Джеймс Эллрой - Widespread Panic

We’re celebrating. I bought KKXZ outright and dumped the deed on Nat. Nick Ray paid the freight. I pocketed two g’s in chump change and paid Lois’ air-fare back to the Apple. She’s got an Armstrong Circle Theatre gig pending.

I’m bleak, blue, and shorn to shit. We defanged the Beast. We radically revised the sexy secret history of our nation. Lissome Lois leaves me for ten minutes on TV.

Sid and his boys cranked it. Bass sax/flügelhorn/drums. It only goes so far.

I got itchy and Giant Ant antsy. I kept thinking of fatal fuckups and the loony lore of decomposition. I walked to the waiting room and ran some deep breaths.

It helped. I de-antsified. I scoped the Charlie Parker tribute wall. I noticed a new screed scrawled below the Live on 52nd Street album.

“Pack up all your cares and woes / Here you go, swingin’ low / Bye, bye, blackbird.”

It was signed, “Much love, Lois N.”

My Pensively Pent-up Life

10/22/57–5/1/60

It came and went. Confidential, the whole Rebel rigamarole. I waltzed on the Arvo Jandine snuff. Decomposition devastated all possible inquiries. Stagnant stomach gasses gasped out of the stiff and ignited. The studio blew up. Nobody made it a murder.

I burned all of the listening-post tapes and tape logs. Confidential and I went kaput. The mag moseys along without me. Bondage Bob’s been raked by residual lawsuits. Savaged celebs now savage him. He’s putting out ten and fifteen g’s per pop. Nuisance suits are draining him dry. The mag’s corrosive content has wizened to wispy white bread. There’s no vindictive va-va-voom and scandal skank. There’s no strongarm goons to dash dissent and fight that fierce First Amendment fight.

I’m shit out of luck there. I’m Ex-Officio Freddy. I’m a former PI and a dervish of divorce at the wheelman lot. I shook the shakedown tree and bled Nosebleed Nick Ray for a spell. Sustained extortion withered my wig. I blew my take on booze, dope, and women. I sold myself into sin and saw a certain sickness eat me alive. I divested to climb clear of the serpent sucking at my soul. I told Nosebleed Nick this. He genuflected and wept.

Opportunity is love. I’ve always known it. I doped a racehorse named Wonder Boy and tried to rig a run of races. I got popped for it. The L.A. DA issued indictments. Bill Parker interceded and rerouted my Quentin trek. I lost my PI’s license. I’m still Big Bill’s back-door bitch and informant. I’m still a rat, a fink, a snarky snitch. I’ve gone from tattle tyrant to tattletale. It’s the work I’m best suited for.

I’m still the Pervdog of the Nite. I still trawl for trouble and peep potent windows in my path. I’ve cruised and crashed a load of lives on said path to date. I’m lonely in my loss of them. I peep them from afar and peruse the paths they’ve chosen.

Jack the K. was resoundingly reelected to the Senate. ’58 boded big for him. Pat Brown was elected governor of California. The Confidential trial trounced the notion that Pat was a putz. Rock and Phyllis are Splitsville. I negotiated the divorce. Nick Ray remains the awful auteur. He makes miasmic movies that slide folks to sleep. The Rebel rigamarole marked his slide into evil. Confluence is destiny. He had help there.

Jimmy D.’s dead. I killed Arvo Jandine. Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo are movie stars. Nick Adams has his own TV show. Chester Voldrich lost the hand I mangled to gangrene. I slide him five yards a month, anonymous.

I see them all as the specious spawn of Caryl Whittier Chessman. The cancerous conjunction of vicious thug/victim/hard-hearted hipster left them too weak to resist. Escalation. The Sorority Panty Raid, the Liquor Store Inferno, the film Red Light Bandit. Spring ’55 et al. Chessman hovers in ellipsis. I cannot and will not forfeit the thought of him. He’s insistently intertwined with Lois Nettleton. They collectively colluded and marked my one shot to become someone else.

Chessman continues. He files appeals and writes books and claims the ownership of a fatuous phalanx of folks given to dime-store notions of redemption. He’ll fry sooner or later. I trust that legal consensus. Here’s what my most heated hatred and powerful perceptions tell me.

He’s struck Lois with a strain of his virus. It lives within that part of her where the hard-hearted careerist and ardent artist coexist. Lois worships a tricky trinity. It’s Art/Chessman/Shirley Tutler’s Desecration. She found me because she needed me and sensed my susceptibility and rage for romance. She’s discarded me twice now. She sees me as a Chessman casualty, as I see her. She knows that I’m love-struck in a way that careerist-artists are not. I torch for her as she does not torch for me. She’s unfit to live a squarejohn life. So am I. I’d try it with her. She won’t try it with me. I must change my life. She will not abet this design. She considers the design pathetic and inimical to her Drama of the Artist Alone. I’ve got one last shot at Lois Nettleton’s love. I consider it a curtain call. We must stand together the day Chessman burns.

San Quentin Penitentiary

5/2/60

There it is. This stark steel contraption. It’s ghastly ghost green and riven with rivets and big bolts. It faces the spectator seats. It fits one condemned convict. The door’s plied with a Plexiglas window staring straight at us. The hot seat features cinchable restraints. A vat socked with sulfuric acid sits beneath it. The cyanide pellets scoot through a chute and dissolve there. Thus begins the big adios.

I sat with Lois. Bill Parker booked our seats. Colin Forbes sat two seats down. Chessman drew a full house. Sixty seats. Sixty newsmen, politicos, and those with clear-cut clout.

We parked in a lower lot and pried through protesters to get here. A thousand people jostled, jeered, shoved, and shrieked. Marlon Brando mugged into a megaphone. He told the folks he was set to play Chessman in a forthcoming flick.

It’s 10:01 a.m. There’s the Beast. He’s entered through a side hallway. Two guards hold his arms. A third guard pops the door. They strap Chessman hard in the hot seat. He’s strapped legs, lap, and chest.

A doctor appears. He hangs a stethoscope around Chessman’s neck. The death dudes pop back out. Chessman’s alone in the green room. It’s 10:02 a.m.

The Warden spoke. Wall speakers sent sound our way.

“Do you have any last words?”

Chessman said, “I am not the Red Light Bandit.”

A green-room mike cranked out his credo. I winked at Colin Forbes. Colin went Freddy, you dog. Lois caught it and swatted my leg.

The pellets dropped. It was soundless. I saw Chessman feign nonchalance. Cyanide fumes filled the chamber. They were invisible. Chessman buckled and gasped and dripped drool.

His head lolled and sat sideways. His mouth stretched wide-wide. His lips curled over his teeth. His tongue torqued. His arms trembled and palsied palms-up. He looked sure-as-shit deadsville to me.

Time slipped slow and stood still. The fumes dissipated and died. The doctor reentered the green room. He held a handkerchief to his face. He donned his stethoscope and put it to Chessman’s chest. He said, “I pronounce this man dead.”

Guards got us through the throng. Protesters pressed against us. Lois looked at them and waved at kids in papoose-style pouches. We trudged and tripped down some stairs. The slogan chants and shouts sheared off to a low roar.

We made the lower lot and my Packard pimpmobile. We lounged upside it and lit cigarettes.