Джеймс Эллрой - Hollywood Nocturnes

We made it to my sled and peeled rubber; out of nowhere a car broadsided us, fender to fender. I saw a white face behind the wheel, downshifted, brodied, fishtailed and hit the freeway doing eighty. The attack car was gone — back to the nowhere it came from. I whipped off Basko’s muzzle and paw weapons and threw them out the window; Basko licked my face all the way to Beverly Hills.

More destruction greeted us: the Bendish/Klein/Basko pad had been ransacked, the downstairs thoroughly trashed: shelves overturned, sections of the satellite dish ripped loose, velvet flocked Elvis paintings torn from the walls. I grabbed Basko again; we hotfooted it to Gail Curtiz’s crib.

Lights were burning inside; the Lab was lounging on the lawn chomping on a nylabone. She noticed Basko and started demurely wagging her tail; I sensed romance in the air and unhooked my sidekick’s leash. Basko ran to the Lab; the scene dissolved into horizontal nuzzling. I gave the lovebirds some privacy, sneaked around to the rear of the house and started peeping.

Va Va Va Voom through a back window. Gail Curtiz, nude, was writhing with another woman on a tigerskin rug. The gorgeous brunette seemed reluctant: her face spelled shame and you could tell the perversity was getting to her. My beady eyes almost popped out of my skull; in the distance I could hear Basko and the Lab rutting like cougars. The brunette faked an orgasm and made her hips buckle — I could tell she was faking from twenty feet away. The window was cracked at the bottom; I put an ear to the sill and listened.

Gail got up and lit a cigarette; the brunette said, “Could you turn off the lights, please?” — a dead giveaway — you could tell she wanted to blot out the dyke’s nudity. Basko and the Lab, looking sated, trotted up and fell asleep at my feet. The room inside went black; I listened extra hard.

Smutty endearments from Gail; two cigarette tips glowing. The brunette, quietly persistent: “But I don’t understand why you spend your life savings renting such an extravagent house. You never spell things out for me, even though we’re... And just who is this rich man who died?”

Gail, laughing. “My daddy, sweetie. Blood test validated. Momma was a car hop who died of a broken heart. Daddy stiffed her on the paternity suit, among many other stiffs, but he promised to take care of me — three million on my twenty-fifth birthday or his death, whichever came first. Now, dear, would you care to hear the absurdist punch line? Daddy left the bulk of his fortune to his dog, to be overseen by a sharpie lawyer and this creep who looks after the dog. But — there has to be some money hidden somewhere. Daddy’s estate was valued at twenty-five million, while the newspapers placed it as much higher. Oh, shit, isn’t it all absurd?”

A pause, then the brunette. “You know what you said when we got back a little while ago? Remember, you had this feeling the house had been searched?”

Gail: “Yes. What are you getting at?”

“Well, maybe it was just your imagination, or maybe one of the other paternity suit kids has got the same idea, maybe that explains it.”

“Linda, honey, I can’t think of that just now. Right now I’ve got you on my mind.”

Small talk was over — eclipsed by Gail’s ardor, Linda’s phony moans, I hitched Basko to his leash, drove us to a motel safe house and slept the sleep of the righteously pissed.

In the morning I did some brainwork. My conclusions: Gail Curtiz wanted to sink my gravy train and relegate Basko to a real dog’s life. Paternity suit intrigue was at the root of the Bendish house trashing and the “searching” of Gail’s place. The car that tried to broadside me was driven by a white man — a strange anomaly. Linda, in my eyes a non-dyke, seemed to be stringing the lust-blinded Gail along — could she also be a paternity suit kid out for Basko’s swag? Sleazy Miller Waxman was Sol Bendish’s lawyer and a scam artist bent from the crib — how did he fit in? Were the shvoogies who tried to break into Gail’s crib the ones who later searched it — and trashed my place? Were they in the employ of one of the paternity kids? What was going on ?

