by James Ellroy
“I want to go through it.”
“No, no. I’m sorry, you can’t. That’s absolute. John entrusted them to the order. I went through the carton and saw that there were no drugs, so I did John the decency of assuring him that his things would always be safe here. No, I can’t let you see them.”
“He’s dead, Andrew. Other lives may be at stake in this thing.”
“No. I won’t belie his trust. That’s final.”
I reached inside my coat and into my waistband and pulled out my .38. I leaned over and placed the barrel in the middle of Andrew’s forehead. “You show me that carton, or I’ll kill you,” I said.
It took him a moment to believe me. “I have work to do that requires me to acquiesce to you,” he said.
“Then you know why I have to do what I’m doing,” I said.
* * *
—
The carton was musty and mildewed and covered with spiderwebs. And it was heavy; reams and reams of paper weighted down with dampness. I hauled it out to my car under Andrew’s watchful eye. He gave me some sort of two-handed benediction as I locked it in my trunk.
“Shall I return it to you?” I asked.
Andrew shook his head. “No, I think you’ve let me off the hook as far as God is concerned.”
“What was that sign you made?”
“I was asking for God’s mercy on readers of dark secrets.”
“Have you read any of it?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know what it is?”
“You wouldn’t have come here if those pages contained joy.”
“Thank you,” I said. Andrew didn’t answer; he just watched me drive away.
* * *
—
I rented a room at a motel in Fond Du Lac and settled in to read John DeVries’s memoirs.
I emptied the musty carton onto my bed and arranged the paper into three neat piles, each one about a foot high. I gave each stack a cursory look to see if the writing was legible. It was. The black ink was smeared by dampness and age, but DeVries had a neat, concise handwriting and a narrative style that belied his drug addiction and rage; there was both chronological and thematic unity in his writing. The pages were not compiled by date, but each sheet was dated at the top. I went through all three piles and collated them according to month and year.
John DeVries’s journals covered the war years, and more than anything else they detailed his fascination with and subservience to Doc Harris, who had taken over the life of Johnny’s domineering sister; who had become his father and teacher and more; who had taken his aimless rage and given it form. “Johnny the enforcer” had only to stand by his avatar’s side and look intimidating, and by so doing gained more respect than he had ever known.
Johnny had been given the job of bringing back into line the recalcitrant burglars and buyers that Doc dealt with as middlemen:
November 5, 1943
This morning Doc and I drove out to Eagle Rock, ostensibly to move a supply of radios out of our garage there and up to our buyer at San Berdoo. Doc lectured on moral terror as I drove. He talked of the smallness of 99.9% of all lives, and how this smallness generates and regenerates until it creates an effect that is a “snowballing apocalypse of picayunity.” He then said that the natural elite (i.e.—us, and others like us) must send messages to the potential elite by “throwing a perpetual monkey wrench into the cogs of the picayunist’s machinery.” He explained that our buyer in San Berdoo was continually trying to bring us down in price by the intimidation tactic of threatening to look elsewhere for radios. Doc said that it could be tolerated no longer and that I should visit the man with a spiritual message that would teach him humility. Doc said no more until we had loaded our radios into the truck and were almost to San Berdoo, then he told me: “This picayune has a cat he dotes on. Picayunes love dumb animals because by comparison they are even more powerless than they themselves are. I want you to strangle that cat in front of its picayune owner. If you grab the cat lengthwise. by its head, and wrap your little finger and thumb around its neck and squeeze abruptly with your first two fingers stationed firmly above its eyebrows, it will cause the cat’s eyes to pop out of its head as you strangle it. Do this for me, Johnny, and I will teach you other ways to consolidate your power: the real mental power that I know you have.” I did it. The buyer pleaded with us, pledging all his business to us exclusively and offering Doc three hundred dollars as a bonus. Doc declined the money and said, “My bonus is the lesson you have learned and the good that will come from it for you and many others.”
I read on through 1943, as Doc Harris consolidated his hold over John DeVries, moving him into a widening arena of violence interspersed with counseling on the philosophy and psychology of terror. Johnny beat up and robbed homosexuals at Doc’s command; he broke the arms and legs of bet welchers; he pistol-whipped burglars who Doc thought were holding out on their take. And he never, ever questioned his mentor. The philosophy with which Doc dominated him was Hitlerian-Utopian, tailored to fit Johnny’s history of overdependence on supportive figures:
“You, Marcella and I are the natural elite. You must respect Marcella for saving you from Tunnel City, Wisconsin, and respect her as your blood; but know that she has her faults. She is weaker than we on the level of action; you and I have reached for the beast within ourselves and have externalized it. We will always do what we have to do, regardless of the consequences to others, rendering ourselves above all of man’s laws and moral strictures designed to keep that beast at bay. Marcella will never reach that point, yet she is a valuable comrade for us at the level of wife and sister. Respect her and love her, but keep your emotional distance. Know that ultimately she is not of our morality.
“The Navy has you now, John, but soon we will have the Navy. Keep your uniform neatly pressed and shine your shoes. Play your part well, and you will be a rich man for life. Your sister is pregnant with the child who will be your nephew and my son and our moral heir. Watch your intake of hop and you will have the power of hop over millions. Listen and trust me, John. You must acquiesce more, and when you do that I will tell you of the literal power of life and death I have exercised over many people.”
I saw where that paragraph was taking me, so I flipped ahead in time to August 1945. What I already knew was strongly confirmed: John DeVries, Eddie Engels, and Lawrence Brubaker had robbed the infirmary of the aircraft carrier Appomattox of forty-five pounds of undiluted morphine. Doc Harris was the mastermind. DeVries, Brubaker, and Engels were questioned, then released. Doc’s intimidation of Johnny was so absolute that Johnny never cracked under questioning. The diary indicated that Engels and Brubaker were equally cowed, equally in the grip of the incredible Doc Harris’s stranglehold. What I had strongly suspected was also confirmed; Marcella Harris did not participate in the crime—she was in the naval hospital in Long Beach miscarrying her expected child.
It was then, for the first time, that Johnny saw Doc Harris shaken. Due to complications, Marcella would now be barren for life. It was then that Johnny came to his mentor’s aid to offer to him what Doc would never himself achieve with Marcella—Johnny told Doc that the girlfriend of whom Doc had disapproved was now pregnant in Wisconsin, and due to give birth in two weeks.
Doc and Johnny flew there. Doc delivered the child in a house trailer parked in a wheat field south of Waukesha. Maggie had wanted to keep the baby, but Doc, aided in the birth by Larry Brubaker, had terrorized her into releasing the child to him, for safe delivery to a “special” orphanage for “special” children. Doc returned to Los Angeles and his wife with the child she so desperately wanted and his own “moral heir.”
* * *
—
Again I skipped ahead in time, only to find that time abruptly stopped, shortly after Johnny described the events of August 1945. But there were at least a hundre
d sheets of paper remaining, undated but crowded with words. Johnny had inexplicably switched to red ink, and in a few moments I realized why: Johnny had sought Doc’s absolute knowledge, and Doc had given it to him in gratitude for his moral heir. Here was the story of “the literal power of life and death” that Doc had exercised over many people. Here it was, appropriately in red, for it was the story of the insane Doc Harris’s murderous ten-year career as a traveling abortionist on the underside of skid rows throughout the Midwest, armed with scalpel for cutting, cheap whiskey for anesthesia, and his own insane elitist hatred as motivation.
Johnny continued to quote his teacher verbatim:
“Of course, I knew since medical school that it was my mission and my learning process; that the power of life and death was the ultimate learning ground. I knew that if I could effectively carry out this dreadful but necessary process of birth and elimination and withstand any emotional damage it might cause, I would possess the inviolate mind and soul of a god.”
I read on as Doc described his process of selection to an awed and finally sickened Johnny:
“If the girls were referred to me by a lover or a pimp then, of course, they had to be allowed to live. If they were bright and charming then I performed the job with all my considerable skill and acumen. If the girls were ugly or whining or slatternly or proud of their promiscuity, then the world was of course better off without them and their offspring. Such creatures I would smother with chloroform and abort after their death—perfecting my craft to save the lives of the unfortunate young women who deserved to live. I would then drive out into the country with dead mother and unborn child and bury them, late at night, in some kind of fertile ground. I would feel very close to these young women and secure in my knowledge that they had died so that others could live.”
Doc Harris went on to describe his abortion techniques, but I couldn’t go on. I began to weep uncontrollably and cry for Lorna. Someone rapped at my door, and I grabbed the pillow off the bed, smothered my cries and fell onto the floor thrashing and kicking convulsively. I must have fallen asleep that way, because when I awoke it was dark. The only light in the room came from a desk lamp. It took me a few seconds to recall where I was and what had happened. A scream rose up in my throat and I stifled it by holding my breath until I almost passed out.
I knew I would have to read the rest of the journal. Gradually I got to my feet and steeled myself for the task. Fearful and angry tears covered the remaining pages as I read the horrifying accounts of life and death and blood and pus and excrement, and life and death and death and death and death.
* * *
—
Johnny DeVries had finally become as sickened as I was, and had run to Milwaukee’s skid row with a private supply of morphine. His prose style by this time had degenerated into incoherent rambling interspersed with chemical formulas and symbols I was incapable of understanding. Fear of Doc—“The slicer! The slicer! No one is safe from the slicer!”—covered the last pages.
Shaken, I locked my room and went for a walk. I needed to be with people who bore a semblance of health. I found a noisy cocktail bar and entered. The room was bathed in an amber light that softened the patrons’ faces—to the good, I thought.
I ordered a double bourbon, then another—and another; a very heavy load for a nondrinker. I ordered yet another double and discovered I was weeping, and that the people at the bar were looking at me in embarrassed silence. I finished my drink and decided I didn’t care. I signaled the bartender for a refill and he shook his head and looked the other way. I threaded my way through a maze of dancing couples toward a pay phone at the back of the room. I gave the operator Lorna’s number in Los Angeles, then started feeding the machine dimes and quarters until the operator cut in and told me I had deposited three times the necessary amount.
