by James Ellroy
Johnny watches the chisel descend, clamping his eyes open with self-
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mauled fingers, knowing he has to see, knowing what must be happening, but seeing instead his daddy sitting beside him in the whirling ferris wheel at Playland in the Bronx, whispering that everything would always be all right and he could go on all the rides and eat all the cotton candy he wanted and that Mommy would quit drinking and they would be a real family. Then the uniform man was saying “It’s a boy!” and he hears the sound of his own scream, and the uniform man was on top of him with his chisel, and then father was stabbing the uniform man with a knife and stabbing him with a needle, whispering, “Easy, Johnny, easy, beauty, easy, babe.”
The Time Machine pushed through days of sedative haze filled with the sound of mother weeping and Baxter the lawyer telling her that the money would always be there, and stern-looking men in cheap summer suits asking her where father was, and did he know a man named Duane McEvoy?
Mother’s scream: “No, you cannot talk to the boy—he knows nothing!”
Then Baxter the lawyer takes him to a horror triple feature in White Plains and tells him father is gone forever, but he will be his pal. Midway through The Curse of Frankenstein images of the whirling circular object hit him. It all starts to come back, and thoughts of the ferris wheel die, slaughtered by a Cinemascope and Technicolor replay of the Caesarean birth.
“It’s a boy!”
Johnny runs out of the theater and hitchhikes to Ossining niggertown. The same A-bomb Negroes and hungry dogs maneuver on the periphery of the area, but the block itself has burned to the ground. But it happened here.
No, it was a nightmare.
But it did happen here.
I don’t know.
Weeks pass. The newspapers attribute the Ossining fire to “heedless Negro children playing with matches” and express gratitude that no one was hurt. Johnny grieves for his lost father and listens in on mother’s phone calls to Baxter. She repeatedly tells the lawyer to buy the cops off once and for all, regardless of the price. Baxter finally calls back and tells mother that it is all set, but to be sure she should destroy everything belonging to father, including everything in his safe-deposit boxes. Johnny knows that there is nothing interesting in father’s study—only his guns and ammo and his books; but the safe deposit boxes are something he has forgotten to scope out. He steals the keys to the boxes from father’s desk and forges a note to the manager of the First Union Bank in Scarsdale Village. The old fart buys 392
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it hook, line, and sinker, chuckling over the twelve-year-old boy doing banking errands for his dad. Johnny walks away from the bank with a brown paper bag full of blue chip stocks and a black leather-bound diary that looks like a bible.
Johnny walks to the train station, intending to go to the movies in the city. A very un-Scarsdale-like bum tries to panhandle train fare from him. Johnny gives him the stock certificates. Once on the train heading toward Manhattan, Johnny opens up the diary and reads his father’s words. The words prove conclusively that what he saw on June 2, 1957, in Ossining niggertown was for real.
Since 1948, alone and with the aid of a Sing Sing Prison guard named Duane McEvoy, father had tortured and murdered eighteen women, some in Westchester County, some in upstate cities adjoining his favorite duck hunting preserves. The mutilations, sexual abuse, and ultimate dismemberments are described in vivid detail. Johnny forces himself to read every word. Tears are streaming down his face and the ferris wheel memory battles the words for primacy. The benevolent whirling object is winning as the train pulls into Grand Central Station. Then Johnny gets to the passages that prove how much his father loves him and everything goes crazy. The boy is so much smarter than me that it’s scary. Brains are everything. I’ve been able to keep Duane as my lackey for so long because the dumbfuck knows that I’m the one who keeps him from getting caught. When Johnny killed the rats and shot the dogs I saw him go cold almost overnight, and when I saw him go smart and wary and cautious too, I knew I was scared. I wanted to go to him and love him, but staying away makes him stronger and more fit for life. Johnny boy is like an iceberg—cold and 7/10’s below the surface. He’s probably afraid to kill human prey; too manipulative, too asexual. It’s going to be interesting watching him hit adolescence. How will he attempt to prove himself?
Johnny walks through Grand Central, openly weeping. Coming out onto 42nd Street, he throws the death bible into a storm drain and hurls a silent vow to his father: he will show him that he is afraid of nothing. Fall 1957. Johnny considers potential victims at Scarsdale Junior High. To fulfill his father’s legacy, he knows that they must be female. Beyond that first essential qualification, he sets his own criteria: All his prey must be
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snooty, giggly, and stay late after school participating in kiss-ass extracurricular activities, then walk home via the Garth Road underpass, where he would be waiting with a razor-sharp Arkansas toad stabber like the one Vic Morrow wielded in Blackboard Jungle.
Johnny’s selection process narrows as he stakes out the underpass. Finally he settles on Donna Horowitz, Beth Shields, and Sally Burdett, grinds who remain until after dark each day in the Chem Lab, washing test tubes and brown-nosing Mr. Salcido for a good grade. Stab. Stab. Stab. Johnny sharpens his switchblade every night and wonders if father ever bagged three at once. He sets the execution date: November 1, 1957. The three grinds will walk through the underpass at their usual time of 5:35 to 5:40, giving him twelve minutes to bump them off, then hotfoot it over to the station and catch the 5:52 to the city. Stab. Stab. Stab.
