by James Ellroy
After hanging up, Lloyd felt his clicking form a tight web of certainty. John Havilland had seized upon him as an adversary, casually remarking on his resemblance to his father at their initial meeting. An obsession with paternal power had led him to acquire a coterie of weak-willed “offspring”—
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Goff and Oldfield among them—that he was molding into carriers of his own plague and dispatching on missions of horror. Thomas Goff had probably collided with the Doctor at Castleford Hospital, some time shortly after his parole from Attica. Havilland’s “counseling” had steered him away from the criminal tendencies that had ruled his life to that time, accounting for his post-Attica one hundred percent clean record. He had probably been Havilland’s recruiter of “guru-worshipper types”—his bar prowling M.O. and the testimony of Morris Epstein and Hubert Douglas pointed to it.
Lloyd’s clickings departed the realm of certainty and jumped into the realm of pure supposition with a wild leap that nonetheless felt right: Thomas Goff was dead, murdered by Havilland after he freaked out at the liquor store with his .41. Havilland had done the interior decorating at Goff’s apartment, leaving the “Doctor John the Night Tripper” album as bait. The man that Goff’s landlord had seen the afternoon before the police raid was Oldfield—impersonating Goff. Havilland himself had killed Howard Christie.
Fool. Dupe. Patsy. Chump. Sucker bait. The reprisals jarred Lloyd’s mind. He got up and started down the hall to Thad Braverton’s office, then stopped when the door embossed with “Chief of Detectives” loomed in his path as a barrier rather than a beacon. All of his evidence was circumstantial, suppositional, and theoretical. He had no evidential basis on which to arrest Dr. John Havilland.
Shifting physical and mental gears, Lloyd walked down to the fifth-floor detention area, finding Marty Bergen alone in the first cage, staring out through the wire mesh.
“Hello, Marty.”
“Hello, Hopkins. Come to gloat?”
“No. Just to say thanks for your statement. It was a help to me.”
“Great. I’m sure you’ll make a smashing collar and carve another notch on your legend.”
Lloyd peered in at Bergen. The crisscrossed wire cast shadows across his face. “Have you got any idea how big this thing is?”
“Yeah. I just heard most of the story. Too bad I can’t report it.”
“Who told you?”
“A source. I’d be a shitty reporter if I didn’t have sources. Got any leads on the guru guy?”
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Lloyd nodded. “Yes. I think it’s almost over. Why didn’t you tell me what you knew when I talked to you before?”
Bergen laughed. “Because I didn’t like your style. I did what I had to do by coming forward, Hopkins, so I’m clean. Don’t ask me to kiss your ass.”
Lloyd gripped the wire a few inches from Bergen’s face. “Then kiss this, motherfucker: if you’d talked to me before, Howard Christie would be alive today. Add that one to your guilt list.”
Bergen flinched. Lloyd walked away, letting his words hang like poisonous fallout.
*
*
*
Driving west toward Hollywood, Lloyd asked himself his remaining unanswered questions, supplying instinctive answers that felt as sound as the rest of his hypothesis. Did John Havilland know that Jungle Jack Herzog was dead? No. Most likely he assumed that the shame of Herzog’s “beyond” would prevent him from clueing in the world at large or the police in specific to the man who had “brought him through” it. The wipe marks in Herzog’s apartment? Probably Havilland; probably the day after the liquor store murders, when he realized that Goff was irrevocably flipped out. Goff had recruited Herzog, so it was likely that he might have visited Jungle Jack’s pad and left prints. Havilland would want that potential link to him destroyed. Yet the Doctor had left himself vulnerable at the level of Herzog. Lloyd forced himself to say the word out loud. Homosexual. It was there in Herzog’s hero worship; in his awful need to court danger as a policeman; in his lack of sexual interest in his girlfriend immediately before his death. Bergen would not elaborate on the suicide note because that piece of paper said it explicitly, illuminating Havilland’s tragic flaw by implication: he wanted Jack Herzog to roam the world as a testimonial to the power of a man who brought a macho cop out of the closet.
Hatred gripped Lloyd in a vice that squeezed him so hard he could feel his brains threaten to shoot out the top of his head. His foot jammed the gas pedal to the floor in reflex rage, and Highland Avenue blurred before his eyes. Then a line from Marty Bergen’s memorial column forced him to hit the brake and decelerate. “Resurrect the dead on this day.” He smiled. Jungle Jack Herzog was going to return from “beyond the beyond” and frame the man who sent him to his death.
Lloyd passed the Hollywood Bowl and turned onto Windemere Drive, cursing when he saw that Oldfield’s Mercedes was not in front of his house and that a profusion of front lawn barbecues would prevent him from a
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quick B&E. After parking, he walked over and peered in the front window, finding it still covered with heavy curtains. Swearing again, he gave the front lawn a cursory eyeballing, stopping when he saw a patch of white on the otherwise green expanse.
He walked over. The patch was a piece of adhesive bandage, with a streak of what looked like congealed blood on the sticky side. Another soft click, this one followed with a soft question mark. Lloyd picked the bandage up and headed south toward the purchasing of material for his frame. Parked outside the Brass Rail gun shop on La Brea, he took Howard Christie’s .357 Magnum from the glove compartment and checked the grips. They were checkered walnut with screw fasteners at the top and bottom; interchangeable, but too ridged to sustain fingerprints. Cursing a blue streak, Lloyd took the gun into the shop and flashed his badge at the proprietor, telling him that he wanted a large handgun with interchangeable smooth wooden grips that would also fit his magnum. The proprietor got out a small screwdriver and arrayed a selection of revolvers on the counter. Ten minutes later Lloyd was three hundred and five dollars poorer and the owner of a Ruger .44 magnum with big fat cherrywood grips, the proprietor having waived the three-day waiting period on the basis of a certified police affiliation. Thus armed, Lloyd crossed his fingers and drove to a pay phone, hoping that his luck was still holding.
It was. The Robbery/Homicide switchboard operator had an urgent message for him—call Katherine Daniel—Bell Telephone, 623-1102, extension 129. Lloyd dialed the number and seconds later was listening to a huskyvoiced woman digress on how her respect for her late policeman father had fueled her to “kick ass” and get him the information he needed.
“. . . and so I went down to the computer room and checked the current feed-in on your two numbers. No calls were made either yesterday or today from either the business or residence phones. That got my dander up, so I decided to do some checking on this guy Havilland. I started by checking the computer files on his phone bills, going back a year and a half. He paid by check on both bills—with the exception of last December, when a man named William Nagler paid both bills. I then checked this Nagler guy out. He paid his own bill every month, plus the bill for a number in Malibu. He lives in Laurel Canyon, because his checks have his address on them, and his number has a Laurel Canyon prefix. But—”
Lloyd interrupted: “Take it slow from here on in, I’m writing this down.”
Katherine Daniel drew in a breath and said, “All right. I was saying this 386
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guy Nagler paid the bill for this number in Malibu—four-five-two, six-onefive-one. The address is unlisted—as long as Nagler pays the bill on the phone there, Ma Bell doesn’t care if it’s in Timbuctu. Anyway, I ran a random sampling of the six-one-five-one toll calls over the past year, and got a lot of the same pay phone numbers the other supervisor gave you on your earlier query. I also ran t
he computer feed-in from yesterday and today and got some toll calls, all in this area code. Do you want them?”
“Yes,” Lloyd said. “Slow and easy. Have you got names and addresses on them?”
“Do you think I’d do a half-assed job, Officer?”
Lloyd’s forced laugh sounded hysterical to his ears. “No. Go ahead.”
“Okay. Six-two-three, eight-nine-one-one, Helen Heilbrunner, Bunker Hill Towers, unit eight-forty-three; three-one-seven, four-zero-four-zero, Robert Rice, one-zero-six-seven-seven Via Esperanza, Palos Verdes Estates; five-zero-two, two-two-one-one, Monte Morton, one-twelve LaGrange Place, Sherman Oaks; four-eight-one, one-two-zero-two, Jane O’Mara, nine-nine-zero-nine Leveque Circle, San Marino; two-seven-five, seveneight-one-five, Linda Wilhite, nine-eight-one-nine Wilshire, West L.A.; four-seven-zero, eight-nine-five-three, Lloyd W. Hopkins, three-two-ninezero Kelton, L.A. Hey, is that last guy related to you?”
Lloyd had his laugh perfected. “No. Hopkins is a common name. Have you got Nagler’s phone number and address?”
