Len Deighton - Violent Ward

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This paperback edition 2011

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollinsPublishers in 1993

Copyright © Len Deighton 1993

Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2011

Cover designer’s note © Arnold Schwartzman 2011

Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

VIOLENT WARD. Copyright © Len Deighton 1993. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780006479017

EBook Edition © JULY 2011 ISBN: 9780007450879

Version: 2017-08-10

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Cover designer’s note

Introduction

1

‘There’s a woman sitting on my window ledge,’ I said…

2

That was some bash, that party for Petrovitch. The little…

3

I drove back from the Petrovitch bash with a lot…

4

Fancy Goldie remembering our breakfasts in Tommy’s. It’s one of…

5

I’d had it too long to trade it in. Maybe…

6

It wasn’t like staying with friends. There was a sort…

7

Flying back from Colorado was not a pleasure for me,…

8

I went home to Woodland Hills and shuffled through some…

9

Next day was Sunday. From the very back of my…

10

Budd’s party was not the sort of Hollywood celebration that…

11

When my next-door neighbors, the Klopstocks, had people over, they…

12

My secretary, the indomitable Magda Huth, came running out of…

13

A week later a call from Felix Chiaputti brought a…

14

Petrovitch had a place up on Hillcrest, where the folks…

15

The trial of the policemen accused of beating Rodney King…

16

Like most of the city’s inhabitants, I spent many of…

About the Author

Other Books by Len Deighton

About the Publisher

Prompted by seeing the renderings of my two murals for Cunard’s new ship, Queen Elizabeth, Len Deighton suggested that I illustrate some of the covers of this next quartet of re-issues. I am delighted to be given the opportunity to draw once again, as it has been well over thirty years since my days as a regular illustrator for the Sunday Times.

It is amazing to think that it is also nearly twenty years since the 1992 Los Angeles riots, an event which looms large in this book. When first reading Violent Ward, it struck a chord with my wife and me as we had just moved into our new apartment in Hollywood when the riots took place.

On the first night we were awoken by loud shouting: ‘Get out, get out, your building is on fire!’ The warning came from a police officer who was banging his night-stick against our building’s wall. In the alley behind us were a couple of LAPD black-and-white patrol cars, and I could hear an officer speaking on his radio urging the fire department to come as quickly as possible. Meanwhile my wife, wielding a garden hose, attempted to douse the flames that were engulfing our neighbouring garages.

The next night, along with several neighbours armed to the teeth, we formed a vigilante watch on the roof of our remaining garage. Apart from the sounds of a stray cat I am pleased to report that it was an uneventful night.

In the morning I visited Samy’s, the professional camera store across from our home, to purchase a few rolls of film in order to record the damage of the previous day. A couple of hours later, while sitting at my desk, I heard three loud explosions. Looking out of the window, I saw an enormous mushroom-cloud rising up from the camera store, which had been torched. It appears that their large stock of photographic chemicals were responsible for the enormity of the explosions.

The following morning I ventured to the scene of the crime to discover the burnt-out shop front strewn with the remnants of expensive cameras, including a gold Leica that had become molten by the inferno, and a large shattered fish-eye lens. These later became part of an exhibit in the store’s new premises.

The composition on the front cover draws upon all these events, with the addition of a National Guardsman who stands ready, and perhaps too eager, to respond to the civil unrest and general chaos that is unfolding. For the book’s title I chose a bold font within which could burn the flames of civil unrest; the falling ‘D’ an apt symbol of the city’s descent into ‘war’.

The back cover collage includes a book match cover from the Beverly Hills Hotel, a valet parking stub with Murphy’s Cadillac circled, a couple of Hollywood postcards, and a movie clapper board. Sitting behind all these is an edition of the ‘Los Angeles Messenger’, beneath whose fictional masthead shouts a contemporary headline that was all too true. When applying some authentic fire damage, we did not realize how flammable the newsprint would be, and nearly ended up burning our apartment down – it’s a good job Isolde was standing by with a bucket of water! Each item in the montage has been selected to convey a facet of the City of Angels, its glamour and charm that is always just a hair’s breadth away from a seedy underbelly full of corruption and violence.

The book’s spine features an LAPD badge. Observant readers will notice that each of the spines in this latest quartet of reissues features a metallic object; a subtle visual link that draws together four books written and set in very different times and places.

I have taken the photograph for this book’s back cover with my Canon 5D camera, and my illustration was drawn with a HB Staedtler pencil.

Arnold Schwartzman OBE RDI

Hollywood 2011

Not all of the world’s greatest cities are old. Paris (where I set An Expensive Place to Die) is a great city. Cairo (the setting for City of Gold) is indisputably great but so is Los Angeles. People frown and argue when I say that but I stand by my assessment. And Los Angeles is dynamic; no sooner than you start to think you understand something of it you find it has substantially changed yet again. It is big, a vast sprawling city of low buildings that follow the freeways so that you can drive all the way to Mexico while believing you are still in the city. It is only when you fly over it that you see the uninhabited expanses that lie behind the freeways. The off-ramp signs offer a wonderland of realtor’s poesy: Tarzana, Hidden Hills, Thousand Oaks, Malibu Canyon, Lake Sherwood, Woodland Hills. But you are never far from the wild outback; listen to the raccoons pattering across the roof to invade your attic; hear the noise of a rattlesnake lurking in your woodpile, go into the yard and see a coyote rummaging through your garbage; go for an early morning round of golf and be confronted with an impudent mountain lion in no hurry to depart. This is Los Angeles County.