Джеймс Эллрой - Widespread Panic

’53 to ’54. My mauve-and-pink skies. Sales-graph lines in escalation. Confidential hits a million a month. Confidential makes two million in rabid record time.

It’s all ME. I’m awash in the sicko secrets I’ve cruelly craved my whole life. I’ve got L.A. hot-wired. My city teems with tattle tipsters on my payroll. Hotel rooms are hot-sheet hives hooked up to my headset. I know everything sinful, sex-soiled, deeply dirty, and religiously wrong. It’s wrong, it’s real, and it’s MINE.

My Marines lived in listening posts. They caught Corrine Calvet cavorting with a car-park cat at the Crescendo. They caught Paul Robeson, ripped to the gills at a Red rally. They caught Jumping Johnnie Ray again. I verified all of it and fed it to Confidential. Gary Cooper and Miss Belmont High? Quashed for ten grand.

’53 to ’54. A-bomb parties on Liz Taylor’s rooftop. Cavalcades of color against the dim dawn. The camaraderie and opportunity. The sense that this march of magnificent moments would never stop.

Sales graphs. Confidential covers. Dipsos, nymphos, junkies, and Commies, exposed. That cover I regret, that ball I dropped, that malignant moment. That page in Purgatory as I pause my pen.

It’s January 16, 1954. I’m at my pad. I’m booking a threeski for the Landing Strip. I quashed a story on Marilyn Monroe’s Mexican marriage. Marilyn grovels, grateful. She knows a sapphic sister with a sometimes yen for men.

The phone rang. I picked up. Arthur Crowley said, “There’s trouble, Freddy.”

I said, “Hit me.”

“I got a tip. Johnnie Ray’s been to a libel lawyer, and he’s suing the magazine. I know that you verified the story, but he’s going forward anyway. I strongly suggest that you nip this in the bud.”

“Men’s Room Mishegas: Jittery Johnnie Strikes Again.” I verified the story. Confidential ran it. This was untold grief.

“My Marines are on maneuvers, Art. There’s no one to handle it.”

“ You handle it, Freddy. Take care of it, before that tip gets back to Bob Harrison.”

I hung up. My nerves were nuked. I took three quick pops of Old Crow. Joi was tight with Johnnie. They girl-talked regular. I liked Johnnie. Jimmy screened The Stacked and the Hung for him, personally.

I dropped three yellow jackets and obliterated the day. I woke up at midnight. Johnnie always hit Googie’s after his closing set. He always parked in the same spot.

I walked over. I recall spring heat and a brisk breeze. I lounged on Johnnie’s Packard Caribbean. Johnnie bopped out at 1:15.

He saw me. He got the gestalt. He said, “Hi, Freddy.”

I said, “Don’t make me, kid. I’ll keep you out from now on, but you’ve got to stop it here.”

Johnnie said, “You’re a parasite, Freddy. You feed off the weak. I’m not backing off. I don’t see any of your goons around, so you’ll have to do it yourself.”

I said, “Let it go, Johnnie. You can’t win this one.”

“ You’re the weak one, Freddy. Joi told me you cry out for your mother in your sleep.”

I trembled. “One more time, Johnnie. No lawsuit. Do this for me, and the magazine will never come near you again.”

Johnnie spit on my shoes. “You’re a mama’s boy, Freddy. Joi told me you fucked a tranny, which makes you more queer than me.”

I saw red and black-red. I hit him. My signet ring slashed his cheek. He went down on his knees. I picked him up and hurled him against his car. I heard bones crack and teeth shear. The bumper ledge gouged his head. I kicked him and tore a chunk of his scalp free.

He said, “Okay, okay, okay.”

I said, “I’m sorry, kid.”

Johnnie spit blood. Johnnie spit teeth and gum flaps. He shot a big fuck-you finger my way.

The market was 2:00 a.m. deadsville. Jimmy and I quaffed Old Crow. We stood by the mirror and gassed at the ghoul show. I was spritzed with Johnnie Ray’s blood.

Jimmy said, “I’m up for the lead in East of Eden. Elia Kazan’s waffling. It could go either way.”

I said, “I’ll lean on Kazan. He’s susceptible. There’s some pinkos he didn’t rat to HUAC.”

Jimmy gazed down at the aisles. My hands hurt. I cracked my signet ring. My shirt cuffs were soaked red.

The Legions of the Lost. They’re down there. They’re damning me. They’re hexing me to Hell. They’re my comrades in chaos. They’re saying You’re One of Us.

“Jimmy, do you know why you’re a freak?”

“I don’t know, Freddy. Do you know why you are?”

I said, “I don’t know, but sometimes it all gets to me.”

Penance Penitentiary

Reckless-Wrecker-of-Lives Block

Pervert Purgatory

8/25/2020

I’m balefully back. It’s time for my next contaminated confession. I’m still stagnantly stuck in the Hell Adjacent Hilton and yammeringly yearn for a heavenly reprieve. I’m still stuck with the fucked-up and failing body I had when I crapped out, back in ’92. It’s still confession/repentence/atonement. It still comes down to that. Here’s the draconian drill:

I’ll repugnantly reprise some shit I pulled in phantasmagoric ’54. I’ll be freewheeling Fred Otash at thirty-two. ’54 was a ring-a-ding-ding year. I’m going to diiiiiiiig going back.

So, succumb to the seditious soul of a scandal-rag scoundrel — because wicked words on paper are pop-pop-popping your way.

Freaky Freddy O. rides again.

2/14/54

It’s a wind-whipped winter nite. It’s cloudless clear all the way to noxious Nevada. Uncle Sambo is detonating a payload-packed A-bomb in some deserted desert burg. We’re here to grok, groove, flip, flash, and gas on the show.

We’ve got a ripe rooftop perch. I’m here at Bondage Bob Harrison’s behest. Confidential ’s running a farkakte feature on radioactive waste as a dick-enlargement bonanza. Bob’s got a mad chemist brother. He’s calling his priapic product “Megaton Man.”

We’re here. That means me and my Marine Corps mastiffs: Race Rockwell and Ward Wardell. Mattress Jack has slipped his gilded guests binoculars and Hyannis Port toggle coats. My cool contingent carries burglars’ tools and comes with B and E know-how. The plan: burglarize Senator Jack’s bungalow in the wiggy wake of the blast.

Dig the guest list. There’s Jack the K. and insolent Ingrid Bergman. There’s Bob Mitchum and Juicy Jane Russell. There’s Tarzan-toned Lex Barker and liquor-looped Lana Turner. Jimmy Dean’s on my guest card. He’s still peddling snapshots of Marlon Brando with a dick in his mouth. Jimmy’s got director Gadge Kazan in tow. He’s this close to snagging the top role in East of Eden. Gadge is a maladroit midget. His flicks send me somnambulistic. He ratted some Comintern cads to HUAC and earned Confidential ’s fevered fealty. He snitches recidivistic Reds to Bondage Bob, subversively sub rosa.

Senator Jack served rum drinks topped with floating hashish cubes. I opted for the Benzedrine-spiked reefers. Jack Baby loves my larcenous Lebanese ass. I flew a bitching bevy of call girls down to Acapulco last year. They trashed Jack’s paparazzi-pounced honeymoon and made Jackie jump into my bed. Jack’s a c’est la vie, Daddy-O, noblesse oblige sort of guy. Jackie was grovelingly grateful.