by James Ellroy
L.A. ’53—ring-a-ding-ding!
Joi and I hit the Crescendo and the Largo most nights. Cocktail waitresses fed me slander slurs in exchange for my titanic tips. It was my kid-voyeur days, rabidly redux.
A fragmenting frustration set in. I had the dirt. It would take an armada of shakedown shills and photo fiends to deploy it. I racked my brain. I knocked my noggin against the bruising brick wall of unknowing. Extortion as existential dilemma. A confounding conundrum worthy of those French philosopher cats.
My cop life could not compete with the lush life. I was a double agent akin to that Commie cad Alger Hiss. Liz Taylor drove me to Central Station and signed autographs for the blues. I knew that word would leak to Chief William H. Parker. I was full of a finger-stabbing Fuck you.
Ralph Mitchell Horvath still haunted me. Nightmares nabbed me as I slid into sleep. Joi and Liz nursed me with yellow jackets and booze. My bedtime mantra was He Deserved to Die. It was beastly bullshit. I couldn’t convince myself that what I did was right.
The Rosenbergs fried at Sing Sing. That was justified. They sold A-bomb secrets to Russia. They got what they paid for.
I developed my personal credo: “I’ll work for anyone but Communists. I’ll do anything short of murder.”
Morally sound in L.A., circa ’53. Equally sound in purgatory today.
I spent nuke-bomb nights at the Hollywood Ranch Market. My office was two-way-mirrored and overlooked the aisles. I scanned for boosters and looked down at legions of the lost.
Their pathos pounded me. Bit actors buying stale bread and Tokay. Six-foot-two drag queens shopping for extra-long nylons. Cough-syrup hopheads reading labels for the codeine content. Teenage boys sneaking girlie mags to the can to jerk off.
I watched, I peeped, I lost myself in the losers. A goofy ghost came and went with them.
He was about 23. He slouched in windbreakers and wore cigarettes as props. He breezed through the aisles at 3 a.m. He always looked ecstatic. He talked to people. He cultivated people. He studied people the way I looked in windows as a kid. I saw him out on the sidewalk once. He played the bongos for a clique of fags and junkies. A girl called him “Jimmy.”
The fucker appeared intermittent. I made him for an actor living off chump change and aging fruits. I saw him kiss a girl by the bread bin. I saw him kiss a boy in the soup aisle. He moved with a weirdo grace. He wasn’t froufrou or masculine. He was in on some exalted joke.
I saw him boost a carton of Pall Malls. I cornered him, cuffed him, and hauled him upstairs. His name was James Dean. He was from Bumfuck, Indiana. He was an actor and a bohemian you-name-it. He explained that Pall Mall cigarettes were queer code. The In hoc signo vinces on the pack meant “In this sign you shall conquer.” Homos flashed Pall Malls and ID’d each other. It was all-new shit to me.
I let Jimmy off with a warning. We started hanging out in the office. We tipped Old Crow, looked down on the floor, and gassed on the humanoids. Jimmy habituated the leather bars in East Hollywood. He ratted off pushers and celebrity quiffs and filled a whole side of my dirt bin. I told him about my smut-film and male-prosty gigs. I promised him a date with Donkey Don Eversall in exchange for hot dirt.
We’d hit silent stretches. I’d scan the floor. Jimmy would read scandal rags.
They were just popping up. Peep, Transom, Whisper, Tattle, Lowdown. Titillation texts. Lurid language marred by mitigation. Insipid innuendo.
Politicos got slurred as Red—but never nailed past implication. Jimmy loved the rags but said they weren’t sufficiently sordid or precise in their prose. He called them “timid tipster texts.” He said, “You’ve got better skank than this, Freddy. I could give you three issues’ worth from one night at the Cockpit Lounge.”
A bell bonged—faint and far-off. Memory is revised retrospection. Oh, yeah—fate fungooed me that night.
A newsboy pulled a red wagon into the market. It was stacked with magazines. He began filling the racks.
A cover caught my eye. Primary colors and big headlines screamed.
The magazine was called Confidential.
6
Beverly Hills Hotel
8/14/53
Joi woke me up. I was nudging off a nightmare. Double dip: Ralph Mitchell Horvath shot in the mouth, Manolo Sanchez with skeleton claws.
I looked across the bed. Shit—Liz was gone.
Joi read my mind. “She had an early call. She said to remind you that Arthur Crowley wants that phone date.”
