Hollywood Nocturnes

by James Ellroy

  “So tell me, Spade.”

  “The rumors were true, boy. Would I be sittin’ here in this condition if those dudes were any less than double-digit bulls?”

  I laughed.

  I roared.

  I howled.

  Spade put both guns to his head and pulled the triggers.

  Two loud clicks—empty chambers.

  I stopped laughing.

  Spade did it again.

  Click/click—empty chambers.

  I grabbed for the guns. Spade shot ME twice—empty chambers.

  I backed into the TV A leg brushed the volume dial—the Star Spangled Banner went very loud, then very soft.

  Spade said, “You could have died hearing your country’s theme song, which might have gotten you the posthumous approval of all them patriotic groups that don’t like you so much. And you also could have died not knowing that John Ireland had to tape that beast of his to his leg when he wore swimming trunks.”

  A toilet flushed upstairs. Ella Mae yelled, “Donnell Clyde Cooley, quit talking to yourself or God knows who, and come to bed!”

  Spade aimed both guns at her voice and pulled the triggers.

  Two empty chambers.

  Four down per piece, two to go—50-50 odds next time. Spade said, “Dick, let’s get blotto. Get me a fresh bottle from the kitchen.”

  I walked to the bathroom and checked the medicine cabinet. Yellow Jackets on a shelf—I emptied two into a glass and flushed the rest. Kitchen recon—a Wild Turkey quart atop the ice box.

  I dumped it down the sink—all but three finger’s worth.

  Loose .38 shells on a shelf—I tossed them out the window.

  Spade’s maryjane stash—right where it always was in the sugar bowl.

  I poured it down the sink and chased it with Drano.

  Spade yelled, “I am determined to shoot somebody or something tonight!”

  I swirled up a cocktail: bourbon, Nembutal, buttermilk to kill the barbiturate taste. Spade yelled, “Go out to your car and get your accordion, and I’ll put it out of its misery!”

  On the breakfast table: a TV remote-control gizmo.

  I grabbed it.

  Back to Spade. On cue: he put down one gun and grabbed his drink. One six-shooter on the floor—I toed it under his chair.

  Spade twirled gun #2.

  I stood behind the chair. Spade said, “I wonder if John used masking tape or friction tape.”

  Blip, blip—I pushed remote-control buttons. Test pattern, test pattern, Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman in some hankie epic.

  I nudged Spade. “I heard Rock Hudson’s hung like a horse. I heard he put the make on Ella Mae back when she played clarinet on your old Hoffman Hayride Show.”

  Spade said, “Ixnay—Rock’s a fruit. I heard he plays skin flute with some quiff on the Lawrence Welk program.”

  Shit—no bite. Blip, blip, Caryl Chessman fomenting from his death row cell. “Now there’s your double-digit dude, Spade. That cat is legendary in criminal annals—Nancy Ankrum told me so herself.”

  “Nix. Shitbird criminals like that are always underhung. I read it in Argosy Magazine.”

  Blip, blip, blip—beaucoup test patterns. Blip, blip, blip—test drive the new ’58 Chevy, Ford, Rambler, et fucking al. Blip—Senator John F. Kennedy talking to reporters.

  Spade pre-empted me. “Hung like a cashew. Gene Tierney told me he screws from hunger. Hung like a cricket, and he expects a standing ovation for a two-minute throw.”

  Blip—more West Hollywood Whipcord re-bop.

  Shit—running out of channels. Blip—an American Legion chaplain with 2:00 A.M. prayers.

  “…and as always, we ask for the strength to oppose our Communist adversary at home and abroad. We ask—”

  Spade said, “This is for Dick Contino,” raised his gun and fired. The TV screen imploded—wood splintered, tubes popped, glass shattered.

  Spade passed out on the floor rag doll limp.

  TV dust formed a little mushroom cloud.

  I carried Spade upstairs and laid him down in bed next to Ella Mae. Cozy: inside seconds they were snoring in unison. I remembered Fresno, Christmas ’47—I was young, she was lonely, Spade was in Texas.

  Keep it hush-hush, dear heart—for both our sakes.

  I walked out to my car. February 12, 1958—what an all-time fucker of a night.

  2.

  Bad sleep left me fried—hung over from my rescue run.

  The baby woke me up. I’d been dreaming: I was on trial for Crimes Against Music. The judge said the accordion was obsolete; a studio audience applauded. Dig my jury: Mickey Cohen’s dog, Jesus Christ, Cisco Andrade.