November 1, 1957. At 5:30 Johnny is stationed on the left-hand side of the Garth Road underpass, wearing blue jeans and a hunting vest that he has scavenged from his father’s left-behinds. The vest has loops to hold shotgun shells and hangs down to his knees. The toad stabber is affixed to his belt in a plastic scabbard.
The three victims approach the underpass right on time. Donna Horowitz notices Johnny and starts to giggle. Sally Burdett hoots, “Is that Johnny Havilland or Chucko the Clown? Dig that crazy vest!” Johnny draws his knife as Beth Shields sidles past him, taunting, “Wimpdick, Wimpdick.” He lunges and snags the stiletto on his vest pocket. The blade pokes his ribcage and he screams and falls to his knees. The girls gather around him and shriek with laughter. Johnny sees a kaleidoscope of the Caesarean birth, the ferris wheel and his father joining in the laughter. He screams again to drown it all out. When that doesn’t work, he bangs his head on the pavement until everything goes silent and black. The banging continues. When a woman’s voice calls out, “Dr. Havilland, are you there?” the Night Tripper is catapulted back to the present. His office, the projector and a portable movie screen come into focus. The voice must belong to Linda Wilhite, banging on his outer office door. His first conscious thought of his now destroyed childhood void is appreciation for his very own God, who did not give him the courage to break down the void until he had given him the courage to kill, and earn his father’s love. His destiny had been dealt with split-second accuracy.
“Dr. Havilland, are you there? It’s Linda Wilhite.”
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His steps were rubbery from the sodium Pentothal jolt, but that was to be expected—he was, technically speaking, a newborn creature. Trying his new voice, he called, “Hold on, Linda. I’m coming.” Hearing his familiar baritone, he walked to the outer office door and opened it. Linda Wilhite stood there, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “Hello, Linda,” Havilland said. “Are you all right? You seem slightly on edge.”
Linda walked past the Doctor into his private office and took her usual seat. When Havilland followed her in, she said, “I’ve been having some very strange, violent fantasies. I’ve even bought a gun.” Pointing to the movie screen and projector, she adde
d, “Are those the visual aids you mentioned?”
Havilland sat down facing Linda. “Yes. Tell me about your new fantasies. You look full of stress. Are you sure you want to quit therapy under such conditions?”
Linda twisted in her chair, clutching her purse in her lap. As the last fuzziness from his Pentothal trip died, Havilland saw that underneath her nervousness she was very angry. “Yes, I still want to quit therapy. You look full of stress. Woozy, too. Everyone is full of stress. These are stressful times, don’t you know that, goddamn it?”
Havilland raised placating hands. “Easy, Linda. I’m on your side.”
Linda sighed. “I’m sorry I barked.”
“That’s all right. Tell me about the new fantasies.”
Linda said, “They’re weird, and variations on my sweater man fantasies. Basically I’m just menaced by the same type of man I used to have the hots for. I fantasize being chased by men like that. The fantasies always end with me shooting them.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a large blue steel revolver, grasping it by the barrel and cylinder. “See, Doctor? Do you think I’m crazy?”
Havilland reached over and took the revolver from Linda, holding it firmly by the smooth wood grips, sighting it at the movie screen. “I’m proud of you,” he said as he handed it back, butt first. Linda returned the gun to her purse. “Why?”
“Because, as you said, these are stressful times. You’re a strong person, and in stressful times strong people go beyond their beyonds. Move your chair over here. I want to run a little home movie for you.”
Linda pulled her chair over to where it was facing the screen. Havilland got up and threaded a length of film through the projector’s feeder device, then hit the on switch and turned off the wall light. A series of blank frames
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flashed across the screen, followed by a jerky panning shot of a bedroom, followed by more blank frames.
Then a blonde woman in a nurse’s uniform began to undress. Close-up shots caught everything fallible about her body: a small abdominal scar, networks of varicose veins, patches of cellulite. When she was naked, she did an awkward vamp dance, then lay down on a mattress covered by a single blue sheet.
A nude man joined her, averting his face from the camera. The couple moved into an embrace, broke it, and moved to opposite sides of the mattress. The woman looked bewildered and the man mashed his face into the sheet. After holding these poses for long moments, the woman rolled underneath the man and they faked intercourse. Linda clutched her purse and said, “What is this, amateur porno film night? I thought this was going to be a therapy session.”
“Shhh,” Havilland whispered. “You’ll catch the drift in just a few seconds.”
The screen went blank, then filled up with a long shot of the blonde woman, now dressed in her nurse’s uniform, leaning against the bedroom wall. Suddenly a man, also clothed, threw himself on top of her. The screen again went blank, then segued into an extreme close-up of a transparent plastic pillow. The muzzle of a gun was pressed to the pillow. A finger pulled the trigger and the screen was awash in red. The camera caught a close-up of the man’s face. When Linda saw the face she screamed “Hopkins!” and fumbled in her purse for the gun. Her finger was inside the trigger guard when the lights went on and the man from the movie jumped out of the closet and smothered her with his body.
