James Ellroy - L. A. Confidential

Knife bit: the tip of the blade in one palm, a little push to retract it. More blood, a key Exley line. "I'm way past you in the information department. I know about the heroin you got from the Cohen-Dragna deal and what you've been doing with it. I know about the smut you were pushing in '53, and I know all about those extortion shakedowns with your whores. And all I want is my file and some information. You give me that and I'll put the fritz to everything Captain Exley has."

"What information?"

The script, verbatim. "I made a deal with Hudgens. The deal was my file destroyed and ten grand in cash in exchange for some juicy dirt I had on the LAPD high brass. I knew Sid was going to work a shakedown scheme with you, and I'd already backed down on Fleur-de-Lis-you know that's true. Sid got killed before I could pick up the money and the file, and I think the killer got both of them. I need that money, 'cause I'm getting shitcanned off the Department before I can collect my pension, and I want the fucker who robbed me dead. You didn't make that smut back in '53, but whoever did killed Sid and robbed me. Give me the name and I'm yours."

Patchett smiled. Jack smiled-one last push before the pistolwhipping. "Pierce, the Nite Owl was smut and heroin-yours. Do you want to swing for that?"

Patchett pulled out a piece, shot him three times. Silencer thwaps-the slugs shattered the tape gizmo, bounced off his vest.

Three more shots-two in the vest, one wide.

Jack crashed into a table, came up aiming. A jammed slide, Patchett on him, two misfire clicks right up close. Patchett in his face, the knife out, a blind stab, a scream-the blade catching.

Patchett's left hand nailed to the table. Another scream, his right hand arcing-a hypo in it. The needle mainline close, stab, zooooom somewhere nice. Shots rifle loud, "No, Abe, no, Lee, no!" Flames, smoke, rolling away from the grief, so he could live to love the needle again, maybe see the funny man with his hand shivved to the table.

The clock in his head was way off, his watch had quit working-he wasn't sure if it was Wednesday or Thursday. His Nite Owl "disclosure" ate up a whole evening-Dudley was so far ahead of him he never even took notes. The man left him at midnight, pumped up with bold language, no date for the strongarm cop's ball. Dud's date was Exley: clear the Nite Owl and ruin his career, seconds for Bad Bud White: "Think of grand ways to hurt him." Murder was all he could think of-a fair trade for Lynn; killing an LAPD captain was the springs in his clock all snapping-one more span of skewed time and he'd do it. Some point early A.M. Kathy Janeway hit him up-Kathy the way she looked then. She found him a date for the wee small hours-the man who killed her.

And Spade Cooley stood him up.

He went by the Biltmore, talked to the Cowboy Rhythm Band-Spade was still gone, Deuce Perkins was off on his own toot. The D.A.'s Bureau night clerk gave him the brush-were they even on the case? Another tear through Chinatown, a run by his apartment-a couple of I.A. hard-ons parked out front. A wolfed meal at a burger stand, dawn creeping up, a pile of «Heralds» that told him it was Friday. A Nite Owl headline: jigs crying police brutality, Chief Parker promising justice.

He felt tired one second, keyed up the next. He tried to set his watch to the radio; the hands stuck; he threw a hundred-dollar Gruen out the window. Tired, he saw Kathy; keyed up, he saw Exley and Lynn. He drove to Nottingham Drive to check cars.

No white Packard-and Lynn always parked the same place. Bud walked around the building-no sign of Exley's blue Plymouth. A neighbor woman bringing in milk. She said, "Good morning. You're Miss Bracken's friend, aren't you?"

The old snoop-Lynn said she peeped bedrooms. "That's right."

"Well, as you can see, she's not here."

"Yeah, and you don't know where she is."

"Well…"

"Well what? You seen her with a man? Tall, glasses?"

"No, I haven't. And mind your tone, young man. Well what, indeed."

Bud badged her. "«Well what», lady? You were gonna tell me something."

"Until you got cheeky, I was going to tell you where Miss Bracken went. I heard her talking to the manager last night. She was asking for directions."

"«Where to?»"

"Lake Arrowhead, and I would have told you before you got cheeky."

Exley's place, Inez told him about it, a cabin flying flags: American, state, LAPD. Bud drove to Arrowhead, cruised by the lake, found it: banners cutting wind, no blue Plymouth. Lynn's Packard in the driveway.

A brodie to the porch; a leap up the steps. Bud punched in a window, unlatched the door. No response to the noise-just a musty front room done up hunting lodge provincial.

He walked into the bedroom. Sweat stink, lipstick blots on the bed. He kicked the feathers out of the pillows, dumped the mattress, saw a leather binder underneath. Lynn's "Scarlet Letters" for sure-she'd been talking up her diary for years.

Bud grabbed it, got ready to rip-down the spine like his old phone book trick. The smell made him stop-if he didn't look, he was a coward.

Flip to the last page. Lynn's handwriting, bold black ink, the gold pen he'd bought her.

March 26, 1958

More on E.E. He just drove off and I could tell he was chagrined by all the things he told me last night. He looked vulnerable in the A.M. light, stumbling to the bathroom without his glasses. I pity Pierce his misfortune in encountering such an essentially frightened and unyielding man. E.E. makes love like my Wendell, like he never wants it to end, because when it ends he will have to return to what he is. He is perhaps the only man I have ever met who is as compromised as I am, who is so smart, circumspect and cautious that you can always see his wheels turning and thus wish you could always talk in the dark so that face value would be less complex. He is so smart and pragmatic that he makes W.W. appear childish and thus less heroic than he really is. And considering his dilemma, my betiayal of Pierce's friendship and patronage seem frankly callow. This man has been so obsessively beholden to his father for so long that the crux of it must influence every step he takes, yet he is still taking steps, which amazes me. E.E. didn't delve too far into specifics, but the basic thrust is that some of the more artful pornographic books that Pierce was selling five years ago have diagrams that match the mutilations on Sid Hudgens' body and the wounds on the victims of a murderer named Loren Atherton, who was apprehended by Preston Exley in the 1930s. P.E. is soon to announce his candidacy for governor and E.E. now considers that his father solved the Atherton case incorrectly and inferred that he suspects P.E. of establishing business relations with Raymond Dieterling at the time of that case (one of Atherton's victims was a Dieterling child star). Another strange crux: E.E., my trIs smart pragmatist, considers his father such a moral exemplar and paragon of efficacy that he is terrified of accepting normal incompetence and rational business self-interest as within the bounds of acceptable human behavior. He is afraid that solving his "Nite Owl related" cases will reveal P.E.'s fallibility to the world and destroy his gubernatorial chances, and he is obviously even more afraid of having to accept his father as a mortal, especially difficult since he has never accepted himself as one. But he will go ahead with his cases, deep down he seems quite determined. As much as I love him, in the same situation my Wendell would just shoot everyone involved, then look for somebody a bit more inteffigent to sort out the bodies, like that urbane Irishman Dudley Smith he always mentions. More on this and related matters after a walk, breakfast and three strong cups of coffee.