  Leigh had coffee and aspirin ready. Ditto the A.M. Mirror, folded to the entertainment page.

  “Brawl Deep-Sixes Contino Opening. Nightclub Boss Calls Accordion King ‘Damaged Goods’.”

  The phone rang—I grabbed it. “Who’s this?”

  “Howard Wormser, your agent, who just lost ten percent of your Crescendo money and ten percent of your sixty-day-stand at the Flamingo Lounge. Vegas called early, Dick. They get the L.A. papers early, and they don’t like to sit on bad news.”

  A Mirror sub-head: Draft Dodger Catcalls Plague Fading Star. “I was busy last night, or I would have seen this coming.”

  “Seeing things coming is not your strong suit. You should have accepted Sam Giancana’s invitation to be on call for Chicago Mob gigs, and if you did you’d be playing big rooms today. You should have testified before that grand jury and named some Commies. You should—”

  “I don’t know any Commies.”

  “No, but you could have gotten a few names from the phone book to make yourself look good.”

  “Get me some movie work, Howard. Get me a movie gig where I can sing a few songs and get the girl.”

  Howard sighed. “There is a certain wisdom to that, since young snatch is your strong suit. I’ll look into it. In the meantime, play a few bar mitzvahs or something and stay out of trouble.”

  “Can you get me a few bar mitzvahs?”

  “That was just a figure of speech. Dick, be calm. I’ll call when I’ve got you ninety percent of something.”

  Click—one abrupt hang-up faded into noise outside—brake squeals, gear crunch. I checked the window—fuck—a tow-truck had my bar bumper-locked.

  I ran out. A man in a Teamster T-shirt held his hands up. “Mr. Contino, this wasn’t my idea. I’m just a poor out of work union man with a family. Bob Yeakel said to tell you enough is enough, he read the papers this morning and saw the writing on the wall.”

  The bumper winch ratched my trunk open. Record albums flew out—I grabbed an Accordion in Paris.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Uh…Bud Brown.”

  I pulled the pen off his clipboard and scrawled on the album cover. “To Bud Brown, out-of-work union man, from Dick Contino, out-of-work entertainer. Dear Bud: why are you fucking with my beautiful Starfire 88, when I’m just a working stiff like you? I know that the evil McClellan Committee is harassing your heroic leader Jimmy Hoffa, in much the same way I was harassed during the Korean War, and thus you and I share a bond that you are trespassing on in your current scab status. Please do not fuck with my beautiful Starfire 88—I need it to look for work.”

  The tow-truck driver applauded. Bud Brown fisheyed me—my McClellan shtick hit him weird.

  “Mr. Contino, like I said, I’m sorry.”

  I pointed to the albums.

  “I’ll donate those to your Teamster Local. I’ll autograph them. You can sell them yourself and keep the money. All I’m asking is that you let me drive this car out of here and hide it somewhere.”

  Raps on the kitchen window—Leigh holding baby Merri up. Brown said, “Mr. Contino, that’s fighting dirty.”

&nb
sp; Worth the fight: my baby blue/white-wall tired/fox-tail-antennaed sweetie. Sunlight on the accordion hood hanger—I almost swooned.

  “Have you guys got kids with birthdays coming up? I’ll perform for free, I’ll dress up like a—”

  The tow-truck radio crackled; the driver listened and rogered the call. “That was Mr. Yeakel. He says Mr. Contino should meet him at the showroom pronto, that maybe they can work out a deal on his delinquent.”

  * * *

  —

  “…and you know I’ve got my own TV show, ‘Rocket to Stardom.’ My brothers and I do our own commercials and give amateur Angeleno talent a chance to reach for the moon and haul down a few stars. We put on a show here at the lot every Sunday, and KCOP broadcasts it. We dish out free hot dogs and soda pop, sell some cars and let the talent perform. We usually get a bunch of hot dog scroungers hanging around—I call them the ‘Yeakel Yokels.’ They applaud for the acts, and whoever gets the most applause wins. I’ve got a meter rigged up—sort of like that thingamajig you had on the Heidt Show.”

  Bob Yeakel: tall, blond, pitchman shrill. His desk: covered with memo slips held down by chrome hubcaps.

  “Let me guess. You want me to celebrity M.C. one of your shows, in exchange for which I get to keep my car free and clear.”

