Джеймс Эллрой - Widespread Panic

I formed a 459 ring. They worked my downtown foot beat. They popped pawnshops and dumped dope-pushing pharmacies. I fingered the jobs. My gang cadged cash and dope. They were 2:00 a.m. creepers. I was their Rogue Cop Rajah.

I’m corrosively corruptible and tempted by the take. I live for the scurrilous score. It’s my existential fate. I had a squaresville home life in bumfuck Massachusetts. My mom and dad loved me. Nobody butt-fucked me in my bassinet. I live by a cool-cat code. There’s shit I won’t do. My code got catastrophized on 2/4/49.

I hogged a hall mirror. I combed my hair and noosed my necktie. Sy Devore tailored my formfit uniform. The squadroom buzzed baaaad all around me. It’s a Code 3 squawk — shoot-out at 9th and Figueroa.

Two men down. One traffic cop/one heist geek. The cop’s nudging near death. The geek suffered superficial wounds. Both men — ensconced at Georgia Street Receiving, right now.

The squadroom bebop buzzed. The squadroom phones rang incessant. The buzz bombarded me. I heard murderous murmurs laced with a lynch-mob gestalt.

I heard heavy footfalls. Booze breath bristled me.

“If you’re through admiring yourself, I’ve got something.”

I turned around. It’s a Robbery bull named Harry Fremont. Harry has a rancid rep. He stomped two pachucos dead during the zoot suit riots. He pimped transvestite whores out of a he-she bar. He was shit-faced drunk at noon.

“Yeah, Harry?”

Harry said, “Be useful, kid. There’s a cop killer at Georgia Street. Chief Horrall thinks you should take care of it. This is an opportunity you don’t want to pass up.”

I said, “Take care of what? The cop he shot isn’t dead.”

Harry rolled his eyes. He passed me a key fob. He said, “4-A-32. It’s in the watch commander’s space. Look under the backseat.”

I got it. Harry locked on my look. He went Nooowww, he gets it. He winked and waltzed away from me.

I steadied myself and stood still. I loaded up on that lynch-mob gestalt. I lurched through the squadroom and zombie-walked downstairs. I hit the garage.

I found the watch commander’s space. There’s 4-A-32. The key fits the ignition. The garage was dark. Ceiling pipes leaked. Water drops turned wiggy colors and morphed into wild shapes.

I gunned the gas and pulled out onto Spring Street. I drove sloooooow. The heist geek was jacked in the jail ward. It was a lockup-transfer ruse. It was forty-three years ago. It’s still etched in Sin -emascope and surround sound. I can still see the passersby on the street.

There it is. There’s Georgia Street Receiving.

The jail ward sat on the north side. The squarejohn ward sat to the south. A narrow pathway bisected the buildings. It hit me then:

They know you’ll do it. They know you’re that kind of guy.

I reached under the backseat. I pulled out transfer papers for Ralph Mitchell Horvath. I grabbed a .32 snubnose revolver.

I put the gun in my front pocket and grabbed the papers. I slid out of the sled. I popped down the pathway and went through the jail-ward door.

The deskman was PD. He pointed to a punk cuffed to a drainpipe. The punk wore a loafer jacket and slit-bottomed khakis. He sported a left-arm splint. He was acne-addled and chancre-sored. He vibed hophead. He looked smack-back insolent.

The deskman did the knife-across-throat thing. I handed him the papers and uncuffed and recuffed the punk. The deskman said, “Bon voyage, sweetheart.”

I shoved the punk outside and pointed him up the pathway. He walked ahead of me. I couldn’t feel my feet. I couldn’t feel my legs. My heart hammered on overdrive. I lost my limbs somewhere.

There’s no telltale windows. There’s no pedestrians on Georgia Street. There’s no witnesses.

I pulled the gun from my pocket and fired over my own head. The gun kicked and lashed life back in my limbs. My pulse topped 200 rpms.

The punk wheeled around. He moved his lips. A word came out as a squeak. I pulled my service revolver and shot him in the mouth. His teeth exploded. He dropped. I placed the throwdown piece in his right hand.

