by James Ellroy
The bartender looked up as he approached. “You drinking or you want the lunch?” he asked.
Havilland placed the twenty flat on the bar and willed his voice to suit the environment. “I’m looking for Sherry Shroeder. A buddy of mine says she hangs out here.”
“Sherry’s eighty-six,” the bartender said. “She gets coked or juiced and gets rowdy. You looking to pour some pork?”
The Doctor gawked, then said, “What?”
The bartender spoke slowly, as if to an idiot child. “You know, push the bush? Slake the snake? Drain the train? Siphon the python?”
Havilland swallowed and took another twenty from his pocket. “Yes. All those things. Where can I find her? Please tell me.”
Snatching up the two bills, the bartender leaned over and spoke into the Doctor’s ear. “Go down the street to the Loafer Gopher. Sherry should show up there sooner or later. Sit at the bar, and sooner or later she’ll come up and try to sit on your face. And, buddy? Keep your roll to yourself. They got some righteous shitkickers down there.”
The Loafer Gopher was dark and featured punk rock. Havilland sat at the bar and sipped scotch and soda while Cindy and the Sinners sang their repertoire of “Prison of Your Love,” “Nine Inches of Your Love,” and
“Gimme Your Love” over and over. He arrayed a stack of one dollar bills in front of him and tried to avoid eye contact with the topless barmaid, who considered eye-to-eye meetings a signal to refresh drinks. Playing Mozart in
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his mind to kill the hideous music and conversation surrounding him, the Doctor waited.
The waiting extended into hours. Havilland sat at the bar, buying a drink every twenty minutes, nursing the top, then, unseen, dumping the rest on the floor. When mental Mozart began to pall, he fantasized Sherry Shroeder as everything from a Nordic ice maiden to a platinum-coiffed slattern, using her security file statistics as his physical spark point. He was nearing the limits of both his patience and imagination when coy fingers caressed his neck and a coy female voice asked, “Care to buy a lady a drink?”
Havilland swiveled his stool to face the come-on. The woman who had delivered it looked like a burned-out beach bunny. Her face was seamed from too much sun and chemical ingestion, with deep furrows around the mouth and eyes that bespoke many desperate attempts to be fetching and an equal number of rejections. Her blonde hair was set in a lopsided frizzy style that added to her look of anxiousness. But her features were pretty, and her designer jean and tanktop-clad body was lean and womanly. If this was his actress, Richard Oldfield would love her.
“I’m Sherry,” the woman said.
Havilland signaled the barmaid and smiled at his pawn. “I’m Lloyd.”
She giggled as the barmaid placed a tall drink in front of her and grabbed two of the Doctor’s one dollar bills as payment. She took a long sip and said,
“That’s a good name. It goes with your blazer. You don’t really dress for the Gopher, but that’s okay, ’cause there’s so many bars on this strip that you can’t go home and change every time you hop one, can you? I mean, is that the truth?”
“That’s the truth,” Havilland said. “I dress conservatively because the bigwigs at the studio demand it. I’m just like you. I can’t go home and change every time I go out on a talent search.”
Sherry’s eyes widened. She gulped the rest of her drink and stammered,
“Ar-ar-are you an agent?”
“I’m an independent movie producer,” Havilland said, snapping his fingers at the barmaid and pointing to Sherry’s empty glass. “I sell art movies to a combine of millionaires, who screen the films in their special screening rooms. As a matter of fact, I’m here looking for actresses.”
Sherry downed her fresh drink in three fast swallows. Havilland watched her eyes expand and bodice flush. “I’m an actress,” she said in a rush of breath. “I’ve done extra work and I’ve done loops and other stuff. Do you think you—”
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Havilland silenced her with a finger to her lips, then looked around the bar. No one seemed interested in their business. “Let’s go outside and talk,”
he said. “This place is too loud.”
Sherry led him across the street to the Junior Miss parking lot and her battered VW van. “I used to work there,” she said as she unlocked the passenger door. “They fired me because I was overqualified. They found out I had a bigger I.Q. than the president of the company, so they let me go.”
