and his relationship with the disgraced cop Marty Bergen. The icing on that cake was the industrial firms and the brass hats who were moonlighting for them. It would not do to step on their toes. A media blitz might flush Goff out, but the Department was covering its ass.

  Lloyd parked in a subterranean facility on Olympic and Century Park East, then took an elevator up to ground level and found the shrink’s building, a glass and steel skyscraper fronted by an astroturf courtyard. The directory in the foyer placed “John Havilland, M.D.,” in suite 2604. Lloyd took a glass-encased elevator to the twenty-sixth floor and walked down a long hallway to an oak door embossed with the psychiatrist’s name. He pushed the door open, expecting to be confronted by the saccharine smile of a medical receptionist. Instead, he was transfixed by photographic images of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  She was obviously tall and slender, with classic facial lines offset by little flaws that made her that much more striking, that much less the trite physical ideal. Her nose was a shade too pointed; her chin bore a middle cleft that gave her whole face an air of resoluteness. Dark hair cascaded at the edge of soft cheekbones and formed a complement with large eyes whose focus was intense, but somehow indecipherable. Walking up to the wall to examine the photographs at close range, Lloyd saw that they were candid 308

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  shots, and that much more stunning for the fact. Closing his eyes, he tried to picture the woman nude. When new images wouldn’t coalesce, he knew why: her beauty rendered all attempts at fantasy stillborn. This woman demanded to be seen naked in reality or not at all.

  “She’s exquisite, isn’t she?”

  The words didn’t dent Lloyd’s reverie. He opened his eyes and saw and heard and felt nothing but the feminine power captured in front of him. When he felt a tap on his shoulder, he turned around and saw a slight man in a navy blazer and gray flannel slacks staring up at him, hand outstretched, light brown eyes amused by his reaction to the photographs. “I’m John Havilland,” the man said. “What can I do for you?”

  Lloyd snapped back into a professional posture, taking the man’s hand and grasping it firmly. “Detective Sergeant Hopkins, Los Angeles Police Department. Could I have a few minutes of your time?”

  Dr. John Havilland smiled and said, “Sure. We’ll go into my office.” He pointed toward an oak door and added, “I’ve got over half an hour until my next session. You’re blushing, Sergeant, but I don’t blame you.”

  Lloyd said, “Who is she?”

  “A counselee of mine,” Havilland said. “Sometimes I think she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

  “I was thinking the same thing. What does she think about being your pinup girl?”

  Havilland’s cheeks reddened; Lloyd saw that the man was smitten beyond the bounds of professionalism. “Forget I asked, Doctor. I’ll keep it to business from here on in.”

  The Doctor lowered his eyes and led Lloyd into an oak paneled inner office, pointing him to a chair, taking an identical seat a few feet away. Raising his eyes, he said, “Is this personal or an official police inquiry?”

  Lloyd stared openly at the psychiatrist. When Havilland didn’t flinch, he realized that he was in the company of an equal. “It’s both, Doctor. The starting point is your nickname. I—”

  Havilland was already shaking his head. “It’s a secondhand nickname,”

  he said. “Doctor John the Night Tripper was a sixties rock and roller. I was given the monicker in med school, because my name was John and I did a certain amount of night tripping. I’ve also counseled a great many criminals, court referred and otherwise. These people have perpetuated the nickname. Frankly, I like it.”

  Lloyd smiled and said, “It does have a certain ring.” He dug two snap-

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  shots out of his jacket pocket and handed them to Havilland. “Have you ever counseled either of these men?”

  The Doctor looked at the photos and handed them back. “No, I haven’t. Who are they?”

  Lloyd ignored the question and said, “If you had treated them, would you have told me?”

  Havilland formed his fingers into a steeple and placed the point on his chin. “I would have given you a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, then asked, ‘Why do you want to know?’ ”

  “Good direct answer,” Lloyd said. “I’ll reciprocate. The light-haired man recently walked into a liquor store and blew three people to shit. The darkhaired man is an L.A. policeman, missing and presumed dead. Before he disappeared he was hysterical and obsessed with your nickname. I’m certain that the light-haired man killed him. Old light-hair is a world-class psycho. Two days ago we shot it out in a Beverly Hills singles bar. You probably read about it in the papers. He escaped. I want to cancel his ticket. Atascadero or the morgue, preferably the latter.”

  Lloyd leaned back and loosened his necktie, chagrined that he had raised his voice and probably blown his professional parity with the psychiatrist. He felt a headache coming on and shut his eyes to forestall it. When he opened his eyes, Dr. John Havilland was beaming from ear to ear and shaking his head in delight. “I love macho, Sergeant. It’s one of my weak points as a headshrinker. Since we’ve established a certain base of candor, can I ask a few candid questions?”

  Lloyd grinned. “Shoot, Doc.”

