Джеймс Эллрой - Hollywood Nocturnes

The tow-truck driver applauded. Bud Brown fisheyed me — my McClellan shtick hit him weird.

“Mr. Contino, like I said, I’m sorry.”

I pointed to the albums.

“I’ll donate those to your Teamster Local. I’ll autograph them. You can sell them yourself and keep the money. All I’m asking is that you let me drive this car out of here and hide it somewhere.”

Raps on the kitchen window — Leigh holding baby Merri up. Brown said, “Mr. Contino, that’s fighting dirty.”

Worth the fight: my baby blue/white-wall tired/fox-tail-antennaed sweetie. Sunlight on the accordion hood hanger — I almost swooned.

“Have you guys got kids with birthdays coming up? I’ll perform for free, I’ll dress up like a—”

The tow-truck radio crackled; the driver listened and rogered the call. “That was Mr. Yeakel. He says Mr. Contino should meet him at the showroom pronto, that maybe they can work out a deal on his delinquent.”

“... and you know I’ve got my own TV show, ‘Rocket to Stardom.’ My brothers and I do our own commercials and give amateur Angeleno talent a chance to reach for the moon and haul down a few stars. We put on a show here at the lot every Sunday, and KCOP broadcasts it. We dish out free hot dogs and soda pop, sell some cars and let the talent perform. We usually get a bunch of hot dog scroungers hanging around — I call them the ‘Yeakel Yokels.’ They applaud for the acts, and whoever gets the most applause wins. I’ve got a meter rigged up — sort of like that thingamajig you had on the Heidt Show.”

Bob Yeakel: tall, blond, pitchman shrill. His desk: covered with memo slips held down by chrome hubcaps.

“Let me guess. You want me to celebrity M.C. one of your shows, in exchange for which I get to keep my car free and clear.”

Yeakel yuk-yuk-yukked. “No, Dick, more along the lines of you produce and celebrity M.C. at least two shows, and perform at the Oldsmobile Dealers of America Convention, and spend some afternoons here at the lot auditioning acts and bullshitting with the customers. In the meantime, you get to keep your car, and we stop the clock on your delinquent interest payments, but not on the base sum itself. Then, if “Rocket to Stardom”s ratings zoom, I might just let you have that car free and clear.”

“Is that all I have to do?”

Yuk-yuk-yuk. “No. You also have to pitch all your potential contestants on the ’58 Oldsmobile line. And no jigaboos or beatniks, Dick. I run a clean family show.”

“I’ll do it if you throw in two hundred a week.”

“A hundred and fifty, but off-the-books with no withholding.”

I stuck my hand out.

Work:

The Oldsmobile Dealers Convention at the downtown Statler. Dig it: five hundred car hucksters and a busload of hookers chaperoned by a V.D. doctor. Bob Yeakel opened for me — shtick featuring “Peaches, The Drag Queen With An Overbite.” Chris Staples sang, “You Belong to Me,” and “Baby, Baby, All the Time” — Yeakel ogled her and cracked jokes about her “Tail Fins.” I killed the booze-fried crowd with a forty-minute set and closed with the “Rocket to Stardom” theme song.

Work:

Birthday parties — Cisco Andrade’s son, Mickey Cohen’s niece. The Cisco gig was East L.A. SRO — Mex fighters and their families wowed by Dick Contino as “Chucko the Birthday Clown.” Degrading? — yeah — but the guests shot me close to a C-note in tips. The Cohen job was more swank: a catered affair at Mickey’s pad. Check the guest list: Lana Turner and Johnny Stompanato, Mike Romanoff, Moe Dalitz, Meyer Lansky, Julius La Rosa, and the Reverend Wesley Swift — who explained that Jesus Christ was an Aryan, not a Jew, and that Mein Kampf was the lost book of the Bible. No gratuities, but Johnny Stomp kicked loose two dozen cases of Gerber’s Baby Food — he bankrolled a fur van hijack, and his guys hit the wrong truck.