“Sure. Four-nine-eight-zero Woodbridge Hollow, Laurel Canyon. Foursix-three, zero-six-seven-zero. Is that it?”
“Yes. Farewell, sweet Katherine!”
Husky chuckles came over the line.
Sweating, his legs weak from tension, Lloyd called Dutch’s private line at the Hollywood Station, connecting with a desk sergeant who said that Captain Peltz was out for the afternoon, but would be calling in hourly for his messages. Speaking very slowly, Lloyd explained what he wanted: Dutch was to dispatch trustworthy squadroom dicks to the following addresses and have them lay intimidating “routine questioning” spiels on the people who answered the door, using “beyond the beyond” and “behind the green door”
as buzzwords. Holding back William Nagler’s name and address, he read off the others, having the officer repeat the message. Satisfied, Lloyd said that he would be calling back hourly to clarify the urgency of the matter with Dutch and hung up.
Now the risky part. Now the conscious decision to jeopardize an inno-
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cent woman’s life for the sake of a murder indictment, an action that was an indictment of his own willingness to deny everything that had happened with Teddy Verplanck. Driving to Linda’s apartment, Lloyd prayed that she would do or say something to prove the jeopardy move right or wrong, saving them both indictments on charges of cowardice or heedless will. Linda opened the door with a drink in one hand. Lloyd looked at her posture and the light in her eyes, seeing indignation moving into anger, a prostitute who got fucked once too often. When he moved to embrace her, she stepped out of his way. “No. Tell me first. Then don’t touch me, or I’ll lose what I’m feeling.”
Lloyd walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa, outright scared that Linda’s rectitude said all systems go. He pulled out the .44 magnum and laid it on the coffee table. Linda took a chair and stared at the gun without flinching. “Tell me, Hopkins.”
With his eyes tuned in to every nuance of Linda’s reaction, Lloyd told the entire story of the Havilland case, ending with his theory of how the Doctor had played off the two of them, counting on at least a one-way attraction developing. Linda’s face had remained impassive during the recounting, and it was only when he finished that Lloyd could tell that her gut feeling was awe.
“Jesus,” she said. “We’re dealing with the Moby Dick of psychopaths. Do you really think he has the hots for me, or is that just part of his scam?”
“Good question,” Lloyd said. “I think initially it was part of the scam, because he wanted to portray himself as a fellow lover of women. Afterwards, though, I think he was genuinely jealous of your attraction to me, if only because he has me slotted in the role of adversary. Make sense? You know the bastard better than I do.”
Linda considered the question, then said, “Yes. My first impression of Havilland was that he was essentially asexual. What next, Hopkins? And why is that gun on my table?”
Lloyd flinched inwardly. Linda was allaying his doubts with perfect responses and the right questions. A light went on in his mind, easing the constricted feeling in his chest. Only if she made the perfect statement voluntarily would he sanction the jeopardy gambit. “I have no hard evidence. I can’t arrest Havilland and make it stick. He called you today, right?”
“Yes. How did you know that?”
“That telephone read-out I mentioned. What did he want?”
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“I called to tell him I was quitting therapy. His service forwarded the call to him. He almost begged me to come for one more session. I agreed.”
“When?”
“Tonight at seven.”
Lloyd checked his watch. 6:05. “One question before we get to the gun. The other night you told me about your parents’ deaths and said that sometimes you have very dark thoughts. Does Havilland know about that? Has he emphasized your parents’ deaths in the course of his counseling?”
Linda said, “Yes. He’s obsessed with it, along with some violent fantasies I have. Why?”
Lloyd choked back a wave of fear. “I need Havilland’s fingerprints on the grips of that gun. Once I have them, I’ll switch the grips to Howard Christie’s gun, get Havilland’s prints from the D.M.V. and arrest him for Murder One and make it stick while I dig up corroborative evidence. I want you to take the gun to your session tonight. Keep it in your purse and don’t touch the grips. Tell Havilland that your fantasies are becoming more violent and that you bought a gun. Hand it to him nervously, holding it by the cylinder housing and barrel. If my reading of him is correct, he’ll grab it by the grips, showing you the proper handling procedure, then give it back. Hold it nervously by the barrel and trigger guard and put it back in your purse. After the session, go home and wait for my call. Havilland has no idea that I’m on to him, so you’ll be in no danger.”