He tried to say “Please.” This dream’s a routine reenactment. The details veer and vary. The “Please” always sticks. I’m alive. He’s not. That’s the baleful bottom line.

The cop lived. He sustained a through-and-through wound. He was back on duty inside a week.

Vicious vengeance. Wrathfully wrong in retrospect. A crack in the crypt of my soul. Harry Fremont passed the word. Freddy O. is kosher. Chief C. B. Horrall sent me a jug of Old Crow. The grand jury sacked him two months later. He got caught up in a call-girl racket. An interim chief was brought in.

Ralph Mitchell Horvath. 1918–1949. Car thief/stickup man/weenie wagger. Hooked on yellow jackets and muscatel.

Ralphie left a widow and two kids. I got the gust-wind guilts and shot them penance payoffs. Money orders. Once a month. Fake signatures. All anonymous. Dig — Ralphie’s dead, and I’m not.

Memory Lane. I’m fetching fine in ’49. I’m full-fuck filleted in ’92.

I holed up at my pad. I lingered through Labor Day. I looped the lane and took last looks at my loved ones, lewd ones, and lost ones.

I scoured scrapbooks. The old photos got my gears going. I’m there with Frank, Dino, and Sammy. I broke legs for them. They cringe and crawl away. There’s boocoo pix of my bed at my old pad. I called it “the Landing Strip.” I was Mr. Three-Way then. I swung with stewardesses, starlets, and stars. Liz Taylor and I swung with a stew named “Barb” on many groin-grabbing occasions. There’s pix of my lost love, Joi Lansing. There’s pix of my true love, Lois Nettleton. I was young and hung then. Aaaahhhh — sweet motherfucking mystery of life!!!!!

There’s my dictionary and thesaurus. They were teaching tools for the wrathful writers at Confidential. Utilize alliteration and instill intensive slurs. Homosexuals are “licentious lispers.” Lesbians are “beefcake butches.” Drunks are “bibulous bottle hounds” and “dyspeptic dipsos.” Vulgarize and vitalize. Create a craaazy populist parlance. Make it sinfully siiiiiing.

My pals popped over on Labor Day. We built burgers and boozed big. They left at 2:00 a.m. A male nurse corps shagged them and shot them down to their limos. Walkers wobbled, oxygen tanks toppled and rolled. It rubbed me raw, Daddy-O.

I settled in and watched a Dragnet rerun. I bought the juicehead judge in four of Jack Webb’s drunk-driving beefs. I shtupped Jack’s wife, soaring songstress Julie London. She said I was the biggest and the best.

I noshed a dozen Famous Amos cookies. I’d seen the episode before. Sergeant Joe Friday busts some hirsute hippie punks. I missed Jack. We shared some yuks. He kicked off back in—

A hydrogen bomb hit my heart. Mushroom clouds claimed me. Monsters morphed out of them. Johnnie Ray. Monty Clift. Politicians pounded and movie stars mauled. It’s a calamitous kaleidoscope of condemnation.

They jumped me. They went J’accuse, j’accuse, j’accuse!!!!! I gasped. My left arm exploded. I hit the medical-emergency button on my phone.

Then some pixilated pops. They’re the Herald ’s horror headlines. Tattle Tyrant, Mr. Fear, Shaman of Shame. Then a crunching crash. My door’s down. There’s a mask on my mouth.

I’m dead. Thence comes Purgatory and this confession.

Downtown L.A.

10/4/52

Central Division. The doofus day watch. Freewheeling Freddy’s at loose ends.

I disbanded my 459 gang. My main men got hooked on Big “H.” They were decidedly desperate and snitch-prone. I’d gambled away my gelt. I was living on a schmuck cop’s pay and was suffused with the blues. William H. Parker became Chief in ’50. He instituted righteous reforms and riddled the ranks with a phalanx of finks to sniff out miscreants and misconduct. I drove a Packard pimpmobile. I won it in a darktown dice game. Parker’s punks tattled to the hellhound Jefe. I got called in and grindingly grilled. Parker warned me not to be a Bolshevik. He said, “I’ve got my four eyes on you.”