Widespread Panic
- Автор: Эллрой Джеймс
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Alfred A. Knopf
- ISBN: 978-0-593-31934-5
- Жанр: Мистика
Электронная книга - «Widespread Panic». Краткое содержание книги:
Confidential presaged the idiot internet — and delivered the dirt, the dish, the insidious ink, and the scurrilous skank. It mauled misanthropic movie stars, sex-soiled socialites, and putzo politicians. Mattress Jack Kennedy, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Liz Taylor, Rock Hudson — Frantic Freddy outed them all. He was the Tattle Tyrant who held Hollywood hostage, and now he’s here to CONFESS.
“I’m consumed with candor and wracked with recollection. I’m revitalized and resurgent. My meshugenah march down memory lane begins NOW.”
In Freddy’s viciously entertaining voice, Widespread Panic torches 1950s Hollywood to the ground. It’s a blazing revelation of coruscating corruption, pervasive paranoia, and of sin and redemption with nothing in between.
Here is James Ellroy in savage quintessence. Freddy Otash confesses — and you are here to read and succumb.
The dirt. The dish. The scandal skank. The lewd libels revealed as real. It all came to me and to Confidential. Freddy O.’s in unstoppable ascent.
Jimmy cut his movie and dubbed in a sizzling sound track. The proud premiere was the L.A. Moment of Fall ’53. I served pizza, booze, and pills from a felonious pharmacy. My pad was packed with movie machers and Marines, stupid starlets, stars, and studs. Dig: Liz, Joi, Ward Wardell, Race Rockwell, Donkey Don Eversall. Ronnie Reagan, Harry Fremont, Arthur Crowley, Bondage Bob, and Jean-Paul Sartre — existentially seeking the scene. A six-foot-six drag queen, Rock Hudson, ex — U.S. Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas. Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, nodding on Big “H.”
It’s the egalitarian epicenter of postwar America. It’s a colossal convergence of the gilded and gorgeous, the defiled and demented, the lurid and the low-down. This seedy summit set the tone for the frazzled and fractured frisson that is our nation today.
I dimmed the lights. Race Rockwell ran the projector. The sound track hit: Bartók, Beethoven, bebop by way of Bird. There’s the opening titles: The Stacked and the Hung, starring Donkey Don Eversall and June Christy. Photographed, edited, produced, and directed by James Dean.
The applause ran apoplectic. There’s the first shot. It’s a Hollyweird motel room. It’s a through-a-wall-peek peep at you know what.
June Christy enters the room and drops her purse on the bed. She looks apprehensive. She lights a cigarette, she checks her watch, she taps her toes and paces. It’s soundless cinema. The camera stays static — the lens is lashed to that peek.
June hears something. She smiles, she walks offscreen, she walks back on with Donkey Don. Donkey Don winks at the wall peek. He’s in on it. June sits on the bed. Donkey Don whips it out and wags it. My pad shakes and shimmies. There’s gasps, wolf whistles, shrill shrieks.
I looked around for Jimmy. June devoured Donkey Don, tonsil-deep. Where’s Jimmy? Fuck — he’s jacking off by the pizza buffet!!!
’53 to ’54. My mauve-and-pink skies. Sales-graph lines in escalation. Confidential hits a million a month. Confidential makes two million in rabid record time.
It’s all ME. I’m awash in the sicko secrets I’ve cruelly craved my whole life. I’ve got L.A. hot-wired. My city teems with tattle tipsters on my payroll. Hotel rooms are hot-sheet hives hooked up to my headset. I know everything sinful, sex-soiled, deeply dirty, and religiously wrong. It’s wrong, it’s real, and it’s MINE.
My Marines lived in listening posts. They caught Corrine Calvet cavorting with a car-park cat at the Crescendo. They caught Paul Robeson, ripped to the gills at a Red rally. They caught Jumping Johnnie Ray again. I verified all of it and fed it to Confidential. Gary Cooper and Miss Belmont High? Quashed for ten grand.
’53 to ’54. A-bomb parties on Liz Taylor’s rooftop. Cavalcades of color against the dim dawn. The camaraderie and opportunity. The sense that this march of magnificent moments would never stop.
Sales graphs. Confidential covers. Dipsos, nymphos, junkies, and Commies, exposed. That cover I regret, that ball I dropped, that malignant moment. That page in Purgatory as I pause my pen.
It’s January 16, 1954. I’m at my pad. I’m booking a threeski for the Landing Strip. I quashed a story on Marilyn Monroe’s Mexican marriage. Marilyn grovels, grateful. She knows a sapphic sister with a sometimes yen for men.
The phone rang. I picked up. Arthur Crowley said, “There’s trouble, Freddy.”
I said, “Hit me.”
“I got a tip. Johnnie Ray’s been to a libel lawyer, and he’s suing the magazine. I know that you verified the story, but he’s going forward anyway. I strongly suggest that you nip this in the bud.”
“Men’s Room Mishegas: Jittery Johnnie Strikes Again.” I verified the story. Confidential ran it. This was untold grief.
“My Marines are on maneuvers, Art. There’s no one to handle it.”
“You handle it, Freddy. Take care of it, before that tip gets back to Bob Harrison.”
I hung up. My nerves were nuked. I took three quick pops of Old Crow. Joi was tight with Johnnie. They girl-talked regular. I liked Johnnie. Jimmy screened The Stacked and the Hung for him, personally.
I dropped three yellow jackets and obliterated the day. I woke up at midnight. Johnnie always hit Googie’s after his closing set. He always parked in the same spot.
I walked over. I recall spring heat and a brisk breeze. I lounged on Johnnie’s Packard Caribbean. Johnnie bopped out at 1:15.
He saw me. He got the gestalt. He said, “Hi, Freddy.”
I said, “Don’t make me, kid. I’ll keep you out from now on, but you’ve got to stop it here.”
Johnnie said, “You’re a parasite, Freddy. You feed off the weak. I’m not backing off. I don’t see any of your goons around, so you’ll have to do it yourself.”
I said, “Let it go, Johnnie. You can’t win this one.”
“You’re the weak one, Freddy. Joi told me you cry out for your mother in your sleep.”
I trembled. “One more time, Johnnie. No lawsuit. Do this for me, and the magazine will never come near you again.”
Johnnie spit on my shoes. “You’re a mama’s boy, Freddy. Joi told me you fucked a tranny, which makes you more queer than me.”
I saw red and black-red. I hit him. My signet ring slashed his cheek. He went down on his knees. I picked him up and hurled him against his car. I heard bones crack and teeth shear. The bumper ledge gouged his head. I kicked him and tore a chunk of his scalp free.
He said, “Okay, okay, okay.”
I said, “I’m sorry, kid.”
Johnnie spit blood. Johnnie spit teeth and gum flaps. He shot a big fuck-you finger my way.
The market was 2:00 a.m. deadsville. Jimmy and I quaffed Old Crow. We stood by the mirror and gassed at the ghoul show. I was spritzed with Johnnie Ray’s blood.
Jimmy said, “I’m up for the lead in East of Eden. Elia Kazan’s waffling. It could go either way.”
I said, “I’ll lean on Kazan. He’s susceptible. There’s some pinkos he didn’t rat to HUAC.”
Jimmy gazed down at the aisles. My hands hurt. I cracked my signet ring. My shirt cuffs were soaked red.
The Legions of the Lost. They’re down there. They’re damning me. They’re hexing me to Hell. They’re my comrades in chaos. They’re saying You’re One of Us.