Джеймс Эллрой: The Big Nowhere

Stony broke.

Buzz sat down at his desk and jotted credits and debits. He owned fourteen acres of Ventura County farmland; parched and worthless, he’d bought it for his parents to retire to — but they foiled him by kicking in a typhus epidemic in ’44. The real estate man he’d been talking to said thirty bucks an acre tops — better to hold on to it — it couldn’t go much lower. He owned a mint green ’48 Eldo coupé — identical to Mickey C.’s, but without the bullet-proof plating. He had a shitload of suits from Oviatt’s and the London Shop, the trousers all too tight in the gut — if Mickey bought secondhand threads he was home free — he and the flashy little hebe were exactly the same size. But the Mick threw away shirts he’d worn twice, and the debit list was running off the page and onto his blotter.

The phone rang; Buzz grabbed it. “Security. Who’s this?”

“It’s Sol Gelfman, Buzz. You remember me?”

The old geez at MGM with the car thief grandson, a nice boy who clouted convertibles out of Restaurant Row parking lots, raced Mulholland with them and always left his calling card — a big pile of shit — in the back seat. He’d bought off the arresting officer, who altered his report to show two — not twenty-seven — counts of GTA, along with no mention of the turd drop MO. The judge had let the kid off with probation, citing his good family and youthful verve. “Sure. What can I do for you, Mr. Gelfman?”

“Well, Howard said I should call you. I’ve got a little problem, and Howard said you could help.”

“Your grandson back to his old tricks?”

“No, God forbid. There’s a girl in my new picture who needs help. These goniffs have got some smut pictures of her, from before I bought her contract. I gave them some money to be nice, but they’re persisting.”

Buzz groaned — it was shaping up as a muscle job. “What kind of pictures?”

“Nasty. Animal stuff. Lucy and this Great Dane with a schlong like King Kong. I should have such a schlong.”

Buzz grabbed a pen and turned over his debit list to the blank side. “Who’s the girl and what have you got on the blackmailers?”

“On the pickup men I got bubkis — I sent my production assistant over with the money to meet them. The girl is Lucy Whitehall, and listen, I got a private detective to trace the calls. The boss of the setup is this Greek she’s shacking with — Tommy Sifakis. Is that chutzpah? He’s blackmailing his own girlfriend, calling in his demands from their cute little love nest. He’s got pals to do the pickups and Lucy don’t even know she’s being had. Can you feature that chutzpah?”

Buzz thought of price tags; Gelfman continued his spiel. “Buzz, this is worth half a grand to me, and I’m doing you a favor, ’cause Lucy used to strip with Audrey Anders, Mickey Cohen’s squeeze. I coulda gone to Mickey, but you did me solid once, so I’m giving you the job. Howard said you’d know what to do.”

Buzz saw his old billy club hanging by a thong from the bathroom doorknob and wondered if he still had the touch. “The price is a grand, Mr. Gelfman.”

“What! That’s highway robbery!”

“No, it’s felony extortion settled out of court. You got an address for Sifakis?”

“Mickey would do it for free!”

“Mickey would go batshit and get you a homicide conspiracy beef. What’s Sifakis’ address?”

Gelfman breathed out slowly. “You goddamn okie lowlife. It’s 1187 Vista View Court in Studio City, and for a grand I want this thing wiped up clean.”

Buzz said, “Like shit in the back seat,” and hung up. He grabbed his LAPD-issue equalizer and headed for the Cahuenga Pass.

The run to the Valley took him an hour; the search for Vista View Court another twenty minutes of prowling housing developments: stucco cubes arrayed in semicircles gouged out of the Hollywood Hills. 1187 was a peach-colored prefab, the paint already fading, the aluminum siding streaked with rust. Identically built pads flanked it — lemon yellow, lavender, turquoise, salmon and hot pink alternating down the hillside, ending at a sign proclaiming, VISTA VIEW GARDENS! CALIFORNIA LIVING AT ITS FINEST! NO $ DOWN FOR VETS! Buzz parked in front of the yellow dive, thinking of gumballs tossed in a ditch.

Little kids were racing tricycles across gravel front yards; no adults were taking the sun. Buzz pinned a cereal-box badge to his lapel, got out and rang the buzzer of 1187. Ten seconds passed — no answer. Looking around, he stuck a bobby pin in the keyhole and gave the knob a jiggle. The lock popped; he pushed the door open and entered the house.

Sunlight leaking through gauze curtains gave him a shot at the living room: cheapsky furniture, movie pinups on the walls, stacks of Philco table radios next to the sofa — obvious proceeds from a warehouse job. Buzz pulled the billy club from his waistband and walked through a grease-spattered kitchen-dinette to the bedroom.

More glossies on the walls — strippers in g-strings and pasties. Buzz recognized Audrey Anders, the “Va Va Voom Girl,” alleged to have a master’s degree from some Podunk college; next to her, a slender blonde took up space. Buzz flicked on a floor lamp for a better look; he saw tame publicity stills: “Juicy Lucy” in a spangly one-piece bathing suit, the address of a downtown talent agency rubber-stamped on the bottom. Squinting, he noticed that the girl had unfocused eyes and a slaphappy grin — probably jacked on some kind of hop.

Buzz decided on five minutes to toss the pad, checked his watch and went to work. Scuffed drawers yielded male and female undergarments tangled up indiscriminately and a stash of marijuana cigarettes; an end cabinet held 78s and dime novels. The closet showed a woman on her way up, a man running second: dresses and skirts from Beverly Hills shops, mothball-reeking navy uniforms and slacks, dandruff-flecked jackets.

With 3:20 down, Buzz turned to the bed: blue satin sheets, upholstered headboard embroidered with cupids and hearts. He ran a hand under the mattress, felt wood and metal, grabbed and pulled out a sawed-off pump shotgun, big black muzzle, probably a .10 gauge. Checking the breech, he saw that it was loaded — five rounds, double-aught buckshot. He removed the ammo and stuffed it in his pocket; played a hunch on Tommy Sifakis’ brain and looked under the pillow.

A German Luger, loaded, one in the chamber.

Buzz ejected the chambered round and emptied the clip, pissed that he didn’t have time to prowl for a safe, find the doggy stuff to shove in Lucy Whitehall’s face later, a jolt to scare her away from Greeks with dandruff and bedroom ordnance. He walked back to the living room, stopping when he saw an address book on the coffee table.

He leafed through it, no familiar names until he hit the G’s and saw Sol Gelfman, his home and MGM numbers ringed with doodles; the M’s and P’s got him Donny Maslow and Chick Pardell, dinks he rousted working Narco, reefer pushers who hung out at studio commissaries — not the extortionist type. Then he hit S and got his lever to squeeze the Greek dry and maybe glom himself a few solids on the side:

Johnny Stompanato, Crestview-6103. Mickey Cohen’s personal bodyguard. Rumored to have financed his way out of lowball duty with the Cleveland Combination via strongarm extortion schemes; rumored to front Mexican marijuana to local dealers for a 30 percent kickback.

Handsome Johnny Stomp. His name ringed in dollar signs and question marks.

Buzz went back to his car to wait. He turned the ignition key to Accessory, skimmed the radio dial across a half dozen stations, found Spade Cooley and his Cowboy Rhythm Hour and listened with the volume down low. The music was syrup on top of gravy — too sweet, too much. It made him think of the Oklahoma sticks, what it might have been like if he’d stayed. Then Spade went too far — warbling a tune about a man about to go to the state prison gallows for a crime he didn’t commit. That made him think of the price he paid to get out.