  Yeakel yuk-yuk-yukked. “No, Dick, more along the lines of you produce and celebrity M.C. at least two shows, and perform at the Oldsmobile Dealers of America Convention, and spend some afternoons here at the lot auditioning acts and bullshitting with the customers. In the meantime, you get to keep your car, and we stop the clock on your delinquent interest payments, but not on the base sum itself. Then, if ‘Rocket to Stardom”s ratings zoom, I might just let you have that car free and clear.”

  “Is that all I have to do?”

  Yuk-yuk-yuk. “No. You also have to pitch all your potential contestants on the ’58 Oldsmobile line. And no jigaboos or beatniks, Dick. I run a clean family show.”

  “I’ll do it if you throw in two hundred a week.”

  “A hundred and fifty, but off-the-books with no withholding.”

  I stuck my hand out.

  * * *

  —

  Work:

  The Oldsmobile Dealers Convention at the downtown Statler. Dig it: five hundred car hucksters and a busload of hookers chaperoned by a VD. doctor. Bob Yeakel opened for me—shtick featuring “Peaches, The Drag Queen With An Overbite.” Chris Staples sang, “You Belong to Me,” and “Baby, Baby, All the Time”—Yeakel ogled her and cracked jokes about her “Tail Fins.” I killed the booze-fried crowd with a forty-minute set and closed with the “Rocket to Stardom” theme song.

  Work:

  Birthday parties—Cisco Andrade’s son, Mickey Cohen’s niece. The Cisco gig was East L.A. SRO—Mex fighters and their families wowed by Dick Contino as “Chucko the Birthday Clown.” Degrading?—yeah—but the guests shot me close to a C-note in tips. The Cohen job was more swank: a catered affair at Mickey’s pad. Check the guest list: Lana Turner and Johnny Stompanato, Mike Romanoff, Moe Dalitz, Meyer Lansky, Julius La Rosa, and the Reverend Wesley Swift—who explained that Jesus Christ was an Aryan, not a Jew, and that Mein Kampf was the lost book of the Bible. No gratuities, but Johnny Stomp kicked loose two dozen cases of Gerber’s Baby Food—he bankrolled a fur van hijack, and his guys hit the wrong truck.

  Work—long days at the Yeakel Olds lot.

  I called the girls in to help me: Leigh, Chrissy, Nancy Ankrum, Kay Van Obst. Word spread quick: Mr. Accordion and female coterie LIVE at Oldsmobile showroom!

  We bullshitted with browsers and referred hard prospects to salesmen; we spritzed the ’58 Olds line-up non-stop. We grilled burgers on a hibachi and fed the mechanics and Bud Brown and his repo crew.

  Nancy, Kay and Leigh screened “Rocket to Stardom” applicants—I wanted to weed out the more egregious geeks before I began formal auditions. Bob Yeakel drooled whenever Chris Staples slinked by—I convinced him to put her on payroll as my assistant. Grateful Chrissy gave Bob a thank-you gift: her Nugget Magazine fold-out preserved via laminated wall plaque.

  My Yeakel run nine days in: a righteous fucking blast.

  Nine days sans “Draft Dodger” jive—some kind of Contino world record.

  We held auditions in a tent behind the lube rack; Bud Brown stood watchdog to keep obvious lunatics out. The girls had compiled a list: forty-odd individuals and acts to be winnowed down to six spots per show.

  Our first finalist: an old geezer who sang grand opera. I asked him to belt a few bars of Pagliacci; he said that he possessed the world’s largest penis. He whipped it out before I could comment—it was of average length and girth. Chrissy applauded anyway—she said it reminded her of her ex-husband’s.

  Bud hustled the old guy out. Pops was gone—but he’d set a certain tone.

  Check this sampling:

  Two roller skating bull terriers—sharklike dogs with plastic fins attached to their backs. Their master was a Lloyd Bridges lookalike—the whole thing was a goof on the TV show “Sea Hunt.”

  Nix.

  An off-key woman accordionist who tried to slip me her phone number with Leigh right there.

  Nix.

  A comic with patter on Ike’s golf game—epic Snoresville.

  Nix.

  A guy who performed silk scarf tricks. Deft and boring: he cinched sashes into hangman’s knots.

  Nix.

  Over two dozen male and female vocalists: flat, screechy, shrill, hoarse—dud Presley and Patti Page would-be’s.

