Джеймс Эллрой - Widespread Panic

More dead air. I doodled on scratch paper. I wrote “Freddy & Stretch” and drew a heart around it. Time ticked. Steve’s phone rang at 10:52.

I picked up. Static and line fuzz futzed with the call. I got a woman’s voice. I got Steve’s voice. I got static, fuzz, garbles, line lint, lewd laffs, and static stew.

I cuffed the console. I hit the squelch switch. I ditzed dials and got this:

The woman said, “Well... I don’t know... are you... can sign up the talent?”

Steve said, “Are you kid... concept... time has come... Celebrity smut. You want to talk—”

The call static-stuck, fuzzed and futzed, and diminuendoed to dead air.

Googie’s hop-hop-hopped. The Iris Theatre ran a sneak peek of some 3-D dog. The Googie geeks retained their 3-D glasses and goofed themselves out of their gourds.

Jejune jerkoffs. Their revelry ran rampant and rubbed me raw. Tattle tipsters took note of me. I got stuck with stacks of stale bread.

Yawn. Orson Welles sliced the Black Dahlia. Check The Lady from Shanghai. Grok the symbiology. Yawn. Bill Holden’s in the DT ward at Queen of Angels. He’s banging night nurses two at a pop. Yawn. I’ve got morgue pix. The Carole Landis suicide, back in ’48. All-nude. Full bush. Kodachrome color — if I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’!!

Snore. There’s a plot to throw the ’54 World Series. The Jew nited Nations is pulling the strings. Snore. Grace Kelly’s a nympho. She turned Johnnie Ray straight in a mop closet at the Crescendo. Snore. I know you won’t believe this — but Pat Nixon hatched Count Basie’s mulatto love child!!!!!

I believed all of it and none of it. I was back at the listening post. Unknown woman: “Can sign up the talent?” Steve Cochran: “Concept... time has come... Celebrity smut.”

Quivering question marks broiled my brain and skimmed under my skin. I couldn’t stop the scurrilous scroll.

Then:

The Googie’s geeks froze. I froze. Four fuzz walked in and waltzed the floor. Not just any cops. The LAPD Hat Squad. Sergeant Max Herman. Sergeant Red Stromwall. Sergeant Harry Crowder. Officer Eddie Benson.

LAPD Robbery. Hunter-slayers of heist men. All six-four and 220. All in pearl gray suits and white panama hats. The PD’s hardest hard boys. Chief William H. Parker’s personal pit dogs. Mastiffs on a mission to maul for their master.

I stood up. They whipped up and braced me. Red Stromwall said, “Hi, Freddy.”

Max Herman said, “The Chief wants to see you, Freddy.”

Harry Crowder said, “I like your suit, Freddy. Where’d you steal it?”

Eddie Benson said, “You were always a dipshit, Freddy.”

Max Herman tugged a belt loop and made me his bitch. Red Stromwall poked me with a beavertail sap. Harry Crowder and Eddie Benson flanked me and dwarfed me and made me mince minuscule.

We marched out to the parking lot. A PD plainclothes car rumbled, off by itself. Bill Parker sat in the backseat. I looked in. He looked out. I said, “How’s tricks, Bill? Your wife still doing her act with the mule?”

Harry Crowder kidney-punched me. Red Stromwall sapped me. Max Herman said, “Don’t screech, Freddy. You’ll sound effeminate.” Eddie Benson tossed me in the backseat.

I caught my breath and caressed my kidneys. Parker wore civvies. Parker spoke in his foghorn South Dakota drawl.

“Joan Hubbard Horvath, the widow of the man you killed in the line of duty, was murdered in her home last night. Her kids were off on a school trip. It appears to be a hot-prowl sex snuff. The house was ransacked, and the woman was strangled and stabbed. We found a total of fourteen envelopes bearing your fingerprints. Two of them were stuffed with twenty- and fifty-dollar bills.”

Parker paused. He evil-eyed me. He made with the malocchio.

