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.
Perdition, catch my soul — for I do KNOW her.
Charlie Fullerton, FBI. Harry Fremont tagged him a booze-hound bachelor and a cloistered closet queen. He juiced at the Raincheck Room, Rick’s Riptide, and Roscoe’s Reef. He had an above-garage crib off 6th and Dunsmuir. Harry advised a midnite snatch-and-grab. Dump him in his doorway and go in strong.
Sound advice. The lock snapped easy. The crib was cloistered-closet claustrophobic. Small kitchen/small bathroom/small front room. Whew — it’s Suffocation City. It’s suffused with stale cigarette smoke and spilled booze.
I kept the lights off. I lurked and listened, doorway-close. 12:19 a.m. Fumbling footsteps. Charlie’s key in the lock.
The door opened. I sandbagged Charlie, coming in. I kicked his legs out from under him. He moaned and mewed. I banged his head on the floor and hankie-gagged him. I dragged him into the kitchen and hit the lights. Heh, heh — there’s this hot plate.
I handcuffed Charlie. I plugged the plate in. The coils glowed hot, hot. I hauled Charlie to his feet and shoved him up to the counter. Charlie bug-eye beseeched me — don’t scorch me, boss.
I curled his right-hand fingers into the coils. I scorched and scalded him. My hankie-gag muffled his screams. I caught the french-fried fragrance of burned skin.
Charlie bawled and buckled and tore free of me. I kicked him in the balls and jackknifed him. A frigid Frigidaire was right there. I opened the door. I pulled Charlie upright and jammed his scorched hand in the freezer compartment. Yeah!!! — it’s a skin-fry frappé!!!
Charlie tried to scream. The gag mumble-muted him. The cold ice cauterized his scalded skin and made streams of steam rise. I pulled his hand free and shoved him into a chair. I stood over him and laid out my Bill of No Redress.
“Joan Hubbard and Ralphie Horvath. Connie Woodard and her CP cell. This latest jive crusade of Joe McCarthy’s, and how Connie fits in. Who you’ve got wired out of that long-range post in Silver Lake. Nod once if you want to live, and twice if you want to die.”
Charlie nodded once. I yanked his gag. His muffled scream screeched out, sissy soprano. I pulled my pocket flask and fed him bonded bourbon. He gargle-gurgled it down and glowed booze-hound red.
I waited. Charlie went Gimme. I ran a refill down his throat. I tapped my wristwatch. Charlie went More. I ran Refill #2 down his gullet. That got him. His booze glow glissandoed into plain old pink-red.
I said, “Give.”
Charlie coughed and cleared his throat. Phlegm flew into his hankie. He went from refusenik to running dog in one second flat.
“Joanie was never a Commie or a Comsymp. She was an FBI plant at the gate. We financed her radio show and gave her a stipend she could live on. She was always ours, and we planted her in Connie Woodard’s UCLA class, because Connie was lez and loved young-idealist cooze, and because Connie was the den mother of the L.A. Left. Joanie was bait from 1939 on. She was nothing but a promiscuous gang girl with hotshot college degrees, and she was on the Federal payroll up to the time of her death. I set Joanie up with Ralphie Horvath, and they got a 459 thing going. So fucking what? Burglary isn’t treason, the last time I checked.”
I sucked bonded bourbon. I passed the flask. Charlie sucked bonded bourbon. He was booze-bombed and hurtin’ for certain. He took on this weird white witch doctor look.
“So, the cell. There’s a joke for you. Sammy A., that hump Crawshaw, and Ellie Donnell. They were smart, though. They recanted before they got named, which left the den mother all by her lonesome. And she was a joke, but she knew everybody, and everybody confided in her. She’s the linchpin of this new thing Joe M.’s running, and we wired her place, but the bugs and taps went on the fritz. Joanie was set to testify, as a friendly witness. She was going to lay out the criminal misdeeds of Ahlendorf, Crawshaw, and Donnell, as sidebars to their recantings, to tell the whole world that onetime Commies never change. But, Joanie gets snuffed. So, there’s a hot-prowl hump on the loose. So, the LAPD keys on him as a suspect, and blows him up. You were there, you should know.”
I ran through the rat-out. One riff rang false.
“I can see Crawshaw and Donnell as criminals — sure. But Ahlendorf didn’t hit me as the criminal type.”
“Yeah, but Sammy’s bent. We knew that, at the start. He emigrated in ’36, but he kept going back to Russia, under false passports that the Party fixed him up with. He was embroiled in some shifty stuff over there, but we never figured out what.”
I said, “That long-range post you’re running. You didn’t set that whole deal up just to nail the den mother.”
Charlie said, “That’s correct. We’ve got nine other cells wired up, lockstep. The members are all Hollywood types, including some very large names, and most of them are linked to the den mother. Joe M. wants to squeeze her and get her to roll on them. She’s never rolled before, but we’ve got her for Murder One, up in Marin County. A lawyer went missing, and we know why. You know how we know? Because Joanie told us. This guy was putting the boots to her, and the den mother got jealous and snuffed him. We can get her full immunity, if she rolls. If she doesn’t roll, she’s got a hot date with the green room.”
I sighed. “Constance Linscott Woodard will never roll.”
Charlie said, “Freddy, you’re blushing.”
The post was spiffed, spangled, and space age. Joe McCarthy scrounged the latest and greatest new stuff.
Long-range broadband transceivers. All-weather bug mounts, suited for outdoor use. Camouflaged microphones. Long-play tape recorders. Automatic voice activators. Static-eliminating headsets.
Plus work desks. Plus twelve file cabinets. All of them unlocked. All stuffed with bug-and-tap transcripts. Nine Commie cells headed for Hell.
I stuffed 12-gauge shotgun shells in the file drawers and spread gunpowder on top. I placed paper bags full of fertilizer and ammonium nitrate under the desks. I splashed two-gallon gas cans full of Mobile Supreme on the floor. I left the front door open and blasted seven ACP rounds inside.
The post blew up mauve and pink. It harked me back to Hiroshima and that blistering blast at Jack K.’s bomb bash. There’s this magnificent mushroom cloud, all aglow.
The Googie’s Parking Lot
4/7/54
Googie’s. Early-bird peeps from my Packard pimpmobile. A peremptory peep for Claire Klein, specific.
I popped dexies and chain-smoked. The a.m. Herald was due. Fullerton wouldn’t rat me. He was in deep with a putrid pol soon to implode. I had him for all his Joanie-Ralphie 459 shit. The listening-post blast would blare headlines. The Feds would stagnantly stonewall it. The words McCarthy/black-bag job/rogue action would not pry their way into print.
I peeped the back window. Four shadows whipped by my windshield. Sergeant Max Herman. Sergeant Red Stromwall. Sergeant Harry Crowder. Officer Eddie Benson.
The Hats. Pearl gray suits and white Panamas. Trouble treads my way.
I waved faux wolfsbane. They deadpanned it. Max and Red yanked me out of the car. Harry and Eddie cuffed me. They tossed me in the backseat of their K-car and sandwiched me in tight.
Max drove. Red whistled “Funeral March of a Marionette.” We ran Code 3 downtown. We hit City Hall and took the freight lift up to the DB. They dumped me in sweatbox #3 and cuffed me to a chair. Note the fat fone book on the table.