Linda’s smile reminded Lloyd of Penny and how she was her most beautiful in moments of rebellion. “You don’t believe that, Hopkins. You’re shaking. I’ll do it on one condition. I want the gun loaded. If Havilland freaks out, I want to be able to defend myself.”
A green light flashed in response to Linda’s perfect voluntary statement. Lloyd took six .44 shells from his jacket pocket and put them on the coffee table. The moment froze, and he felt himself treading air. Linda put a hand on his arm. “I think I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” she said. 22
The Time Machine sped backward, fueled by a high octane sodium Pentothal mainline. Calendar pages ruffled in the wind. Bombardments of imagery from recent gauntlets pushed the pages closer and closer, until the black-on-white type smothered him, then turned him outside in. Saturday, June 2, 1957. Johnny Havilland has heard from the J.D.’s at school that an auto graveyard on the edge of Ossining niggertown is a chrome treasure trove. The old jig who looks after the place sells nifty hood ornaments for the price of a pint of jungle juice, and if you hop the fence you can swipe something sharp and get away before he catches you. Jimmy Vandervort got a bulldog from a Mack truck for thirty-nine cents; Fritz Buckley got a gunsight hood hanger off a ’forty-eight Buick for free, flashing a moon on the spook when he demanded the scratch for some T-bird. Johnny imagines all manner of chrome gadgetry that he could kipe and give to his father to jazz up his ’fifty-six Ford Vicky ragtop. He takes a series of buses up to Ossining, and within an hour he is walking the streets of a Negro shanty town in the shadow of Sing Sing Prison. The streets remind him of photographs he has seen of Hiroshima after Uncle Sam slipped the Japs the A-bomb: Rubble heaps on the front lawns of abandoned houses; gutters filled with empty wine bottles and sewage overflow; emaciated dogs looking for someone or something to bite. Even the Negroes reinforce the A-bomb motif: they look gaunt and suspicious, like mutant creatures fried by atomic fallout. Johnny shivers as he recalls the spate of horror movies he has seen against his mother’s wishes. Somehow this is scarier, and because it is scarier he
will become that much more of a man by stealing here.
Johnny is about to ask one of the Negroes for directions to the auto graveyard when he spots a familiar flash of color down the block. He walks 390
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over and sees his father’s Vicky parked outside an old wood-framed house patched over with tarpaper. Painted obscenities and swastikas cover all sides of the house. Johnny climbs in through a broken window, as if drawn by a magnetic force.
Once inside, standing in darkness on rotting wood planks, Johnny’s magnet takes on the form of his father’s laughter, issuing from the top of a staircase off to his left. He walks over, hearing his father’s baritone glee meld with the high-pitched squealing of another man. The whir and click of gears joins with the voices as Johnny treads up the stairs, holding tightly to the banister.
When he reaches the second-story landing, Johnny sees a door and squints in the darkness to see if it is green. The laughter and the gear noise grow louder, then the door blows open a crack. Johnny tiptoes over and peers inside.
A stench assails him as his eyes hone in on the backs of his father and a man in a gray uniform standing in front of a whirling circular object. The smell is of blood and body waste and sweat. A green blanket marked off like a crap table lies on the floor, covered with coins and folding money. The walls and ceiling are dotted with bright red, and rivulets of pale red drip toward the floor. Johnny squints and sees that his father is holding a chisel. He moves the chisel toward the whirling object, and a spritz of red liquid cuts the air. The man in the gray uniform laughs and exclaims, “Shit, that’s a ten pointer!” He steps back and sticks his hand in his pocket, then drops a wad of cash on the blanket. The whirling circular object comes to a halt and into view.
A nude woman is attached to a plywood reinforced corkboard mounted on a foundation of bricks. A gear train composed of motorcycle chains and lawnmower belts stands behind it. The woman is manacled at the ankles and pinioned at the top with spikes through her wrists. Slash wounds oozing blood cover her chest and extremities, and a black rubber handball is stuck in her mouth, held there by crisscrossed strips of friction tape. Johnny bites his hand to keep from screaming, feeling his fingers crack beneath his teeth. He squints at the first naked woman he has ever seen and notes her swollen belly and knows that she is pregnant. His father grabs a handle at the top of the corkboard and leans his whole body into a downward pull. The woman spins end over end, and the man in the uniform squeals, “How about ten bucks on a roulette abortion?”