Havilland sat down in the passenger seat and made a mental note not to touch anything inside the vehicle. Sherry walked around the front of the van and squeezed in behind the wheel. When she looked at him importuningly, the Doctor said, “Sherry, I’ll be frank. I produce high-budget adult films. Normally I would not advise a serious young actress like yourself to appear in such a movie, but in this case I would—because only a private audience of Hollywood bigshots will be viewing it. Now let me ask you, have you had experience in adult films?”
Sherry’s answer came out in a gin-fueled torrent of words. “Yeah, and this is perfect because before I did loops and the camera guy said my mom and dad would never know. We shot in the boys’ gym at Pacoima Junior High,
’cause the camera guy knew the janitor and he had the key, and we had to shoot late at night ’cause then nobody would be around. Ritchie Valens went to Pacoima Junior High, but he got killed with Buddy Holly on February 3, 1959. I was just a little girl then, but I remember.”
The final memory numbed the Doctor. He took out his billfold and said,
“We’ll be shooting in two days or so, at a big house in the Hollywood Hills. Two performers—you and a very handsome young man. Your pay is a thousand dollars. Would you like an advance now?”
Sherry Shroeder threw her arms around Havilland and buried her head in his neck. When he felt her tongue in his ear, he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her away. “Please, Sherry, I’m married.”
Sherry gave a mock pout. “Married men are the best. Can I have a Cnote now?”
Havilland took three hundreds from his billfold. He handed them to Sherry and whispered, “Please keep quiet about this. If word gets out, other actresses will be bothering me for parts, and I think I want to stick with you exclusively. All right?”
“All right.”
Havilland smiled. “I need your phone number.”
Sherry reached in the glove compartment, then flicked on the dashboard
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light and handed the Doctor a red metallic flaked business card bearing the words, “Sherry—Let’s Party! Incall and outcall, 632-0140.” Havilland put the card in his pocket and nudged the passenger door open with his shoulder. He smiled and said, “I’ll be in touch.”
Sherry said, “Party hearty, Lloyd baby,” and gunned her engine. The Doctor watched the VW van peel rubber into the night.
*
*
*
The Night Tripper drove to a pay phone and called Richard Oldfield at his home, speaking a single sentence and hanging up before Oldfield could reply. Satisfied with the force of his words, he drove to the Hollywood Hills and his third stellar performance of the day.
Oldfield had left the front door unlocked. The Night Tripper walked through it to find his pawn kneeling on the living room floor in his efficacy training posture, head thrust out and eyes closed, hands clasped behind his back. He was stripped to the waist, and his pectoral muscles were twitching from a recent workout.
Havilland walked up and flung a whiplike backhand at Oldfield’s face, gashing his cheek with his Harvard signet ring. Oldfield leaned into the blow and remained mute. Havilland reared back and swung again, catching his pawn on the bridge of the nose, ripping flesh and severing a vein below his left eye. When Oldfield betrayed no pain, the Doctor unleashed a whirlwind of open palms and backhands, until his pawn’s face contorted and a single tear escaped from
each eye and merged with the blood from his lashings.
“Are you ready to hurt and twist and loathe and gouge the woman who ruined you as a child?” the Night Tripper hissed. “Are you ready to go as far as you can go? Are you ready to enter a realm of pure power and relegate the rest of the world to the shit heap that it really is?”
“Yes,” Richard Oldfield sobbed.
The Doctor took a silk handkerchief from his blazer pocket and swabbed his counselee’s face. “Then you shall have all of it. Now listen and don’t ask questions. The time is two days from now, the place is here. Don’t go out of the house until I tell you, because a policeman is looking for someone who looks exactly like you. Do you understand all these things?”
“Yes,” Oldfield said.
Havilland walked to the phone and dialed seven digits he had memorized early that afternoon. When a weary voice answered, “Yes?” he said, 318
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“Sergeant, this is John Havilland. Listen, I’ve got a line on your suspect. It’s rather vague, but I think I credit the information.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Lloyd Hopkins said. “Where did you get it?”
