Джеймс Эллрой: White Jazz

The announcement last week surprised everybody: the Los Angeles Police Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern California District, were holding a joint press conference. Adversaries during U.S. Attorney Welles Noonan’s still ongoing Southside rackets probe, the two law enforcement agencies had recently come across as anything but friendly. Federal officers charged the LAPD with allowing vice to rage in South-Central Los Angeles, while LAPD Chief of Detectives Edmund Exley accused Mr. Noonan of mounting a politically motivated smear campaign against his Department. That dissention ended last week when both men issued identical statements to reporters. Now, tomorrow’s press conference has been precipitously called off, leaving many members of the Southern California law enforcement community baffled.

Last week’s press release was carefully worded; it hinted only that a cooperative Federal-LAPD effort had been mounted, one perhaps aimed at securing indictments against members of the LAPD’s Narcotics Division. Much more was to have been revealed tomorrow, and an anonymous source within the U.S. Attorney’s Office stated that he thought the joint effort was scotched due to breach of official promises. Queried as to exactly what “promises,” the source stated: “A Los Angeles police officer skipped Federal custody. He was to have testified against members of the LAPD Narcotics Squad and a criminal family they have long been allied with, and he was also to have induced a total of four other potential witnesses into testifying. He did not deliver those witnesses, and when allowed two days out of custody to take care of personal matters, he attacked his guard and escaped. Frankly, without him the Federal Government has only Mickey Cohen, a former gangster, to offer testimony.”

This situation occurs in the middle of a statistically staggering Los Angeles crime wave, much of it Southside based. The City homicide rate for the past month soared 1600 %, and although neither the LAPD nor U.S. Attorney’s Office will confirm it, speculation has linked last week’s gangland killings in Watts to the Hollywood Ranch Market shootout that also left four dead. Add on the mysterious disappearance of Los Angeles District Attorney Robert Gallaudet and the November 19 Herrick family slayings, still unsolved, and you have what Governor Goodwin J. Knight has called “a powder keg situation. I have every confidence in the ability of Chief Parker and Deputy Chief Exley to maintain order, but you still have to wonder what could cause such a drastic upsweep in crime.”

Asked to comment on the press conference cancellation, Chief Exley refused. Queried on the recent crime wave, he stated: “It was simply coincidental and non-tangential, and now it’s over.”

L.A. Mirror , 12/8/58:

The Los Angeles Police Department’s famously stern Chief of Detectives Edmund J. Exley called an impromptu press conference this morning. He was expected to digress on the recent Federal Southside crime investigation and offer comments on why the LAPD and local U.S. Attorney’s Office have apparently abandoned their short-lived “cooperative venture” into probing both Southside malfeasance and the Los Angeles Police Department’s own Narcotics Division.

He did neither. Instead, in a terse prepared statement, he blasted the Narcotics Division himself and said that he would personally deliver incriminating evidence to a specially convened County grand jury, then offer tax fraud information unilaterally to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Describing “Narco” as a “police unit autonomously run amok,” Exley stated that he was certain its “long-standing tradition of graft” did not extend to other LAPD divisions, but Internal Affairs Division, under his supervision, was going to “comb this police department like a bloodhound sniffing out graft to make sure.”

Stunned reporters asked questions; Exley refused to answer them. He did state that the commanding officer of Narcotics Division, Captain Daniel Wilhite, 44, recently committed suicide, and that Internal Affairs detectives were currently interviewing various “Narco” officers with an eye toward securing voluntary grand jury testimony.

Asked just how “dirty” “Narco” was, Chief Exley said, “Very. I am personally stating that it has been in collusion with a vicious dope-pushing family for over twenty years. It is my desire to reform the Narcotics Division from the ground up and take that family down. I will be passing pertinent Federal venue information on to U.S. Attorney Welles Noonan, but he should know that I am taking the primary responsibility for cleaning my own house.”

Hush-Hush Magazine, 12/11/58:

Journalistic nitroglycerine — that’s the only way to describe it. 94 pages that arrived at Hush-Hush ten days ago, atom bomb accusations that were also sent to a Los Angeles newspaper and the State Attorney General’s Office.

They chose to ignore it; we chose to print it. The confidential source that transmitted this literary A-bomb verified its authenticity — and we believed him. 94 pages: scorching, scalding, burning hot revelations, the confessions of a crooked Los Angeles policeman on the run from the mob, the cops and his own violent past. You would have seen it here on December 18th — but something happened.

Kats and kittens, we’re on dicey legal ground here. We can describe the “legal” machinations that have censored us; our lawyers tell us that the vague description of the material covered in the preceding paragraph does not violate the “legal” injunction filed against us by the Los Angeles Police Department.

And we’ll go just a tad further in our description: those 94 pages would have brought the LAPD to its knees. Our (regrettably) anonymous author, unflinching in his portrayal of his own corruption, also charged celebrated Los Angeles policemen with felony malfeasance on a spectacular scale and claimed that LAPD officials covered up a complex web of circumstances surrounding the recent L.A. crime wave. Scalding, scorching hot revelations — verifiably true — and we can’t print them.

That’s as much as our attorneys will permit us to tell you about those 94 pages. Is your appetite whetted? Good, now let us stoke your rage.

An employee of ours, a man charged with gathering electronic information, has a drinking problem. He saw those 94 pages, recognized them as dynamite and called an LAPD acquaintance. Our employee, a probation absconder ducking drunk driving warrants, leaked those pages to his acquaintance. Word spread to the LAPD hierarchy; a restraining order was secured. Our employee was rewarded: his warrants were rendered null and void. Those scalding 94 pages were seized; we cannot print any portion of them under threat of “legal” injunction.

The newspaper? The State Attorney General’s Office?

They discarded their 94 pages. They ridiculed them as hogwash. The monstrous facts were too ugly to believe.

The author? He’s out there among the night blooming fiends in the City of the Fallen Angels.

The upshot? You decide. Decry this fascistic censorship. Write to us. Write to the LAPD. Express your rage. Send one up for a rogue cop whose mea culpa read too explosive to print.

BANNERS:

L.A. Times , 12/14/58:

L.A. Mirror , 12/15/58:

L.A. Herald-Express , 12/16/58: