Джеймс Эллрой - Widespread Panic

5/14/55

A.M. shitwork. Phone work and field reports. Two per Rebel Without a Cause. Mendacious memos to Bondage Bob Harrison and Bill Parker.

I called Nasty Nat at KKXZ. Pathos pounded me. He lived at the station. His noxious news: last nite’s trace went blooey. Nat said he’d try again tonite. I bid the big bopster bon voyage.

Miss Blind Item. You’ve got me torched and scorched.

I wrote my report to Bondage Bob. I delivered the dish on Nick Ray’s Afrika Korps and described the pustulant panty raid in delirious detail. I omitted Jimmy Dean’s presence. I owed Jimmy that. I exorbitantly expanded my memo to Bill Parker. I reported Robbie Molette’s dish per Führer Nick’s “escalation” escapades. Dig, Chief: He’s planning hot-prowl 459’s and liquor-store 211’s. He’s the maladroit mastermind of the “motivation” crime. Addled actors bow to his bidding. Nazi Nick’s applied the Stanislavskiesque stamp.

I called Confidential ’s messenger service. A car schlepped down from Sunset and Vine and picked up the pouches. Chop, chop, fucker — deliver them now.

My desk phone rang. I picked up. Bondage Bob bored straight in.

“Lew Wasserman just called me. Rock’s at the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Station. He was booked under his kosher name of Roy Fitzgerald, and it looks like he was drunk or maybe Mickey Finn’d, he might have been blowing some guy in a parked car, and what’s for sure is he swung on a deputy, so now he’s in custody. All this means I need you and your boys to get him out and clean him up before the press gets wind of it.”

I said, “ Jawohl, boss. I’ll jump on it.”

Bob bored back in. “We’ve got to safeguard our exclusive on the ‘Rock marries a woman’ front. Lew’s a hundred percent behind us on this. He wants to call the piece ‘Rock’s Rocky Road to Marital Bliss,’ and he’s a hog for the eternal-triangle bit that you and Phyllis have cooked up. That means you’ve got to find us a bait girl to play the other woman. You dig, bubi? I want a fresh face, which means nobody we’ve used before. If Rock falls in the shit on this Sheriff’s deal, we can lay the bait girl off as the ‘sexy succubus who led the righteously religious Rockster to tasty temptation,’ or some such happy horseshit.”

I said, “I’ll have Rock out inside of an hour.”

Bob said, “Lay off the kraut jive. I’m one twenty-fourth Jewish, and I’m touchy about it.”

Ward Wardell and Race Rockwell rendezvoused with me. We surged up surreptitious. We slid in slick and parked by the jail-exit door. Bondage Bob called ahead and bought the bail bond. Rock stood ready to roll.

Race remained with my sled and sluiced the engine. I’d called ahead and pledged the jail deputies a yard per. Ward and I juked through the jail door. We caught a corridor and sidled up to cellblock row. There’s Rock. He’s signing autographs for a filthy phalanx of his fellow jailbirds. Wheww!!! — they’re malodorous Menschen — winos, weedheads, K-Y cowboys caught in the act.

Race wrangled Rock. I ran interference. Rock hurled hand kisses back to the boys and ran with us. He was sweaty and swack-back on some kind of hop. His feet flip-flopped on the floor.

We made the door. I barged us out. We ran right into a riotous raft of reporters.

Banzai!!!! Sneak attack!!!! It’s Pearl Harbor perpetrated by the putzoid Fourth Estate!!!!

Flashbulb flare. Hurled questions. I heard Rock, Rock, Rock and ARE THOSE RUMORS TR—

A cordon constricted around us. I pulled my belt sap. Ward pulled his belt sap. We sap-slapped cameras. Flashbulbs shattered and sheared into shards. We sap-bashed heads and scoured scalps and hurled Rock ahead of us. We slid into my sled three across. Race Rockwell goosed the gas. We surfed out to San Vicente and nailed it north to the Strip.

