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 marched out to the parking lot. A PD plainclothes car rumbled, off by itself. Bill Parker sat in the backseat. I looked in. He looked out. I said, “How’s tricks, Bill? Your wife still doing her act with the mule?”
Harry Crowder kidney-punched me. Red Stromwall sapped me. Max Herman said, “Don’t screech, Freddy. You’ll sound effeminate.” Eddie Benson tossed me in the backseat.
I caught my breath and caressed my kidneys. Parker wore civvies. Parker spoke in his foghorn South Dakota drawl.
“Joan Hubbard Horvath, the widow of the man you killed in the line of duty, was murdered in her home last night. Her kids were off on a school trip. It appears to be a hot-prowl sex snuff. The house was ransacked, and the woman was strangled and stabbed. We found a total of fourteen envelopes bearing your fingerprints. Two of them were stuffed with twenty- and fifty-dollar bills.”
Parker paused. He evil-eyed me. He made with the malocchio.
“The victim fought. We found beard and skin fragments under her nails, and I can see that you’re unmarked. Her assailant had AB-negative blood. Your PD file reveals that you have O positive. This exonerates you as the actual killer, but not as an accomplice or a material witness. I would advise you to provide me with a plausible explanation for your prints on those envelopes.”
I evil-eyed Parker. I made my malocchio more hopped-up and hateful than his.
“I killed Ralph Mitchell Horvath under the PD’s implied dictum that cop killers must die. He was unarmed. I planted a throwdown gun on him and shot him in the back. Then the cop he shot recovered, which rubbed me the wrong way. I’ve been laying penance payments on Joan Horvath, going back five years. I’ve never spoken to her. You’re a good Catholic boy, Bill. You get the guilts sometimes, so you know how it is.”
Parker lit a cigarette and blew smoke in my face. I coughed the smoke back in his face.
“There’s more to this, and most of it makes you look bad. First off, we’ve seen you talking to the Beverly Hills PD, and we make you and your boys for the 459 on Senator Kennedy’s hotel suite. You screwed up the print transparencies, though. You laid down prints for all three of those shitheels who’ve been terrorizing Beverly Hills. That was a big mistake. George Collier Akin left the gang two weeks ago. We have very sound intelligence on this. He insisted on killing the girl they kidnapped, but Brown and Dulange held him back, and the girl was released. George Collier Akin is alleged to be casing solo hot-prowl jobs in my jurisdiction, and I’ve told Max and the boys to find him and kill him. They may seek to consult you in the course of their investigation, and I would advise you to cooperate. It might prevent the Beverly Hills PD from filing charges on you.”
Parker paused. Parker went Shoo, you cockroach. I stepped out of the car. The Hats surrounded me, hail-fellows all.
Max Herman shook my hand. “Here’s to you, Freddy.”
Red Stromwall shook my hand. “Be good, kid.”
Harry Crowder shook my hand. “We miss you, Freddy. Keep your chin up.”
Eddie Benson shook my hand. “Stay clean, dipshit.”
I cut free and stumbled back into Googie’s. I beelined for the front door and plowed busboys and waiters, en masse. I knocked over drink trays. Customers went eeeek and crap-your-pants cringed. I grabbed a double scotch off Gene “the Mean Queen’s” table and guzzled it, sans consent. I capsized a waitress and sent milk shakes and club sandwiches airborne. I crashed out the front door and snagged my Packard pimp sled at the curb.
The Strip was one block north. I blew a red light and whipped westbound. Ciro’s was close. I floored the gas and flamed through late-nite traffic. I swung hard right and racked my undercarriage all up the porte cochere. I fender-bended Ferraris and Facel-Vegas and didn’t give a fucking shit. Two car-park kids tried to corner me. I decked them and downed them and bashed them in the balls. They went ball-bashed falsetto and mewed for their mamas in Miami and Milwaukee.
