Джеймс Эллрой - Widespread Panic

Red lit a cigarette. “The Chief has a job for you. It pays three grand, cash, no counterfeit. It piggybacks a job you’re embarking on for Bob Harrison.”

I drained my drink. I faked a cough and dipped two dexies.

“He’s got me packing up listening posts, and disarming the bug-and-tap feeds. Let me hazard a guess. The Chief wants me to play the recordings extant and compile intel files.”

Max said, “Freddy was never dumb. He’s always known up from down.”

Red said, “I like Freddy, but I wouldn’t go that far.”

I blew smoke their way. “Sure, I’ll do it. I’m starting the gig for Bob tomorrow.”

Max twirled his glass. “You know what the Chief likes. You can’t go wrong with sex, politics, and California Penal Code violations.”

I noshed a bread stick. It was stagecraft. It covered my mean megrims and trembling tremens.

“I need a favor. I don’t think it’s a big one to ask.”

Max went tsk-tsk. “Snow job alert. I sense one coming.”

Red went tsk-tsk. “The shaky hands are always the tell.”

“I need a look at the Caryl Chessman master file, and the PD file on Janey Blaine.”

Max said, “No. Whatever you’re thinking of, whatever you may be planning, no good can come of it. The Chief looks askance at your fixation with dead and brutalized women.”

Red said, “No more dead-woman crusades, Freddy. That’s over and out. Chessman’s a dead issue, and Janey Blaine’s been avenged. You should know — we killed the man who killed her.”

Argyle North of Franklin

10/16/57

Shitwork. Divestment duty. I’m a wage slave. Lift that barge, tote that bale.

There’s six posts. Pack the furniture/box the bug-and-tap mounts. Take last listens. List damning dish Bill Parker would drool for. Look through bug-and-tap logs. Bootjack hot bug-and-tap tapes for Big Bill.

I started here. The Argyle post ran a loooooong -range transceiver. We bugged and tapped mid-Hollywood and the hip Hollywood Hills. Our bug-and-tap targets totaled twenty-four houses and apartments.

Film folk. Sullen subversives. Furtive fuck pads and nifty nests of stewardess call girls. Fly me — I’m Pam, Lizzie, Sally, Nancy, Kathy et al.

I scanned the logs. The indices listed bug-and-tap targets and their addresses. Tap callers were listed. Their call dates and times were marked. Two names nabbed me, straight off.

Ingrid Ellmore. Pan Am stew and poon panderess supreme. Ingrid invented the all-nite pajama party. She owned a six-bedroom A-frame on Bronson Hill. You got six girls/180-proof absinthe/all the poppable pills in the PDR. Ingrid had a heated pool. Ingrid had sauna and steam rooms. Two yards bought you the Debauch of the Damned. Ingrid rocked round the clock.

Ingrid’s call-in list. Note some names. AG Pat Brown, Mayor Norris Poulson. Baseball boss Leo Durocher. Sheriff Gene Biscailuz. TV titan Sid Caesar. Bumptious Buddy Hackett and lounge lizard Louis Prima.

I boosted three bug-and-tap boxes. I’d listen in and cherry-pick some choice shit for the Chief. This was a listen-at-your-leisure deal. The second name shrieked Listen Now!!!

Dalton Trumbo. Commie Caporegime. Bugged and tapped at his worker’s wigwam off Whitley Drive. Hollywood Ten hard-on. Gallivanting gadfly. Dig this name on his call-in list:

The Caryl Chessman Defense Committee. Dig Bernie Spindel’s margin notes:

“CP-financed. Popular front-group remnant. Evolved from the Free the Rosenbergs Committee. Frequent celebrity call-ups to target’s home phone. Names noted on specific call sheets.”

I culled the call sheets. They coughed up baaaaaad Burt Lancaster and cheesy Chuck Heston. There’s Calypso King Preston Epps. He’s hard on the heels of his hit “Bongo in the Congo.” There’s Liz Taylor. There’s Hugh Hefner. There’s Mr. Mumbles himself — Marlon Brando.

Marlon mauled my main mujer, Joi Lansing, at a party. It was fall ’53. I’ve ground that grudge for four years now.

I went straight for the call-in tapes. I was hopped up on hate now. I’d rereprised my role of the cornholed cornuto. I got a hot hit off the call-tap list: Marlon Brando at the Caryl Chessman Defense Committee.

I found the tape and wrapped it into a tape rig. Dig the date: 10/9/57. That’s just last week.

I got cozy. I lit a cigarette and sucked my flask. I punched play. Red rake Trumbo schmoozed Mumbles Brando.

Static cut through the call. I amputated the amenities and sundered some chitchat. Voices vibrated two minutes in.

Brando: “...and they’ve got that burglar-killer guy, slated to burn on the eleventh. What’s his name, again?”

Trumbo: “Donald Keith Bashor. The Party was thinking of sending some pickets up, but this guy was just too vicious. He killed two women, and messed around with the good-looking one, postmortem. We want him to burn, because it explicates the callous nature of fascist injustice. In fact, we want everyone to burn, including Caryl. The more the merrier. They’re martyrs to the cause. We can really play that angle up in the press.”

Brando: “You’re right about that. And, you know, there’s these rumors floating around that Caryl will be coming down soon for a hearing. I’m laying some groundwork on that. Can the Party bounce for two hundred protestors, at ten clams a pop? That’s two grand, all in all. I’m leading a protest outside the Hall of Justice, downtown. Me, Preston Epps, maybe Liz Taylor. That’s on the seventeenth, and I’m not floating this gig out of my pocket.”

Trumbo: “I’ll get you the bread, don’t worry. That’s what front groups do — they front their comrades money.”

Brando: “Rumors... yeah, I dig that concept. Hey, have you heard the one about the third victim? That Caryl bit her nipples off, and she’s been in the funny farm ever since? That she couldn’t testify at Caryl’s trial, because she was far-gone catatonic?”

Trumbo: “The fascist lie machine dreamed that one up. Of course, they made her a real baby doll, with tits out to here. Too bad she didn’t really exist.”

The call staticked up and stuttered out. Mumbles mumbled. Dial tones ditzed and dimmed Trumbo out.

I went back to work. Caryl Chessman click-clicked in my head. It felt like a fever. It’s mutating and metastasizing. It’ll maim me unless I do something soon.

I boxed up the Ingrid and Trumbo tapes. I called Confidential ’s messenger service and told them to roll up here now. I added notes to Bill Parker:

“The Ellmore woman’s a mother lode for Headquarters Vice. Duplicate and forward the Trumbo tapes to your Intel Division, plus State and Fed HUAC. More to come/F.O.”

That fever. Festering, mutating, metastasizing. I could feel it. I could feel him — this malignant microbe inside me.

I called my answering service. I had one message:

Mr. Nat Denkins called. He said Miss Blind Item called him and will call the show tonight.

Festering. Mutating. Metastasizing. The malignant microbe inside both of us.

I messengered the bug-and-tap boxes to Bill Parker. I blew off my other work gigs. I popped home and perched by the phone. I’m Stage Door Freddy, resurrected.

She didn’t call. The wait wilted, withered, and wiped me out. I boozed, I chain-smoked, I popped pills to push the clock forward. A paradoxical effect popped me. They slowed the clock down.

I made midnight. The clock climbed to 1:00 a.m. I ran my radio. The Synagogue Sid Trio blatted and blasted their intro. They went topical tonite. The microbe moved within them. Dig their composition: “I Got Dem Caryl Chessman Blues Again, Mama.”