Work — long days at the Yeakel Olds lot.

I called the girls in to help me: Leigh, Chrissy, Nancy Ankrum, Kay Van Obst. Word spread quick: Mr. Accordion and female coterie LIVE at Oldsmobile showroom!

We bullshitted with browsers and referred hard prospects to salesmen; we spritzed the ’58 Olds line-up non-stop. We grilled burgers on a hibachi and fed the mechanics and Bud Brown and his repo crew.

Nancy, Kay and Leigh screened “Rocket to Stardom” applicants — I wanted to weed out the more egregious geeks before I began formal auditions. Bob Yeakel drooled whenever Chris Staples slinked by — I convinced him to put her on payroll as my assistant. Grateful Chrissy gave Bob a thank-you gift: her Nugget Magazine fold-out preserved via laminated wall plaque.

My Yeakel run nine days in: a righteous fucking blast.

Nine days sans “Draft Dodger” jive — some kind of Contino world record.

We held auditions in a tent behind the lube rack; Bud Brown stood watchdog to keep obvious lunatics out. The girls had compiled a list: forty-odd individuals and acts to be winnowed down to six spots per show.

Our first finalist: an old geezer who sang grand opera. I asked him to belt a few bars of Pagliacci ; he said that he possessed the world’s largest penis. He whipped it out before I could comment — it was of average length and girth. Chrissy applauded anyway — she said it reminded her of her ex-husband’s.

Bud hustled the old guy out. Pops was gone — but he’d set a certain tone.

Check this sampling:

Two roller skating bull terriers — sharklike dogs with plastic fins attached to their backs. Their master was a Lloyd Bridges looka-like — the whole thing was a goof on the TV show “Sea Hunt.”

Nix.

An off-key woman accordionist who tried to slip me her phone number with Leigh right there.

Nix.

A comic with patter on Ike’s golf game — epic Snoresville.

Nix.

A guy who performed silk scarf tricks. Deft and boring: he cinched sashes into hangman’s knots.

Nix.

Over two dozen male and female vocalists: flat, screechy, shrill, hoarse — dud Presley and Patti Page would-be’s.

A junkie tenor sax, who nodded out halfway through a flubbed-note “Body and Soul.” Bud Brown dumped him in a demo car; the fucker woke up convulsing and kicked the windshield out. Chrissy summoned an ambulance; the medics hustled the hophead off.

I confronted Nancy. She said, “You should have seen the ones that didn’t make the cut. I wish the ‘West Hollywood Whipcord’ had a viable talent — it would be fun to put him on the show.”

Only Nancy found sash cord strangling/bumperjack bashing fiends alluring.

I braced Bud Brown. “Bud, the show’s forty-eight hours off, and we’ve got nobody.”

“This happens sometimes. When it does, Bob calls Pizza De-Luxe.”

“What—”

“Ask Bob.”

I walked into Yeakel’s office. Bob was eyeballing his wall plaque: Miss Nugget, June ’54.

“What’s Pizza De-Luxe?”

“Are your auditions going that bad?”

“I’m thinking of calling those roller skating dogs back. Bob, what’s—”

“Pizza De-Luxe is a prostitution racket. An ex-Jack Dragna goon who owns a greasy spoon called the Pizza Pad runs it. He delivers pizza 24 hours a day legit, and if you want a girl or a dicey boy on the side, a male or female prostitute will make the delivery. All of the hookers are singers or dancers or Hollywood riff-raff like that, you know, selling some skin to make ends meet until they get their so-called ‘big break.’ So... if I get strapped for decent contestants, I call Pizza De-Luxe. I get some good pizza, some good ‘amateur’ talent, and my top-selling salesman of the month gets laid.”

I checked the window. A transvestite dance team practiced steps by the grease rack — Bud Brown and a cop type shooed them off. I said, “Bob, call Pizza De-Luxe.”