Джеймс Эллрой - Widespread Panic

“Hollywood could use a guy like you.”

I turned around. There’s Jolting Joi. She knows from opportunity.

“You mean I could use Hollywood.”

She kissed me. I kissed her back. That’s how it all started.

I know from opportunity. It costs money, honey. I heisted a bookie room two days later.

A Hitler mask hid my face. I entered with an empty grocery sack and exited with four g’s. I blew half the swag on Joi. I bankrolled my biz with the remainder. A Beverly Hills pharmacist fed me piles of pills to push. Harry Fremont sold me eight ice-cold roscoes. Joi scared up a scrape doctor. I told him I’d be out seeking nice-girls-in-a-jam. Guns/dope/a felonious physician. My girlfriend as conduit to a coruscatingly corrupt culture.

Joi hit Hollywood in ’42. She was fourteen. She matriculated at MGM and met Everybody. She was luridly low-rent and confoundingly connected. She knew Everything. She was a one-babe Baedeker. She knew bartenders, bellhops, busboys, call girls, casting directors, and cads. She knew pornographers, pushers, and pimps. She knew troves of tramps in trouble. She was out to crown me King Shakedown. Joi greased Holly weird with my handouts. Scores of scurrilous scamsters licked up my largesse. We were buying bleak and blowsy blackmail dirt.

I worked LAPD. I scored an off-duty gig. I was now the security boss at the Hollywood Ranch Market. It was licentiously legendary and open-all-nite. I bagged shoplifters and check kiters. I lived within my means and never gave Bill Parker’s goons a hook to entrap me. I took Joi to Ciro’s and the Mocambo. I saw Intelligence Squad cops cataloguing the scene. I braced them as a brother. I ballyhooed my big nights, financed by big days at the track.

I sold guns. I sold pills. I brokered abortions. I hawked a filthy film called Mae West’s Menagerie. Shack jobs were verboten for LAPD men. Joi and I trysted at her mom’s pad in Redondo. She said the word was moving out and metastasizing: Freddy O.’s The Man to See.

Gigs rolled in. I pounded a perv who’d whipped out his whang on Duke Wayne’s wife. Duke paid me five yards and gave me the skinny on Red Hollywood. Dino Martin called me. He knocked up his maid with soon-to-hatch triplets. I bribed a Customs cop and got Dolorous Dolores deported. Dino paid me two g’s and dished the dirt on a stunning string of starlets. They bounced on my bed and dug up dirt on my regular retainer. Want C-notes and riotous ruts in the hay? Call Mr. Nine Inches.

I got Lana Turner a scrape. She banged an alto sax named Art Pepper in a bout of bebop abandon. Putzy Pepper wanted her to keep the kid and threatened exposure. I planted two reefers in his sax case and buzzed the fuzz. He got nine months at Wayside Honor Rancho.

Joi knew a classy clique of Hancock Park housewives. They were unbearably unbodied and entrenched in ennui. They needed furtive fucking. She saw money in it. Put “pimp” on my résumé. I’m on Stud Patrol as of now.

Opportunity is love. That cold concept socked my sick soul.

Joi said Liberace had a job for me. We were in the sack at her mom’s place. Her eyes twinkled and twirled me some all-new way. She drew dollar signs in the air.

The moment vibrates in VistaVision and swervy Swish-O-Scope. A piano noodles a nocturne and pounds a polonaise.

Coldwater Canyon

4/29/53

A fey factotum met me. The yard was tropically tricked out and football-field size.

Flamingos flitted. Toucans tooled and bit bugs. A path cut through ten-foot-high fronds and floral explosions. Everything was green, purple, and pink.

We hit a clearing. It was paved with stones embossed with musical clefs. The pool was shaped like a piano. Liberace sat in a deck chair. A leopard with a mink collar snoozed at his feet.

The factotum sashayed off. I pulled up a deck chair. The leopard stirred and snarled at me. I scratched his neck and kissed his snout. He went back to sleep.

Liberace said, “You’re fearless. You’re the kind of man I need.”

“I’m here to help you out, sir. Joi said you’ve got a guy bugging you.”

The factotum sashayed back with cocktails. Two highball glasses glowed pink. The guy served us and skedaddled. My drink tasted like radioactive bubble gum.

Liberace said, “Bottoms up.”

I yukked. “A kid’s putting the boots to you, right? Pay up, or he’ll rat you to the Legion of Decency. All those dago mob guys that book your act in Vegas will hightail it. Your TV show will be canceled if word gets out you go Greek.”

Liberace sighed. “Inimitably candid, and so, so true. He’s a dishwasher at Perino’s. What was I thinking?”

I sipped my pink drink. “Pictures?”

“Of course, dear heart. He lured me to a motel with a wall peek.”

A hi-fi speaker sparked and kicked on. Judy Garland belted, “Someday he’ll come along / The man I love.” The leopard lolled and licked his balls. Liberace goo-goo-talked him.

“Five thou, sir. You get the pictures and the negatives, along with my assurance that it won’t happen again.”

Liberace pouted. His chest heaved. Sequins popped off his toga. The leopard loped to the pool and arced his ass over the edge. A giant shit ensued.

The factotum ran up. He wielded a turd-scoop contraption. Liberace reached under his chair and snagged a scrapbook.

“Ex-convicts are a weakness of mine, I’m chagrined to say. I’ve got mug shots of him, and quite a few other rough-trade conquests. It’s my new hobby. I paste pictures, when I’m not wowing my fans or practicing Chopin.”

I grabbed the book and leafed through it. It was the fucking lavender lodestone. I counted twenty-six K-Y cowboys wearing neck boards. Names/dates/penal-code numbers. A smutty smorgasbord of malignant maleness. Parole holds and prosty beefs galore.

Liberace jabbed a pic of one Manolo Sanchez. The guy vibed baleful bantamweight.

“He broke my heart, while his evil lezzie sister took snapshots. Feel free to get tough.”

I nodded and flipped ahead. Three glum glamour boys popped off the page. Ward Wardell, Race Rockwell, Donkey Don Eversall. All booked for possession of pornography.

I pointed to the pics. “Blue-movie actors, right? They peddle it on the side. You see the movies, you get a yen, you make a phone call.”

“That’s correct. I went to a screening at Michael Wilding and Liz Taylor’s house. Michael screened Locker Room Lust and Jailhouse Heat, and supplied the referral.”

“Referral” ripped me. “Could these guys get it up for women?”

Liberace whooped. “Could, can, and do, sweetheart. And Donkey Don is the eighth wonder of the world, if you follow my drift.”

I tingled. I thought Parlay. I saw dollar signs and movie-star movement on my Landing Strip.

“So, Michael Wilding’s a gay caballero?”

“In spades, love. His house is known as the ‘Fruit Stand,’ which perturbs lovely Liz no end.”

I yukked. “And Liz wants a divorce, so she can move on to her next husband and break the all-time world record?”

Liberace slapped his knees. “Yes, and she’s pulling ahead of your girlfriend in that department.”

I cracked my knuckles. Liberace swooned. The cat almost creamed in his jeans.

“Tell Liz to meet me at the Beverly Hills Hotel, tomorrow night. Fill her in on my résumé.”

Liberace re -swooned. The leopard snarled and shooed a toucan up a tree.

Perino’s was high swank and old money. It catered to sterile stiffs and dotty dowagers. I drove over at close-up time and parked by the back kitchen door. It was whipped wide open. Sassy Sanchez was scour-scrubbing pots.