“No,” Havilland said, “I can’t tell you that. I can tell you this—the man is right-handed, and in my professional opinion he knows nothing about any homicides, or about Goff’s whereabouts.”
Lloyd said, “I’ve got my notebook, Doc. Talk slowly.”
“All right. This man says he met Goff last year at a singles bar. They pulled a burglary together, he forgets the location, and stole some art objects. Goff had a customer for the stuff. My man says his name was either Rudolph Stanley or Stanley Rudolph. He had a condo in Brentwood, somewhere near Bundy and Montana.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes. My counselee is a basically decent, very disturbed young man, Sergeant. Please don’t press me for his identity. I won’t yield on that.”
“Don’t sweat it, Doc. But if I get Goff on your info, be prepared for the best dinner of your life.”
“I look forward to it.” Havilland waited for a reply, but the policeman had already hung up.
Putting down the phone, he saw that Richard Oldfield had not budged from his supplicant position. He looked at the blood on his hands. Twist the cop. Gouge him. Maim him. Make him pay for the childhood darkness and infuse the void with light.
14
At dawn, Lloyd was stationed in his car at the southeast corner of Bundy and Montana, armed with skin-tight rubber gloves and a selection of burglar’s picks. After receiving Havilland’s phone call, he had made a battery of his own calls, to the L.A.P.D.’s R&I, the All Police Computer Network, the feds, and the California Department of Motor Vehicles Night Information line. The results were only halfway satisfying: A man named Stanley Rudolph lived at 11741 Montana, # 1015, but he possessed no criminal
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record and had never been cited for anything more serious than running a red light. A solid citizen type who in all probability would scream for his attorney when confronted with the fact that he was a receiver of stolen goods. There was only the tried-and-true and highly illegal daylight recon run. Rudolph’s D.M.V. application had yielded the facts that he was unmarried, worked as a broker at the downtown stock exchange, and was the owner of a light blue 1982 Cadillac Seville bearing the personalized license plate
“Big Stan,” which was now parked directly across the street. Lloyd fidgeted and looked at his watch. 6:08. The exchange would be opening at seven.
“Big Stan” would have to leave soon or be late for work. Sipping coffee directly from the thermos, he thought of his other, nonprofessional telephone inquiries. Against his better judgment, he had called R&I and the D.M.V. to learn what he could about Linda Wilhite. The information gleaned was lackluster: Date of birth, physical stats, address, and phone number and the facts that she was “self-employed,” drove a Mercedes and had no criminal record. But the act of pursuit was thrilling, fueled by fantasies of what it would be like to need and be needed by a woman that beautiful. Thoughts of Linda Wilhite had competed with thoughts of his investigation for control of his mind, and it was only Havilland’s astonishing phone call that bludgeoned them to second place.
At 6:35, a portly man wearing a three-piece business suit trotted up to the Cadillac, holding a sweet roll in one hand and a briefcase in the other. He got in the car and gunned it southbound on Bundy. Lloyd waited for three minutes, then walked over to 11741 Montana and took the elevator up to the tenth floor.
1015 was at the end of a long carpeted corridor. Lloyd looked in both directions, then rang the bell. When thirty seconds went by without an answer, he studied the twin locks on the door and jammed his breaker pick into the top mechanism, feeling a very slight click as a bolt loosened. He leaned his shoulder into the door, accentuating the give of the top lock. With his free hand he stuck a needle-thin skeleton pick into the bottom keyhole and twisted it side to side. Seconds later the bottom lock slid open and the door snapped inward.
Lloyd stepped inside and closed the door behind him. When his eyes became adjusted to the darkness, he found himself in a treasure trove of primitive art. There were shelves filled with Colombian fertility statues and African wood carvings covering the tops of empty bookcases. Windowsills and ottomans held Mayan pottery, and the walls were festooned with 320
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framed oil paintings of Peruvian Indians and shrines in the Andes. The living room carpeting and furniture were bargain basement quality, but the artwork looked to be worth a small fortune.
