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.
We packed two big metal cases. They were marked “Acme TV Repair.” We vacated the van and coursed through the courtyard. We hit Steve’s door at a sprint. Bernie jabbed keys at the door lock. Key #3 got us in.
I popped through the pad. It was cool, cozy, and tidy tight. Living room/ bedroom/kitchen/bathroom/washroom. One connecting hallway. One demented decorating motif:
World War II. Ripe real regalia. Booty from Berchtesgaden and Jap flags salvaged from Saipan. Swastika wall banners. German helmets as cereal serving bowls, sunk in the sink. SS-motif ashtrays. Rising-sun rugs. Showy shadow-boxed Lugers. Beaver pix of Eva Braun — der Führer’s freaky Frau. Choice tchotchkes on chairs/tables/wall racks. Dig this, deranged: Jap shrunken heads, beady-eyed beasts, all wearing fit-to-size Brooklyn Dodger hats.
Bernie slavered, slack-jawed. I got out my Minox spy camera and shot it all. I smelled Smear Job. Let’s foto-fuck this creep.
Steve Cochran, the Big Dick Bürgermeister of the L.A. Reich. Nazi nests at Warner’s, Metro, and Fox. We’ll loose-link it to last year’s Nazi/flying saucer piece. Bondage Bob Harrison partied with Paraguayan parasite Alfredo Stroessner and wicked Juan Perón. They hid hordes of Hitlerites, circa ’46. Commie columnists called Confidential “fascistic,” “nativistic,” “hucksteristic,” and “the voice of vile volition in the vox populi.” The coruscating Cochran exposé would lash those leftist lies!!!!!
Bernie jerked at my jumpsuit and jacked me half off my feet. “Freddy, let’s go. Quit gawking. We’ve got work to do.”
So, yeah — we worked. We whipped wires to wainscoting and wiggled them under rugs. We drilled white walls and wedged in bug mounts. We rigorously respackled and repainted. We vacuumed up Spackle dust. We planted microphones in cracks, crevices, crawl spaces. We ripped the receivers off the two telephones and planted condenser mikes. We studied standing lamps and stuck bug mounts under the shades. We bugged the bedroom and looped the living room. We supersocked in the sound.
Tick, tick, tick. Four-plus hours’ work. I was sweat-swacked and dexie-ditzed and stomp-the-stars elated. We repacked our gear. Bernie sighed and went Oy. Opportunity is love. That maladroit maxim moved through me.
The Sweetzer listening post. A two-bedroom flop in a Deco dive off Willoughby. We recorded Burt Lancaster’s torture tilts with stacked starlets there. Plus three call-girl cribs. Plus an opium den in the back of the Hunan Hut — “Home of the Shanghai Shipwreck Cocktail.”
The pad was wire-whipped, floor to rafters. Cable cords and outlet plugs jammed up the joint. We manned tape rigs round the clock. Bernie set up a transceiver in Steve Cochran’s living room. It went optimum operational at 6:00 p.m. 6:00 sharp came and went. I slipped on headphones and listened to dead air.
Jimmy Dean dropped by. He brought nudie pix and brief bios for Rock Hudson’s wife candidates. Dig: six backlot babes who cadged coffee for cast and crew and blew select directors. I told Jimmy they looked gooooood. Jimmy donned earmuffs and manned the Hunan Hut rig. He passed on choice sinuendo. The delivery dinks pushed pills packed in with their pupu platters and pork fried rice. Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre toked “O” in the den. They schmoozed their guest shots on Vampira’s late-nite TV show. Vampira went lez in the Los Amigas home for girls. She was running a lez string out of Googie’s, as we speak.
More dead air. I got bored and called my answering service. Oooooh — Miss Joan “Stretch” Perkins called. She wanted to know if she could pick up Lance the Leopard and install him at my crib. I called Stretch back and set it up. I urged caution. Stretch blew me a fone kiss and said she’d make out with me soon.
Joi called. Johnnie Ray called. The answering-service girl said they got catty. “Tell Mr. Otash he’s hung like a cashew — and who knows better than me?” “Tell Mr. Otash he’s an evil storm trooper — and soon the whole world will know.”
Fuck that shit — I went back to line hiss and dead air.
Time ticked. I chain-smoked and scratched my balls. The Hunan Hut delivered dinner. I noshed Noodles à la Chang and China Joe’s Chop Suey. Steve Cochran’s phone rang at 8:29.
Steve picked up. The voice activator vibrated. “It’s Lew’s War Surplus. We’ve got a clearance sale on Schmeisser machine pistols, Nazi daggers, and Jap shrunken heads — flamethrower-fried on Iwo Jima.” Steve bought three daggers and three heads. The guy said he’d fix them up with Dodger baseball caps.
More dead air. I doodled on scratch paper. I wrote “Freddy & Stretch” and drew a heart around it. Time ticked. Steve’s phone rang at 10:52.
I picked up. Static and line fuzz futzed with the call. I got a woman’s voice. I got Steve’s voice. I got static, fuzz, garbles, line lint, lewd laffs, and static stew.
I cuffed the console. I hit the squelch switch. I ditzed dials and got this:
The woman said, “Well... I don’t know... are you... can sign up the talent?”
Steve said, “Are you kid... concept... time has come... Celebrity smut. You want to talk—”
The call static-stuck, fuzzed and futzed, and diminuendoed to dead air.
Googie’s hop-hop-hopped. The Iris Theatre ran a sneak peek of some 3-D dog. The Googie geeks retained their 3-D glasses and goofed themselves out of their gourds.
Jejune jerkoffs. Their revelry ran rampant and rubbed me raw. Tattle tipsters took note of me. I got stuck with stacks of stale bread.
Yawn. Orson Welles sliced the Black Dahlia. Check The Lady from Shanghai. Grok the symbiology. Yawn. Bill Holden’s in the DT ward at Queen of Angels. He’s banging night nurses two at a pop. Yawn. I’ve got morgue pix. The Carole Landis suicide, back in ’48. All-nude. Full bush. Kodachrome color — if I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’!!
Snore. There’s a plot to throw the ’54 World Series. The Jewnited Nations is pulling the strings. Snore. Grace Kelly’s a nympho. She turned Johnnie Ray straight in a mop closet at the Crescendo. Snore. I know you won’t believe this — but Pat Nixon hatched Count Basie’s mulatto love child!!!!!
I believed all of it and none of it. I was back at the listening post. Unknown woman: “Can sign up the talent?” Steve Cochran: “Concept... time has come... Celebrity smut.”
Quivering question marks broiled my brain and skimmed under my skin. I couldn’t stop the scurrilous scroll.
Then:
The Googie’s geeks froze. I froze. Four fuzz walked in and waltzed the floor. Not just any cops. The LAPD Hat Squad. Sergeant Max Herman. Sergeant Red Stromwall. Sergeant Harry Crowder. Officer Eddie Benson.
LAPD Robbery. Hunter-slayers of heist men. All six-four and 220. All in pearl gray suits and white panama hats. The PD’s hardest hard boys. Chief William H. Parker’s personal pit dogs. Mastiffs on a mission to maul for their master.
I stood up. They whipped up and braced me. Red Stromwall said, “Hi, Freddy.”
Max Herman said, “The Chief wants to see you, Freddy.”
Harry Crowder said, “I like your suit, Freddy. Where’d you steal it?”
Eddie Benson said, “You were always a dipshit, Freddy.”
Max Herman tugged a belt loop and made me his bitch. Red Stromwall poked me with a beavertail sap. Harry Crowder and Eddie Benson flanked me and dwarfed me and made me mince minuscule.