by James Ellroy
Gail crossed herself—half shtick, half for real. “Where?”
“You meet him at Dale’s Secret Harbor. He’s got a fuck pad a few blocks away where he bangs his secretary, but you insist on the Ambassador. You’re in town for a convention, and you’ve got a snazzy room with a wet bar.”
Gail shivered. Early a.m. chills—a sure sign that she had the yips.
Pete slipped her a key. “I rented the room next door to yours, so you can lock up and make it look good. I picked the lock on the connecting door, so I don’t think this one will be noisy.”
Gail lit a cigarette. Steady hands—good. “Distract me. Tell me what Howard the Recluse wanted.”
“He bought Hush-Hush. He wants me to find him a stringer, so he can pull his pud over Hollywood gossip and share it with his pal J. Edgar Hoover. He wants to smear his political enemies, like your old boyfriend Jack Kennedy.”
Gail smiled toasty warm. “A few weekends didn’t make him my boyfriend.”
“That fucking smile made him something.”
“He flew me down to Acapulco once. That’s a Howard the Recluse kind of gesture, so it makes you jealous.”
“He flew you down on his honeymoon.”
“So? He got married for political reasons, and politics makes for strange bedfellows. And my God, you are suuuch a voyeur.”
Pete unholstered his piece and checked the clip—so fast that he didn’t know why. Gail said, “Don’t you think our lives are strange?”
They took separate cars downtown. Gail sat at the bar; Pete grabbed a booth close by and nursed a highball.
The restaurant was crowded—Dale’s did a solid lunch biz. Pete got choice seating—he broke up a fag squeeze on the owner once.
Lots of women circulating: mid-Wilshire office stuff mostly. Gail stuck out: beaucoup more je ne sais quoi. Pete wolfed cocktail nuts—he forgot to eat breakfast.
Kinnard was late. Pete scanned the room, X-ray-eye-style.
There’s Jack Whalen by the pay phones—L.A.’s #1 bookie collector. There’s some LAPD brass two booths down. They’re fucking whispering: “Bondurant” … “Right, that Cressmeyer woman.”
There’s Ruth Mildred Cressmeyer’s ghost at the bar: this sad old girl with the shakes.
Pete slid down Memory Lane.
Late ’49. He had some good sidelines going: card-game guard and abortion procurer. The scrape doctor was his kid brother, Frank.
Pete joined the U.S. Marines to bag a green card. Frank stayed with the family in Quebec and went to medical school.
Pete got hip early. Frank got hip late.
Don’t speak French, speak English. Lose your accent and go to America.
Frank hit L.A. with a hard-on for money. He passed his medical boards and hung out his shingle: abortions and morphine for sale.
Frank loved showgirls and cards. Frank loved hoodlums. Frank loved Mickey Cohen’s Thursday-night poker game.
Frank made friends with a stickup guy named Huey Cressmeyer. Huey’s mom ran a Niggertown scrape clinic. Huey got his girlfriend pregnant and asked Mom and Frank for help. Huey got stupid and heisted the Thursday-night game—Pete was off guard duty with the flu.
Mickey gave Pete the contract.
Pete got a tip: Huey was holed up at a pad in El Segundo. The house belonged to a Jack Dragna trigger.
Mickey hated Jack Dragna. Mickey doubled the price and told him to kill everyone in the house.
December 14, 1949—overcast and chilly.
Pete torched the hideout with a Molotov cocktail. Four shapes ran out the back door swatting at flames. Pete shot them and left them to burn.
The papers ID’d them:
Hubert John Cressmeyer, 24.
Ruth Mildred Cressmeyer, 56.
Linda Jane Camrose, 20, four months pregnant.
François Bondurant, 27, a physician and French-Canadian émigré.
The snuffs stayed officially unsolved. The story filtered out to insiders.
Somebody called his father in Quebec and ratted him. The oid man called him and begged him to deny it.
He must have faltered or oozed guilt. The old man and old lady sucked down monoxide fumes the same day.
That old babe at the bar was fucking Ruth Mildred’s twin.
Time dragged. He sent the old girl an on-the-house refill. Walter P. Kinnard walked in and sat down next to Gail.
The poetry commenced.
Gail signaled the bartender. Attentive Walter caught the gesture and whistled. Joe Barman zoomed over with his martini shaker—regular boozer Walt packed some weight here.
