James Ellroy - Silent Terror

“You were easy to track, sweetie. I am a world-class abuser of police power and an even better skip-tracer. The .38 I gave you was my tracker. I gouged the inside of the barrel, test-fired it into a ballistics tank, then kept the spents. Very distinctive lands and grooves, not even the silencer I figured you’d get could alter the striations. Soooo, all I had to do was make statewide queries on Dead Body Reports filed under ‘Gunshot,’ check the ballistics bulletins and see where my old buddy Martin was hanging out. It took a lot of phoning, but I’m the persistent type. I made you for the retard in Illinois and the tag in Nebraska — you come out of the closet yet, sweetie? They were both big dark-haired guys about your age, and I thought, ‘Uh, oh, Martin wants some new ID because he knows Ross the Boss has got his number.’ Then you offed the old kraut in Michigan, almost two years had passed; I figured if you snuffed an old guy like that, maybe you already got your ID from a stiff you didn’t shoot or the cops never found. I also had a hunch you were getting hinky and cautious, that you must have snuffed Pops for a reason. So I wangled a Xerox of the case file from the Kalamazoo cops.

“And damned if I don’t make you for e pretty good forger. Twelve K in checks to credit-card companies? The dumbfuck Kalamazoo cops don’t even bother to check with the companies, but I do. Future credit-card transactions? Sweetie, you have got a pair of platinum balls, and I’ve been following those balls cross-country, courtesy of Telecredit. There’s Martin in Ohio, maybe doing some cutting in Sharon, P.A. Follow up on that Rohrsfield dead-body report, call the rental-listing hotline the cops have access to keep track of parole absconders, damned if I don’t get a William Rohrsfield right down the road from this family reunion that I thought would be too boring to attend. Good work on Rohrsfield, Martin, but you shouldn’t have buried him under the site of a future 7-11. Sweetie, you want to put those pictures down and look at me?”

The request took my eyes away from the death portraits. Feeling only awe for the way Ross had set me up, I said, “How did you manage this? Different cities? Spacing them like that?”

Petting the alligator on his chest, Ross said, “Extradition assignments. I’d hit the municipal P.D.s, file my papers, shoot the shit with the investigating officers, then mosey by the Vice files and look for some nice blond meat with recent hooking convictions. Easy. Get the information, buzz their door, say it’s Sergeant Plunkett or whoever, do the deed, take the pictures and split. Space the jobs, different cities. It took four jobs for the connection to get made, and I just stopped. New-breed killer, capable of control. I also booked my flights to and from the extradition cities under assumed names, then turned in forged vouchers for myself and my returnee, so that I’m not listed on any passenger manifests. Saul Malvin was the fall guy on the brunettes, and I destroyed the files on them in case somebody connects the ‘Wisconsin Whipsaw’ and the ‘Four-State Hooker Hacker’ and decides to start comparing forensic specs. I’ve just figured out something about the two of us, Martin. We equal out in the end, but you excel in quantity while I excel in quality.”

Despite all my awe and that something else, the condescension rankled, and I said, “What about one-on-one?”

Ross smiled, and I caught a flash of his awe. “I don’t know, sweetie. I truly, honestly don’t. You feel like taking a ride? Maybe meeting some family of mine?”

Ross had taken a cab, so we took Deathmobile II to the summer house where the younger reunion people were staying. Having him in the passenger seat beside me was softly warming, and he spoke softly while we drove north on the Saw Mill Parkway.

“I used to spend summers here as a kid. This bash is being thrown by the Liggetts, my mother’s people. Big bucks. They all thought Mom married beneath herself — Lars Anderson, big dumb handsome squarehead, cabinetmaker from the Wisconsin boonies, no future. They used to let me know in subtle ways, kill me with kindness while they were doing it. Every September around this time, right before they sent me back to Beloit, they bought me a humongous load of fall school clothes, marched me into Brooks Brothers like I was Little Lord Fauntleroy. The salesmen hated me because they thought I was a rich kid with a silver spoon up his ass; the Liggetts blew the wad so they could make my dad look low; and I always ordered everything too big or too small so I could sell it or ditch it when I got home. You remember that buddy of mine? The late Billy Gretzler? You should have seen him wearing this five-hundred-dollar cashmere Chesterfield when he worked on his truck. It finally got so black and greasy that I told him, A joke’s a joke, throw it away. He wouldn’t, though. He chopped the coat up and used the pieces as gun-cleaning rags. We’re almost to Croton, so turn off at the next exit and hang a left.”

Easing over toward the off-ramp lane, I asked, “What was having a family like?”

Ross stroked his alligator. “You didn’t have one, sweetie?”

“Orphaned early,” I said.

“Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve got Andersons and Liggetts and Caffertys up the ying-yang, and mostly they’re just people you see through as being what they are. My mom and sis are weak; my dad’s stupid and proud; Richie Liggett — my cousin who you’ll probably meet — he’s smart, but so lost in this grad-school vision of what he thinks life is that you’d never know it. Another cousin, Rosie Cafferty, she’s your prototypical hot-pants teenybopper with a yen for Italian guys and muscle cars. Good she’s got bucks — she’d be a whore otherwise. She’s—”

Pulling off the parkway, I interrupted: “But what’s it like?”

Ross considered the question as I drove past huge white homes for over a mile. Station wagons crowded with people and luggage were pulling out of driveways, and renters were handing over keys on a score of front lawns. The lights in the houses reminded me of burglary, and I blurted, “Tell me, goddamnit.”

Ross laughed. “You want a definition of family, I’ll give you one. Family is feeling sort of close to people because you know they’re connected to you by blood, and you have to tolerate them, regardless of what you think of them. So over the years they grow on you, in one way or the other, and it’s interesting to observe them and know you’re smarter than they are. Also, they’re beholden to you and can do you solids. Turn left on the corner and park.”

I slowed, accomplished the turn and pulled to the curb in front of a large white house that must have dated back to the Revolutionary War. Ross said, “Nice pad, huh?” and pointed to mounds of toys strewn across the immaculate front lawn. “There’s family and money for you in a nutshell. Lots of bucks in this area, and the kids still carry on like niggers. Come on.”

We walked across the grass and veranda and through the open front door. Inside, the house was expensive furniture and carpeting in need of dusting, with sports clothes, tennis rackets and odd golf clubs scattered around the living room and foyer. Ross put his fingers in his mouth and whistled, then said, “What a bunch of slobs. Richie and Rosie are shacked up here with their paramours, and I’ve been staying in a room about the size of a broom closet. The reunion starts tomorrow night at this yacht club in Mamaroneck, and the unmarried cousins have got this place so they won’t embarrass Big Daddy Liggett by porking in the cabanas. Hey! Achtung! Ross the Boss is here!”

I heard footsteps upstairs, and moments later two couples in tennis whites bounded down the staircase. The young men were wholesome fitness personified, one WASP style, one Italian; the young women were brunette and redheaded outtakes from the Ralph Lauren ads I had seen during my reading spurts. All four started babbling “Hi!” and “Hi, Ross,” at once, looking at me sidelong, like an afterthought. Ross pumped the male hands and hugged the girls, then put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. The shrill report froze all the jabbering, and Ross said, “Hey kids, let’s mind our manners. Cousins, this is my friend Billy Rohrsfield. Billy, we have, left to right, Richie Liggett, Mady Behrens, Rosie Cafferty and Dom De Nunzio.”