  “All right. One, did you honestly think that I knew these two men?”

  Lloyd shook his head. “No.”

  “Then is it safe to assume that you came to exploit my renowned knowledge of criminal behavior?”

  Lloyd’s grin widened. “Yes.”

  The Doctor grinned back. “Good. I’ll be glad to offer my observations, but will you phrase your case or questions or whatever nonhypothetically?

  Give me the literal information as succinctly as possible, then let me ask questions?”

  Lloyd said, “You’ve got it,” then w
alked to the window and looked down on the street twenty-six stories below him. With his back to the doctor, he spoke for ten uninterrupted minutes, recounting a streamlined version of the Herzog/Goff investigation, excluding mention of the security files and 310

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  Herzog’s relationship with Marty Bergen, but describing the Melbourne Avenue horror show in detail. When he concluded, the Doctor whispered, “God, what a story. Why hasn’t there been mention of this man Goff on TV? Wouldn’t that help flush him out?”

  Turning to face Havilland, Lloyd said, “The high brass have ordered a total media blackout. Public safety, public relations, take your pick—I don’t want to go into it. Also, my options are dwindling. I haven’t got the slightest handle on Goff’s partner. The A.P.B. is hit or miss. I’ll be staking out some bars myself, but that’s needle in a haystack stuff. If I don’t get any leads soon, I’ll have to fly to New York and interview people who knew Goff there, which, frankly, seems futile. Run with the ball, Doc. What I’m interested in are your assumptions on Goff’s relationship with his partner and the condition of his apartment. What do you think?”

  Havilland got up and paced the room. Lloyd sat down and watched him circuit the office. Finally the Doctor stopped and said, “I buy your appraisal of Goff’s basic psychoses and the left-handed man as a restraining influence, but only to a degree. Also, I don’t think that the men are homosexual lovers, despite the symbolism of the wall cutouts. I think you’re dealing with subliminally exposited false clues; the nude men and the slogans especially. The slogans are reminiscent of the sixties—maybe Goff and his friend were inspired by the sloganeering of the Manson family. I think that the left-behind record albums point to the subliminality of the subterfuge, because every single record was some kind of sixties musical archetype. The apartment was cleaned out thoroughly, yet these albums were left behind. That strikes me as odd. Now one thing is obvious—Goff’s cover was blown after his gunplay with you; he knew he had to run, that he would be positively identified very soon. So his friend wiped the walls to eliminate his own fingerprints, probably after Goff had vacated—but he didn’t remove the cutouts because they pointed only to Goff’s psychoses. He didn’t see the cupboard cutout that bore the missing officer’s badge number, because it was an inside surface that he himself had never touched, and because he didn’t know that Goff had created it. The other wall clues could be construed as ambiguous, but not the cupboard cutout. It pointed to the murder of a Los Angeles policeman. Had Goff’s friend known of it, he would have destroyed it. What do you think, Sergeant?”

  Riveted by the brilliantly informed hypothesis, Lloyd said, “It floats on

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  all levels. I was thinking along similar lines, but you took it two steps further. Can you wrap the whole package up for me?”

  The Doctor sat down facing Lloyd, drawing his chair up so that their knees were almost touching. He said, “I think that the basic motivational clues, subliminal and overt, are the nude men, which represent not homosexual tendencies, but a desire to destroy male power. I think that Goff’s friend is highly disturbed while Goff himself is psychotic. I think both men are highly intelligent, highly motivated pathological cop haters.”

  Lloyd let the words sink in, retaining eye contact with the Doctor. The thesis was sound, but what was the next investigative step?

  Finally Havilland lowered his eyes and spoke. “I’d like to help you, Sergeant. I have lots of informed criminal sources. My own mini-grapevine, so to speak.”

  “I’d appreciate it,” Lloyd said, taking a business card from his jacket pocket. “This has my office and home numbers on it. You can call me regardless of the time.” He handed Havilland the card. Havilland pocketed it and said, “Could I have that picture of Goff? I’d like to show it to some of my counselees.”

  Lloyd nodded. “Don’t mention that Goff is a homicide suspect,” he said as he placed the snapshot in the Doctor’s hand. “Try to sound casual. If your patients think this is a big deal, they might try to exploit the situation for money or favors.”

  “Of course,” Havilland said. “It’s the only professional way to do it. By the same token, let me state this flat out: I cannot and will not jeopardize the anonymity of my sources, under any circumstances.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  “Good. What will you do next?”

  “Hit the bricks, chew on your thesis, go over the existing paperwork forty or fifty times until something bites me.”

  Havilland laughed. “I hope the bite won’t be fatal. You know, it’s funny. All of a sudden you look very grave, and just like my father. Bad thoughts?”

