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.
Rippled, revitalized, ready to roll. Bam!!!!! — scratch a righteous and reptilian American, and the lines between OPPORTUNITY and LOVE blur.
Jimmy split to find Rock Hudson a wife he’d never pour the pork to. I checked the a.m. papers and ran the radio. As expected — the 459 at Jack Kennedy’s suite went unreported. As expected — a BHPD Burglary dick called me. As expected — he called everybody on Senator Jack’s A-bomb-bash guest list. As expected — he mentioned the burdensome B and E in sooooo-discreet terms. But — he laid the vivid verismo on ex-cop Otash, X-clusive.
“We know who did it, Freddy. It’s those rape-o shitheads who kidnapped that cheerleader chick. They left prints up the wazoo. Those humps are bought and paid for.”
Don Wexler called half an hour later. Dig: we got 11.6 thou for the furs and jewels in Jack the K.’s hotel suite.
I went through the five address books we stole. Confidential thrived on insider tattle. I had pink and red leather books for Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner, and some society sob sister named Connie Woodard. She scribed for the Hearst rags and wrote up the pampered party lives of the L.A. elite. I had black books for Baaaaaad Bob Mitchum and Senator Jack his own self.
I tapped La Grande Bergman first. The names and numbers were prissy predictable. Fat voyeur Alfred Hitchcock. Yawn-meister Gregory Peck. Dago directors Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Michelangelo Antonioni. So far, so what? Ingrid swung with Rossellini, circa ’50. She popped his out-of-wedlock whelp and caused a stir. So what? Confidential ran that stale story already. The rest of the numbers? Studio stiffs, fag hags, anonymous suck-ups to the stars. Plus — Jack the K., biiiiiiiiig surprise: Ingrid was a WOMAN — if it mamboed, he’d move on it. Plus this: all the dizzy data was in Confidential’s master file already.
I tapped Bob Mitchum’s black book. It was all call girls/all day and all nite. Note the boffo bust measurements next to the numbers. Half these babes peddled their poon out of Googie’s. Yawn. They were all in Confidential’s comprehensive call-girl file. Note to Bondage Bob Harrison: run an All Call Girl Issue soon!!!!
Next up: Hearst hack Connie Woodard. Aha — here my hackles hopped.
Call girls to Commies. That’s a puzzling parlay. Note these noxious names. We’ve got Joe Losey and John Howard Lawson. We’ve got Comintern cultural commissar V. J. Jerome. There’s dyspeptic Dalton Trumbo. Don’t stop now. There’s blustery blowhards blasted and blacklisted, Moscow’s minions all, plus all the mock martyrs known as the Hollywood Ten.
We had all the names and numbers in our “Known Commo” file. So what? It’s the confounding connection to the Woodard cooze that made it all pop!!!
And — here’s a hot one. Gnaw on this non sequitur. He ain’t no apoplectic apparatchik. He ain’t no rank Red, no way.
Steve Cochran.
Steve the Stud. Mr. Twelve Inches. B-movie thug and cad supreme. Star of dreary drive-in drivel like Highway 301, White Heat, and The Damned Don’t Cry. Steve the Stud’s ruff and tuff, on- and offscreen. He’s a brawler and a sicko psychopath. Men fear him, women crave him. He’s the hungest among us. He treats women ruff and tuff — like they licentiously like it. He beat two pachucos who tried to mug him half dead. A fruit honked him at Grauman’s Chinese. He bit the guy’s nose off and spit it back in his face.
Woooo-woooo!!!!
A hunch hit me, hard. Call it the Cochran Confluence. I had two address books left. Lana Turner’s and Jack K’s. Said books would yield boring bupkes. Except for this: said books would unify the Cochran Confluence.
I cracked the books and riffled pages. Steve the Stud’s right there, alphabetical.
Bingo. Both books. Add on Commophile Connie Woodard. Here’s my hunch: it all meant Something Big.
I drove back to my pad. I brooded and worked the phone until 10:00 p.m. sharp. Then I dressed sharp and drove out to the Valley.
Something Big.
My phone work confirmed it. I tapped my contact at PC Bell. I gave him four names and pledged him a thou to run phone bills. Dig this, demonic:
Jack Kennedy called Steve Cochran nineteen times the past two months. He called from his Senate office and his Hyannis Port home. Steve the Stud called Jack fourteen times. He called from his well-known fuck pad in West Hollyweird.
Connie Woodard called Steve Cochran twenty-four times the past two months. She called from her crib in high-rent Hancock Park. Steve the Stud called Connie twenty-one times.
Lana Turner called Steve Cochran thirty-four times the past two months. She called from her Holmby Hills manse. Steve the Stud called Lana twenty-six times.
I logged the insidious info and let it pulse and percolate. Dumb domestic shit ditzed me. Joi left a note, taped to the bathroom mirror. She called me a “Merchant of Hate and Violence” and preeningly prophesied my short and loveless life. I checked my answering-service messages. Liberace begged me to babysit Lance the Leopard. I left a message with his service: “Okay, I’ll do it.”
I popped two dexies and leveled the load with four belts of Old Crow. I put on my choice chalk-stripe suit and spritzed on Lucky Tiger. I pondered the Cochran Confluence and Joan “Stretch” Perkins, nonstop. I called Bernie Spindel on my way out the door.
I said, “We’re working tomorrow. It’s a bug-and-tap on Steve Cochran’s place.”
Bernie said, “Oy,” and hung up.
Linda’s Little Log Cabin: a lezbo lair and rustic rendezvous raft. A shadowed shack. Shellacked wood beams and show tunes tuned low. A make-out mood. Wraparound booths wrapped in cigarette smoke. Butch bunkers and fetching femme nests.
I walked in. I knew the drill. Central Vice validated the dive and took 5 percent. Linda Lindholm owed me. She liked lewd Latin stuff. She went through wetback wenches, mucho mas. Linda laid las chiquitas low. Linda went from burning love to boredom in six seconds flat. Frame-up Freddy stepped in then. I reefer-rousted the girls and bounced them back over the border.
Linda saw me. She stood at the bar and made that gimme sign. I dipped a double sawbuck her way. She pointed to a back booth.
I walked over. I smelled Jungle Jaguar perfume — straight up/no chaser. She stepped out of the booth and stood up to meet me. Gilded goddess, I’m yours.
She towered tall. She backlit and bashed my base desires and made me simmer sooooooft in her glow. She wore a sleeveless madras shirtdress and saddle shoes sans socks. She emitted Valkyric vibrations. She looked like Kirsten Flagstad sang Tristan und Isolde. She said, “Hello, Mr. Otash,” and held out her hand.
I took it and bowed. She had a husky kid voice. It was cool contralto cut with prep school — straight up/no chaser.
We slid into the booth. We sat across from each other. A table lamp lit Stretch, A-bomb mauve and pink. Her bare arms were my size. She raised a hand and tossed her hair. Her underarm hair showed. Her craaaaazy credentials crackled by torchlight. Kirsten Flagstad to Anna Magnani. She took on an Italian Neorealist glow.