When Lorna came on the line I just stammered drunkenly until she said, “Freddy, goddamnit, is that you?”
“Lor-Lorna. Lorna!”
“Are you crying, Freddy? Are you drunk? Where the hell are you?”
I brought myself under control enough to talk: “I’m in Wisconsin, Lor. I know a lot of things I have to tell you about. There’s this great big little boy that might get hurt like Maggie Cadwallader…Lorna, please, Lor, I need to see you…”
“I didn’t know you got drunk, Freddy. It’s not like you. And I’ve never heard you cry.” Lorna’s voice was very soft, and amazed.
“I don’t, goddamnit. You don’t understand, Lor.”
“Yes, I do. I always have. Are you coming back to L.A.?”
“Yes.”
“Then call me then. Don’t tell me anything about great big little boys or the past. Just go to sleep. All right?”
“All right.”
“Good night, Freddy.”
“Good night.” I hung up before Lorna could hear me start to weep again.
* * *
—
Somehow I slept that night. In the morning I put Johnny’s history of terror into the trunk of my car and drove to Chicago.
I stopped at a hardware store in the Loop and bought a reinforced cardboard packing crate, then spent an hour in the parking lot sifting through and annotating the memoirs. From a pay phone I called L.A. Information, and learned that Lawrence Brubaker’s residence address and the address of Larry’s Little Log Cabin were the same. This gave me pause, especially when I recalled that there was a post office directly across the street from the bar when Dudley Smith and I had braced him in ’51.
Before transferring the mass of paper from the musty carton to the new one I checked my work: all references to Brubaker and the drug robbery were underlined. I dug some fresh sheets of stationery out of the glove compartment and wrote a cover letter:
Dear Larry—
It is time to pay your dues. You belong to me now, not Doc Harris. I will be in touch.
Officer Frederick U. Underhill
1647
Next I drove to a post office, where I borrowed masking tape and sealed up the carton tight as a drum. I addressed it to:
Lawrence Brubaker
Larry’s Little Log Cabin Bar
58 Windward Avenue
Venice, California
For a return address I wrote:
Edward Engels
U.S.S. Appomattox
1 Fire Street, Hades
A nice touch. A just touch, one that would appeal to Lorna and other lovers of justice.
I explained several times what I wanted to the patient postal clerk: insured delivery, to the post office across the street, where the recipient would be required to produce identification and sign a receipt before getting his hands on the package. And I wanted the carton to arrive in three days’ time; no sooner. The clerk understood; he was used to eccentrics.
I left the post office feeling light as air and solid as granite. I drove to O’Hare Field and left off the rented car, then caught an afternoon flight home to Los Angeles and my destiny.
VI
THE GAME FOR SHELTER
23
Three days later at seven in the morning I was stationed on Windward Avenue in front of a liquor store that afforded me a view of both the Venice Post Office and Larry’s Little Log Cabin.
I waited nervously for the post office to open its doors at seven thirty, fully aware that my plan would work to psychological perfection only if the postal messenger roused Brubaker early enough so that he was alone at his bar. His joint was no longer open the maximum hours—the current hours posted on the door were a more demure 10:00 a.m. to midnight. It could work only to my benefit—I would come down on Brubaker under any conditions, but I wanted him and his Little Log Cabin to myself if possible. So I lounged in front of the liquor store, knowing I might be in for a long day.
I thought mostly of Lorna. I hadn�
�t phoned her when I returned to Los Angeles. I wanted to recapture a parity I thought I had lost on the night I called her, sobbing. The two days I had spent at my apartment trying not to think about her had been days of complete defeat; I thought of little else, and pictured every possible resolution between us in the light of what I knew had to happen before we could be together again. I had to will myself, there on seedy “Wineward” Avenue, wearing a seedy windbreaker to cover my gun, not to think about what I wanted most, and not to think about dead women, dead unborn children and my own past that wouldn’t die.
My trying not to think was interrupted at eight twenty, when a postal clerk in uniform trotted across the street toward Larry’s Little Log Cabin. I watched as the man consulted a slip of paper in his hand and knocked loudly on the front door. A moment later the door opened and a pale-skinned Negro in a silk robe was standing there, blinking against the brightness of the day. Brubaker and the postman talked, and from half a block away I could tell that old Larry’s curiosity was whetted.
Brubaker came back out the door five minutes later, dressed in slacks and a sport shirt. He jaywalked directly across the street to the post office while my body started to go alternately hot and cold all over.
I figured on another five minutes. I was wrong: three minutes later Brubaker was running back across the street, my carton in his arms, his face the picture of absolute panic. He didn’t run for his front door—he bypassed it and ran for the parking lot adjacent to his building. I was right behind him, and as he plopped the carton down on the trunk of a Pontiac roadster and groped in his pocket for the keys, I came up behind him and jammed my gun into his spine.
“No, Larry,” I said as he cut loose with a sound that was half wail and half shriek, “not now. You understand?” I cocked the hammer and dug the barrel into the fleshy part of his back. Brubaker nodded his head very slightly.