I crashed into the club. The floor was packed tight-tight. Johnnie Ray stomped the stage. He woman-wiggled and wanton-warbled his hit song, “Cry.” He wiggled the mike and wailed like a jilted fishwife. He sobbed, he sighed, he tossed his spit curl and spun his hearing aid out into the crowd.
Joi and Liberace sat front-row center. I charged up. Patrons saw me. They stood up and went Whoa and Halt now!!!!! I dumped waiters and a fat broad at Bing Crosby’s table. I made the front row. Joi and Lee looked up. Joi lip-synched, “You loser cocksucker.”
I poured her Tom Collins down her dress and ice-cubed her chichis. Joi roundhoused me and fell flat on her ass. Patrons yowled. Johnnie blew his crescendo and cried for real. I dumped Joi’s purse and found her Seconal stash. I guzzled out the contents. I chased five fat red devils with Lee’s double martini. Lee looooved it. He pinched my cheek and swooned. I lurched and lunged and levitated my way out of the club. I slid into my sled and sluiced eastbound on Sunset.
Some new solar system subsumed me. Streetlights went mauve and pink. A-bomb particles parsed and pierced my windshield. I eyeballed passersby. Every man’s face went gargoyle, every woman’s went succubus. Steve Cochran sang “Das Horst Wessel Lied.” I ripped Nazi flags off his walls.
There’s Vine Street. I cut south and cut east on Camerford.
The Horvath house was hot-lit, postmidnite. Nosy neighbors gawked. Outside arc lights glare-glowed the pad and strafed the sky. I parked behind a row of black-and-whites and K-cars. Plainclothesmen and bluesuits pounded the porch. Kids’ toys and furniture were loose on the lawn. The front door stood open. Print men dusted walls. Foto men snapped fotos. Lab men fiber-swept the floors.
Burglary dicks checked window openings and cluck-clucked. I saw Harry Fremont at work. The red devils ripped me and turned it all topsy-turvy. I went blank. Arc-light glare burned my eyes. Joan Horvath and Joan Perkins kissed me like Liz in that close-up. I went black-blank and blinked. I saw Bill Parker and Red Stromwall pass a flask on the porch. I slid my car seat back to deflect the arc light. I got snug and supine. I said, “Please, God — make me safe,” and passed out.
I passed out cold and woke up windshield-warmed by the sun. My windows were up. A cop type stood in the street and eyeballed me. I didn’t recognize him. He got into an unmarked unit parked in front of me. I grabbed a stray piece of paper and wrote down the rear plate number.
It all came back. I prayed my way out of the sunlight and blinked back to black. Rosie Clooney sang, “Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes.”
The Security Office at the Sleazoid Hollywood Ranch Market
2/17/54
I made the Mirror. Niteklub Inferno: P.I. Fred O. In Frantic Fracas. I made the Herald: Confidential Cop Otash In Ciro’s Brouhaha. The hot headlines heartwarmed me. They instilled instant pride. Joan Horvath dead-deadened it. Freddy, what thou hath wrought.
Bondage Bob called and congratulated me. The insidious ink spiked Confidential’s early-morning sales. Ciro’s was Sheriff’s turf. Bob called Gene Biscailuz and pledged ten thou to his reelection campaign. It covered the cost of my ten-minute tantrum and frosted out possible beefs.
Joan Horvath got a bleary blip in the Herald’s local spread. Widow Woman Slain in Hollywood Home. Burglary-Sex Motive Cited.
Bob and I biz-talked. I tossed him the tattle on the Rock Hudson wife hunt and laid out the lowdown on the would-be wives. Bob knew candidate Claire Klein. She played shakedown shill at Whisper, back in ’51. Her part-time gig at Universal was a plain ploy to meet extortable men. I weighed in: We’ve got to scoop the fan mags on this one. Dole out the dish on Rump Ranger Rock’s disingenuous dates with real women. Sock in the subtext. It’s a shadow shuck. Hollywood will fuck you when no one else will.