  Lloyd laughed until his sides ached and tears ran down his cheeks. Havilland chuckled along, forming a series of steeples with his fingers. Regaining his breath, Lloyd said, “God, that feels good. I was laughing at how ironic your question was. For a solid week I’ve had nothing but homicide on my brain, but when you said ‘bad thoughts’ I was thinking of that incredible woman on your walls.”

  Laughing wildly himself, the Doctor blurted out, “Linda Wilhite has that 312

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  effect on a man. She can tur—” He caught himself in mid-sentence, stopped and said, “She can move men to the point of wanting to speak her name out loud. Forget what I said, Hopkins. My counselees’ anonymity is sacred. It was unprofessional of me.”

  Lloyd got to his feet, thinking that the poor bastard was in love, beyond rhyme or reason, with a woman who probably caused traffic jams when she walked down the street to buy a newspaper. He smiled and stuck out his hand. When Havilland took it, he said, “I do unprofessional things all the time, Doc. Guys with our kind of juice should fuck up once in a while out of noblesse oblige. Thanks for your help.”

  Dr. John Havilland smiled. Lloyd walked out of his office, willing his eyes rigid, away from the photographs of Linda Wilhite. 13

  The Night Tripper began to hyperventilate the very second that Lloyd Hopkins walked out his door. The suppressed tension that had fueled his performance, his brilliant performance, started to seep out through his pores, causing him to shiver uncontrollably and grab at his desk to fight his vertigo. He held the desktop until his knuckles turned white and cramps ran up his arms to his shoulders. Concentrating on his own physiology to bring his control back to normal, he calculated his heartbeat at one twenty-five and his blood pressure as stratospheric. This professional detachment in the face of extreme fear/elation calmed and soothed him. Within seconds he could feel his vital signs recede to something approaching normalcy. “Father. Father. Father,” Dr. John Havilland whispered. When his physical and mental calm united, the Doctor replayed his performance and assessed the policeman, astonished to find that he was not the right-wing plunderer he had expected, but rather a likable fellow with a sense of humor that was offset by the violence he held in check just below the surface of his intellect. Lloyd Hopkins was a bad man to fuck with. So was he. He had taken their first round easily, running on instinct. Round two would have to be meticulously planned.

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  Checking his desk calendar, the Doctor saw that he had no patients for the rest of the day and that Linda Wilhite’s next session was still two days off. Thoughts of Linda spawned a long series of mental chess moves. Hopkins would be leaving for New York, unless he discovered evidence to keep him in Los Angeles. It would not do to have “Crazy Lloyd” talk to the administrators at Attica. Round two would have to be initiated today, but how?

  Just then it hit him. At their first session Linda had spoken of a “client”

  who collected Colombian art and who took nude photos of her and hung them in his bedroom. Another pawn.

  Havilland opened the wall safe hidden behind his Edward Hopper original and took out Thomas Goff’s verbatim transcription of Linda’s john book/journal. He sifted through pages of sexual facts, figures, and ruminations before he found men
tion of the man. 8/28/83; Stanley Rudolph, 11741 Montana (at Bundy) 829-6907. Referred by P.N.

  A truly ambivalent man. He lives in a condo full of Colombian art (aesthetic!) that he claims he buys dirt cheap from doper rip-off bimbos (macho obnoxiousness!). The statues were atavistic, virile, wonderful. Stanley talks them up so much prior to business that I know he wants something other than straight fucking—especially when he starts calling me a work of fucking art. Lead in to (of course!) a photography session! (Reading between the lines—Stan baby is impotent, digs nudie shots juxtaposed against his phallic statues.) Stan takes his shots (no beavers—actually tasteful)—(Stan the Aesthete)—then tells me stories about all the women who beg for his donkey dick (Stan the macho buffoon.) I lounge around nude trying to keep from cracking up. $500.00. 9/10/83—Ambivalent Stan has become a regular at $500.00 per. I am now framed on his walls in naked splendor. Weird. I wish my breasts were bigger.

  Havilland replaced the transcript in his safe and thought of another faceless pawn living a sleazy life in the Valley industrial district, then locked up his office and went looking for her.

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  Junior Miss Cosmetics was situated at the northeast edge of the San Fernando Valley, a squat green stucco building enclosed by rusted cyclone fencing. Outside the wire perimeter was a huge dirt lot filled with carelessly parked cars, and across the street stood an entire city block of cocktail lounges, all of them flashing neon signs at three o’clock in the afternoon. Parking underneath a sign advertising “Nude Workingman’s Lunch,” Dr. John Havilland felt like he had just entered hell. The Doctor locked his car and counted neon blinking doorways all the way up the block, ending with a total of nine. He walked into the first door, wincing against a blast of country western music, squinting until he could make out a bandstand and an overweight redhead doing a listless nude boogie. There was a horseshoe-shaped bar off to his left. Steeling himself for his role, Havilland took a twenty dollar bill from his money clip and walked over.