Helpless Gail searched her purse for matches. Helpful Walt flicked his lighter and smiled. Sexy Walt was dripping scalp flakes all over the back of his jacket.
Gail smiled. Sexy Walt smiled. Well-dressed Walt wore white socks with a three-piece chalk-stripe suit.
The lovebirds settled in for martinis and small talk. Pete eyeballed the pre-bed warmup. Gail guzzled her drink for courage—her jaggedy nerves showed through plain.
She touched Walt’s arm. Her guilty heart showed plain—except for the money, she hates it.
Pete walked over to the Ambassador and went up to his room. The setup was perfect: his room, Gail’s room, one connecting door for a slick covert entrance.
He loaded his camera and attached a flashbulb strip. He greased the connecting doorjamb. He framed angles for some face shots.
Ten minutes crawled by. Pete listened for next-door sounds. There, Gail’s signal—“Damn, where’s my key?” a beat too loud.
Pete pressed up to the wall. He heard Lonely Walt pitch some boo-hoo: my wife and kids don’t know a man has certain needs. Gail said, Why’d you have seven kids then? Walt said, It keeps my wife at home, where a woman belongs.
Their voices faded out bed-bound. Shoes went thunk. Gail kicked a high-heeled pump at the wall—her three-minutes-to-blastoff signal.
Pete laughed—thirty-dollar-a-night rooms with goddamn wafer-thin walls.
Zippers snagged. Bedsprings creaked. Seconds tick-tick-ticked. Walter P. Kinnard started groaning—Pete clocked him saddled in at 2:44.
He waited for 3:00 even. He eeeeased the door open—that doorjamb grease lubed out every little scriiich.
There: Gail and Walter P. Kinnard fucking.
In the missionary style, with their heads close together—courtroom adultery evidence. Walt was loving it. Gail was feigning ecstasy and picking at a hangnail.
Pete got closeup close and let fly.
One, two, three—flashbulb blips Tommy-gun fast. The whole god-damn room went glare bright.
Kinnard shrieked and pulled out dishrag limp. Gail tumbled off the bed and ran for the bathroom.
Sexy buck-naked Walt: 5′9″, 210, pudgy.
Pete dropped his camera and picked him up by the neck. Pete laid his pitch out nice and slow.
“Your wife wants a divorce. She wants eight hundred a month, the house, the ’56 Buick and orthodontic treatments for your son Timmy. You give her everything she wants, or I’ll find you and kill you.”
Kinnard popped spit bubbles. Pete admired his color: half shock-blue, half cardiac-red.
Steam whooshed out the bathroom door—Gail’s standard postfuck shower always went down quick.
Pete dropped Walt on the floor. His arm fluttered from the lift: two hundred pounds plus, not bad.
Kinnard grabbed his clothes and stumbled out the door. Pete saw him tripping down the hallway, trying to get his trousers on right.
Gail walked out of a steam cloud. Her “I can’t take much more of this” was no big surprise.
Walter P. Kinnard settled non-litigiously. Pete’s shutout string jumped to Wives 23, Husbands 0. Mrs. Kinnard paid off: five grand up front, with 25% of her alimony promised in perpetuity.
Next: three days on Howard Hughes’ time clock.
The TWA suit was spooking Big Howard. Pete stepped up his diversions.
He paid hookers to spiel to the papers: Hughes was holed up in
numerous fuck pads. He bombarded process servers with phone tips: Hughes was in Bangkok, Maracaibo, Seoul. He set up a second Hughes double at the Biltmore: an old stag-movie vet, beaucoup hung. Pops was priapic for real—he sent Barbara Payton over to service him. Booze-addled Babs thought the old geek really was Hughes. She dished far and wide: Little Howard grew six inches.
J. Edgar Hoover could stall the suit easy. Hughes refused to ask him for help.
“Not yet, Pete. I need to cement my friendship with Mr. Hoover first. I see my ownership of Hush-Hush as the key, but I need you to find me a new scandal man first. You know how much Mr. Hoover loves to accrue titillating information.…”
Pete put the word out on the grapevine:
New Hush-Hush dirt digger needed. Interested bottom-feeders—call Pete B.
Pete stuck by the watchdog house phone. Geeks called. Pete said, Give me a hot dirt tidbit to prove your credibility.
