James Ellroy - Silent Terror

Summary Homicide Report filed by Lieutenant D. D. Bucklin of the Sunbury, Ohio, Sheriff’s Department on June 1, 1981:

Chief—

Here’s the rundown on the stiff found near that 7-11 site out by Route 3:

Name — Rohrsfield, William Waiter

Race — Cauc.

D.O.B. — 5-4-48

Phys Stats — 6'3", 210, brown & brown, build large

Cause of death — shot in head, 38 spents found in dirt by body (unusual lands & grooves) (see attached ballistic workup done by State Officers). Body buried 12 feet deep (strange).

Preliminary investigation — State Detectives. Although this is technically our case, Dead Body Report was filed by State unit that caught the squeal, and since Rohrsfield was an ex-con and not a Sunbury resident, I say let them do the work. Here’s Rohrsfield’s record:

Juvie — B&E — 12-12-65 — (received counseling). Poss. of Marijuana — 1-8-66 — (6 mos Chillicothe Youth Fac.).

Adult — House Burg. & Rec. Stolen Goods — 8-2-67 (1 yr. Chillicothe Adult Fac. 3 yrs. prob.). 1st Deg. Burg. — Convictions (2) on 4/20/69, (3 yrs. — Ohio State Pen.); also on 7/2/74 with added charges of Soliciting for Purposes of Male Prostitution, Loitering in the Vicinity of Public Restrooms and Indecent Exposure (5 yrs. State time — refused parole, topped out sentence). Released 7/14/79, a dozen drunk arrests since.

The State dicks can have him — I say good riddance to bad rubbish — D. D. Bucklin, Lieutenant, Watch Commander.

And so the kiss made me a fugitive, and set the man who gave it free to kill with the stylish ease that I used to own.

At the time, of course, I had no idea what Ross was doing. Panic and unnamed desires kept him shut out but close — like a hot wind at my back, one that would turn me blind if I stared into it. Today, with manuscript pages and police documents accumulating on my desk and pins marking my journey on the map covering my cell wall, the lines connecting our respective murders make the dichotomy stand out in boldface: Ross discreetly choosing his victims, cloaked with a badge and extradition warrants, always returning safely to rural Wisconsin; Martin tearing cross-country in flight from real sex, seeking the perfect non-Martin to become, burning like an ant caught in sunlight through a magnifying glass held by a sadistic child.

Burning my way back to my own childhood;

Feeding sacrificial fires with a grandfather and three brothers;

Sabotaging my old caution by skipping at the edge of the flames...

Blasted out of Huyserville, I drove due east on sludgy two-lanes to Lake Geneva. The resort was thronged with athletic youths in brightly colored sportswear, and in the wake of Ross I felt inadequate to the task of working among them. The snub-nose .38, loaded in an undercarriage compartment, seemed like a poor substitute for my magnum; and I knew that if I put my hands on a victim — man, woman, young, old, ugly or attractive — they would feel like Ross, and I wouldn’t be able to finish the job. My only recourse was to force myself to forget the man — his looks, his feel, his style.

That night I did something extraordinarily out of character.

I booked a suite at the Lake Geneva Playboy Club and spent an evening celebrating an auspicious unnamed occasion, forcing myself to act like a reveler blowing off steam. I ate an overpriced meal at the “Sultan’s Steakhouse,” tipped lavishly and watched the floor show at the “Jet Setter’s Lounge.” Young hostesses in low-cut rabbit costumes looked disapprovingly at my out-of-style clothing there, but changed their tunes when I showed them my rabbit-ear room key with “Potentate’s Pad” embossed on the back. Then they accepted my stylishly handed-out twenty-dollar bills with proper humility and led me to a front-row table in the “VIP” section. I ordered Dom Perignon champagne for myself and my fellow VIP’s, and was roundly applauded. Soon the man next to me was offering cocaine, and in the spirit of the unnamed occasion I snorted it and drank greedily from the bottle at my table.

The floor show featured a vulgar buffoon named Professor Irwin Corey. His act consisted of ad-libbed double entendres and malapropisms aimed at the people sitting at the ringside tables; and although at first I found him tedious, as I snorted and drank on he became the funniest thing I had ever seen. Old notions of control kept my laughter internal until Corey pointed to a fat drunk who was snoring with his head on the table. In the voice of an oriental sage, the Professor said, “You drink to forget, Papa San?” and reflexively I thought of Ross, dug through my mind for a portrait and came up instead with the face of a pretty boy from a Calvin Klein ad. Then I did laugh out loud, spewing, spittle and tears across my table until Corey noticed me, walked over and slapped my back and said, “There, there, big guy. Take a shot of meth, two bunnies, four Excedrin and call your broker in the morning. There, there.”

I don’t know how I made it back to my suite; my last waking image was of rabbit girls solicitously opening a door into ice-cold air. When I did awaken, my head was throbbing and I was sprawled fully clothed across a red satin heartshaped bed. I thought of Ross and got another vacuously handsome model, then a flashback of the evening hit, ringed with question marks and dollar signs. This led to a series of four-figure speculations followed by??? and I comforted myself with the thought that the night was a one-time-only blowout. Then I ran a mental litany of my safe-deposit box balances and key hiding places — and came up three short.

Now Ross appeared in detail, smoothing his mustache with utter cool, murmuring, “Martin, you dumb shit.”

I lashed out at the bed with my fists and knees; Ross was saying, “Thought I let you off easy, huh? Sweetie, who could ever forget a face like mine? Ross the Boss, what a guy.”

I jumped up and tore through the suite until I found stationery and pens on a table by the telephone. With shaking hands I wrote down bank names, figures and hiding places, ending with a total of five boxes and $6,214.00. Simple subtraction gave me the cost of my evening of prosaic debauchery: $11,470.00 minus $6,214.00 equaled $5,256.00.

Ross said, “You’ll never make it as a swinger, Martin. Splitting on the tab’ll save you a few bucks, though. They didn’t see your van when you registered, so all they’ve got is your name... WHICH YOU CAN CHANGE .”

I was back on the road inside of ten minutes, and Ross, faceless but huge, was like a Santa Ana wind behind me.

I never mentally regained the lost money, and I spent a month traveling throughout the West picking my remaining safety boxes clean. I can only describe that month as savage. Driving into cities where I had previously killed felt savagely stupid; keeping the money in the Deathmobile’s glove compartment felt necessary, but savagely risky. Ross loomed all around me — faceless as an advisor, but savagely beautiful and dangerous when I didn’t listen to him.

Other faces were there, always on roadsides. Men, women, old, young, pretty, ugly — they all had big open mouths that shouted, “Love me, fuck me, kill me.” Ross, faceless, only a voice, kept me from wasting them, kept the idea of a new identity in my mind. In the counselor role that Shroud Shifter used to play, he told me to take my time and eschew murder until I found a perfectly expendable man to become, a man who looked exactly like me and who would never be missed. Knowing that Ross would remain sexless only if I obeyed him, I waited.

Reversing directions after picking up my last cache of money, I headed East again, driving all day, sleeping in cheap motels. Ross’s presence was always with me, and his obsession of making me kill for a non-Martin Plunkett persona grew in my brain, buttressed by savage questions: