by James Ellroy
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, “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 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 Havil-land’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 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 pat
ches 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 right-handed. 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 coincidence 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 laughed 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.
Parked outside Linda Wilhite’s plush high rise on Wil-shire and Beverly Glen, Lloyd ran through literal and instinctive chronologies in an attempt to logically explain the remarkable coincidence that has 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.
He ran into the high rise and bolted three flights of service stairs. When he raised his hand to knock on the door of Linda Wilhite’s apartment, he saw that he was shaking.
A security peephole slid open. “Yes?” a woman’s voice said.
Lloyd put his badge up in front of the hole. “L.A.P.D.,” he said. “Could I speak to you for a moment, Miss Wilhite?”
“What’s this about?”
Lloyd felt his shaking go internal. “It’s about Stanley Rudolph. Will you open up, please?”
There was the sound of locks being unlatched, and then she was there, wearing an ankle-length paisley caftan. Lloyd tried to stare past her into the apartment, but Linda Wilhite held the center of his vision and rendered the background dull black.
“What about Stanley Rudolph?” she asked.
Lloyd walked into the apartment uninvited, taking a quick inventory of the entrance hall and living room. It was still hazy background stuff, but he knew that everything was tasteful and expensive.
“Don’t be shy, make yourself right at home,” Linda Wilhite said, coming up behind Lloyd and pointing him toward a floral-patterned easy chair. “I’ll have the butler bring you a mint julep.”
Lloyd laughed. “Nice pad, Linda. Out of the low-rent district.”
Linda feigned a return laugh. “Don’t be formal, call me suspect.”
Lloyd stuck his hand in his jacket pocket and pulled out snapshots of Thomas Goff and Jungle Jack Herzog. He handed them to Linda and said, “Okay, suspect, have you seen either of these men before?”
Linda looked the photos over and returned them to Lloyd. There was not the slightest flicker of recognition in her eyes or her hands-on-hips pose. “No. What’s this about Stan Rudolph? Are you with Vice?”
Lloyd sat down in the easy chair and stretched his legs. “That’s right. What’s the basis of your relationship with Rudolph?”
Linda’s eyes went cold. Her voice followed. “I think you know. Will you state your purpose, ask your questions, and get out?”
Lloyd shook his head. “What do you know?”
“That you’re no fucking Vice cop!” Linda shouted. “You got a snappy comback for that one?”
Lloyd’s voice was his softest; the voice he saved for his daughters. “Yeah. You’re no hooker.”
Linda sat down across from him. “Everything in this apartment calls you a liar.”
“I’ve been called worse than that,” Lloyd said.
“Such as?”
“Some of the choicer shots have included ‘urban barracuda,’ ‘male chauvinist porker,’ ‘fascist cocksucker,’ ‘wasp running dog,’ and ‘pussy hound scumbag.’ I appreciate articulate invective. ‘Motherfucker’ and ‘pig’ get to be boring.”
Linda Wilhite laughed and poked a finger at Lloyd’s wedding ring. “You’re married. What does your wife call you?”
“Long distance.”
“What?”
“We’re separated.”
“Serious splitsville?”
“I’m not sure. It’s been a year and she’s got a lover, but I intend to outlast the bastard.”
Linda stretched out her legs, matching Lloyd’s pose, but in the opposite direction. “Do you always discuss intimate family matters with total strangers?”
Lloyd laughed and stilled an urge to reach over and touch her knee. “Sometimes. It’s good therapy.”
“I’m in therapy,” Linda said.
“Why?” Lloyd asked.
“That’s your first dumb question,” Linda said. “Everyone has problems, and people who have money and want to get rid of them go to shrinks. Comprende?”
Lloyd shook his head. “Most troubled people are swamped by petty neuroses, stuff that they haven’t got the slightest handle on. Offhand, I’d say that you’re not that kind of person. Offhand, I’d say that some sort of catalyst led you to the couch.”
“My shrink doesn’t have a couch. He’s too hip.”
“That’s a strange thing to call a psychiatrist.”
“All right. Hip translates to brilliant, concerned, dedicated, and brutally honest.”
“Are you in love with him?”
“No. He’s not my type. Look, this conversation is getting a little weird and a bit far afield. You are a cop, aren’t you? That wasn’t a dime-store badge you showed me, or anything like that, was it?”
Lloyd saw a large stack of newspapers lying on top of a coffee table an arm’s length away. He pointed to them and said, “If you’ve got Tuesday’s Times, look at the second page. ‘Shootout at Beverly Hills Nightclub.’”
Linda went to the table and leafed through the papers, then read the article standing up. When she turned around to face Lloyd, he had his badge and I.D. card extended. Linda took the leatherette holder and examined it, then smiled from ear to ear. “So you’re Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins and one of those pictures is the unidentified homicide suspect you shot it out with. Very impressive. But what do Stan Rudolph and I have to do with it?”
Lloyd mulled the question over as Linda sat back down without relinquishing the I.D. holder. Deciding on an abridged version of the truth, he said, “An informant told me that Thomas Goff, my previously ‘unidentified homicide suspect,’ sold Stanley Rudolph some art objects, aided by a still unidentified partner. I came across Rudolph’s address book and noticed the names of several call girls I’d busted years ago. I also noticed your nam
e, and concluded that since the only other women in the book were in the Life, you had to be also. I needed an outside lever to pry some information out of Rudolph, and since the other women probably still hate me for busting them, I decided on you.”
Linda handed the I.D. holder back. “Are you that fucking brash?”
Lloyd smiled. “Yes,” he said.
“Why don’t you just question Stan baby yourself?”
“Because he’d probably want an attorney present. Because any admission of knowing Goff is an implicit admission of receiving stolen goods, accessory to first degree burglary and criminal conspiracy. What kind of man is Rudolph?”
“A pathetic little nerd who gets his rocks off taking nude pictures. A loud-mouthed buffoon. What specifically did this guy Goff do?”
“He’s murdered at least three people.”
Linda went pale. “Jesus. And you want me to pry information about him out of Stan baby?”
“Yes. And about his partner, who I’m certain is left-handed. Does Rudolph ever talk about his art collection and how he accquired it?”
Linda tapped Lloyd’s arm and said, “Yes. His art collection is his favorite topic of conversation. It’s all tied in to his sex M.O. He’s told me a dozen times that he buys his stuff from rip-off guys. That’s as specific as he gets. He used to have nude photographs of me on his bedroom walls, but he took them down because he was expecting some more Colombian statues. I haven’t tricked with him in six weeks or so, so maybe he and Goff got together recently.”
Lloyd thought of the rectangular patches on Rudolph’s bedroom wall, imagining the nude Linda he could have seen had he pulled his B & E a few months before. “Linda, do you think you—”
Linda Wilhite silenced him with a breathtaking coconspirator’s smile. “Yes. I’ll call Stan baby and set up a date, hopefully for tonight. Call me around one A.M., and don’t worry, I’ll be very cool.”
Lloyd’s conspiratorial smile felt like a blush. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure. You were right, you know. I did enter therapy for a reason.”