Lloyd slipped on his rubber gloves and reconnoitered the rest of the condo, coming to one nonincriminating conclusion: Except for the artwork and the late model Cadillac, “Big Stan” lived on the cheap. His clothing was off the rack and his refrigerator was stuffed with TV dinners. He shined his own shoes and owned nothing electronic or mechanical except the built-in appliances that came with the pad and an inexpensive 35mm camera. Stanley Rudolph was a man obsessed. Lloyd took a generic brand cola from the refrigerator and sat down on a threadbare sofa to consider his options, realizing that it would be impossible to secure latent prints from any art objects that Goff or Havilland’s anonymous source might have touched. Stanley Rudolph had probably fondled the statues and pottery repeatedly, and the shrink had said that his source was both right-handed and innocent of knowledge of Goff’s whereabouts and homicides in general. Havilland was a pro; his assessments could be trusted.
This left three approaches: Lean hard on “Big Stan” himself; toss the pad for levers of intimidation, and find his address book and run the names through R&I. Since “Big Stan” was unavailable, only the last two approaches were practical. Lloyd killed his soft drink and went to work. It took him three hours to comb every inch of the condo and confirm his conclusion that Stanley Rudolph was a lonely man who lived solely to collect art. His clothes were poorly laundered, his bathroom was a mess, and the bedroom walls were blanketed with dust, except for rectangular patches where paintings had obviously recently hung. The sadness/obsessiveness combo made Lloyd want to send up a mercy plea for the entire fucked-up human race.
This left the address book, resting beside the telephone on the living room floor. Lloyd leafed through it, noting that it contained only names and phone numbers. Turning to the G’s, he saw that there was no mention of Thomas Goff and that Stanley Rudolph’s scrawl was unmistakably righthanded. Sighing, he thumbed back to the A’s and got out his notepad and pen and began copying down every name and phone number in the book. When he got to “Laurel Benson,” Lloyd felt a little tremor drift up his spine. Laurel Benson was a high-priced call girl he had rousted while working West L.A. Vice over ten years before. Thinking that it was merely a co-
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incidence and that it was nice to know that “Big Stan” got laid occasionally, he continued his transcribing until he hit “Polly Marks” and put down his pen and la
ughed out loud. Thus far, the only two women listed in the book were hookers. No wonder Rudolph had to shine his own shoes and drink generic soda pop—he had two expensive habits. The N through V section contained the names of over fifty men and only four women, two of them hookers that Lloyd had heard about from vice squad buddies. Writers cramp was coming on when he turned to the final page and saw “Linda Wilhite—275-7815.” This time the little tremor became a 9.6 earthquake. Lloyd replaced the address book and left the obsessive little condo before he had time to think of his next destination and what it all meant.
*
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*
Parked outside Linda Wilhite’s plush high-rise on Wilshire and Beverly Glen, Lloyd ran through literal and instinctive chronologies in an attempt to logically explain the remarkable coincidence that had just fallen into his lap. Dr. John Havilland was in love with Linda Wilhite, who was probably a very expensive prostitute, one who had tricked with Stanley Rudolph, who had bought stolen goods from Thomas Goff and the Doctor’s anonymous source. Havilland did not know Goff or Rudolph, but did know Wilhite and the source. The coincidence factor was strong, but did not reek of malfeasance. Unanswered questions: Did Linda Wilhite know Goff or the source; or, the wild card—was the shrink, who had the air of a man in love, protecting Linda Wilhite, the real source, by giving him correct information from a bogus “informant,” this way protecting both his professional ethics and the woman he loved? Was the Doctor playing a roundabout game, wanting to aid in a homicide investigation, yet not wanting to relinquish confidential information? Lloyd felt anger overtake his initial sex flush. If Linda Wilhite knew anything about Thomas Goff or his left-handed friend, he would shake it out of her.