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.
Esta la verdad, Daddy-O — I sound you loud and clear.
“What did you think of Joan?”
“I thought she was the single most self-absorbed human being I’ve ever met, and that she was a hot piece of skirt. I also thought that she was no sort of Communist, back when the rest of us were convinced that the Party was the light of the world.”
I snorted. “That’s it for Joan, huh?”
Sambo sucked air. “Yes, it is. Ask me about nuclear physics. I can talk physics all day long, but it might prove to be over your head.”
I snorted snide. “Okay. Why’d you get dumped off the Manhattan Project? That must have been an ace gig for a guy in your trade.”
Sambo sucked air. He rattled and racked. His lifespan loomed as next week.
“I’d made friends in the film colony, here in L.A. Young people — one in particular. I was antibomb then, even though I helped build the bombs the fascist U.S. dropped on Japan. It’s believed that I was fired for scientific ineptitude. That’s hardly the case. I was a political casualty, pure and simple. I may be a physicist, but I’m an idealist and a patron of the arts, most of all.”
Sambo, the idealist. Sambo, the ardent artist. I ran with that ball.
“I know you swung with all those swinging artists in Russia. Eisenstein, Stanislavsky, Meyerhold — those were some hotshot cats.”
Sambo laffed and coughed viscous vapors. Pops, you contaminate me.
“I knew them, yes. Their visions formed me in ways that you will never know.”
Sambo sickened me. The interview inflamed me. I bounced a new ball. Let’s get this over with.
“There’s a dangerous woman, circling your cell. I know she’s aware of your ‘den mother,’ who I assume to be Constance Woodard. Her name is Claire Klein, and she’s not to be trifled with.”
Ooohhh — did Sambo just glitch, twitch, shudder, cower, and cringe?
“No. The name Claire Klein means nothing to me.”
That’s okay, Sambo — I’ve registered your response.
“Constance Woodard. Your ‘den mother.’ Why would she fabricate cell minutes, after all the members of the cell had renounced the Party?”
Sambo sighed. “Because she was the only one of us who truly believed, and her belief transcended quite an onslaught of reality. And she was the loneliest woman I’ve ever known, and her fabrications must have convinced her that she still had comrades and friends.”
The Club Zombie. A double dose of darktown. A danger dive. Discordant bebop and the Baron Samedi Cocktail — “One Sip Leaves You Zombified.”
I knew the Zombie. I busted beboppers, mud sharks, and junkies here back in the ’40s. The big buck bartender made me. Fractious Freddy’s back. He still be baaaaaaaaaad muthafuckin’ juju. I’ll make him a Baron Samedi Cocktail. He gots to be Zombified.
He cooked up the cocktail. It glowed radioactive. I slipped him a Bondage Bob C-note. He went You the man. I guzzled the cocktail. It bebopified the dexies dosing my bloodstream. I went ZOMBIFIED.
Robert Jones Crawshaw walked in. He’s aka Comrade Bob and KKKomrade X. He bypassed the bandstand and bopped to a booth by the bar. I made him off old mug shots. He looked bad to the bone. I dug his purple porkpie hat.
I joined him. He snapped his fingers. Two Baron Samedi Cocktails appeared. He bolted his. I sipped mine.
He belched, he burped, he bypassed all amenities. He gave me the Big This Is It.
“The Party is a crock of motherfucking shit. Ask Richard Wright or Zora Neale Hurston. Money and fame is the name of the game. I’m raking it in off Black Bossman, Black Dictator, and Black Führer. Billy told me you’re investigating the murder of Comrade Joanie, and let me state at the outset that I liked her okay, but I never poured her the pork — not no way. Ralphie and me were tight — and I know you killed him, and it was a humbug deal, and now you got the guilts. I didn’t kill Joanie, because the fuzz know it was a white man, because Joanie scratched his face good. I also know you know that Ralphie bailed me out on a 459 charge, back in ’48. Are we all caught up, now? You think Bob Harrison would shoot me a gig, writing for Confidential? I’m hot shit in intellectual circles. Black Führer just went into its twelfth printing. Alfred Kazin and all them motherfucking intellectuals go for my shit.”
I was zombified. I was beatified and transmogrified. The booze. The bebop. The dope. Comrade Sammy’s sad take on my Connie. The mad musings of KKKomrade X.
“Known associates. Joan, Ralphie, or both of them. Can you come up with some names?”
KKKomrade X went haw-haw. “Some Fed mofo named ‘Charlie.’ He shot Ralphie the word on burglary scores. He knew Joanie, too, and he might have been her handler when she got hip and turned rat. Plus, I think Charlie might have introduced Joanie to Ralphie. That’s the only name that I can think of, off the top of my head.”
Charlie. Agent Charles Fullerton. It had to be.
“There’s a woman named Claire Klein. She’s got a very bad beef against a man in your cell, or in your general circle of the Party. Does her name ring any bells?”
KKKomrade X said, “Nein, Daddy. But there was only two men in the cell — me and old Sammy Ahlendorf. That said, there was this cast of thousands that the den mother knew, because she was always taking in strays. That also said, there was no man who jumped out of the crowd and said, ‘Hey, remember me?’ ”
I stood up. I was Zombified, Commified, RATified.
“Go home and sleep it off, baby. And remember to chat me up to Bob H.”
KKKomrade X called it. I took his advice and car-napped in my Packard pimpmobile. I woke up, unzombified. I remained Commified and RATified. My first thought was:
Lonesome Connie.
I pulled those taps and bugs at her pad. The McCarthy/rogue-Fed listening post was northeast in Silver Lake. Connie’s place stood within long-range broadcast beams. Comrade Sam lived in Van Nuys. His place was out of range. KKKomrade X lived in Watts. His place was out of range. Comrade Ellie lived in Westwood. Party Girl’s pad was out of range.
And:
Die Kameraden had ditched the Party and renounced Communism. Only my Connie carried the torch.
Ergo:
The Feds had targeted my Connie, solamente. Plus other Commos in cells unknown.
I whipped west to the Wilshire corridor. Party Girl had demon digs in a high-ticket high-rise. A valet parked my pimpmobile. I big-tipped him. He said Miss Donnell was in and walked me to the penthouse lift.
A glass rocket rocked me up twenty-four stories. It vibrated me, vertiginous. The door opened into Party Girl’s parlor. Party Girl welcomed me.
She was tall. She was blond and waif willowy. She looked like Lizabeth Scott in Pitfall. Dick Powell leaves his wife for her. Now I know why.
I flashed my Statie badge. Party Girl said, “I already testified, and I thought I blew all the State HUAC guys, back when I was in the game.”
She gored my gonads. She had Liz Scott’s lisp and low purr down pat. She wore tennis whites to stay home and talk blow jobs to strange men. She defined noblesse oblige.