I lit a cigarette. I chased three bennies with Old Crow. Aaaaaaah, breakfast of champions!
“Remind me again. Who’s Arthur Crowley?”
“That divorce lawyer who needs your help.”
“I’ll call him when I go off-duty.”
Joi stepped into a skirt and pulled her shoes on. She dressed as fast as most men.
“No more girls for a while, okay, Freddy? Liz is great, but Barb is like Helga, She Wolf of the SS. Really, that stunt with the armband and the garters? That and she hogs the whole bed.”
I laffed loud and lewd. My wake-up whipped through me and canceled cobwebs. Summer in L.A.—ring-a-ding-ding!!
Joi kissed me and bopped out of the bungalow. I shit, shaved, showered, and put on my uniform.
The bedroom phone rang. I snagged it. A man said, “Mr. Otash, this is Arthur Crowley.”
I buffed my badge with my necktie. A mirror magnetized me. Man, oh Manischewitz, I looked good!
“Mr. Crowley, it’s a pleasure.”
Crowley said, “Sir, I’ll be blunt. I’m swamped with pissed-off husbands and wives looking to take each other to the cleaners. Legal statutes are in flux, and divorce-court judges are demanding proof of adultery. Liz Taylor told me you might have some ideas.”
I lit a cigarette. Benzedrine arched through my arteries and piqued my pizzazz.
“I do have ideas. If you have flexible scruples, I think we can do biz.”
Crowley laffed. “I’m listening.”
I said, “I know some Marines stationed down at Camp Pendleton. I was their DI in ’43 and ’44, and now they’re back from Korea and looking for kicks. It’s a parlay. Hot rods, good-looking shills, walkie-talkies, phone drops, and Speed Graphic cameras.”
Crowley hooted. “Semper fi, sir. You’re a white man in my book.”
“Semper fi, boss. We’ll work out the details at your convenience, and I’ll round up my boys.”
“And in the meantime? Is there anything you need?”
Benzedrine was a groin groper. One thing came to mind.
“My Landing Strip’s got two empty runways tonight. Liz told me you’re conversant with the concept.”
I heard voices outside the bungalow—male and brazenly brusque. I thought I heard foot scrapes and coughs.
Crowley said, “Liz explained the concept, so I called you prepared. I’ll send two stenos over.”
“Mr. Crowley, you’re a pisser.”
“It takes one to know one, sir.”
We hung up. I heard the voices again. A key-in-lock noise followed. I walked into the living room. The door opened wide.
William H. Parker.
Two plainclothes bulls. Maladroit mastiffs on a mission to maul for their master.
“Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”
I unpinned my badge and tossed it at Parker. It hit his chest and dropped on the floor. The mastiffs moved. Parker gestured Get back. The mastiffs pawed the carpeting.
I unhooked my gun belt and dropped it on a chair. I called up some cool. Freon Freddy, the Shaman of Shakedown.
“Hit me, Bill. Shack jobs, living above my means, bending the rules here and there. My head’s on the chopping block, baby. Guillotine me.”
The mastiffs smirked smug. Pious Parker parsed out a grin.
“You are currently engaged in an intimate relationship with a Pan American stewardess named Barbara Jane Bonvillain, now in federal custody for possession of narcotics procured in Mexico. I must
inform you that the outsized Miss Bonvillain is a Communist agent and a personal emissary of Marshal Tito, the Red boss of Yugoslavia. As if that weren’t enough, Miss Bonvillain is really a man. She underwent a sex-change operation in Malmö, Sweden, in late 1951, before her stellar efforts impersonating a woman at the ’52 Olympics. You fucked a man, Freddy. You’re a homo. Get the hell off my police force.”
* * *
“You’re a homo.”
“You’re a homo.”
“You fucked a man.”
“You fucked a man.”
“You’re a homo, you’re a homo, you’re a homo.”
I drank myself into a stunned stupor. I passed out on the floor. I got intimate with insects inhabiting the rug. They were dung desperadoes. They were my filthy fellow travelers, lower than lice.
“You’re a homo, you’re a homo, you’re a homo.”
I drank, I passed out, I woke up. I went eye to eye with a big beetle. We discussed the man-bug metaphysic, infused with frissons from that freaky frog Camus. The beetle explained that life was horrifically happenstance and that we were all fucked by fate. Bugs were bid by biology to live off larvae and leaves. Men were massacred by lascivious lust and bumbled into bed with he-shes. You didn’t know that she was a he. Hit your bennie stash and find your way out of this funk.
