Джеймс Эллрой - Widespread Panic

There’s a desk/a swivel chair/a typewriter. There’s three drawers packed with dumb desk supplies. Connie’s column for today was tucked in the typewriter. The Marlborough School for Girls, the winter ’54 ball, the Hancock Park elite attends.

I checked the top drawer. There’s a red leather diary marked “1954.” Yesterday was March 20. I dipped to the date and read this:

“I fear what I presume will be Senator McCarthy’s last stand before a long-overdue U.S. Senate censure. I fear what will happen when less strident anti-Communists take up the cause that once he owned and has now all too overtly besmirched, and that those subtle fascists will assume an aura of respectability. I fear that my Party membership will be exposed, along with those in my cell — which seems likely, as Senator Joe has set up shop here in Los Angeles, rather covertly, and seems determined to do damage to those I love in the city that I love and call home. All of us have sworn allegiance to the Soviet Union. How could any sane person not? But I fear that we will never have the chance to put forth our public case, as we conduct our more pertinent tasks in secret. McCarthy has been our most consistent goad and the most persistent face of fascist vituperation since the early days in Korea. What will happen when he goes? We require intense persecution to prove the solvency of our war on capital. We must never be tolerated. Tolerance militates against revolution. We must be violently opposed, so that our reaction in kind will be considered the only true and sane reaction by the oppressed masses that we strive to liberate.”

Woooo!!!!! That is some dippy dialectic and convoluted confusion!!!!! Connie’s a stagnant Stalinist — with Uncle Joe now a year dead!!!!!

I dipped diary pages backward. It was more, more, more — maladroitly more of the same. I hit February 17. Simple sentiment stunned me and stopped me in my tracks.

“JMH is dead. She is dead, the only she I’ve ever known. It was in the papers and briefly on the radio. The police suspect a burglary gone awry.”

I flipped back to New Year’s. It was all agitprop and agitation. I got no more Joan jolts, no incriminating initials, no named names.

I bopped to the bedroom. I saw more red walls. They were garlanded with Goyaesque portraits of women. Ooooh — they were nuke-bomb nude and clad in the wicked wardrobe of revolution. They wore black boots and fur-trimmed hats emblazoned with hammer and scythe. They wielded whips and laid the lash on men marked “Fascist Oppressor.”

I got it. It’s Goya as comic-book artiste. It’s savage satire. It’s the annihilating antithesis of Connie Woodard’s toooooooo -tame life as a Hearst hack. It’s communism as contraband pornography. It’s a staggering strain of the jejune jive WE ALL jerk off to. It’s the jack-off juvenilia that has enslaved half the world.

I opened a closet door. Connie’s spinster threads channeled Chanel No. 5. A top shelf featured comely camisoles and slithery slips. I ran a hand under them. Scented envelopes slid out. I knew they were lesbian love letters.

I let the butch billet-doux lie. A file cabinet couched against the wall caught my eye. Three file drawers. All unlocked. I tornado-tore through them.

Red-leather diaries. Connie’s Red message, beaming back to ’38. The Moscow show trials. Connie justifies Stalin’s purges. She confoundingly cosigns death, death, and more death. There’s photographs tucked between pages. Connie cultivates young women and preens proud with them. Perdition, catch my soul — there She is.

Connie and Joan Hubbard. A UCLA backdrop. The foto is dated 8/12/41. There’s Joan. She’s twenty-two. It’s faded Kodachrome color. Connie’s russet-haired and knock-kneed at forty. Joan wears a red beret.

I tore through Connie’s August ’41 diary. I went to 8/12/41 and found this:

“I spent time with Joan H. today. I think she’s ready to join the Party. I told her my cell was small and all were utterly loyal to one another. She’d be safe there.”

It wasn’t enough. I wanted more of what all of this was. I found diaries dated up to 1946. Connie’s prose went crypto-clipped. Initials replaced names. “All of this” had to be Commie cell minutes.

I hit my first “JH” in May ’42. I followed “JH” at weekly intervals, up through V-J Day. “JH,” “JH,” “JH.” My Joan’s a certified subversive. I know who “CW” is. Who’s “SA”? Who’s “RJC”? Who’s “EPD”? I didn’t know and didn’t care. I only wanted Joan’s name and Connie’s scent on the pages.

JH, JH, JH. She’s mine throughout the war years. She’s left UCLA. I’m in the Marine Corps and dodging combat duty. She translates for the California State Senate. I join LAPD. JH, JH, JH. We’re into ’46 now. I’ll murder Joan’s husband in three years’ time—

Googie’s. My unfailing fallback and righteous retreat. The Tattle Tyrant held sway here. Confidential was king. Bondage Bob Harrison’s handouts bought me all the love I could take.

Late-a.m. tipsters almost toppled my table. Orson Welles snuffed the Black Dahlia. The rumor raged now. I told the tipsters to fuck off and bought them off with chump change. Joe McCarthy’s in town. No shit, Sherlock. Yeah — but he’s shacked at the Chateau Marmont with Danny Kaye. Okay — here’s ten scoots, don’t bug me, my heart’s heavy, and I’m all alone with some shattering shit.

Boo-hoo, boo-hoo. I’m in existential exile. I’ve got boocoo opportunity, but the love eludes me.

I wolfed pancakes and pondered my doofus dilemma. I told my wetback waiter to bring me a phone. I called Harry Fremont at the City Hall DB. Harry boo-hoo’d me. He hadn’t rigged a ruse or devised a diversion to get me inside Casa Connie. I told him I got inside. I trashed my tracks and blew a blistering shot at reentry. In the meantime, I’ll pay you to do this:

There’s Feds in town. They may be running rogue. They’re jungled up in jumpy juju with Joe McCarthy. They must have a field office somewhere. Find them and suborn them with Bondage Bob’s payola. I need three hours with their files.

Harry said, “And this pertains to Joanie?”

I said, “Yeah — it sure as shit does.”

Harry coughed up compliance. I hung up. Claire Klein and Rock Hudson sat down with me. They held hands. I held up my hand and showed them my stigmata. Claire laffed. Rock went Huh ?

They looked good together. They glowed. They were actors to their core. They were Strasbergites maimed by the Method. The homo heartthrob marries the sicko psychopath. This mock marriage sends them, Daddy-O.

Rock said, “You’re green at the gills, Freddy. You should take a Bromo and hit the sack.”

Claire said, “Freddy has things on his mind.”

I laffed. “Have you set a date yet?”

Rock lit a cigarette. “Jimmy’s working on it. He’s with Liz and me on Giant, you know. He thinks two ceremonies is the way to go. Claire’s Jewish, and I’m a Presbyterian. Jimmy wants to emphasize the interfaith angle. You know, one synagogue gig, and one church gig.”

Claire lit a cigarette. “There’s no need for Rock to convert. I know a rabbi who performs a good ceremony and works cheap. We met in the Sinai, back in ’48.”

Rock said, “Claire’s got a history.”

I said, “Don’t I know it.”

Autograph hounds hit the table. Rock threw up his hands and winked at Claire. I’m in demand, babe.

Claire winked at me. Rock signed autographs. Claire slipped me a note under the table. I peeped the piece of paper.

Tipster Claire. The insidious insider. She’s got news on the celeb smut film.