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.
Connie won’t name names. She won’t reveal Robin Redbreast’s real moniker. She won’t name names. I’m on her side as much as she’ll let me be — and more. She won’t name names in Joan’s memory. She memorializes Joan and tells me how much she loved her. She loves me with her body and won’t say the worshipful words. I explore the world’s secret shit. I excoriate it and explode it in Confidential. I live to do this. I’ve peeped windows since 1936. Connie joined the Party that same year. She joined the Party to run rogue in the squarejohn world and live baaaad bourgeois while she did it. We bit the same cancerous coin and spit it back at the world. Shared blood blooms in our veins. We both know this. She still won’t name names.
The Sweetzer Listening Post
4/5/54
The noxious nite shift. Torrid two-line tilts. Pizza pie and beer and Pink’s hot dogs. Stretch worked Lez Line #1. I worked Lez Line #2. We held hands and swapped nifty nuggets.
Gamal Abdel Nasser’s in town. He’s scrounging funds to overthrow Egypt. He’s a fellow camel jockey. He’s banging butch girls, three at a throw. Go, Gamal, go!!!
Biff Stanwyck’s ensconced at a hot-sheet hut on Highland. She likes it fresh and heavenly wholesome. There’s a dyke slave den near Hollywood High. The den doyenne’s an old studio scrape nurse. She “reeducates” nymphets and feeds them dope and the lewd lore of Lesbos. Currently embroiled: ex — kiddie star Natalie Wood. Jimmy Dean told me she’s hot to trot, across the sex spectrum. Biff’s got first dibs.
Art Pepper’s at it again. He’s gone foto fiend. He’s now the King of the Sapphic Snapshot. He’s snapping pix at a fuck pad on Fountain. Go, Art, go!!!
I was big-time bored. My headphones itched. Lance went home to Liberace. Stretch and I boo-hoo’d his departure. The lez line pickings were thin — but tasty. Then Harry Fremont called, two hours back. Go, Harry, go!!! Once again, Harry delivers.
That Fed car. The rear plate I saw. Outside the Horvath crime scene. It’s on loan to a Fed fuck named Charles Fullerton. He’s in Joe McCarthy’s posse. He’s a rogue Red basher from Jump Street. And, Freddy, dig: I’ve located the longrange listening post. It’s a shit shack in Silver Lake. They’re running bug-taps up the yammering ying-yang. I hit my PC Bell contact. Dig: the phone bills run three grand a month.
Woooo!!! — that’s one nifty nugget!!!
I yawned. I scratched my balls. I ogled Stretch in basketball silks. I got insistently itchy. I wanted to sloooooooow-cruise the Fed pad and lay some late-nite love on Connie.
I yawned. I scratched my balls. I ogled Stretch in basketball silks. She went Wowie-zowie and scribbled up her scratch pad. She hurled off her headset and went You, too.
I hurled my headset. Stretch glooooowed and dished this:
“Claire and Babs just tricked with V. J. Jerome. I got forty minutes of grunts and groans, and then Claire starts pumping V.J. on Robin Redbreast again. V.J.’s vexed and bored, but he finally cops that Robin Redbreast was a crackpot scientist and a CP flunky named ‘Sammy.’ But that’s as far as it went, because they all started up with the woof-woof again.”
—
We lounged in the red bedroom. Connie wore a half-slip and her tartan skirt. I was stripped down to my skivvies. We ran the radio. Some Russki piano putz rippled Rachmaninoff.
I was tooooooo tense and caught-up constricted. I went by the Fed pad and reconnoitered. I got a Big Dumb Idea. It was cold-calculated and meant to make Connie name names.
Connie lay languorous. We stretched and struck poses and draped off the bed. I kissed Connie’s knock knees. She ran her hands through my hair.
“Don’t start hounding me again, dear. My lips are sealed, and I won’t let you ruin this lovely moment.”
I parted her legs and tossed her skirt and kissed my way up a bit. Connie made this soft sound that she makes.
“I’ll name some names that you might recognize. You don’t have to respond, but I’d be happy if you would.”
Connie laffed. “It’s our ongoing game, isn’t it? Freddy interrogates Connie. Connie takes the Fifth. Freddy and Connie. Has it ever occurred to you that our names lack dignity?”
I smiled. Connie said, “I’ll indulge you, if you promise that you won’t press me too hard. I’m out to sustain this mood that I’m in.”
I pulled her skirt down and patted it back into place. I looked up at her and fixed on her eyes. I’d know if she dissembled or flat-lied to me. I’d know if she knew the names and went refusenik.
“Robin Redbreast. He’s allegedly a ‘crackpot scientist’ and a Party flunky named Sammy. There’s also an FBI man named Charles Fullerton. He was at Joan’s house with all the other cops, and I saw him there myself. You should know that he’s in Joe McCarthy’s posse — which is, quite frankly, out to get you, given the bugs and taps that I’ve pulled here.”
Bingo/Eureka/Three-Cherry Jackpot. The refusenik reacts. Tears fill her eyes. Her hands fly to her face.
I know you, Constance. You’ll wipe your face on a pillowcase. You’ll light a cigarette and blow smoke at the ceiling. You’ll say, “No comment” or “I’m not telling you.”
I nailed the first part. I blew the second part. Connie said, “You’re never going to quit, are you? You will always insist on this, and in the end, I’ll either lose you or never have a moment’s peace.”
I pulled myself up close to her. I got our eyes close.
“Sammy. Charles Fullerton. The ‘SA,’ ‘RJC,’ and ‘EPD’ in your cell. I want full names and confirmations. It’s all for Joan. You know that’s true, and since you’re a dialectical materialist who’s always looking for a payoff, I’ll offer you a doozy if you’ll do this for me.”
Connie kissed me. I wiped some tears off with my thumbs. She kissed me again. I pulled her slip up and kissed her bare back.
“ ‘A doozy,’ you said?”
“Yes. If you tell me what I need to know, I’ll burn down the McCarthy gig. You’ll never set foot on a witness stand. It’ll spare some other people a good deal of grief, whether they’re for-real traitors, or just bleeding-heart fools like you.”
Connie said, “It’s not nice to betray your friends, you know. People you’ve lived History with.”
I said, “Joan.”
Connie said, “We’ll always come back to her. She’s our deus ex machina.”
I said, “Joan.” Connie stubbed out her cigarette and turned back to me.
“Yes, we were briefly lovers, and that’s as far as I’ll go to sate your curiosity there. Charles Fullerton turned Joan out as an FBI informant, and served as her handler for years. He also introduced Joan to Ralph Horvath. Sammy is a physicist named Samuel Ahlendorf — and, yes, he was Robin Redbreast in our cell. ‘RJC’ was a Negro man named Robert Jones Crawshaw. He wrote for the Daily Worker, and now he writes cheap paperbacks about Negro pimps. I know that he’s friends with your friend Billy Eckstine, for what that’s worth. ‘EDP’ is Eleanor Price Donnell. She was one of Joan’s professors at UCLA.”