  A junkie tenor sax, who nodded out halfway through a flubbed-note “Body and Soul.” Bud Brown dumped him in a demo car; the fucker woke up convulsing and kicked the windshield out. Chrissy summoned an ambulance; the medics hustled the hophead off.

  I confronted Nancy. She said, “You should have seen the ones that didn’t make the cut. I wish the ‘West Hollywood Whipcord’ had a viable talent—it would be fun to put him on the show.”

  Only Nancy found sash cord strangling/bumperjack bashing fiends alluring.

  I braced Bud Brown. “Bud, the show’s forty-eight hours off, and we’ve got nobody.”

  “This happens sometimes. When it does, Bob calls Pizza De-Luxe.”

  “What—”

  “Ask Bob.”

  I walked into Yeakel’s office. Bob was eyeballing his wall plaque: Miss Nugget, June ’54.

  “What’s Pizza De-Luxe?”

  “Are your auditions going that bad?”

  “I’m thinking of calling those roller skating dogs back. Bob, what’s—”

  “Pizza De-Luxe is a prostitution racket. An ex-Jack Dragna goon who owns a greasy spoon called the Pizza Pad runs it. He delivers pizza 24 hours a day legit, and if you want a girl or a dicey boy on the side, a male or female prostitute will make the delivery. All of the hookers are singers or dancers or Hollywood riff-raff like that, you know, selling some skin to make ends meet until they get their so-called ‘big break.’ So…if I get strapped for decent contestants, I call Pizza De-Luxe. I get some good pizza, some good ‘amateur’ talent, and my top-selling salesman of the month gets laid.”

  I checked the window. A transvestite dance team practiced steps by the grease rack—Bud Brown and a cop type shooed them off. I said, “Bob, call Pizza De-Luxe.”

  Yeakel blew his wall plaque kisses. “I think Chrissy should win this next show.”

  “Chrissy’s a professional. She’s singing back-up for Buddy Greco at the Mocambo right now.”

  “I know that, but I want to do her a solid. And I’ll let you in on a secret: my applause meter’s rigged.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. It’s a car battery hooked up to an oscilloscope screen. I’ve got a foot pedal I tap to goose the needle. I’m sure Chris would like to win—it’s a C-note and a free down payment on a snappy new Old
smobile.”

  I laughed. “With debilitating monthly payments?”

  “Normally, yes. But with Chrissy I’m sure we could work something else out.”

  “I’ll tell her. I’m sure she’ll play along, at least as far as the ‘free’ down payment.”

  Bob’s phone rang—he picked up, listened, hung up. I scoped the window—Bud Brown and the fuzz type saw me and turned away, nervous.

  Bob said, “I might have a way for you to buy out of your second “Rocket to Stardom” commitment.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’ve got to think it over first. Dick, I’m going to call Pizza De-Luxe right now. Will you…”

  “Talk to Chrissy and tell her she just won an amateur talent contest rigged by this car kingpin who wants to stroke her ‘Tail Fins’?”

  “Right. And ask for what she wants on her pizza.”

  * * *

  —

  Chris was outside the sales shack, smoking.

  I spilled quick. “Bob’s bringing in some quasi-pro talent for Sunday’s show. He wants you to sing a couple of songs. You’re guaranteed to win, and he’s got mild expectations.”

  “If he keeps them mild, he won’t be disappointed.”

  Smoke rings drifted up—a sure sign that Chrissy was distracted.

  “Something on your mind?”

  “No, just my standard boogie man.”

  “I know what you mean, but if you tell me you’ll probably feel better.”

  Chris flicked her cigarette at a Cutlass demo. “I’m 32, and I’ll always earn a living as an entertainer, but I’ll never have a hit record. I like men too much to settle down and have a family, and I like myself too much to sell my tush to clowns like Bob Yeakel.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing. Except that a car followed me after my Mocambo gig last night. It was scary—like the driver was checking me out for some reason. I think it might be Dot Rothstein. I think she got re-hipped on me after she saw me at your show at the Crescendo.”

  “Was she at the Mocambo last night?”

  “Yes. And it’s in L.A. County jurisdiction, and she’s an L.A. County Deputy Sheriff, which means…shit, I don’t know. Dick, will you and Leigh come to Buddy’s show tonight? Dot knows you’re friends with Mickey Cohen, and it might discourage her from making any moves.”