I obeyed the beetle. The Benzedrine outrevved the booze. I talked shit with the beetle for hours. We went feeler to feeler on the floor.
I called Abe Adelman at the State License Bureau. I promised him two G’s for PI’s ducat, quicksville. I bid the beetle adieu and climbed back into my civvies. I drove straight to the Hollywood Ranch Market.
L.A. looked like Pompeii, post-earthquake. The summer sun skimmed the sky and scattered death rays. Hes were shes and shes were hes and the most gorgeous girls were gargoyles. I got to the market and ran up to my office. Jimmy was scanning the August Lowdown.
He said, “You’re wigged out, Freddy.”
I said, “I’ve been talking to a bug.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Some shit you wouldn’t believe.”
“I would. It’s the basis of our friendship. We tell each other shit the world wouldn’t believe.”
I smiled. “Tell me something typical. I’ve had a jolt. I need to get my feet back under me.”
“The barman at the Manhole is pushing horse.”
“I’ll file it away in case I need him.”
Jimmy said, “I’ve got a picture of Marlon Brando with a dick in his mouth.”
“I’ll give you a C-note.”
Jimmy passed me the Old Crow. I took a pull and felt the floor meet my feet.
“How was your date with Donkey Don?”
Jimmy held his hands two feet apart. Jimmy said, “Ouch.”
I roared. We passed the jug back and forth. Jimmy lit a Pall Mall.
“I’m up for a role on GE Theater, but this Paul Newman punk will probably get it.”
“I’ll plant a bag of weed on him and lay on the fear. You’ll get the gig.”
“Thanks, Freddy.”
I thought about the talking bug. I looked down at the floor. I saw the kid with the wagon, unloading magazines.
“I’ve got all this good dirt and no place to put it. It’s driving me fucking crazy.”
* * *
Semper fi.
I assembled my ex-Marine cadre. My porno-prosty boys proceeded priapically apace. My Camp Pendleton pals came up to L.A. and joined Operation Divorce. The two crews crossed over. I had six certified psychos culled for my command. My Pendleton pit dogs were blood-blitzed from killing Commies in Korea. They were out for chaotic kicks and required tight tugs on their chains. Our marks were adulterous wives and husbands. Donkey Don lured ladies to hot-sheet hotels and instigated insertion. Flashbulbs flared as I kicked in doors, camera cocked. My Pendleton pits were adroit and adept at rolling surveillance. They tailed wayward wives and whorehound hubbies to hotels and walkie-talkied me. Joi was the mouthwatering man bait. She worked off Arthur Crowley’s craaazy crib sheets on his hubbies’ habits. Joi was sinful seductress and cold cock tease. I always kicked the doors in just as zippers dropped.
Operation Divorce was a Marine Corps maneuver and a mad moneymaker. Operation Otash was the ultimate umbrella command. I had an army of snarky snitches on my payroll. My PI’s license arrived in the mail and served to cinch my sinful sanction. I did not much mourn my severed service with the LAPD. I paid vulture vice cops for tips on quivering queers, jittery junkies, dipsos deep in the DTs. I built fat files on celebrity secrets and hoarded the horrors hard in my heart. Knowledge is power—the Beverly Hills Hotel bug reminded me of that. The one puzzle piece still missing: how to systematically carve cash from all of it.
Jimmy joined in. I kicked putzy Paul Newman’s ass and held a bag of Mary Jane primed with his prints. Jimmy got the GE Theater role and groveled with gratitude. I hired him to hump the husband of a divorce-seeking dowager sick of hubby’s hijinks. Jimmy was a swift switcherooer—if it mamboed, he’d move on it. He boffed five babes in one week—topping Donkey Don’s extant record. I camera-caught the wives as Jimmy shot them the schvantz.
L.A. ’53—rampant ring-a-ding-ding! Calendar pages ruffling toward that date with destiny.
I was on the Landing Strip with Liz and a waitress from Biff’s Charbroil. I heard the mail slot open and an envelope hit the floor.
It was a Western Union telegram. I opened it and read:
Dear Mr. Otash,
We here at Confidential Magazine are looking for a man conversant in the celebrity secrets of present-day Los Angeles, preferably a man with prior police experience. Would you be willing to meet me in a week’s time, to discuss a possible collaboration?
Sincerely,
Robert Harrison, Publisher and Editor-In-Chief
7
“Ava Gardner’s Dusky Dee-lite.”
