James Ellroy - Silent Terror

“You move real nicely,” the man shouted above the music. Ross zipped through my mind and said, “Kill him for me,” and I cupped my ear and pointed to the door. The man caught my drift and walked ahead of me, and when we hit the sidewalk, I looked around for witnesses. Seeing nothing but a cold, deserted street, I mentally affixed myself as L.P.D. Sergeant Anderson and said, “I’m a police officer. You can take a ride with me out to the wheat flats, or a ride to the station. Take your pick.”

The almost-Martin laughed. “Is this entrapment or a proposition?”

I laughed a la Ross. “Both, sweetie.”

The man poked my arm. “Hard. I’m Russ.”

“Ross.”

“Russ and Ross, that’s cute. Your car or mine?”

I pointed down the street to where Deathmobile II waited. “Mine.”

Russ leaned into me coyly, then pulled himself back and started walking. I kept pace with him, staying up against the sides of buildings, thinking of late-night burials and whether my old shovel was capable of cracking wheat-rooted frozen earth. Russ kept quiet, and I imagined him imagining me naked. At Deathmobile II I opened the door and squeezed his arm as I motioned him into the cab, and he let out a little grunt of pleasure. Anticipation and exhilaration hit me, and when I got in behind the wheel I exploded with an urge to know Russ/Martin’s history.

“Tell me about your family,” I said.

This time his laugh came out crude, his voice a mid-western bray. “Very romantic there, gay officer.”

The “gay” angered me; I hit the ignition, gunned the gas and said, “I’m a sergeant.”

“Is that part of your typical gay sergeant’s foreplay?”

The second “gay” accentuated the feel of the .38 tucked into my waistband and kept me from lashing out. “That’s right, sweetie.”

“Any man who calls me ‘sweetie’ can hear my tale of woe.” Russ tooted a fanfare on an imaginary horn, then laughed and proclaimed, “This is your life! Russell Maddox Luxxlor!”

The full name settled on me like a declaration of freedom. The industrial district disappeared, prairie flats and a huge starry sky loomed ahead, and I started to buzz all over. “Tell me, sweetie.”

The midwestern twang came out archly, theatrically. “Wellll, I’m from Cheyenne, Wyoming, and I’ve known I was gay since about age zero, and I’ve got three lovely sisters who buffered me through the tough parts. You know, being picked on, that kind of thing. And Daddy’s a Congregational minister, and he’s uptight about it, but not crazy on the subject like the born-agains, and Momma’s like a big sister, she accepted me real—”

The monologue’s sex drift was turning my buzzing ugly, itchy. “Tell me other things,” I said, holding my voice down. “Cheyenne. Your sisters. What it’s like to have a minister for a father.”

Russ pouted. “I guess you know all about that other stuff already. Okay, Cheyenne was a bore, Molly’s my favorite sister. She’s thirty-four now, three years older than me. Laurie’s my next favorite, she’s twenty-nine and married to this awful farmer man who hits her; and Susan’s the youngest, twenty-seven. She had a drinking problem, then she joined A.A. Daddy’s a good guy, he doesn’t judge me, and Momma quit smoking a few months ago. And oh God, this is so boring.”

I tightened my grip on the wheel until I thought my knuckles would pop. “Tell me more, sweetie.”

The dead man’s effete bray rattled through the cab. “It’s your funeral; my family would bore Jesus to death. Okay, Susan’s the prettiest, and she’s a dental tech; Laurie’s fat, and she’s got three rug rats with her awful husband, and I’m the smartest and the most sophisticated and the most sensit—”

I said the words the very instant the idea took hold. “Let me see the pictures in your wallet.”

Martin/Russ said, “Sweetie, don’t you think this is getting a little far afield? I’m up to party, but this is getting weird.”

I looked in my rearview, saw nothing but dark prairie, decelerated and pulled over to the side of the road. The dead man gave me a spooked look, and I took the .38 from my waistband and leveled it at him. “Give me your wallet or I’ll kill you.”

With jerky hands he plucked it from his back pocket and put it on the dashboard. With calm hands worthy of Ross Anderson, I lowered the gun to my lap and fingered my way through the photo and credit-card compartments. Seeing three young women in graduation gowns and a couple in ’40’s wedding attire, I winced; seeing a pictureless Nebraska driver’s license, valid draft card and Visa, American Express, and Diner’s Club, I smiled and said, “Get out of the van.”

Martin got out and stood by the door, shaking and murmuring prayers. I put the wallet in my pocket and joined him on the roadside, savoring mental images of my three new sisters until their about-to-be-excommunicated brother started to weep. Then, jarred, I poked the silencered snout of my weapon into his back and said, “Walk.”

I marched him exactly sixty-two paces, one step for each year of our lives, then said, “Turn around and open your mouth.” With chattering teeth he did, and I stuck the barrel in and pulled the trigger. His pitch backward almost wrenched the gun from my hand, but I managed to hold on.

The cold prairie air singed my lungs as I mentally regrouped. I thought of making a search for the expended round, then rejected the idea — my only other hit with Ross’s piece had been in Illinois seven months before; there was no way the killings would be connected.

I was walking back to Deathmobile II and my shovel when I saw headlights approaching from the direction of Lincoln. The abruptness of it spooked me, and I got in, hang a U-turn and headed to work. I was on the job early, and I spent the entire shift memorizing the photographs of my new family. In the morning I burned them to ash in the ground-floor men’s room, and when I flushed the sooty remains I knew the faces were imprinted in my memory bank forever.

Forever lasted eleven days.

Those days were happy, peaceful. I had earned a family to fill up empty spaces in my past, and although Russell Luxxlor’s body was discovered, nullifying my attempt to steal his identity, I still had Dad and Mom and Molly and Laurie and Susan as consolation prizes. Salable credit cards were a bonus on top of that, and I decided to unload them when I left Lincoln for good — a prescheduled two weeks after the killing.

Luxxlor’s death made the local media, and one newspaper account had police accurately speculating that he was killed for his ID; I was even mentioned as having been seen with him at Tommy’s. Still, I wasn’t questioned, nor was I worried — it was the homosexual community that would bear the brunt of the heat.

So, for eleven days I existed in a realistic fantasy world devoid of violence and sexual urges I laughed with favorite sister Molly and comforted sister Laurie when her husband gave her grief; I encouraged sister Susan to stay sober and teased Mom and Dad about their religious fervor. I was running on a fuel mixture that was 80 % fantasy, 20 % a detachment that knew the game the rest of me was playing. The point spread existed harmoniously within me and my new family drifted through my sleeping dreams in a jumble that made them seem old and well thumbed.

On my twelfth post-killing morning I woke up and couldn’t remember Molly’s face. Wracking my memory wouldn’t bring it back; small chores to ease my mind were no help. Fantasizing with other family members made my 20 % detachment zoom to 90 % plus, and toward evening every time I memory-searched for Molly I came up with the bloodied faces of old women victims.