The geeks complied. Dig the sampling:
Pat Nixon just hatched Nat “King” Cole’s baby. Lawrence Welk ran male prosties. A hot duo: Patti Page and Francis the Talking Mule.
Eisenhower had certified spook blood. Rin Tin Tin got Lassie pregnant. Jesus Christ ran a coon whorehouse in Watts.
It got worse. Pete logged in nineteen applicants—all fucking strange-o’s.
The phone rang—Strange-O #20 loomed. Pete heard crackle on the line—the call was probably long distance.
“Who’s this?”
“Pete? It’s Jimmy.”
HOFFA.
“Jimmy, how are you?”
“Right now I’m cold. It’s cold in Chicago. I’m calling from a pal’s house, and the heater’s on the blink. Are you sure your phone’s not tapped?”
“I’m sure. Freddy Turentine runs tap checks on all of Mr. Hughes’ phones once a month.”
“I can talk then?”
“You can talk.”
Hoffa cut loose. Pete held the phone at arm’s length and heard him juuuust fine.
“The McClellan Committee’s on me like flies on shit. That little weasel cocksucker Bobby Kennedy’s got half the country convinced the Teamsters are worse than the goddamn Commies, and he’s fucking hounding me and my people with subpoenas, and he’s got investigators crawling all over my union like—”
“Jimmy—”
“—fleas on a dog. First he chases Dave Beck out, and now he wants me. Bobby Kennedy is a fucking avalanche of dogshit. I’m building this resort in Florida called Sun Valley, and Bobby’s trying to trace the three million that bankrolled it. He figures I took it from the Central States Pension Fund—”
“Jimmy—”
“—and he thinks he can use me to get his pussy-hound brother elected President. He thinks James Riddle Hoffa’s a fucking political steppingstone. He thinks I’m gonna bend over and take it in the keester like some goddamn homosexual queer. He thinks—”
“Jimmy—”
“—I’m some pansy like him and his brother. He thinks I’m gonna roll over like Dave Beck. As if all this ain’t enough, I own this cabstand in Miami. I’ve got these hothead Cuban refugees working there, and all they do is debate fucking Castro versus fucking Batista like like like …”
Hoffa gasped out hoarse. Pete said, “What do you want?”
Jimmy caught some breath. “I’ve got a job for you in Miami.”
“How much?”
“Ten thousand.”
Pete said, “I’ll take it.”
He booked a midnight flight. He used a fake passenger name and charged a first-class seat to Hughes Aircraft. The plane landed at 8:00 a.m., on time.
Miami was balmy working on hot.
Pete cabbed over to a Teamster-owned U-Drive and picked up a new Caddy Eldo. Jimmy pulled strings: no deposit or ID was required.
A note was taped under the dashboard.
“Go by cabstand: Flagler at N.W. 46th. Talk to Fulo Machado.” Directions followed: causeways to surface streets marked on a little map.
Pete drove over. The scenery evaporated quick.
Big houses got smaller and smaller. White squares went to white trash, jigs and spics. Flagler was wall-to-wall low-rent storefronts.
The cabstand was tiger-striped stucco. The cabs in the lot had tiger-stripe paint jobs. Dig those tiger-shirted spics on the curb—snarfing doughnuts and T-Bird wine.
A sign above the door read: Tiger Kab. Se Habla Español.
Pete parked directly in front. Tiger men scoped him out and jabbered. He stretched to six-five-plus and let his shirttail hike. The spics saw his piece and jabbered on overdrive.
He walked in to the dispatch hut. Nice wallpaper: tiger photos taped floor to ceiling. National Geographic stock—Pete almost howled.
The dispatcher waved him over. Dig his face: scarred by tic-tac-toe knife cuts.
Pete pulled a chair up. Butt-Ugly said, “I’m Fulo Machado. Batista’s secret police did this to me, so take your free introductory look now and forget about it, all right?”
“You speak English pretty well.”
“I used to work at the Nacional Hotel in Havana. An American croupier guy taught me. It turned out he was a maricón trying to corrupt me.”
“What did you do to him?”
“The maricón had a shack on a pork farm outside of Havana, where he brought little Cuban boys to corrupt them. I found him there with another maricón and murdered them with my machete. I stole all the pigs’ food from their troughs and left the door of the shack open. You see, I had read in the National Geographic that starving pigs found decomposing human flesh irresistible.”
