Джеймс Эллрой - Widespread Panic

I lit a cigarette. “Who put in the work order?”

“The security chief at Warner’s. He didn’t trust Nick Ray not to go over budget, and he didn’t trust him with all that young pulchritude around. He was just keeping tabs for the studio execs. It was a nothing kind of Hollywood job. I did all the transcriptions, and nothing I ever heard was worth a shit.”

I said, “Shit.”

Bernie said, “Yeah, ‘Shit.’ Just what I said. One thing you should check, though. One of my guys misfiled a bunch of the May transcripts in the July log. Since the gig never came to anything, I just let it lie.”

Lois Nettleton at thirty. The second time I saw her for the first time.

Gaunt subsumes goooood -looking. She’s winsome and wary, all wound up. She’s much more of whatever made her. She’s a runner stirred in the starting blocks. She’ll run from you but not herself.

Once again. Lois the Lithe. My midnight caller. We’re outside Dale’s Secret Harbor. She’s boxed in a booth. She’s haloed in a heathered crewneck sweater and cord slacks.

I walked up. She saw me. She closed her eyes and probably prayed. It was a whew!!! prayer. We worked through conduits and cupids. Her sudden summons worked.

She talked to the phone. I pulled out the Chessman/Jimmy D. letter and placed it flat on the booth glass. Chessman rags Shirley Tutler. He adamantly admits the assault.

I gripped the door hinge. Lois laid her hand there and laced up our fingers. I heard the phone drop.

We got naked and tumbled to bed. We didn’t do it. We conjured a rainstorm, like last time. It time-machined two years away. It rained hard and hurled hailstones. We sealed our circuit of time lost. ’55 to ’57 — our window view’s a wonderland by nite.

It was now. We did what we did then. We kicked the sheets off and burrowed deep- deep. I told her how I found the letters. I forgave her Janey Blaine blurts to the press. She winced and wept at that. I put it off to pillow talk. I didn’t tell her I killed a man to spare her exposure.

Lois talked. She said Chessman’s L.A. court date had been moved up. We had forty-eight hours to make the meet and no more. I talked. I said Ernie Roll retired. Bill McKesson had his job now. He was a tough piece of goods. Bill Parker would have to persuade him. Lois said, The Chief should see the letters. I said, He should. She said, I want to read every one.

The bedroom spun. It arced on an axis in sync with the rain. It rendered me reluctant and muzzled me mute. I wanted to riff, ramble, and laff. I wanted to predict our prosaic future beyond this sacred cause. I stayed still. Our future ended at the green room. We both knew that.

Lois grabbed my briefcase and walked to the kitchen. She left the door open. She chain-smoked and drank coffee and read Chessman’s letters. I watched her. She wept and kept her sobs as mute as me.

I hid in her heartbeats. Her silent sobs put me to sleep. Time hurtled haywire. She slid into bed and moved me to murmurs. I said, “Do you love me?”

She said, “I’ll think about it.”

West Holly weird

10/18/57

“Escalation.”

“Final filmic thrust.”

“Can you spell the word rape?”

All synced to Janey Blaine’s date of death.

I popped into the post. Bernie’s boys misfiled some May ’55 transcripts. They were master-filed here. I felt moon-mad in broad daylight. Lois was back. I was raking in righteous results.

I’d messengered a missive to Bill Parker. It included photostats of four Caryl Chessman to Jimmy Dean letters. Ernie’s out, Chief. Bill McKesson’s in. Remember that favor I asked? Twenty minutes with the Fiend?

Parker called McKesson and messengered me back. We got ten minutes with the Fiend.

I blew out of my pad then. I hopped to Hollywood and blitzkrieged Hollywood Station. I blew into the records room and cruised crime-scene pix. I found Shirley Tutler and Janey Blaine. ’48 meets ’55. Mulholland meets Beverly Glen. The abduction spot for Shirley. The probable dump spot for Janey. Five fotos total. They were point-by-point duplicates.

Here’s what’s hair-raising. The ’55 foliage had been trimmed back to ’48 dimensions. I did not imagine this. I saw tree and leaf clippings on the ground.

Escalation meets replication.

I locked myself up in the listening post. I pulled the July ’55 book and skimmed for misfiles. I found the Nick Ray/Chateau Marmont work order. The room-bug transcripts preceded the fone taps. The room bugs revealed jack shit.

Neuter Nick blathers and bloviates. Jimmy D. and Nick A. blather back. Nick pokes Nifty Natalie and Sassy Sal on the couch. Bernie’s notes note “low and high-pitched grunts and sounds of sexual frenzy.” Fourteen pages of garbled-voice overlap follow that.

I hit the phone-tap transcripts. The section ran sixty-two pages. A separate column listed callers. It got boring, fast.

Nick Ray calls Googie’s forty-three times. Cal the counter man picks up. Nick calls Jimmy/Nick A./Natalie and Sal. They discuss movie motivation. Nick promotes underage woof-woof.

Nick calls his agent. Nick calls twenty-nine unknown men and women. Forty-one unknown men and women call Nick. Bad-boring to languorous and long-winded. No ripe revelation. No talk worth jack shit.

I hit twenty-six pages of fone static. Bernie marked it as such. I hit a noodle-nudging non sequitur: Nick calls NO-65832 nineteen times.

It’s a pay phone in Silver Lake. It’s by the Black Cat Bar at Sunset and Vendome. Bernie lists it as a “known bookie drop.”

Nick and Unknown Man #21 talk. It’s 99.9 percent voice voids and static crunch. Yeah — but there’s nuggets in with the dross.

Nick, 5/11/55. Bookie Call #8: “Setups,” “lights,” “the girl.” Interlaced static throughout. Eleven minutes of line static follow.

Unknown Man #21, 5/13/55. Bookie Call #9: “Props,” “the ’46 Ford,” “some sort of real-life location.” Interlaced static throughout. Sixteen minutes of line static follow.

Nick, 5/14/55. Bookie Call #16: “Of course, Jimmy wants to play the Bandit.” Interlaced static throughout. Four minutes of line static follow.

Three more pay-phone calls follow. There’s no transcribed talk. So what? Calls 8, 9, and 16 dumped the dirt.

The calls precede the Janey Blaine snuff. It’s movie talk. “Props,” “lights,” “setups.” Janey’s “the girl.” Caryl Chessman drove a “ ’46 Ford” on his rape jobs. Mulholland and Beverly Glen is the “real-life location.” Jimmy wants to play the (Red Light) Bandit ? If the shitbird weren’t dead, he could do just that.

The booth calls belatedly bugged me. I considered them conclusive. They surged circumstantial. The “ ’46 Ford” cinched the whole deal. I wanted more. I wanted to place Janey Blaine’s killer in that phone booth.

I called Al Wilhite at Headquarters Vice. He knew that booth and the bookie-drop gestalt. He said, “Freddy, it’s just a run-of-the-mill pay phone. Yeah, it sees a lot of bookie traffic — because bookies book a lot of action at the Black Cat. But what’s to stop some neighborhood denizen with no phone from making calls there? Or your two callers arranging calls there, because the callee lives in the neighborhood, and he doesn’t want his number listed on any calls-received list?”

It made sense. I drove by Sunset and Vendome and eyeballed the booth. I saw bookie types exit the Black Cat and enter the booth. I saw them take and make calls and fill out bet slips. I got half gassed at the Cat. I called up concepts and threaded theories through my head. One stuck stern and held.