23
Lloyd slammed down the phone in response to Dutch’s news: the two women and one man that Hollywood Division detectives had leaned on with “behind the green door” and “beyond the beyond” had immediately clammed up, first threatening the officers with lawsuits, then going into re-396
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peated recitations of the phrase “patria infinitum. ” No breakdowns, no recantings of past sins, just indignation at police scare tactics and the rapid expulsion of seasoned cops. Dutch would be deploying a new team of detectives for runs at the guru worshippers, but they would probably be in mantra comas by then. There was only himself, Linda and her magnum, and the unknown quantity of William Nagler.
Lloyd checked the clock on the kitchen wall. 7:45. Linda would still be at her “therapy” session. He could wait and call and ease his mind, or he could move. The ticking of the clock became deafening. He locked up the house and walked to his car.
Headlights flashed across the driveway as he slipped behind the wheel, and a panel truck pulled in front of his unmarked cruiser. Lloyd got out and saw Marty Bergen step in front of the headlights and jam his hands into his pockets. A gun butt extended from his waistband.
“My lawyer glommed me a writ,” he said. “Fred Gaffaney almost shit shotgun shells.”
Lloyd said, “Amateurs shouldn’t pack hardware. Beat it. I’ve got no stories for you.”
Bergen laughed. “When I was on the job I was in love with my piece. Off duty, I always made sure that people could see it. I was in love with it until I had to use it. Then I dropped it and ran. Jack’s dead, Hopkins.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“It’s on me. It’s all on me.”
“Wrong, Bergen. It’s the Department’s and it’s mine.”
Bergen kicked the grill of the Matador, then stumbled backward into the hood of his truck. “I owe, goddamn you! Can’t you see that? All I ever had was what Jack gave me, and even that was all twisted. Some piece of shit took him where he shouldn’t have fucking gone and made him feel things that he shouldn’t have fucking felt, and it was me that he felt them about, and I owe! Don’t make me say the words, Hopkins. Please don’t make me say the fucking words.”
Lloyd sent up a prayer for all guilt-driven innocents seeking jeopardy.
“What do you want, Bergen?”
Former L.A.P.D. Sergeant Martin D. Bergen wiped tears from his eyes. “I just want to pay off Jack.”
“Then get in the car,” Lloyd said. “We’re going to Laurel Canyon to good guy–bad guy a suspect.”
*
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*
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William Nagler was not at home.
Lloyd parked across the street from his two-story redwood A-frame and walked over and knocked on both the front and back doors. No answer, no lights burning and no sounds of habitation. After checking the mailbox and finding two catalogs and a Mastercard bill, he returned to the car and his improbable partner.
“Are you going to open up this thing?” Bergen asked as Lloyd squeezed in behind the wheel.
Lloyd shook his head. “No. I don’t trust the fourth estate. Just play the interrogation by ear. You ever work plainclothes?”
“Yeah. Venice Vice. I’m going to be the good guy, right?”
“No. You’ve got booze breath and you need a shave. You’re big, but I’m bigger, so I can play savior. I’ll ask the questions, you just be abusive. Just imagine yourself as a typical fascist pig out of the pages of the Big Orange In- sider and you’ll be cool.”
Bergen laughed. “You’re the kind of joker who hands out compliments one minute, then rags people who hand out compliments the next, which means one of two things—you either love to give people shit, or you don’t know where your own head is at. Which one is it?”
With his eyes on Nagler’s front door, Lloyd said, “Don’t jerk my chain. If I didn’t want you here, you wouldn’t be here. If I didn’t understand what you have to do, I would have busted you for carrying a concealed weapon and kicked your ass back to the slam.”
Bergen scratched his razor stubble and poked Lloyd in the arm. “I apologize for saying I didn’t like your style. What I should have said was that you have style, but you don’t know what to do with it.”
Lloyd turned on the dashboard light and stared at Bergen. “Don’t tell me about style. I read some of your early stuff. It was damn good. You could have been something big, you could have said things worth saying. But you didn’t know what to do with it, because being really good is really scar
y. I know fear, Bergen. Two niggers blew away your partner and you ran. I can understand that and not judge you for it. But you had the chance to be great and you settled for being a hack, and that I can’t understand.”
Bergen toyed with the knobs of the two-way radio. “You Catholic, Hopkins?”
“No.”
“Tough shit, you’re going to hear my confession anyway. Jack Herzog taught me to write. He ghosted my first published stories, then edited the 398
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ones I actually did write. He formed my style; he was the one who had the chance to be great. It’s weird, Hopkins. You’re supposed to be the pragmatist, but I think you’re really a romantic innocent with an incredible nose for shit. It’s funny. Jack gave me everything I have. He made me a derivative fiction stylist and a competent journalist. He’d been writing a novel, and I was serving as his editor, helping him hold it together as he got crazier and crazier. I’ve never had the chance to be great. But if I had your brains and drive and guts, I’d be more than a gloryhound flatfoot.”
Lloyd turned on the radio and listened to code ones and twos. “It’s a stalemate, Marty, and a life sentence for both of us. But we’re lucky we can play the game.”