I rented a suite at the Bel-Air Hotel and ensconced Basko there, leaving a grand deposit and detailed instructions on his care and feeding. Next I hit the Beverly Hills Library and re-read Sol Bendish’s clippings. I glommed the names of his paternity suit complainants, called Liz Trent and had her give me DMV addresses. Two of Sol’s playmates were dead; one was address unknown, two — Marguerita Montgomery and Jane Hawkshaw — were alive and living in Los Angeles. The Montgomery woman was out as a lead: a clipping I’d scanned two weeks ago quoted her on the occasion of Sol Bendish’s death — she mentioned that the son he fathered had died in Vietnam. I already knew that Gail Curtiz’s mother had died — and since none of the complainants bore the name Curtiz, I knew Gail was using it as an alias. That left Jane Hawkshaw: last known address 8902 Saticoy Street in Van Nuys.

I knocked on her door an hour later. An old woman holding a stack of Watchtowers opened up. She had the look of religious crackpots everywhere: bad skin, spaced-out eyes. She might have been hot stuff once — around the time man discovered the wheel. I said, “I’m Brother Klein. I’ve been dispatched by the Church to ease your conscience in the Sol Bendish matter.”

The old girl pointed me inside and started babbling repentance. My eyes hit a framed photograph above the fireplace — two familiar faces smiling out. I walked over and squinted.

Ultra-paydirt: Richie “Sicko” Sicora and another familiar-looking dude. I’d seen pics of Sicora before — but in this photo he looked like someone else familiar. The resemblance seemed very vague — but niggling. The other man was easy — he’d tried to broadside me in darktown last night.

The old girl said, “My son Richard is a fugitive. He doesn’t look like that now. He had his face changed when he went on the run. Sol was going to leave Richie money when he turned twenty-five, but Richie and Chuck got in trouble and Sol gave it out in bail money instead. I’ve got no complaint against Sol and I repent my unmarried fornication.”

I superimposed the other man’s bone structure against photos I’d seen of Chick Ottens and got a close match. I tried, tried, tried, to place Sicora’s pre-surgery resemblance, but failed. Sicora pre-plastic, Ottens already sliced — a wicked brew that validated non-dyke Linda’s theory straight down the line...

I gave the old woman a buck, grabbed a Watchtower and boogied southside. The radio blared hype on the Watts homicides: the monster dog and his human accomplice. Fortunately for Basko and myself, eyewitnesses’ accounts were dismissed and the deaths were attributed to dope intrigue. I cruised the bad boogaloo streets until I spotted the car that tried to ram me — parked behind a cinderblock dump circled by barbed wire.

I pulled up and jacked a shell into my piece. I heard yips emanating from the back yard, tiptoed around and scoped out the scene.

Pit Bull City: scores of them in pens. A picnic table and Chick Ottens noshing bar-b-q’d chicken with his snazzy new face. I came up behind him; the dogs noticed me and sent out a cacophony of barks. Ottens stood up and wheeled around going for his waistband. I shot off his kneecaps — canine howls covered my gun blasts. Ottens flew backwards and hit the dirt screaming; I poured bar-b-q sauce on his kneeholes and dragged him over to the cage of the baddest looking pit hound of the bunch. The dog snapped at the blood and soul sauce; his teeth tore the pen. I spoke slowly, like I had all the time in the world. “I know you and Sicora got plastic jobs, I know Sol Bendish was Sicora’s daddy and bailed you and Sicko out on the 7-11 job. You had your goons break into Gail Curtiz’s place and the Bendish pad and all this shit relates to you trying to mess with my dog and screw me out of my gravy train. Now I’m beginning to think Wax Waxman set me up. I think you and Sicora have some plan going to get at Bendish’s money, and Wax ties in. You got word that Curtiz was snouting around, so you checked out her crib. I’m a dupe, right? Wax’s patsy? Wrap this up for me or I feed your kneecaps to Godzilla.”