Джеймс Эллрой: White Jazz

Rumors are climbing the underworld grapevine: two surviving Cohen gunmen (Chick Vecchio and his brother Salvatore “Touch” Vecchio, a failed actor rumored to be très lavender) are planning nefarious activities outside of Mickey’s aegis. Get in on the ground floor, Mickster — we’ve heard that your sole source of income is Southside vending and slot machines: cigarettes, rubbers, french ticklers and one-armed bandits stuffed into smoky back rooms in Dark-town jazz clubs. For shame again, Mickey! Shvartze exploitation! Penny ante and beneath you, you the man who once ruled the L.A. rackets with a paralyzingly pugnacious panache!

Get the picture, kats and kittens? Mickey Cohen is Skidsville, U.S.A., and he needs moolah, gelt, the old cashola. Which explains our most riotous rumor revelation, raffishly revealed for the frenetically foremost first time!

Digsville:

Meyer Harris Cohen is now in the movie biz!!

Move over C. B. DeMille: the fabulous, benevolent, malevolent Mickster is now sub-rosa financing a horror cheapie currently shooting in Griffith Park! He’s saved his negro exploited nickels and is now partners with Variety International Pictures in the making of Attack of the Atomic Vampire . It’s sensational, it’s non-union, it’s a turkey of epic proportions!

Further Digsville:

Ever anxious to parsimoniously pinch pennies, Mickey has cast lavender loverboy Touch Vecchio in a key role — and the Touchster is hot, hot, hotsville with the star of the movie: limpwristed lothario Rock Rockwell. Off-camera homo hijinx! You heard it first here!

Final Digsville:

Enter Howard Hughes: Mr. Airplane/Tool Magnate, lascivious luster after Hollywood lovelies. He used to own R.K.O. Studios; now he’s an independent producer known for keeping wildly well-endowed wenches welded to “personal service contracts” — read as bit roles in exchange for frequent nighttime visits. Dig: we’ve heard that Mickey’s leading lady left the mammary-mauling mogul spinning his own propeller — she actually amscrayed on a Hughes contract and car hopped until Mickey materialized at Scrivner’s Drive-In dying for a chocolate malt.

Are you smitten, Mickster?

Are you heartbroken, Howard?

Hollywood Cavalcade shifts gears with an open letter to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Dear LAPD:

Recently, three wino bums were found strangled and mutilated in abandoned houses in the Hollywood area. Very Hush-Hush: we’ve heard the still-at-large killer snapped their windpipes post-mortem, utilizing great strength. The press has paid these heinously horrific killings scant attention; only the sin-sation slanted L.A. Mirror seems to care that three Los Angeles citizens have met such nauseatingly nasty nadirs. The LAPD’s Homicide Division has not been called in to investigate; so far only two Hollywood Division detectives are working the case. Hepcats, it’s the pedigree of the victims that determine the juice of investigation — and if three squarejohn citizens got choked by a neck-snapping psychopath, then LAPD Chief of Detectives Edmund J. Exley would waste no time mounting a full scale investigation. Often it takes a catchy tag name to bring dirty criminal business into the public’s consciousness and thus create a clamor for justice. Hush-Hush hereby names this anonymous killer fiend the “Wino Will-o-the-Wisp” and petitions the LAPD to find him and set him up with a hot date in San Quentin’s green room. They cook with gas there, and this killer deserves a four-burner cookout.

Watch for future updates on the Wino Will-o-the-Wisp, and remember you heard it first here: off the record, on the Q.T. and very Hush-Hush.

The job: take down a bookie mill, let the press in — get some ink to compete with the fight probe.

Some fruit sweating a sodomy beef snitched: fourteen phones, a race wire. Exley’s memo said show some force, squeeze the witnesses at the hotel later — find out what the Feds had planned.

In person: “If things get untoward, don’t let the reporters take pictures. You’re an attorney, Lieutenant. Remember how clean Bob Gallaudet likes his cases.”

I hate Exley.

Exley thinks I bought law school with bribe money.

I said four men, shotguns, Junior Stemmons as co-boss. Exley: “Jackets and ties; this will end up on TV. And no stray bullets — you’re working for me, not Mickey Cohen.”

Someday I’ll shove a bribe list down his throat.

Junior set it up. Perfect: a Niggertown street cordoned off; bluesuits guarding the alley. Reporters, prowl cars, four jackets and ties packing twelve-gauge pumps.

Sergeant George Stemmons, Jr., snapping quick draws.

Hubbub: porch-loafing jigs, voodoo eyes. My eyes on the target — closed curtains, a packed driveway — make a full shift inside working bets. A cinderblock shack — figure a steel plate door.

I whistled; Junior walked over twirling his piece.

“Keep it out, you might need it.”

“No, I’ve got a riot gun in the car. We go in the door, we—”

“We don’t go in the door, it’s plated. We start banging on the door, they burn their paper. You still hunt birds?”

“Sure. Dave, what—”

“You got ammo in your car? Single-aught birdshot?”

Junior smiled. “That big window. I shoot it out, the curtain takes the pellets, we go in.”

“Right, so you tell the others. And tell those clowns with the cameras to roll it, Chief Exley’s compliments.”

Junior ran back, dumped shells, reloaded. Cameras ready; whistles, applause: wine-guzzling loafers.

Hands up, count it down—

Eight: Junior spreads the word.

Six: the men flanked.

Three: Junior window-aiming.

One: “Now!”

Glass exploded ka -BOOM, loud loud loud; recoil knocked Junior flat. Cops too shocked to yell “TRIPLE AUGHT!”

Window curtains in rags.

Screams.

Run up, jump the sill. Chaos: blood spray, bet slip/cash confetti. Phone tables dumped, a stampede: out the back door bookie fistfights.

A nigger coughing glass.

A pachuco minus some fingers.

“Wrong Load” Stemmons: “Police! Stop or we’ll shoot!”

Grab him, shout: “This was shots fired inside, a fucking criminal altercation. We went in the window because we figured the door wouldn’t go down. You talk nice to the news guys and tell them I owe them one. You get the men together and make fucking-A sure they know the drill. Do you understand me? ”

Junior shook free. Foot thumps — window-storming plain-clothesmen. Cover noise: I pulled my spare piece. Two ceiling shots, a wipe — evidence.

Toss the gun. More chaos: suspects kicked prone, cuffed.

Moans, shouts, shotgun wadding/blood stink.

I “discovered” the gun. Reporters ran in; Junior spieled them. Out to the porch, fresh air.

“You owe me eleven hundred, Counselor.”

Make the voice: Jack Woods. Mixed bag — bookie/strongarm/contract trigger.

I walked over. “Did you catch the show?”

“I was just driving up — and you should put that kid Stemmons on a leash.”

“His daddy’s an inspector. I’m the kid’s mentor, so I’ve got a captain’s job as a lieutenant. Did you have a bet down?”

“That’s right.”

“Slumming?”

“I’m in the business myself, so I spread my own bets around for good will. Dave, you owe me eleven hundred.”

“How do you know you won?”

“The race was fixed.”

Jabber — newsmen, the locals. “I’ll get it out of the evidence vault.”

“C’est la guerre. And by the way, how’s your sister?”

“Meg’s fine.”

“Say hi for me.”