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.
Stretch provides innocence. Claire turns my lifelong voyeurism back in on me. I want to know her secret shit — but fear the price she’ll make me pay. She knows that I killed the Red Devil Bandit to impress her. She intends to kill a man. I intend to kill the man who really killed Joan Horvath. The hellhound Horvaths. It all comes back to them. Claire sees that and knows that full well. I told her that I killed a man so she’ll love me. She failed to reply. She won’t love me until I find the man that she wants to kill. In the meantime, my will to work rages.
I work the Cochran gig. Bondage Bob wants a wild and sex-soiled serialization. I live at the listening post. The bugs and taps work gooooood. I listen to Studly Steve fuck my ex-woman Joi Lansing. They deliriously defame me. They underestimate me. Joi tattles, taunts, and teases me. She knows there’s bugs and taps in place. She hasn’t told Steve. She knows I’m listening. She wants me to hear. That means she wants me to see.
Sound equals sight. My imagination seals the sensory gaps. Information insistently issues. Steve’s recruited Lana Turner and hunk hubby Lex Barker. Lurid Lex loooooves underage stuff. The casting-call aspect of the celeb smut film proceeds. I’m on it. I’m on the Connie connection just as assiduously.
I haunt the UCLA library. I bug the admin folk: where’s the Joan Horvath transcripts? The admin folk go Soon, soon. I read and reread Connie’s columns. Connie’s a codified Commie. She’s Comintern. She’s a Red Reptile couched in cold cover. She’s seditiously subtle. Her words work on a mini-microdot level. She’s linked to Steve Cochran. Steve rolls Red. I’m building a scandal-rag exposé and a damning derogatory profile. I’ll leak it to Joe McCarthy or some more rigorously responsible cat. I’ll get Claire the name of the man she wants to kill in the process. She’ll love me then or she won’t. I’ll love her whatever the outcome.
Work. Operation Rock Wife. Rock and Claire like each other and look good together. Lew Wasserman’s pleased. Rock orders in bunboys from a dial-a-dick service owned by Bondage Bob’s wayward kid brother. He gets his regular woof-woof.
I fotograph Rock and Claire’s at-the-doorway kisses. It’s sterile stuff. Rock’s a movie star and a very sweet man. He’s engaged to wed a batshit bomb thrower and more. Only in America, only in L.A., only in Hollyweird.
Work. Allies and adversaries. Old friends passing through.
The Hats hold their hands in. They swing by Googie’s and torque me as I tally tipster dish. How’s the boy, Freddy? Do you miss us, Freddy? The Chief misses you, Freddy. You’re always in his thoughts.
I looked for them when they weren’t there. I listened for them at the listening post. They imparted the impudent theme of We See You. I saw them everywhere. I popped pills and saw them. I drank and saw them. I adamantly abstained and saw them most of all.
Work. I got my FBI kickback on that Horvath house print. Bad news: there’s no file print extant. I lived at the listening post. I wore headphones and willed the next static-stung stammer that would tell me something big and something wrong. I waited for UCLA to call. Commie Connie confounded me. She never left her Hancock Park home. I needed to prowl the premises. I needed to booby-trap bugs and hot-wire the whole hut.
Connie hid from me and hindered me and immolated my imagination. I parked across the street and ran my radio. Joe McCarthy proclaimed his presence in L.A. Bondage Bob told me a Fed listening post had been set up someplace/somewhere. I saw my wires crossed with their wires, strung as strangling cords.
Work to constant communion. The Horvath house as soiled sacristy. I vowed vengeance. I exonerated the Red Devil Bandit and ran my rationale for his death. Joan heard me. I know that. Vigilance is love. I hold vigil most nights. I know that Joan hears me and sees me.
Outside Constance Woodard’s Hancock Park House
3/19/54
Connie’s casa: a cool contemporary job at 1st and Beachwood. Two stories. All aluminum and glare-glinted glass, up and down. Some dippy Dane’s idea of swank.
Sit-and-brood surveillance. A raging rainstorm brings a brainstorm. Hey, lady — we’ve got fone lines down. Let me in to check your fones, willya?
I perched in my Packard pimpmobile. Bernie was due. He had the pseudo repair tools and the know-how. He’d wing it, wham-bam. One fone/one condenser mike/one half-ass tap. No time to tackle bug mounts.
Raging rainstorms rip me, recollective. They wash my broiled brain and cleanse it clean. Last month. The Willoughby listening post. Stretch Perkins works Call-Girl Line #2. She hears Claire Klein and Barbara Payton trick with V. J. Jerome. The appalling apparatchik’s in Connie’s address book. That’s Cold Connection #1. Here’s Cold Connection #2:
Last month, ditto. Claire and I nosh the news and flare-flirt at Googie’s. Claire lights me large with this line:
“I came to L.A. to kill a man. I don’t know his name, but I think Connie Woodard might.”
Hence, my bristling brainstorm. Hence, my ripe resolve. Work the Connie Connection now.
I yawned. My ass dragged. I was up late last nite. My landlord lashed my lease and tossed me out, temporary. Lance the Leopard laid waste to his rose gardens and crotch-sniffed his crotchety wife. I rented a boss bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Stretch helped me move. We hung up corkboards and tacked on Confidential sales graphs. Plus notes for my tricky troika: Operation Rock Wife/the Cochran Gig/my Horvath Crusade.
Lance looooooved his new lair. Room service served his cheeseburgers and fries in a dog dish. Lance slept with Stretch. I slept on the couch.
I yawned. I dexie-dosed my case of the blahs. Bernie showed. He’d scrounged a PC Bell repair truck, for vivid verismo. He parked in Connie Woodard’s driveway and drilled her doorbell.
She opened up. There she is. She’s still rangy, nervous, and knock-kneed. She’s the Specious Spinster and Miss Soviet Suck-Up of 1924.
Bernie schmoozed her. I rolled down my window and heard it. He went Oy, lady. She went Oh dear — are you sure? Ooohhh — she talked butch bass like Lauren Bacall.
She let Bernie in. He shut the door. I timed the house call.
Twenty-two and a half minutes. Bernie tips his cap and walks back out the door. Connie holds the door. Her russet hair’s wrapped in a bun now. She waves toodle-oo.
Paydirt.
Bernie tapped the living room fone and shoved a short-range transceiver under the couch. We rented an upstairs office at a bank building off 1st and Larchmont. We laid in listening-post paraphernalia. Casa Connie to the post: two short-range blocks. We should get gooooood signal feeds.
Bernie donned earmuffs and manned the tap. I called Harry Fremont from a pay phone. I groused and proclaimed my predicament.
There’s this woman. She’s a shut-in. I’ve tapped her. I need to pad-prowl her. Rig me a ruse. I need four hours. She’s a Commie. Uncle Sambo needs you. Violate her sissified civil rights. I’ll pay you five yards.
Harry said, “Jawohl, boss.”
Babs Payton car-hopped and hooked out of Stan’s Drive-In. It was hard by Hollywood High. She hit her Hollyweird high with Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, circa ’50. She was Mrs. Franchot Tone for six seconds. Tom Neal beat Timid Tone half dead and battered Babs with his lurid love. Tattle told the torchy tale, circa ’51. Babs screeched into the skids. Yeah — she was ripe for Steve Cochran’s sexploitation.