Джеймс Эллрой - Widespread Panic

I pulled into Stan’s. A comely carhop cadre caught sight of Big Freddy O. Babs and I go back. We badger-gamed businessmen in my cop days. Babs snared the schnooks at the Kibitz Room at Canter’s Delicatessen. She lured them to the Lariat Motel on Lankershim. She socked the saps into the saddle and made with the moans. I kicked the door in and played irate husband. I glommed the gelt and kicked the cads back out the door.

Babs roller-skated over. She wore red-and-white jodhpurs and a too-tight jersey top. She said, “Here’s trouble.” She hooked a tray to my passenger-side door.

I dropped a C-note on the tray. Babs got the gestalt. She got in and sat beside me. The C-note went poof!!!

“Okay, I’ll play.”

“I thought you might want to.”

Babs scooched down and swung her legs up. Her skate boots nudged her knees and fit fetishistic. She posed pouty and ran the rollers on my dashboard.

“I’m on my break for the next fifteen minutes. Before you start, let me state no more shakedowns. I’m not going back to the Kibitz Room or the Lariat Motel.”

I laffed and lit a cigarette. Babs bummed a smoke and lit it off my lighter.

“ Freddy, the point of all this is—”

“Steve Cochran. The smut film he’s making, and don’t ask me how I know about it.”

Babs said, “Ha-ha. You’re jealous, because Joi’s in the flick, and she left you for Steve. I don’t blame you, I’d be jealous, too. Ha-ha, and too bad for Joi, because as crummy men go, she’s gone from the frying pan into the fire.”

I rebuffed the rude remark. “Update me. The film, who Steve’s conned into appearing, the start date, the whole schmear.”

Babs shrugged. “Smut’s smut, and I know from smut on an intimate level. Okay, Steve’s wrapping Private Hell 36 this week, so we’ll start pretty soon. Probably within the next two weeks. Lana Turner, Lex Barker, and Gene Tierney have dropped out, which I know don’t surprise you. Steve’s stuck with me, Joi, and Anita O’Day, and he’s recruiting an additional ten girls out of one of the call services some of us have been known to work for, which makes the full thirteen women that Steve and his big dick will repopulate the world with, after the A-bomb wipes everybody else on Earth out. Need I say that Steve’s hipped on the A-bomb like nobody I’ve ever seen.”

I went Don’t stop now. Babs rolled her rollers on my red leather dashboard. It rubbed me wrong. I nudged her knees and kiboshed it.

Babs tapped ash out the window. “The premiere is sometime later this spring, in Harry Cohn’s rec room. Smut’s smut, and what’s smut without some straitlaced boys to let their back hair down while they watch it. And since Harry’s Harry, and a tyrant, a perv, and, most especially, a suck-up, these are some powerful boys, as in Senator Bill Knowland, Senator Joe McCarthy — if he don’t trip on his dick between now and this so-called ‘premiere’ — and Senator Jack Kennedy, who I know you know from, but probably not on the intimate level that I do.”

“Why would Jack’s name be in Steve’s address book? Why would Jack and Steve be calling each other, regularly?”

“Because Steve’s Jack’s pimp and dope supplier in L.A. Because Steve rolls left, and Jack’s a barely suppressed bleeding heart, right below the surface.”

I dipped through the dish. I strung it and strained it and microscoped it minutely. Nothing surprised me. Babs bops banal, so far.

“Claire Klein. I know you trick three-ways with her, and don’t ask me how I know. If you start by saying she scares you, it wouldn’t surprise me — because she scares me, too.”

Babs made the hex sign. Babs waved faux wolfsbane. Babs made the sign of the cross.

“Claire don’t scare me. Claire terrifies me. She likes to shave men’s pubic hair with her switchblade, and half the tricks we go out on love it. She carries a Makarov pistol with a silencer in her purse, and we’ve been tricking with these Russian consulate guys, and they speak Russian with her, so I don’t know what they’re saying—”

I cut in. “ And V. J. Jerome, that Commie culture-vulture guy—”

Babs cut back in. “Yeah, there’s him, and Claire’s cutting side deals, to swing with these Russian guys and shave their wives, and all the time she’s pressing them, and she’s digging for leads on some Commie scientist back in the ’30s and ’40s, who’s got this weirdo ‘Robin Redbreast’ code name, and then she’s pressing them on some society writer named Constance Woodard, and about this time I lose track of all Claire’s crazy shit, and start praying to the Good Lord that I never have to work with her again.”

I drove to Googie’s. I perv-peeped Claire through a back window. I trembled. I smeared nose prints on the glass.

Claire sat in her back booth. She sipped absinthe and nibbled french fries. She wore tight blue jeans. Note the knife bulge on her left leg.

I walked in. The dinner din diminuendoed. There was just my heartbeat and hers. I trembled and tumbled toward her. She saw me. She read me right and tumbled telepathic. She knew that I knew.

I sat down. She read me. Here’s fright-fraught Freddy. Freddy’s got the frets.

“I saw the bug mounts when Babs and I tricked with V. J. Jerome. I thought it might get back to you. Babs even joked about it. ‘Half these trick pads are hot-wired, and you never know who’s listening. Most likely it’s Freddy Otash.”

I guzzled her absinthe. I grabbed the goblet too hard. The glass sheared and shattered. Sharp shards cut my hand.

Claire pressed her napkin into the palm and balled my fist around it. Claire unbuttoned my shirt cuffs and rolled up the sleeves in one go.

She ran her hands up my arms. She tugged at the hairs. She removed the napkin and blotted blood off my hand.

“You should assume that I want you to know everything that I do and say, and that it’s all in our common interest. ‘Opportunity is love,’ as you’ve put it before. I’m sure you’ve spoken to Babs. And I’m sure she’s told you a few things. You know why I’m here in L.A., and I know you’re not here to deter me or prevent me from doing what I intend to do. From here on in, we should credit each other with the ability to learn and extrapolate. We’ll have our moment together when we’ve accomplished what we need to, and it will be all that much sweeter then.”

I said, “Robin Redbreast” and “Connie Woodard.” My voice sheared. Claire pulled her shiv and picked glass shards out of my hand.

Stretch said, “You’re scared. It’s like you’ve seen the world’s worst ghost.”

My bungalow bid me to safety. Stretch was safe. Lance was safe. I needed that. I wanted to be someplace dark and depraved with Claire Klein.

I held my hand up. I heal fast. My cuts had crusted into crisp little crosses. I’d been stigmatized.

Claire was a Navy nurse, circa ’43. Claire knew from knives. She cleansed my wound with high-test absinthe. She placed my hand on her breast and held it there. A part of me passed into her.

“Uncle Freddy, you’re shaking. And what’s with your hand? Don’t tell me you’ve had some kind of religious visitation.”

I walked up to my wall graph. Confidential ’s daily sales had spiked spectacularly. I scanned my treacherous troika graph. I drew arrows between Operation Rock Wife and the Cochran Gig. I linked former to latter and wrote “Claire Klein & Babs Payton” below. I arrow-linked “V. J. Jerome” & “Connie Woodard.” I wrote “Russian consulate guys” & “Robin Redbreast” below that.

Stretch walked over. Her eyes grazed the graph and ran right to “Robin Redbreast.” She got goose bumps. They sprouted and spread up her arms.