Джеймс Эллрой - The Big Nowhere

Dudley laughed. “You won’t live the day.”

Buzz backed into the curtains. “Don’t go out the rear door, it’s booby-trapped.”

Mickey Cohen said, “ Please . You can’t run with her. Not a hair on her head will I hurt.”

Buzz getawayed.

Johnny Stompanato was waiting for him at the motel, lying on the bed listening to an opera on the radio. Buzz dropped the garment bag, unzipped it and pulled out ten ten-thousand-dollar bank stacks. Johnny’s jaw dropped; his cigarette hit his chest and burned a hole in his shirt. He snuffed the butt with a pillow and said, “You did it.”

Buzz threw the money on the bed. “Fifty for you, fifty for Mrs. Celeste Considine, 641 South Gramercy, LA. You make the delivery, and tell her it’s for the kid’s education.”

Stompanato hoarded the money into a tight little pile and gloated over it. “How do you know I won’t keep it all?”

“You like my style too much to fuck me.”

Buzz drove up to Ventura, parked in front of Deputy Dave Kleckner’s house and rang the bell. Audrey answered. She was wearing an old Mickey shirt and dungarees, just like she was the first time he kissed her. She looked at the garment bag and said, “Planning to stay awhile?”

“Maybe. You look tired.”

“I was up all night thinking.”

Buzz put his hands to her face, smoothing a wisp of stray hair. “Dave home?”

“Dave’s on duty until late, and I think he’s in love with me.”

“Everybody’s in love with you.”

“Why?”

“Because you make them afraid to be alone.”

“Does that include you?”

“Me especially.”

Audrey jumped into his arms. Buzz let go of the garment bag and kicked it for luck. He carried his lioness into the front bedroom and made a swipe at the light switch; Audrey grabbed his hand. “Leave it on. I want to see you.”

Buzz got out of his clothes and sat on the edge of the bed; Audrey slow-grinded herself naked and leaped on him. They kissed ten times as long as they usually did and strung out everything else they’d ever done together. Buzz went into her fast, but moved extra slow; she pushed up with her hips harder than she did their first time. He couldn’t hold it and didn’t want to; she went crazy when he did. Like the first time, they thrashed the sheets off the bed and held each other, sweating. Buzz remembered how he’d hooked a finger around Audrey’s wrist so they’d still be touching while he caught his breath. He did it again, but this time she squeezed his whole hand like she didn’t know what the gesture meant.

They curled up, Audrey nuzzling. Buzz looked around the strange bedroom. Passport applications and stacks of South American tourist brochures were resting on the nightstand and boxes of women’s clothing were arrayed by the door next to a brand-new suitcase. Audrey yawned, kissed his chest like it was sleep time and yawned again. Buzz said, “Sweetie, did Mickey ever hit you?”

A drowsy head shake in answer. “Talk later. Lots of talk later.”

“Did he ever?”

“No, only men.” Another yawn. “No Mickey talk, remember our deal?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

Audrey gave him a squeeze and settled into sleep. Buzz picked up the brochure closest to him, a huckster job for Rio de Janeiro. He flipped pages, saw that Audrey had circled listings for guest cottages offering newlywed rates and tried to picture an on-the-lam cop-killer and a thirty-seven-year-old ex-stripper basking in the South American sun. He couldn’t. He tried to picture Audrey waiting for him while he attempted to lay off twenty-five pounds of heroin to some renegade mob guy who hadn’t already heard of the heist and the contract that went with it. He couldn’t. He tried to picture Audrey with him when the LAPD closed in, hard-on glory cops holding their fire because the killer was with a woman. He couldn’t. He thought of Icepick Fritzie finding them together, going icepick crazy on Audrey’s face — and that picture was easy. Mickey saying “Please” and going mushy with forgiveness was even easier.

Buzz listened to Audrey’s breath; he felt her sweaty skin cooling. He tried to picture her getting some kind of bookkeeper’s job, going home to Mobile, Alabama, and meeting a nice insurance man looking for a Southern belle. He couldn’t. He made a big last try at the two of them buying their way out of the country with a nationwide cop-killer APB on his head. He tried extra, extra hard on that one — and couldn’t find a way to make it stick.

Audrey stirred and rolled away from him. Buzz saw Mickey tired of her in a few years, cutting her loose for some younger stuff, a nice cash money separation gift. He saw Sheriff’s, City cops, Feds and Cohen goons chasing his okie ass to the moon. He saw Ellis Loew and Ed Satterlee on easy street and old Doc Lesnick hounding him with, “And how will you fix that?”

Lesnick was the kicker. Buzz got up, walked into the living room, grabbed the phone and had the operator get him Los Angeles CR-4619. A voice answered, “Yeah?”

It was Mickey. Buzz said, “She’s at 1006 Montebello Drive in Ventura. You hurt her and I’ll do you slower than you ever thought of doin’ me.”

Mickey said, “Mazel tov. My friend, you are still dead, but you are dead very fast.”

Buzz let the receiver down gently, went back to the bedroom and dressed. Audrey was in the same position, her head buried in the pillow, no way to see her face. Buzz said, “You were the one,” and turned off the light. He grabbed his garment bag on the way out and left the door unlocked.

Dawdling on back roads got him to the San Fernando Valley just after 7:30 — full evening, black and starry. Ellis Loew’s house was dark and there were no cars parked out front.

Buzz walked around to the garage, broke a clasp on the door and pushed it open. Moonlight picked out a roof bulb at the end of a string. He pulled the cord and saw what he wanted on a low shelf: two double-gallon cans of gasoline. He picked them up, found them near full, carried them to the front door and let himself in with his special-investigator’s key.

A flick of the overhead light; the living room jarring white — walls, tables, cartons, shelves and odd mounds of paper — Loew and company’s once-in-a-lifetime shot at the political moon. Graphs and charts and thousands of pages of coerced testimony. Boxes of photographs with linked faces to prove treason. A big fuckload of lies glued together to prove a single theory that was easy to believe because believing was easier than wading through the glut of horseshit to say, “Wrong.”

Buzz doused the walls and shelves and tables and stacks of paper with gasoline. He soaked the Sleepy Lagoon Committee photos. He ripped down Ed Satterlee’s graphs, emptied the cans on the floor and made a gas trail out to the porch. He lit a match, dropped it and watched the white whoosh into red and explode.

The fire spread back and upward; the house became a giant sheet of flame. Buzz got in his car and drove away, red glow lighting up the windshield. He took back streets northbound until the glow disappeared and he heard sirens whirring in the opposite direction. When the noise died, he was climbing into the foothills, Los Angeles just a neon smear in his rear-view mirror. He touched his future there on the seat: sawed-off, heroin, a hundred and fifty grand. It didn’t feel right, so he turned on the radio and found a hillbilly station. The music was too soft and too sad, like a lament for a time when it all came cheap. He listened anyway. The songs made him think of himself and Mal and poor Danny Upshaw. Hardcases, rogue cops and Red chasers. Three dangerous men gone for parts unknown.