Pete said, “Fulo, I like you.”
“Please reserve judgment. I can be volatile where the enemies of Jesus Christ and Fidel Castro are concerned.”
Pete stifled a yuk. “Did one of Jimmy’s guys leave an envelope for me?”
Fulo forked it over. Pete ripped it open, itchy to roll.
Nice—a simple note and a photo.
“Anton Gretzler, 114 Hibiscus, Lake Weir, Fla. (near Sun Valley). OL4-8812.” The pic showed a tall guy almost too fat to live.
Pete said, “Jimmy must trust you.”
“He does. He sponsored my green card, so he knows that I will remain loyal.”
“What’s this Sun Valley place?”
“It is what I think is called a ‘sub-division.’ Jimmy is selling lots to Teamster members.”
Pete said, “So who do you think’s got more juice these days—Jesus or Castro?”
“I would say it is currently a toss-up.”
Pete checked in at the Eden Roc and buzzed Anton Gretzler from a pay phone. The fat man agreed to a meet: 3:00, outside Sun Valley.
Pete took a snooze and drove out early. Sun Valley was the shits: three dirt roads gouged from swampland forty yards off the Interstate.
It was “sub-divided”—into matchbook-size lots piled with junk siding. Marshland formed the perimeter—Pete saw gators out sunning.
It was hot and humid. A wicked sun cooked greenery dry brown.
Pete leaned against the car and stretched some kinks out. A truck crawled down the highway belching steam; the man in the passenger seat waved for help. Pete turned his back and let the geeks pass by.
A breeze kicked dust clouds up. The access road hazed over. A big sedan turned off the Interstate and barreled in blind.
Pete stood aside. The car brodied to a stop. Fat Anton Gretzler got out.
Pete walked over to him. Gretzler said, “Mr. Peterson?”
“That’s me. Mr. Gretzler?”
Fats stuck his hand out. Pete ignored it.
“Is something wrong? You said you wanted to see a lot.”
Pete steered Fat Boy down to a marsh glade. Gretzler caught on quick: Don’t resist. Gator eyes poked out of the water.
Pete said, “Look at my car. Do I look like some union schmuck in the market for a do-it-yourself house?”
“Well … no.”
“Then don’t you think you’re doing Jimmy raw b
y showing me these piece-of-shit pads?”
“Well …”
“Jimmy told me he’s got a nice block of houses around here just about ready to go. You’re supposed to wait and show them to the Teamsters.”
“Well … I thought I—”
“Jimmy says you’re an impetuous guy. He says he shouldn’t have made you a partner in this thing. He says you’ve told people he borrowed money from the Teamsters’ Pension Fund and skimmed some off the top. He’s says you’ve been talking up the Fund like you’re a made guy.”
Gretzler squirmed. Pete grabbed his wrist and snapped it—bones sheared and poked out through his skin. Gretzler tried to scream and choked up mute.
“Has the McClellan Committee subpoenaed you?”
Gretzler made “yes” nods, frantic.
“Have you talked to Robert Kennedy or his investigators?”
Gretzler made “no” nods, shit-your-pants scared.
Pete checked the highway. No cars in view, no witnesses—
Gretzler said, “PLEASE.”
Pete blew his brains out halfway through a rosary.
2
Kemper Boyd
(Philadelphia, 11/27/58)
The car: a Jaguar XK-140, British racing green/tan leather. The garage: subterranean and dead quiet. The job: steal the Jag for the FBI and entrap the fool who paid you to do it.
The man pried the driver’s-side door open and hot-wired the ignition. The upholstery smelled rich: full leather boosted the “resale” price into the stratosphere.
He eased the car up to the street and waited for traffic to pass. Cold air fogged the windshield.
His buyer was standing at the corner. He was a Walter Mitty crime-voyeur type who had to get close.
The man pulled out. A squad car cut him off. His buyer saw what was happening—and ran.
Philly cops packing shotguns swooped down. They shouted standard auto-theft commands: “Get out of the car with your hands up!”/“Out—now!”/“Down on the ground!”
He obeyed them. The cops threw on full armor: cuffs, manacles and drag chains.
They frisked him and jerked him to his feet. His head hit a prowl car cherry light—