Dig it. Escape from Stalag 69. Rock could top-line the flick. He yukked, I yukked. Ward and Race yukked. There’s blood in my soul and torn-out teeth stuck to my sap.

Race wound west on Sunset and dipsy-doodled south and north on Crescent Heights. Rock and I hopped out at Googie’s. The coffee cave was midmorning lulled. We took my table. Debrief me, Daddy. Escape from Stalag 69. What’s the priapic prelude here?

I fed Rock my flask and two dexies. I fed myself, likewise. Rock said, “Don’t tell me. You want me to lay out the whole sordid tale.”

I said, “That’s right.”

Rock lit a cigarette. “Here’s what I recall. I was visiting this kid actor, Nick Adams. Why? Because I sensed susceptibility. He’s got a little rental house, up north of the Marmont. Okay, I’m there. Nothing much is happening, except I go to the bathroom, and I notice this spare bedroom piled up with hi-fis, TV sets, movie cameras, and all kinds of radio consoles and electrical gear. It’s like Nick’s running a Sears, Roebuck out of this one room. Then Nick makes me a drink, and there had to be something in it, because I go gaga. And... well... there might have been another guy there, but I’m not sure... and... well... the next thing I remember is waking up in jail.”

Nick Adams. “Motivation, escalation.” Robbie Molette’s 459 dish. Rock’s Sears, Roebuck shit. It radiated Burglary Swag.

“I’ll take you home. We’ve got that fake-wife caper coming up, you’ll have two good-looking women fighting over you, and you should get some rest.”

Rock went Why me, Lord?

I pulled into Stan’s Drive-In. Babs Payton knew from bait girls. She had a history with Nick Ray. She cadged courses at the Actors Studio West. She knew all within her limited perv view. She tattled all for cash and cocaine.

I’d dropped off Rock and rolled by the Ranch Market. I read my two message slips. Bondage Bob and Bill Parker called. I returned the calls. I bagged big bravos for my Rebel Without a Cause report. Bob said the Escape from Stalag 69 cost him six g’s. It covered cameras smashed and busted bones set at Central Receiving. He laffed it off.

The Rebel report and Rock’s tricky triangle made the money minuscule. Parker parsed attaboys. He told me Ernie Roll rhapsodized per the Rebel revelations. Meet us at Ernie’s office, 4:00 tomorrow.

Babs skated up. She did her signature sideways dip and passed me a pineapple malt. The malt metastasized. A mushroom cloud toxified me. Babs laced my malts. Bonded bourbon and Benzedrine bits brought the brew to a head.

I slid our seats back. We got cozy. Babs tucked her legs up and skimmed her skate wheels on the dashboard.

“I need a hundred, Freddy. Regardless of how many topics we cover.”

“Okay. Let’s start with the Actors Studio. I’m looking for something very specific here. Do they keep a radio and TV tape library on the premises? I’m looking to identify a specific actress by her voice.”

Babs lit a cigarette. “Yeah, they do. Their members put on these earmuff thingamajigs and watch the TV and movie stuff on some monitor-type gizmos.”

I sipped my malt. The depth charge detonated. Oooooohhh, Daddy—

“Second topic. I’m looking for a bait girl. It’s a long-range deal, and I’m looking for a new-kid-in-town, who-are- you ? type.”

Babs blew smoke rings. “Let’s come back to that one. I’ve got to put my thinking cap on.”

“Okay, here’s topic three. Nick Ray. I know you worked as an extra on They Live by Night, so that’s got to ring some bells.”

Babs whooped. “That’s the three-cherry jackpot and two chapters in my book, Hollywood Creeps I Have Known. To begin with, he’s a perv of the fake-daddy ilk. He likes it young, and he likes sending young actors out on ‘motivational missions,’ which he films, and I assume that that would be for kicks in the moment and blackmail purposes somewhere down the line. Do you like it so far?”