“Johnnie Ray’s Men’s Room Misadventure.”
“Bad Boy Bob Mitchum: Back in Reeferland AGAIN?”
I wired Harrison and confirmed the meet. I booked a boss bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. I borrowed textbooks from Arthur Crowley’s library and studied libel, slander, and defamation of character. I learned to think and talk like a language-lucid lawyer.
Jimmy bagged back issues of Peep, Lowdown, Whisper, Tattle, and Confidential itself. I studied linguistic loopholes and cultivated codes of mitigation, equivocation, ambiguity. Innuendo, inference, implication. So many wicked ways to scandal-skin a cat.
I alter-egoed myself in a week’s time. I discovered sin-uendo and scanda-language. I moved into the bungalow a day early. That talking bug and I conferenced and concurred: Confidential was the grooved-out grail of this shook-up generation. Disillusionment is enlightenment. Confidential trafficked truth and harpooned hypocrisy. It was a devoutly decorous document. It was the meshuggener Magna Carta of our hopped-up and fucked-up age.
It’s now 9/21/53. It’s now precisely 10 a.m. The doorbell rings.
Caviar, canapés—check. Martinis mixed magnifico—check. My dossier on Bondage Bob—malignantly memorized.
I opened the door. The Sultan of Sin-uendo: a nervous nebbish in a dreary drip-dry suit.
He said, “Mr. Otash.”
I said, “Mr. Harrison.”
He walked in and went Ooh-la-la. I poured two mighty martinis and pointed to the couch. We raised our glasses. I said, “To freedom of speech.”
“The First Amendment. What it hath wrought.”
We clicked glasses. I sat facing Bondage Bob. He made the you-and-me sign. He said, “Strange bedfellows.”
You’re stranger, dipshit. You wear women’s lingerie and love the lash. You published Honeys in Heels, pre-Confidential.
“Get my attention, Mr. Otash. Open strong, baby. I’ve got a storefront called the ‘Hollywood Research Bureau.’ It’s been my primary source since we launched. We’ve floated the magazine on the few nuggets it’s panned, plus imagination. It’s
been thin gruel, by and large. Hit me, sweetheart. Show me why the cognoscenti says, ‘Fred Otash is the man to see.’ ”
I pulled out my Marlon Brando snapshot. I passed it to Bondage Bob. He gasped and sprayed me with a mouthful of martini.
I let it drip-dry on my suit coat. Bondage Bob coughed and called up composure. He said, “Holy fucking shit.”
“May I give you a candid assessment of your situation and explain how I might best serve you?”
“Hit me, doll. I didn’t fly 3,000 miles for some namby-pamby chitchat.”
I shot my cuffs and showed off my Rolex. I buzz-bombed Bondage Bob with the Freon Fred stare.
“You publish what is rapidly becoming the premier scandal magazine in a very crowded field. You compete with Whisper, Tattle, Peep, On the Q.T., Lowdown, and others. Your competitors rely largely on true-crime exposés, reports of miracle cures for various diseases, and rehashes of your own articles on celebrity misbehavior. The specific strengths of your magazine are its staunch anti-Communist stance and sex. Frankly, I find your articles that play on the greed of your readers are both unbelievable and devoid of the heat that people turn to Confidential for. There are no emerald mines in Colorado and no Uruguayan herbs that triple the size of the male member in two weeks’ time. You’re lying, sir. You’re hoping that bilking your readers with stories like that will both boost your sales and help defray the costs of the libel suits that are being filed against you with greater and greater frequency in circuit courts all over America. My good friend, the esteemed jurist Arthur Cowley, has informed me that magazines that publish filler pieces chock-full of bold-faced lies create what he calls a ‘gap in credibility and verisimilitude.’ This calls into question the veracity of all the articles published in said magazines over time, leaving said magazines vulnerable to both individual lawsuits and the looming specter of what Mr. Crowley calls the ‘lynch-mob-like and Communistic specter of the emerging class action suit,’ wherein aggrieved parties band together under the aegis of left-wing Jewish lawyers in order to posit a common beef and destroy the First Amendment right of free speech that we hold so sacred here in America. The mitigating, equivocating, and temporizing language that runs through your groundbreaking articles on celebrity misconduct will not save you. You may use ‘alleged,’ ‘purported,’ and ‘rumored’ as much as you like, but they will not legally extricate you in the end. My first two salient points are these: you must dramatically boost your sexual content, and everything you publish in Confidential must be entirely true and verifiable.”