“The victim fought. We found beard and skin fragments under her nails, and I can see that you’re unmarked. Her assailant had AB-negative blood. Your PD file reveals that you have O positive. This exonerates you as the actual killer, but not as an accomplice or a material witness. I would advise you to provide me with a plausible explanation for your prints on those envelopes.”

I evil-eyed Parker. I made my malocchio more hopped-up and hateful than his.

“I killed Ralph Mitchell Horvath under the PD’s implied dictum that cop killers must die. He was unarmed. I planted a throwdown gun on him and shot him in the back. Then the cop he shot recovered, which rubbed me the wrong way. I’ve been laying penance payments on Joan Horvath, going back five years. I’ve never spoken to her. You’re a good Catholic boy, Bill. You get the guilts sometimes, so you know how it is.”

Parker lit a cigarette and blew smoke in my face. I coughed the smoke back in his face.

“There’s more to this, and most of it makes you look bad. First off, we’ve seen you talking to the Beverly Hills PD, and we make you and your boys for the 459 on Senator Kennedy’s hotel suite. You screwed up the print transparencies, though. You laid down prints for all three of those shitheels who’ve been terrorizing Beverly Hills. That was a big mistake. George Collier Akin left the gang two weeks ago. We have very sound intelligence on this. He insisted on killing the girl they kidnapped, but Brown and Dulange held him back, and the girl was released. George Collier Akin is alleged to be casing solo hot-prowl jobs in my jurisdiction, and I’ve told Max and the boys to find him and kill him. They may seek to consult you in the course of their investigation, and I would advise you to cooperate. It might prevent the Beverly Hills PD from filing charges on you.”

Parker paused. Parker went Shoo, you cockroach. I stepped out of the car. The Hats surrounded me, hail-fellows all.

Max Herman shook my hand. “Here’s to you, Freddy.”

Red Stromwall shook my hand. “Be good, kid.”

Harry Crowder shook my hand. “We miss you, Freddy. Keep your chin up.”

Eddie Benson shook my hand. “Stay clean, dipshit.”

I cut free and stumbled back into Googie’s. I beelined for the front door and plowed busboys and waiters, en masse. I knocked over drink trays. Customers went eeeek and crap-your-pants cringed. I grabbed a double scotch off Gene “the Mean Queen’s” table and guzzled it, sans consent. I capsized a waitress and sent milk shakes and club sandwiches airborne. I crashed out the front door and snagged my Packard pimp sled at the curb.

The Strip was one block north. I blew a red light and whipped westbound. Ciro’s was close. I floored the gas and flamed through late-nite traffic. I swung hard right and racked my undercarriage all up the porte cochere. I fender-bended Ferraris and Facel-Vegas and didn’t give a fucking shit. Two car-park kids tried to corner me. I decked them and downed them and bashed them in the balls. They went ball-bashed falsetto and mewed for their mamas in Miami and Milwaukee.

I crashed into the club. The floor was packed tight-tight. Johnnie Ray stomped the stage. He woman-wiggled and wanton-warbled his hit song, “Cry.” He wiggled the mike and wailed like a jilted fishwife. He sobbed, he sighed, he tossed his spit curl and spun his hearing aid out into the crowd.

Joi and Liberace sat front-row center. I charged up. Patrons saw me. They stood up and went Whoa and Halt now!!!!! I dumped waiters and a fat broad at Bing Crosby’s table. I made the front row. Joi and Lee looked up. Joi lip-synched, “You loser cocksucker.”

I poured her Tom Collins down her dress and ice-cubed her chichis. Joi roundhoused me and fell flat on her ass. Patrons yowled. Johnnie blew his crescendo and cried for real. I dumped Joi’s purse and found her Seconal stash. I guzzled out the contents. I chased five fat red devils with Lee’s double martini. Lee looooved it. He pinched my cheek and swooned. I lurched and lunged and levitated my way out of the club. I slid into my sled and sluiced eastbound on Sunset.